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764 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. DECEMBER, 1862. [[line across page]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] gambler. Other journalists, instead of lauding it as a triumph of freedom, denounce the savagery which is inciting a servile insurrection; and, hitherto, so far from silencing the cry for intervention, it has seemed to stimulate it, on the plea that it is necessary to prevent the unutterable horrors that it must cause. We think that Mr. Lincoln had a perfect right to make this proclamation. The slaveholders have rebelled against the National Government; their rebellion has caused infinate misery——loss of life and treasure——loss of what is more precious than treasure or life.——The President is not inviting the aid of foreign savages; he merely says to those who have an infinitely better moral right to revolt than their masters had, that henceforth he will recognise and maintain their freedom. We suppose that if England had gone to war with the old United States, our generals would have welcomed the aid of those who had the best reasons for dissatisfaction with the Government under which they lived, and would have maintained their freedom to the best of their power. If our memory does not deceive us, this was actually done, even while we were as much complicated with slavery as the Government of Washington is now. If it be the case that the negroes are such fiends that their rising is to be deemed an outrage against humanity, it is obvious that the responsibility rests with their masters, who have demanded the monopoly of training and influencing them. If, on the contrary, Southern boasts are to be believed, and the slaves are an attached docile people much better off, and aware that they are better off than free laborers, the President's proclamation will cause no embarrasment. He does not intimate the intention of inciting them to revolt or violence. Had it been otherwise, why should not Northerns stimulate the oppressed to throw off the yoke, whilst Southerners have done their best to corrupt and seduce those who are bound to service in the North not by the bonds of tyranny, but by every obligation of honor, trust, and gratitude. The atrocious ravings in the Southern Congress are entirely in keeping with an assembly of slaveholders. How absurd is their wrath at the employment of negroes against them, whilst they have employed them in such numbers against the North. It was their business, before going to war, to see whether they could do it with safety to their own institutions. If they thought they had reason to complain of the North, they should have considered the complaints of the millions within their borders.——The Southerners deserve no pity for a danger which it is in their power to avert. If they are sincere in urging that it is not their love of oppression, but of independence, which stimulates them to fight, they can, we believe with perfect safety, proclaim freedom to their slaves, and enlist them as their devoted auxiliaries. This Proclamation does not on the face of it make any decided revolution in the conduct of the war. The President refers to the Act of July 17, which declares liberty to all the slaves of rebels who come within the power of the Federalists, and to declare it to any other, seems fruitless; the Proclamation, however, now extends to States what it before restricted to individuals. If Virginia, e.g., is a rebel State, no Virginian can any longer claim his fugitive slaves on the pretext that he is loyal. As the Act of July has often been worse than useless, through the falseness and tyranny of Federal officers, who have betrayed those who have fled to their protection, it remains to be seen how far the army is disposed honestly to carry out the provisions of the Proclamation which is to take effect next January. On the whole, we trust that it will be more effective. Being a more general and sweeping measure, it offers few if any, excuses for evasion; and the repeated reverses of the North, which have called it forth and justified it, even to those who are opposed to the negroes, will also stimulate its enforcement. Although, logically, it has rather a pro-slavery than an anti-slavery espect——because it denounces abolition as a final threat against an implicable enemy——every one recognises it [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] as, in fact, a proof that the Washington Government have listened to their anti-slavery advisers. Hitherto the loyal or semi-loyal Slave States have had undue influance in the controal of the war. The President now defies them to leave the Union——he tells them that if they do so all their slaves will be freed. However idle his proclamation may be in Alabama, there is not the least doubt that it can be executed in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and in most of Virginia and Kentucky; whilst these States will be more than ever inclined to secession, they will more than ever feel the greatness of the sacrifice it would involve; and since slaveholders will now be retained in the Union by a terrible threat, they will lose the paramount influence which they possessed when they were to be conciliated and courted. From the growing insecurity of slave property, they will also be more inclined to listen favorably to the plans which the President will recommend for the compensation of those States which voluntarily adopt measures for emancipation. What the result may be on the negro population we cannot predict, and we must not now detain our readers with surmises. We repeat that the Proclamation, as regards the Rebel States, does not profess to be dictated by philanthropy; it results from the supposed necessities of war, and those whom it declares free may only be exposed to more savage and revolting tyranny from their infuriated masters. Merely viewed as a war measure, it seems the climax of meanness. Had it been enforced from the beginning, it might have been taken as the policy of principle; coming when it does, the North seems to crave help from those whom it has insulted, scorned, and betrayed. Yet this is not a fair view.