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June, 1861.    DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.    475
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and we should embrace it with a determination to make the best of it.  The doctrine of submission to justice has its limits, and those limits have been fully reached.  What I have been now saying applies with even more force to the man of sable hue.  We have been everywhere despised as cowards, as wanting a manly spirit, as tamely submitting to the condition of slavery.  A time is at hand, I trust, when this reproach will be wiped out.  If this conflict shall expand to the grand dimensions which events seem to indicate, the iron arm of the black man may be called into service.
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GERRIT SMITH ON THE REBELLION.
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The following is an extract from a speech delivered by Hon. GERRIT SMITH at a meeting held in Peterboro', April 27:

We are assembled, in my neighbors, not as Republicans, nor Democrats, nor Abolitionists--but as Americans.  And we are assembled to say that we are all on the side of the Government; and that it must be upheld at whatever expense to friend or foe.

As I am a peace man and have often spoken against war, some persons may think it improper in me to take part in a war meeting.  But I have never spoken against putting down traitors.  It is true, too, that I am too old to fight; and that I am so ignorant of arms as not to know how to load a gun; and that my horror of bloodshed is so great that, were I a slave, I should probably choose to live and die one rather than kill my master.  All this is true.  Nevertheless I may be of some service in the present crisis.  I can along with others care for the families of my brave and patriotic neighbors, who go forth to peril their lives for their country.  Let this be my work.  It falls in not with my principles only, but also with my habits of feeling and acting.

The end of American Slavery is at hand.--That it is to be in blood does not surprise me.  For fifteen years I have been constantly predicting that it would be.  From my desk in Congress I repeated the prediction; and said that this bloody end 'would be such a reckoning for deep and damning wrongs--such an outbursting of smothered and pent-up revenge as living man has never seen.'  But I had no party, no press, no influence; and I was a Cassandra whose predictions no one would listen to.

Pardon the immodesty of another personal reference.  Immediately after the last Presidential election we all saw that the South was hurrying on this bloody end of Slavery.  The discourse I then delivered, and which was printed in the Tribune, says:  'It is even probable that the Slave States will secede--a part now, and nearly all the remainder soon.  This will not be because of the election of Lincoln.  That is at the most an occasion or pretext for secession.  Nor will this be because it has long been resolved on.  There is something, but not so much, in that.  It will be because their "iniquity is full," and the time for their destruction is at hand.'

Why did I believe that nearly all of the Slave States would secede?  Did I forget that their Non-Slaveholding whites greatly outnumber the slaveholders?  I did not.  But I remembered how controlling is the slaveholding power by reason of its concentration and itelligence.  It resides in comparatively few hands, and not only are the slaveholders the educated class, but the other whites are almost as illiterate and ignorant as the blacks.  It is because of this concentration and intelligence that I have all along feared that scarcely one Slave State would remain with us.

Alas, what a sorrow, what a shame, what a sin, that the North did not long ago peaceably abolish the whole system of American Slavery by political action!  It is now left to her angry and revengeful passions to do what she had not virtue enough to do.  Those passions will do it.

Slavery is war--constant as well as most cruel.  Hence I call it a war--incessant, infamous, infernal war--which the Northern whites have, in league with the Southern
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whites, been waging for more than half a century against the blacks of the whole country.  This war the whites of the North were willing to have prolonged--aye, and were willing to adopt new measures for prolonging it.  But now that Slavery has struck at themselves, they are not only disposed to forbear warring upon the blacks, but very soon they will, under greater exasperations, be disposed to make common cause with them against the Southern whites.  A few more outrages at the hands of the 'pug-ugly' mob which rules miserable Maryland, and our intellectual and eloquent Secretary will no longer think rhetorical twattle to be the very best language in which to answer the silly and impudent propositions of her poor, feeble, vacillating Governor.  A few more such outrages will stiffen up our President into the downright refusal to hold any further parley with traitors, or give them any more comforting assurances of the limited services which he intends for his troops.  We have strong men to wield the Government.  Chase is a giant.  And we shall soon see that they are as determined as they are strong.

