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April, 1861.    DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.    435 
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ficiently true to the letter of the Constitution, and to the history of the times in which the Constitution was framed and adopted, to deny that the Constitution required slaves to be given up, and quoted Mr. JAMES MADISON in corroberation of his statement.  This is Mr. WEBSTER'S language:—'It may not be improper here to  single speech mark is at the start of each printed line of quote]]to allude to that—I had almost said celebrated—opinion of Mr. MADISON. You observe, sir, that the term slavery is not used in the Constitution.  The Constitution does not require that fugitive slaves shall be delivered up; it requires that persons bound to service in one State escaping into another, shall be delivered up.  Mr. MADISON opposed the introduction of the term slave, or slavery, into the Constitution; for he said he did not wish to see it recognized by the Constitution of the United States of America, that there could be property in men.'

How sadly have the times changed, not only since the days of MADISON—the days of the Constitution—but since the days even of DANIEL WEBSTER.  Cold and dead as that great bad man was to the claims of humanity, he was not sufficiently removed from the better days of the Republic to claim, as Mr. Lincoln does, that the surrender of fugitive slaves is a plain requirement of the Constitution.

But here comes along a slight gleam of relief.  Mr. LINCOLN tremblingly ventures to inquire (for he is too inoffensive to the slaveholders to assert and declare, except when the rights of black men are asserted and declared away) if it 'might not be well to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.'

Again we thank Mr. LINCOLN. He has, however, ventured upon a hazardous suggestion.  The man has not quite learned his lesson.  He had not been long enough in Washington to learn that Northern citizens, like persons of African descent, have no rights, privileges or immunities that slaveholders are bound to respect.  To break open a man's trunk, to read the letters from his wife and daughters, to tar and feather him, to ride him on a rail and give him the alternative of being hanged or of leaving town the same hour, simply because he resides in a free State, is a privilege and immunity which our Southern brethren will not give up, though the requirement were made in every line of the Constitution.  Yet, we say, we are thankful.  It is something even to have a sickly intimation that other American citizens, not belonging to the privileged slaveholding class, have rights which it 'might be well' to secure by law, and that the mere fact of living in a free State ought not to subject the unfortunate traveler either to being whipped, hanged or shot.  Yes, this is something to be thankful for and is more than any other American President has ever ventured to say, either in his Inaugural Speech or Annual Message.  It is, perhaps, this latter fact that gives Mr. LINCOLN's casual remark its chief importance.—Hitherto our Presidents had pictured the South as the innocent lamb, and the greedy North as the hungry wolf, ever ready to tear and devour.

From slave-catching, Mr. LINCOLN proceeds to give a very lucid exposition of the nature 
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of the Federal Union, and shows very conclusively that this Government, from its own nature and the nature of all Governments, was intended to be perpetual, and that it is revolutionary, insurrectionary and treasonable to break it up.  His argument is excellent; but the difficulty is that the argument comes too late.  When men deliberately arm themselves with the avowed intention of breaking up the Government; when they openly insult its flag, capture its forts, seize its munitions of war, and organize a hostile Government, and boastfully declare that they will fight before they will submit, it would seem of little use to argue with them.  If the argument was merely for the loyal citizen, it was unnecessary.  If it was for those already in rebellion, it was casting pearls before swine.  No class of men in the country understand better than the rebels themselves the nature of the business on which they are engaged.—They tell us this in the thousands of pounds of powder they have been buying, and the millions of money and arms they have been stealing.  They know that unless the Government is a miserable and contemptible failure, destitute of every attribute of a Government except the name, that that Government must meet them on the field and put them down, or be itself put down.  To parley with traitors is but to increase their insolence and audacity.

