Viewing page 12 of 16
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
588 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. January, 1862 [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] country that gave us the Constitution. The Constitution did not so much as give us our Government. On the contrary, our Government gave us our Constitution. We had our Government before we had our Constitution. The principle of Democracy was our Government: and the Constitution but served to point out some of the modes by which the principle should govern. The Constitution did not create the union of the American people. Traditions, common memories and common hopes, fellowship in faith and fellowship in suffering did. The Constitution but enjoined ways for making an already existing union 'a more perfect union.' Let us then have no fear that we shall be left without a Constitution. If the country survives the war, we shall not fail to have a Constitution: and if it does not, we shall not need one. Our present Constitution may be roughly handled by the necessities of War.——Parts of it may be modified, and parts utterly destroyed, It may even need to be abandoned. Not only, however, shall we have a Constitution if we have a country, but we shall have a Democratic Constitution if only the Democratic principle shall have survived.——For wherever that principle lives and reigns will be Democratic Constitutions. It produces such, and it can produce only such.——England would not cease to be England and to have a Government by the repudiation of any however large part of that long series of precedents which make up her Constitution. Should she lose one Constitution, she would quickly have another. And the Constitution, which would come out of the great liberty-loving heart of her people, would be essentially a free Constitution. Among the blessings which will result from this War, provided we shall have the wisdom to conquer in it, (thus far we have had the power but not the wisdom to use it,) among these blessings, I say, will be the restored love of country. That love was once the passion of the American heart. But demagogues have succeeded in making the passion give place to the worship of the Constitution; and should our country perish in its present perils, it will be owing to this unhappy substitution. President Lincoln is a man of understanding and of honest intentions: and why he has not ere this ended the War, and saved the country, is simply because he is a worshiper of the Constitution, and feels that he can love and honor and serve and save the country only through the Constitution. Every breach made in the Constitution is in his eye a breach made in the country: and with him the alarming prospect of a lost Constitution is all one with the alarming prospect of a lost country. But the good man cannot help it. For how rare is he who is able to surmount his education! And the President was educated to worship the Constitution. This education hampers him at every step. With all his heart would he save the country, but his reverence for the Constitution will not let him. He is capable of purposes to sweep away, even in his native Kentucky, every obstruction in the path of our cause. But palsied would be these purposes by such an appeal to that reverence as a Crittenden or Holt would make in the bare mention of Constitutional objections. Miserable substitute for the love of country is this worshipping of a Paper!——quite as miserable as is the making more account of the suit of clothes than of the man who wears it! Yes, if the War shall have no other good effect than to bring back the popular heart from this debasing, shrivelling worship to the expanding and ennobling love of country, it will be worth all it has cost. The one thing which from the beginning of the War I have striven for, is to contribute, so far as my little influence can, to band together all men and women, white, red and black, in the invincible determination to save the country——and to save it, too, even though it be in the face of the certainty that the saving of it will involve the destruction of the party, slavery, Constitution and what not else. Nothing short of this determination can suffice [[column 1]] [[column 2]] to overcome our foe. For he is most emphatically a determined foe——determined to wield every possible power and avail himself of every possible advantage for success.——Whilst our boasted high style of civilization forbids our following the example, he calls the bloody Indian to his aid: and whilst we send back his fugitive slaves, he makes slaves his most effective helpers. And so determined is he that he will spare nothing which stands in the way of his success. Not even slavery will he spare, if the sacrifice shall become necessary to his success. Rather than come under the North, he would unhesitatingly emancipate his slaves. A prominent member of the Government told me that slaveholding pride would prevent this. There was such pride——but it exists no longer. It is swallowed up in the all-swallowing up pride to whip the North. When hard pressed by our victories, the South will (provided we shall continue so insane as to leave them in her hands) not hesitate to make unconquerable allies of her slaves by emancipating them. And by the way she would not fail to take into account the gaining of the world's sympathy by the measure. But there are persons who remind us that the South, inasmuch as she went to War for slavery, will never consent to give it up. Superficial thinkers are they. The cause of a quarrel is generally lost sight of. The parties to it forget the cause in their passion to conquer. The dog or the dollar about which men came to blows is not what sustains and swells the interest of the battle. It is the blows themselves. That stage of the controversy in which the object of the South was the establishing of slavery was passed months ago. The joy of her final success against our invading armies would be scarcely at all diminished by the attendant loss of all her slaves. I repeat what I have