Some of the Democratic organs are endeavoring to convey the impression that the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia is at best but a trivial matter, as there were not more than fifteen hundred slaves at the time in the District. So far as numbers are considered, we admit it is comparatively a small matter, but when we look at the principle involved it assumes gigantic proportions. It is the initiatory step of freedom in our country. It has inaugurated a principle that will ultimately lead to the emancipation of every slave in the United States. Had there been but one hundred slaves in the District of Columbia at the time of the passage of this act, the principle would have lost none of its force, and had there been ten thousand it would not have altered its tone. The President of the United States for the first time in its history has addressed a formal message to Congress recommending the emancipation of slaves in the Union and that deliberative body for the first time has taken decisive action on the subject, and so far as its influence extended, acted upon the recommendation of the Executive. We would that John Quincy Adams could have lived to see this day, but if ever the spirits of the departed are permitted to visit the earth, surely his hovered in the Capitol when the seal was set to slavery in our nation!
The pro-slavery press takes a very narrow view of the question, when it seeks to cast obloquy upon the Republican party by identifying its action simply with love for the negro. While the welfare of the black man is duly regarded in manumitting him from slavery, that is not the great object sought to be attained. It is to free our country from the darkest stain and greatest drawback to prosperity with which the nation was every cursed. To remove from it the only obstacle to continued peace and harmony. To unite the nation as one people, governed by one interest, and working for the same great object. To destroy an incubus that is crushing out the intelligence, morals and religion of the nation, and fitting it only for “treason, stratagem and spoil.”
The war that is now distracting our nation and sowing misery broadcast over the country, is the direct result of slavery, and yet not the most fearful to be apprehended. It kills the body, but the effect of slavery is to destroy the mind, by corrupting all the channels of moral and social progress, and reducing the nation to a state of semi-barbarism. The first step in the progress of reform having been taken, freedom having been initiated at the Capital of the nation, henceforth the sympathies and the action of our Government will be exerted for the constitutional abolition of slavery, and all good men who love their country more than party, may rejoice at the flood of light which illumed the future, when then portals for freedom were thrown open, by the passage of an act breaking the shackles of every slave who enters the Capital of the nation.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, April 24, 1862, p. 2
The pro-slavery press takes a very narrow view of the question, when it seeks to cast obloquy upon the Republican party by identifying its action simply with love for the negro. While the welfare of the black man is duly regarded in manumitting him from slavery, that is not the great object sought to be attained. It is to free our country from the darkest stain and greatest drawback to prosperity with which the nation was every cursed. To remove from it the only obstacle to continued peace and harmony. To unite the nation as one people, governed by one interest, and working for the same great object. To destroy an incubus that is crushing out the intelligence, morals and religion of the nation, and fitting it only for “treason, stratagem and spoil.”
The war that is now distracting our nation and sowing misery broadcast over the country, is the direct result of slavery, and yet not the most fearful to be apprehended. It kills the body, but the effect of slavery is to destroy the mind, by corrupting all the channels of moral and social progress, and reducing the nation to a state of semi-barbarism. The first step in the progress of reform having been taken, freedom having been initiated at the Capital of the nation, henceforth the sympathies and the action of our Government will be exerted for the constitutional abolition of slavery, and all good men who love their country more than party, may rejoice at the flood of light which illumed the future, when then portals for freedom were thrown open, by the passage of an act breaking the shackles of every slave who enters the Capital of the nation.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, April 24, 1862, p. 2
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