Viewing page 5 of 15

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

MARCE, 1863     DOUGLASS MONTHLY    805
[[line]]

[[3 columns]]

[[column 1]]
principles. Color is no longer a crime or a badge of bondage. At last the out-spread wings of the Americans Eagle afford shelter and protection to men of all colors, all countries. and all climes, the long oppressed black man may honorably fall or gloriously flourish under the star-spangled banner.  [Applause.] I stand here to-night not only as a colored man and an American, but, by the express decision of the Attorney-General of the United States, as a colored citizen, having, in common with all other citizens, a stake in the safety, prosperity, honor, and glory of a common country. [Cheering.]  We are all liberated by this proclamation.  Everybody is liberated.  The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated, the brave men now fighting battles of their country against rebels and traitors are now liberated, and may strike with all their might, even if they do by thus manfully striking hurt the Rebels, at their most sensitive point.-- [Applause.]  I congratulate you upon this amazing change--this amazing approximation toward the sacred truth of human liberty.--All the space between man's mind and God's mind, says Parker, is crowded with truths that wait to be discovered and organized into law for the better government of society.  Mr. Lincoln has not exactly discovered a new truth, but he has dared, in this dark hour of national peril, to apply an old truth, long ago acknowledged in theory by the nation--a truth which carried the American people safely through the war for independence, and one which will carry us, as I believe, safely through the present terrible and sanguinary conflict for national life, if we shall but faithfully live up to that great truth.  [Cheers.]--Born and reared as a slave, as I was, and wearing on my back the marks of a slave-driver's lash, as I do, it is natural that I should value the Emancipation Proclamation for what it is destined to do for the slaves.  I do value it for that.  It is a mighty event for the bondman, but it is a still mightier event for the nation at large, and mighty as it is for both, the slave and the nation, it is still mightier when viewed in its relation to the cause of truth and justice throughout the world.--It is in this last character that I prefer to consider it.  There are certain great national acts, which by their relation to universal principles, properly belong to the whole human family, and Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation of the 1st of January, 1863, is one of these acts.  Henceforth that day shall rank with the Fourth of July.  [Applause.]  Henceforth it becomes the date of a new and glorious era in the history of American liberty.  Henceforth it shall stand associated in the minds of men, with all those stately steps of mankind, from the regions of error and oppression, which have lifted them from the trial by poison and fire to the trial by Jury--from the arbitrary will of a despot to the sacred writ of habeas corpus--from abject serfdom to absolute citizenship.  It will stand in the history of civilization with Catholic Emancipation, with the British Reform Bill, with the repeal of Corn Laws and with the noble act of Russian liberty, by which twenty millions of serfs, against the clamors of haughty tyrants, have been released from servitude  [Loud cheering.]  Aye!  It will stand with every distinguished event which marks any advance made by mankind from the thraldom and darkness of error to the

[[/column 1]]
[[column 2]]

glorious liberty of truth, I believe in the millenium--the final perfection of the race, and hail this Proclamation, through wrung out under the goading lash of a stern military necessity, as one reason of the hope that is in me.  Men may see in it only a military necessity.  To me it has a higher significance.  It is a grand moral necessity.

"Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though wrapped up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted."

The conscience of the North has been troubled during all this war.  It has seen the inconsistency of fighting for Slavery.  It has seen the absurdity of killing the Rebel, while asserting the Rebels' right to his slave.  It has seen the folly of fighting the Rebels with our soft white hands, and keeping back our iron black hands.  [Cheers]

This whole subject of the war and the Presidents proclamation naturally brings us to the consideration of first principles, the nature of truth and error, and their respective powers and prospects, in the Government of mankind.  I attempt no scientific definition either of truth or of error.  The occasion does not require it.  Truth is that view or theory or things which describes them as they really are.  It describes a man as a man, a horse as a horse, and never confounds the distinction between men and horses.  Error is any and every contradiction of truth, in much or in little.  The one is in its nature a unit.  The other is in its nature multitudenous.  The devil gave his name correctly when he called himself legion--for there are a thousand wrong ways to but one right way.

