Viewing page 1 of 16

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
[[double line]]

"OPEN THY MOUTH FOR THE DUMB, IN THE CAUSE OF ALL SUCH AS ARE APPOINTED TO DESTRUCTION; OPEN THY MOUTH, JUDGE RIGHTEOUSLY, AND PLEAD THE CAUSE OF THE POOR AND NEEDY."——Proverbs xxxi. 8, 9. 
[[double line]]

VOLUME V. NUMBER VI.
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1862.
PRICE——ONE DOLLAR PER ANNU
[[double line]]

[[3 columns]]

[[column 1]]
CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
[[short line]]

The Slaves appeal to Great Britain - 753
The Result of the Election - 765
Letter from the Old World - 756
Letter from W. O. Duval - 757
The two Unions - 764
The Press on the Election - 764
Delay in Publishing our number for Dec - 765
Dr. Cairnes on the Rebellion - 754
The coming Distress - 767
From Cent al America - 768
The President and Gen. McClellan - 758
President's Message - 756
A change of Base and Commanders - 766
The dismay caused by the Proclamation - 766
Theodore D. Weld - 762
President's Lincoln's Proclamation -763
[[double line]]

DOUGLASS' MONTHLY
[[double line]]

THE SLAVE'S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN.
[[short line]]

HEAR this, my humble appeal; and grant this, my most earnest request.  I know your power; I know your justice; and, better still, I know your mercy; and with the more confidence, I, in my imperfect speech, venture to appeal to you.  Your benevolent sons and daughters, at great sacrifice of time, of labor, and treasure, more than a quarter of a century ago, under the inspiration of enlightened Christianity, removed the yoke of cruel bondage from the bowed down necks of eight hundred thousand years of my race, in your West India Islands; and later a few of them, in their generosity, unasked, with silver and gold, ransomed me from him who claimed me as his slave, in the United States, and bade me speak in the cause of the dumb millions of my countrymen still in slavery.  I am now fulfilling my appointed mission in making on the slaves' behalf this appeal to you.
 
I am grateful for your benevolence, jealous for your honor, but chiefly now I am concerned, lest, in the present tremendous crisis of American affairs, you should be led to adopt a policy which may defeat the now proposed emancipation of my people, and forge new fetters of slavery for unborn millions of their posterity.  You are now more than ever urged, both from within and from without your borders, to recognize the independence of the so called Confederate States of America.  I beseech and implore you, resist this urgency.  You have nobly resisted it thus long.  You can, and I ardently hope you will, resist it still longer.  The proclamation of emancipation by President Lincoln will become operative on the first day of January, 1863.  The hopes of millions, long trodden down, now rise with every advancing hour.  Oh! I pray you, by all your highest and holiest memories, blast not the budding hopes of these millions by lending your countenance and extending your potent and honored hand to the blood stained fingers of the impious slaveholding Confederate States of America.

For the honor of the British name, which has hitherto carried only light and hope to the slave, and rebuke and dismay to the slaveholder, do not in this great emergency be persuaded to abandon and contradict that policy of justice and mercy to the negro which has made your character revered, and your name
[[/column 1]]

[[column 2]]
illustrious, throughout the civilized world.——Your enemies even have been compelled to respect the sincerity of your philanthropy.——Would you retain this aspect, welcome not those brazen human fleshmongers, those brokers in the bodies and souls of men, who have dared to knock at your doors for admission into the family of nations.  Their pretended government is but a foul, haggard, and blighting conspiracy against the sacred rights of mankind, and does not deserve the name of government.  Its foundation is laid in the impudent and heaven-insulting dogma that man may rightfully hold property in man, and flog him to toil like a beast of burden.  Have no fellowship, I pray you, with these merciless men-stealers; but rather with whips of scorpions scourge them beyond the beneficent range of national brotherhood.

