The Slaveholders’ Rebellion: An Address Delivered in Himrod’s, New York, on July 4, 1862
THE SLAVEHOLDERS’ REBELLION: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN HIMROD’S, NEW YORK, ON 4 JULY 1862
Douglass' Monthly, 5: 689—93 (August 1862). Another text in Foner, Life and Writings,
3: 242—59.
Independence Day 1862 began inauspiciously for Douglass when no one met
his train in Himrod’s, New York, a town consisting of a “half dozen neat little
dwellings . . . one Church, two Taverns, one Grocery and a Railroad Sta-
tion.” He later wrote, “But what a place for a celebration thought we.” At
10:00 A.M., however, a crowd of two thousand, many of whom had come by
rail from the nearby towns of Penn Yan and Canandaigua, gathered in a pine
grove to hear speeches by Douglass, a Dr. Spence, and Henry Bradley of
Penn Yan. Local young people supplemented the program by playing rousing
band music. Douglass, who described his audience as remarkably “orderly,
intelligent and thoughtful,” delivered a lengthy lecture on the causes and
proper conduct of the war. A month later Douglass confessed that he then
“should use language far more pungent” than he employed in Himrod’s to
criticize President Lincoln and General George B. McClellan. Even so, at
least one listener did not approve of Douglass’s Fourth of July oration. “Mr.
Yougherty was shocked, Mr. Yougherty was grieved,” Douglass recalled,
“but Mr. Yougherty could not disprove a single statement . . . and Mr.
Yougherty narrowly escaped being removed from the meeting as a disturber,
and probably would have been handled roughly, but for our honest solicitation
that Mr. Yougherty be heard patiently by the audience.” DM, 5: 694 (Au-
gust 1862).
FELLOW CITIZENS: Eighty-six years ago the fourth of July was consecrated
and distinguished among all the days of the year as the birthday, of Ameri-
can liberty and Independence. The fathers of the Republic recommended
that this day be celebrated with joy and gladness by the whole American
people, to their latest posterity. Probably not one of those fathers ever
dreamed that this hallowed day could possibly be made to witness the
strange and portentous Events now transpiring before our eyes, and which
even now cast a cloud of more than midnight blackness over the face of the
whole country. We are the observers of strange and fearful transactions.
Never was this national anniversary celebrated in circumstances more
trying, more momentous, more solemn and perilous, than those by which
this nation is now so strongly environed. We present to the world at this
moment, the painful spectacle of a great nation, undergoing all the bitter
pangs of a gigantic and bloody revolution. We are torn and rent asunder,
we are desolated by large and powerful armies of our own kith and kin,
converted into desperate and infuriated rebels and traitors, more savage,
more fierce and brutal in their modes of warfare, than any recognized
barbarians making no pretensions to civilization.
In the presence of this troubled and terrible state of the country, in the
appalling jar and rumbling of this social Earthquake, when sorrow and
sighing are heard throughout our widely extended borders, when the wise
and brave men of the land are everywhere deeply and sadly contemplating
this solemn crisis as one which may permanently decide the fate of the
nation I should greatly transgress the law of fitness, and violate my own
feelings and yours, if I should on this occasion attempt to entertain you by
delivering anything of the usual type of our 4th of July orations.
The hour is one for sobriety, thoughtfulness and stem truthfulness.
When the house is on fire, when destruction is spreading its baleful wings
everywhere, when helpless women and children are to be rescued from
devouring flames a true man can neither have ear nor heart for anything but
the thrilling and heart rending, cry for help. Our country is now on fire. No
man can now tell what the future will bring forth. The question now is
whether this great Republic before it has reached a century from its birth, is
to fall in the wake of unhappy Mexico, and become the constant theatre of
civil war1As many as thirty different governments held power in Mexico during the first thirty years of its independence from Spain. The Liberal party, headed by the Zapotec Indian Benito Juarez, came to power in 1855. From their stronghold in Vera Cruz, Juarez's republican troops fought the armies controlled by rival factions of proclerical monarchists. Although Juarez's troops took Mexico City in January 1861, guerilla warfare continued to the north of the capital. Joan Haslip, Imperial Adventurer: Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (London, 1971), 146—50, 155. or whether it shall become like old Spain, the mother of Mexico,
and by folly and cruelty part with its renown among the nations of the earth,
and spend the next seventy years in vainly attempting to regain what it has
lost in the space of this one slaveholding rebellion.2Revolutions against Spanish rule over most of Latin America began in 1810, during the Napoleonic invasion of the mother country, and continued until 1824, when the last royalist army on the continent was defeated at Ayacucho in Peru. Of Spain's great empire in the Western Hemisphere only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained. In later years Spain made several attempts to enlist the support of other European powers for a reconquest of its American colonies. On her own, Spain occasionally intervened militarily in the affairs of the newly independent states. In the same year as Douglass’s speech, Spanish expeditions were landed in Mexico, Peru, and Santo Domingo. John Edwin Fagg, Latin America: A General History, 2d. ed. (New York, 1969), 326—72, 394, 415—16, 424, 513— 15; Hubert Clinton Herring, A History of Latin America from the Beginnings to the Present, 3d ed. (New York, 1968), 247-76, 301, 320-21, 445, 597, 905—07.
Looking thus at the state of the country, I know of no better use to
which I can put this sacred day, I know of no higher duty resting upon me,
than to enforce my views and convictions, and especially to hold out to
reprobation, the short sighted and ill judged, and inefficient modes adopted
to suppress the rebels. The past may be dismissed with a single word. The
claims of our fathers upon our memory, admiration and gratitude, are
founded in the fact that they wisely, and bravely, and successfully met the
crisis of their day. And if the men of this generation would deserve well of
posterity they must like their fathers, discharge the duties and respon-
sibilities of their age.
