J.D. Copeland to Frederick Douglass, April 15, 1853
COLUMBIANA, Col. Co., Ohio,
April 15, 1853.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS: DEAR SIR:—I re-
ceived your printed circular yesterday.—You request me to "try to add another
name beside my own to your subscription
list." In addition to the "one named," you
will not, I presume, take it amiss in my ask-
ing you to send each of the following per-
sons a copy of your elegant paper for the en-
closed.
"Magna est veritas et prevaelebit." I have
been a reader of your paper for two years,
and I would be last without it; and am thor-
oughly convinced in my own mind that the
Constitution, if taken as it reads, without
being perverted by interpretation, &c., &c.,
is an anti-slavery instrument, affording, by
many of its ample provisions, the broadest,
the strongest, and the most effectual ground
for the abolition of slavery. If we would ask
for the abolition of the slave, strip the slave-
holder of the law that binds him. Give him
the law—acknowledge his legal claim to his
victim, and yet ask him to let his "slave go
free," and he laughs at you to scorn. In the
language of Gerrit Smith, deny the existence
of such a thing as law to hold slavery—as
slave laws. Out upon all such fooler I say,
especially among reformers who would be-
friend the oppressed.
While it is an indispensable prerequisite
to society, and to a nation's safety, that its
people should be a law-loving and law-abid-
ing people, it is obviously no less so that it
be understood that this arises from an evi-
dent and manifest principle of law, namely,
that it protect its citizens in the full enjoyment
of all their natural rights; and when laws
fail to do this, (much less snatch them from
its subjects,) they should be, for the same
reason, disregarded—trampled underfoot by
every law-loving and intelligent citizen. Is
there one intelligent political reformer who
is willing to say "what is morally right is po-
litically impossible?" I think not—no,
never; this has done for a motto for the little
band of disunionists to harp on, but it is be-
coming well nigh exhausted with them, and
the party with it. Like Stoicism, it is to be
found all vanity—worse than labor lost. But
I must close. I shall endeavor to send you
other patrons to your elegant paper. Its pe-
rusal, more than that of any other of my ac-
quaintence, is calculated to do good in the
right channel.
Believe me truly,
Your friend in reform,
J. D. COPELAND.