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DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
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"OPEN THY MOUTH FOR THE DUMB, IN THE CAUSE OF ALL SUCH AS ARE APPOINTED TO DESTRUCTION; OPEN THY MOUTH, JUDGE RIGHTEOUSLY, AND PLEAD THE CAUSE OF THE POOR AND NEEDY."—1st Eccl. xxxi. 8, 9.
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VOLUME IV. }
NUMBER II. }

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, JULY, 1861.  

{PRICE—
{ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM.
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DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
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FREEDOM FOR ALL,
[[image: eagle carrying flag of the USA with 22 stars and ribbon in its mouth.]]
OR CHAINS FOR ALL.
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NOTES ON THE WAR.
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Though the destruction of life and property has been frightful and appalling, we are yet at the beginning of the horrors of our civil war.  The slaveholders, though less hopeful of the result, are not less determined to fight, and fight to the last.  They rely for success not more upon their arms in the field, than upon the faithful industry of their slaves to keep their rebel army supplied with food,  clothing, and the sinews of war.  They boast that the slave population is a grand element of strength, and that it enables them to send and sustain a stronger body of rebels to overthrow the Government than they could otherwise do if the whites were required to perform the labors of cultivation; and in this they are unquestionably in the right, provided the National Government refuses to turn this mighty element of strength into one of weakness.  While the rebels are tearing up railways, cutting telegraph wires, burning bridges[[,]] building forts, guarding fords, fighting behind batteries, marching and countermarching, and doing all they can to destroy the lives and property of loyal citizens, one species of their own property, in the shape of men and women, are busily at work with spade, shovel, plow and hoe, to feed and clothe the destroyers.  Why?  Oh! why, in the name of all that is national, does our Government allow its enemies a powerful advantage?  The war has made little progress, physical or moral.  We are stupidly applying maxims of peace to a condition of war--maxims of loyalty to a condition of treason and rebellion--obligations of friendship towards implacable enemies.--The lives of loyal men are being sacrificed by scores, and will, by and bye, be sacrificed by thousands.  Rebels and pirates sweep peaceful commerce from the sea, and the country is full of desolation and ruin; and yet the vital, necessary and animating cause of all our national calamities is spared the slightest shock, and the Government at Washington utterly refuses to call that cause in question.  The passions of selfishness, murder and rebellion are fired by slavery; the physical strength of rebellion is found less in the attenuated arm of the slaveholder, than in the sinewy arm of steel, which wields, without wages, the hoe
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and spade on the plantation.  All this is plain.  The very stomach of this rebellion is the negro in the condition of a slave.  Arrest that hoe in the hands of the negro, and you smite rebellion in the very seat of its life.--Change the status of the slave from bondage to freedom, and you change the rebels into loyal citizens.  The negro is the key of the situation--the pivot upon which the whole rebellion turns.

The rulers at Washington, and those who direct public opinion at the North, seem to be utterly in the fog on this point.  They have made some progress, but they are still far behind the plain requirements of the hour.  Even the New York [[italics]] Tribune [[/italics]] protests against making this a war for the destruction of slavery, and insists that such a war would alienate a large body of the Northern people at present who adhere to the Government in the prosecution of the war.  When the [[italics]] Tribune [[/italics]] has watched the progress of the war a little longer, it will see that what it calls a diversion from the objects of war, is the only effective and certain way to accomplish those objects.  The clear-sighted and earnest men of the North are forever checked in carrying forward measures of justice and principle, from the fear of giving offence to some conservatives whose influence and co-operation it is desirable to have.  In nine cases out of ten, these very conservatives would be secured rather than repelled by bold and vigorous measures.  Men who a little while ago denounced coercion, are now in the foremost ranks of the Government to suppress rebellion.  The men who applauded Gen. BUTLER for offering his army to put down a slave insurrection, applauded him more when he refused to return slaves to their masters, altho' his duty under the Constitution is as plain to do this latter as the former.  But we believe that the [[italics]] Tribune [[/italics]] and other papers have over estimated the tenderness of the commercial classes towards slavery.  They are under a cloud, in a perfect haze, concerning the rights of slave property; but let the Government once lift itself up to the dignity of a sound principle, and it will draw the whole people up to it.  The Government must lead the people.  The people will follow in any just and necessary path, and do so joyfully.

We know that rebellion cannot be talked down, written down, or coaxed down.  It has got to be beaten down, and the heaviest blow that can be given is the right blow to be given.  There is no whipping the traitors without hurting them.  War was made to hurt, and those who provoke it ought to be hurt; and the only conceivable good which can come out of war, comes because it hurts.

What our rulers at Washington most of all stand in need of, in order to a speedy suppression of this slaveholding rebellion, and to place the nation on a firm foundation of peace and prosperity, is neither men nor money, but a living and all-controlling faith in the principles of freedom avowed in the Declaration of
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Independence, and which are the foundation of the Government; they need faith in the Bible truth, that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that sin is a reproach to any people; they want faith in justice and humanity, and in the fullest application of them.  They have men, money and arms in abundance.  A call is made for a thousand men, and lo! ten thousand start up as from the ground to answer that call.  They ask for thirty millions of treasure, and at once sixty millions, like a golden flood, is rolled into the National treasury.  The world has never seen a government so suddenly thus made opulent in all the munitions of war.  But alas! while strong in men, rich in money and in the munitions of war, we are neither rich nor strong in what is far more important in moral consistency.--To fight against slaveholders, without fighting against slavery, is but a half-hearted business, and paralyzes the hands engaged in it.  Our army presents the appearance, while thus fettered, of seeming to be trying how not to put down rebellion and treason among the slaveholders.  It would knock them down, but it would see that they fall upon feathers, and not upon forks or flints.  It is still clinging to the delusion--for it is nothing else--that they can win the slaveholders to loyalty by showing friendship to slavery, and by admitting, within certain limits, that slavery has constitutional rights--the wildest possible mistake.

They know that slavery is the crime, the curse and the scandal of the American name; that to it they owe all their present National troubles; and that while slavery lasts, there can be no lasting peace.  They know that there is, and must ever remain an 'irrepressible conflict' between slavery and freedom, and that one or the other must be eventually and totally extinguished; but still they hesitate to adopt the only mode of warfare which can secure the permanent triumph of freedom, and the lasting peace of the country.--What is this mode of warfare which we recommend, and which is required by the exigency now upon the land?  This it is:  Accept the aid of the slaves wherever the National army is required to march to suppress rebellion, and proclaim freedom and protection to men of all colors who will rally to the support of the established Government.--Teach the rebels and traitors that the price they are to pay for the attempt to abolish this Government must be the abolition of slavery in every State and Territory where the National arm is required to march in vindication of the National flag.  Send no more slaves back to their rebel master; offer to put down no more slave insurrections 'with an iron hand;' reject no more black troops; release no more slaveholding rebels on their word of honor; hang or imprison for life all pirates; and henceforth let the war cry be, down with treason, and down with slavery, the cause of treason.

There are objections to this programme; but they are by no means so strong as those
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Transcription Notes:
This document was for some reason extensively reworded when transcribed. I have returned it to the expected verbatim transcription.