It remains to be seen whether the Federal Government is really able to do more than hand over some JOHN BROWN to be hanged, suppress a slave insurrection, or catch a runaway slave—whether it is powerless for liberty, and only powerful for slavery.  Mr. LINCOLN says, 'I shall take care that the laws of the Union shall be faithfully executed in all the States'—that is, he will do so as 'as far as practicable,' and unless the American people, his masters, shall, in some authoritative manner direct the contrary.  To us, both these provisos had better have been omitted.  They imply a want of confidence in the ability of the Government to execute its own laws, and opens its doors to all that border tribe who have nothing but smiles for the rebels and peace lecturers for the Government.  The American people have placed the Government in the hands of ABRAHAM LINCOLN for the next four years, and his instructions are in the Constitution.  He had no right to suppose that they will reverse those instructions in a manner to give immunity to traitors; and it was a mistake to admit such as a possibility, expecially in the presence of the very traitors themselves.  But we are dwelling longer upon Mr. LINCOLN'S speech than we had intended, and longer than we are warranted either by the patience of our readers, or the extent of our space.  The perusal of it has left no very hopeful impression upon our mind for the cause of our down-trodden and heart-broken countrymen.  Mr. LINCOLN has avowed himself ready to catch them if they run away, to shoot them down if they rise against their oppressors, and to prohibit the Federal Government irrevocably from interfering for their deliverance.  With such declarations before them, coming from our first modern anti-slavery President, the Abolitionists must know what to expect during the next four years, (should Mr. LINCOLN not be, as he is likely to be, driven out of Washington by his rival, Mr. JEFF. DAVIS, who has already given out that should Mr. LINCOLN attempt to do, what
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he has sworn to do--namely, execute the laws, fifty thousand soldiers will march directly upon Washington!)  This might be taken as an empty threat on the part of the President of the Confederated States, if we did not see with what steadiness, promptness and certainty the rebels have from the first executed all their designs, and fulfilled all their promises.  A thousand things are less probable than that Mr. LINCOLN and his Cabinet will be driven out of Washington, and made to go out, as they came in, by the Underground Railroad.  The game is completely in the hands of Mr. JEFFERSON DAVIS, and no doubt he will avail himself of every advantage.
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THE FUTURE OF THE ABOLITION CAUSE.
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In looking into the future, and endeavoring to ascertain what it has in store for the American slave, all calculations based upon the assumption that the slave States which have seceded will return to their places, and that those which still remain in the Union will continue their allegiance to the old Constitution, will be found fallacious.  One fact we take to be settled, and that is, THE COMPLETE AND PERMANENT SEPARATION OF THE SLAVEHOLDING STATES FROM THE NON-SLAVEHOLDING STATES OF AMERICA.  This we hold to be as fixed and certain as though the fact were entirely accomplished.  The vital policy, the policy that inflames and animates the political masses of the seceded slave States, is only a few months in advance of that in the non-seceded slaveholding States.  Blood is thicker than water, and birds of a feather will flock together.  The tardiness of the border States in going out, discloses to us only the profound sagacity and skill with which the political affairs of those States are managed.  From the first they have known what they were about, and have seen the end from the beginning.—The whole drama of disunion was long ago written, and each State has had its part assigned it.  Virginia has played her part, thus far, about as well as South Carolina hers, and the one has been essential to the other thro'out.  If South Carolina has stabbed the Union, Virginia has held the arm from striking down the assassin.  She sings out, 'Peace, ho!' as if shocked with the idea of bloodshed; but she is sure to go out and share the gains of robbery with her sister slave States, and will claim, as she well may, to have performed her part as well as any.  All notion that the non slaveholding white people in the border slave States will keep them in the Union, is founded on the very erroneous supposition that that class of persons have more than nominal political power in those States.  The non-slaveholding people of the South are such, simply because they can't be otherwise.  The highest ambition of that class is to be able to own and flog a negro.  They are the utmost dread of the slave.  They furnish the overseers, the negro drivers, the patrols, and negro-hunters of the South, and are, in their sphere, as completely the tools of the slaveholders, as the slaves themselves.  They are ignorant, besotted and servile, and have no opinions of their own upon political affairs.—A smile or nod of approbation from a wealthy slaveholder would make most of the class happy for a month.  We at the North have no adequate idea of the power of these master spirits of the South; and yet the fact is, we at the North are under the same influence.—

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