Men have strange notions now[a]days as to the manner of showing
their respect for the heroes of the past. They every where prefer the form to
the substance, the seeming to the real. One of our Generals, and some of
our editors seem to think that the fathers are honored by guarding a well,
from which those fathers may have taken water, or the house in which they
may have passed a single night, while our sick soldiers need pure water,
and are dying in the open fields for water and shelter.3In the spring of 1862, during his attempt to march on Richmond by way of the peninsula between the York and James rivers. Union general George B. McClellan strictly enforced War Department orders prohibiting pillage. Douglass here describes the protection of property at White House Landing, on the Pamunkey River in New Kent County, Virginia, where McClellan established his headquarters in mid-May 1862. At that time, White House plantation, once the residence of George Washington‘s wife, Martha Dandridge Custis, was owned by the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Henry J. Raymond, covering the Peninsula campaign for the New York Times, approved the use of guards at White House: “It is a very small price to pay out of respect to the memory of Washington." According to Raymond, White House was too small to be used as a hospital and its well was guarded merely “to prevent its being exhausted by overdrafts; the water is used by the soldiers constantly, although excellent water is abundant and much more accessible." He thought Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's order to remove the guards from White House “very foolish” and feared that “we shall now get the reputation of being utterly reckless of Washington and his memory." Although Lee’s wife acknowledged “the care with which [the property] has been protected," the house was burned when McClellan's troops resumed their advance on Richmond late in June. Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army (Garden City, N.Y., 1951), 118; Long, Civil War Day by Day, 212—13; Hassler, General George B. McClellan, 108; Eckenrode and Bryan, George B. McClellan, 56; Minnie Kendall Lowther, Mount Vernon: Its Children, Its Romances, Its Allied Families and Mansions (Chicago,1923), 274—79; New York Times, 24 June 1862; Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, 25 June 1862; NASS, 7, 28 June 1862. This is not honoring,
but dishonoring your noble dead. Nevertheless, I would not even in words
do violence to the grand events, and thrilling associations, that gloriously
cluster around the birth of our national Independence. There is no need of
any such violence. The thought of to-day and the work of to-day, are alike
linked, and interlinked with the thought and work of the past. The conflict
between liberty and slavery, between civilization and barbarism, between
enlightened progress and stolid indifference and inactivity is the same in all
countries, in all ages, and among all peoples. Your fathers drew the sword
for free and independent Government, Republican in its form, Democratic
in its spirit, to be administered by officers duly elected by the free and
unbought suffrages of the people; and the war of to-day on the part of the
loyal north, the east and the west, is waged for the same grand and all
commanding objects. We are only continuing the tremendous struggle,
which your fathers, and my fathers began eighty-six years ago. Thus
identifying the present with the past, I propose to consider the great present
question, uppermost and all absorbing in all minds and hearts throughout
the land.
I shall speak to you of the origin, the nature, the objects of this war, the
manner of conducting, and its possible and probable results.
ORIGIN OF THE WAR.
It is hardly necessary at this very late day of this war, and in view of all
the discussion through the press and on the platform which has transpired
concerning it, to enter now upon any elaborate enquiry or explanation as to
whence came this foul and guilty attempt to break up and destroy the
national Government. All but the willfully blind or the malignantly trai-
torous, know and confess that this whole movement, which now so largely
distracts the country, and threatens ruin to the nation, has its root and its
sap, its trunk and its branches, and the bloody fruit it bears only from the
one source of all abounding abomination, and that is slavery. It has sprung
out of a malign selfishness and a haughty and imperious pride which only
the practice of the most hateful oppression and cruelty could generate and
develop. No ordinary love of gain, no ordinary love of power, could have
stirred up this terrible revolt. The legitimate objects of property, such as
houses, lands, fruits of the earth. the products of art, science and invention,
powerful as they are, could never have stirred and kindled this malignant
flame, and set on fire this rebellious fury. The monster was brought to its
birth, by pride, lust and cruelty which could not brook the sober restraints
of law, order and justice. The monster publishes its own parentage. Grim
and hideous as this rebellion is, its shocking practices, digging up the
bones of our dead soldiers slain in battle, making drinking vessels out of
their skulls, drumsticks out of their arm bones, slaying our wounded sol-
diers on the field of carnage, when their gaping wounds appealed piteously
for mercy, poisoning wells, firing upon unarmed men, stamp it with all the
horrid characteristics of the bloody and barbarous system and society from
which it derived its life.
Of course you know, and I know that there have been and still are,
certain out of the way places here at the north, where rebels, in the smooth
disguise of loyal men. do meet and promulgate a very opposite explanation
of the origin of this war, and that grave attempts have been made to refute
their absurd theories. I once heard Hon. Edward Everett entertain a large
audience by a lengthy and altogether unnecessary argument to prove that
the south did not revolt on account of the fishing bounty paid to northern
fishermen. nor because of any inequalities or discriminations in the reve-
nue laws.4On 4 July 1861 Edward Everett delivered an address entitled “The Questions of the Day" toan audience at the Academy of Music in New York City. Everett concluded that “more money was expended by the United States in removing the Indians from Georgia, eight or ten times as much was expended for the same object in Florida, as has been paid for Fishing Bounties [to northem fishermen] in seventy years. " Everett noted that the existing revenue law, a “policy, now put forward as one of the acts of Northern oppression, which justify the South in flying to arms," was framed in response to requests from merchants in Baltimore, Maryland, and Charleston, South Carolina, and not from those in northern states. Everett, Orations and Speeches, 4: 376-79, 382-83. It was the Irishman’s gun aimed at nothing and hitting it every
time. Yet the audience seemed pleased with the learning and skill of the
orator, and I among the number, though I hope to avoid his bad example in
the use of time.
There is however one false theory of the origin of the war to which a
moment’s reply may be properly given here. It is this. The abolitionists by
their insane and unconstitutional attempt to abolish slavery, have brought
on the war. All that class of men who opposed what they were pleased to
call coercion at the first, and a vigorous prosecution of the war at the
present, charge the war directly to the abolitionists. In answer to this
charge. I lay down this rule as a basis to which all candid men will assent.
Whatever is said or done by any class of citizens, strictly in accordance
with rights guaranteed by the constitution, cannot be fairly charged as
against the union, or as inciting to a dissolution of the Union.
Now the slaveholders came into the union with their eyes wide open,
subject to a constitution wherein the right to be abolitionists was sacredly
guaranteed to all the people. They knew that slavery was to take its chance
with all other evils against the power of free speech, and national en-
lightenment. They came on board the national ship subject to these condi-
tions, they signed the articles after having duly read them, and the fact that
those rights, plainly written, have been exercised is no apology whatever
for the slaveholders’ mutiny and their attempt to lay piratical hands on the
ship, and its officers. When therefore I hear a man denouncing abolitionists
on account of the war, I know that I am listening to a man who either does
not know what he is talking about, or to one who is a traitor in disguise.
THE NATURE OF THE REBELLION.
