Viewing page 11 of 16

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

DECEMBER, 1862.      DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.      763
[[line across page]]
[[3 ruled columns]]

[[column 1]]
lar fury?  Go on, sir!  Set in a blaze the passions of the mob!  Such artifices rarely fail, even when practised with ordinary skill——but of this be advertised, that you have studied most superficially the character of those who advocate the immediate abolition of slavery, if you suppose they are to be frowned down by public sentiment.  No, sir!  They have pondered the whole subject too thoroughly.  They have too long baptized it with prayer.  They have too carefully inventoried its difficulties, and its perils one by one.  They have sounded too deep into its woes and its wrongs, and have too strong an assurance that theirs is the cause of God, and that God is with them.  The results at which they have arrived are the deliberate convictions of long, varied, and conscientious inquiry.  If they had taken connsel of worldly policy, time serving expediency, suggestions of personal safety, popularity, ease, or earthly honor, they would have escaped the inflictions of public obloquy and rage.  But they have counted the cost.  Through evil report and good report, whether the storm beats in their faces or upon their backs, they will hold on their way.  Sir, you have mistaken alike the cause, the age, and the men, if you think to intimidate by threats, or to silence by clamor, or shame by sneers, or put down by authority, or discourage by opposition, or appal by danger, those who have put their hands to this work.  Through the grace of God, the history of the next five years will teach this lesson to the most reluctant learner.

From the entire tenor of your article, it is manifest that your main object is to forestall the public mind, and muzzle discussion upon the subject of slavery, especially in institutions of learning.  You are too late, sir!  Discussion has begun.  Already 'the little one has become a thousand,' and moves victorious from conquering to conquer.  What! think to put down discussion in eighteen hundred thirty-four! and that, too, by the dictum of self clohted authority!  Go, stop the tars in their courses, and puff out the sun with an infant's breath!  Men will no longer take opinions upon trust, and think by proxy upon the subject of slavery.  They will no longer admit the validity of the oppressor's claim to a monopoly of sympathy for the oppressed, and a monopoly of capacity to understand the system, and of wisdom, benevolence and conscience to devise the best means and to determine the best time when the sin of oppression shall cease.  Slavery, with its robbery of body and soul from birth to death, its exactions of toil unrecompensed, its sunderings of kindred, its frantic orgies of lust, its intellect levelled with the dust, its baptisms of blood, and its legacy of damning horrors to the eternity of the spirit——Slavery, in this land of liberty, and light, and revivals of millennial glory——its days are numbered and well-nigh finished.  Would to god that all its abominations were but day dreams!  Would to god that they were not the daily enacted horrors of living reality——the legitimate fruits of a system authorized by law, patronized and protected be republican institutions, sanctioned by puplic sentiment, and sanctified by religion!  While these things are so, research, and discussion, and appeal, and remonstrance, and rebuke, and strong beseeching shall never cease.  The nation is shaking off its slumbers to sleep no more "

The result of the application of the GAG RULE in the Seminary was, the immediate withdrawal from that institution of almost every student, and to this day it has never recovered from the blow, nor exerted a particle of influence upon the destiny of the country.  Another result was the foundation of the Oberlin Institution, on avowed anti-slavery principles, which has educated a greater number of students than any similar institution, and continues in a flourishing state.

On leaving Cincinnati, Mr. Weld lectured extensively upon Manual Labor Schools, Temperance and Anti-Slavery, till he lost his voice in 1836; nor did he recover its natural tone for several years.  Compelled to quit the lecturing field, he opened an educational institution at Belleville, N. J., which was subsequently removed to Eagleswood, and met with extensive patronage.  His earliest Anti-Slavery work was entitled, "American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses," and was of immense service in demonstrating the nature and results of slavery by unimpeachable Southern evidence, names and dates being given with great particularity.  Then followed a most able and thorough vindication of the Bible
[[/column 1]]

[[column 2]]
from the foul charge of upholding slavery, published in pamphlet form, and entitled "The Bible against Slavery: An Inquiry into the Patriarchal and Mosaic Systems on the subject of Human Rights."  It commenced in the following graphic manner:——

"The spirit of slavery never seeks shelter in the bible, of its own accord.  It grasps the horns of the altar only in desperation——rushing from the terror of the avengers' arm.  Like other unclean spirits, it 'hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved.'  Goaded to phrenzy in its conflicts with conscience and common sence, denied all quarter, and hunted from every covert, it vaults over the sacred inclosure, and courses up and down the Bible, 'seeking rest, and finding none.'  THE LAW OF LOVE, glowing on every page, flashes around it an omnipresent anguish and despair.  It shrinks from the hated light, and howls under the consuming touch, as demons quailed before the Son of God, and shrieked, ,Torment us not!'  At ast, it slinks away under the types of the Mosaic system, and seeks to burrow out of sight among their shadows   Vain hope!  Its asylum is its sepulchre; its city of refuge, the city of destruction.  It flies from light into the sun; from heat, into devouring fire; and from the voice of God into the thickest of His thunders."

