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786 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. FEBRUARY, 1863 [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] though held up to derision by the satanic Press of the North, have upon the whole gained up. on the confidence and regard of the country and the Government. Colored men going into the army and navy of the United States must expect annoyance. They will be severely criticised and even insulted——but let no man hold back on this account. We shall be fighting a double battle, against slavery at the South and against prejudice and proscription at the North——and the case presents the very best assurances of success. Whoever sees fifty thousand well drilled colored soldiers in the United States, will see slavery abolished and the union of these States secured from rebel violence. [[line]] HON. GERRIT SMITH.——The able speech on the present condition of the nation, with the eloquent and searching letter of Mr. SMITH to Governor Seymour, which fill the columns of our present number will more than compensate for Editorial deficiences. These two papers embody the views and sentiments of earnest abolitionists of all classes, if indeed there is now any division among abolitionists. No man amongst us has since the outbreak of this rebellion kept a more vigilant outlook upon the events of the war, and upon the policy which has directed it than Mr. Smith We commend his utterances in this number for their intrinsic value. [[line]] [[image: manicule]] We are earnestly called upon by Mr. H. FORD DOUGLASS to lay down the quill and take up the sword, and the fact that he has been accepted in a white company, and is now n the enemy's territory, gives his counsel at least the weight of consistency. But our correspondent must bear with our absence from the army until our own unbiased judgement and the action of the Government shall make it our duty and our privilege to become a soldier. We have no very high opinion of our fighting qualities, and have no military knowledge but we suppose we could fight if cornered, and could learn something of military science if put in the way of it. Highly as we respect the motives which dictate the call from Memphis, a call from Washington requesting us to raise a regiment in the State of New York and furnishing the money to do it with, would be more respected. [[line]] LETTER FROM H. FORD DOUGLASS. [[short line]] COLLIERSVILLE TENNESSEE, } Jan 8th 1863. } MY DEAR DOUGLASS:——My wife sent me this morning the Monthly for December containing your appeal to England to "hands off" in this fearful conflict for freedom. It was indeed gratifying to me who have always felt more than a friendly interest in you and yours to read your eloquent and manly words of admonition to the old Saxon mother States to give no moral or legal countenance to the claims of the impious Confederate States of America in their attempt to set up a Government established upon the idea of the perpetual bondage of the Negro. England has wisely withstood every temptation to do so.——Abraham Lincoln has crossed the Rubicon and by one simple act of Justice to the slave links his memory with immortality. The slaves are free! How can I write these precious words? And yet it is so unless twenty millions of people cradled in christianity [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] and civilization for a thousand years commits the foulest perjury that ever blackened the pages of history. In anticipation of this result I enlisted six Months ago in order to be better prepared to play my part in the great drama of the Negroe's redemption. I wanted its drill, its practical details for mere theory does not make a good soldier. I have learned something of war for I have seen war in its brightest as well as its bloodiest phase and yet I have nothing to regret. For since the stern necessities of this struggle have laid bare the naked issue of freedom on one side and slavery on the other——freedom shall have in the future of this conflict if necessary my blood as it has had in the past my earnest and best words. It seems to me that you can have no good reason for withholding from the government your hearty co-operation. This war will educate Mr. Lincoln out of his idea of the deportation of the Negro quite as fast as it has some of his other pro slavery ideas with respect to employing them as soldiers. Hitherto they have been socially and politically ignored by this government, but now by the fortunes of war they are cast morally and mentally helpless (so to speak) into the broad sunlight of our Republican civilization there, to be educated and lifted to a higher and nobler life. National duties and responsibilities are not to be colonized, they must be heroically met and religiously performed. This mighty waste of manhood resulting from the dehumanizing character of slave institutions of America is now to be given back to the world through the patient toil and self-denial of this proud and haughty race. They must now pay back to the negro in Spiritual culture in opportunities for self-improvement what they have taken from him for two hundred years by the constant over-taxing of his physical nature. This law of supply and demand regulates itself. And so this question of the colonization of the negro it will be settled by laws over which war has no control. Now is the time for you to finish the crowning work of your life. Go to work at once and raise a Regiment and offer your services to the government and I am confident they will be accepted. They say we will not fight. I want to see it tried on. You are the one to me of all others, to demonstrate this fact. I belong to company G, 95th Regiment Illinois volunteers——Captain Eliot N. Bush——a christian and a gentleman. You must pardon my miserable chirography. There is not in me one particle of mechanical genius, and it does seem to me that I can learn almost any thing but to write a decent hand. If you can by what you see marked on this paper decipher my meaning, I shall be content. Very truly your friend, H. FORD DOUGLAS. [[line]] IETTER FROM DR. CAIRNES. [[short line]] The following letter from Dr. Cairnes, so promptly endeavoring to remove the unfavorable impression made upon our mind, by a remark of his, in a recent very able address, on our civil war, is creditable to the sensitive heart, of that gentleman, and is quite satisfactory to us. We point to its eminent author as one who does not deem it beneath him, to set himself right even in the mind of a colored man. 74 LOWER MOUNT STREET, DUBLIN, } December 31, 1862. } [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] DEAR SIR——Accept my warm thanks for your very flattering notice of my lecture in the number of your paper, which you have done me the favor to send me. I have read it with extreme pleasure, not however, unmingled with a sense of pain that word should have escaped me, which, I admit when unexplained, seem to countenance a calumny, which very naturally and very properly excites your indignation. Permit me now to say that in using the phrase to which you take exception, nothing was further from my intention than to express an opinion derogatory to the negro race. I merely sought to indicate the degradation to which, as I believe, human beings have been brought by the system of Southern slavery. I say as I believe, for certainly the impression left upon my mind by (a pretty extensive study of works upon the South) respecting the condition of the mass of the plantation slaves is what I describe it in that passage. At the same time, I never thought of attributing this to any incapacity for civilization in the negro, and I think I may say that the whole scope of my remarks, both in the lecture and in my larger work, shows that this was my meaning. If, for example you will look to page 15 of my lecture (of which I send you a copy) you will see that I there distinctly claim for the negro a capacity for high mental cultivation; and, if I have not expressed myself more strongly, it is only because I wished to strengthen my argument by putting the case in the lowest ground. As to the question of fact, you are, of course a far better judge than I can pretend to be. I can only say that in what I said I stated my honest opinion without the slightest wish to disparage the negro race. If its condition under slavery be not what I have described it, then the Southern system is less accursed than I have thought it. Should the lecture go into a fourth edition as I think probable, I shall not fail to append an explanatory note to the objectionable passage, and shall accompany it with an extrac from your article. The news of the catastrophe at Fredericksburgh has just reached us. What is to be the result? It seems to me that one hope now remains for freedom--a negro army! Believe me dear Sir, with warm sympathy, Very truly yours, I. E. Cairnes [[line]] SPEECH OF HON GERRIT SMITH, ON THE COUNTRY, [[short line]] DELIVERED AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, [[short line]] New York, December 21, 1862. Will our nation be saved? I do not ask whether it will be saved from being destroyed by this Rebellion, but whether it will be saved from its hard heart--from its heart to oppress and enslave. That heart, and not the Rebellion, is the disease of which the nation is dying. The Rebellion is but one of the symptoms of the disease, and is no more to be confounded with the disease than is coughing with consumption. The Rebellion is not only not our disease; but horrible as it is, it is not so much as the worst symptom of it. The endeavor two years since to make peace between the North and the South at the further expense of the crushed and innocent negroes was a far worse symptom. Nay, in that endeavor--in that climax of meanness and malignity--is to be seen the very worst of all the symptoms.-- [[/column 3]]
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