O. A. Bowe to Frederick Douglass, July 11, 1852
A Word from Old Herkimer.
Bro. Douglass:—Though wholly disabled for business, and confined to my house for several months past, by a painful if not incurable affection of the heart, my interest in the anti-slavery cause I assure you is in no degree diminished; nor do I believe it will be lost or essentially lessened but with the failure of my reason or my life.
Among the most encouraging signs of the times, I think we may reckon the publication and wide diffusion of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's graphic and powerful work, "Uncle Tom's Cabin"—of which, I do not recollect to have seen any proper notice, either editorial or communicated, in your columns. It is, indeed, a mighty book—a perfect moral thunderbolt—and is making dreadful havoc among the "refugees of lies" in which the political, clerical, and cotton apologists for slavery are accustomed to hide themselves. It addresses itself directly to the heart and conscience of the American people—arraigns the atrocious laws and usages of the slave system at the bar of common sense and Christianity; shows them to be essentially vile and abominable, and clearly proving the fallacy and folly of the argument so often drawn from the alleged "good treatment" of the slaves by kind masters, utters a trumpet-toned condemnation of the whole system. It seems to me, with the possible exception of Weld's "Slavery as it is," the most important book that has been published on the subject during the last quarter of a century.
Per contra; the Whig and Democratic parties of the Free States—or rather, the unprincipled and profligate leaders of those parties—have again made their quadrennial and accustomed obeisance to "the South;" have again got down on their marrow-bones in the slave mart at Baltimore, and basely promised to perform every mean and wicked act demanded of them by the men-stealers of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky; and so these chivalrous men-stealers have once more agreed to help them elect a President and Vice President of the United States—conditioned, however, that the Vice President shall be a man-stealer! Of course the Northern Whig or Democrat—one of the two—will wake up, after the Fall Election, and find himself egregiously cheated; but he may console himself by the reflection that whoever may be defeated, the man-stealers are sure to win, since they invariably dictate and control the men and measures of the Whig and Democratic parties.
How much longer are Northern freemen going to consent to be made fools, in this way, for the benefit of slaveholders? How long are they going to give their votes for parties whose leaders pledge them to help catch poor black men and women, here in New York and New England, and to aid in upholding the vilest oppression on the face of the earth?
And where stands the anti-slavery Whigs of 1844—the enlightened Whigs, who really have some sense of the rights of all men, and felt impelled, in the then crisis of Texas Annexation, and prospective War, to vote "that [once]" for a slaveholder, but were never going to do so again; the Wilmot Pro[viso] Whigs of 1848, who nobly took the Buffalo platform, and refused to go for Zachary Taylor - where stand these progressive Whigs now that such a [...] platform has been had by their Whig managers at Baltimore, and Scott and Graham, the latter a notorious slaveholder, have been [nominated as] the Whig candidates for President and Vice President? Where are Charles B. Sedgwick and E. D. Culver and Joseph D. White, and the Whig p[resses] and the Whig electors that refused to go in for the hero of Buena Vista? We hope they have not all gone off at the tap of the Scott drum. We are sure they have not all done so in Massachusetts, and Ohio, but the signs of fidelity are not encouraging in the Empire State.
As for the Radical Democracy—the Barnburners, the John Van Burens, the David Wilmots, the Judge Nyers, the Atlases, Evening Posts, Mohawk Couriers, the [vaunted] Buffalo platform men and organs of 1848, including Ex-President Van Buren, they appear to have gone over en masse to Frank Pierce and his slaveholding associate on the so-called "Democratic ticket." They have shamelessly repudiated the pledges and professions so solemnly made by them four years ago, and John Van Buren has even the hardihood to avow himself openly in favor of the infamous Fugitive Slave Act! Who can ever trust these men and presses again? "They have turned like the dog to his vomit, and like the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire."
Abolitionists! Ye who believe in the Supremacy of God and the equality of man—fellow members of the old Liberty Party of 1844—buckle on your whole armor and take the field to reprove those unholy leagues with the Slave Power, these "unfruitful works of darkness." Rally in your strength; let the whole land see and feel the evidences of your strong abhorrence of slavery, and your love of that Golden Rule which requires you to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them."
O. A. Bowe.
Mohawk, July 11, 1852.