At Music Hall, on Sunday last, Wendell Phillips made a very complimentary reference to the labors of Mr. Weld in the Anti-Slavery and Temperance movements, and urged a crowded attendance at the Hall to hear him.  The Anti-Slavery Standard says:——

"Theodore D. Weld, one of the early and most eloquent advocates of the anti-slavery movement, but who, for some years past, has been engrossed in teaching, to the abandonment of the public platform, is shortly to return to the field of his former successes.  He is to lecture in various places during the coming season, beginning at Music Hall, Boston, early in November.  This announcement will be received with hearty satisfaction by his friends everywhere."
[[line]]

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S PROCLAMATION.
[[short line]]

We earnestly wish that we could re-echo the hopeful and enthusiastic greeting with which our friends, the Revs. F. Bishop and R. Spears, welcomed the President's Proclamation in our last number.  We cannot, however, allow that "it raises the very issue which the press and people of England have professed to wish to see."  Still less can we grant the boast of the Christian Inquirer, that "it puts us (the Federals) right with Europe, with mankind, with ourselves, and with God."  It is not in itself an anti-slavery document, and if we are to judge from the past declarations of the Government, it is not set forth with an Anti-Slavery purpose.  No one can be said to support and favor that which he keeps from his friends, and inflicts on his enemies; the President does not proclaim liberty to the slaves within the territories over which he rules, but to the slaves of those in rebellion against him.  It is open to the same objection which was urged against a similar proclamation of General Fremont's last year, which was then disallowed; it presents the United States as a refuge of Slavery: and all who desire Slavery are to be loyal to the Union, lest their slaves should be emancipated.  Nor does the President permit us to hope that this measure arises from any newborn desire for liberty.  His letter to Mr. Horace Greeley, written exactly a month before, August 22nd, distinctly says:——"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy Slavery:" he will act in regard to Slavery just as he deems expedient for saving the Union.  The Providence (R. I.) Journal says (in an article quoted with approval by the Christian Register,) It is superfluous to say that the President adopts the measure strictly as a war mearure, that he frees the slaves as he takes the horses or houses which it is necessary to take from the enemy.'  The South, therefore, may regard it as intended to frighten them into submission, or to add to the horrors and difficulties of rebellion, rather than as the result of any sympathy with a race which is still kept in bondage in loyal States.  The Boston Register of Oct. 4th speaks in a much calmer tone than the New York Inquirer.
[[/column 2]]

[[column 3]]
In an article on Emancipation, it sarcastically notes how anxious the Conservatives are to prove that the Proclamation does not concede universal emancipation as the right of man——that it is not dictated by justice or humanity, but is all the effect of selfishness.——The writer justly adds:——

"This is not the way to stop the mouth of England.  She will only vary her rebukes, till we assume the one immovable position, that we will do that which is right because it is right.——Among al the dreams of Plato, More, Harrington, Bacon, or Swift, we have never read of an imaginary republic so excessively humble and disinterested as strenuously to decline honest praise, and insist on putting its worst leg foremost.  The mischief may be infinite if we are taken at our own word."

The President has, in its country, generally been taken at his own word.  May who earnestly longed for tokens that this was a war of liberty against slavery have been constrained, by the cruel conduct of the North towards the negroes, to look on this measure as the desperate expedient of those who had been worsted in war Mr. Frederick Douglass, in his "Monthly" for October, thus refers to the past action of the Republican Administration:——

"While slavery was in arms against the Government so controlling was his influence that no denunciations of slavery could be tolerated in any department of the national service.  The Secretary of State, himself long distinguished for his anti-slavery sentiments, strangely forbade all allusion to slavery in the communications of our ministers to foreign countries.——Our generals in the field freely offered the aid of the loyal arm to the slave states in putting down their slaves, should they avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the rebellion to rise and assert their liberty.  With a fierce alacrity, which extorted a cry of shame from Christendom, our loyal army officers acted the degrading part of bloodhounds to ferret out and return trembling slaves, who had sought their protection, to infuriated rebel masters, to be whipped and otherwise tortured to death.——Others to divert the slaves of all hope of freedom through the war, ordered that no slaves should be allowed within their lines.  For any general to distinguish himself by any act of humanity to the negro, was the surest way to incur the displeasure of the Government, and to secure his own humiliation.  So that even our Republican Government under Abraham Lincoln, though elected on the strength of anti-slavery sentiment, and warred upon as such by slave-holding rebels, has been in fact, during nearly the whole course of its existence, a bulwark of slavery.  Now, to the gladness and joy of all who wish well to the country, and sympathise with the sorrows of the enslaved negro, all is changed."

The sincerity and stability of this change requires further proof.  At the commencement of the war Mrs Stowe and others confidently predicted that it was to work deliverance for the slave; and yet Mr. Douglass, Mr. Garrison, and many anti-slavery leaders, have testified to the strength and influence of the pro slavery party in the North up to this point: and if this party accept President Lincoln's Proclamation, it is because they expect that very little will result from it for the good of the slave, whom they detest.  It is however, only just to remember that since the commencement of the war the ant-slavery cause has had some glorious triumphs——above all, the emancipation of the slaves in Columbia.

In England the Proclamation has awakened little excitement, and less enthusiasm.  If we could believe with Mr. Spears that the men of the Free States were doing "battle with their brethren of democratic pretensions, that they might emancipate millions of men and women they never saw, but whose injuries and sorrows have pierced their hearts," we should share his admiration, whereas we have their own explicit declaration that they are battling for the Union; they keep in slavery the myriads of negroes in their midst, and offer emancipation to those out of their reach, in order to inflict injury and dismay on their enemies, who have proved too strong for them in the open field!  Accordingly, Punch, notwithstanding its hatred of slavery, treats this proclamation as the last move of a des-
[[/column 3]]

Transcription Notes:
bold and italics notations omitted per Smithsonian instructions