often said——THE PARTY WHICH GETS THE BLACKS TO FIGHT IT, GETS THE VICTORY. May God move our Congress and our Commanders, whilst yet it is not too late, to get the blacks to fight for us! But I must stop. I thank you for your letter. It cannot fail to do great good. I beg you however not to ignore the fact that the Abolitionists are with you and Mr. Dickinson and Col. Cochrane. Be not ashamed of your company——for you may be sure that before this fight is through with, you will feel the need of the help of all the despised classes——the Negroes, the Indians and even the Abolitionists. Do not peril your country for the sake of gratifying old prejudices. Respectfully Your friend, GERRIT SMITH. [[line]] STARTLING INTELLIGENCE! [[short line]] The following letter to the Editor of the N. Y. Principia, from Rev. GEORGE GORDON, Principal of Iberia College, Ohio, will send a thrill of astonishment, alarm and indignation, through the ranks of the friends of freedom, wherever it is circulated. It should rouse the free States to demand the speedy and final abolition of slavery. CLEVELAND JAIL, Nov. 29th, 1861. DEAR BROTHER:——I have met the enemy, and I am theirs. I have been tried for the offence of 'resisting process,' in the hands of a U. S. Deputy Marshal, in his attempt to capture a fugitive slave; found 'guilty,' and sentenced to six month's 'close confinement' in the County Jail, to pay a fine of $300, and the costs of prosecution, some $1,000 or $1,500 more. The so-called crime was committed on the night of the 20th Sept., 1860, but the trial did not take place till lately.——Both my friends, and myself have been taken by surprise, We supposed the day had passed away in which men would be persecuted for disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Enactment. But we find in this, as in other things, the slave power still rules. The case was one of special provocation on the part of the official kidnappers. The thing occurred in the neighborhood of Iberia, Morrow County, Ohio. About dark, [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] eight men came up on the train, rang the bell themselves, and stopped it about two miles below the station, got off, and divided into companies. One of these got to their place before any alarm was given, rushed into the house with their revolvers and bowie knives, seized their stray man, and fettered and bore him away. Another company invaded a second house, and searched it, but the alarm had been given, and the man or 'chattel' escaped. In the yard, they encountered two young colored men, students of Iberia College——Marshal Lowe (of Oberlin notoriety) seized one of them by the collar, probably mistaking him for the fugitive; the young man resisted, the Marshal fired his revolver twice, wounding him in the hand, and putting another bullet through his clothes. At this juncture, the other colored man struck with his gun-barrel, and a shot was fired as a signal, some distance off, upon which the redoubtable official put the steam to his pedals, and escaped. The third company was still less fortunate. They broke into the dwelling of a Mr. James Hammond, did not find the fugitive, but report says, seized and bore off a watch instead. Mr. Hammond soon came in, learned what was done, took up a corn-cutter, and followed them. He soon overtook and stopped them. After keeping them at bay a short time, he had others come to his assistance. The men were disarmed, taken to the woods and whipped. In the midst of their receiving a castigation, I came up; was told they had received but little, and stood by, consenting to their receiving from ten to fifteen lashes more. I then told the Deputy why he was chastised, the kind of men who did it, and that he had received but a small instalment, a mere taste of what he was endeavoring to inflict on men as good as he was. He humbly confessed the charge, said he would go home, resign his office, and do so no more. On the trial these men swore to much that was positively false, and what was in part true, was exaggerated five-fold. To their false testimony, was added the bitter point, with additions and embellishments in the pleadings of R. F. Paine, the U. S. prosecuting attorney. Not desiring to conceal anything that was true, I had sommoned no witnesses, and did not discover that I needed any, till too late to obtain them. You are probably aware that, in the U. S. District Courts, you must either produce and pay your own witnesses, or make oath to the Court of the name, and points to be proved, and then the Judge will decide whether you can have them summoned by the Marshal and paid as the witnesses of the prosecution. This gave a false aspect to my doings. Still I was not on trial for the injury done to the men, but for 'obstructing process.' And one of their number testified that they had given up pursuit before the men were taken, and my connection with it did not occur ten minutes before the whole matter was over. I was ably and eloquently defended by A. G. Riddle, Member of Congress from this District, assisted by his partner in law, Mr. Williamson. Judge Spalding was to have taken part, but was called away to see a sick daughter. Judge Wilson's charge was singularly mild and candid, considering his kidnapping and Hunker antecedents. But as soon as I was convicted, he was himself again. A motion was made to arrest judgment, and give me a new trial, on a point in which the whole Bar is against him, but he overruled it without giving a reason for his decision. His hatred of anti slavery men only slumbered, and awaited an opportunity to vent itself as maliciously as ever. I came up, intending to go into Court, and submit to a trial one year ago, but was advised to go away, avoid the officers, and run the case into the new Administration. I consequently spent the winter in Canada, and returned and give myself up a few days before Sumter was taken and the war begun. Nothing has been gained by the delay. The sentence runs to the extreme limit, in all except the imprisonment, and it would have been the [[/column 3]]
