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January, 1862. DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. 581 [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] sentiment existed as the governing animus of the war. Every thing seems to have been done on the supposition that the South has been misled by conspirators——has acted on a misconception, and will come back and apologize as soon as it is disabused. The obvious theory at the bottom of the Federal campaign of 1861, is, that if the Government maintains itself, defends its Capital, shows Christian magnanimity and forbearance in all its armies, and above all takes care that the 'institution' of slavery shall receive as little damage as possible from its military operations, the Southern people will discard their rebel leaders, and return to their loyalty, as doubtless they would but for the hatred which fills their hearts. Misconceiving entirely the cause of the war, and the animus of the enemy, we have every reason to be thankful that nothing worse has happened to our cause; but what have we to hope for the future? As long as we do not strike at the cause of the war, nothing. Every dollar we expend on the plan of restoring the statum quo ante beltum, is so much given to the rebel cause. As long as slave property is not stricken away from under them, it really makes little difference to the Southerners whether they take Washington or not. If they take it, they thereby perhaps stir up the impassive North to more aggressive hostility. If they do not, they tire us out by our enormous expenses, and we shall the sooner return to our allegiance to King Cotton, and our humiliating subserviency to their unjust treatment of the negro. The sooner shall we consent to those shameful demands against freedom which caused our late strictly constitutional, political Northern rebellion, they will have driven us into obedience at our own expense. If any love of freedom should still remain at the North, any willingness that black or blackish people should participate in it, the old hatred of the North, and every thing Northern, would still grow at the South, and again produce sudden, unexpected, calamitous war. For be it remembered that a slaveholding community in which the master class is in excess, has always the main preparation for war, abundance of men spoiling to fight. Either what has been said about the spirit and temper of the Southern people is untrue, either their scolding, raving, lynching and rushing en masse to arms, before they were wronged in the least, means nothing, or else the war has been managed thus far, on our part, unwisely. Nearly every blow our Government has struck has been where the enemy was strongest. Not one has been struck with its approbation, where he is weakest. This could be done without supreme folly only on the supposition that the people of the South are not acting from animosity, but from misapprehension——from which they will soon recover, if we accept coolly a few hard knocks, and give none, to do any serious damage. It is really a case of national life or death, and the people must judge according to their own light and observation whether the terrible fact is as above stated. If it is, then, let every man as he loves home, wife, children, liberty, country, cry aloud and demand of the Government that it lose not one moment in dealing its deadliest blow at slavery——that it strike at the enemy's weakest point——that it sink at once the soil from which grew and [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] grows the hatred that produced this rebellion. The single head and arm of the heroic TILLMAN recaptured a ship from the "Jeff Davis" pirates. We may have a hundred thousand such heroes with a word. Are we ashamed of that word, liberty? Do we pretend it would violate the Constitution to utter it now? If we were at war with Brazil, and had one hundred thousand troops drawn up around Rio Janerio, would the Constitution forbid us to utter the word liberty to the blacks of that empire, if that word would secure victory? Have the rebel States, in their present attitude, any more right to hamper us with "Constitution" than Brazil has? The Constitution was made for a state of peace. We are now at war. The Confederates have declared themselves foreign States——what right have they under the Constitution? We do not admit their right to make themselves foreign States, and intend to bring them back under the Constitution.——But are we going to insist, at the risk of our national life, that they shall come back slave States, and not free States? Is it objected that uttering the word "Liberty" to the slaves of the rebel States would violate our constitutional obligation to the Border Slave States still nominally loyal? The slaves, as slaves, are nothing but property; and the Constitution only insists on compensation when the Government takes private property for the public use. Had the Government paid market price for all the slaves in Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, and set them free, before it fought the battle of Bull Run, the war would probably have been at an end before this, and the public debt could not have been much greater. No man, not lost in misanthropy, can believe that the great majority of the people of the free Sates are not in love with free institutions and the honest application of the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence to all men, everywhere. But they never felt any special affection for black people, and were never willing to meddle with the affairs of other States. Therefore, so long as we were at peace with the slaveholding States, they would do and suffer anything to maintain peace. Now, the case is altered. They would sustain the Government in any action towards the slave-cursed States that would make them free. It is too true that there are scattered all over the North many men who, for various reasons, do not prize freedom anywhere below their own level, but sympathize heartily with slaveholders in their contempt for the rights of black people and their hatred of white ones who sympathize at all with the black.