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684        DOUGLASS MONTHLY.   JULY, 1862

SENATOR SUMNER AND THE PRESIDENT.
From the Boston Journal

We are permitted to publish the following private letter from Hon. Charles Sumner, in reply to a letter addressed to him by a personal friend.  Senator Sumner's hearty endorsement will not be without its influence upon those who are impatient at what they term the pro-slavery of the President, at the same time there is nothing in this endorsement which should  shake the confidence of conservative men in his wisdom and prudence.  The responsibility resting upon the President is momentous and he does well to take on steps in advance of public sentiment.  Making the Constitution his guide, and with a single eye to the suppression of the rebellion and the restoration of the Union, he must dissapoint many who would hasten the dawn of universal freedom by every appliance of legislation, and by the utmost stretch of the war power.  It is something to obtain from one who may be'regarded as a representative of this class, so handsome a tribute to the purity of the President's motives and so hearty an endorsement of the correctness of his convictions and sympathies:

SENATE CHAMBER, June 5, 1862.

My Dear Sir:– Your criticism of the President is hasty.  I am confident that if you knew him as I do, you would not make it. 

Of course the President cannot be made responsible for the misfeasance of subordinates, unless adopted or at least, tolerated by him.  And I am sure that nothing unjust or ungenerous will be tolerated, much less adopted by him.

I am happy to let you know that he has no sympathy with Stanley in his absurd wickedness, closing the schools, nor again in his other act of turning our camps into a hunting ground for slaves.  He repudiates both – positively.  The latter point has occupied much of his thought, and the newspapers have not gone too far in recording his repeated declarations, which I have often heard from his own lips, that slaves finding their way within the national lines are never to be re-enslaved.  This is his conviction expressed without reserve.

Could you have seen the President, as it was my privilege often, while he was considering the great questions on which he has already acted – the invitation to emancipation in the States, empancipation in the District of Columbia, and the acknowledgment of the independence of Hayti and Liberia, even your zeal would have been satisfied, for you would have felt the sincerity of this purpose to do what he could to carry forward the principles of the Delcaration of Independence.  His whole soul was occupied, especially by the first proposition, which was peculiarly his own.  In familiar intercourse with him, I remember nothing more touching than the earnestness and completeness with which he embraced this idea.  To his mind it was just and beneficent, while it promised the sure end of slavery.  Of course, to me, who had already proposed a Bridge of Gold for the retreating fiend, it was most welcome.  Proceeding from the President, it must take its place among the great events of history.

If you are disposed to be impatient at any seeming shortcomings, think I pray you, of what has been done in a brief period, and from the past discern the sure promise of the future.  Knowing something of my convictions and of the ardor with which I maintain them, you may perhaps, derive some assurance from my confidence.  I say to you, therefore stand by the Administration.  If need be, help it by word, and act, but stand by it and have faith in it. 

I wish that you really knew the President, and had heard the artless expression of his convictions on those questions which concern you so deeply.  You might perhaps, wish that he were less cautions, but you would be grateful that he is so true to all that you have at heart.  Believe me therefore, you are wrong, and I regret it the more because of my desire to see all our friends stand firm together. 

If I write strongly it is because I feel strongly, for my constant and intimate intercourse with the President, beginning with the 4th of March, not only binds me peculiarly to his Administration, but gives me a personal as well as a political interest in seeing that justice is done him.
Believe me, my dear sir,
With much regard,
Ever faithfully yours, 
CHARLES SUMNER.


GEN. FREMONT'S MARCH.– The march of Fremont from Franklin to Strasburg and beyond is a most incredible one, and one that will never be appreciated by those who have not seen an army of 20,000 or 25,000 men on the move.  He made over 100 miles in less than a week and that, too, with the most limited transportation that was probably ever assigned to a command of the same size.  The moving of an army is not the moving of so many men.  It includes the moving or rather dragging of immense pieces of artillery, with all their heavy wheeled accountrements, frequently requiring 15 and 20 mules to perceptibly move the wheels through mountain gorges and deep cuts, mud holes and ravines.–
But even this is a small part of the moving.  Subsistence has got to be not only provided but transported, and this again includes forage for all the trains of mules and horses, companies of cavalry, &c.  Ambulances with their sick and wounded have got to be moved.  Thousands of barrels of flour, meat and all sorts of commissary stores have got to be moved, also.  In a word all the endless paraphernalia of tents, baggage and stores of every description belonging to an army have to be moved and kept along within the protection of the troops. 

Gen. Fremont had to make his march over half a dozen ranges and spurs of mountains.  He had to cross all the various intersections and combinations of the Shenandoah, with all their mountain streams.  Yet he came to time.  He was bound to come to time when he left Franklin, if it was in the limits of human endurance to do so.  He, himself, led the advance from the start, and with his maps and his guides piloted the way.  His march was almost a second crossing of the Alps, and a great deal faster time in proportion to the facilites at hand, was made by him than was made by Napoleon.

