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JANUARY, 1863, DOUGLASS MONTHLY 781 [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] friendliness and peace would be as absurd as the attempt of the Federalists to force back their foes into amity and union! We have read, with much edification, the appeals to the North on the ground of the horrors of war, contained in the Times and other journals. We may quite accord in them, yet we can scarcely expect them to produce much effect whilst our conduct belies our sincerity. If our faith is to be proved by our works, it is too plain that we believe in fighting. Those cannot consistently censure the rising in behalf of the national flag of America who considered it indispensable that we should go to war with the United States if the insult to our flag, in the case of Mason and Slidell, had not been retrieved; and it would be difficult for Englishmen to say at what point of the war they would have given it up had they been in the position of either of the contending parties. As the organ of a religious denomination, which has not feared to rebuke our national sins, and which has always deprecated wars between brethren, we have felt that it was our duty and our right to remonstrate with those who are engaged in what we regard as a useless and cruel strife; but we must neither wonder nor be angry if our remonstrances are not always taken in good part. We must give weight to our pleas for peace by manifesting a peaceful spirit.——With the South we are in no present danger of hostility——our commercial interest are the same; it has risen in favor from its courageous resistance to invasion; and it is due to the North to own that it has never urged us to take up its quarrel to reduce the seceders. Those against whom we feel most irritated are they who are usually nearest our regard, and with whom we were on the most intimate relations. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. Without any change of opinion as to the desirableness, in present circumstances, of a dissolution of the Union, the interests of humanity require that we should take a candid, and even a fraternal, view of the conduct of those who are maintaining it. Perhaps there is no denomination in America more attached to the Union than the Unitarians. Boston was long the head-quarters of the Federal party. The Church in which Dr. Channing first ministered was that in which the Convention of Massachusetts adopted the Federal constitution, and thence derived its name. Whilst individual Unitarians have no doubt been pro-slavery, the denomination has only thriven on free soil; and where isolated congregations have been formed in the South, their ministers have usually done much to cherish the Federal feeling. Unitarians have felt that if their Churches had pervaded the Union, secession might have been prevented. Be this as it may, General Scott said of the State of California, "It was kept loyal to this nation by a young clergyman of San Francisco——his name is King:" the Rev. T. S. King (the editor of Mr. Martineau's Miscellanies) is the eloquent Unitarian minister whose appeals and labors had this remarkable effect. Dr. Elliot, of St. Louis, has used his great influence for the Union in Missouri.——Mr. Heywood has striven persevereingly at Louisville, Kentucky, to cherish a kindly feeling between North and South: and, since the war, he has been indefatigable in his services in the hospital department. At Washington the Unitarian Church, where the Rev. W. H. Channing was ministering, was the first offered there as an hospital. Unitarian ministers have been conspicuous for their zeal in this war. We cannot, then, be surprised that they have felt deep grief at us for our continued protests against what they deem essential, not only to the honor of their country, but to the interests of freedom, and the future peace of that vast continent. These protests we repeat. We thinkit infinitely better that the two section should be devided, than that they should be united by the compliances which degraded the North so long, and we see no probability of union on any other terms. And yet we will not refuse to tribute of respect to the North in its time of trial that we withheld from its self-laudations: and if we have faithfully censured [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] its past pro-slavery acts, we most cheerfully give it credit for the efforts it is now making for emancipation. If the convention with England for the suppression of the slave trade were a matter of policy, all must allow that it was a noble act to purchase the freedom of the slaves in Columbia at a time when the national treasurers seemed needed for the war, and we believe that there is an increasing desire to root out Slavery from all the loyal States by similar acts of generous disinterestedness. Boasting invites rebuke; and when the friends of the North boast of what they are doing for the slaves, we feel it only just to enumerate the complaints of the slave's champions and representatives; yet justice also requires us to add, that these wrongs are only in accordance with past grievances, while the triumphs of freedom since the war have been unprecedented. Let the negro be wronged and insulted in the North as he may, he has never before found himself a person of so much consideration, and never have so many sacrifices been made for his race. On the other hand, what hopeful sign is there of that abatement of Slavery in the South, which we are told is to be the result of secession? What vile slave laws have been repeated? What chains have been broken? Has liberty been promised to those slaves who will risk their lives in fighting bravely for the masters who have wronged them so deeply? Has it not been the case on the contrary, that so-called free negroes have been reduced to military slavery; and that whilst the South has hypocritically denounced the arming of blacks by the North, it has used them as auxiliaries to rivet their own bonds? It can scarcely be doubted that the South instituted the war for the stability of slavery; and it has not yet given the first practical proof that it has receded from its atrocious purpose. If England had been as virtuous as it requires the North to be, it is probable that this war would not have happened; or, had it taken place, the injury inflicted on ourselves would have been secondary. We have had a trade partnership with the South, almost as blunting to our hatred of slavery as a political partnership. Had we felt it a religious duty to make commerce the allay of freedom, and not to be dependent for our cotton on the pillaged labor of slaves we should long before this have called forth abundant supplies. The Southerners would not have been elated with the boast that their cotton was king, and they would have been more desirous to reign the favor of civilised nations by commencing emancipation, than to provoke war on behalf of the perpetuation of tyranny.