The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power eBook
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“‘The risk of the privateer,’ says
the same organ of the rebel confederacy, ’will
still be trifling; but he will continue to reap the
harvest.’ His risk will only be his neck,
and his ‘harvest’ will be a halter.
But the risk, nay, the certainty of the punishment
to be visited upon the slave confederacy, will be 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.