There is something quite distinct and quite individual in the nature and
character of this rebellion. In its motives and objects it stands entirely
alone, in the annals of great social disturbances. Rebellion is no new thing
under the sun. The best governments in the world are liable to these terrible
social disorders. All countries have experienced them. Generally however,
rebellions are quite respectable in the eyes of the world, and very properly
so. They naturally command the sympathy of mankind, for generally they
are on the side of progress. They would overthrow and remove some old
and festering abuse not to be otherwise disposed of, and introduce a higher
civilization, and a larger measure of liberty among men. But this rebellion
is in no wise analogous to such. The pronounced and damning peculiarity
of the present rebellion, is found in the fact, that it was conceived, under-
taken, planned, and persevered in, for the guilty purpose of handing down
to the latest generations the accursed system of human bondage. Its leaders
have plainly told us by words as well as by deeds, that they are fighting for
slavery. They have been stirred to this perfidious revolt, by a certain deep
and deadly hate, which they warmly cherish toward every possible contra-
diction of slavery whether found in theory or in practice. For this cause
they hate free society, free schools, free states, free speech, the freedom
asserted in the declaration of independence, and guaranteed in the constitu-
tion. Herein is the whole secret of the rebellion. The plan is and was to
withdraw the slave system from the hated light of liberty, and from the
natural operations of free principles. While the slaveholders could hold the
reins of government they could and did pervert the free principles of the
constitution to slavery, and could afford to continue in the union, but when
they saw that they could no longer control the union as they had done for
sixty years before, they appealed to the sword and struck for a government
which should forever shut out all light from the southern conscience, and
all hope of Emancipation from the southern slave. This rebellion therefore,
has no point of comparison with that which has brought liberty to America,
or with those of Europe, which have been undertaken from time to time, to
throw off the galling yoke of despotism. It stands alone in its infamy.
Our slaveholding rebels with an impudence only belonging to them-
selves, have sometimes compared themselves to Washington, Jefferson,
and the long list of worthies who led in the revolution of 1776, when in fact
they would hang either of those men if they were now living, as traitors to
slavery, because, they each and all, considered the system an evil.
THE CONFLICT UNAVOIDABLE.
I hold that this conflict is the logical and inevitable result of a long and
persistent course of national transgression. Once in a while you will meet
with men who will tell you that this war ought to have been avoided. In
telling you this, they only make the truth serve the place and perform the
office of a lie. I too say that this war ought never to have taken place. The
combustible material which has produced this terrible explosion ought
long ago to have been destroyed. For thirty years the abolitionists have
earnestly sought to remove this guilty cause of our troubles. There was a
time when this might have been done,. and the nation set in permanent
safety. Opportunities have not been wanting. They have passed by unim-
proved. They have sometimes been of a character to suggest the very work
which might have saved us from all the dreadful calamities, the horrors and
bloodshed, of this war. Events, powerful orators, have eloquently pleaded
with the American people to put away the hateful slave system. For doing
this great work we have had opportunities innumerable. One of these was
presented upon the close of the war for Independence; the moral sentiment
of the country was purified by that great struggle for national life. At that
time slavery was young and small, the nation might have easily abolished
it, and thus relieved itself forever of this alien element, the only disturbing
and destructive force in our republican system of Government. Again there
was another opportunity, for putting away this evil in 1789, when we
assembled to form the Constitution of the United States. At that time the
anti-slavery sentiment was strong both in church and State, and many
believed that by giving slavery no positive recognition in the Constitution
and providing for the abolition of the slave trade, they had given slavery its
death blow already. They made the great mistake of supposing that the
existence of the slave trade was necessary to the existence of slavery, and
having provided that the slave trade should cease, they flattered them-
selves, that slavery itself must also speedily cease. They did not com-
prehend the radical character of the evil. Then again in 1819 the Missouri
question gave us another opportunity to seal the doom of the slave system,
by simply adhering to the early policy ofthe fathers and sternly refusing the
admission of another State into the Union with a Constitution tolerating
slavery. Had this been done in the case of Missouri, we should not now be
cursed with this terrible rebellion. Slavery would have fallen into gradual
decay. The moral sentiment ofthe country, instead of being vitiated as it is.
would have been healthy and strong against the slave system. Political
parties and politicians would not as they have done since, courted the slave
power for votes and thus increased the importance of slavery.
THE FIRST PALPABLE DEPARTURE FROM RIGHT POLICY.
The date of the Missouri Compromise forms the beginning of that
political current which has swept us on to this rebellion, and made the
conflict unavoidable. From this dark date in our nation's history, there
started forth a new political and social power. Until now slavery had been
on its knees, only asking time to die in peace. But the Missouri Compro-
mise gave it a new lease of life. It became at once a tremendous power. The
line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, at once stamped itself upon our
national politics, our morals, manners, character and religion. From this
time there was a south side to everything American, and the country was at
once subjected to the slave power, a power as restless and vigilant as the
eye of an escaping murderer. We became under its sway an illogical
nation. Pure and simple truth lost its attraction for us. We became a nation
of Compromisers.
It is curious to remark the similarity of national, to individual demor-
alization. A man sets out in life with honest principles and with high
purposes inspired at the family hearthstone, and for a time steadily and
scrupulously keeps them in view. But at last under the influence of some
powerful temptation he is induced to violate his principles and push aside
his sense of right. The water for the first moment is smooth about him. but
soon he finds himself in the rapids. He has lost his footing. The broad
flood, resistless as the power of fate, sweeps him onward, from bad to
worse, he becomes more hardened, blind and shameless in his crimes till
he is overtaken by dire calamity, and at last sinks to ruin. Precisely this has
been the case with the American people. No people ever entered upon the
pathway of nations, with higher and grander ideas of justice, liberty and
humanity than ourselves. There are principles in the Declaration of Inde-
pendence which would release every slave in the world and prepare the
earth for a millenium of righteousness and peace. But alas! we have seen
that declaration intended to be viewed like some colossal statue at the
loftiest altitude, by the broad eye ofthe whole world, meanly subjected to a
microscopic examination and its glorious universal truths craftily per-
verted into seeming falsehoods. Instead of treating it, as it was intended to
be treated, as a full and comprehensive declaration of the equal and sacred
rights of mankind, our contemptible negro-hating and slaveholding critics,
have endeavored to turn it into absurdity by treating it as a declaration of
the equality of man in his physical proportions and mental endowments.
