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JUNE, 1861.     DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.     473
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countless number of people (whose names I do not know) going up and down the country and collecting money for the cause; and truth to say, the friends are rather wearied with the continual importunities they receive.  A little cessation would be desirable.  I am not speaking for myself, but for 'the public,' to whom the appeals have generally to be made. 

Your review of the President's 'Inaugural Address' I consider a masterpiece, and so do others, better judges than I.  Dr. Cheever wishes it could be copied into a number of our journals.  So rapid are the changes in the phase presented by slavery at this time, that we scarcely know where we are, or what we have to hope, or to fear, in regard to the future.  The news has just come to us that the looked-for war has broken out; but it is said the telegraphic wires are in the hands of the secessionists, and we are warned not to believe all we hear.  We cannot even pray, 'God defend the right,' for with such a cowardly North there is little 'right;' but may that God who delivered the children of Israel out of their Egyptian bondage, open a way for the Southern victims to escape from their worse than Egyptian taskmasters!--God reigns, and reigns in righteousness, and will, in His own time, deliver the oppressed slave.  He is never the God of the oppressor.  He is my constant, my only Hope, when striving to solve the complicated problem of American slavery, and seeing the extraordinary changes that have taken place of late in the aspect of affairs.  I dare not allow myself to enter on the vast subject.  I need scarcely say we eagerly watch for American news, and speculate what next?

That God may sustain you and all those who are faithfully laboring for the deliverance of their brethren from bondage, is the sincere prayer of

Your ever true friend,
JULIA G. CROFTS.

P.S. The most important part of a letter is sometimes said to be left to the postscript.  It may be so in the present instance, when I earnestly express the hope that our Government will never see fit to recognize the piratical Southern Confederacy.  Some of the A. S. Societies have been moving and adopting memorials on the subject.
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FREDERICK DOUGLASS ON THE CRISIS.
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The [[italics]] Express [[/italics]] of this city contains the following synopsis of two lectures delivered by Mr. Douglass in Zion's Church, on two successive Sundays, April 27th and May 4th:

SUNDAY, APRIL 27.

We meet here again after another week of deep, intense, heartfelt, wide-spread and thrilling excitement.  I have never spent days so restless and anxious.  Our mornings and evenings have continually oscillated between the dim light of hope, and the gloomy shadow of despair.  We have opened our papers, new and damp from the press, tremblingly, lest the first line of the lightning should tell us that our National Capital has fallen into the hands of the traitors and murderers who have bound themselves as with an oath to break up our National Government. 

The thing you and I want, most of all, to know, concerning this mighty strife, is yet far from us.  We cannot see the end from the beginning.  Our profoundest calculations may prove erroneous, our best hopes disappointed, and our worst fears confirmed.  We live but to-day, and the measureless shores of the future are wisely hid from us.  And yet we read the face of the sky, and may discern the signs
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of the times.  We know that clouds and darkness, and the sounds of distant thunder mean rain.  So, too, may we observe the fleecy drapery of the moral sky, and draw conclusions as to what may come upon us.  There is a general feeling amongst us, that the control of events has been taken out of our hands, that we have fallen into the mighty current of eternal principles--invisible forces, which are shaping and fashioning events as they wish, using us only as instruments to work out their own results in our National destiny.

I cannot claim to speak on this great movement of the great North, as one of the privileged class of the American people.  I take my place cheerfully, with the enslaved and proscribed in the land, and from their humble and lowly position, I wish to view the events now transpiring, and rightly interpret their significance as affecting the oppressed and enslaved.

Nevertheless, I am not indifferent, but profoundly solicitous for the character, growth and destiny of this American Republic, which but for slavery, would be the best governed country in the world.  While, therefore, I may speak as a man, and view the great subject which now comes before us, as one of the oppressed, I can also speak as an American.--All that I have and am, are bound up with the destiny of this country.  When she is successful, I rejoice; when she is prosperous, I am happy; and when she is afflicted, I mourn with her as sincerely as any other citizen, for though not yet taken into full communion with her, I still feel that she is my country, and that I must fall or flourish with her.--But what of this war?  What does it mean?  And what results will it finally arrive at?

We all know what the rebels and traitors mean.  They mean the perpetuity, and supremacy of slavery.  They mean that the slave power shall control and administer the American government now and forever, or else that the government shall be destroyed, and that another shall be put in its place, of which slave holders shall have absolute control; they mean, in a word, to have Washington, and to drive the present government away.

