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December, 1862, DOUGLASS MONTHLY. 767 [[line across page]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] objects to be accomplished by this naval demonstration are of the most considerable importance. They are to capture our seaports; to make their blockade effectual; and to open avenues of invasion to those districts of the South where the Emancipation Proclamation can, with the beginning of the new year, be put into practical effect. It is useless to deny the advantages which would ensue to the enemy from the capture of our remaining ports, or to slight such a misfortune to us by the consolation that we can still whip the enemy by interior warefare. The welfare of the country is essentially associated with the protection of what ports we now have; and if there is any reason to fear that, through improvidence or imperfect foresight on the part of this Government, Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile are to fall into the hands of the enemy this Winter, then we may prepare ourselves for a train of disasters that will reach the heart of the South, and fearfully try the fortitude of our people. With these ports in the hands of the enemy, the blockade could be enforced with a strictness and rigor of which we have yet had no experience in our sufferings from this source. We would have to abandon all idea of building a navy on this side of the Atlantic. We would have to repeat the humiliation of giving up to the enemy or of destroying what few naval structures we have. We would lose, to a great extent, our vast system of railroad communication in the Cotton States; and we might realize, when it was too late, that the interior warfare of which such hopes are indulged would have to be conducted under circumstances in this section of the Confederacy which would render the sustenance and preservation of a large army almost impossible. These calamities threatened in the capture of our port are great enough. One graver, however, and more terrible than all these, is to come if the enemy can get a hold in the Cotton States, for putting into operation there his emancipation scheme. Great efforts will naturally be made to keep this pet measure of the Abolitionists from falling to the ground, and to see that the wrath which Mr. Lincoln has bottled for the first of January does not go into a harmless fizzle of soda powder. So far in the war the enemy scheme of servile insurrection has proved a ridiculous failure.——The attempt is now to put it into operation where we are least defended, to try the poison at the heart of the South. Prediction of future disaster is not a pleasing tale to that portion of our people who are never questioning what the Government does, and take for patriotism a blind and blustering trust in the future. It is for fear of the consequences of this wretched self deceit that we have pointed out the important results involved in the naval movements of the enemy on our coast and rivers. We do not say that Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile are or are not in a state of complete defense. There is, of course, abundant military authority in the South for saying that they are as impregnable as Gibraltar; but military men and their mouth-pieces have too often succeeded in lulling our people to sleep with a false sense of security to admit the principle that they are to be implicitly relied on, and that it is unpatriotic to resist their lullabies. We had the same strain at New Orleans. The people there awoke one morning to find the enemy's flag in their harbor, and that they had been made victims of the sloth and inefficiency of those who had flattered them with security. Nothing outside of official circles is permitted to be known of the state of the defenses of our ports. But recent omens are not favorable. Within a few weeks past Galveston has almost without a struggle fallen into the hands of the enemy. The newspapers were forbidden to say anything of the defences of this city; there was no call for help except such as reached the dull ear of the Government, people were not aroused; their patriotisms was required to be ignorant, to trust to leaders, and to be submissive to whatever Providence had in store for them——and so another prize has fallen into the lap of the enemy. [[/column 1]] [[Column 2]] The practice of shrouding all military matters in mystery, and requiring the people to believe that all is said without their troubling themselves with inquiries, has not acted well in the South. It may, to some extent, have served the purposes of authority in throwing a vail over the eyes of criticism, and concealing, though imperfectly, its faults. It certainly has not blinded the enemy. It appears, curiously enough, that he has kept himself thoroughly informed of the condition of our defenses, while our own people know of weakness only when the intelligence reaches them that they are in the hands of the Yankees.——That we shall not have a repetition of this sad experience of the past at Charlston, Mobile, Savannah, and other places on our coast threatened by the enemy, we continue to hope; but it is hoping in the dark. [[line]] THE COMING DISTRESS. [[line]] LETTER CXXXVIII. SIR,——They say a distress is coming; and what is more they say it is come. There is a huge difference between objectless grumbling over what is done and cannot be undone, and a manly looking into the antecedents of the mischief, for the sake of the lessons which may be of use another time. The distress, or the part here spoken of, is what is to fall on the Working Classes. The others had so much more power to take care of themselves, and the evil finally lights on them in so much more diluted a form, that their case may be dismissed or at least postponed. The Working Classes have suffered, through leaving things too much in the hands of other people. They did not put forth all the care they might have done, nor exercise the superintendance over their own affairs which would at all events have had the effect of calling attention to the case. Some years ago, they were too vigorously active, when they strapped their blankets to their backs, and set forth to reform the State. If they