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482   DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.    JULY, 1861
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which can be urged against the policy at present pursued.  It is urged, for instance, that upon any declaration of the emancipation of the slaves on the part of the Federal army, the slaveholders would at once proceed to a work of indiscriminate slaughter of the male portion of their slaves; and this threat has already been made in a letter from the South to Ex-President FILLMORE.  Horrible purpose!  but quite worthy of the guilty wretches from whom it proceeds.  The thought of it chills the blood and stuns the mind; but horrible as would be such wholesale murder, the work once begun would soon cure itself, and out of it would come in the end peace to the country and freedom to the slave.  Anything but unending slavery; and if the abolition of slavery must and can only end in blood at any time, no time can be better than now for that bloody end.  There are good reasons for believing, however, that with all the known savage ferocity of slaveholders, that even they within sight of the American people and the world, would proceed only to a very limited extent in the sanguinary slaughter which they now so shamelessly threaten.  But whatever might be the consequences, nothing worse can happen than victory to the slaveholding rebels, either for the country or for the slave.
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THE ATTITUDE OF ENGLAND TOWARDS THE UNITED STATES
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Many of our journals and public men affect astonishment that England, with her anti-slavery history and professions, should not have, upon the outbreak between the North and the South, promptly espoused the cause of the North, and opposed the pretensions of the South.  To us, there appears little ground for this astonishment.  We can easily see that in the view of the British public, that the question of the abolition or non-abolition of slavery was not involved in the present contest.  Mr. LINCOLN, Mr. SEWARD and all the leading men of the Republican party, had, at the time of the formation of British public opinion, distinctly affirmed their purpose to administer the Government in a manner in no way prejudicial to the existence of slavery in any State of the American Union.  The Republican party had virtually abandoned its doctrine of prohibiting the extension of slavery.  In many of the free States they had repealed their Personal Liberty Laws, were in favor of slave-hunting, and also in favor of holding a National Convention with a view to such an alteration of the Constitution as should forever put it out of the power of the Federal Government to abolish slavery in any of the States.  Even at the beginning of hostilities, long after the fall of Fort Sumter, and while the streets of Baltimore yet ran loyal blood, our Generals, with the approbation of the Government, were assuring, as they are now, the guilty slave-traffickers that they stand ready to suppress, with an 'iron hand,' any attempt on the part of the slaves to gain their freedom.  When, too, it is remembered that up to the fall of Fort Sumter nothing really existed on the surface of American affairs indicating a decided purpose on the side of the Government to assert the supremacy of the Union over the South, within a few days of the bombardment of Sumter, it appeared to be the policy of Mr LINCOLN to surrender that fort, and if that, all other forts and arsenals in the Southern
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States.  Commissioners from the seceded States were in Washington, right under the nose of the President, for the avowed purpose of negotiating for the surrender to the rebel States all Federal property within their borders.  The Democratic press of the North, with great unanimity, were denying the power and denouncing the policy of coercing the seceding States; while many of the leading Republican papers were saying, let them go!  The fact is, the whole aspect of affairs looked towards a peaceful and permanent separation of the slaveholding from the non-slaveholding States; and it was in this state of facts that British public opinion was formed.

It was, therefore, natural that the statesmen of Great Britain, especially in view of our pernicious Northern tariff, should, for commercial purposes, assume an attitude of friendliness to the new Confederacy, whose independence, even by American admissions, appeared inevitable.  It is ridiculous for the North, in view of its anti-abolition record, and even its present pro-slavery policy, to claim the sympathies of Great Britain on abolition grounds, or even upon the ground of its right to put down treason and rebellion to the Federal Government.  To the first we have no claim, and to the second we have but recently asserted either power or purpose.  Upon this subject we give below the tersely stated view taken by an Abolitionist in England, one whom we know to be as true a friend to humanity, and as true a friend to the Northern people as any in the United States:

HALIFAX, June 8, 1861.

MY DEAR SIR:--In times like these, we feel that all the writing, as all the action, should be on your side.  We have nothing to write about, commensurate in interest to what is passing among you.

