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FEBRUARY, 1863,   DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.  791
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rebels are no worse than the people of New England?  And how, if we had the heart, would it be practicable, should you succeed, as is your too manifest intent, in arraying the Western and Central States against New England Instead of Rebeldom?

2d.  I see you still regret that the satanic compromise proposed two years ago was not adopted.  I call it satanic because it was to be a compromise between two guilty parties at the sole expense, and this too an overwhelming expense-of an innocent third party.  Fresh outrages were to be heaped upon the negroes-ay and eternized.  The malignity of this Democratic compromise, which not a few Republicans also favored, [for there are Republicans too who are capable of being  Satanized.] is equally only by its meanness.  That they, who could propose further and greater crimes against they guiltless and helpless, could still make much account of their of their Bibles and Churches: but I do say that they would have thereby made themselves infinitely more consistent. 

3d.  'The claim of power under martial law you indignantly and utterly refuse to admit You say that this claim 'asserts that the President may in his discretion declare war.' I do not believe that it does, and I never before heard that it does.  You say it 'exalts the military power of the President above his Constitutional rights.'  I reply that this power is specifically one of those rights, inasmuch a] the Constitution makes him the Head of the Army.  I admit that the has no other official rights than what the Constitution gives him; and you should admit that it is only from martial law or, in other words, the law of the civilized warfare, that he can learn the measure of his rights as Head of the Army.  You say that this 'measure is fixed by the Constitution.'  Rather is it fixed by this martial law which you disparage.  It is also changes with this law, which changes with the progress of civilization.  It is true that Congress has power to prescribe rules for war.  But, on the other hand, it is not only true that it could not provide for a large share of the cases in which the Head of the Army might find himself; but also true that this power of Congress is to be exercised within the limits and according to the character of martial law. So long as that law shall forbid the poisoning of food or water or the killing of prisoners or the selling of them into slavery Congress has no power to authorize there barbarisms.   That a nation may carry on war according to its own laws, be they what they will, 'Christendom would never suffer.  These laws must be conformed to the law of civilized warfare. If it is true, as recently reported, that the rebels shot twenty prisoners because they were black, and if also their government shall approve it, then will this enormous violation of the conventions of the ware not only go far to reveal the character of the rebels to the eyes of Europe; but it will also go far to damage their cause with her.

4th.  Scouting as you do the doctrine of martial law, it is not strange that you deny the right of the Head of the Army to lay hands, even in time of war, on persons in a loyal State.  Indeed, you do not admit that he may on persons in a revolted one.  You decline saying, "whether such a State has lost any of its rights.  Your language clearly implies that it has not lost them all.  Here, as well as elsewhere in the Message, you treat the rebels as more 'sinned against than sinning."  Doubtless you hold that State sovereignty can never die:--no, not even in a State whose people have all turned traitors.  Possibly however you would admit that the Head of the Army has the right to dispose of the honored Missouri traitors, who just within the North line of Arkansas are plotting and promoting the destruction of our army and country.  But how farcical the distinction that he may not dispose of them if, availing themselves of your theory, they return a mile, and claim that they can now perpetrate their treason with impunity, because they are again in 
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their loyal State of Missouri!  Moreover, Missouri might, at the time, be the principal seat of the war, and the very State in which traitors could most peril and damage our cause.  Whilst writing this letter, I learn that Springfield in Missouri is besieged by rebels.  Does not our army there need the right to make the quick and sure military dispositions of both open and suspected traitors?  Surely it does: and what folly, not to say what treason, to deny the right, simply because Springfield is in one of the really or nominally loyal States?  Upon your theory a single State, and though no larger than Rhode Island or Delaware, might under its mask of loyalty, by harboring traitors and protecting their operations, accomplish the betrayal of the country into the hands of the enemy.  Surely, surely, our nation could not have meant to leave herself at such fatal disadvantage.  She could not have failed to mean that, in time of war, her military power should be free every where within her borders to deal with traitors in its own sure and summary ways where they could not safely be entrusted to slow uncertain, and what, even though in a professedly loyal State, might prove to be disloyal civil proceedings.  If it be but one State that has broken out in war against the nation, the war power nevertheless is entitled to its paramount rule in every State so long as the war shall continue.  Son long it must have the right to practise in every State its own means for saving all the States.  The military power may it dispose of a man in a loyal state!  A man referred to.  He would not be a saying that he feels bound to do whatever he can do in accordance with the laws and usages of civilized warfare to weaken his for and strengthen himself. 


   6th.  Our work, as you interpret it, is to save the Constitution as it was and to "restore our Union as it was before the outbreak of the war."  Right here, at this great error, is it probable that our nation will perish, if perish it must.  The breaking out of the rebellion found the nation so debauched by slavery as to be incapable of meeting the Rebellion on the one square and simple issue of putting it down.  For thirty or forty years it had cherished, not to say worshipped, slavery : and nearly all its contests during that time for the Constitution and the Union were virtually contests for slavery.  Hence she had scarcely come to blows with the South before the North found her people divided by feigned, false, impertinent and ruinous issues. Loud and incessant was the cry, that the Constitution and Union must be restored.  The Democrats and pro slavery Republicans meant a restoration to the intensely pro-slavery interpretation that the one and to the intensely  pro slavery character that the other had reached when the Rebellion broke out.  The anti slavery Republicans were for restoring the Constitution and Union to what they were held to be in those early days of the Republic when slavery was looked upon as sectional and liberty national. A part of the abolitionists said that the Constitution is antislavery, and that therefore in the name of the Constitution, as well as in the name of God, the Union should also be anti slavery.  And another part said that the Constitution is pro slavery, and that they preferred no Union at all to a Union under a pro slavery Constitution.

   Oh, had we but been uncorrupted by slavery, how quickly would we have put down the rebellion if indeed there could, in that case, have been a rebellion to put down!  We should then have wasted no time, and produced no divisions amongst ourselves, by talking about the Union, the Constitution, or even the country.  Our one purpose then would have been to put down the rebels - and to put down them down irrespectively of the bearing it might have on whatever interests.  Naked plunderers and murderers were these entirely unwronged rebels ; and they should have been put down with as total a disregard of consequences, as would characterize the single purpose of a stern father in putting down his revolted child.  Who doubts that with such disregard they had been put down instantly?  Suppose, that scoundrels in Utica - your adopted and my native home - had with arms in their hands, and using them too, seized her funds, her fire engines, and her other corporate property, and that you had, at the time, been her Mayor, - would you have sent to the Common Council a message at the tone and character of that you have just sent to the Legislature?  Would you have sought in it to divider her citizens upon a multiplicity of issues respecting the future of her Fire Department, her funds and other interests?  Oh no! Oh, no!!  You could have no Democratic and no other gain by such an insane policy.  You would, beyond a doubt, have sought to unite them in the one purpose and one endeavor to subdue and punish the miscreants ; - ay, to subdue and punish them, come what might of Fire Department, Funds or Utica herself.  I am wrong - they would already have been thus united.  Such union would have been the necessary result of the outrage.  Only had counsels and partisan influences could have disunited them. The people of the North were united when they heard of the bombarding of Sumter.  But alas our good and patriotic President temporized!  The spirit, which should have been taken at the flood, was allowed time to subside.  Hundred of thousands of millions of dollars have already been the penalty of this mistake ; and only too reasonable is the fear that the loss of the nation will be needed to complete the