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436    DOUGLASS MONTHLY.    April, 1861.
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A man here feels more flattered by the attentions of a man who owns a hundred slaves, than he would feel if the same attention were paid him by a millionaire at the North.  To have slaveholding relations is even here a matter of boast, and men are not ashamed to tell that their fathers and mothers were slaveholders.  During the meeting of the Old School General Assembly in this city last Spring, our citizens, religious and otherwise, did their best to show their respect to this class of criminals.  Pulpits flew open, and people flocked to bear the gracious words that fell from the lips of Dr. THORNWELL, of South Carolina, as if he were really a messenger from heaven.--The chief consequence of this wordy declaimer was that he was a representative of a slaveholding gospel, and we believe himself an owner of slaves.

The slaveholders are the South.  They not only live South, but they are practically, and to the exclusion of all others, the South itself.  They are the only active power there.  They rule the States entirely, and tolerate no policy which in the least degree endangers their power.  It is, therefore, wholly fallacious to look for any policy in the South that does not emanate from and meet the approbation of the slaveholders.  The six millions of free non-slaveholding whites are but freight cars, full of cattle, attached to the three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholding locomotives.  Where the locomotives go, the train must follow.--Such being the undeniable fact, we are to look for the policy of the whole South, to the sagacity, intelligence, pride and interest of slaveholders alone; and we have no hesitation in saying that these all point to the entire dissolution of the Union, and to the permanent establishment of a grand slaveholding confederacy.  All talk about 'executing the laws in all the States;' all talk about putting down treason and rebellion by force, by our demoralized Government and people, are as impotent and worthless as the words of a drunken woman in a ditch.  Slavery has touched our government, and the virtue has gone out of its arm.  Our rulers are really about the only parties that bear the sword in vain, and they will soon not bear it at all.

It sometimes boastfully said that the people of the North will fight for the Union.--One paper talks of sending an hundred thousand men to New Orleans.  The wildest nonsense!  If they went there they would be far more likely to fight against the North than for it, to defend treason than to put it down.  See how at the first frown of their Southern masters they have mobbed Abolitionists and suppressed freedom of speech, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi!  Listen to the Democratic whine against all coercion but that practiced by traitors towards the Government.  See with what promptitude they have repealed their Personal Liberty Bills.  Observe, if you please, the congratulations upon the surrender of Fort Sumpter; and see the representatives of rebels and conspirators going at large under the eyes of the Government and actually holding a correspondence with them!  The truth is, the South has no fear whatever of the North.  They buy arms for the overthrow of the Government, and the Government seize the arms; the remedy is in the hands of the rebels.  They have only to seize one or two old brigs belonging to New York merchants, to make the Government
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succumb.  The bravest thing we ever did was to elect LINCOLN, and our meanest thing will be, as we certainly shall, desert him, and leave him a potentate without power, a commander without a sword, the sport of traitors, and a hissing and byword to the surrounding world.  The South is not afraid of us.  The popular impression they have of us is this:  We are a miserable set of schemers, destitute of every element of honorable pride, and entirely unconscious of the first element of patriotism--a nation of selfish, pinching shopkeepers, close-fisted farmers, with whom gain is godliness; unprincipled and greedy politicians, who are ready to sell out their constituents, as their constituents are to sell out their wares, far more ready to compromise than to defend any position.  When they approach us, they seem to expect to hear us swear, and to see us stamp, declaring we will never, no never!  But they understand us better than we do ourselves, and persevere till the end is gained.  No, we would not have Texas--not we--but we had to take her for all that. Then Texas should not have ten millions; but Texas did get ten millions for all that.  Then slavery should never go to New Mexico; but slavery is there now for all that.  We never would hunt slaves under the Fugitive Slave Law; but we do hunt them for all that.  They should never repeal the Missouri Compromise; but they did repeal it for all that; and the fact is, history shows that the North has never been able to stand against the power and purposes of the South.  Indeed, if compromise could possibly save the Union, the Union could easily be saved; but thanks to the spirit of tyrants, they want no compromise.  They have got sick of our company, and don't want to associate with us any longer on any terms, and they spurn the compromises which we are so ready to make.  Hence, we take it that the Union is and will remain at an end.  Those who have looked forward to the dissolution of the Union as the one thing needful to the abolition of slavery, and remain of that faith still, may well rejoice, as Mr. PHILLIPS does, for the fact of disunion is indeed accomplished.  To us, however, the event does not seem quite so auspicious.  The Union is gone but slavery remains; and we may well ask ourselves what will be the probable effect of the separation upon the question of slavery.  Will the South become less intensely slave-holding, and the North more anti-slavery?

