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632 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. April, 1862 [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] THE WAY TO SAVE THE COUNTRY. [[short line]] [Extract from Gerrit Smith's Speech delivered in Washington, D.C., March 1, 1862] Do you ask how the country can be saved? The answer is at hand: Stop all your other fighting, and fight but against the rebels.——Another answer is also at hand: Stop taking counsel of Kentucky, and take counsel of the nation. I am not prejudice against Kentucky. I love her. I have gazed with delight upon her surprisingly rich blue grass fields, and the find breeds of cattle grazing upon them. I have enjoyed her unstinted hospitality. I have conversed with her fascinating Henry Clay, and with others of her great men. I acknowledge the eminent bravery of her people. Nevertheless I cannot admit that the advice of Kentucky should be taken in this war. It can but lead to destruction. For this is a war which slavery has brought upon us. Hence a slave State——a State which is still under the infatuating power of slavery——is not fit to give advice in it. Anti-slavery men, and anti-slavery men only, are fit to shape your policy against a pro-slavery war. Indeed, the very best counsellors we could have at this juncture are such men as Garrison and Phillips, and Bryant and Jay, and Tyng, and Cheever, and Frederick Douglass. You need men in your national councils at this time who know all about slavery——men who have made the monster their life study. Drunkards know little of drunkenness. Their very drunkenness disables them from knowing much of it. It is the clear eyed Temperance men who know all about it. Slaveholders know little of slavery. Their very slaveholding disables them from knowing much of it. Their are its blinded victims——scarcely less blinded than their fellow victims the slaves. It is the clear eyed abolitionists who know all about slavery. Had this been a rebellion of the whiskey drinkers, and whiskey makers, you would not have gone to distillers and drunkards for counsel how to resist and conquer it. But, as well might you as to make slaveholders adviser against a pro-slavery rebellion. So far from our needing the advice of Kentucky how to save the nation, most emphatically does she need our advise how to save herself What is the one thing which has set her people o cutting one another's throats? Slavery! But she does not see it. What is the one thing which would have kept the war without her borders? Just that which has kept it out of the contiguous States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois——Anti-Slavery! But she does not see it. Had not slavery made them stone blind, the statesman of Kentucky would instantly see that in protecting and cherishing slavery, they are protecting and cherishing the viper which is stinging her to death. Were we involved in any other than a pro-slavery war, such able and admired men as Crittenden and David, Guthrie and Holt would be competent to give us valuable counsel. But as a proof how unfit even such a high-minded gentleman as Garrett David is to counsel us in this war, he proposes on the floor of the Senate to have some of the best and noblest men in the land put to death, simply because they are opposed to slavery.——To saw the least he betrays great weakness in this. As he is my namesake, and is perhaps partial to me, I will call it nothing worse than weakness. The general principle, which forbids the trusting of Kentucky wisdom in this crisis, "Never trust a person in a matter where his interest is against you——and especially if he is manifestly blinded or seduced by that interest." For illustration——should Polygamy get up a rebellion against our government, do not rely largely on the help of Brigham Young to put it down. He wo'd be likely to prove as weak and unwise against a Polygamy rebellion as does Garrett Davis against a pro-slavery one. Nevertheless, I say, God be good to Kentucky! We will save her if she will not interpose slavery in the way of our saving her. At great cost of Norther life and treasure are we now clearing her of traitors. What could she do in her present distresses without [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] the help of the free States against the slave States? The slave States are her foes. The free States are her friends. A very ungrateful return does she make te [sic] the free States in refusing to surrender the guilty and sole cause of the war——a very cruel return in clinging to slavery, and in thus keeping open the way for repetitions of the war and for repetitions of Northern sacrifices on her account. But Kentucky, and Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware say "Our slavery has constitutional rights." They should not be saying so at this time. Nothing has rights now but our distressed and beloved country. This is no time to be mousing through the Constitution in quest of personal or any other rights. But this is the very time for us all to exclaim out of the fullness of our hearts: 'Our property is nothing, our life is nothing, only as they can be used, constitutionally or unconstitutionally towards 'putting down this piratical and diabolical rebellion.' But Kentucky and Missouri, Maryland and Delaware go on to say that if they give up their slaves they should be paid for them.——From early manhood I have steadily and earnestly held that the North inasmuch as she is, to say the least an equally guilty partner with this South in this stupendous robbery of slavery, should be willing to share with her in the present or temporary loss of emancipation. This I have held notwithstanding no one abominates more than I do the idea of property in man. Let the States I have named hasten to abolish slavery, and in this wise to make sure and speedy defeat of the rebellion, and I am sure that the heart of the north will go out not only in justice but in wide generosity toward all their loyal slaveholders who have suffered loss by such abolition.——Liberally will she expend money toward repairing the loss; and her gratitude and love will go along with her money. I said stop taking advise of Kentucky. If our nation is lost, it will be because of the large influence of the Border States in her counsels A simpleton, seeing that the squirrels in attacking corn fields began upon the border rows. I am not so simple as to propose that a nation shall dispense with border States.