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FEBRUARY, 1863,    DOUGLASS MONTHLY.   787
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"But as for these sheep, what had theydone?"  But as for these harmless and helpless negroes, what had they done, that this expense also should fall upon them?  Another symptom of the disease preying upon the vitals of this nation was the outrages of the Slave Power in Kansas.  The Fugitive Slave Act was another.  The Missouri Compromise and its Repeal were each of them such a symptom.  The cruel and diabolical expulsion of the Indians to make more room for Slavery was another.  So too was there another in the mean and murderous War for the same foul purpose against unoffending Mexico.

A heart so hard as to hold millions and fresh millions in Slavery——in that condition where they are denied all right to wife and husband and children and knowledge and wages, and where body and mind and soul all lie at the absolute disposal of an irresponsible despotism——this, and this alone, is the disease of which our nation is dying.  Will it be cured?  Not soon, I fear.  Repentance is the only remedy.  The Abolitionists, beginning with William Lloyd Garrison, have been prescribing it for more than thirty years.  But the nation has constantly refused to try it:  and even now, in the midst of her terrible sufferings from the disease, she persists in refusing to try it.

I admit, that there is increasing ground to hope that the Rebellion will be put down.  I say this too, notwithstanding the recent disaster at Fredericksburg.  For I see nothing in it to discourage us.  On the contrary I find much encouragement in the determination and daring displayed by our brave army.  With here and there a splendid exception, determination and daring have been our essential lack all the way through the War, whilst of indecision and delay, hesitancy and shrinking we have constantly had a ruinous abundance.  I cannot advert to the battle of Fredericksburg without saying out of a grateful heart:  All honor to our valiant soldiers who fought and fell in it; and all honor to our valiant soldiers, who fought by their side and survive them!  As said Tennyson of the immortal six hundred in the Crimean War, so say I of these our immortal ones:

"When can their glory fade?"

I admitted the better prospect for putting down the Rebellion.  But let us remember that it may be put down, and still the national disease be left uncured.  I believe that our Government is at last convinced that its hesitating and inefficient prosecution of the War has failed to conciliate either the Southern leaders or their allies among the Northern Democratic leaders.  I believe it now sees that only by an unconditional and vigorous prosecution of the War can it command the respect, or inspire the dread, or discourage the endeavors, or win the good will of either of these classes of leaders.  In a word, the Government is, I trust, at last resolved to put down the Rebellion, cost what it may to put it down.  I believe, too, that none of our Generals will any longer show more concern for the cause of the enemy than for our own cause.  I believe that none of them will any longer, by pledging themselves to put down servile insurrections, assure the Rebels of the continued safety of their families.  I believe that none of them will any longer feel bound to provide guards for Rebel homes, or to be so concerned to supply the South with food as to seize and return to her fields the laborers who had absconded from them.  I believe that none of them will any longer, either in these or others ways, virtually tell the Rebels that, so far from a large share of them being needed to stay behind for the protection of their homes or the production of their crops, they can every one of them be spared to come out to shoot our soldiers and send distress into our families.  Oh, had this been so at the beginning of the War, then should we, ere this, have seen the end of the War!  Oh, had we, when the Rebels first struck at the life of the nation, instantly struck back at their life by proclaiming liberty to the slaves, then had our nation been now safe, and tens of thousands of her families escaped their sorrow!"  The excuse for this omission is, that 
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the people were not then prepared to have this decisive blow struck.  But they were.——Their right feeling was then at high tide; and just because it was not then availed of, it has been ebbing away ever since.  Ours is the only nation on the face of the earth that, in such circumstances, would not have instantly struck back with its hardest and deadliest blow.  There are mobs so tame and timid that you can scatter them by shooting over their heads or at their legs.  But the very first shots into this mad Southern mob should have been aimed at the head and the heart.——Hence the great Emancipation gun, which always aims its shots at the vitals, should have been brought out at the very beginning.

