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January, 1862.      DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.      589
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full year, but for the greater probability of a pardon.  My case is, in a good many aspects, worse than was that of the Oberlin men.——There were many, and could keep each other in company and countenance; I am alone, without the aid of numbers.  They were men of mark, excited much interest, and had a continued run of visitors; I am obscure, and cannot claim or expect much notice.  Their imprisonment took place when the country was quiet——had little else to think about——and consequently they drew a large share of public interest; now there is so much else to engross the public mind, that the wrongs of one obscure individual will receive little attention.  They enjoyed the consolation that their sufferings were doing much to break the slave power, and bring the country right.  Now, the people are possessed with the delusive idea that slavery is aleady in its death-pangs, and going into dissolution by its own acts.——They had the freedom of the jail yard, for health and recreation, and were taken as boarders into the Sheriff's family; the present Sheriff, Mr. Craw, is a gentlemanly man, but feels compelled (and no doubt rightly) to keep me in 'close confinement.'  And finally, they enlisted the interest of the Republican party, who perceived that their case furnished the raw material for a good deal of political capital; but now, the party is in power, they wish to convince the loyal slaveholders that they are as faithful to the Fugitive Slave Enactment, and as willing slave-catchers, as the Democrats.  Hence, I am ground between the upper and nether mill-stone, the one of Republican trucking, the other of concealed secessionism.

Still it should be a matter of gratitude that a stockholder in the U. G. R. R. escaped so long.  Other, and better men, have endured much worse.  Walker, Sayres, Drayton, Dellingham, Burr, Work and Thompson, had each an endurance to which mine in comparatively small.  And Torry, poor Torry! a tear starts when I write his name!  His young, and beautiful wife, and two lovely children, during six cheerless years, were denied an interview.  And even when death, in the form of sure consumption, held him a hostage of the grave, still the inexorable slave power refused to relax its iron grasp, and allow him the last comfort of dying with his loved ones.  And not till his freed spirit passed the everlasting hills was the pale clay given up.  To spend six long months inside the grim and surly looking bars of my prison. have my property swept away by fines and costs, and come out in poverty, is not pleasant; but the trial shrivels into nothing when compared to those of others.

Judge Wilson, in passing sentence, declared it one of the most aggravated cases that had come within his knowledge.  From his character and antecedents, that looks like strong presumptive evidence that the conduct was meritorious.  But I must close this letter, already too long.  The Fugitive Act is once more vindicated.  Hunkerdom is jubilant, and I am in prison, but calm, contented and sufficiently happy.

Yours truly,     GEO. GORDON.

ADDRESS TO THE COURT.

We give below the concluding paragraphs of Mr. Gordon's eloquent address to the court:

But the slave power still rules, and I must suffer.  Then be it so.  'The beginning of the end has come.'  Though slavery yet rules, it is only in the death throes, and last contractions of its mighty heart.  The iron logic of events is changing public sentiment, and few look on slave-catching as anything but a mean and infamous business.  The slaveholder himself despises the man who catches the fugitive.  He looks on him as he does his bloodhound——calls him up, and scents him on the track——doles out to him his reward——and then looks on him with utter contempt.

A few words more, and I shall have done.  In the charge to the jury, I cast no reflections on the Court.  In so far as I had ability to judge, it was fair and candid.  My counsel
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made an able, eloquent, and manly defence.——Though I was put in a very untrue position before the jury, still I think they need not. and know they ought not, to have convicted me.  Some of them will not retain the remembrance of the act among their cherished memories.

We are all passing to another tribunal, where the Fugitive Enactment will be at a discount.  To have 'resisted process' in the hands of a judicial kidnapper will not there be regarded as a crime.  The blessing of the Judge will fall upn such as fed him when hungry, took him in when a stranger, and visited him in prison; and all this he will acknowledge to have been done to him——if done to his poor.  To another class he will say, 'Inasmuch as ye did not these things unto the least of my brethren, ye did them not unto me.'  If Grandson Marten be a Christian, the so-called crime for which I am now to be sentenced is for resisting an attempt to drag back Christ himself to the crucifixion of perpetual slavery, in the person of his chattelized representative.  If he was not a Christian, still it was resistance to the crime of reducing God's image to a slave, and crushing out his aspirations to be a man.

And now, sir, apart from the defence of the rectitude of my conduct, I have no favors to crave——no mercy to implore.  I stand erect, in conscious integrity and manhood.  My house has ever been a home for the fleeing fugitive, and shall be so still.  If my dwelling be reduced to a cabin, he shall be welcome to a corner.  All the devils in hell and slave-catchers out of hell, shall not close my door against him.  I cannot repress the hope that, in this line of persecutions, I may be the last victim of the slave power.  Whether this be so or not, I wish when 'all that's mortal' of your humble prisoner shall be in its last resting place, it may be with truth written on my grave-stone, 'Here lie the remains of one who in life was faithful to God's poor.'

