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478     DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.     June,1861

other means of destruction more potent and fearful, which no power can prevent their using.  When the time comes for them to act, they will know no love stronger than the love of liberty. 

The free negro element has always been considered dangerous to Southern slavery, and in the present crisis, the best way to dispose of it, was an important question.

The free and enslaved are everywhere in constant and uninterrupted intercourse, and it would not be wise to leave them at home while their masters were in the army.  To the Southern mind, there is nothing so terrible as the fear of a servile insurrection.  On my way from Lynchburg to Alexandria, I heard a physician at one of the stations tell an acquaintance in the cars that he was the only white man left on fifteen adjoining plantations, and that nearly all the 'niggers' had been sent away.  To protect themselves against negro brutality, which they know to be deep, abiding, unrelenting, and fierce, the citizens of the Southern towns and cities organized the Home Guard, and then a very cunning device was, to send the 'niggers' free and bond, with the army, and employ them in erecting fortifications, and in performing the drudgery of the camp.  Large numbers of them are thus engaged in Virginia.  The free people went because they were offered good wages, when they could do nothing at home, and the slaves had no alternative but to obey orders.  They are closely watched by the military, who largely outnumber them, and who fear no insurrection in their presence; but whenever a Federal army confronts their masters, and they see that the Northern troops must win the day—to use the expressive language of a slave in Richmond—they 'will fight for those who fight for them;' so that in the end, the slaveholers' fancied security may be a terrible delusion.  The Southern newspapers, in noticing the promptitude with which the negroes respond to the call for their services in military operations, ascribe it to the love they bear their masters—to the loftiest patriotism, and to their hatred of their Northern enemies, as they are taught to regard the people of the North.  In the writer's flight from Virginia, he was secreted for three days and nights in the house of a colored family, the head of which was among the 'patriots' at Norfolk, engaged in throwing up fortifications under the directions of Gen. Gwynn.  He and his family are unrelenting in the hatred of slavery, and pray for the triumph of Northern arms, and when the time comes when such men (and the South is full of them) can strike a sure blow, they will strike.  Already we hear of insurrections, and of extensive conflagrations, and this is but the beginning.  Northern men may deplore this feeling on the part of the negroes, and the excesses to which it will give rise; but there is no help for it—the day of retribution is at hand, and there is no power to arrest its progress or its terrors.

SLAVERY IN AMERICA.

The following letter, written by JAMES HOUGHTON, a gentlemen not unkown to a majority of our readers, we copy from the Sligo (Ireland) Champion: 

Dear Sir:—In my occasional addresses to my countrymen on the above interesting topic, I have endeavored to keep steadfastly before their view, two great principles; first the inalienable right of every man to liberty; and second, the duty which devolved on Irishmen, in an especial manner, to sustain that principle in America.  The first is a plain and simple proposition, which no man can misunderstand.  Equal liberty is the right of every individual, in every state and community.  That law is unjust, and should be resisted by every human being, which does not look with an equal eye on all its members of the human family.  No exception can be justly made to this rule.  Therefore, slavery should not be tolerated for an hour.  The man who is held as a slave, is justified in the use of any means, which his conscience does not condemn—(according to the united decision of mankind in every country and in every age)—in endeavors to free himself from that condition whenever he can.  Men resort even to the shedding of blood in cases trifling in comparison with the one I am now considering; if it be lawful, or expedient, in any case to go to this length, the man who is manacled by another, and held as property, as if he were a soulless brute is surely justifiable in the act, whether he be white or black; the color makes no difference; it is the outrage on humanity which is alone to be considered.