This gross and scandalous perversion of the true intents and meaning of the
declaration did not long stand alone. It was soon followed by the heartless
dogma. that the rights declared in that instrument did not apply to any but
white men. The slave power at last succeeded, in getting this doctrine
proclaimed from the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. It
was there decided that “all men” only means some men, and those white
men. And all this in face ofthe fact. that white people only form one fifth of
the whole human family—and that some who pass for white are nearly as
black as your humble speaker. While all this was going on, lawyers, priests
and politicians were at work upon national prejudice against the colored
man. They raised the cry and put it into the mouth of the ignorant, and
vulgar and narrow minded, that “this is the white man’s country,” and
other cries which readily catch the ear of the crowd. This popular method
of dealing with an oppressed people has while crushing the blacks, corrup-
ted and demoralized the whites. It has cheered on the slave power, in-
creased its pride and pretension. till ripe for the foulest treason against the
life of the nation. Slavery. that was before the Missouri Compromise
couchant, on its knees, asking meekly to be let alone within its own limits
to die, became in a few years after rampant, throttling free speech, fighting
friendly Indians, annexing Texas, warring with Mexico, kindling with
malicious hand the fires of war and bloodshed on the virgin soil of Kansas,
and finally threatening to pull down the pillars of the Republic, if you
Northern men should dare vote in accordance with your constitutional and
political convictions. You know the history. I will not dwell upon it. What
I have said, will suffice to indicate the point at which began the downward
career of the Republic. It will be seen that it began by bartering away an
eternal principle of right for present peace. We undertook to make slavery
the full equal of Liberty, and to place it on the same footing of political
right with Liberty. It was by permitting the dishonor of the Declaration of
Independence, denying the rights of human nature to the man of color, and
by yielding to the extravagant pretensions, set up by the slaveholder under
the plausible color of State rights. In a word it was by reversing the wise
and early policy of the nation, which was to confine slavery to its original
limits, and thus leave the system to die out under the gradual operation of
the principles of the constitution and the spirit ofthe age. Ten years had not
elapsed, after this compromise, when the demon disunion lifted its ugly
front, in the shape of nullification. The plotters of this treason, undertook
the work of disunion at that time as an experiment. They took the tariff, as
the basis of action. The tariff was selected, not that it was the real object.
but on the wisdom of the barber, who trains his green hands on wooden
heads before allowing them to handle the razor on the faces of living men.
You know the rest. The experiment did not succeed. Those who at-
tempted it were thirty years before their time. There was no BUCHANAN in
the Presidential chair, and no COBBS, and FLOYDS in the Cabinet. CAL-
HOUN5James Buchanan, Howell Cobb, John B. Floyd. and John C. Calhoun. and his treasonable associates were promptly assured, on the high-
est authority that their exit out of the Union was possible only by one way
and that by way of the Gallows. They were defeated, but not permanently.
They dropped the tariff and openly adopted slavery as the ostensible, as
well as the real ground of disunion. After thirty years of persistent pre-
paratory effort, they have been able under the fostering care of a traitorous
Democratic President, to inaugurate at last this enormous rebellion. I will
not stop here to pour out loyal indignation on that arch traitor, who while he
could find power in the Constitution to hunt down innocent men all over the
North for violating the thrice accursed fugitive slave Bill, could find no
power in the Constitution to punish slaveholding traitors and rebels, bent
upon the destruction of the Government. That bad old man is already
receiving a taste of the punishment due to his crimes. To live amid all the
horrors, resulting from his treachery is of itself a terrible punishment. He
lives without his country’s respect. He lives a despised old man. He is no
doubt still a traitor, but a traitor without power, a serpent without fangs.
and in the agony of his torture and helplessness will probably welcome the
moment which shall remove him from the fiery vision of a betrayed and
half ruined country.
THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR.
To-day we have to deal not with dead traitors, such as James
Buchanan, Howell Cobb, Floyd, Thompson6Jacob Thompson (1810-85) was born in Leesburg, North Carolina, and educated at the University of North Carolina. After a law career, he represented Mississippi for twelve years in Congress (1839—51). Thompson held the post of secretary of the interior in Buchanan's cabinet before joining the Confederate army as inspector general. Sobel, Biographical Directory of the Executive Branch, 330; ACAB, 6: 91; NCAB, 18: 459-60. and others, but with a class
of men incomparably more dangerous to the country. They are our weak,
paltering and incompetent rulers in the Cabinet at Washington and our
rebel worshipping Generals in the field, the men who sacrifice the brave
loyal soldiers of the North by thousands, while refusing to employ the
black man’s arm in suppressing the rebels, for fear of exasperating these
rebels: men who never interfere with the orders of Generals, unless those
orders strike at slavery, the heart of the Rebellion. These are the men to
whom we have a duty to discharge to-day, when the country is bleeding at
every pore, and when disasters thick and terrible convert this national festal
day, into a day of alarm and mourning. I do not underrate the power of the
rebels, nor the vastness of the work required for suppressing them. Jeffer-
son Davis is a powerful man, but Jefferson Davis has no such power to
blast the hope and break down the strong heart of this nation, as that
possessed and exercised by ABRAHAM LINCOLN. With twenty millions of
men behind him, with wealth and resources at his command such as might
pride the heart of the mightiest monarch of Europe, and with a cause which
kindles in every true heart the fires of valor and patriotism, we have a right
to hold Abraham Lincoln, sternly responsible for any disaster or failure
attending the suppression of this rebellion. I hold that the rebels can do us
no serious harm, unless it is done through the culpable weakness, im-
becility or unfaithfulness of those who are charged with the high duty, of
seeing that the Supreme Law of the land is everywhere enforced and
obeyed. Common sense will confess that five millions ought not to be a
match for twenty millions. I know of nothing in the mettle of the
slaveholder which should make him superior in any of the elements of a
warrior to an honest Northern man. One slaveholder ought not longer to be
allowed to maintain the boast that he is equal to three Northern men: and
yet that boast will not be entirely empty, if we allow those five millions
much longer to thwart all our efforts to put them down. It will be most
mortifyingly shown that after all our appliances, our inventive genius, our
superior mechanical skill, our great industry, our muscular energy, our
fertility in strategy, our vast powers of endurance, our overwhelming
numbers, and admitted bravery, that the eight or ten rebel slave States,
sparsely populated, and shut out from the world by our possession of the
sea, are invincible to the arms, of the densely populated, and every way
powerful twenty free States. I repeat, these rebels can do nothing against
us, cannot harm a single hair of the national head, if the men at Wash-
ington, the President and Cabinet, and the commanding Generals in the
field will but earnestly do their most obvious duty. I repeat Jeff. Davis and
his malignant slaveholding Republic, can do this union no harm except by
the permission of the reigning powers at Washington.
I am quite aware that some who hear me will question the wisdom of
any criticisms upon the conduct of this war at this time and will censure me
for making them. I do not dread those censures. I have on many occasions,
since the war began, held my breath when even the stones of the street
would seem to cry out. I can do so no longer. I believe in the absence of
martial law, a citizen may properly express an opinion as to the manner in
which our Government has conducted, and is still conducting this war. I
hold that it becomes this country, the men who have to shed their blood and
pour out their wealth to sustain the Government at this crisis, to look very
sharply into the movements of the men who have our destiny in their hands.
Theoretically this is a responsible Government. Practically it can be
made the very reverse. Experience demonstrates that our safety as a nation
depends upon our holding every officer of the nation strictly responsible to
the people for the faithful performance of duty. This war has developed
among other bad tendencies, a tendency to shut our eyes to the mistakes
and blunders of those in power. When the President has avowed a policy,
sanctioned a measure, or commended a general, we have been told that his
action must be treated as final. I scout this assumption. A doctrine more
slavish and abject than this does not obtain under the walls of St. Peter’s.7Douglass alludes to the Roman Catholic Church.