Nevertheless, truth as one, shall be more than a match for error as a thousand--and all nations shall yet be brought into harmony with its absolute requirements.  Either in the truth, or man himself, there is a compensating force, which renders him, in a high sense superior to the numerical advantages of error.  By some means or other, whatever may be said of innate depravity, men do and will in the end prefer truth to error, and the right way to the wrong one.

When we meet with facts in our experience of the world, which seem to contradict this, the explanation can always be found in considerations entirely apart from the qualities of truth on one hand, and of error on the other.  Men never prefer the crooked to the straight road, because the one is crooked and the other is straight.  It is always done because of some fancied advantage gained, or some disadvantage avoided--and done in the name of expediency, as choosing the least between two evils.

But little hope would there be for this world covered with error as with a cloud of thick darkness, and studded with all abounding injustice, wrong, oppression, intemperance and monopoles, bigotry, superstition, King-craft, priest-craft, pride of race, prejudice of color, chattle-slavery--the grand sum of all human woes, and villanies if there were not in man, deep down, and it may be very deep down, in his soul or in the truth itself, and elective power, or an attractive force, call it by what name you will, which makes truth in her simple beauty and excellence, ever preferred to the grim and ghastly powers of error.

Hence, though this life, voyage of our's offers a thousand opportunities to drown, to only one of being saved ; Hence though the ea is broad, and the ship is narrow ; hence

[[/column 2]]
[[column 3]]

though the billows are mighty, and the bark frail, there is a power on board, a captain at the helm whose presence forbids despair even in the darkest hours.

The hope of the world--the progress of nations--the triumph of the truth and the reign of reason and righteousness among men are conditioned on free discussion.  Good old John Brown [loud applause] was a madman at Harper's Ferry.  Two years pass away, and the nation is as mad as he.  [Great cheering.]--Every General and every soldier that now goes in good faith to Old Virginia, goes there for the very purpose that sent honest John Brown to Harper's Ferry.  [Renewed cheers.]  After discussing the momentous power of Free Speech, he continued:  Once of the peculiarties of our times compels notice here.  Parties have to some extent changed sides on the subject of free speech.  The men who would a few years ago mob and hang Abolitionists for exercising the sacred right of free thought and speech, have all at once become the most urgent for the largest liberty of speech.  And I must say, detestable as are the motives that have brought them to the defense of free speech, I think they have the right in the controversy.  I do not know where I would limit the right of simple utterance of opinion.  If any one is base enough to spit upon the grave of his mother, or to shout for Jefferson Davies, let him, and do not lock him up for it.  [Cheering.]  After that almost inspired announcement of equal rights contained in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson has left us nothing more worthy of his profound mind than his saving that error may be safely tolerated where truth is left free to combat it.  Equally true, though not always equally manifest, is it that error can never be safely tolerated when truth is not left free to combat it.  Whence came the terrible conflict which now rocks our land with the thundering tramp of hostile armies?  Why does the cold and greedy earth now drink up the warm red blood of our patriot sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers--carrying sorrow and agony into every household?  Many answers have been returned to these questions.  This however, is the true one.  A stupendous error, long tolerated, and protected even from discussion, held too sacred to be called in question, has at last become belligerent and snatched the sword of treason for permanent dominion.--Nothing strange has happened unto us; the result has been reach naturally.  Our trouble is a logical part of the conflict of ages, past, present, and future.  It will go on.  It cannot be stopped.  Here, as elsewhere, the fire will go out only when the fuel is exhausted.--The moral chemistry of the universe makes peace between Liberty and Slavery impossible Moral necessity is upon the slaveholders to stand up for Slavery.  The dream and delusion of the hour is the thought of restoring the country to the condition it occupied previous to the war.  What good would come of such restoration?  What is the tremendous war but the ripened fruit of that past condition?  Our present, horrible as it is, is the legitimate child of our previous; and to go back to what we were is simply to ask us to come back again to what we are.  The conflict has changed its form from words to blows, and it may change again from blows to words; but the conflict itself, in one form or the other will go on till truth is slain or error is driven from the field.  [Cheers.]  Much as I hate

[[/column 3]]