were then too hot, they are now too cold; and greatly their enemies rejoice, both at the one and at the other. Scarcely anything is so thoroughly exploded by the experience of grown men, as what may be described as 'scattering judgments round the land.' The ways of the power which rules the earth, are in the darkness and the cloud; and yet not all darkness nor all cloud. If men go from evil to evil, they will break down at the last, cheer they never so lustily. Some unexpected incident, some lack of caution or unguarded turn of the wheel, makes their sin find them out, though hand joined in hand ever so zealously. It is no secret to anybody in the habit of watching events, that almost from the moment the commercial classes carried their just object of free trade at home, they have been looking for the extension of gain through oppression of everybody abroad that could be oppressed. If they were not the active doers, they were the backers and encouragers behind, in all the different degrees from effective support, to leaving it assured that from them no oppositian was to be feared. The massacre of the Indian Army (for whom I have official right to feel) was got up through the influence of what in American phraseology would be called the 'mean whites;' and it unfortunately happened that a well-meaning governor-general, though clear of all intended participation, had not intelligence enough to detect and prevent the scheme. The object was, to get at the lands of the Natives; which there was a sort of constitutional understanding with them, was not to be done. They had submitted to the British rule, under this belief. And for this and other stipulations of the same nature, the existence of a native army was the substantial guarantee. To destroy the native army, therefore, was the first step in the chain. And as foully it was played for. The precedent of the persecutors in Jewish history was fixed on, and the second book of the Maccabees (vi. 18) will show the spirit of the plot There might not always be literal accordance; it might sometimes be beef instead of pork, but this was the nature of the [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] thing. It was not done by accident, but done over and over, with the resolution of a staunch murderer. And a remarkable instance it is, of the efficacy of a religious belief in all cases, that the man-devils we are obliged to call our countrymen, put it on record, that some of my poor soldiers when called out to die for their faith, they went to their death 'as though though they liked it.' A great gulf, I trust that there shall be. From all this the active part of the commercial interest expected in some way to suck gain. It was in one shape or other to be good for trade; and therefore they vigorously held their tongues. As the Frenchman said, 'great talents for silence they displayed.' It was the same in the Chinese villainies, where every rule of military or civil honor was ostentatiously set at naught. Last came the Slavery question; and there they took, tooth and nail, against what used to be in England the honored name of Abolitionists. The so-called Anti-Slavery Society gave the tone; and whoever concocted the manifesto, calling on the Americans whatever they did not to let the war end in the destruction of Slavery, has the deaths of a hundred thousand men to answer for, for which the Lord have mercy on his soul. All this was from a notion of what was to be good for trade; and unhappily the working classes never looked into the matter for themselves, nor showed signs of having an opinion on the subject. Then came the offensive and foolish attack on France, in the shape of warlike preparations in time not only of peace but of professed alliance. It is settled that peace is to be no peace; and when, as come it will, some tarn of popular feeling takes place in France, it will be held up as evidence that England is incapable of peace or truce, and so far set a-going the conflagaration at which gun-makers and army tailors are to warm their hands. All this the working classes allowed to pass without note or comment. They neither peep'd nor mutter'd while it was doing, nor when it was done. And now by hook or by crook, nature's vengeance has come on them in the shape of disappointment to wicked hopes. It was sure to be so, first or last.——But what are you to do? Go to church, and hear the clergyman begin with 'When the wicked man.' It is little enough influence the working classes have, and they do not seem to care much for its being more. If they did, they would not go to sleep over the insulting meanness of what call themselves the superior classes, in denying the freedom from oppression when called to vote, they diligently cultivate for themselves and clan where interested. It may take good many shakes, but whenever the working classes begin to sing 'Johnny Cope are you waken'd yet? It is on this they must in reason move. Yours sincerely, T. PERRONET THOMPSON Eliot Vale, Blackheath, 16 Oct. 1862. [[line]] THE Times says of the Proclamation reported issued in America, 'It is a party move that will not be followed up with any special earnestness after the pending elections. It was necessary to keep the Abolitionists in the Republican ranks, for if they split off, the Democrats might be the majority.' A Daniel come to judgment! The very thing, neither better nor worse than the truth. This is exactly what is meant; and what will be put in act, unless some special revelation should show the way to hinder it. The grand point to conceal, from the beginning always was, that the North had the power to put down the rebellion when it chose, if it would only take the way. But it did not choose to take the way. It chose to do anything and everything that was not the way. And now when it comes with a kind of deathbed repentance to say it will take the way, there are strong suspicions that the penitent, if he should feel a chance of evading the death struggle, will find some way to 'boil his peas,' which shall be fatal to all hopes of any newness of life. The secret to be kept, always was, that the North had the power, not only of overpowering [[/column 3]]
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