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AUGUST, 1861. DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. 507 [[line across page]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] erty. As yet they had no idea even of that priceless liberty, man's natural attribute, and we have the mortification to behold their most distinguished leaders, Biasson, Jean Francois, and even their Lieutenant, Toussaint L'Ouverture himself--to such an extent, alas! had slavery corrupted their minds--selling the blacks and mulattoes who fell into their hands, without scruple, to the Spaniards of the Eastern part of the Island. (1) The perpetration of such revolting abuses, together with repeated scenes of carnage and depredation, could only grieve the true friends of liberty, and very soon those whom a pure love for the sacred rights of man had armed in favor of the insurgents, abandoned them to their fate. At length, their chiefs, weary of carnage, or doubtful of the future, made overtures to the civil commissioners, Myrbeck and St. Leger, &c, representatives of France in the colony, to put an end to the insurrection, and reduce the whole of the army to slavery, with the exception of four hundred of the principal ones among them. (2) After these unpropitious events, order and peace were not re-established in the colony. The whites, puffed up with pride, and blinded by the prejudicies which controlled them, quickly forgot the imminent danger they had just escaped, and redoubled their persecutions against the men of color and free blacks, whose intelligence and evident prosperity appeared to them an odious and insupportable rivalry. Nourished in vice, and habituated to crime, these infamous colonists, of execrable memory, did not only make laws, as some of the Southern States in this country, to expel the free colored men from their midst, but carried their atrocity, in their insatiable thirst for control, to the extent of meditating the horrible, the inconceivable project of exterminating the entire colored caste! (3) Disembarrassed of that turbulent population, as they style them, jealous of their rights, they would remain, so they thought, only more quiet possessors of their slaves. Toussaint L'Ouverture sprang from this scandalous and unheard of scheme, which even now, after a lapse of seventy years, makes us tremble with horror and indignation. But, very soon, the genius of the black chieftain displaying itself, he thought to turn against his instigators the fratricidal weapon which they had placed in his hands. It was too late! France had sent her battalions to deliver the colonists from their redoubtable ally. Toussaint was taken, and conveyed to France. Then, and only then, it was, that the Genius of Liberty, spreading its protecting wings over that unprotected land, carved with its puissant sword upon the blue firmament of Hayti, to the astonished gaze of blacks and mulattoes, the magic and ineffaceable words:--'LIBERTY, INDEPENDENCE, or DEATH!' Alexander Petion, a mulatto, the founder of the Republic of Hayti, seized, like another Washington, with all the sacred enthusiasm with which his great soul was susceptible, these words, and wrote them, on the glorious night of the 13th of October, 1802, on the standard of the new country, which together with Dessalines, (black,) he was about to bestow upon his brethren. And thus uniting their efforts, both colored and black, under the inspiration of those two reform chiefs, succeeded, at last, after the most desperate struggles, in attaining their liberty and independence. Behold the action of colored and black men of Hayti! But in order that the lesson which Mr. Wright's able pen has so wisely and so intelligently drawn from the history of Hayti should have its full effect, it was necessary that we should correct the involuntary error into which he has fallen: namely, that the men of color of Hayti have manifested an indifference to the condition of the slave. The facts which we have just set forth prove, on the contrary, what part they played in the --------- (1) T. Madiou, Histoty d'Haiti. Vol. 1, p. 93. (2) T. Madiou, History d'Haiti. Vol. 1, p. 91. B. Ardouin. Vol. 1, p. 278. (3) B. Ardouin, vol. 4, p. 60. [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] events of the war which led to the independence of that country. There should be no conealment; the same causes will produce the same effects in the United States as in Hayti. If blind prejudices, as unjust as they are barbarous, induce the South to perpetuate slavery and its horrors in their States, the 500,000 free colored men, scattered throughout the Union in shame and dejection, eagerly waiting for an opportunity, will find means, some day, to inflame the souls of the slaves, and to execute, in the words of Dessalines, [[italics]] by a universal earthquake, [[/italics]] a terrible vengeance! And be well assured, that every attempt, on the part of the North, to maintain and protect slavery at the South, is only making her take one step more towards her ruin and destruction. When France, occupied in her continental wars, was obliged, in a manner, to abandon St. Domingo to herself, and her Commissioners there, in order to save the authority of the mother country, imperilled in that colony by the treason of the colonists, were compelled by circumstance to proclaim a mock liberty to the slaves, England sent 31,000 men, and expended on hundred million of dollars to re-establish slavery in the parts of the island which the colonists had given up to her. Of these 31,000, 21,000 perished, the victims of their audacious temerity. Later, Bonaparte, mistaking his destiny, and abjuring his past, attempted to restore the old regime in France and her colonies. He sent his fleet to St. Domingo, and 55,600 of his best soldiers, the conquerors of Arcole and the Pyramids. Of this number, 53,000 were immolated as holocausts to the Goddess of Liberty. Of the 40,000 whites who were in St. Domingo when these bloddy struggles between Liberty and Slavery began, scarcely 10,000 were able to save themselves, in exile, from the avenging fury