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562     DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.     DECEMBER, 1861
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by our army and other public servants towards slavery, the guilty cause of our present rebellion. No such policy has yet been declared. With a timidity and hesitation, which can only be explained by a long course of subserviency to the Slave Power, our rulers have only dared to approach slavery with cowardly ifs and ways. If slavery does this, that and the other, why, we may be required to do this, that and the other. If slaves are armed against the Government, it may become a military necessity, forced upon us--why, why, to do something, which the rebels will much regret! One General gives notice that he will not allow a slave to come within his lines; another is commanded to employ them, and even arm them. One gives notice that he will treat slaves as contraband of war; and another, that he has no intention to disturb the slaveholders in any of their rights of property. Congress, last July, declared that it is no part of the business of our army to return fugitive slaves to their masters; but in the face of this resolution of Congress, our army has been employed in this inhuman and scandalous work repeatedly, and up to this hour and temptation of re-enslaving their confiscated bondmen, now within our lines, is held out to the rebels with more or less prominence to win them back to loyalty. This abominable truckling to the cause of all our calamities, it should be the first business of the approaching Congress to rebuke. The members of that body should see to it that resolutions solemnly adopted by Congress are entitled at least to Executive respect, and should not be contemptuously disregarded by army or officers.

There are several measures short of the abolition of slavery which we hope to see brought promptly to the notice of Congress. The first is the policy of excluding colored citizens from the army, and from the privilege of assisting in suppressing rebellion. Let this thing be thoroughly discussed, and let it be ascertained if it can be, whether any motive other than a most narrow and irrational prejudice, or in deference to the slaveholding rebels, or in both, it is alike weak and unworthy, and should be at once abandoned.-- Both in the war of Independence, and in the war of 1812, colored citizens were employed to fight the battles of the country, and won for themselves the grateful commendations of their Generals and of the country at large.

Now is the time to settle the question, whether colored men, born upon American soil, are Americans or foreigners, aliens or citizens, whether they can fill the places and eat the bread of freemen, and yet not be required to share the duties, responsibilities and dangers incident to great national exigencies, such as are now happening to this great Republic. That colored free men are citizens, was never questioned in the earlier days of the Republic. The rule was that the moment a man born upon American soil became free, he also became a citizen. The highest authority, executive and judicial, North and South, prior to the year 1820, admitted their citizenship. MONROE admitted our citizenship when Missouri applied for admission into the Union. JACKSON admitted our citizenship when he called us to enlist in the United States service during the war of '12. MARTIN 
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VAN BUREN admitted our citizenship in the Convention which framed the Constitution of this State. Judge KENT has strongly asserted our rights as citizens. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS has given no other opinion. Eleven out of the thirteen original States accorded to black freemen all the rights, privileges and immunities of citizens, including the right of suffrage. Our Secretary of State, Mr. SEWARD, consistently with all his well-known principles, and in the face of Judge TANEY, has granted a passport to a free black man of this State to travel about the world as a citizen of the United States. It now remains for the National Congress, not only in view of the national exigencies, but in view of the right of the case, to affirm our complete citizenship, and to act consistently with that affirmation, by immediately authorizing the enrollment of colored men, as well as others, in the service of the country.

Congress has also to decide upon the all-commanding question as to its own constitutional power--whether it can take private property in houses, lands, horses and cattle for the common defence, and are yet restrained from touching slave property. If the slaves are property, why should they not be subject to seizure and confiscation like other rebel property? If they are men, why has Congress not the right to put arms in their hands and require them to defend the country that feeds them, from rebellion and anarchy?--When the Constitution was submitted to the people of Virginia for adoption, PATRICK HENRY demonstrated beyond refutation that Congress has the right and the power under the constitutional provision, making it the duty of Congress to provide for the common defence, and the general welfare, to abolish slavery whether in peace or in war.

Another question awaiting the action of this Congress is, What shall be the condition after the war, of such slaves who have been employed in picking cotton or performing other services for the Government? Justice and humanity alike make it the duty of the Government to declare its policy at that point. The poor slaves are running all manner of risks to life and limb to reach our lines, with the impression, if once set to work by the Government, they will surely be free. We have no fear that our Republican Government will ever replunge any one of these into the hell of slavery; but Congress should by all means set all doubt on the point at rest, by declaring just what the Government will do to them. 

We take it that about the only business of Congress will relate to the slaveholding rebellion. The nation can have no patience with any measures or debates which do not look to the speediest and most permanent suppression of this stupendous crime. The loyal people, with every wish to support the Government, are already disgusted with the tenderness with which the Administration treats the cause of the war, and the total want of any settled and uniform policy with respect to it. The course pursued by the Congress meeting at this tremendous crisis in the life of this nation will certainly decide the fate of this Republican Administration, and may possibly decide the fate of the nation. Oh! that our representatives may have

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the needed wisdom, and above all, the statesmanlike courage to strike down the guilty cause of all this war, and thus set the nation in safety forever. The opportunity is sublime and matchless. The cup of slaveholding iniquity is full to the brim, and is running over. Let the accursed thing receive its rightful doom at the hands of the present Congress.

THE WOULD-BE MOBOCRATS AT SYRACUSE

We have of late years made it a rule not to celebrate the outrages and insults to which we are subjected sometimes in the prosecution of our abolition labors. Civility being the rule, we have not been disposed to magnify the exceptions. We notice the attempt to get up a mob against us at Syracuse, less for the purpose of denouncing the mobocrats, than for commending, gratefully, the prompt and effective manner by which they were defeated and rebuked by the city authorities, and by the respectable people of that place. The main facts of the case are elsewhere published in our columns from the Journal and the Standard of Syracuse, both of which papers, it will be seen, properly condemn the meditated outrage. We thank them for it - not only from personal considerations, but on behalf of the sacred cause of Free Speech and Civilization, as against Despotism and Barbarism.

Upon entering Syracuse, side by side with the handbill announcing our meeting, was the following at ever corner:

"NIGGER FRED COMING.

"This reviler of the Constitution, and author of 'DEATH IN THE POT!' and who once in this city called George Washington a Thief! Rascal!! and Traitor!!! is advertised to lecture on 'Slavery' again on Thursday and Friday evenings of this week at Wieting Hall!!!

"Shall his vile sentiments again be tolerated in this community by a constitutional liberty loving people? or shall we give him a WARM reception at this time, for his insolence, as he deserves? Rally, then, one and all, and DRIVE HIM FROM THE CITY! Down on the arch fugitive to Europe, who is not only a COWARD, but a TRAITOR to his country!!! - RALLY, FREEMEN! Admission ten cents."

This paper was a surprise to us, as it was perhaps to most of the people of Syracuse. - It was the work of midnight, perpetrated at the assassin's favorite hour. Where it was printed, and by whom put up, nobody outside of the moral assassins could tell; but there it was, and with it the probability of a furious mob - for in every large community, however respectable, there is always base and combustible material enough to be kindled into violence by such appeals, It was gratifying to find that the inflammatory placard contained little else than downright lies. Instead of reviling the Constitution, we have for the last ten years vindicated the Constitution. - Instead of calling WASHINGTON a "thief," "rascal" and "traitor," and the like loathsome epithets, we have uniformly spoken of him as an enemy to slavery, and as giving his dying testimony in favor of the freedom of all men, by emancipating all his own slaves. We were not, as the lying placard says, advertised to lecture on slavery, but on the Rebellion, its Cause and Remedy. But the instincts of the pro-slavery mob was not to be misled by any glosses of language. They saw well enough that the true cause was to be assigned for the Rebellion, and the true remedy proposed for its suppression; and they anticipated us, as did certain other dark