Even in the Rebel States, the Confederate Government is sharply crit-
icized, and Jefferson Davis is held to a rigid responsibility. There is no
reason of right or of sound policy for a different course towards the Federal
Government. Our rulers are the agents of the people. They are fallible men.
They need instruction from the people, and it is no evidence of a factious
disposition that any man presumes to condemn a public measure if in his
judgment that measure is opposed to the public good.
This is already an old war. The statesmanship at Washington with all
its admitted wisdom and sagacity. utterly failed for a long time to com-
prehend the nature and extent of this rebellion. Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet
will have by and by to confess with many bitter regrets, that they have been
equally blind and mistaken as to the true method of dealing with the rebels.
They have fought the rebels with the Olive branch. The people must teach
them to fight them with the sword. They have sought to conciliate obe-
dience. The people must teach them to compel obedience.
There are many men connected with the stupendous work of suppress-
ing this slaveholding rebellion, and it is the right of the American people to
keep a friendly and vigilant eye upon them all, but there are three men in
the nation, from whose conduct the attention of the people should never be
withdrawn: The first is President Lincoln, the Commander in chief of the
army and navy. The single word of this man can set a million of armed men
in motion: He can make and unmake generals, can lift up or cast down
at will. The other two men are MCCLELLAN, AND HALLECK.8George B. McClellan and Henry W. Halleck. Between
these two men nearly a half a million of your brave and loyal sons are
divided. The one on the Potomac and the other on the Mississippi. They are
the two extended arms of the nation, stretched out to save the Union.
Are those two men loyal? are they in earnest? are they competent? We
have a right, and it is our duty to make these inquiries, and report and act in
reference to them according to the truth.
Whatever may be said of the loyalty or competency of McClellan, I am
fully persuaded by his whole course that he is not in earnest against the
rebels, that he is to-day, as heretofore, in war, as in peace a real pro-slavery
Democrat. His whole course proves that his sympathies are with the rebels,
and that his ideas of the crisis make him unfit for the place he holds. He
kept the army of the Potomac standing still on that river, marching and
countermarching, giving show parades during six months. He checked and
prevented every movement which was during that time proposed against
the rebels East and West.
Bear in mind the fact that this is a slaveholding rebellion, bear in mind
that slavery is the very soul and life of all the vigor which the rebels have
thus far been able to throw into their daring attempt to overthrow and ruin
this country. Bear in mind that in time of war, it is the right and duty of each
belligerent to adopt that course which will strengthen himself and weaken
his enemy.
Bear in mind also that nothing could more directly and powerfully tend
to break down the rebels, and put an end to the struggle than the Insurrec-
tion or the running away of a large body of their slaves, and then, read
General McClellan’s proclamation, declaring that any attempt at a rising of
the slaves against their rebel masters would be put down, and put down
with an iron hand.9Douglass refers to the proclamation “To the Union Men of Western Virginia," issued from Cincinnati, Ohio, on 26 May 1861 by General McClellan when he sent troops into the western part of Virginia to suppress Confederate military activity. The proclamation pledged: “Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors to induce you to believe our advent among you will be signalized by an interference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly; not only will we abstain from all such interference, but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand, crush any attempt at insurrection on their part." New York Times, 30 May 1861. Let it be observed too, that it has required the interven-
tion of Congress, by repeated resolutions to prevent this General from
converting the Army of the Potomac from acting as the slave dogs of the
rebels, and that even now while our army are compelled to drink water
from muddy swamps, and from the Pamunky river, forbidden by George
B. McClellan to take pure water from the Rebel General LEE’s well. Let it
be understood that Northern loyal soldiers, have been compelled by the
orders of this same General, to keep guard over the property of a leading
rebel, because of a previous understanding between the loyal, and the
traitor General. Bear in mind the fact that this General has, in deference to
the slaveholding rebels, forbidden the singing of anti-slavery songs in his
camp,10On 14 January 1862, the secretary of war's office issued a permit to the Hutchinson Family, allowing the singers to perform in the camps of the Army of the Potomac, then in its winter quarters near Alexandria, Virginia. On 17 January the Hutchinsons performed their first concert, attended largely by the First Regiment of New Jersey Volunteers. When hisses from the audience greeted their musical rendition of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, an officer rose and threatened to evict anyone who disrupted the performance. Jumping to his feet, a camp surgeon, outraged that “those who have been identified with abolitionism—and its rabid followers" should “stir up those troubles here," dared the officer to evict him and sent for pistols to defend himself. Although an army chaplain managed to restore order, W. B. Franklin, the division commander, later ordered the Hutchinsons to give him a copy ofthe Whittier poem. “I pronounce that [poem] incendiary," Franklin advised the chaplain. "If these people are allowed to go on, they will demoralize the army." Franklin thereupon revoked the singers' pass and informed McClellan of his decision. McClellan would allow the concerts to continue only if no abolitionist melodies were included in the program. The Hutchinsons gave no more concerts and left the camp. William S. Myers, A Study in Personality: General George Brinton McClellan (New York, 1934), 236-39; John W. Hutchinson, The Story of the Hutchinsons, 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 1: 381—91. and you will learn that this General’s ideas of the demands of the
hour are most miserably below the mark, and unfit him for the place he
fills. Take another fact into account, General McClellan is at this moment
the favorite General of the Richardsons,11William Alexander Richardson (1811-75) was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, and educated at Transylvania University in Lexington. In 1831 he commenced the practice of law in Illinois. Within two years the Illinois legislature elected him state's attorney for his district, a position he held until 1835, after which he served as a Democratic state representative (1836-38) and senator (1838-42). During the Mexican War, Richardson rose to the rank of major on the basis of meritorious performance at the Battle of Buena Vista. After the war Richardson again returned to politics and successfully obtained the congressional seat vacated by Stephen Douglas. Richardson remained in Congress until 1856 when he resigned to seek the governorship. Unsuccessful in that endeavor, he resumed his law practice and devoted his efforts to Douglas and the Democratic party. In 1861 he was again elected congressman from Illinois and served in that capacity until 1863 when he became U.S. senator. A leading Peace Democrat, Richardson chastised the Lincoln administration for prolonging the war in order to abolish slavery and called for an immediate reconciliation between the North and the South. Richardson retired from public office in 1865. Robert D. Holt, “The Political Career of William A. Richardson," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 26: 222—69 (October 1933); BDAC, 1518; ACAB, 5: 244. the Ben Woods,12Benjamin Wood (1820-90) was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and became a merchant in New York City in the 1850s. The younger brother of New York City mayor Fernando Wood, he participated in local Democratic party politics. In 1860 Wood purchased the New York Daily News and acted as its editor. From 1861 to 1865, he served in the U.S. Congress. where he was a leading opponent of the Civil War. In 1867 Wood converted the Daily News into an evening journal that eventually attained the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United States. Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868 (New York, 1977), 133; ACAB, 6: 592-93; DAB, 20: 456—57. the Vallan-