In such times as these we grow fast.  Only a fortnight ago, the N. Y. [[italics]] Times [[/italics]] said:--'We have nothing to do in this contest with Slavery or slaves.'  Then it would not allow the slave to benefit in the least by the contest A week after, however, the [[italics]] Times [[/italics]] was talking of the propriety of 'setting free the Southern slaves and arming them against the Southern rebels!'  The truly good Democratic meeting held a few days ago in Albany sought to conciliate the traitors by saying that they did 'not seek to stir up servile insurrection.'--But the meeting would not have descended to even this disclaimer, had it been held a few weeks later, and just after some battle in which the traitors had slain hundreds of Northern fathers, brothers, and sons.  I said that in such times we grow fast.  Who has clung so persistingly, gallantly, and defiantly to the South as our Daniel S. Dickinson?  Indeed, so Southern were his sympathies and attachments, that he was wont to regret that he had not been born there.  Nevertheless, even he has been carried by the force of events to the side of the North. A nd so boundless is the zeal of this young convert, that he not only counts on 'servile war,' but with a vindictiveness althogether savage, he would 'wipe the South from the face of the earth.'  Often as he had been told by the Abolitionists of the treachery of slaveholders, he never before could believe that they would dare prove so treacherous to the great Northern Democracy.  And so he, in common with thousands of prominent Democrats, is in a great rage about it.  Even Senator Douglas, though he still prates of his abiding and profound respect for the rights of property in man, and though his children's ownership of a Mississippi plantation places him under bonds for his good behavior towards the South, will ere long break these bonds, and cease from this prating.  A few more Southern atrocities, and he, too, will openly curse slavery as the cause of them, and be eager to see it go out in blood.  Let the city of Washington be captured, or let some of Jefferson Davis's pirate-ships capture some of our merchantmen, and the North will then lose no time in arming the slaves.  She will do it, if her Government will not.--The British armed savages against the Americans, and the Americans armed them against the Britons.  And, unless, the South shall immediately cease from her rebellion, the North will arm her slaves against her.--As sure as human nature is human nature, she will do it.  Saddening as is the prospect, it will nevertheless be realized.  When men get enraged against their fellow men, they will avail themselves of whatever help is within their reach.  Especially true is this of Southern men.  They go so far as to set dogs on men--ay, even the most ferocious and devouring dogs.

I have spoken of the capture of Washington as a possibility.  So difficult of defense is that city in several points of view, that a few weeks ago (not so now) I could almost
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have consented to the Government's withdrawing from it and going to Philadelphia or New York.  An unsuitable place is it for the Capitol; and I felt compelled to say so on the floor of Congress.  In no event will it be there a long time.  Soon after the Pacific Railroad is built, and the Pacific States thereby permanently attached to us, the Capital will, if the nation shall be then undivided, be transferred to the West, probably to St. Louis.  Should Washington then become a seat of science, and the great American University be there, her costly buildings will be put to what will probably be their best possible use.

To return from this digression--the approaching Congress will, of course, hasten to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act.  Now that Slavery has broken up our nation, and made war upon us, that Act cannot be left unrepealed.  Is it said that the Constitution calls for a Fugitive Salve Act?  It calls for a Fugitive Servant Act--but not even that at the hands of Congress.  It is due from the States only.  What, however, if it did call for a Fugitive Slave Act?  Surely, we are under no Constitutional obligations to those who are trampling on the Constitution and breaking away from the nation.

The repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act would correspond with even the present state of the public mind.  THE FIRST GUN FIRED AT FORT SUMTER ANNOUNCED THE FACT THAT THE LAST FUGITIVE SLAVE HAD BEEN RETURNED.

Let us thank God that anything has occurred to save Congress from repeating its foolish and guilty talk about compromises and the reconstruction of the Government.  There would have been nothing of this at the last session had not Congress been blind to the fact that the day of the destruction of Slavery had come, and that the Gulf States were therefore too infatuated to listen to any propositions of compromise and reconstruction.  Those States had long before decided that the slave States, in order to save their Slavery, must insulate themselves, build up a despotism all their own, and surround themselves with a wall so thick as to be impervious, and so high as to be insurmountable, to the world's growing Anti-Slavery sentiment.  Congress now sees this, and it also sees that the Border Slave States were holding in their treason only against the time when it might burst forth with the most deadly effect against the nation.  What folly it was for Congress and the Peace Convention to hope for anything from the Border Slave States!

And what if, when Congress shall come together in this Extra Session, the Slave States shall all have ceased from their treason, and shall all ask that they may be suffered to go from us?  Shall Congress let them go?--Certainly.  But only, however, on the condition that those States shall fist abolish Slavery.  Congress has clearly no constitutional right to let them go on any conditions.  But I believe that the people would approve the proceeding, and would be ready to confirm it in the most formal and sufficient manner.  A few weeks ago, I would have consented to let the slave States go without requiring the abolition of Slavery.  I would, looking to the interests of both the bond and free, have preferred this to an attempt to abolish it in blood.  Nevertheless, I would have had the North sternly refuse to establish diplomatic relations with them, or even so much as recognize their nationality so long as they continued their horrible oppression.  Less than this it could not have insisted on.  But now, since the Southern tiger has smeared himself with our blood, we will not, if we get him in our power, let him go until we have drawn his teeth and his claws.  In other words, when the South shall lie conquered before us, we will inexorably condition peace on her surrender of Slavery.  The Government will not consent, and if it will the people will not, to allow it any longer existence.

It is quite enough that Slavery has in time past corrupted and disgraced us, and imposed its heavy taxes upon our industry.  It is quite
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