Such marching is not the way, of course, to move troops as a rule.  It is killing on them, and soon uses up an army.  But the march shows that when an exigency is an hand in which the Government requires celerity above any other consideration, Gen. Fremont is eminently fitted for the occasion.– Wheeling Intelligencer. 

– Slavery exists in China not as relic of barbarism, nor from the prevalence of caste or the absence of industry, but simply, it would appear, as the effect of a redundant population; it is a man's last shift for employment.  We can give a most pleasing anecdote in connection with this point, which recently appeared in the Jave Bode newspaper, published at Batavia, where there is a large Chinese population – which shows at once the good feeling of the Chinese in regard to the unfortunate objects of slavery, and the remarkable industry and self-relying spirit of the slaves themselves.  In giving an acocunt of the sale of slaves at the Chinese camp, it says:– The slaves who were twelve in numnber, having been placed upon the table of exposition, arranged in four lots, rattled some money in their hands, and addressed a few words, timidly and in low tones, to the assembly.  A person who acted as their agent here stepped forward, and stated that his clients having accumulated by long and painful labors some small savings, solicited the favor of being allowed to make a bidding for the purchase of their own persons.  No opposition was offered; and the first lot of three being put up to action made an offer through their agent of forty francs.  No advance being made on this sum, the slaves were knocked down to themselves.  The next lot, encouraged by their predecessors' success, offered only twenty-four francs for themselves.  The public preserved the same silence, and they likewise became their own purchasers.  The third lot took the hint, and were even more fortunate; picking themselves up, a decided bargain, for the sum of ten francs!  The Java Bode rightly sees in these facts signs of a great advance in civilization among the Chinese, who constituted the great majority of the persons present.  Superficial writers on China judge of the whole nation by what they see of the population at Canton; and are profuse in their charges of lying, treachery, and inhumanity – as if it were even possible for four hundred millions of human beings to be nothing but one black mass of moral deformity!  The monstrousness of the idea ought to have been its own refutation.  Such writers might as well conclude that the whole abyss of ocean is a turbid mass, because its fringing waves are 'gross with sand.'  In truth, their conclusions are as unjust as if one were to judge of our own nation solely by the doings of the wreckers of Cornwall or the mobs of our great cities.  The inhabitants of Canton are termed the 'Southern boors,' by their own countrymen; and it may safely be stated of the people  of Fokien and the southern coast of China, with whom alone foreigners come in contact, that they are all more or less addicted to piracy and smuggling and have adopted the nefarious habits which commerce invariably engenders when carried on between nations who despise and whose only desire is to overreach, one another.–Patterson' Essays in History and Art

A FIRST-CLASS weekly paper in England proposes a mode of escape from the dilemma which puzzles all Americans except the Abolitionists pure.  It proposes to get rid of the four millions of operatives who are the tribulation and the burthen, by carrying them to the English West-India islands, where England wants laborers, and is much too wise to talk of transporting her colored citizens.

In a Clown is, seen throwing his own and master's money abut the street, there is no law of theatrical morality which forbids to pick it up. 

America is ambitious of following great precedents.  She always said she was born to greatness.  The banishment of the Jews from Spain and of the Protestants from France, are the examples she has just now in her eye, unless the Abolitionists save her from herself. 

Suppose it all done, and with a wave of her lily hand some mighty enchantress has removed every stain of color from out the Southern States.  What is to come next?  What is to be done with the country thus purgated?  How are those left, to live? –
Who is to keep them?  Or are they not to live?  Sure no little boy who had unexpectedly come into possession of a bird's nest, was ever at such a loss what to do with his conquest.  Some 90 000 square miles of good cotton growing country, are to be turned into No Man's Land by removing the cultivators, at an expense of blood and treasure which will astonish calculators as much as the leeks and onions consumed by the builders of the Pyramid.  And all this for a crotchet, and because Abraham the Unready could not find in his heart to go the easier way.

Would it not be better, to set up the whole concern to auction?  Perhaps the holy allies would make a decent bid.  If the conquerors can only look at their conquest and sigh, why should not they do a turn of business with those to whom it will be of more use? 

But suppose they are not the conquerors.–
That arms are inconstant, and has been the decision of the ablest militarists.  In this case, what limit shall be to the regret the world will feel, at seeing in store for these latter days the saddest example of chances abused, of fortune scorned. of Providence tempted, of resolute resistance to the continuous calls of sense and justice, which has occurred since the first of human kind were sent forth in their coats of skins, to face the consequences of the good or evil of their ways.– T. PERRONET THOMPSON.

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