dighams,13Clement Laird Vallandigham (1820-71), Ohio lawyer, editor, and politician, was one of the most controversial figures of the Civil War era. Born in New Lisbon, Ohio, and educated at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, Vallandigham was elected as a Democrat to the Ohio legislature in 1845 and to the House of Representatives in 1856, 1858, and 1860. During the secession crisis, Vallandigham staunchly opposed the Lincoln administration by calling for a reconciliation with the South on any terms. Vallandigham's vehement opposition to military conscription and his advocacy of a negotiated peace led to his arrest and conviction in May 1863 for treasonous activity. He was sentenced to be incarcerated at Fort Warren in Boston harbor, but President Lincoln intervened and banished him to the Confederacy. While in exile, Vallandigham unsuccessfully campaigned for the Ohio govemorship. In 1864 he returned to Ohio to lead the Peace Democrats and wrote an antiwar plank of his party's national platform. After the Civil War, Vallandigham failed to mount a political comeback, and so he returned to his law practice. Frank L. Klement, The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham & The Civil War (Lexington, Ky., 1970); ACAB, 6: 227—28; DAB, 19: 143—45. and the whole school of pro-slavery Buchanan politicians of
the north, and that he is reported in the Richmond Dispatch, to have said
that he hated to war upon Virginia, and that he would far rather war against
Massachusetts.14In a critical editorial, the Richmond Daily Dispatch stated that following the Battle of Rich Mountain, “both McClellan and Rosecrans declared to Confederate officers, who were prisoners of War, that they had much rather be leading an army against Massachusetts than Virginia." The editorial chastised McClellan for being “a man that will serve any cause which pays well, and always the cause which pays best—a man that puts his honor and his conscience alike in his pocket, and offers himself to the highest bidder." The writer concluded: “Is it possible to conceive a character more thoroughly mercenary?" Richmond (Va.) Daily Dispatch, 11 June 1862. This statement of the Richmond Dispatch in itself is not
worth much, but if we find as I think we do find, in General McClellan’s
every movement an apparent reluctance to strike at Virginia rebels, we
may well fear that his words have been no better than his deeds. Again,
take the battles fought by him and under his order, and in every instance the
rebels have been able to claim a victory, and to show as many prisoners and
spoils taken as we. At Ball’s Bluff, McClellan’s first battle on the Poto-
mac, it is now settled, that our troops were marched up only to be slaugh-
tered. Nine hundred and thirty of our brave northern soldiers were deliber-
ately murdered, as much so as if they had each been stabbed, bayonetted.
shot, or otherwise killed when asleep by some midnight assassin, for they
were so ordered and handled, that they were perfectly harmless to their
deadly foes, and helpless in their own defense.15The casualty figures for the Union forces at Ball's Bluff, Virginia, were 49 killed, 158 wounded, and 714 missing for a total of 921. Many of the missing drowned during the Union retreat across the river. Long, Civil War Day by Day, 129. Then the battle of Seven
Pines, where General Casey’s16Silas Casey (1807-82), born in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, spent most of his life in the U.S. Army. After graduation from the U.S. Military Academy, Casey served on the frontier and participated in the Second Seminole War (1837-42). Twice brevetted for distinguished service in the Mexican War, he commanded the Puget Sound District, Washington Territory, in 1856—57. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Casey was recalled to Washington, D.C., where he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and charged with organizing the volunteer forces around the capital. He was subsequently given command of a division in the Army of the Potomac and was promoted to both brigadier general in the regular army and major general of volunteers for meritorious conduct during the first Confederate attack at Seven Pines, or Fair Oaks (31 May—1June 1862). Between 1863 and 1865 Casey presided over the examining board for officers of black troops. He retired from active service in July 1868. Clifford Dowdey,The Seven Days: The Emergence of Lee (Boston, 1964), 94—95, 97, 99; ACAB, 1: 550-51; NCAB, 4: 279; DAB, 3: 560. Division was pushed out like an extended
finger four miles beyond the lines of our army. towards the rebels, as if for
no other purpose than to be cut to pieces or captured by the rebels. and then
the haste with which this same Division was censured by Gen. Mc-
Clellan,17In the Battle of Seven Pines, or Fair Oaks (31 May-1 June 1862), McClellan's Army of the Potomac repulsed a Confederate attack led by General Joseph E. Johnston. Receiving the brunt of the first Confederate onslaught was the division commanded by General Silas Casey. Both sides suffered heavy casualties as a result of the two-day battle: Confederate losses totaled 6,314 out of approximately 42,000 troops, while the Union army experienced 5,031 casualties, also out of 42,000 effectives. McClellan was initially displeased with Casey's performance, concluding that his division had “given way without proper resistance . . . ‘unaccountably and discreditably.'" Upon further investigation of the battle, however, McClellan determined that Casey's division had performed well. Long, Civil War Day by Day, 218-20; George B. McClellan, Report on the Organization and Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac: To Which Is Added an Account of the Campaign in Western Virginia, With Plans of Battle-fields (New York, 1864), 222. are facts looking all the same way. This is only one class of
facts. They are not the only facts, nor the chief ones that shake my faith in
the General of the Army of the Potomac.
Unquestionably, Time is the mightiest ally that the rebels can rely on.
Every month they can hold out against the Government gives them power
at home, and prestige abroad, and increases the probabilities of final suc-
cess. Time favors foreign intervention, time favors heavy taxation upon
the loyal people, time favors reaction, and a clamor for peace. Time favors
fevers, and pestilence, wasting and destroying our army. Therefore time,
time is the great ally of the rebels.
Now I undertake to say that General McClellan has from the beginning
so handled the Army of the Potomac as to give the rebels the grand advan-
tage of time. From the time he took command of the Potomac army in
August 1861 until now, he has been the constant cause of delay, and
probably would not have moved when he did, but that he was compelled to
move or be removed. Then behold his movement. He moved upon Man-
assas when the enemy had been gone from there seven long days. When he
gets there he is within sixty miles of Richmond. Does he go on? Oh! no, but
he just says hush, to the press and the people. I am going to do something
transcendentally brilliant in strategy. Three weeks pass away, and know-
ing ones wink and smile as much as to say you will see something wonder-
ful soon. And so indeed we do; at the end of three weeks we find that
General McClellan has actually marched back from Manassas to the Poto-
mac, gotten together an endless number of vessels at a cost of untold
millions, to transport his troops to Yorktown, where he is just as near to
Richmond and not a bit nearer than he was just three weeks before, and
where he is opposed by an army every way as strongly posted as any he
could have met with by marching straight to Richmond from Manassas.