of the Nemesis whom their perfidious hands had armed! So, then, 21,000, 53,000, and 30,000, equal to a total of 104,000 white corpses--without counting the money, without mentioning the negroes--that is what the blind obstinacy of the colonists of St. Domingo cost humanity! Should not their interests alone, setting aside the considerations of justice and humanity, have induced them to break the chains of their slaves, and attach them to themselves by their justice and equity? They would have made of them free and intelligent laborers, who, even to-day, would have been glad to moisten with their sweat the vast domain of their former masters, as is the case now in Barbadoes, St. Lucia, Jamaica--in short, every where, where the chains of the slave have been broken even by the hand of the masters! Here, then, is a weighty lesson, as Mr. Wright very justly remarks, and one which God seems to have placed expressly in view of the Americans, to save their beautiful and flourishing country from the ruin and desolation with which slavery threatens it. A. TATE [[italics]] Capitaine de la Garde de S.E. le President d'Haiti. [[/italics]] BOSTON, July 19, 1861. [[line]] THE FUGITIVES AT OUR STRONGHOLDS.-- At Fortress Monroe the ebony 'contrabands are everywhere to be seen in large numbers, and make themselves generally useful. The women and children occupy an hold house near the fortress and laugh and sing away the long warm days in blissful ignorance of the magnitude of the contest of which their race is the innocent cause. Some seven or eight hundred of these people have come in, and all of them are made to contribute to the defences of the place. Numerous anecdotes are told of their sayings and doings. At Cairo slaves are coming into the camps of the soldiers every day, and are immediately set to work upon the fortifications. The number of these people at this stronghold is not stated. It seems that the officers at Fort Pickens are now permitting the runaway slaves who arrive at that fort to remain and receive protection. Some three or four have been received by the commander of the Fort. [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] "THE QUESTION AT THE DOOR." --- BY LEWIS TAPPAN. --- In the [[italics]] Maryland Colonization Journal [[/italics]] of April, 1861, is an article with the above heading, taken from the [[italics]] Vermont Chronicle, [[/italics]] the leading religious newspaper of that State. The 'Question at the Door' is this--What will the Northern States do with the free people of color--'At least fifty thousand, now in South Carolina, Virginia and North Carolina, who will be sent North within a short time?' The writer in the [[italics]] Chronicle [[/italics]] thinks that such persons may soon be excluded from ALL the Southern States, and adds, 'not merely fifty thousand, but five times fifty thousand may soon be sent North. Fifty thousand! This would give about three thousand to each Northern State.' The question is then raised, 'What then, will the North do? What will Vermont do? . . . The reply is obvious.' Expatriate the negroes--of course! The writer proceeds to narrate the acts of oppression passed by the Legislatures in the free States, and sums up the disgraceful catalogue by saying: 'What, then, shall become of these thousands of human beings sent North? They cannot stay at the South. At the North they are repelled.' The obstacles are then enumerated in the way of their 'flying' to Canada, Hayti or Central America; the conclusion is made that they must go to Liberia; and the inquiry is made 'Will the North help the emigrants to the New Republics? The question is at the door.' It is natural enough that the Colonization Society should sound an alarm, as its friends may, in view of this gigantic EXPATRIATION--not EMIGRATION--exert themselves to replenish its treasury. But the sagacious friends of this Society can not seriously entertain the wish that fifty thousand of the free people of color, it may be five times fifty thousand, should be suddenly thrown upon the shores of Liberia. They know that if such an immense number of men, women, and children were at once added to the population of Liberia, they would die of starvation, and the Republic would be ruined. But the object of this article is not to complain particularly of the Colonization Society, nor of the [[italics]] Vermont Chronicle [[/italics]], which has so cooly propounded the 'Question'--while narrating the cruel enactments of Northern Legislatures--without expressing any commiseration for the victims of a mean prejudice and wicked oppression, or uttering any rebuke against those who have framed such iniquity into laws. We aim rather to notice the perverse feelings and hostile actions that prevail so extensively throughout the country with reference to the colored population. It is marvelous in the eyes of the friends of the colored man, who acknowledge him as their countryman and brother, and in the eyes of the civilized world--this country excepted--that so large a portion of the people of the United States, religious and irreligious, and especially those who deify the founders of our Republican government, and more especially those who profess to be disciples of Christ, are so indifferent to the welfare, improvement, and advancement of the colored Americans. We may well suppose also that the angelic hosts look with astonishment upon the aversion manifested by the citizens of this country, native and naturalized, toward those who are guilty of a skin not colored like their own. Talk of the 'Question at the Door' proposed by the Vermont Chronicle and Colonization Journal, and all who sympathize with the sentiments we have quoted from these publications! Let them observe the signs of the times, the hand-writing upon the wall, the indications of Divine Providence, more visible to the spiritual eye than is the comet that has just visited us, to the natural eye; let them listen to the 'Question' that the Almighty is propounding to the people of this land:--'Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?' 'Have the workers of [[/column 3]]
