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^[[B K Ross]] DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. [[double line across page]] "OPEN THY MOUTH FOR THE DUMB, IN THE CAUSE OF ALL SUCH AS ARE APPOINTED TO DESTRUCTION; OPEN THY MOUTH, JUDGE RIGHTEOUSLY, AND PLEAD THE CAUSE OF THE POOR AND NEED." - 1st Eccl. xxxi. 8, 9. [[double line across page]] VOLUME III.} NUMBER X} ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, MARCH, 1861. { Price - { ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM. [[heavy double line across page]] [[newspaper format in 3 columns, with vertical lines between columns]] [[column 1]] CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT NUMBER. [[short line]] Reconstruction the New Danger | 417 The Pro-Slavery Mob and Ministry | 417 The Victors Conquered by the Vanquished | 418 The New President | 419 Haytian Emigration | 420 British Writ of Habeas Corpus | 420 Gerrit Smith at the Capital | 420 Cotton and Sugar Culture in Africa | 421 The Star Spangled Banner. (Poetry) | 421 Cotton and Hayti | 422 The Maryland and Delaware Slaves | 423 Flax Cotton | 423 Kansas Admitted | 423 The Compromise Measures | 424 Secret History of the African Slave Trade | 425 Our New U. S. Senator | 426 The Crisis in the U. S. Senate | 426 Slavery and the Irish Element | 428 Notes on Hayti | 429 Speeches of the President Elect | 430 The Secession Movement | 431 The Two Andersons, (Poetry) | 432 A Negro Confederacy | 432 Slave State Statistics | 432 To the Friends of the Fugitives | 432 Remittances, Terms, &c | 432 [[heavy double line]] DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. [[double line]] RECONSTRUCTION THE NEW DANGER. [[short line]] The Cotton States having now formally seceded, and set up a separate and Independent Government for themselves, the idea of Reconstruction is beginning to be the rallying cry of many at the North who have done their utmost in cheering on the rebels and traitors in their work of demolishing the present Government. Nothing now can, we think, save the North this new degradation, but the contempt and scorn with which the Cotton Lords spurn the miserable serviles who proffer it But Northern servility is very persistent, and contempt and scorn are, after all, only [[italic]]feeling[[/italic]], and may succumb before suitable apologies and proper self-abasement. The Peace Congress, so called, but only a Virginia caucus to get new guarantees for Slavery over the head of Congress - we are told that this Congress will recommend a National Convention, which means National Reconstruction - which means alterations of the Constitution - which means making that Constitution the express image of Slavery itself, and the poor Northern people more than ever its sworn worshipers. This is clear from the parties who ask for this altering Convention. The North, the East, the West, are satisfied with the Constitution as it is. They ask no change, and need none. The demand for it comes from the South, and those who are for granting it, if they are sincere, are so because they are willing to furnish further guarantees and greater immunities to slaveholding than are to be found in the old Constitution as it is. Some of the Republicans have already expressed their willingness thus to alter or amend the Constitution, Senator SEWARD among the number. Indeed, the Republican press generally assent to the holding of the Convention. But two motives can induce them to favor it: First, to stimulate false hopes in the Border Slave States, stave of Secession, and gain time for the Inauguration of Mr. LINCOLN - a cowardly [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] and dishonest motive. Or the other may be to assent to new Constitutional provisions for the protection and preservation of Slavery - a motive as cruel and wicked as the other is mean and dastardly. We are, therefore, now in danger of having an open palpable Covenant with Death, and Agreement with Hell. The old Constitution, it is found, after all, to be defficient in pro slavery provisions It was made by an anti-slavery generation, at an anti-slavery period in our National history, and does not answer the purposes of the human flesh-mongers who delight in the blood and tears of their victims, so they must have another. This, then, is the great and exceeding peril now besetting the cause of the poor slave. - The Union has fallen apart, and must be again cemented with the slave's blood! The calamity of permanent disunion, great as it is, is nothing to this proposed plan of Reconstruction. It signifies all abounding servility to the Slave Power, and the endless perpetuation of Slavery, so far as incorporating it with the organic law of the land can make it so. Once thus incorporated, the North is bound hand and foot, and chained to the