You long ago fixed the burning brand of your reprobation upon the guilty brow of the whole slave system.  Your philanthropy, religion, and law——your noblest sons, living and dead——have taught the world to loathe and abhor slavery as the vilest of modern abominations.  You have sacrificed millions of pounds and thousands of lives to arrest and put an end to the piratical slave-traffic on the coast of Africa; and will you now, when the light of your best teachings is finding its way into the darkest corners of the earth, and men are beginning to adopt and practically carry out your benevolent ideas,——will you now, in such a time, utterly dishonor your high example and your long cherished principles?——Can you at the bidding or importunity of those negro-driving lords of the lash, Mason and Morehead, whose wealth is composed of the wages of laborers which they have kept back by fraud and force, take upon you and your children the dreadful responsibility of arresting the arm now outstretched to break the chains of the American slave?

Ah! but I know the plea.  The North as well as the South has wronged the negro.——But must you, because the loyal States have been guilty of complicity with slavery, espouse the cause of those who are still more guilty?  Must you, while you reprobate the guilty agent, embrace in the arms of your friendship the still more guilty principal?  Will you lash the loyal States for their want of genuine detestation of slavery, and yet in open day form on alliance with a band of conspirators and thieves who have undertaken to destroy the loyal Government of this country, and make slavery perpetual and universal on the continent?  Will you stand in the way of a righteous measure, because supported and urged by wrong and selfish motives?  Will you prevent the slave from getting his due, because a sense of necessity and not a sense of moral obligation impels the payment?  Oh! again, Great Britain, let me implore you, by all things high and sacred, fling away all false and selfish reasoning, and bear aloft higher than ever that standard of justice and humanity which has justly exalted you to the head of civilized nations.
[[/column 2]]

[[column 3]]
That the loyal States have grievously wronged the black man——slave and free——is, alas! too true.  That these States even now, for the sake of an empty peace——there can be none other while slavery continues——might be induced to receive the rebels, slavery and all, again into the Union, cannot well be disproved.  And that their immeasurable blood-guiltiness is drawing down upon them the fierce judgments they now suffer, is a most solemn and instructive truth, for your edification as well as ours.  There is no more exemption for nations than for individuals from the just retribution due to flagrant and persistent transgression.  For the time being, America is the blazing illustration of this solemn truth.  But yesterday she sat as a queen among the nations of the earth, knowing no sorrow and fearing none.  She killed some of her prophets, and stoned those who were sent unto her, and proudly pointed to her great prosperity as a proof of her honesty.  But now the evil day is upon her, and she is making one grand effort, through blood and tears, though fire and death, to return to the ways of righteousness and peace.  In the name of the slave——whose fate for weal or for woe trembles in the balance——and for the sake of a war-smitten country, now struggling to save itself by doing right, I entreat you, beware what you do concerning us!

Can it be doubted that the hope so persistently kept alive by such organs of British public opinion as The London Times, and by such eminent statesmen as Mr. Gladstone, that recognition of the independence of the Confederate States is only a question of time——that this hope is one grand source of the strength of our slaveholding rebellion?  Your early concession of billigerent rights to the rebels——the adoption of neutrality as between the loyal and the rebel governments——the oft-repeated assertion in high places that the rebels can never be subdued——the ill-concealed exultation sometimes manifested over disasters to our arms——the prompt action of your Government in the Trent affair, now happily settled by a ready and friendly compliance with your demand, although coupled with irritating menace——with much else which it can do no good and might do harm to mention here, have evidently served the bad purpose of keeping life and spirit in this horrible rebellion.

I have no hesitation in saying that if you Great Britain, had at the outset of this terrible war, sternly frowned upon the conspirators, and had given your earnest and unanimous sympathy and moral support to the loyal cause, to-day might have seen America enjoying peace and security, and you would not have been the sufferer in all your commercial and manufacturing interests you now are.——The misfortune is that your rebukes of the North have been construed into sympathy and approval at the South.  Your good opinion of the slaveholders have been taken as renunciation of your former abhorrence of slavery; and you have thus kept in these confederate
[[/column 3]]

^[[B. K. Ross]]