This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
676 DOUGLASS MONTHLY. July 1862 roam over, the retreating system is the policy of their side of the war. They strike only when opposed by weakness, and take care to retreat in good time to save themselves. It was thus in the attack on Casey's Division, on the Pamunkey river. It was thus in the Shenandoah valley upon Bank's little army, and it was thus at the battle of Shiloh. The similarity of these movements show a common design, a common policy, and a well defined system extending over the rebel forces. We take possession of rebel cities, but not the rebel hearts. We protect their property and persons, but do not secure their allegiance. We return them their slaves, but they return not to the Union. Like Austrian soldiers in Hungary, and French soldiers in Italy, our soldiers are hated. The men and women, old and young, rich and poor, slaveholders and non slaveholders, cherish towards us a subdued, but lasting hate, and sullenly wait for that deliverance, they firmly believe will surely come, if their rebel soldiers will but continue the strife. This is not a fancy picture, but the result of attentive reading, and comparison of testimony, unimpeachable, from correspondence from all our recaptured localities of the south, from Alexandria, Norfolk, Memphis, and New Orleans. Conciliation does not placate, superior force does not command respect, and all efforts thus far have failed to rekindle the Union sentiment among the southern people and while they have a southern army, and negro slaves to provide them with corn and bacon, they may be expected to continue to struggle. We repeat therefore, what we have said before repeatedly, in various forms of speech, the end is not yet, and we are in for a long war, a broad war, and a war the end whereof no man knoweth. We are getting well into the second year of it, and to all appearance the rebels have bated no jot of heart or hope, but are really more determined than when the first shot was fired at the starving Garrison of Sumpter. [[line]] CELEBRATION AT ITHACA. [[short line]] Great and commendatory preparations are being made by the colored citizens of Ithaca for the appropriate Celebration of the Abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The Committee have happily selected the 8th of July the anniversary of the Abolition of slavery in the State of New York as the day upon which to take suitable notice of the down fall of slavery at the national Capital. Our friends have kindly invited us to be present and make a speech on the occasion, and they may rely upon both our presence and our speech if all be well. The Abolition of slavery in the D. C. is the great event of the war, the first important step towards the final triumph of Liberty in the country and the firm establishment of our national Union. [[line]] ANTI-SLAVERY CELEBRATION ON THE GLORIOUS FOURTH IN YATES COUNTY. The only appropriate Celebration of our national anniversary, is that which aims to organize into Law and Reality the sublime and glorious teachings of the Declaration of American Independence that all men are created free and equal and are endowed with the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All others are hollow shams, beautiful without, rotton within whited sephulcres, clean and white without, but within full of dead mens bones and all uncleanness. In this great hour of the nations peril, the 4th of July should be given its true signification, and the self-evident truths of the Declaration of American Independence, be no longer treated as so many self-evident lies. The celebration will be held at HIMRODS CORNERS eight miles from Pen Yan. FREDERICK DOUGLASS has been engaged to deliver the address on the occasion. We hope to see a vast throng of the friends of equal Liberty assembled at Him Rods on the 4th and that the cause of Emancipation will receive renewed power and impetus from the contemplated celebration. [[symbol: index]] THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY for July has reached us. The present number commences the tenth volume of this excellent Monthly, under circumstances the most hopeful; an increase of many thousands since the year began, is sufficient evidence of the permanent hold on popular favor which the magazine has won. The following are the Contents for July:- Some Soldier Poetry, Froude's Henry the Eighth; Why their Creeds Differed; Presence; Chiefly about War Matters; The Minute Guns; Originality; Ericsson and his Inventions; Moving; Methods of Study in Natural History; Lyrics of the Street; Friend Eli's Daughter; Taxation no Burden; The Poet to his Readers; The Children's Cities; Reviews and Literary Notices; Recent American Publication. LETTER FROM W. W. TATE. MONTGOMERY CITY, C. T., June 2, '62. FRED'K DOUGLASS Esq:——Although an entire stranger to you, and claiming no right either to your time or attention, neither as a philanthropist nor as a writer; yet I especially solicit your attention at this time, most respectfully on the score of Humanity and Justice to our oppressed and shamefully degraded race. I have been forced to this unpleasant duty from the reading of an article in the May number of your Monthly, which I have just received, entitled "Colored Men Petitioning to be Colonized;" and from the reading of which, I am left in a labyrinth to know your true meaning. But by way of explanation, dear friend, allow me to give you the fullest assurance that I am not a Colonizationists that is according to the American construction