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April, 1861. Douglass' Monthly. 445 [[line]] minority with not acquiesce, the majority must or the government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government is acquiescence on the one side or the other. SECESSION A TWO-EDGED SWORD. If a minority in such a case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily sewed again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession? Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. THE SPHERE OF THE SUPREME COURT. I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decision must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the objects of that suit, whilst they are also entitled to high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government; and while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it being limited to that particular case, with the change that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon the vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decision of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigations between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.-Nor is there in the view any assault upon the Court or the Judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if other seek to turn their decisions to political purposes. THE REAL DISPUTE. One section of our country believes Slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The Fugitive Slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any laws can ever ben in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself.-The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. SEPERATION IMPOSSIBLE. Physically speaking, we cannot separate; we cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and a wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; by the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse either amicable or hostile must continue between them.-It is possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before?Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war you cannot fight always, and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you. AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION. This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendment, I recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself, and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the Convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by other not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand that a proposed amendment to the Constitution, which amendment however I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that holding such a provision now to be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. THE PEOPLE THE SOURCE OF POWER AND JUSTICE. The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix the terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also, if they choose, but the Executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government as it came to his hands, and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor. Why should not there be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in this world? In our present differences, is ether party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty ruler of nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people. By the frame of the Government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no Administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years. REFLECTION INVOKED - THE ISSUE IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time, but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point the laws of your own framing under it, whilst the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulties. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourself the aggressors.-You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have a most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it. I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. [[line]] Set back for once.- A few evenings since, a decently dressed young colored man entered the bar room of a public house near the Central Railroad Depot in this city, and asked if he could be accommodated for the night. He was answered in the affirmative, and took a seat quietly, to await the hour for retiring. Among those who were present, was a well-known horse dealer, noted for the roughness of his language and the flinty character of his politics. This individual finally rose from his seat to go home, but before leaving, felt called upon to say something insulting to the stranger. Accordingly, drawing himself up, and assuming a patronizing air, he exclaimed: "Well, nigger, what are you going to do with yourself? I'll give you five dollars a month to carry out manure from my stables." The "nigger" looked at him a moment, and then thrusting his hand into his pantaloons pocket, drew forth a handful of gold pieces, from which he selected a quarter eagle, which he tendered to the horse dealer, saying:- "When you get a 'nigger' to work for five dollars a month at that business, just give him this from me to help make out a decent month's wages, which you don't seem able to pay." A roar of laughter from the listeners, completely disconcerted the man of horses, and without stopping to continue the conversation, he sneaked out of the house. It turned out that the "nigger" was a drover, who does a very heavy business in buying and selling cattle, and at the very moment when the colloquy took place between himself and our grandiloquent horse dealer, he had ten car loads of stock at the North street depot, which he was about to take east for sale. He is not only a man of wealth enough to buy out and give away the property of the man who insulted him, without feeling it, but he is also a man of education, being a graduate of one of the New New England Universities. In everything but color- if the hue of one's skin really makes a difference in the worth of a man- he might claim with justice to be vastly the superior of his interlocutor.- Rochester Democrat. [[line]] We are rejoiced in view of the fact that the State of Ohio has given, through her Legislature, a suitable token of her respect for one of the noblest spirits among the Republican representatives in Congress. Hon. John Sherman will shed lustre upon the Senate, as he has already down upon the House. With talents of a high order he combines that quality so much needed and so seldom shown by Northern politicians and statesmen- pluck. John Sherman is not the man to flinch from the performance of his duty, no matter how threateningly the negro-driver crackers his whip; and as the North has heretofore honored much too seldom that class of men, we are glad to see so worthy a member selected to appear for the State of Ohio in the Senate. May other States follow her example.- Ibid. [[line]] The New York Observer has not been accused of anti-slaveryism hitherto, but to stand by the Union is to be reckoned an abolitionist in the Southern Confederacy now, or such a journal would never get such a letter as this from one of its southern subscribers: "We cannot sustain a paper that inculcates opinions and doctrines as hostile to the interests of the South. You support the Crittenden resolutions, which are mere milk and water. You make great glorification over Etheridge's, Clemens', Gilmer's and Johnson's speeches in Congress- men who are all traitors to the South and to their constituents.- You are great Union men, but we can perceive the cloven foot. You are black republicans, Lincolnites and abolitionists in disguise. Adieu."
