Viewing page 1 of 16

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

^[[B K Ross]]

DOUGLASS' MONTHLY
[[double line]]

"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 NEEDY."--1st Eccl. xxxi. 8,9.
[[double line]]
VOLUME III. }
NUMBER XI.  }
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, APRIL, 1861.
{PRICE--
{ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM. 
[[double line]]

[[column 1]]
CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
[[line]]
The Inaugural Address.................... 433
The Future of the Abolition Cause........ 435
Who Killed the American Eagle?........... 437
Anti-Slavery Meeting in Rochester........ 437
The Free Colored People of South Carolina 437
The Wicked Flee when no Man Pursueth..... 438
Who Shall Avenge the Slave?.............. 438
The Underground Railroad................. 438
From the Pike's Peak Gold Region......... 439
Letters from the Old World............... 440
Letter from Bishop Payne................. 441
Victor Hugo and John Brown............... 441
Lord Brougham and James Redpath.......... 441
Wendell Phillips on Progress............. 442
Amendment to the Fugitive Slave Law...... 443
Stand Firm............................... 443
Proceedings at Dr. Cheever's Church...... 443
President Lincoln's Inaugural Address.... 444
The Fugitive Anderson.................... 446
Outrageous Cases of Kidnapping........... 447
British Vessels in the Port of Charleston,
  South Carolina......................... 447
Miscellaneous Items...................... 448
The New Congress......................... 448
Remittances, Terms &c.................... 448
[[double line]]

DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
[[double line]]

THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS
[[line]]
Elsewhere in the columns of our present monthly, our readers will find the Inaugural Address of Mr. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, delivered on the occasion of his induction to the office of President of the United States.  The circumstances under which the Address was delivered, were the most extraordinary and portentous that ever attended any similar occasion in the history of the country.  Threats of riot, rebellion, violence and assassination had been freely, though darkly circulated, as among the probable events to occur on that memorable day.  The life of Mr. LINCOLN was believed, even by his least timid friends, to be in most imminent danger.  No mean courage was required to face the probabilities of the hour.  He stood up before the pistol or dagger of the sworn assassin, to meet death from an unknown hand, while upon the very threshold of the office to which the suffrages of the nation had elected him.  The outgoing Administration, either by its treachery or weakness, or both, had allowed the Government to float to the very verge of destruction.  A fear, amounting to agony in some minds, existed that the great American Republic would expire in the arms of its newly elected guardian upon the very moment of his inauguration.  For weeks and months previously to the 4th of March, under the wise direction and management of General SCOTT, elaborate military preparations were made with a view to prevent the much apprehended outbreak of violence and bloodshed, and secure the peaceful inauguration of the President elect.  How much the nation is indebted to General SCOTT for its present existence; it is impossible to tell.  No doubt exists that to him, rather than to an forbearance of the rebels, Washington owes its salvation from bloody streets on the fourth of March.  The manner in which Mr. LINCOLN entered the Capital was in keeping with the menacing and troubled
[[/column 1]]
[[column 2]]
state of times.  He reached the Capital as the poor, hunted fugitive slave reaches the North, in disguise, seeking concealment, evading pursuers, by the underground railroad, between two days, not during the sunlight, but crawling and dodging under the sable wing of night.  He changed his programme, took another route, started at another hour, travelled in other company, and arrived at another time in Washington.  We have no censure for the President at this point.  He only did what braver men have done.  It was, doubtless, galling to his very soul to be compelled to avail himself of the methods of a fugitive slave, with a nation howling on his track.  It is hard to think of anything more humiliating.  The great party that elected him fairly wilted under it.  The act, in some sense, was an indication of the policy of the new Government--more cunning than bold, evading rather than facing danger, outwitting rather than bravely conquering and putting down the enemy.  The whole thing looked bad, but it was not adopted without reason.  Circumstances gave to an act which, upon its face, was cowardly and mean, the merit of wisdom, forethought and discretion.