Once in possession of the machinery of the Federal Government they would place their iron yoke upon the necks of freemen, and make the system of Slavery the great and all commanding interest of the whole country.  With their success the historian may record the decline and fall of American Liberty and Civilization, the banishment and proscription of free speech and free press, and the domination of a proud, selfish, cruel and semi-barbarous oligarchy, whose arguments are bowie-knives, slung-shot and revolvers.

It is this purpose that animates all their movements.  The war on their part is for a government in which Slavery shall be National, and freedom no where, in which the capitalist shall own the laborer; and the white non-slaveholder a degraded man, to be classed, as such men are now classed all over the South, as 'poor white trash.'

But what does the war mean to the North?  This inquiry is far more important than any concerning the South, for the South can do nothing without the great North shall see fit to let her.  I look upon the war as in the hands of the North.  It shall be made short or long, important or insignificant, as they shall and will determine.

There are many conflicting theories of the end had in view of this war.  To some it means complete dissolution of the American Union, the absolute and final separation of the slaveholding States from the non-slaveholding States; a division of the national property, and an acknowledgment of the independence of the governments of the respective sections.  To others it means simply suppression of the rebellion, and the establishment of things precisely as they were before the election of Mr. Lincoln, without any alteration of a single principle or inference of the old Union.  To still another class, it means a National Convention, which shall reconstruct the Union upon a basis which shall remove the objections which the slaveholders have raised against the present one.  While others
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see, or think they see, in it the complete humiliation of the slaveholders, and the abolition of slavery, and a strong Federal Government which will make successful resistance to its authority and power, useless if not improbable.

The complete dissolution of the Union will depend upon the will and ability of the Government, and of the North that sustains it against the traitors and rebels of the South, who have attempted its destruction.  It would be a most lame and impotent conclusion, after expending millions of treasure and rivers of blood, for the North to consent to a dissolution of the Union.  Such a conclusion would be giving up the point contended for in the war, and would be a triumph of the South.--It would brand the war as a useless and worthless war, and draw after it all the evils that the war was intended to avert and prevent.  There are great natural as well as moral objections to such a termination of the conflict, which make it quite improbable.

All natural relations conspire to make the United States one country, under one government, and one general code of laws.  Nature seems to have frowned upon separation, welded the sections together so strongly as to defy permanent separation to the people who inhabit it.  To the mighty rivers and fertile fields that bind it together, civilization, commerce and science have flung over it a network of iron, making the sections one and undivisible.  The great Mississippi river, father of waters, would look ill indeed in the possession of two rival nations.  Dissolution is not a solution of our present troubles.

The speaker proceeded to show that the only settlement that can be made will be by the destruction of the cause which has produced the difficulty--Slavery.  True, the Government seems not to be doing anything to bring about this result directly; but things are working.  If the Government is not yet on the side of the oppressed, events mightier than the Government are bringing about that result.

He had been asked, 'What are you colored men going to do?'  He answered, let a few colored regiments go down South, and assist in setting their brothers free, and they could and would do this work effectively for our Government.  He was ready to go; but this did not imply much courage, for he knew he would not be accepted.  The South are wiser in their generation than the North.  Black people are being made soldiers of at Montgomery.  They piled the sand-bags and raised the batteries which drove Major Anderson from Sumter; but you Northerners are too aristocratic to march by the side of a 'nigger.'  But the time may yet come when the President shall proclaim liberty through all the land.  The speaker argued that the Constitution granted this power to Congress.--That great statesman, John Quincy Adams, once told the chivalry to their faces that the power to set the slaves at liberty was clearly implied in the war-making power.  There can be no peace or unity in this country while slavery exists.  Slavery is an enemy to free speech.  It struck down Charles Sumner, and stained the floor of the Senate Chamber with his blood.  The language of slavery is and always must be, 'put out the light.'  The slaveholders know their vile institution will not bear discussion.  All nature is opposed to slavery.  The broad sunlight, the free roving winds, the blue o'erarching sky, and ocean's bounding billows, were all eloquent against the enslavement of man by his fellow man.

Mr. Douglass closed by referring to the sterling patriotism shown by the volunteers in rushing to arms at their country's call.  He received hearty and frequent applause.

SUNDAY, MAY 4.

I propose again to throw out a few thoughts on the great crisis through which the country is now passing.  On many accounts it would be pleasant to me to vary the character of these Sunday afternoon lectures; but I find it impossible to do so at present.  Like the rod of Moses which swallowed up all the petty creations of the Eastern
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