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792 DOUGLASS MONTHLY. FEBRUARY, 1863
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penalty.  How surely and how quickly would he at that time but for the timidity and hesitancy, which grew out of his pro-slavery education, have saved our wealth and toil from this oppressive taxation, our tens of thousands of bereaved families from their sorrows, and our country from the appalling prospect of her ruin!  The Rebellion should have been shot dead at once.  Whoever denies it, proves therein that he is insensible of its infernal character, and knows not how to deal with such a crime.  Or rather, whoever denies it makes room thereby for the suspicion that he sympathizes with the rebellion and is a participant in the crime.  At once should the President have brought out the Big Emancipation Gun ; and he should have so charged it, and so aimed it, as not to spare one shred of slavery in all the land.  The rebellion would have been ended by the first fire.  And what right had the rebels to our shrinking and delay?--rebels who, without the least provocation, so malignantly and murderously struck at our all?--at the life of our coun-try, and therefore at our all.

7th. What a sad exhibition of the power of ambition with a gentle and refined spirit, is your insisting that slavery shall be re-established ; that Southern " elements of production must be unimpaired ;" and that nothing short of this "can command the support of the majority of the American people !" Yes, even now when, if there ever was, there is no longer any constitutional obstacle in the way of the slave's freedom ; even now when the slaveholder has himself opened the prison door--you are still determined that he shall remain in bondage, and his children and children's children after him--still determined that this shall continue to be a land in which multiplying millions have no right to husband nor wife, nor children, nor wages, nor bibles, nor schools, nor to aught else but stripes and insults, tortures of the body and tortures of the soul.  You are indeed to be pitied. You were not made to be what you are.  You were made to be strong and helpful and sustaining brother among your poor and needy and weak brethren : not an object of terror, but a tower of safety to them.  You were made not to bolt but to unbolt the door of the oppressed ; not to extinguish but to multiply and realize their hopes.  But, alas! your party turned for strength and success to slavery ; and so entirely identified itself with slavery ; and so entirely identified itself with it that the party can live only in the life of the monster, and must die when the monster dies.  Hence it is that you are what you are You are stoneblind, both morally and politically.  You see not God's hand in this war. You see not htat His time has at last come for setting free his sable children.  So deluded are you as to imagine that pro-slavery will be popular forever, and abolition unpopular forever.  But the Sun of the Seymours and Rynders and Woods will soon set in darkness, and the Sun of the Garrisons and Phillips and Cheevers will soon rise in splendor.  Your spurious Democratic Party, deserted as it is by the Dickinsons and Butlers, and by all who love country more than party, and freedom more than slavery, will soon pass away, leaving history to tell on one of her blackest pages of as base and wicked a party as ever defied God or trampled on man.

8th. In your infatuation you propose to cross swords with the President--and this too not figuratively but literally.  You threaten the forcible supplanting of the military power of the United States by the merely civil power of this single State.  THis is your way of standing by the President in his patriotic endeavors.  THis is your way of standing by your country as she reels under the blows of traitors--of traitors in arms and of more ef-fective traitors not in arms--of traitors in the rebellious States, and of more dangerous trai-tors in the loyal States.  You say that the Union must b preserved.  But your means for preserving it prove what kind of a Union it is that you are so intent on preserving.  It is a Union for submission to the South.  A Union for slavery and for the Democratic Party.  You well know that our nation would [[/column 1]]

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have gone down very speedily had the civil power of Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland been allowed to override the military power of the nation. No man knows better than yourself to which side, but for the dread of that military power, the State, whose city shed Massachusetts blood would have gone, carry-ing with her both her civil and her military power.  She might have gone South, even though opposed by a very large non-slave-holding majority.

