Viewing page 14 of 16

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

542    DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.    OCTOBER, 1861

democracy trammeled.  Heaven be praised that it is now free!—and that in this sad and gloomy day of his country he proves himself capable of sinking the politician and partisan in the patriot.  He still loves that Constitution; and is intent on going for it as far as he can.  But infinitely more intent is he to go for the Country, be it at whatever expense to the Constitutuion.  So would it be with Daniel Webster were he now alive—for he too was a patriot.  He too, like Mr. Dickinson, would be found forgetting the Constitution in his depper concern for the Country.

I know that you magnify the Constitution not to turn men from saving the Nation, but to quicken their zeal to save it.  Nevertheless to magnify it at this time is to favor their cry of the Constitution, whose object in the cry is to counteract the claims of the country, and to accomplish its ruin by busying its friends with something else than its salvation.  Happy would it be for the country if, until the last rebel against it had laid down his arms, your pen should no more write and your lips no more speak the word Constitution.

I close under this head, with the remark that even if the Constitution were so plain as to compel the reading of it in but one way, nevertheless inasmuch as the Nation can be saved only by making its salvation the absorbing idea of the Nation the less the public attention is called to the Constitution the better.   But the Constitution, like most other books, is capable of being read several ways not only by ingenuity but by honesty.  How very unwise then, at such a time as this to multiply divisions among the people by directing them from the Country to the Constitution.  In a word, as the enemies of the Nation care for nothing but to destroy it, so let its friends care for nothing but to save it.

Now the other error—Overrating the importance of conciliating loyal slaveholders.  Had all the slave States seceded and all the slaveholders sanctioned the Secession, the War would have been over ere this time.— Immediately on its breaking out you would have given to the Rebellion its death blow by your Proclamation inviting to our standard all the people of those States.  Not only would it have been in your heart to do so—but it would have been in every true Northern heart to have you do so.  Not to have done so would have shown you to be utterly unworthy of your place.  But the Secession was only partial; and as all the slaveholders were not drawn into it, sympathy with such of them as were loyal, desire to please them and preserve their loyalty operated effectually to hold you back from giving such an invitation to the people of any of the slave States.  I do not forget that many will argue that a Proclamation so bold would have disaffected the North.  Their philosophy is unsound.  It would have lifted up and rejoiced the North.  It would have left scarce patronage enough for one Secession Newspaper.  Boldness for the right is might to convert men to the right.

That all the slave States did not secede is what makes the War so expensive, so perilous, and perhaps in the end so ruinous to us.  But for this, none would have felt the need of summoning half a million nor even a quarter of a million of white men to arms.  But for this, none would have felt the need of draining the people of four hundred or half four hundred millions of money.  But for this, none would have felt the flagrantly Unconstitutional assumption by military men of the right to decide who are slaves, would never have been.  But for this, such men would have had no occasion to insult humanity and defy God by thrusting some persons into slavery, and by threatening to prevent others from getting out of it.  But for this, black regiments from the Northern States would have been accepted, and the crime of denying men the right to participate in the defence of their country have been avoided.  [By the way, have you ever dwelt upon the enormity of this crime? Is it not more criminal to restrain a man from defending his country, than to restrain him from defending his wife and children?  For not only is country more than family, but the fate of family is involved in the fate of country—and hence he is denied the defending of his family also, who is denied the defending of his country]  But that only a part of the slave States seceded, and that your Call for the help of bond as well as free, black as well as white, was thereby kept back, the white men of each slave State would have had quite enough to do within their own State; and none could have gone from the Southern slave States to help their fellow Secessionists in the Northern slave States.  Among the black men, who would have sprung forward in response to your Call, hundreds would have exhibited as high heroism as William Tillman, the black sailor who, as yet, stands at the head of all the heroes of the present War.  In response to that Call, many a black man would have shown himself as eager to be early in this War as was Crispus Attucks to be early in the Revolutionary War.  For it was in one of the very first skirmishes in the dawn of the Revolution, that this noble black man led a party in Boston and sealed his patriotism with his blood.  In response to your Call many a black regiment would have come forth and distinguished itself for valor and power as highly as did the famous Rhode Island black Regiment of the Revolution.  Tristam Burgess says of this Regiment: 'No braver men met the enemy in battle.'  How sublime an instance of devotion to a leader was the defending by his Guard of the mortally wounded Colonel of this Regiment!  Not one of them would consent to leave him.  Every one was slain.  God alone knows how far our success in the Revolution was owing to the black patriots: and He alone can fathom the deep ingratitude of persecuting and oppressing their descendants.  In response to your call, there would have been black troops, whom their Commanders would have eulogized as highly as General Jackson did the black troops who rendered him so essential service in saving New Orleans.  That great General, who was not so dainty as to decline the help of black muscles, said to his black troops: 'I expected much from you; you have done more than I expected.'

