The Abolition of Slavery | Page 7

far greater--of infinitely greater magnitude
than they can well conceive; because it will be no more or less than the
loss of all their slave property, accompanied with the necessity of
contending, hand to hand, for their lives, with the servile race so long
accustomed to the lash, and the torture, and the branding and maiming
of their inhuman masters; a nation of robbers, who now, in the face of
the civilized world, repudiate their just debts, rob banks and mints, sell
freemen captured in an unarmed vessel into perpetual slavery, trample
upon law and order, insult our flag, capture our forts and arsenals, and,
finally, invite pirates to prey upon our commerce!
"Such a nest of pirates may do some mischief, and greatly alarm the
timid. But the men of the North know how to deal with them; and we
tell them, once for all, that, if they dare grant a solitary letter of marque,
and the person or persons acting under it venture to assail the poorest of
our vessels in the peaceful navigation of the ocean, or the coasts and
rivers of our country--from that moment their doom is sealed, and
slavery ceases to exist. We speak the unanimous sentiment of our
people; and to that sentiment all in authority will be compelled to bow
submissively. So let us hear no more of the idle gasconade of 'the
Chivalry' of a nest of robbers, who seek to enlarge the area of their
public and private virtues, &c."
This is very plain talk, and cannot easily be misapprehended by those
whom it concerns.

O. A. BROWNSON ON THE WAR.
There is neither reason nor justice in Massachusetts, New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania and the great States northwest of the Ohio pouring
out their blood and treasure for the gratification of the slaveholding
pretensions of Maryland, Kentucky or Missouri. The citizens of these

States who own slaves are as much bound, if the preservation of the
Union requires it, to give up their property in slaves, as we at the
farther North are to pour out our blood and treasure to put down a
rebellion which threatens alike them and us. If they love their few
slaves more than they do the Union, let them go out of the Union. We
are stronger to fight the battles of the Union without them than we are
with them.
But we have referred only to the slaves in the rebellious States, and if it
is, or if it becomes, a military necessity to liberate all the slaves of the
Union, and to treat the whole present slave population as freemen and
citizens, it would be no more than just and proper that, at the
conclusion of the war, the citizens of loyal States, or the loyal citizens
of loyal sections of the rebellious States, should be indemnified at a
reasonable rate for the slaves that may have been liberated. The States
and sections of States named have not a large number of slaves, and if
the Union is preserved, it would not be a very heavy burden on it to pay
their ransom; and to paying it, no patriot or loyal citizen of the free
States would raise the slightest objection. The objection therefore urged,
though grave, need not be regarded as insuperable; and we think the
advantages of the measure, in a military point of view, would be far
greater than any disadvantage we have to apprehend from it.
Whether the time for this important measure has come or not, it is for
the President, as Commander-in-Chief of our armies, to determine. But,
in our judgment, no single measure could be adopted by the
government that would more effectually aid its military operations, do
more to weaken the rebel forces, and to strengthen our own.
It seems to us, then, highly important, in every possible view of the
case, that the Federal Government should avail itself of the opportunity
given it by the Southern rebellion to perform this act of justice to the
negro race; to assimilate the labor system of the South to that of the
North; to remove a great moral and political wrong; and to wipe out the
foul stain of slavery, which has hitherto sullied the otherwise bright
escutcheon of our Republic. We are no fanatics on the subject of
slavery, as is well known to our readers, and we make no extraordinary

pretensions to modern philanthropy; but we cannot help fearing that, if
the government lets slip the present opportunity of doing justice to the
negro race, and of placing our republic throughout in harmony with
modern civilization, God, who is especially the God of the poor and the
oppressed, will never give victory to our arms, or suffer us to succeed
in our efforts to