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Page 486     DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.     JULY, 1861
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unto themselves.  To all who press the Bible into the service of slavery, we have said, if you would not be the slave, you cannot be the master.

The fact is, slavery is at the bottom of all mischief amongst us, and will be until we shall put an end to it.  We have seen three attempts within less than thirty years to break up the American Government in this the first century of its existence, and slavery has been the moving cause in each instance.  The attempt was made in 1832, again in 1850, and again in 1860.  Some of us were surprised and astonished that the slaveholders should rebel against the American Government, simply because they could not rule the Government to the full extent of their wishes.—-Little cause had we for such surprise and astonishment.  We ought to have known slaveholders better.

What is a slaveholder but a rebel and a traitor?  That is, and must be in the nature of his vocation, his true character.  Treason and rebellion are the warp and woof of the relation of master and slave.  A man cannot be a slaveholder without being a traitor to humanity and a rebel against the law and government of the ever-living God.  He is a usurper, a spoiler.  His patriotism means plunder, and his principles are those of the highway robber.  Out of such miserable stuff you can make nothing but conspirators and rebels.

So far as the American Government is entitled to the loyal support and obedience of American citizens, so far that Government is, in the main, in harmony with the highest good and the just convictions of the people.  Justice, goodness, conscience are divine.  Conformity to these, on the part of human governments, make them binding and authoritative.  These attributes, wherever exhibited, whether in the government of States, in the government of families, or wherever else exhibited, command the reverence and loyal regard of honest men and women.  But slaveholders, by the very act of slaveholding, have thrown off all the trammels of conscience and right.  They are open, brazen, self-declared rebels and traitors to all that makes loyalty a virtue, and fidelity a duty.  The greater includes the lesser crime.  In the one high handed act of rebellion against truth, justice and humanity, comprehended in making one man the slave of another, we have the ascertained sum of treason and rebellion which now rages and desolates the whole slaveholding territory in the Untited States.

This is no new idea in these lectures.  I have presented it before, and shall probably repeat it again.  I wish at any rate to underscore it now, for I deem it important that we should thoroughly understand the foe with which we have to deal.  Let it, then, be written down in every man’s mind, as no longer a matter of dispute, that a thief and a robber cannot be safely trusted; that a slaveholder cannot be a good citizen of a free republic; and that the relation of master and slave is in the nature of it treason and rebellion.  It has long been obvious to common sense—-it is now known to common experience—-that a slaveholder who is a slaveholder at heart is a natural born traitor and rebel.  He is a rebel against manhood, womanhood, and brotherhood.  The essence of his crime is nothing less than the complete destruction of all that dignifies and ennobles human character.
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I don’t know how it seems to you, in reading the authoritative utterances of our Government, and the officers of our army, respecting slavery; but it really seems to me that they are wofully mistaken if they think this country can ever have peace while slavery is allowed to live.  Every little while you learn that slaves have been sent back to their loyal masters.  We hear that while other property is freely confiscated, this peculiar property is only held to the end of the war, and the inference seems to be that these slaves, by and by, are to enter into the basis of negotiations between the Government and the slaveholding rebels.  I am anxious to look charitably upon everything looking to the suppression of rebellion and treason.  I want to see the monster destroyed; but I think that while our Government uses its soldiers to catch and hold slaves, and offers to put down slave insurrections, and subject them to the control and authority of their rebel masters, it will make precious little headway in putting down the rebels, or in establishing the peace of the country hereafter.

There is still an effort to conciliate the Border States.  Our Government does not know slavery.  Our rulers do not yet know slaveholders.  We are likely to find them out after a while.  We are just now in a pretty good school.  The revolution through which we are passing is an excellent instructor.  We are likely to find out what is meant by Southern chivalry and Southern honor.--When you have watched a while longer the course of Southern men, whether in the cotton States or in the slave-breeding States, you will have become convinced that they are all of the same species, and that the Border States are as bad as any.  JOHN BELL, the Union man, is as much a traitor as FRANK PICKENS of South Carolina.  We shall learn by and by that such men as LETCHER of Virginia, JACKSON of Missouri, MAGOFFIN of Kentucky, were traitors and rebels in the egg, only waiting to be hatched by the heat of surrounding treason.  The ties that bind slaveholders together are stronger than all other ties, and in every State where they hold the reins of government, they will take sides openly or secretly with the slaveholding rebels.--Conciliation is out of the question.  They know no law and will respect no law but the law of force.  The safety of the Government can be attained only in one way, and that is, by rendering the slaveholders powerless.

