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June, 1861.    DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.    467
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and shrinking from every cross which required of them manly and heroic qualities; they have piously and psalm-singingly committed all into the hands of the Lord, and branded Abolitionists as great sinners because they have refused to do the same.  It has been the standing excuse for inaction--the perpetual apology for guilty complicity in the crime of slavery.  No doctrine is more grateful to the heart of the slaveholder, than that which would leave slavery to Divine Providence.--All that he asks is to be let alone.  He can rest quite secure from Divine power, if he can only escape human power.  An anti-slavery movement in heaven gives the tyrant slaveholder no alarm while it keeps away from the earth.  He fears more from the human conscience than from the Divine conscience.  A meeting for prayer gives far less alarm than a meeting for works.

We have need just now to reflect upon primary and fundamental principles--that effects do evermore flow from causes, and are in exact accordance with them in meagreness or in magnitude.  We may not always be able to comprehend the form and power of causes, or the extent of their operation by attending exclusively to them; but we know that plenty comes not of idleness, that figs are not gathered of thistles, nor grapes of thorns.  What of anti-slavery feeling there is in the country that is really good for anything, is the result of earnest, persevering, long-continued and faithful enforcement of anti-slavery principle, by argument, appeal, and warning, and by the stringent application of truth to the heart and conscience of the nation.  We think we need this now as much as ever, and that this is no time for dispensing with a single means to the end, but rather a time for increasing them.  Some of our friends, we think, in the present moment of deep excitement, by what we must consider partial and exaggerated views of the causes which have led to the grand uprising of North in support of the Government against the slaveholding rebels, have fallen into the error of supposing that their work is now done, and if not done, it will be done by others.  We have been dazzled by the splendor and sublimity of this mighty uprising, and in the excitement of the moment have failed to subject its elements to the severe criticism we are generally accustomed to bestow upon developments affecting the great question of slavery.

The more we observe of the progress of this war, the more we see that the great North has but very imperfectly learned the lesson which the Abolitionists have been endeavoring to teach them during the last thirty years, and the need of greater exertions on our part to teach that lesson.  Neither slavery nor the slaveholder is understood.  The slave system is still recognized by the Government and army as a lawful institution, and the guilty slaveholder, with hands covered with blood, and ready for the darkest deeds of piracy and assassination, is to be conciliated by deeds of so-called magnanimity.  We are still hugging the delusion that we can crush out treason without hurting the traitors; that we can put down a slaveholding rebellion without weakening or abridging the privileges of slaveholding.  All this has go to be unlearned; and now is the time, and Abolitionists are the men and the women to carry on the instruction
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by aid of the facts that are every day occurring.  He who speaks now, not only has something to say, but has somebody to hear.  Slavery, always hateful to the moral sense, shocking to the better sentiment of human nature, has added to its hateful character all the hatefulness of rank treason and red handed rebellion, and has thus given the antislavery advocate an additional advantage before the people in assailing it.  Now is the time to expose its true character, and dash against it, with all the force of its own violence, the hot and condemning brand of an aroused and outraged nation.  Down with the ten thousand-times accursed slave system, should now thunder from every platform and pulpit in the land.  Instead of giving up anti-slavery meetings, we should increase them; instead of calling home our anti-slavery agents, we should send out more; and instead of allowing anti-slavery papers to languish for support, we should earnestly labor to extend their circulation and to increase their influence.
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A CHANGE OF ATTITUDE
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We have too much human nature lurking beneath our sable skin not to notice, with moderate exultation, the change which has taken place recently in the attitude of Mr. GARRISON and his friends, in respect to the American Union.  There are personal, as well as public reasons for our present joy; and though we might for the sake of appearances, attempt to conceal the personal reasons in the public ones, those who know anything of our humble history, during the last ten years, could not fail to see that DOUGLASS feels a personal, if not a little malicious pleasure in finding Mr. GARRISON and his friends in their present attitude of devotion to the American Union.  Ten years ago, we came to the hard belief, and avowed it, that the battle of freedom should be fought within the Union, and not out of it; that instead of leaving the Union on account of slavery, we should stand by the Union, and drive out slavery.  This belief, and the avowal of it, cost us more than we are able or willing to tell; for it branded us as an 'apostate,' and drove us from the fellowship of those whom we had long loved and venerated as the chosen champions of the cause of the slave.  Nevertheless, we talked and acted in accordance with our new faith, and endeavored to convince and convert our old friends.  But they met us with dogmas and formulas, far too potent for our arguments. 'No union with slaveholders,' 'Covenant with death,'  &c., 'Blood-stained Union, 'Madison papers,' 'Phillips's reply to Spooner,' 'Dissolution of the Union,' 'Dissolution of slavery,'  were flung at us with such energy and earnestness, that we were compelled to take our hat and be off.  Well now, all is changed.  Events are more potent than arguments.  Ten years' experience, and one month of rebellion, have timed even the footsteps of Mr. GARRISON, the Liberator, and the  Standard, to the music of the Union.  The poor old Anti-Slavery Bugle, like the foolish virgins, not being quite ready for the startling cry at midnight, has been cast into outer darkness.  The Annual Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and that of the New York Anti-Slavery Society, have been carefully put out of the way of the great Union movement of the hour; the  Liberator is for the Union as against traitors and rebels.  The StarSpangled
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Banner 'clings (no longer) to the mast head heavy with blood,' but floats benignantly from the peaceful columns of the National Anti-Slavery Standard; while the eloquent PHILLIPS tells the thousands who hear him in Music hall, 'To-day, the slave asks God for a sight of that flag.'  PILLSBURY, from granite hills of New Hampshire, shakes his large head in doubt, but tells his friends he will try to be hopeful, though it is plain that the old 'field hand' of the Garrisonians does not quite relish the new position of his associates.  BERIAH GREEN, too--a name seldom mentioned, till recently, either in 'tones of kindness,' or in any other tones, in Garrisonian circles--is most evidently a little troubled by what he sees and hears among his new friends and associates.  He holds this American Government to be a huge mass of corruption, 'a foul, haggard, and hamning conspiracy,' and he does not quite understand why Abolitionists should all at once cease thus to regard and characterize it.

