Douglass' Monthly, 1862-08, vol. 5 iss. 3

              DOUGLASS'  MONTHLY.
" OPEN THT  MOUTH  FOR  THE DUMB,  IN  THE  CAUSE  OF  AIL SUCH AS  ARE APPOINTED  TO  DESTRUCTION ;  OPEN  THY MOUTH
,_ JUDGE  RIGHTEOUSLY,  AND   PLEAD   THE   CAUSE  OF  THE  POOR  AND  N*EEDY." PrOVerbs XXxi. 8,   9.
VOLUME
NUMBER
A
ROCHESTER,   NEW    YORK,    AUGUST 1862.
i PRICE-
ONE   DOLLAR   PER   ANNUM
CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
Speech of Fred'k Douglass  589
Fourth of July at Himrods   691
War Meetings   in the Loyal States 694
Celebration of the Abolition of Slavery
in the District   of   Columbia   694
Dr. M. R.   Delany.- 695
Letter from Rev.  Alex. Crummell   695
The Confiscation and Emancipation   Bill..695
Letter F^om the Old World   696
Late Southern News   697
The Rebel  Col. Fry   697
Gen. Hunter's Negro   Soldier's  698
No e from Maj. Zagonyi _ 698
Letter F om Gen. Hunter    698
Col. Anthony under Arrest  698
New Orleans  699
The Presidents'^Address to the Border
States       700
What the People Expect of Mr. Lincoln.. 701
Colored   Soldiers   in the    Revolu'ion   702
Reminiscences of Marshall and Madison— 703
DOUGLASS'  M-OXTHLI
THE   SLAVEHOLDERS  REBELLION.
A speech delivered on the 4th day of July, at
Himrods Corners, Yates Co : N. Y. by Frederick Douglass.
Fellow Citizens: Eighty-six years ago the
fourth of July was consecrated and distinguished among all the days of the year as the birth
day of American liberty and Independence
The fathers of the Sej^jic recommended
that this day be celebrated with joy and gladness by the whole American people, to their
latest posterity. Probably not one of those
athers ever dream ed 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 clond 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 thi8
moment, the painful spectacle of a great nation, undergoing all the bitter pangs of a gi.
gantic 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 aud
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 oneTor sobriety, thoughtfulness
and stern truthfulness. When the house is
on fire, when destruction is spreading,its bale
ful 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 war or whether it shall become like old Spain, the mother of Mexicoi
and by folly and cruelty part with its renown
among the nations of the earth, and spend the
next seventy years in vainly attem pting to regain what it has lost in the space of this
one slaveholding rebellion.
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 elaims of our farthers up-
oar memory, admin.iy>n .find 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 responsibilities of their age.
Men have strange notions now 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 oar 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 wate'^and shelter. This
is not honoring, but dis^a-iiii;!!!? 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 tgvich 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. Tour fathers drew the
sword for free aud independent Government,
Republican in its form, Democratic in its spirit ; to be administered by officers duly elected
by the free and nnbought 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 tremen
dous 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 fquestion,
uppermost and all absorbing in aH 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 aod guilty attempt to
break up and destroy the national Government. All but the willfully blind or the malignantly traitorou8,know and confess that this
whole movement which now so la-gely 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
abomiuatiou, aud that is slavery. It has
sprung out of a malign selfishness and a
haughty and imperious pride which only the
practice of the roost hateful oppression o nd
cruelty could generate and develop. No ordinary love oft gain.no ordir'^ry love of power,
could nave 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 th<3
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 rebel'Ioo
is, its shocking practices, digging up the bones
of our dead soldiers slain in battle, making
drinking vessels out of iheir skulls, drumsticks
out of their arm bones, slaying our wounded
soldiers 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, in 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 Everettenter-
tain 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 revenue laws. 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 ?igorous prosecution of the