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548      DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.     NOVEMBER, 1861

droves, leaving the fuel of rebellion in that State exhausted.  The power of the slaveholders is broken in Western Virginia and in Maryland.

Meanwhile the friends of the Union and of liberty should be active, and appear by petition at the bar of Congress in such numbers, and in such arguments, as to leave no room for the Government to escape from the great work of liberation.  Already, signs are not wanting which prove that our Administration at Washington is quite vincible to the moral influence now setting against slavery.  We hear no more about protecting the property of the rebels——no more about putting down slave insurrections——no more about excluding all persons "held to service or labor from their lines;" but instead, we have an order from the Secretary of War to the Naval Expedition, now about to depart from Old Point, from which we quote the following important passage:

"You (Gen. Sherman) are to avail yourself of the services of ANY persons, whether fugitives from labor or not, who may offer them to the National Government; you may employ such persons in such services as they may be fitted for, either as ordinary employees, or, if special circumstances seem to require it, IN ANY OTHER CAPACITY, with such organization, in squads, companies, or otherwise, as you deem most beneficial to the service.  This, however, not to mean a GENERAL arming of them for military service.  You will assure all LOYAL masters that Congress will provide just compensation to them for the loss of the services of the persons so employed."

The Secretary does not go the length of arming the slaves and treating them as loyal soldiers.  He moves slowly; but he moves, and that is something.  He will put into the hands of the bondman the space, the pick and the ax, and set him to work for his country, instead of the person to whom his "service and labor may be due."  This is something; and we think the next step will be to welcome under the Star Spangled Banner "any muscle that can fight," whether slave or free; and when that day comes, the end of the rebellion and the end of slavery will not be far off.——Keep pounding on the rock.


"THIS IS NOT A WAR FOR THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY."

So says the New York Tribune, the Times, the World, and many other Liberal American papers, and so says HENRY WARD BEECHER.  The saying is repeated at every corner, every hour in the day, and every minute in the hour.  Why do we hear this disclaimer thus perpetually?  Out of what class of motives does it spring?  What is its true signification, and the impression it is designed to make?  Whose hopes is it intended to disappoint, and whose fears is it intended to allay?  What does it mean?  To us it is at best a most unnecessary and cowardly disclaimer, and one in no sense fit to be made by any true man.  It is an outgrowth of that debasing servility to slavery which has from the beginning served to paralyze the national arm in striking down the atrocious slaveholding rebellion.  It proves that we are as a nation bound, as by a spell of enchantment, to slavery; that we are so bound and so blind that no crime, from treason and rebellion down to cold-blooded piracy and murder on its part, can alienate us from it.  Men would scout this disclaimer and the men who utter it, but for the moral debasement into which our long years of contact with the putrid carcass of slavery has sunk us.  "This is not a war for the abolition of slavery1"  In most mouths it means that slavery ought to survive the war, of which it is the sole cause; it means that the military power ought not to be employed in a manner to put down slavery; it means that the Government should take care that in suppressing the rebellion, that it does not suppress slavery; it means assurance to the slaveholding traitors that the Government has no designs upon slavery, and that that monstrous aggregation of wrong and mischief has but to lay down its rebellious arms to receive, as formerly, the full and complete protection of the Government which those who act for it have been, and are now, endeavoring to break up.

But it is not historically true that this is not a war for the abolition of slavery?  Yes it is; but everybody knows it, no body doubts it, and hence there is no need whatever for asserting it in the manner now done, especially since to do so carries with it implications calculated to embarrass the Government in one important means of putting down the rebellion.  It is said that this war was undertaken for the preservation of the Government.  This is true; but not more true is it than that the war is for the preservation of that for which the Government was instituted.——The loyal American people are not fighting for dead parchment, and for empty form, but the great living principles of liberty now assailed by a combination of slaveholding despots, whose purpose it is to break down and destroy, first the Government, and then the principles which the Government was ordained and established to secure and protect.  We are not merely fighting for the old house which shelthers us, but for the precious lives, liberties and happiness, which it covers.——Whatever thereatens these, are legitimate obstacles to be removed.  Slavery, of all things else, thus threatens.  Out of its polluted heart has sprung this devilish rebellion.  To tell us that the war is not to put down slavery, may at last come to mean that the war is not intended to put down the rebellion.  We should hear no more disclaimers.  It should be understood that the war is to do anything and everything which may be needful for the preservation of order, liberty and justice.


THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY for November has reached us.  Its contents are——1. Geo. Sand, by Mrs. Howe.  2. Hair-Chains, by the author of "Found and Lost."  3. The Flower of Liberty, a poem attributed to Holmes.——4. Alexis de Tocqueville, by C. E. Norton.  5. A continuation of Mrs. Stowe's Agnes of Sorrento.  6. Health in the Camp, by Miss Martineau.  7. "The Stormy Petrel.'  8. The second part of A Story of To-Day.  9. Concnerning the People who carried Weight in Life.  10. Why has the North felt aggrieved with England? by Geo. E. Ellis, D. D.  11. The Wild Endive, an anonymous poem.  12. The Contrabands at Fortress Monroe, an article containing highly interesting facts respecting the slaves, written by E. L. Pierce, Esq, a private in one of the Massachusetts regiments.  13. The Washers of the Shroud, a poem by James Russell Lowell. 


Lydia Maria Child has written a characteristically warm-hearted letter to Mrs. Fremont, 'our Jessie,' on the cause, nature and hoped-for results of the war. 


READ THIS!---IMPORTANT PETITION:

A Petition to Congress, of great importance, will be found in another column of this paper.  It is in favor of Emancipation, under the war power, and a fair compensation of loyal slave-owners, as an aid to speedy adjustment, and the only way to secure honor, peace, and the conquest, thorough and lasting, of rebellion.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, whose name justly has great weight, declared in Congress, three times on different occasions, that, in case of dangerous rebellion or war, the Government had a full right to put slavery out of existence. 

Surely, the present crisis is one full of danger, threatening the liberties of the people. 

Hon. KINGSLEY S. BINGHAM, of Michigan, United States Senator, who died but a few weeks since, told a friend in Washington just before his death, that he feared trials, reverses and troubles were before this nation, unless they emancipated the slaves.

No word from any army officer of Government official since this rebellion began has met with such hearty response and approval, as FREMONT'S proclamation of freedom to all slaves of rebels.  Instinctively the people felt it was a blow at the root of the whole matter.  "So many slaves, so many enemies," is true.  Shall the four millions be our friends or enemies?

The Petition is being largely circulated, and meets with favor wherever it is properly brought before the people.  But work is needed for it.  Will some earnest and working men and women, in each place where this Petition reaches, circulate it themselves, going from house to house for names?

This is the best course, by far.

And let all signers' names, both men and women, be sent to me, promptly, by mail or otherwise, on or before Nov. 25th, at Rochester, New York——that is, all names in Western or Central New York. 

Here we gather up all Petitions, and send them to Washington by some good hand. 

Let the potent and united voice of the people speak to Congress, and thus give that aid, strength, high purpose and single aim to our Government, so much needed in this trying crisis.  Let voters and non-voters sign in parallel columns on the same sheet, that they may be separately counted.

    G. B. STEBBINS.


Our trans-Atlantic friends, whose co-operation with the ROCHESTER LADIES' ANTI-SLAVERY ASSOCIATIONS has given it the means of greatly aiding the anti-slavery cause, by assisting the fugitive slave on his way to Canada, and the dissemination of anti-slavery truth over the country by means of the press and the living speaker, will read with interest the brief annual report of Society elsewhere published in our columns.  Our friends, too, will observe that although the effect of the war may be, as we sincerely hope it will put an end to the necessity of sending fugitives to Canada, the Society will still have a good work to do in assisting in the improvement and education of those whom long years of bondage has kept in ignorance.  Having liberated the body of the bondman, it may be ours to assist in also liberating his mind from the bondage of ignorance and degradation.


It is estimated that the number of Germans in the Federal army amount to 59,000.