Meanwhile, the Union sentiment is spreading among our old friends, and will soon become the common faith of all.  We spoke ten years too soon, or rather the slaveholding rebellion came just ten years too late, else today we might have been a member, in good and regular standing, in the Garrisonian anti-slavery church, instead of being, as now, a worker for the slave as a single individual.--Well, to make a short story of it, we are very glad--indeed, have lived to see Messrs. GARRISON and PHILLIPS just where they are.--They have shown themselves not above instruction.  They have not been able to get Slavery out of the Union, and have jumped at the first chance of killing it in the Union, and by the Union.
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JOHN BROWN, JR.--The close watch kept upon the movements of this gentleman, and the many strange designs attributed to him by the newspapers of the day, shows that the nation does not easily forget the hero and martyr of Harper's Ferry, and that the people still think that the father lives in the son.  The slaveholders have known no repose since old JOHN BROWN held Harper's Ferry.  They dwell in the midst of alarms, and are strangers to a sense of security.  Guilty wretches, they invite all the heavy judgments which are now bursting upon them.  Young JOHN BROWN is still alive, though his glorious father sleeps among the rocks and mountains of Essex.--Of this we were exceedingly glad to have had tangible proof only a few days ago.  Many of the statements concerning him are erroneous.  The story that he has a company of men near the Southern border, within a few days march of Virginia, is the coinage of the general alarm, and need not be credited.  Mr. BROWN will, we trust, know his hour and perform his part in the cause of freedom.  He is too good a singer to sing out of time or tune.  We were happy in finding him in excellent health, and thoroughly alive to the important events now transpiring.  A note from his bugle can at once bring to him a thousand men, ready for any enterprize which shall promise liberty to the slave and humiliation to the master.  To those who are eager, and even complaining of tardiness, we commend patience.  The Northern people and the Government are gradually learning the lesson which they most of all stand in need of.--They will yet welcome aid from the right quarter.
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