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MARCH, 1863      DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.      807
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much better at the North?  You know and I know that even here, the black mantle of Slavery was everywhere flaunted in our faces from Northern pulpits.  If at any time during the last thirty-years preceeding the firing upon Fort Sumter any slaveholder had consulted the leading divines of the North as to the sinfulness of Slavery, he would have found that the teachings of the Northern pulpit differed very little from that of the South.  A few heterodox, and still fewer orthodox ministers, filling humble pulpits and living upon small salaries, have espoused the cause of the slave; but the ministers of high standing——the $5,000 divines——were almost to a man on the side of Slavery, and did their best to defend the system from the assaults of the Abolitionists.  They steadily denied the inherent sinfulness of Slavery and so far from being rebuked as an offender, the slaveholder was received and welcomed as a saint.  Every influential pulpit of Rochester, where I live was open to slaveholders so lately as two or three years ago.  The old school General Assembly met there——the city survived it——at that time.  [Laughter and applause.]  The late Dr. Thornwall, a champion, alike of Secession and of Slavery, was there.  He was courted and welcomed by every prominent pulpit of the city, while that faithful champion of the rights of human nature, Dr. George B. Cheever, was coldly repulsed from all such pulpits.  What was true of Rochester three years ago, and true of the whole North, would become true again if this war were settled on the basis of compromise.  Nay, I should expect that the Press would be fettered at the North nearly as heavily as it is at the South.  Slavery would be welcomed and honored in Northern pulpits, with a servility more disgusting and shocking than ever before.  Why do I make these remarks?  I will tell you.  Much as I value the present apparent hostility to Slavery at the North, I plainly see that it is less the outgrowth of high and intelligent moral conviction against Slavery, as such, than because of the trouble its friends have brought upon the country.  I would have Slavery hated for that and more.  A man that hates Slavery only for what it does to the white man, stands ready to embrace it the moment its injuries are confined to the black man, and he ceases to feel those injuries in his own person.  [Cheers.]  I confess, if I could possibly doubt the salvation of this nation, it would not be because the traitors and Rebels are strong, but because we are weak at this vital point.  There is yet among us a cowardly shrinking from a full and frank acknowledgement of the manhood of the negro, and a whole-souled recognition of his power to help in the great struggle through which we are passing.  [Cheers.]  But to proceed: The saying that the children of this world are in their day and generation wiser than the children of light, is verified in the history of the conflict between Slavery and Freedom.  History will accord to the Abolitionists a large measure of wisdom, and heroic courage and fortitude in assailing Slavery in its strongholds of Church and State; but it cannot award to them that prophetic vision that sees the end from the beginning.  It is fortunate, I think, that they did not see it——fortunate that they walked by faith and not by sight.  Could they have foreseen their country torn and rent by the giant footsteps of this terrible rebellion——could they have seen a million of men, confronting each other, discussing the question of Slavery with cannon——could they have seen the rivers red with blood, and the fields whitened with human bones, they might have shrunk back from the moral contest, and thus only have postponed this physicial contest to a future day, and upon a more dreadful scale than the one now going on.  From the very first the enemies of Abolitionism comprehended one feature in the nature of the contest between Freedom and Slavery.  They saw at least the evils attendant on that conflict. Merchants saw their trade with the South embarrassed and ruined.  Churches saw their denominations divided.  The old political parties saw their organizations broken up.  Statesmen saw the Union dissolved and terrible border
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wars inaugerated.  Worshiping at mammon's alter themselves they knew the mighty hold which mammon held upon its Southern worshipers.  They said that the slaveholders would strike down the Government before they would give up Slavery.——They predicted that the South would secede if we did not stop talking and voting against Slavery.  By their very predictions, they helped on the fulfillment.  The South was flattered and encouraged by what was thus expected of her by leading men at the North.——She doubtless expected that those who said she would dissolve her connection with the Union without once denouncing her doings as a crime, recognized her right to do so, and would rather think her wanting in spirit if she did not do so.  Foreseeing the evils thus predicted, these men cried with one accord: 'Give us the Union; give us Slavery and prosperity; give us Slavery and peace; give us error, if Slavery be an error; and as for what you call truth and human liberty, crucify them.'  The world has seen no greater example of patience and perseverence than that exhibited by the Abolitionists in meeting the objections of their opponents.  Weapons of war they had cast from the battle.  No Abolitionist ever drew sword against Slavery until Slavery drew its exterminating sword against Liberty on the soil of Kansas.  It was only after he saw his brave sons hunted like felons and shot down like wolves, that noble old John Brown went to Harper's Ferry.  [Cheers.]  Until this, Anti-Slavery men, of all shades of opinion were eminently peaceful.  The grand mistake of the Abolitionists was in supposing the American people better than they were.——They did not see that an evil so gigantic as Slavery, so interwoven with the social arrangements, manners, and morals of the country, could not be removed without something like the social earthquake now upon us.  They ought to have known that the huge Leviathan would cause the deep to boil——aye, to howl, and hiss, and foam in sevenfold agony.  