I see that the North is rather disappointed with the course our Government is adopting, but it has itself to thank for our neutrality.  It did not treat the Southern secession as rebellion, till the secession movement had grown into a sort of government; and the present quarrel seems rather one for supremacy, than for the interests of liberty.  If the South was to say now, 'Take us back, slaves and all--give us the rights to oppress we had before'--the North would consent.

The tariff bill has, of course, caused great disgust in England, and very justly.  If a majority can pass a bill for their own supposed interests, which must cause a vast amount of dishonesty, and which is oppressive to a large portion of the States, it gives a color to the plea of the South that they could not be secure of impartiality on any sectional question.  The North had expressed its readiness to barter the small concessions towards freedom they had made for the colored race, to gain the South back.  They could give the poor man's lamb to feast the stranger!  but not only do they spare their own flocks and herds, but try to filch some of the said stranger's!  They talk as if Union was the thing dearest to their hearts, and at the same time pass a Bill similar in effect to the one which had caused secession in time past.  I fancy if the South had seceded on some such principle--if it had said, the North are protectionists and manufacturers, we are agricultural free traders, and what is the food of the North (commercial imposts) is poison to us--it would not have seemed very absurd to divide the Government, when interests seem so much divided.

I think I sent you an Inquirer--to which I contributed an article 'Slaveownia' --or else expected you to see it, before the last outbreak happened, when it seemed as if the North was consenting to peaceful secession.  If the South was to secede, it seemed natural that it should keep the forts on its own soil. 
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The rage of the North at the capture of Sumter caused some astonishment.

As yet, the war is not undertaken to promote freedom, but to force union, or to terrify from further disunion; and till we see what comes of it, as friends of freedom we feel no intense interest in the success of the pro-slavery North any more than that of the South.  It is true the North may hate Southern institutions while they are enemies, yet be prepared to protect them, as before, when peace comes.  In this respect it may be better for the period of hatred to sinners to continue, till a hatred of the sin is thoroughly ingrained in the Northern conscience.  But I am a peace-loving Abolitionist; and war talk, and the cruelty of hatred, is as disgusting to me as pro-slavery talk, and the cruelty of oppression, and I think each section of the States proud, hectoring and revengeful.  The only comfort is, that the North does contain many thousands of true, generous, devoted men and women, who may do something to elevate and ennoble this horrid civil war.  But fratricide has few charms for those who are not engaged in it! and the North, as a community, are not entitled to claim the function of pure and righteous ministers of divine vengeance.  In the same army are noble anti-slavery men, and the worst rowdies, of whom our only hope is, that they can't do much more harm in war, than they have inflicted in a corrupt peace.

I fear in this hurried scrawl I have not made myself very intelligible.  As for you, I hope you may rather shed salt than blood --Never did your country stand more in need of the true salt of Christian principle.

Ever faithfully yours, R. L. C.
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STILL IN DANGER OF A COMPROMISE
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We confess to something like a dread of the approaching meeting of Congress to be convened on the 4th of July.  The situation of affairs is not without signs of hope that the day of compromise with slavery is past; and still there is nothing yet which absolutely assures us.  Leading statesmen and newspapers of the North have denounced the very possibility of accomplishing any new adjustment of the relations of the North to slavery.  The haughty, imperious, disdainful tone of the slaveholding rebels, and the firm declaration of the Government of a determination to suppress the rebels, without the alteration of a single line of the Constitution, very strongly forbid the idea that there is to be another paper compromise by which the North is to be bound, and with which the slaveholders are to be made satisfied.  The temper for compromise seems wanting on both sides, and many weighty considerations, even of policy, forbid the entertainment of any such measure.  Thus far, nothing has been demonstrated one way or the other by the war.  The uprising of the North, and the equally spirited uprising of the South, the slight conflicts which have ensued, have done nothing to settle the ability of the Government of the U.S. to make itself respected, nor has the South proved its ability to break up the Government.  Both sides are in the field.  Both sides have taken up the sword, and solemnly declared their purpose never to lay it down till certain results have been accomplished.  So far, compromise seems out of the question; for either party now to lay down their arms and attempt to settle by the tongue and pen, what both had undertaken to settle by the sword, would be a confession not only of being in the wrong, but of cowardice.  Neither the North nor the South could go before the world with any explanation which would leave it entirely free from the suspicion of cowardice, and of having performed over again the heroic exploit of
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