Yes, I believe that the prospect of putting down the Rebellion is much improved.  The folly of trying to put it down, and of trying at the same time to keep up slavery, is now apparent.  The madness of refusing to march out our armies against the Rebellion, and the madness of refusing to vote against it, save on the condition in either case that Slavery shall be preserved, no candid man any longer denies.  In nothing I have said do I mean to countenance the charge that our Pro-Slavery Generals are traitors.  I see no more reason for calling Gen. McClellan a traitor than for calling Gen. Scott one, or Gov. Seward one, or the President one.  They are all opposed to the Rebellion, and would all have it put down.  They all loved their country and their whole country, and would be very sad at seeing it divided.  It is true that there was a time when they were all opposed to an uncompromising and unconditional coercion of the Rebels.  His famous letter of March 3, 1861, to Gov. Seward, as also his choice of Gen. McClellan to be his successor, proves that Gen. Scott was opposed to it.  Gov. Seward was also, as is manifest from his correspondence with Mr. Adams and from other sources.  It was by compromises and conditions, by burdens easy to be borne by both the Northern and Sothern whites, because all to be laid on the shoulders of the blacks; it was by the bloodless and winning rhetoric of diplomacy; and it was not by any stern and compulsory processes, that he expected to be able to reduce the life of the Rebellion to the short period of sixty or ninety days.——I confess that I did myself believe that the Rebellion would be short.  But it was only because I was so credulous as to believe, that the outrage would turn the people of the North into Abolitionists and into deadly enemies of that system, which is at once the cause of the Rebellion and the great essential and indispensable means of sustaining it.  I said that the President, as well as those other gentlemen, was opposed to such a coercion of the Rebels.  For surely had there not been harmony between himself and them at a point so important, he would have preferred that others should occupy their places.  There can be no reasonable doubt that all of them believed that the proper and effectual way to overcome the Rebellion was faithfully to prosecute the compound purpose of restoring the Country, the Constitution, and Slavery to their condition before the Rebellion, save only that Slavery was to have extended territory and even new Constitutional advantages.  Doubtless had they foreseen the vast dimensions, the determined and terrible spirit of the Rebellion, they would have known that it could be put down only by the simple purpose of putting it down, and not possibly by blending any other purposes with it.  I trust that they all now see, that such a Rebellion can be put down only by unconditionally aiming to put it down——only by aiming to put it down, come what will of Slavery or the Constitution, aye, or even of the Country.  I say even of the Country.  I speak considerately.  For as the father is to put down the child who revolts against his authority, and to do so without at all weighing the question whether he shall thereby break up or save his family; so Government is to put down a gang of Slavery-frenzied and Satan-inspired Rebels,even though to do so shall cost its every shilling and every acre, its last strength and last credit.  Notwithstanding my abundant advocacy for a 
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quarter of a century of the Constitution, and the whole Constitution, I do not like to have our War called a War for the Constitution.  And I would rather not have it called a War for the Country.  Call it rather a War to put down the Rebels——to put them down Constitution or no Constitution, Country or no Country.  Say you this is a reckless spirit?  Nevertheless it is only by this spirit that you can conquer——nay, only by this spirit that you can save either Constitution or Country.  Upon the Divine principle, that "he who loses his life shall save it," the people who are so noble as to respond to calls still more commanding than the high duty of preserving Country and Constitution, shall have, in return for their sublime devotion, both Country and Constitution vouchsafed to them.  Upon the Divine principle of getting all by forsaking all, we lose nothing if we do what must be done even though it can be done but at the seeming hazard of losing both Constitution and Country.

"Submit or be conquered," is the only alternative that Government can offer the Rebels.  Government can neither propose nor accept a Compromise.  Government can tolerate no intervention, foreign or domestic.  Foreign intervention it will regard as a declaration of war, and domestic intervention it will punish as treason.  As well might the father I have referred to consent to a compromise or an intervention in the case of himself and his revolting child.  I repeat that, "Submit or be conquered" is our only alternative to the Rebels.  If we consent to waive it for compromise, intervention, or mediation, or to modify it in any wise, however slightly, we perish.  Our determination to beat the Rebels must be as strong, and, in regard to consequences, as reckless, as is theirs to beat us, or it will be in vain for us even to double the number of our regiments and our armed vessels.

This favorite Democratic idea of holding the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other makes quite a pretty picture; and perhaps there are Rebellions which pictures can overcome.  But our Rebellion is not one of them.  To overcome that needs stern, uncompromising, unrelenting terms.

I say further in regard to this mistake, into which so many of our leader fell at the beginning of the War, that the country has no right to complain of it.  For the country, in common with these leaders, was debauched by slavery.  In common wit them, it had been trained to regard Slavery as among all interests the most sacred——as among them all the supreme.  The present and the past of our country, her policy and traditions, all went to make our Pro-Slavery conduct of the war a thing of course.  No other could reasonably have been expected.  The country had better confess it——even though to do so might render her still more the world's laughing stock and scorn——that when slavery, after all her other outrages upon her, at last took up arms against her, her poor Slavery-infatuated people were in no more mood and condition to put down the Rebellion (the Rebellion being simply Slavery in arms) than drunkards would be to put down a whiskey insurrection.  Drunkards cannot fight against whisky.  Nor were we then prepared to fight against Slavery.——Neither could fight against its conqueror.——None of the people are to-day capable of good service against this Pro-Slavery Rebellion except such of them as have succeeded in breaking the strong withes with which Slavery had bound them, and as are now no longer cowed in its presence.

God be praised that many of our leaders and of our people have learned much in the progress of this War.  Among the things they have learned is that this blatant solicitude to save the Constitution is but hypocrisy——is but solicitude to save slavery.  Under all this affected regard for the Constitution, the real regard is for Slavery.  This using the Constitution to block the wheels of war, and thus save Slavery, is a crime against the Constitution and the Country, which I trust, will not be perpetrated much longer.

The Constitution, say the sticklers for Slavery,
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