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April, 1861.   DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.   437
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WHO KILLED THE AMERICAN EAGLE?
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This mighty bird of prey has ceased to give signs of life.  The wing that never tired is prostrate in the dust, broken and motionless; that eye which met the brightest sunbeam with a steady and defiant glance, is now half shut and dim; that throat whose wild scream startled all other birds from the surrounding heavens, is choked and silent; those fierce talons and bloody beak, which awhile ago could tear and rend the very bones asunder, have lost all their terrors. Rattlesnakes, pelicans and buzzards draw near and eagerly wait for their rottening meal.  Cowardly crows and noisome cow-birds venture near enough to send their bills into the sockets of his once blazing eyes.  His ample and glorious plumage is torn and scattered on the ground.  Can it be that the eagle is really dead?  Will he not even yet arise, stretch forth his majestic wings, open again those once piercing eyes, utter again his wild scream in the heavens, and reassert his wonted dominion over the birds of the air?  Alas! no.  The great American eagle is dead.  His power is gone forever.

'Now lies he there, and none so poor as to do him reverence.'

He is neither honored at home, nor respected abroad.  But how came that eagle to die?  Thus we think the story goes.  By an old agreement, compact or constitution--call it what you will--between Mr. SOUTH and Mr. NORTH, the mighty eagle was to be raffled off between the contracting parties every four years, and whichever got the highest number, was to take the bird for the next four years.  For many years, Mr. SOUTH had regularly won the eagle and enjoyed its services.  He had trained it to hunt slaves, to protect slave-traders, and fillibuster in Central America, to steal from Mexico, to tear the flesh of offensive strangers, to guard, protect and extend slavery, and to be useful to him in such like work generally.  For many years Mr. NORTH saw the coveted bird put to the basest uses, taught to tear innocent flesh, and to pluck out the eyes of innocent people.  This had often grieved Mr. NORTH very much, and he determined that if he should ever get possession of the eagle, he would teach him better manners, and train him to better habits.  At last Mr. NORTH won the eagle; but alas! before handing it over, as in honor bound, the treacherous Mr. SOUTH filled the unsuspecting bird with a heavy dose of secession powders so that our once majestic bird was about as good as dead when he got into the hands of Mr. NORTH.

People are always hopeful in such cases, for the proverb that 'while there is life there is hope,' comes in here as well as everywhere;  but we think it is hope against hope.  The eagle is dead beyond resuscitation.  Its constitution is entirely broken down.  There is nothing to build upon.  The organs have nearly all ceased to perform their functions.--The extremities are cold, and the pulsations of the heart scarcely perceptible.  The bird must die, and the verdict of the inquest must be, that it died of poison, treacherously administered, at the instigation of Mr. SOUTH by one JAMES BUCHANAN.  The sole motive for putting the eagle out of existence was the fear that it might possibly be made to serve freedom as faithfully as it has for fifty years been made to serve slavery.  Eternal shame [[/column 1]]

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on the perfidious slaveholding wretches who have thus murdered the glorious symbol of American liberty!  The curses of posterity will descend into their very graves, and shake their dusty bones in unrelenting execration.
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ANTI-SLAVERY MEETING IN ROCHESTER
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PARKER PILLSBURY gave us lecture a few evenings ago in Zion's Methodest Episcopal Church, on the present aspect of the anti slavery struggle.  The church is a small one, owned by the colored people, and is now, in these cowardly and compromising times, the only public building in Rochester where an abolition lecture can be delivered.  The house which will seat about an hundred and fifty, was well filled by an intelligent audience, composed of white and colored people.  MR. PILLSBURY has some where modestly rated himself as a 'field hand' in the anti-slavery work.--On this occasion be proved himself a master workman, and his words of solemn truth and soberness made a very deep impression upon his audience.  He spoke as one of the old prophets, calm and tranquil himself, yet dealing out thoughts of fire and words of flame with every breath.  The facts and tendencies of these disjointed times were grouped together and reviewed, from the position of the slave, covered with stripes and loaded with chains, a living sacrifice on the bloody altar of Mammon.  He weighed and measured the worth of our Christianity, as a slave on the auction block being sold to the highest Christian bidder might weigh and measure it, and  held it up, as it ought to be held up, to unutterable loathing, as a vile and filthy thing, covered with the blood of four million slaves.  We give only our impression of the lecture.  To us it was a word fitly spoken, and while differing from MR. PILLSBURY in regard to the character of the American Constitution, and the probable effect of a dissolution of the Union, we do most earnestly commend his efforts to drag out from under the ruins of the Republican party the few Abolitionists who yet remain alive, as well as to convert others to uncompromising Abolitionism.