--The slaveholders overrated the number and influence of these people very much but not their motive. Should the war continue on its plan of taking the greatest pains not to injure slavery, as if it were essential to the salvation of the Government, this class will become more and more arrogant, and will give more and more comfort and aid to the enemy. And it is not at all unlikely to happen that the war may thus be transferred to the soil of the free States. Then the revolution of '76 will have to be fought over again, with even more fearful odds against inalienable rights. As the slaveholders are actually at war with the whole human race, in favor of injustice to the weak, shall we not take up the gage and fight for downright justice? The war must end one way or another. Justice must gain or lose by it. If slavery is to survive, justice must lose. If it is not, better have it killed by the shortest cut. Ho! unsophisticated young America, to the rescue! Oceans of twaddle have been ladled over this nation about the danger of letting black people loose! Would to Got there were some danger in it! There are entirely too safe for their own interests and ours. It is time to hoot out of this continent the nonsense that it is more dangerous to hire than to drive, to cash than to lash anybody. There is not one fact in this world's history, so far as the writer knows, and he once offered a handsome reward for one, to show that any harm ever came form liberating slaves. They can be kept from [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] stealing as easily when free, as when slaves. If they will not work for wages, they starve to death, which, in the circumstances, is of course a blessing. This war, as has been truly said more than ten thousand times already, is not a war for the emancipation of black people, and never can be. It is a question of the life and liberty of a nation, chiefly white. But we all deserve to be black and chattel slaves to boot, if we do not have the sense to use the emancipation of the black people as the means of saving the nation, it being a self-evident infallible means of ending the rebellion in the shortest possible time. Does anybody ask, After the slaves are set free, and the rebellion crushed, what then?--Will slaveholders consent to work a free system? Doubtless not, if left to themselves.--The difficulty of emancipation is always the unfitness of the master. But the expenses of the war must be paid, and the lands of the rebels must do it. Our armies will settle them. They are well drilled in the arts of peace, if not of war. They know how to work themselves, and how to make others work justly and happily. Capital will flow where they yoke t the plow and kindle the forge fire. They must and will plant, water and cherish the right sort of civilization on the soil their courage has delivered from the curse. Human nature is everywhere the same. The cause of hatred being removed, the hatred will cease, and the very men who struck at the beloved flag in behalf of a pitiful tyranny, will bless and venerate the conquerors who struck under it in the name of eternal justice. [[line]] JEFFERSON'S SLAVES.--An interesting lecture on 'Jefferson at Monticello,' was recently given in New York by the Rev. Dr. Pierson-President of Cumberland College, Kentucky, in which reminiscences of the great statesman, derived from Capt. Edwin Bacon, an overseer of Jefferson's estate, now living in Kentucky, were related. The following is an extract: He was always very kind and indulgent to his servants; he would not allow them to be over worked, and would scarcely ever permit them to be whipped. Once a servant stole some nails. I had evidence of the fact, and informed Mr. Jefferson. Jim, the thief, had previously been a faithful servant. Mr. Jefferson, surprised, told me to be at his house with Jim when he took his ride. I never saw any person, white or black, so mortified as he was when he saw his master. Tears streamed from his eyes; he begged to be forgiven, exhibiting the most acute anguish. Mr. Jefferson turned to me, and said, 'Sir, we cannot punish him any more; he has suffered enough already.' He then talked to the servant, giving him much good advice, and dismissed him. Jim's overseer expected to be called to whip him, and was surprised when the negro stated the facts; Jim added that he had been seeking religion a great while; yet he never heard anything that made him feel so bad as he did when master said, 'Go, and don't do so any more.' Jim was soon converted, and came for a permit to be baptized.--He was a good servant afterwards. Jefferson had several family servants, and they were allowed to do as they pleased. Mr. Jefferson freed a number of servants in his will, and I think (said Captain Bacon) that he would have freed them all if his affairs had not been so involved that the could not do it. He did not like slavery; I have heard him talk a great deal about it. He believed it was a bad system. I have heard him prophecy that we should have just such trouble with it as we are having now. [[line]] The Erie (Pa.) Dispatch says provision was lately made to have the colored children of that city taught in separate schools from white children, but the parents of the little blacks would stand no such indignity, declaring that their children were as good as those of the whites, and no distinction should be made on account of color. [[/column 3]]