We anticipate neither result. For ten years at least we have seen that disunion was no remedy for slavery, and hold the same view now.  Once let the independence of the slave States be recognized, as it will be by our Republican Administration, and from that moment the question begins to lose its hold upon the Northern mind and conscience as a question with which we of the North have nothing further to do.  We may speak of it and write of it, as it is written of and spoken of in England, as a thing of foreign interest over which we have no power, and, therefore, no responsibility.  Our pulpit, now largely silent, will become absolutely dumb on the subject, and the moral sense of the North will in a few years probably die out; and thus will end the thirty years moral warfare with the accursed slave system.  The Abolitionists have done their best, by moral means; they have faithfully exposed evil; they have argued and expostulated with the slaveholders.
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No cause was ever more faithfully advocated.  Learning, eloquence, zeal and ability, and life itself, have all been freely laid on the altar of the slave's cause.  Mountain testimonies for truth, justice and humanity have been piled up to be read by aftercoming generations.  These will be perused with wonder and amazement, that the words of eternal truth were so little heeded by the slaveholders of the present generation.  They will wonder that against such warnings any people could be so head strong and determined to rush on to destruction and ruin.  So much for the moral movement against slavery. Hereafter, opposition to slavery will naturally take a new form.  The fire is kindled, and cannot be extinguished.  The 'irrepressible conflict' can never cease on this continent.  It will change its methods and manifestations, but it will be none the less real for all that.  Slaves will run away, and humane men and women will help them; slaves will plot and conspire, and wise and brave men will help them.  Abolition may be postponed, but it cannot be prevented.  If it comes not from enlightenment, moral conviction and civilization, it will come from the fears of tyrants no longer able to hold down their rising slaves.

During the first few years of separation, anti-slavery men will have to keep an eye on those ruthless doughface politicians of the North, who, longing for the leeks and onions of Egypt, servile in spirit, eager to be kicked by the slaveholders who have spit upon them, will bend all their energies for a reconstruction of the broken Union.  It cannot be expected that this recreant race will die out at once upon the death of the Union.  Southern trade will still remain to tempt them; Southern pride and assumption will still remain to awe them; Southern bluster will still remain to frighten them; Southern visitors to Saratoga, Newport and Niagara will still remain to dazzle and corrupt them.  They may even attempt to get down lower out of the Union than in it, to accommodate the wishes of the affronted South.  It would not be surprising if they should propose to grant by treaty to the non-slaveholding confederacy, all that the slave States have claimed within the Union.  They will endeavor to secure the return of fugitive slaves, prevent invasions of the slave States to put down slavery, harass and degrade the free colored population of the North, and allow slaveholders to bring and hold slaves, for a time, in the free States, so that Mr. TOOMBS may get out of the Union, what he could obtain in it, the right to call the roll of his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill monument.  But all this will be in vain to win back our [[italics]] 'dissatisfied' [[/italics]] late fellow citizens.  Nothing short of a guarantee that the slaveholders shall enjoy the luxury and honor of governing the country will avail to bring them back, and not a few at the North would gladly assent to that.  In England they have a party which is for peace at any price; so here we have a party which is for Union at any price.  To watch, circumvent and defeat this servile party will be the immediate mission of all who value freedom more than gain, and who prefer truth, honor and manhood more than a union with slaveholders, for slaveholding.
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--A bill for the repeal of the Personal Liberty Law of Maine has passed the Senate of that State by a vote of 17 to 10.
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