To say that slavery is not the cause of the rebellion is to say what is infinitely absurd. And yet for you to say it is anything but strange.  For you are a politician ; and as all your political hopes are identified with slavery, you love it, cling to it, and are ever alert to screen it from blame.  In consenting to let your idol be held responsible for this horrid rebellion, you would consent to the only death you dread--your political death. Hence your queer theory that the rebellion resulted from the characteristic differences between the peoples of New England and the people of the Cotton States.  I admit the existence of these differences.  But who cannot see that they have, in the main, proceeded from slavery.  You imply that, had there been as much homogeneousness between these people as is found " in the por-tions traversed by the great East and West lines of commerce," there would have been no rebellion.  I agree with you.  But I bid you remember that this is the homogeneousness of anti-slavery "portions."  For, save that one of these "lines" is partly in the skirts of the slaveholding section of the country, they all traverse States consecrated to Free-dom, and only such.  I thank you for this illustration of the homogeneousness and peacfulness of the anti-slavery "portions" of the country--for this illustration of the falseness of your position that an anti-slavery portion shares in the responsibility of the rebellion.  You further imply that had there been between the people of New England and the people of the Cotton States the homogeneousness there is between the Border Free States and the Border Slave States, the rebellion would not have been.  You enumerate the causes, viz, "confluent rivers," &c., to produce this homogeneousness ; but you do not give facts to prove that it has been produced.  There are none to give.  How can there be facts to prove the homogeneousness of two peoples, one of whom holds the family relation sacred, and the other separates its members upon the auction block? among one of whom the laborer is counted to be worthy of wages, and among the other of whips?--among the native adult population of one of whom not a third can read, whilst in such population of the other the individual who cannot read is a curiosity seldom to be met with?  Homogeneousness between the Border Free and Border Slave States!  What imputation could be more insulting to the former, and what more false in the face of the fact that, whilst the Border Free States have furnished soldiers but to the loyal army, and these cheerfully and abundantly, the Border Slave States, except little Delaware not so many, have furnished thousands--nay some, and probably each of them, tens of thousands--of soldiers to the rebel army!  There is not homogeneousness between Pennsylvania and Maryland ; nor between Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, on the one hand, and Kentucky on the other ; nor between Iowa and Missouri.  I admit that the people of Missouri are coming to resemble the people of Iowa.   But it is only because Missouri is casting off slavery, and hasting to make her grand State the grandest of perhaps all the States, and her city the capital of the nation, whilst Washington is left to be the University of the Nation.  I admit that there is a class of men in the Border Slave States.  I refer to the pro-slavery politicians in each section. Take, for instance, Gov. Robinson of Kentucky, and yourself.  One might be tempted to conclude that the same pen wrote your 
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recent Message and his--so equally imbued are they with the pro-slavery spirit ; so equally devoted are they to the Border State policy, which makes the saving of slavery paramount to the saving of the country ; and so equally determined are they that even in time of war " the military is and must be subject to the civil authority'--and must be made and kept so " at all hazards"

I ought to have said in its more proper connection, that such a State as Ohio or Iowa will not thank you for implying that slavery is less repugnant to her moral sense than to New England's ; and that Western hatred of oppression is less radical than Eastern.

To bolster up this theory you say (for this is your meaning, and the only meaning that would be at all pertinent to the case,) that the Border Free and the Border Slave States came out as one at the breaking out of the rebellion.  This is entirely true as regards the former:--but it is glaringly false as regards the latter.  Virginia went with the rebels : and for a long time there was a strong doubt (not even yet wholly dispelled) whether there was not in Maryland and also in Kentucky and Missouri, a majority I favor of going with the rebels.  You are constrained to except "Eastern Virginia"--though you do it in a way so ingenious and artful, that the careless reader would make scarce any account of the exception.  Nevertheless this "Eastern Virginia" is several times as populous as the remainder of Virginia.  And is it really so, that you did not see that this exception, which you make, is fatal to your attempt to prove that slavery is not the cause of the rebellion?  If you did not, then is there here another fact of the stone-blindness which has come upon you.  Why did Western Virginia cast in her lot, with the North? Because she has but half a dozen thousand slaves, and wants to get rid of them. And why did Eastern Virginia go with the South? Because she has several hundred thousand slaves, and wants to hold and multiply them. Can you doubt that Eastern Virginia, had her slave population been as sparse as that of Western Virginia, would have come North?  Can you doubt that Western Virginia, had hers been as dense as that of Eastern Virginia, would have gone South?

That the Western and Central Free States "enlisted warmly in a war for the Union and Constitution," I admit.  But your implication that New England did not is badly and cruelly false.  That the administration has abandoned its " sole purpose to restore the Union and maintain the Constitution," is a slander.  I had no part in bringing it into power, but not the less ready am I to do it justice. And if, as you substantially say, " the Central and Western States" have in this gloomy hour, when to stand by the country is to stand by the Administration, given the cold shoulder to the Administration, then it is the slanderers and not the slandered who are responsible for so calamitous an alienation.  I charged you with slandering the Administration.  The sole difference between Democrats, Republicans, and Abolitionists, at this point where you slander it, is that whilst all three agree that the one issue is the salvation of the Constitution and the Union, the Democrats are not willing to have them saved at the necessary sacrifice of slavery; the Republicans are ; and the Abolitionists rejoice in the necessity.

To return for a moment to your queer theory.  What will not a man do when he is in straits?  You would not consent to the disgrace and ruin of your pro-slavery party, as you would do if you consented to have slavery held responsible for the accursed rebeliion. Hence your queer theory, that has not one fact or one semblance of a fact to sustain it.  The theory to which facts are made is worthless.  Emphatically worthless is yours, since you have not so much as taken the pains to coin facts, and have substituted for the coinage simple assertion!

Slavery not the cause of the rebellion! Then why is it that, whilst every free State