Great however, as was our mistake, incomparably greater and vastly more harmful was the mistake of those who flattered themselves and the nation that all was peace and prosperity, and that the nation had nothing to fear from anything but Abolitionists.  They thought that this nation could go on year after year and century after century, outraging and trampling upon the sacred rights of human nature, and that it could still enjoy peace and prosperity.  To them the world was without a moral Government, and might was right.  The war now on our hands is sometimes described as a school for the moral education of the nation.  I like the designation.  It certainly is a school, and a very severe and costly one.  But who will say that it will not be worth all it costs if it shall correct our errors concerning Slavery and free us from that barbarism.  [Applause.]——Slavery from the first has not only been our great national crime, but our great national scandal and mistake.  The first grand error of which this war is likely to cure us is: That a nation can outlaw one part of its people without endangering the rights and liberties of all the people.  They will learn that they cannot put a chain on the ankle of the bondmen without finding the other end of it about their own necks.  Hitherto the white laborer has been deluded into the belief that to degrade the black laborer is to elevate the white.  We shall learn by-and-by that labor will always be degraded where idleness is the badge of respectability.  Whence came the degrading phrases, fast growing popular before the war, 'hireling labor,' 'greasy mechanics,' 'mudsills of society.'  The laborer should be 'owned by the capitalists.'——Poor 'white trash'——and a dozen others of the same class: They come from Slavery.  I think I never saw anywhere such contempt for poor white people as in the South.  [Loud cheers.]  Gen. Butler has only made a discovery which any man having two eyes could not fail to make in the South, that the war of the Rebels——is a war of the rich against the poor.  Let Slavery go down with the war, and let labor cease to be fettered, chained, flogged, and branded.  Let it be paid honest wages for 
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honest work, and then we shall see as neve before, the laborers in all sections of this country rising to respectability and power.  [Cheers.]]  That this war is to abolish Slavery I have no manner of doubt.  The process may be long and tedious, but the event will come at last.  It is among the undoubted certainties of the future. [Cheering.]  It is objected to the Proclamation of Freedom, that it only abolishes Slavery in the Rebel States.  To me it seems a blunder that Slavery was not declared abolished everywhere in the Republic.  Slavery anywhere endangers the National cause, and should perish everywhere.  [Loud applause.]  But even in this omission of the Proclamation the evil is more seeming than real.  When Virginia is a free State, Maryland cannot be [[a]] slave State.  When Missouri is a free State Kentucky cannot be a slave State.  [Cheers.]  Slavery must stand or fall together.  Strike it at either extreme——either on the head or at the heel, and it dies.  A brick knocked down at either end of the row brings every brick in it to the ground.  [Applause.]  You have heard the story of the Irishman who paid the price of two spurs——but refused to carry away but one; on the ground, as he said, that if he could make one side of his horse go, he would risk the other.  [Laughter and cheering.]  So I say, if we can strike down Slavery in the Rebel States, I will risk the downfall of Slavery in the Border States.  [Cheering.]  It is again objected to this Proclamation that it is only an ink and paper proclamation.  I admit it.  The objector might go a step further, and assert that there was a time when this Proclamation was only a thought, a sentiment, an idea——a hope of some radical Abolitionist——for such it truly was.  But what of it?——The world has never advanced a single inch n the right direction, when the movement could not be traced to some such small beginning.  The bill abolishing Slavery, and giving freedom to eight hundred thousand people in the West Indies, was a paper bill.——The Reform bill, that broke up the rotton borough system in England, was a paper bill.  The act of Catholic Emancipation was a paper act, and so was the bill repealing the Corn Laws.  Greater than all, our own Declaration of Independence was at one time but ink and paper.  [Cheering.]  The freedom of the American colonies date from no particular battle during the war.  No man can tell upon what particular day we won our national independence.  But the birth of our freedom is fixed on the day of the going forth of the Declaration of Independence.  In like manner aftercoming generations will celebrate the first of January as the day which brought liberty and manhood to the American slaves.——[Loud cheers]  How shall this be done?  I answer: That the paper Proclamation must now now be made iron, lead and fire, by the prompt employment of the negro's arm in this contes .  [Great applause.]  I hold that the Proclamation, good as it is, will be worthless——a miserable mockery——unless the nation shall so far conquer its prejudice as to welcome into the army full-grown black men to help fight the battles of the Republic.  [Renewed applause ]  I know it is said that the negroes won't fight.  But I distrust the accuser.  In one breath the Copperheads tell you that the slaves won't fight, and in the next they tell you that the only effect of the Proclamation is to make the slaves cut their master's throats [laughter] and stir up insurrections all over the South.——The same men tell you that the negroes are lazy and good for nothing, and in the next breath they tell you that they will all come North and take the labor away from the laboring white men here.  [Laughter and cheers ]  In one breath they tell you that the negro can never learn the military art, and in the next they tell you that there is danger that white men may be outranked by colored men.  [Continued laughter.]  I may be pardoned if I leave these objections to their own contradictions and absurditities.  They are like the [[Kilkenny]] cats, and there is a fair probability of their reaching the same result.  [Great Laughter]  But we are asked why have the negroes remained silent spectators of the dreadful struggle now going on?  I am not annoyed by this question.
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