PRINGLE COTTAGE, near Markle
dom, April 2d, 1853.

SQUIRE DOUGLASS:—Allow me, now, to
present some evidence of the entire failure
of Democracy in our native country.

That the Democratic elecment, controlled
the country at the time of the Revolution,
was generally believed, but, I think, that ad
mits of a doubt. The postponement of the
abolition of the foreign slave trade, till 1808;
i. e., for twenty years from the time of the
adoption of the Federal Constitution; the
striking out of the Declaration of Independ
ence the clause which charged King George
with conniving at the slave trade; the deter
mination to retain slavery, for a time-to
continue to oppress six thousand negroes, at
the very time they were spilling blood in be
half of their own liberties; the cool, con
temptuous-aye, divilish disregard with
which they treated their Revolutionary com
patriots of African descent; and the estab
lishing the first of that long series of diabol
isms, known as "the Compromises of the
Compact;" all look, very much, as if the
Democratic Principle was far from control
ing the Republic in its earliest, purest days.

Meanwhile, the confessedly anti-slavery
clauses of the Constitution; the assertion of
the Independence of the Colonies; the grand
ideas in this Declaration; the insertion of it
in the 5th Amendment of the Constitution;
the ordaining of the prospective abolition of
the slave trade; and the readiness with which
several of the Northern States, abolish sla
very; and the establishing of the Ordinance
of 1787; all look in a Democratic direction.
Summing up and comparing these different
acts, I am constrained to say, rather than Dem
ocratic Principle existed, than that it prevailed, even, at this early hour.

One thing, however, is certain—that the
national legislation began to succumb, to
Despotism, within one short year of the ad
option of the Constitution. Witness the law
of '90 against negroes in the District of Co
lumbia. Nay—this is evident, that the Dem
ocratic Principle was made to succumb to
the Despotic Principle, in each of the un
fortunate cases cited in the first paragraph.
If the Despotic ascendency did not take its
origin here, it did soon, very soon, thereafter.
Be it remembered, too, that the very first
Congress, under Washington, the purest and
most Democractic Congress we ever had, and
doubtless the best as well as the first of Pres
idents, commanded those acts of legislation,
by which legislative supremacy then began
to be given to Despotism. The precedent
thus established, has been succeeded by acts
of like character, from that day to this. To
give instances of these facts were to recite
the history of every act of legislation, in Con
gress, where Despotism and Democracy have
come into conflict, from 1790, to 1853.

It was hoped, that the anti-slavery agita
tion, developing as it did, the fact that the
doctrines of the Revolution were buried be
neath the rubbish, or pro-slavery commerce,
religion and politics, would revivie and give
prevalence to the Democratic Principle.—
We who so hoped, overlooked the fact, that
in the very earliest days of the Republic the
intention to pay the hypocrite with and in
respect to these principles, was manifestly
the intention of the majority; and that from
sire to son, as an heir-loom, had been hand
ed down the doctine, that the corner-stone
principles of the Republic were never to be
applied to negroes. Two and
twenty years—nearly a quarter century—has this agitation
been going on, in all varieties of forms, em
ploying the pen, the press and the living
voice, of some of the noblest, ablest men and
women that ever graced Heaven's footstool.
And, what is more, the last year has witnessed
the universal thrilling of the public mind, by
that peerless fiction, "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
The new political principles of GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. Ab
olitionism, the pure testimony of the Lib
erty Party, the more moderate, more conser
vative doctrines of the Free Democracy, the
quickened impulse given to these, by "Uncle
Tom," all fail to arrest the progress of Am
erican Despotism. The plain reason, is, that
such Despotism having been entreanched behind Religion, Politics, and Commerce for seventy-seven years; i. e., from the earliest
times of the Republic, is not now too strong
for the forces feebly opposing it.

I hate gloomy croaking. But I think no
one as conversant as you are, Squire Doug
lass, with the history of the country, can
doubt that the Democratic Principle, in Am
merica, is entirely, hopelessly, and forever sub
ordinate to the Despotic Principle. The Ill
inois "Negro Law" is but an indication of
what has long existed-a readiness on the
point of Northern doughfaces, like Senator
Douglas, and his fellows, to go to any heights
and depths in diabolism, to please the Des
pots of woman-whipperdom. That spirit is so
prevalent, so abundant, so universal in every
Northern state, that I cannot conclude other
wise than that Democracy, in reality-in
spirit and truth, is, in the United States, an
entire failure.

I draw but one conclusion. The reforma
tion of the Government, or the People, so as
to give prevalence to Democracy, is out of
the question. What could not be done in
the infancy of American Despotism, cannot
be done in those days of its maturity.

PETER PRINGLE.