Here we have two hundred and thirty thousand men moved to attack empty
fortifications, and moved back again.
Now what is the state of facts concerning the nearly four months of
campaign between the James and the York Rivers? The first is that Rich-
mond is not taken, and in all the battles yet fought. the rebels have claimed
them as victories. We have lost between thirty and forty thousand men, and
the general impression is that there is an equal chance that our army will be
again repulsed before Richmond. and driven away.18Under direct order from the Lincoln administration to launch an offensive with the Army of the Potomac. General George B. McClellan in March 1862 commenced a campaign to dislodge the Confederates from the Potomac batteries near Manassas, Virginia. The Confederates, however, had already secretly withdrawn from the batteries. McClellan then embarked on a campaign, lasting from 4 April to 1 July 1862, to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond by advancing up the peninsula created by the James and York rivers. Arriving at Fortress Monroe with some 112,000 troops, McClellan advanced eighteen miles before being stopped by the Confederates outside Yorktown. On 4 May the Confederates retreated to Richmond. Although McClellan took up a position outside Richmond and his forces significantly outnumbered the rebel army, he refused to launch an attack, preferring instead to wait for reinforcements. Meanwhile, the combined Confederate forces of Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson attacked McClellan on 26 June. The Seven Days battles (25 June—1 July), of which that was part, resulted in the Federal forces being driven back twenty miles to the James River at Harrison's Landing. During McClellan's entire Peninsula campaign his troops suffered approximately 20,000 to 25,000 casualties. Hanson, Bull Run Remembers, 81; Reed, Combined Operations, 119-22; Myers, Study in Personality, 294-302; Long, Civil War Day by Day, 180, 192—93, 196, 202, 206—07, 218-20, 225—27, 230-38.
You may not go the length that I do, in regard to Gen. McClellan, at
this time, but I feel quite sure that this country will yet come to the
conclusion that Geo. B. McClellan, is either a cold-blooded Traitor, or that
he is an unmitigated military Impostor. He has shown no heart in his
conduct, except when doing something directly in favor of the rebels, such
as guarding their persons and property and offering his service to suppress
with an iron hand any attempt on the part of the slaves against their rebel
masters.
THE POLICY OF THE ADMINISTRATION.
I come now to the policy of President Lincoln in reference to slavery.
An Administration without a policy, is confessedly an administration with-
out brains, since while a thing is to be done, it implies a known way to do it
and he who professes his ability to do it, but cannot show how it is to be
done, confesses his own imbecility. I do not undertake to say that the
present administration has no policy, but if it has, the people have a right to
know what it is, and to approve or disapprove of it as they shall deem it
wise or unwise.
Now the policy of an administration can be learned in two ways. The
first by what it says, and the second by what it does, and the last is far more
certain and reliable, than the first. It is by what President Lincoln has done
in reference to slavery, since he assumed the reins of government that we
are to know what he is likely to do, and deems best to do in the premises.
We all know how he came into power. He was elected and inaugurated as
the representative of the anti-slavery policy of the Republican party. He
had laid down and maintained the doctrine that Liberty and Slavery were
the great antagonistic political elements in this country. That the Union of
these States could not long continue half free and half slave, that they must
in the end be all free or all slave.
In the conflict between these two elements he arrayed himself on the
side of freedom, and was elected with a view to the ascendancy of free
principles. Now what has been the tendency of his acts since he became
Commander in chief of the army and navy? I do not hesitate to say, that
whatever may have been his intentions, the action of President Lincoln has
been calculated in a marked and decided way to shield and protect slavery
from the very blows which its horrible crimes have loudly and persistently
invited. He has scornfully rejected the policy of arming the slaves, a policy
naturally suggested and enforced by the nature and necessities of the war.
He has steadily refused to proclaim, as he had the constitutional and moral
right to proclaim, complete emancipation to all the slaves of rebels who
should make their way into the lines of our army. He has repeatedly
interfered with, and arrested the anti-slavery policy of some of his most
earnest and reliable generals. He has assigned to the most important posi-
tions, generals who are notoriously pro-slavery, and hostile to the party
and principles which raised him to power. He has permitted rebels to
recapture their runaway slaves in sight of the capital.19In the early stages of the Civil War, the return of fugitive slaves to their owners from behind the Union lines was a common practice. General Robert C. Schenck, in the Department of Northeastern Virginia, instructed his subordinates that his camps “will not be permitted while I have command to be made a harbor for escaping fugitives . . . [they] always will be surrendered when demanded . . . by the lawful owner or his representatives." It was not uncommon for some slaveholders to travel to Union camps to regain their fugitive slaves themselves. These actions adversely affected black enthusiasm for the Union war effort. Attempting to standardize the Federal government's policy, Congress, on 9 July 1861, instructed Union troops that it was not their responsibility to seize or return fugitive slaves. OR, 2d ser., 1: 750-59; Fred A. Shannon, “The Federal Government and the Negro Soldier, 1861-1865," JNH, 11: 565—67 (October 1926); Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 65—66. He has allowed
General Halleck, to openly violate the spirit of a solemn resolution by
Congress forbidding the army of the United States to return the fugitive
slaves to their cruel masters, and has evidently from the first submitted
himself to the guidance of the half loyal slave States, rather than to the wise
and loyal suggestions of those States upon which must fall, and have
fallen, the chief expense and danger involved in the prosecution of the war.
It is from such action as this, that we must infer the policy of the Admin-
istration. To my mind that policy is simply and solely to reconstruct the
union on the old and corrupting basis of compromise; by which slavery
shall retain all the power that it ever had, with the full assurance of gaining
more, according to its future necessities.
The question now arises, “Is such a reconstruction possible or desir-
able?” To this I answer from the depths of my soul, no. Mr. Lincoln is
powerful, Mr. Lincoln can do many things, but Mr. Lincoln will never see
the day when he can bring back or charm back, the scattered fragments of
the Union into the shape and form they stood when they were shattered by
this slaveholding rebellion.