——There was a party who, from the beginning, have demanded this measure. However base and timeserving others have been, they have been constant in their assertion of the claims of freedom. What may seem as the defeat of the national policy is their victory. We await the issue, not without awe. If the cloud has indeed risen above the horizon, for which the watchers have looked so long in vain——if the rain from Heaven, for which the thirsty land has so long prayed in withering and barrenness, is at length to descend——we must not quail before the driving of the storm, and the fury of the tempest. This at least, we know——that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.—— The Inquirer. [[line]] THE TWO UNIONS. [[short line]] The Democratic or Pro-Slavery Party is constantly crying for 'The Union as it was;' and the Republican or Abolition Party also claims to be for 'The Union as it was.' How shall this be explained? By the fact that there are two such Unions. In the following extract from his Speech in Congress on the Nebraska Bill Gerrit Smith describes both. To speak against slavery in any manner, and, especially, in the national councils, is construed into hostility to the Union: and hostility to the Union is, in the eye of American patriotism, the most odious of all offences——the most heinous of all crimes. I prize the Union, because I prize the wisdom, courage, philanthropy, and piety, of which it was begotten. I prize it, because I prize the signal sufferings and sacrifices, which it cost our fathers. I prize it, because I prize its objects——those great and glorious objects, that prompted to the Declaration of Independence; that were cherished through a seven years' war; and that were then recited in the preamble of the Constitution, as the objects of the Constitution. I prize it, for the great power it has to honor God and bless man.——I prize it, because I believe the day will come, when this power shall be exerted to this end. Now, surely, opposition to slavery cannot be hostility to such a Union. Such a Union is not assailed, and cannot be endangered, by opposition, however strenuous, to slavery, or to any other form of oppression, or to any other system of iniquity. To attack what is good, is to be hostile to such a Union. To attack what is evil, is to befriend it. [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] Nevertheless, the position is persisted in, that to attack slavery is to attack the Union. How are we to account for this persistence in this absurd position? It is easily accounted for. The position is not absurd. There are two Unions. There is the Union of early times——that, which our fathers formed, and the most authentic record of the formation of which, and of the spirit and object of which, is to be found in the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. This is the Union openly based on the doctrine of the equal rights of all men. This is the Union, the avowed purpose of which is 'to establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty.'——Then, there is the other Union——the Union of later times——of our times——manufactured, on the one hand, by Southern slaveholders, and, on the other, by Northern merchants and Northern politicians. The professed aims of this new Union are, of course, patriotic and beautiful. Its real, and but thinly disguised, aims are extended and perpetual slavery on the one hand, and political and commercial gains on the other. The bad character of this new Union is not more apparent in its aims, than in its fruits, which prove these aims. Among these fruits, are Union Safety Committee Resolutions; Baltimore platforms; pro-slavery pledges of members of Congress; resolutions of servile Legislatures contemptible Inaugurals, in which now a Governor, and now a President, go all lengths for slavery; and, above all, or rather below all, Union-saving and slave-catching sermons of devil-deluded and devil-driven Doctors of Divinity. To this list is, now, to be added the stupendous breach of faith proposed in the bill before us. This, Bill which lays open all our unorganized territory to slavery, is a legitimate fruit of the new Union. The consecration of all the national territory to freedom, sixty-five years ago, was the legitimate fruit of the old Union. Which is the better Union? By their fruits ye shall know them. Now, the matter is not explained by saying that this new Union is but a misinterpretation of the old. Misinterpretation cannot go so far, as to change the whole nature of its subject. Oh no, it is not a misinterpretation. But it is distinctly and entirely another Union, with which its manufacturers are endeavoring to supplant the Union given to us by our fathers:——and this supplanting Union is as unlike the precious gift, as darkness is unlike light, as falsehood is unlike truth. When, then, we, who are laboring for the overthrow of slavery, and for the practical acknowledgement of the equal rights of all men, are charged with hostility to the Union, it is, indeed, pretended by those, who make the charge, and for the sake of effect, that we are hostile to the original and true Union. Our only offence is, that we withstand the base appeals and seductive influences of the day.——The only cause, for the abundant reproach, which has befallen us, is that in our honesty and patriotism, we still stand by that good old Union, which is a Union for justice and liberty; and that we bravely oppose ourselves to those artful and wicked men, who would substitute for it a Union for slavery, and place, and gain; and who are even impudent enough to claim, that this trumped-up Union is identical with that good old Union. Yes, wicked, artful, impudent, indeed, must they be, who can claim, that this dirty work of their own dirty hands is that veritable work of our fathers, which is the glory of our fathers. [[line]] THE PRESS ON THE ELECTION. [[short line]] [From the Evening Post.] THE PEOPLE TO THE ADMINISTRATION. A little more than a year ago, the people of every loyal State rushed together with unparalleled unanimity and enthusiasm to devote 'their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors,' to the support of the Government and the maintenance of the integrity of the Nation. That this was no transient outburst of feeling, but the utterance of a calm and determined purpose, has been proved by their persistent and indefatigable efforts to accomplish even more than they had promised.—— [[/column 3]]
