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450 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. May, 1861. [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] the apprehended storm which is about to beat pitilessly upon them. Without attempting to dispel this apprehension by appeals to facts, which have failed to satisfy, and to general principles of development and progress, which most of our people have deemed too abstract and transcendental for practical life, we propose to act in view of the settled fact that many of them are already resolved to look for homes beyond the boundaries of the United States, and that most of their minds are turned towards Hayti. Though never formally solicited by any organized body of our people to acquire information which may be useful to those who are looking to that country for a home, we have been repeatedly urged to do so by individuals of the highest character and respectability. Without at all discrediting the statements of others, we have desired to see for ourselves. For the next six to eight weeks, therefore, we know of no better use to which we can put ourselves, than in a tour of observation in this modern land of Canaan, where so many of our people are journeying from the rigorous bondage and oppression of our modern Egypt. --Since this article upon Hayti was put in type, we find ourselves in circumstances which induce us to forego our much desired trip to Hayti, for the present. The last ten days have made a tremendous revolution in all things pertaining to the possible future of the colored people of the United States. We shall stay here and watch the current of events, and serve the cause of freedom and humanity in any way that shall be open to us during the struggle now going on between the slave power and the government. When the Northern people have been made to experience a little more of the savage barbarism of slavery, they may be willing to make war upon it, and in that case we stand ready to lend a hand in any way we can be of service. At any rate, this is no time for us to leave the country. [[line]] NEMESIS. [[short line]] At last our proud Republic is overtaken. Our National Sin has found us out. The National Head is bowed down, and our face is mantled with shame and confusion. No foreign arm is made bare for our chastisement. No distant monarch, offended at our freedom and prosperity, has plotted our destruction; no envious tyrant has prepared for our necks his oppressive yoke. Slavery has done it all. Our enemies are those of our own household. It is civil war, the worst of all wars, that has unveiled its savage and wrinkled front amongst us. During the last twenty years and more, we have as a nation been forging a bolt for our own national destruction, collecting and augmenting the fuel that now threatens to wrap the nation in its malignant and furious flames. We have sown the wind, only to reap the whirlwind. Against argument, against all manner of appeal and remonstrances coming up from the warm and merciful heart of humanity, we have gone on like the oppressors of Egypt, hardening our hearts and increasing the burdens of the American slave, and strengthening the arm of his guilty master, till now, in the pride of his giant power, that master is emboldened to lift rebellious arms against the very majesty of the law, and defy the power of the Government itself. In vain have we plunged our [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] souls into new and unfathomed depths of sin, to conciliate the favor and secure the loyalty of the slaveholding class. We have hated and persecuted the negro; we have scourged him out of the temple of justice by the Dred Scott decision; we have shot and hanged his friends at Harper's ferry; we have enacted laws for his further degradation, and even to expel him from the borders of some of our States; we have joined in the infernal chase to hunt him down like a beast, and fling him into the hell of slavery; we have repealed and trampled upon laws designed to prevent the spread of slavery, and in a thousand ways given our strength, our moral and political influence to increase the power and ascendency of slavery over all departments of Government; and now, as our reward, this slaveholding power comes with sword, gun and cannon to take the life of the nation and and overthrow the great American Government Verily, they have their reward. The power given to crush the negro now overwhelms the white man. The Republic has put one end of the chain upon the ankle of the bondman, and the other end about its own neck. They have been planting tyrants, and are now getting a harvest of civil war and anarchy. The land is now to weep and howl, amid ten thousand desolations brought upon it by the sins of two centuries against millions on both sides of eternity. Could we write as with lightning, and speak as with the voice of thunder, we should write and cry to the nation, REPENT, BREAK EVERY YOKE, LET THE OPPRESSED GO FREE, FOR HEREIN ALONE IS DELIVERANCE AND SAFETY! It is not too late. The moment is propitious, and we may even yet escape the complete vengeance of the threatened wrath and fury, whose balls of fire are already dropping to consume us. Now is the time to put an end to the source of all our present national calamities. Now is the time to change the cry of vengeance long sent up from the tasked and toiling bondman, into a grateful prayer for the peace and safety of the Government. Slaveholders have in their madness invited armed abolition to march to the deliverance of the slave. They have furnished the occasion, and bound up the fate of the Republic and that of the slave in the same bundle, and the one and the other must survive or perish together. Any attempt now to separate the freedom of the slave from the victory of the Government over slaveholding rebels and traitors; any attempt to secure peace to the whites while leaving the blacks in chains; any attempt to heal the wounds of the Republic, while the deadly virus of slavery is left to poison the blood, will be labor lost. The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time; but the 'inexorable logic of events' will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery; and that it can never be effectually put down till one or the other of these vital forces is completely destroyed. The irrepressible conflict, long confined to words and votes, is now to be carried by bayonets and bullets, and may God defend the right! [[line]] --The colored population of New York recently presented to the Rev. Henry Highland Garnet a valuable service of silver plate, a gold headed cane, and Joshua's trumpet.--They also presented Mrs. Garnet with a China dinner set. [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] THE FALL OF SUMTER. [[line]] As a friend of freedom, earnestly laboring for the abolition of slavery, we have no tears to shed, no lamentations to make over the fall of Fort Sumter. By that event, one danger which threatened the cause of the American slave has been greatly diminished. Through so many long and weary months, the American people have been on the mountain with the wily tempter, and have been liable at any moment of weakness to grant a new lease of life to slavery. The whole power of the Northern pro-slavery press, combined with the commercial and manufacturing interests of the country, has been earnestly endeavoring to purchase peace and prosperity for the North by granting the most demoralizing concessions to the insatiate Slave Power. This has been our greatest danger. The attack upon Fort Sumpter bids fair to put an end to this cowardly, base and unprincipled truckling. To our thinking, the damage done to Fort Sumter is nothing in comparison with that done the secession cause. The hail and fire of its terrible batteries has killed its friends and spared its enemies. ANDERSON lives, but where are the champions of concession at the North? Their traitor lips are pale and silent. While secession confined its war operations to braggart threats, pompous declarations, exciting telegrams, stealing arms, planting liberty poles, wearing cockades, and displaying palmetto and rattlesnake flags, it exercised a potent influence over the public mind, and held the arm of the Government paralyzed. It commanded the artillery of a thousand presses, far more formidable than a thousand cannon. But the secessionists themselves have now 'smashed' up these magnificent machines, and have spiked their [[unreadable due to fold]] most efficient guns. They have completely shot off the legs of all trimmers and compromisers, and compelled every body to elect between patriotic fidelity and pro-slavery treason. For this consummation we have watched and wished with fear and trembling. God be praised! that it has come at last. We should have been glad if the North, of its own proper virtue, had given this quietus to doubt and vacillation. She did not do it, and perhaps it is best that she did not. What her negative wisdom withheld has now come to us through the vengeance and rashness of slaveholders. Another instance of the wrath of man working out the purposes and praise of eternal goodness! Had Mr. JEFFERSON DAVIS continued to allow Major ANDERSON, with his harmless garrison, to receive his daily bread from the markets of Charleston, or even permitted the Government at Washington to feed his men, the arm of the nation might have slept on, and the South might have got the most extravagant concessions to its pet monster slavery. Every Personal Liberty Bill might have been swept from the statute books of the North, and every trembling fugitive hunted by Northern bloodhounds from his hiding place to save the Union. Already the hateful reaction had reaction had begun. Chicago and Cleveland, head quarters of Republicanism, had both betrayed innocent blood, while 'down with Abolition' was fast becoming the cry of the mob on the one hand, the clergy on the other. The color of the negro, always hated, was fast becoming more hated, and the [[/column 3]]