of the word. So far as you oppose the scheme of the Washington petitioners, petitioning Congress to colonize them either in some part of this country, or in Central America, I certainly have not a word of dissent to offer. And most heartily and religiously agree with you when you say, "We regret this movement on the part of the colored men at Washington." "But, when a little farther along in the same thread of argument you say that is is now too late in the day for us to think of colonizing in any quarter of the globe freed from the presence of the white race even if that were desirable." To which you add, "But the Washington petitioners do not wish to be free from the protection of the white race, for they would prefer to remain in some part of the United States. Whether they go to Central America or to some part of this country set apart for them, they still wish to be under the protection of the United States and in this feature of their plan and in this only are they wise." Well, where under the canopy of heaven did these Washington petitioners derive the phrase "under the protection of the United States Government," from. Now sir, it is from the above quoted paragraph that I must conscientiously dissent; or at least call upon you for further exemplification. Why is it so exclusively profoundly wise that the emancipated slaves of this country should still hold to the coat tails of the sworn and inexorable enemies of their race, who declares by their every word and action, throughout the length and breadth of the land, in New York as in Louisiana, and in Ohio as in Texas, that the "Negro has no rights that the white man is bound to respect?" Is there no living example to prove that, both the emancipated slave and the nominally free colored man might improve their conditions far more, both socially and politically, as well as Nationally, by emigrating to some country beyond the influence of the barbarous inclinations of the dominant class in these United States? And where too, the climate is congenial, the soil rich, and the ruling class a people of their own kind, of their own stock and lineage I need scarcely refer you to the elevated positions of the colored people throughout Central America and the West Indies, or even to Canada, for there the colored man is equal before the law, nor in fact to their superior condition in any other country as compared with this slavery damned and thoroughly corrupted country, wholly destitute of the essential elements necessary to the dissemination and maintenance of Justice, Freedom and Equality. For my part, individually, I look not for common justice even in a country where the ruling class is so far in advance of my race, in numbers, wealth, and intelligence; and where too they now are, and always have been our bitterest enemies, for the space of two hundred and forty years. The people of the United States have robbed us of our birthright. The right of schools, the right to read the sacred Bible, handed down to us by God himself; the right of elective franchise, without which no people can be free; also the right to call our own bodies, and those of our dear wives and children our own. These things have they done and are yet doing to-day. A nation sir, that is capable of committing these heinous, and uncalled for deeds against my people for two centuries and a half, is wholly incapable of my esteem and confidence. But from the following I am constrained to believe that you are averse to the colored man emigrating to any country beyond the confines of the United States; whether it be to Canada, Central America, Hayti, Liberia, or anywhere else. For you say, that "The great argument for emigration, is that we must go where we shall be respected." And further: "The best answer to this view of the case was made recently by Mr. Powers in New York, who took the ground that the colored race can never be respected anywhere till they are respected in America." And by the term "America," you evident mean the United States, exclusively, for you further ahead adopt these words: "We thoroughly agree with Mr. Powers that the question as to the estimate which shall be formed of the negro, and the place he shall hold in the world's esteem, is to be decided here &c."——I ask sir, that, if it was good for the Pilgrim Fathers to emigrate in the Seventeenth Century to free themselves from Religious tyranny, why then may it not be good for the descendants of Africa, in the Nineteenth Century, to quit their unhomely homes, the place of their nativity, on account of oppression both social and political, as well as religious. Oppression sir for barbarity would put to shame the wicked absurdities of the Antideluvians, and bring to naught the atrocities of those who were the modus operandi of the superstitions and crimes of those who lived in the Middle and Dark Ages of the world.– And while the inhabitants of the Old World are continually fleeing from oppression at home and the civilized world cries, "Amen, so mote it be!" Where is the potent unanswerable argument that says "The true policy of the colored American is to make himself in every way open to him an American citizen, bearing with proscription and insult, till these evils disappear." How long, O, Lord, how long must be suffer to be kicked and proscribed, and then only to be kicked and proscribed again, simply because we were born on the sacred soil of America?
Transcription Notes:
See instructions re formatting - there is no need to include details of lines, columns etc. unless it is a table.