What does this policy of bringing back the union imply? It implies first
of all, that the slave States will promptly and cordially, and without the
presence of compulsory and extraneous force, co-operate with the free
States under the very constitution, which they have Openly repudiated, and
attempted to destroy. It implies that they will allow and protect the collec-
tion of the revenue in all their ports. It implies the security and safety of our
postal arrangements within their borders. It implies the regular election of
the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives and the
prompt and complete execution of all the Federal laws within their limits. It
implies that the rebel States will repudiate the rebel leaders, and that they
shall be punished with perpetual political degradation. So much it implies
on the part of the rebel States. And the bare statement, with what we know
of the men engaged in the war, is sufficient to prove the impossibility of
their fulfillment while slavery remains.
What is implied by a reconstruction of the union on the old basis so far
as concerns the northern and loyal States? It implies that after all we have
lost and suffered by this war to protect and preserve slavery, the crime and
scandal of the nation, that we will as formerly act the disgusting part of the
watch dogs of the slave plantation, that we will hunt down the slaves at the
north, and submit to all the arrogance, bluster, and pretension of the very
men who have imperilled our liberties and baptized our soil with the blood
of our best and bravest citizens. Now I hold that both parties will reject
these terms with scorn and indignation.
Having thus condemned as impossible and undesirable the policy
which seems to be that of the administration you will naturally want to
know what I consider to be the true policy to be pursued by the Government
and people in relation to slavery and the war. I will tell you: Recognise the
fact, for it is the great fact, and never more palpable than at the present
moment, that the only choice left to this nation, is abolition or destruction.
You must abolish slavery or abandon the union. It is plain that there can
never be any union between the north and the south, while the south values
slavery more than nationality. A union of interest is essential to a union of
ideas, and without this union of ideas, the outward form of the union will
be but as a rope of sand?20Douglass uses a phrase first published in Samuel Butler's Hudibras (1799). , I. Canto 1, line 157, and popularized by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Compensation,” which Douglass had probably read. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Centenary ed., 12 vols. (1903—04; New York, 1968), 2: 119.
Now it is quite clear that while slavery lasts at the south, it will remain
hereafter as heretofore, the great dominating interest, overtopping all oth-
ers, and shaping the sentiments, and opinions of the people in accordance
with itself. We are not to flatter ourselves that because slavery has brought
great troubles upon the south by this war, that therefore the people of the
south will be stirred up against it. If we can bear with slavery after the
calamities it has brought upon us, we may expect that the south will be no
less patient. Indeed we may rationally expect that the south will be more
devoted to slavery than ever. The blood and treasure poured out in its
defense will tend to increase its sacredness in the eyes of southern people,
and if slavery comes out of this struggle, and is retaken under the forms of
old compromises, the country will witness a greater amount of insolence
and bluster in favor of the slave system, than was ever shown before in or
out of Congress.
But it is asked, how will you abolish slavery? You have no power over
the system before the rebellion is suppressed, and you will have no right or
power when it is suppressed. I will answer this argument when I have
stated how the thing may be done. The fact is there would be no trouble
about the way, if the government only possessed the will. But several ways
have been suggested. One is a stringent Confiscation Bill by Congress.
Another is by a proclamation by the President at the head of the nation.
Another is by the commanders of each division of the army. Slavery can be
abolished in any or all these ways.
There is plausibility in the argument that we cannot reach slavery until
we have suppressed the rebellion. Yet is is far more true to say that we
cannot reach the rebellion until we have suppressed slavery. For slavery is
the life of the rebellion. Let the loyal army but inscribe upon its banner,
Emancipation and protection to all who will rally under it, and no power
could prevent a stampede from slavery, such as the world has not witnessed
since the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea.21Douglass alludes to the event described in Exod. 14: 16-31. I am convinced that this rebellion
and slavery are twin monsters, and that they must fall or flourish together,
and that all attempts at upholding one while putting down the other, will be
followed by continued trains of darkening calamities, such as make this
anniversary of our national Independence, a day of mourning instead of a
day of transcendent joy and gladness.
But a proclamation of Emancipation, says one, would only be a paper
order. I answer so is any order emanating from our Government. The
President’s proclamation calling his countrymen to arms, was a paper
order. The proposition to retake the property of the Federal Government in
the Southern States, was a paper order.22On 15 April 1861, one day after the surrender of Fort Sumter. President Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring that a state of insurrection existed in the seceded southern states. Lincoln called “forth the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress [the rebellion], and to cause the laws to be duly executed." In the same proclamation, the president declared that the first assignment for these troops would most likely “be to re-possess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union." Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 4: 331—32. Laws fixing the punishment of
traitors are paper orders. All Laws, all written rules for the Government of
the army and navy and people, are ‘paper orders,’ and would remain only
such were they not backed up by force, still we do not object to them as
useless, but admit their wisdom and necessity. Then these paper orders,
carry with them a certain moral force which makes them in a large measure
self-executing. I know of none which would possess this self-executing
power in larger measure than a proclamation of Emancipation. It would act
on the rebel masters, and even more powerfully upon their slaves. It would
lead the slaves to run away, and the masters to Emancipate, and thus put an
end to slavery. The conclusion of the whole matter is this: The end of
slavery and only the end of slavery, is the end of the war, the end of
secession. the end of disunion, and the return of peace, prosperity and
unity to the nation. Whether Emancipation comes from the North or from
the South, from Jeff. Davis or from Abraham Lincoln. it will come alike
for the healing of the nation, for slavery is the only mountain interposed to
make enemies of the North and South.
FELLOW CITIZENS: let me say in conclusion. This slavery begotten and
slavery sustained, and slavery animated war. has now cost this nation more
than a hundred thousand lives, and more than five hundred millions of
treasure. It has weighed down the national heart with sorrow and heav-
iness, such as no speech can portray. It has cast a doubt upon the possibility
of liberty and self Government which it will require a century to remove.
The question is, shall this stupendous and most outrageous war he finally
and forever ended? or shall it be merely suspended for a time, and again
revived with increased and aggravated fury in the future? Can you afford a
repetition of this costly luxury? Do you wish to transmit to your children
the calamities and sorrows of to-day? The way to either class of these
results is open to you. By urging upon the nation the necessity and duty of
putting an end to slavery, you put an end to the war, and put an end to the
cause of the war, and make any repetition of it impossible. But, just take
back the pet monster again into the bosom of the nation, proclaim an
amnesty to the slaveholders, let them have their slaves, and command your
services in helping to catch and hold them, and so sure as like causes will
ever produce like effects, you will hand down to your children here, and
hereafter, born and to be born all the horrors through which you are now
passing. 1 have told you of great national Opportunities in the past[;] a
greater [one] than any in the past is the opportunity of the present. If now
we omit the duty it imposes, steel our hearts against its teachings, or shrink
in cowardice from the work of to-day, your fathers will have fought and
bled in vain to establish free Institutions, and American Republicanism
will become a hissing and a by-word to a mocking earth.