car of Slavery; Free Speech and a Free Press are gone. Anti Slavery meetings, which are now put down by the mob, will be dispersed by municipal authority, while Doctors of Divinity will find Scripture for absolute submission to the new order of affairs. The plantation rule will thus extend itself over the North, and the negro will be hated, persecuted and despised as never before. An Abolitionist will be a hated man, and to tar and feather him will become a patriotic duty. - Such is the prospect now before us. For let the North now relinquish its feeble hold upon anti-slavery principle, and who can sound the fathomless depths to which it shall fall? - Once let it stain its soul with new concessions to Slavery for the sake of Reconstruction, then it is prepared for all conceivable villainy for its preservation. This is a dark picture, but is it unreasonably so? If Slavery has ruled the Nation for fifty years, under an Anti Slavery Constitution, and has been able to break up the Government when its friends could not longer rule it, what will those friends not be able to do when they get the fundamental law of the land completely molded to their purposes? We insist that the picture is none too dark. The danger is imminent, and no time should be lost in arresting this Convention movement. No larger premium to treason could be demanded by traitors, than the holding such a Convention would be. It would be saying to all after-coming rebels, your is the true method of reform. A Convention called now to placate men who have taken up arms against the Government, (and no other motive is or can be assign for it,) would be for the Government to invite disloyalty and court contempt. [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] We will not speculate further as to what will be the result. The immediate future is too big with events, and the veil is too soon to be lifted to make such speculations of much value. Of one thing, however, we may never cease to remind our countrymen: no compacts, no compromises, no arguments or covenants into which they may enter, for the purpose of strengthening and perpetuating Slavery, can stand before the settled moral conviction against Slavery which, thanks to the efforts of the Abolitionists, now has a firm hold upon the conscience of a large portion of the people of the North. Mob violence, and red-handed persecution may await us; but out of the trial as by fire, the cause of Liberty, pure, bright and triumphant, is sure to come. [[line]] THE PRO-SLAVERY MOB AND THE PRO-SLAVERY MINISTRY. [[short line]] These two Powers have been harmoniously and simultaneously active, since the second of December, in the service of the American slave system. The union and concert between them is as admirable as their work is hateful and diabolical. The causes that have moved the one to pelt us with brickbats, have equally moved the other to pester us with sermons. - The weapons of the one are brutal, and those of the other spiritual; but they amount to about the same thing in the end. Both aim to guard, defend and perpetuate, in all its fiendish rigor, the thrice-accursed system of Human Slavery. The piety of the Church, and the profanity and obscenity of the Mob, are morally the same, and express, in their characteristic ways, the same demoniacal idea. That idea is a righteousness of robbery where the victim is black, and the robber is white - for nobody at the North, we think, would defend Slavery, even from the Bible, but for this color distinction. What it would be a State's Prison offense to do to a white man, is quite innocent and praiseworthy to prepetuate as against a human being of a different complexion. Color makes all the difference in the application of our American Christianity. To the whites it is full of love and tenderness. To the blacks it is full of hate and bitterness. The same Book which is full of the Gospel of Liberty to one race, is crowded with arguments in justification of the slavery of another. Those who shout and rejoice over the progress of Liberty in Italy, would mob down, pray and preach down Liberty at home as an unholy and hateful thing. The aspect of the times must be admitted to be somewhat gloomy and dark for the Abolition cause. During a period of more than thirty years have the Abolitionists, with ze[[torn and missing paper]] and ability unsurpassed by those exhib[[torn and missing paper]] any other great moral movement, [[torn and missing paper]] National heart and conscience w[[torn and missing paper]] doctrine, and have endeavored [[torn and missing paper]] guilty nation to repentance, and [[torn and missing paper]] slave, and now to human seemi[[torn and missing paper]] far from the accomplishment [[torn and missing paper]] [[/column 3]]
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