Once in Washington, Mr. LINCOLN found himself in the thick atmosphere of treason on the one hand, and a cowardly, sentimental and deceitful profession of peace on the other.  With such surroundings, he went to work upon his Inaugural Address, and the influence of those surroundings may be traced in the whole character of his performance.  Making all allowance for circumstances, we must declare the address to be but little better than our worst fears, and vastly below what we had fondly hoped it might be.  It is a double-tongued document, capable of two constructions, and conceals rather than declares a definite policy.  No man reading it could say whether Mr. LINCOLN was for peace or war, whether he abandons or maintains the principles of the Chicago Convention upon which he was elected.  The occasion required the utmost frankness and decision.  Overlooking the whole field of disturbing elements, he should have boldly rebuked them.  He saw seven States in open rebellion, the Constitution set at naught, the national flag insulted, and his own life murderously sought by slave-holding assassins.  Does he expose and rebuke the enemies of his country, the men who are bent upon ruling or ruining the country?  Not a bit of it.  But at the very start he seeks to court their favor, to explain himself where nobody misunderstands him, and to deny intentions of which nobody had accused him.  He turns away from his armed enemy and deals his blows on the head of an innocent bystander.  He knew, full well, that the grand objection to him and his party respected the one great question of slavery extension.  The South want to extend slavery, and the North want to confine it where it is, where the public mind shall rest in the belief of its ultimate extinction.  This was the question which carried the North and defeated
[[/column 2]]
[[column 3]]
the South in the election which made Mr. ABRAHAM LINCOLN President.  Mr. LINCOLN knew this, and the South has known it all along; and yet this subject only gets the faintest allusion, while others, never seriously in dispute, are dwelt upon at length.

Mr. LINCOLN opens his address by announcing his complete loyalty to slavery in the slave States, and quotes from the Chicago platform a resolution affirming the rights of property in slaves, in the slave States.  He is not content with declaring that he has no lawful power to interfere with slavery in the States, but he also denies having the least 'inclination' to interfere with slavery in the States.  This denial of all feeling against slavery, at such a time and in such circumstances, is wholly discreditable to the head and heart of Mr. LINCOLN.  Aside from the inhuman coldness of the sentiment, it was a weak and inappropriate utterance to such an audience, since it could neither appease nor check the wild fury of the rebel Slave Power.  Any but a blind man can see that the disunion sentiment of the South does not arise from any misapprehension of the disposition of the party represented by Mr. LINCOLN.  The very opposite is the fact.  The difficulty is, the slaveholders understand the position of the Republican party too well.  Whatever may be the honied phrases employed by Mr. LINCOLN when confronted by actual disunion; however silvery and beautiful may be the subtle rhetoric of his long-headed Secretary of State, when wishing to hold the Government together until its management should fall into other hands; all know that the masses at the North (the power behind the throne) had determined to take and keep this Government out of the hands of the slave-holding oligarchy, and administer it hereafter to the advantage of free labor as against slave labor.  The slaveholders knew full well that they were hereafter to change the condition of rulers to that of being ruled; they knew that the mighty North is outstripping the South in numbers, and in all the elements of power, and that from being the superior, they were to be doomed to hopeless inferiority.  This is what galled them.  They are not afraid that LINCOLN will send out a proclamation over the slave States declaring all the slaves free, nor that Congress will pass a law to that effect.  They are no such fools as to believe any such thing; but they do think, and not without reason, that the power of slavery is broken, and that its prestige is gone whenever the people have made up their minds that Liberty is safer in the hands of freemen than in those slaveholders.  To those sagacious and crafty men, schooled into mastery over bondmen on the plantation, and thus better able to assume the airs of superiority over Northern dough-faces, Mr. LINCOLN'S disclaimer of any power, right or inclination to interfere with slavery in the States, does not amount to more than a broken shoe-string!  They knew it all before, and while they do not accept it as a satisfaction,
[[/column 3]]