At the close of Mr. PILLSBURY'S lecture, we were called upon for a word, and upon briefly responding, was soon made the subject of vigorous criticism by MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, for attending Plymouth Church.  The inconsistency of our attending a church, the doors of which are known to be open to the cause of all other heathen but the heathen in our own land--a church in which even Rev. Dr. CHEEVER is not permitted to plead the cause of the salve--was set in a very glaring light.  The criticisms of MISS ANTHONY were very sharp, and perhaps very just;  but unfortunately she was hardly the person to make them, for it so happened that we had repeatedly seen her in attendance upon the religious exercises of the same church, and her rebuke of us very forcibly suggested the passage in Holy Writ, 'first take out the beam from thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.'  Mrs. LUCY COLMAN, in a brief speech, thought that it would hardly be safe to insist upon absolute consistency, and that very few could stand the test which had been applied to us.  For our own part, we are quite willing to thus be criticised.  We go to hear Mr. EDWARDS preach, just as we go to Corinthian Hall to hear a lecture, responsible for [[/column 2]]

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our own convictions and conduct, and for those of no other hearer, free to receive what we may regard as true and valuable, and equally so to reject what may be erroneous and hurtful.  We hardly see how we are to live in this country on any other principle than this.  Slavery is in the street, in the church, and in the social circle;  we meet with it everywhere.  Some anti-slavery women have pro-slavery and negro-hating husbands and friends; the doctrine of 'no union with slaveholders,' if applied as rigidly to them as in other directions, would prove quite inconvenient, and would make it needful, as Paul says, to ' go out of the world.'  Nevertheless, there is a solemn duty resting upon us, and upon all Abolitionists, to bear a faithful testimony against the stupendous wickedness of slavery, and against the church that supports it.  But each man must determine for himself as to the best mode of testifying against the position of the church, and we shall certainly choose ours, whether denounced or commended.
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THE FREE NEGROES OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
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In consequence of recent harsh legislation, and apprehensions of still greater severity hereafter, the free colored people of South Carolina are now leaving that State in vast numbers, a considerable portion of whom are taking advantage of inducements held out by the Haytian Government to colored emigrants.  Nineteen of these refugees recently left Boston for that island in the brig 'Mary A. Jones,' chartered by Mr. REDPATH for that purpose.  Among them was Capt. Graddick, a well know pilot of Charleston, who left behind considerable property, which he could not dispose of.

A bill having been introduced, in December, into the South Carolina Legislature, to sell all free negroes found in the State after a certain date, Hon. J. H. READ, Chairman of the Committee to which it was referred, made a long and able report upon the subject.  He said that there were at present within the borders of the State, nearly 10,000 free colored persons; that they are thrifty, orderly and well disposed; that they are the owners of a vast amount of property, both real and personal; that in the city of Charleston alone they pay taxes on $1,561,870 worth of property; and that other portions of the State show as fair a ratio.  The report, as a general thing, goes on to say that they are 'good citizens, and patterns of industry, sobriety and irreproachable conduct.'

The question is asked, 'Can it enter the mind of any South Carolina legislator to confiscate this property, put it into the treasury, and enslave the industrious class which has accumulated it?  The Committee say they forbear to consider anything so full of injustice and wickedness.  This candid and truthful document concludes with the following paragraph:

'Whilst we are battling for our rights, liberties and institutions, we can expect the smiles and countenance of the Arbiter of all events, when we make war upon the impotent and unprotected, enslave them against all justice, and rob them of the property acquired by their own honest industry, under your former protection and sense of justice?  God forbid that this Legislature could tolerate such a sentiment--forbid it humanity--condemn it enlightened legislation!'
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--At Charleston, a white woman named Hertzer was recently fined $500 for whipping a slave to death.
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Transcription Notes:
Reviewed second column a mistake of the word they. The word was thy.