We have received a copy of the proceedings of a meeting held at Iberia, at which resolutions were passed sympathizing with Mr. Gordon.  For want of space, we are compelled to leave them out.
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FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN BOSTON.
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[From the Boston Liberator.]

The regular lecture in the Fraternity Course was delivered on Tuesday evening, December 3d, by Frederick Douglass.  The Fraternity is the outgrowth of the life and teachings of Theodore Parker, at once the legacy he has left to humanity, and the monument to his memory.  Meet and fitting is it, then, that Frederick Douglass, the representative of the much-abused colored race, should be among the speakers that it welcomes to its platform.

At an early hour, the spacious Tremont Temple was filled to overflowing, and the welcome which the speaker received upon coming to the platform was deep and hearty.

Mr. Douglass began by thanking the audience for their presence, and the Fraternity for the invitation to speak, modestly saying he trusted more to the indulgence of his hearers than to any ability of his own.  If ever a man, standing before a great audience of refined and cultivated people, has the right to their indulgence, surely he whose early years were spent in slavery, whose spelling-book was the soft sand at his feet, and who took his degree of the sign-boards over the doors, might claim such indulgence; and yet, as Frederick Douglass stood there, his form dilating with conscious power, his eye flashing, and his whole face glowing with enthusiasm while his clear silver tones rang like a trumpet, all who saw and heard him must have felt that he was not an object of indulgence, but of admiration.  His very presence gives the lie to the oft-repeated assertion that the negro is incapable of elevation, and only fit for a menial condition.

The lecture, which was called 'Pictures and Progress,' was elegant in diction, and full of fine poetic passages, but its chief excellence consisted in a manly and fearless utterance
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of the great truths which underlie all poetry, and constitute the very essence of all that is heroic and beautiful in humanity; nay, which go to make up all our ideas of that Divine Nature whose throne is established in justice.  He claimed for his race equal rights with their white brothers, and showed conclusiuely [sic] that as slavery is the cause of the war, so only freedom can put an end to the war.  His logic was irresistible, and he completely swept away that net-work of sophistry which was entangled so many, catching even Henry Ward Beecher in its web, that as slavery is constitutional, therefore it cannot be abolished constitutionally.  He said he trusted less to the virtue of the North that to the villainy of the South, and that the Government would yet be brought to a position, where, instead of catching fugitive slaves, it would arm them.

But it is not in a lecture such as this that Frederick Douglass shows his greatest power——that he is really himself.  At the close of the meeting at Tremont Temple, he went directly to Rev. Mr. Grimes's Church, on Southac Street, which was packed to its utmost capacity to receive him.  Here the exuberance of his nature found expression in the glowing imagery of his imaginative race; his wit and drollery were inimitable; and his rollicking good humor, blended with a vein of pathos, took all hearts captive.

 A. F. R.
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[From the Pine and Palm.]

We are always glad to hear colored speakers select topics outside of the slavery question; not that we would have that important subject ignored, but we would have the negro haters of our country to know that the man of color, though once a slave, has a reflective mind, and can make himself master of other phases of thought.  The lecture showed deep research, and satisfied every listener that Mr. Douglass looks upon pictures with the eye of an artist.  There was originality in his description of the progress of picture-making, especially as modernized, which was indeed refreshing, as well as amusing.  Every phase of the art, and its effect upon the age, from Raphael, Rubens, and Michael Angelo, down to the daguerreotypist who may be found at almost every village cross-road, was brought out with all its light and shade.

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton once said that 'the genius that would realize the palace of Aladdin, must still be the genius of the lamp.'  No one has crystalized the above theory into practice more clearly than Mr. Douglass; and this seemed to be the feeling of the highly educated and thinking audience that paid such close attention to the lecture on Tuesday evening.

From 'Pictures,' the speaker turned to 'Progress,' and handled the present crisis and its connection with slavery, as few but Frederick Douglass can.  His allusion to Captain John Brown, and his noble efforts for the liberation of an oppressed people, was warmly applauded, and the audience became wild with enthusiasm when the speaker drew his graphic picture of ex Senator Mason, as he appeared at Harper's Ferry, two years ago, in comparison with his position now at Fort Warren.

Altogether, this is one of the best of the lectures thus far given in the Fraternity course, and reflects great credit upon its author.  We have no doubt but that Mr. Douglass will receive many invitations to deliver it before lyceums in the surrounding towns, for he certainly deserves it, and its effect upon all who would hear it, would be to raise the colored man still higher in the scale of ability, while the cause of human progress would be benefited.      B.
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The Cincinnati Gazette says:——A paragraph in an exchange states that in Western Virginia many fugitives were arriving in Gen. Kelly's camp, who put them in confinement, 'awaiting the claim of their masters.'  The practice of Gen Kelly had better be 'modified to the act of Congress' for the recapture of fugitives from labor.
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