——But I am wise enough to wish that there were no pro-slavery border States. Far more dangerous to our nation are the pro-slavery border States than are the border rows to the corn field. Fare more dangerous are the slaveholders in the one than the squirrels in the other. I advised taking counsel of the nation instead of Kentucky. All the States north of the border States would to-day vote the abolition of slavery. They would do so not for the sake of abolishing slavery, but for the sake of abolishing the rebellion. They do not claim that the abolition of slavery is the object of the war. That any do is a gross slander. But they do claim that it is right and obligatory to put down anything and everything which stands in the way of putting down the rebellion. Had the President of the United States who is a man not of strong mind only, but of strong intentions to do justice, been born in New England, instead of Kentucky the rebellion would have been overcome long ago. With his New England education he would have let Cameron's anti-slavery have its mighty way, and the proclamation of the intrepid and manly Pathfinder have its mightier way. He would at the very beginning of the war, have decided that slavery could not be taken care of by the government, but much be left to take care of itself; or in other words, that the slaveholder must, as well as the farmer, merchant and manufacterer, take the chances of war. Nay with a true New England education, he would, at the very first have given a death blow to the rebellion by allowing colored men to be a part of the 75,000 troops he called for. One black regiment would have been sufficient to secure a speedy end to the war, and to save us from the loss of a hundred thousand lives and a thousand million of dollars. For it would have been sufficient to advertise the four million and a half of enslaved and free blacks which was the sid [sic] [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] of their friends——which was the side for them to sympathise with and serve. I of course assume that had there been such a regiment, other thing would have been in harmony.——There would have been no repelling and outraging of the negroes, and no alienation of them from our good cause to help the South win them to her bad one. Ever since the President modified Fremont's proclamation and indicated so strongly that hatred and oppression were still to be the policy of the government toward the negroes, I have strongly feared that our country was lost. For, believing that the South would be pressed by our victories and the persuasive counsels and tempting offers of Europe to proclaim Emancipation, I have strongly feared that her negroes bond and free, would be drawn by the proclamation and driven by our hostile attitude toward them to identify themselves with the cause of the South. The time for the South to take this step with undoubting certainty that it would crown her cause with triumph was when she found herself disappointed in her expectations of both northern and European aid. But it is probably not yet too late. If taken now, she will hardly fail to gain her independence. Sad result this of our persevering crimes against our dark skinned brothers! And yet, if it be the Divine decree that the innocent slave shall be freed and the guilty nation destroyed, who shall arraign its wisdom? The nation on our South will be an exceedingly base one——for the great mass of its whites will be scarcely less ignorant and servile than the great mass of its blacks. It will of course have no oth- [sic] than an intensely despotic government. Our own long and narrow remnant of a nation will soon be broken up into two or three nations. Such will be the end of the grand Republic that loved slavery more than liberty! Strongly do I fear that you stand to-day on the very brink of national ruin. Strongly do I fear that, if the government shall persist a few weeks longer in the insane policy of driving the negroes and Europe along with them (for Europe will go with the negroes) into a cordial union with the Southern cause, you cannot escape from falling into this ruin. But nothing of what I have said of emancipation by the South do you believe will come to pass. I own it will not if you shall hasten to deal justly and wisely with the negroes. And I own it will not if you shall anticipate emancipation by your surrender to the South. Your ecceptance [sic] from her of anything short of an unconditional surrender will be your base and guilty surrender to her.——No government can come into a compromise with the rebels against without perishing in the compromise. But all that I have said of emancipation by the South will probably come to pass if whilst continuing the war against the rebels you shall also continue the war against the negroes. Why will not the South emancipate?——Other peoples have done so in the straits of war. Is has been repeatedly done on this side of the Atlantic, and within the lifetime of our aged men. To repel the English invaders of Hayti, the French planters armed and emancipated their slaves. To defeat Spain her American colonists did likewise.——Will the South, because she loves slavery, refuse to emancipate? It is true that she loves it, but she hates the North more. Will she refuse to emancipate because it was in the interest of slavery that she began the war? The blows which she is exchanging with the North have become her ruling interest, and slavery is comparatively forgotton by her.——The original cause of the quarrel is quite apt to sink in importance, if not indeed to be entirely lost sight of. To achieve her independence of the despised Yankees the South would sacrifice everything else, "All that a man hath will he give for his life." That independence is dearer to the South than life, and to die achieving it would be far more welcome to her than to live without it. But could the South, even with the earnest help of all her blacks, bond and free, successfully defend herself again the North? Our nation was busied several years, and at the [[/column 3]]
