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578 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. JANUARY, 1862 [[line]] [[3 ruled columns]] [[column 1]] WAR WITH ENGLAND. [[short line]] Troubles seldom come singly, either to individuals or to nations. They are usually encountered in groups. A mysterious chain, invisible but strong, seems to link one misfortune closely to another, so that when once within the iron girdle, we may well look for a succession of calamities till the circuit is finished. To what a fate have we as a nation been already doomed! We seem to be drinking the cup of wrath to its very dregs. Possessing men and money without end, valor and skill in abundance, mental activity and general knowledge, such as no other nation on the globe can boast ; yet we have confusion and contradiction in the Cabinet, and doubt, uncertainty and hesitation on the field. No grand effort has been made to strike at the heart of this slaveholding rebellion since the Bull Run battle ; and to-day the rebel hosts are within a few miles of Washington, as fierce, determined and defiant as ever. In this state of facts, war with England booms upon the political horizon as a more than possible event. There are, it is true, good men both in England and America, who are exerting all their influence to prevent a disaster so ruinous to both parties, as such a war would prove ; but we cannot shut our eyes to what is passing before us. Both countries are studded with the materials by which nations are hurled from peaceful security into the boiling abyss and fierce tumults of war. England is suffering at this moment untold calamities from the rebellion in this country. She sees that ABRAHAM LINCOLN at Washington is as sternly opposed to emancipation, as Jeff. Davis is sternly in favor of slavery, and that the cause of civilization has nothing to hope from either. She sees nothing like a vigorous prosecution of the war for the suppression of rebellion, and to all human seeming our war is to go on for long years, poisoning the moral sentiment of the world, and dealing out stagnation and death to the world's industry.——These, aside from the Trent affair, are well calculated to breed bad blood towards us in England. While, on our side, hesitating, doubting, shrinking on the Potomac before our rebellious foe, sending brigades to look for the enemy where it is known he is not, but carefully avoiding all places where he is known to be, we, nevertheless, with true Celtic bravado, deal in fiery talk about a war with England. We are vain, boastful and haughty, the very qualities favorable to bringing on war, though not of victory. As to the affair of the Trent, with which our readers are already familiar, the public mind has, we think, hardly been treated with candor. Our newspapers and orators have kept back a part of the truth, and allowed the masses to suppose that we are all right, while, in truth, taking our own past versions of international law, we are all wrong. Up to this writing, it is not known what views will control our National Cabinet, concerning the conduct of Capt. WILKES ; but in the street, and in the newspapers, his conduct is everywhere commended. By the same authority, no doubt WILKES would have been sustained if he had made the capture in a British port, instead on the deck of a British steamer. To our mind, the capture was wrong and inexcusable on general principles, and especially so on American principles. No nation [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] has maintained a more steady position against the right of a search in all its forms, and exacted greater deference to our national flag than have the American Government and people. We have seen our national flag the last refuge of pirates and slave-traders, and have contended that even this abuse could not justify even the right of visit. While all the great powers have been ready these twenty-five years to unite in a treaty by which slave-traders could not shelter their hell-black traffic under their respective flags, the United States, with her usual tenderness towards slavery in all its forms, and her sensitive regard for the sacredness of our flag, have sternly refused to unite with the world in this honorable concession for the promotion of honesty on the ocean We have contended, over and over again, that the deck of an American ship is as sacred as any part of the national domain. But what a commentary on this doctrine is the conduct of Captain WILKES. He hails a British mail steamer, on her way from one neutral port to another——sends a cannot [sic] ball a few yards from her bow——boards her with armed men——demands her passenger list, and captures by force four of her passengers. We are not skilled in the law of nations, and know not what may be brought from that source to sustain this conduct; but we know enough to know that whatever sustains such conduct is a point blank condemnation of all our pretensions at this point hitherto. We have contended that free ships make free goods, and the same of passengers. The practice of boarding American ships, and capturing so-called British subjects, led to the war of 1812. We were not deterred from declaring war either by any sentiment of magnanimity, considering that England had then a grand European war on her hands, and had enough to attend to without fighting us. We mention this, not to justify England in her present position——for she is just about as inconsistent as ourselves——but simply to induce men to look at this affair more calmly and candidly than they have been wont to do. But MASON and SLIDELL were belligerent ambassadors. That is a character which, from the first, we have denied them. We have complained that other nations should look upon them as belligerents, and felt affronted when England and France so recognized them. Well, they were rebels; ye [[page tear]] y are rebels; but not rebels against any other than the American Government, and no other Government or people under heaven has any right to make any discrimination against them on this account. Whatever these men might be to us, we hold that they were passengers to the Captain of the Trent, and that as such they were under the protection of the British flag. Wo to the world when Governments can pursue rebels beyond their own territories, and where there shall no longer be any asylum for political offenders! Had the Trent run the blockade——escaped from one of our ports——the case would have been different. These so-called Commissioners were out of American waters before the British flag covered them, and Captain WILKES had no more right to capture them there than he would have had to capture them crossing from Dublin to Liverpool. Against all bravado, against all inflated talk about national honor, while we hate with all the hate one man can feel, the [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] conduct of these guilty rebels, we say, if England demands them, GIVE THEM UP. Our honor can not require England's dishonor, and we should certainly regard the deed done to her as done unto ourselves. [[short line]] ——Wisdom has triumphed over folly, common sense over false pride, the sober second thought over violence and passion. The foregoing article was written before the news of the release of the rebels MASON and SLIDELL had reached us, and when the terrible issue of peace and war trembled in the balance.——Thank God that this calamity no longer hangs over us, and that the nation may now go forward in suppressing the rebels and traitors marshalled against it, without apprehension of foreign interference! The Cabinet at Washington has done its duty, and shown itself deaf to all vulgar and senseless clamor. Putting itself right on American principles, it has saved both the nation's honor and the nation's welfare. Our duty is done. If England can afford to preach one doctrine and practice another——to claim for herself a right which she does not grant to another——she will hereafter simply appear before the world as a bully, and the world will find some way of protecting itself from her bold assumptions of power. There is, however, good reason to believe that she will never again assert for herself a right, or exercise a power which she has now denied us under the loud menace of war. The seizure of MASON and SLIDELL was done upon English, not American principles. Examples of such seizures are a part of the history of English naval exploits. By demanding the release of the arch traitors and rebels, MASON and SLIDELL, she can never again claim the right to seize English subjects on the high seas, and under whatever flag she may find them, without the most brazen and scandalous contradiction to her present position. Thus, out of this unauthorized and dangerous proceeding of the San Jacinto in stopping the Trent, may come a great advantage to the cause of justice and freedom on the high seas to America and to other nations, besides making the danger of a conflict with England upon any other point far less than previously——for seeing the moderation and justice of the American Government in this matter, will disarm English violence in the immediate future. We have done our duty, and done it under circumstances severely trying to our national pride, under a liability to be misconstrued, and having the act attributed to our sense of fear, rather than our sense of justice. We have done it promptly and gracefully. Now, let England do hers. Not by uttering complaints of the inefficiency of our blockade; not by decrying our army and navy; not by grumbling about our tariff, which the war has made necessary; not by holding out hopes of recognition to the Confederate States; not by proclaiming the inability of the North to suppress this most foul and unnatural rebellion; not by magnifying the victories of the rebel arms, and disparaging those of the loyal people; not by hints of a purpose to raise the blockade to obtain cotton for her mills; but by a whole-soul sympathy, such as one friendly nation should gladly show to a sister nation undergoing the perils of a formidable and terrible rebellion. Let the ties of friendship between the two countries, now weak-[["ened" on following page]] [[/column 3]]
