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^[[B. K. Ross]]
DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
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"OPEN THY MOUTH FOR THE DUMB, IN THE CAUSE OF ALL SUCH AS ARE APPOINTED TO DESTRUCTION; OPEN THY MOUTH, JUDGE RIGHTEOUSLY, AND PLEAD THE CAUSE OF THE POOR AND NEEDY."——Proverbs xxxi. 8, 9.
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VOLUME V. NUMBER VI.}   ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, JANUARY 1863.   {PRICE——ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM
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CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
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Letter from the old world..............772
Rev. A. Pryne..........................772
An Appeal..............................773
The Black Man..........................771
The tide turning.......................771
Just like him..........................771
Remarks of F. Douglass at Zion Church..770
The paper Famine.......................770
Important official testimony...........774
The suffering in Lancashire............776
Devotion and heroism of a contraband...777
The Rebel women of the South...........777
Expression of foreign sympathy.........778
The Proclamation of Freedom............779
Intervention...........................780
The free negroes and the South.........780
The President's Message................781
The mission of our free colored men....781
Miscellaneous Items....................72
Justice to slaveholders................782
Good behavior of the negroes...........783
Colored soldiers and Contraband........783
The New York Tribune 1863..............784

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DOUGLASS' MONTHLY
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JANUARY FIRST 1863.
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The first of January, which is now separated from us only by a few days and hours, is properly looked forward to with an intense and all surpassing interest, by all classes of the American people and from the most opposite reasons and motives.  The slave hopes to gain his liberty, the slaveholder [[obscured by fold in page]] of Slaves, and northern daughfaces fear the loss of political power.  It is a pivotal period in our national history——the great day which is to determine the destiny not only of the American Republic, but that of the American Continent.  Far off in the after coming centuries, some Gibbon with truthful pen, will fix upon that date, as the beginning of a glorious rise, or of a shameful fall of the great American Republic.  Unquestionably, for weal or for woe, the first of January is to be the most memorable day in American Annals.  The fourth of July was great, but the first of January, when we consider it in all its relations and bearings is incomparably greater.  The one had respect to the mere political birth to a nation, the last concerns the national life and character, and is to determine whether that life and character shall be radiently glorious with all high and noble virtues, or infamously blackened, forevermore, with all the hell darkened crimes and horrors which attach to Slavery——it is whether our national life shall be to ourselves and the world, a withering curse or a benediction of all national blessedness for ages to come.  We may well stay before it and amplify it.  It is an occasion which can happen but seldom in the life of any nation.  It is not the creation of individual design and calculation, but the grand result of stupendous all controlling wide sweeping national events.  Powerful as Mr. Lincoln is, he is but the hands of the clock.  He cannot change the pivotal character of the day.  The word has gone forth——and no system of balancing, of props here, or weight there, can
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possibly anchor the national ship in anything like a stationary position after the first day of January.  From that day her ample form, will swing round, her towering sails will be swelled by the trade winds of the Almighty and she will either be wafted off gloriously to the open sea, on a prosperous voyage, or furiously driven by rebellious gales upon the sharpe and flinty rocks only to mark the place of danger to other and aftercoming voyagers.  We repeat, there is no escape.  The tide is reached which must be taken at the flood——For the present the Angel of Liberty has one ear of the nation and the demon of Slavery the other.  One or the other must prevail on the first of January.  The national head swings, pendulum like, now to the one side and now to the other.  Alas, no man can tell which will prevail——and we are compelled to wait, hope, labour and pray.

It is of but little use to speculate as to probabilities, when events are at the door which will dispel all doubt and make all certain——yet we may even now glance at the probable effects which may be looked for as certain to follow any one of the other three courses——open to the President of the United States on the first of January.  We say three courses although in a radical point of view there are but two.  One is the issuing, according to promise, of his proclamation abolishing slavery in all the States and parts of States which shall be in rebellion on the first of January and the second is, not to issue it at all.  Any postponement, any apology——any plan of compromise which saves the guilty neck of slavery one hour beyond the first of January, will be in effect a suppression of the proclamation altogether.  And now supposing that Mr. Lincoln shall fail, supposing that the hour comes and the man is missing, what will be the effect upon him?  Thus far the loyal north has trusted him, less for his ability than his honesty.  They have supported him with patience rather than enthusiasm.  His word though clumsily uttered has been esteemed his bond, good for all, and more than all it has promised.  But what, as we have already said, if the President fails in this trial hour, what if he now listens to the demon slavery——and rejects the entreaties of the Angel of Liberty?  Suppose he cowers at last before the half loyal border Slave States, which have already nearly ruined his administration, and have been of more service to Richmond than to Washington from the beginning——withholds his proclamation of freedom——dissappoint the just hopes of his enemies——and thus gives a new lease of life to the slaveholder's rebellion?  Where then will stand Mr. Abraham Lincoln?  We know not what will become of him.  The North has been so often betrayed and trifled with that it has become unsafe to predicate anything spitited, resolute and decided on her part.  But this we will say, if Mr. Lincoln shall thus trifle with the wounds of his bleeding country——thus fiddle, while the
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cold earth around Fredericksburg is wet with the warm blood of our patriot soldiers——every one of whom was slain by slaveholding rebels, he will be covered with execrations as bitter and as deep as any that ever settled upon the head of any perjured tyrant ancient or modern.  His name would go down in history scarcely less loathsome than that of Nero  Such a course, on the part of Mr. Lincoln would justly make him the distrust and scandal of his friends, the scorn of the world and the contempt of his enemies.  Henceforth none but fools will believe in him and his protestations of honesty and patriotism will be hailed but as the deceitful utterances of another Iago.

To the country, a failure to issue the Emancipation proclamation would prove the most stunning and disasterous blow received during the war.  It would well nigh break the loyal Heart of the nation, and fill its enemies North and South, with a demoniacal enthusiasm.——Missouri, with its noble German population and Western Virginia, both sternly endeavouring, against terrible odds of treachery and danger, to throw off the system of bondage would fall paralysed in the presence of their exulting foes, while the loyal North and West would feel that they had fought and bled in vain.  The most hopeful of all our prophets would [[line lost in crease]] to presidential promises or in any arm or department of Government when the central pillar had fallen?  Who but a fool can believe that any grace shown the rebels at this moment after nearly too years of patience will not be construed into conscious weakness, into a base and cowardly spirit, as another proof of the unfitness of the Northern round heads" to rule, and of the necessity of rebel dominion?  The natural and inevitable effect of the suppression or postponement of the proclamation will be to cheer the hopes and intensify the determination and efforts of the rebels to break up and distroy the Union.  Mr. Lincoln might threaten in the event of continued resistance, to send out another decree on the fourth of July 1863, but the North would gain no hope from it, and the South would be caused no fear by it for the moral constitution, of the Government more solemn than all paper ones would be broken down beyond repair.

But on the other hand let the President promptly on the morning of the first of January, with the truthful steadiness and certainty of the movement of the heavenly bodies send forth his glorious proclamation of Liberty, and a shout like the voice of many waters will rise to heaven from three millions of robbed and plundered bondmen, while a groan of despair, will heard in every rebel Hall South of Mason and Dixon's line.  It will add four millions to the strength of the Union with a single dash of the pen, establish the moral power of the Government, kindle a new the enthusism [sic] of the friends of freedom, number the days of Northern doughfaceism,

Transcription Notes:
italics and bold notations omitted per Smithsonian instructions