I shall define now what I mean by the term slave.  That man is not a slave who is deprived of some of his rights, by an unjust system of government; such a condition as this exists everywhere, to some extent, and when it becomes too galling to be borne any longer, resistance, even by force of arms, has always been justified by the majority of mankind, and when successful, applauded as an act of heroism and virtue.  I do not myself approve of such means; I consider them unchristian, and I believe they have seldom assisted in the promotion of freedom.  Slavery is that condition in which a man is, by his fellow man, denied all his rights as a human being; wherein he is treated by force, as a brute—liable to be transferred from hand to hand, without his own consent—placed on the auction stand, and knocked down to the highest bidder--having no right to himself, to his wife, to his child—no will of his own, which he can for a moment exercise; in a word, wherein he is held as a mere chattel.  This is slavery; and it only exhibits a desire to evade the question at issue, when the condition of the slave is likened to that of the man deprived of some or all of his political rights.  There is no analogy between the two conditions.— This is the condition of the human being held in slavery in America, which your correspondent, James McGowan, Captain 8th Company, 131st Regiment U. S. Militia, Virginia, has, in your issue of the 30th ult., the hardihood to defend, and which he has sworn to sustain.  Let me reverse the picture for a moment, and ask this countryman of ours, if he were in the place of one of the slaves whose comforts and luxuries he paints in such glowing colors as makes one almost envy their fortunate position, would he consider that any oath taken by his soul driver to keep him as his piece of property forever, was a just excuse for the deed?  Place Captain McGowan on the auction stand, let him hear all his physical qualities dilated on, in order to enhance his money value, and will the fact that he may be well clothed, and well fed, and permitted to 'sport a fine gold watch' (what a heaven upon earth this Irishman describes American slavery to be,) reconcile him to the condition he so wishes 'the poor of Ireland were placed in?'  His pale complexion would become paler at the horrible prospect, and he would then learn to know and to feel, what every man in Ireland knows and feels, that slavery is a condition that the most poverty stricken man among us would reject with scorn, even surrounded with all the fine accompaniments which your correspondent so glowing describes, as the happy condition of those most favored sons of toil—these human chattels of America.  For shame, Mr. McGowan, recall the word that you are a son of old Erin, or quit your present position, and unite with every Irishman who is an honor and not a disgrace to his country, in upholding the right of every man to his personal freedom.

I repeat, what I have often said before, on the best authority, Irishmen, as a general rule, are opposed to the rights of the colored man in America; and this reflects deeply on our honor, in the eyes of the world; for Irishmen are a numerous body in America; and if they took the side of freedom, slavery could not stand a moment in the land of their adoption; therefore, with us rests the disgrace of the continuance of a vile system with which man is at war in every land the world over.

It is true, Mr. Editor, that I do give my notions on this question to the world as truth, (to quote the language of Capt. McGowan,) because they are true; and they find an echo in every true man's bosom.  I do not care to go much into the treatment of slaves in America, for that is beside the question; golden fetters are even more galling than iron fetters.  The petted slave is the most miserable being of the whole lot, and the one who most chafes at his wretched condition; he is continually liable to be transferred from his favored place as a domestic servant—where he is often treated with kindness such as your correspondent describes—to that of a field slave, where cruelty is the rule, and kindness almost, or altogether, unknown.  I am better acquainted with the real facts of the case—although I never was in America—than Capt. McGowan gives me credit for.  But even if I were more ignorant of the facts than I really am, it is quite sufficient for every Irishman, at home and abroad, to know that slavery—such as I have described it—exists in America, to make us all its decided and determined opponents.— No other course is consistent with our honor, or with the glory of our country.  We have been much oppressed ourselves, and we still have many evils to complain of; but we are free to complain, and to grumble as hard as we please, so that we are bound in conscience and in consistency, as much as any people, to cry aloud against slavery wherever it exists—but especially in America, where it exists solely because our countrymen, so many of whom have made that land their home, give to the vile system their countenance and support, and the poor victims of which dare not utter a complaint against it.

As I may not intrude too much on your space at present, you will kindly permit me on a future occasion, to reply to some portions of Capt. McGowan's letter which, for the reason stated, I have omitted to notice in this letter.  Thanking you heartily for your willingness to allow this question which bears so closely on the fame of our beloved Ireland, to be discussed in your columns,

I remain, very truly, yours,
JAMES HAUGHTON.
35, Eccles St., Dublin, 2d April, 1861.

THE REIGH OF TERROR.

MR. FREDERICK DOUGLASS:  DEAR SIR:—If you are of opinion the enclosed stanzas will hasten the downfall of slavery, by augmenting the detestation of the anti-slavery party against it, their appearance in the columns of your journals will gratify many a well-wisher of your success in the cause you have espoused, for which you have suffered, and in which you have so nobly fought.      A READER.

Away—away—for Terror here
Usurps an universal reign;
Away like righteous Lot, in fear,
Nor tarry thou in all the plain;
Away—for through the Western Isles,
Which sprang from ocean's bed in smiles,
The Demon stalks and claims the whole,
Like him who once to Eden stole,
And spread the blight of death:
His music is the victim's cry,
His shrivelling glace is in the eye—
Infection in his breath.

Talk not of joy where Slavery reigns,
Of bright'ning hopes midst 'hope deferr'd;'
The negro's joys are hung in chains—
The negro's hopes are all interr'd:
He sees the writing on the wall,
In laws enacted to enthral,
And seems, in every driver's hand,
To see upon the desert sand
The lion's fatal paw.
And in the voice of men of blood,
To hear the roar that shakes the wood,
And holds a soul in awe.

Foul Misery, like a blast from hell,
Hath forced throughout the soul its way,
As mighty tempests, when they swell,
And toss on high the ocean spray,
And every flood, in maniac form,
Becomes the plaything of the storm

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