Slavery, like all other gross and powerful forms of wrong which appeal directly to human pride and selfishness, when once admitted into the frame work of society, has the ability and tendency to beget a character in the whole net work of society surrounding it, favorable to its continuance.  The very law of its existence is growth and dominion.  Natural and  harmonious relations easily repose in their own rectitude, while all such as are false and unnatural are conscious of their own weakness, and must seek strength from without.  Hence the explanation of the uneasy, restless, eager anxiety of slaveholders.--Our history shows that from the formation of this Government, until the attempt now making to break it up, this class of men have been constantly pushing schemes for the safety and supremacy of the slave system.  They have had marvelous success.  They have completely destroyed freedom in the slave States,
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and were doing their best to accomplish the same in the free States.  He is a very imperfect reasoner who attributes the steady rise and ascendency of slavery to anything else than the nature of slavery itself.  Truth may be careless and forgetful, but a lie cannot afford to be either.  Truth may repose upon its inherent strength, but a falsehood rests for support upon external props.  Slavery is the most stupendous of all lies, and depends for existence upon a favorable adjustment of all its surroundings.  Freedom of speech, of the press, of education, of labor, of locomotion, and indeed all kinds of freedom, are felt to be a standing menace to slavery.  Hence, the friends of slavery are bound by the necessity of their system to do just what the history of the country shows they have done--that is, to seek to subvert all liberty, and to pervert all the safeguards of human rights.  They could not do otherwise.  It was the controlling law of their situation.

Now, if these views be sound, and are borne out by the whole history of American slavery, then for the statesman of this hour to permit any settlement of the present war between slavery and freedom, which will leave untouched and undestroyed the relation of master and slave, would not only be a great crime, but a great mistake, the bitter fruits of which would poison the life blood of unborn generations.  No grander opportunity was ever given to any nation to signalize, either its justice and humanity, or its intelligence and statesmanship, than is now given to the loyal American people.  We are brought to a point in our National career where two roads meet and diverge.  It is the critical moment for us.  The destiny of the mightiest Republic in the modern world hangs upon the decision of that hour.  If our Government shall have the wisdom to see, and the nerve to act, we are safe.  If it fails, we perish, and go to our own place with those nations of antiquity long blotted from the maps of the world.  I have only one voice, and that is neither loud nor strong.  I speak to but few, and have little influence; but whatever I am or may be, I may, at such a time as this, in the name of justice, liberty and humanity, and in that of the permanent security and welfare of the whole nation, urge all men, and especially the Government, to the abolition of slavery.  Not a slave should be left a slave in the returning footprints of the American army gone to put down this slaveholding rebellion.  Sound policy, not less than humanity, demands the instant liberation of every slave in the rebel States.
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SLAVE-CATCHING OBSOLETE.--A Philadelphia correspondent of the Tribune says:--A gentleman just in from the counties bordering on Maryland, informs me that there is a small but constant stream of fugitive slaves coming over our State line from Maryland and Virginia.  No one undertakes to molest them, the Fugitive Slave Law being by common consent regarded as dead.  On the contrary, life-long Democrats, residing on the track of the fugitives not only refuse to intercept their flight, but feed them generously.  A year ago these men would have considered themselves bound to aid in catching them.  But all that feeling of duty is now gone, and is entirely reversed.  Indeed, the general change of sentiment in regard to the alleged rights of slaveholders is most remarkable.  We cannot yet divine what is to become of slavery, but we are fast washing our hands of all sympathy for it.
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