——The Inquirer. [[line]] THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE. [[short line]] We have given, in preceding columns, all that portion of the President's Message which relates to the question of emancipation and the war. Of course, it will be read with the deepest interest, and doubtless the greatest diversity of views will be elicited, through the press and in private intercourse concerning it. We shall express our own very briefly. In the first place, we maintain that, whatever may be his natural ability, the President is not competent to write his own official papers——It is evident that they are all from his pen; for they all bear the same marks of crudeness, incongruity, feebleness, and lack of method.——There is no parrelel to them among the State documents to be found in any nation. The Tribune says, "it is easy to criticise his rhetoric;" but there is a fitness in all things, and where there is not the ability to write in a style required by the dignity of the position, good sense and a respect for the critical judgment of the world suggest the propriety of employing some one who is competent to put the wishes and opinions of the President into well expressed language. But this is of minor importance. The paramount object of concern is what the President submits as his method of bringing the rebellion to a close. And here,——while conceding to him all the 'honesty' of purpose ever [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] claimed for him, and also a sincere desire to see slavery some day or other banished from the country,——we cannot refrain from expressing our astonishment at the folly and infatuation evinced in his plan for buying up Southern treason "in lots to suit purchasers," and ending the rebellion by a shrewd regard for pecuniary considerations! In the midst of the most tremendous convulsions, and the fiercest civil war that the world has ever seen with all the colossal forces of the Government in battle array, the President——instead of proclaiming the duty and necessity of carrying on the war with a vigor not yet shown, and suppressing the rebellion as indispensable before any new proposition can be entertained——goes into a homily about the evils and disadvantages of disunion, treats the war as a matter of dollars and cents, recommends to Congress to chaffer with the tratorious men-stealers for the purchase of all their slaves at the expiration of the present century, and expresses the hope that they will signify their approval of his scheme before the first of January, so that his Proclamation of September 22d may be rendered nuil and void, the Union restored, and all the old pro-slavery guaranties of the Constitution rigorously enforced! And this, too, in the face of the unanimous declarations of the tyrants of the South, that on no consideration will they ever desist from slaveholding——that they regard slavery as paramount in importance and value to any other institution, and to be extended and perpetuated to the end of time as the normal condition of the laboring classes, black or white——that they have seceded expressly to make slavery the corner-stone of their confederacy——and that they hold in measureless contempt and scorn the very idea of free institutions and a democratic form of government!!!——The President is demented——or else a veritable Rip Van Winkle, who, for the last thirty years, has been oblivious to everything going on in the country! To enable Congress to bribe the traitors, and buy up the treasion, the President gravely proposes an amendment to the Constitution, (which will require the approval of three fourths of all the States,) giving that body the necessary authority, and the rebellion and slavery (the latter he admitted to be the sole cause of the former) till the introduction of twentieth century to be metamorphosed into loyalty and freedom! This is something more deplorable than lack of common sense; it closely borders upon hopeless lunacy. It will assuredly excite the astonishment of all Europe, the derision of the Southern traitors, and the pity of every true friend of freedom. It would in our judgment, warrent the impeachment of the President by Congress as mentally incapable of holding the sacred trusts committed to his hands. We need scarcely add, that we hold in abhorrence the renewed proposition of the President for the colonization of the colored population to distant shores. This is their native land; their labor is of immense value, the indispensable to the South in the cultivation of cotton, rice and sugar, as free laborers; they have as good a right to remain here as the President and his Cabinet; and to propose their expatriation is both to insult and outrage them, and to stimulate popular prejudice to wreak its spite upon them.——Liberator. [[line]] THE MISSION OF OUR FREE COIORED MEN. [[short line]] Great opportunities are about to open before the free colored of this country——chances for usefulness, wealth and position, such as have been denied to their race through many weary ages of injustice and contempt. Do they begin to comprehend the future that awaits them? Four million of their race, born in slavery, are about to be transformed into freemen. They are to begin a new life, in which they will come into possession of their own persons, their own physical and mental powers, and will be thrown upon their own resources for self direction and support. Their long degradation has rendered most of them mere children in intellect——a nation of vigorous animals, who are to be trained to intelligent [[/column 3]]