We have seen that had all the slaveholders rebelled, you would have been in no doubt of your duty, and you would have saved the country quickly and cheaply—with no wrong to God nor man—with no defiance to the One nor insult to the other.  But the case, which would then have been so plain, became in your esteem greatly complicated by the continued fidelity and allegiance of a very small part of the slaveholders.  Here was your error.  The salvation of your country demanded your Call for the help of bond and free, black and white, no less than if all the slaveholders had turned traitors.  As a War measure—as a military necessity—it is justified as clearly in the one case as in the other.  For there was not one in ten of the slaveholders who was even professedly loyal:—and why should you accommodate your policy to the gratification of so small a share of the slaveholders?—to the gratification of so exceedingly small a fraction of the American people?  Again, among those who are determined slaveholders, and who insist, as all such do, on the maintenance of slavery at whatever hazard to other interests, there is not one who is loyal.  The truly loyal man goes for his country at whatever hazard to slavery or aught else.  The Government offered a command to that wise and brave, as well as rich man, Jas. S. Wadsworth.  Did he, ere accepting it, stipulate for the safety from the hands of Government of his hundreds of oxen and thousands of sheep?  Had he done  so he would not have been commissioned.  But the General is a patriot; and therefore does he hold his sheep and oxen, and all his great estate subject to the needs of his country.— Soo too does the slaveholder, who is a patriot, and who is deserving of his country's favor, recognize the like paraqmount claim to his possessions, his slaves not excepted.  No slaveholder has a particle of loyalty who, when traitors are striking at the life of his country, and his slaves are needed to save it, is not willing, ay is not glad, to surrender them to a service infinitely more sacred, important and commanding than his own.  This is the one test of the loyalty of slaveholders: and hence you may be sure that all those slaveholders, whose loyalty is to be secured by securing slavery, are traitors.  As Gen. Wadsworth would rejoice to see the Government take his flocks and herds, and even his 'sacred home,' when the necessities of his beloved country call for them, so will the truly loyal slaveholder, rejoice to see it blotted out if the salvation of his country shall require the sacrifice.  Is it said that the Government will pay General Wadsworth?  I answer that the slaveholder, as well as General Wadsworth, should trust the justice and generosity of the Government.

But this whole matter is in the compass of a nut-shell.  Are the slaves property?—then like all other property, they are to be regarded as bought and sold and held subject to the superior claims of the Government, and to such uses as the Government may choose to put them to.  Are they not property, but men?—then, when Government calls for them, neither must they refuse to come, nor must others hold them nor hide them.

Why is it that our Government may not have the help of black men as well as white when it is in need of both?  Or why is it that in the exercise of its War-power it may take this man's grain, and that man's horses, these men's railroads, and those men's vessels, and all simply because it needs them, and whether they belong to friends or foes, and whether too it does or does not pay for them—and yet may not take the property of slaveholders?  Is their property so sacred and so privileged as to be exempt from the liabilities common to the property of all others?  We are educated into a deep delusion at this point.

I add that nothing so much as this insane respect for slave property has contributed to overshadow the claims of the Country with the claims of the Constitution.  Constitutional as well as other pleas for the absolute and unending preservation of slavery in the Border States were put in, and the Government was unwise enough to listen to them, and to make the question one of the Constitution rather than that of Country—of the construction of a Paper rather than of the rights of a Nation struggling for life.

We find, then, that there has not been the least occasion in point of fact for all the fastidiousness, and all the fear of giving offence which have marked the course of the Administration on the slave question.  To no degree whatever should it have been embarrassed by this question.  It should have acted just as freely as if there had been no loyal slaveholders in its way—for there really was none, and there really can be none, since a truly loyal man cannot put himself in the way of his country.  Those slaveholders who annoy the Government, draw it from the line of its duties, and damage its reputation at home and abroad by their impudent and absurd claims upon it for persons they allege to be fugitive slaves, and by the expression of their fears that the slaves will rise against their masters, do of course find it expedient to put on the guise of loyalty.  However, were it not for the presence of Federal troops and the fear of eventual Federal success, they would not trouble themselves to profess loyalty.

It is all for nothing, then, that the Administration has forborne to bring the nearly five millions of blacks, counting bond and free, to the side of our distressed and deeply endangered country:  all for nothing that it has insulted them and let its armies insult, threaten and outrage such of them as were trying to get their own freedom and were eager to help the country secure hers:  all for nothing that it is driving these five millions to hate the North, and make the best terms they can with 

Transcription Notes:
Reviewed