We are not aware that the Democrat of this city has got a new hand at the bellows, but certainly
its issue of yesterday abounded with more than its usual quota of ignorance and
defamation. Were we to turn around – which
heaven forbid – and utter a tithe of the secession sympathizing sentiments of
that sheet our readers would drop the paper instanter [sic] and tell us we had
better face toward Dixie; yet they will read this sheet day after day, curse
its sentiments from the bottom of their loyal hearts and continue to pat its
editor patronizingly on the back! Its
leader of yesterday was a medley of stupidity and calumny, and at the same time
a remarkable exhibition of quick exemplification of what we predicted but the
day before, that soon our secesh contemporaries would ring in our ears that the
result of their own action in flooding the North with negroes, was the work of
the Republican party. It is true that
the Democrat uses the word
Abolitionists to designate Republicans, but every reader of that sheet knows
that he is in the habit of using them interchangeably. He charges that the flooding of the North
with negroes is just what the Republicans of the country have been so long working
and intriguing for; that they regard this freedom as paramount to the
government, the Union, or the Constitution.
That is folly; we doubt the sincerity of a man who will write so, and
the sense of the man who thinks so. In
the abstract, we do not suppose a Garrisonian has much more love for the negro
than a pro-slavery Democrat, only that he awards more humanity to him and would
treat him accordingly.
It is for the principle
of freedom that Republicans contend; and while they commiserate the condition
of the unfortunate slave, it is not that they bear a greater degree of love for
even so much for the negro as they do for their own species, but because they
believe the act of man enslaving his fellow man is barbarous, inhuman, sinful,
and dragging down our nation in glory, prosperity and morality. The editor who contends that the fact of the
refugee slaves seeking the North is the result of the operations of Republican
principles shows a degree of ignorance, a degradation of intellect, that unfits
him for his occupation. The very fact
that congress does not and has not passed an act confiscating the slaves of
rebels, and assigning them freedom at the South, is the cause of their seeking
that freedom at the North; and the Democrat,
and kindred sheets that protest against the passage of such act, are
responsible for the North being flooded with fugitive slaves. The Democrat
protests against assigning the negro a home at the South as an act of tyranny,
and denounces his appearance at the North as an unwelcome intruder. Alas! what is to become of the poor
negro! Keep him as a slave, argues the Democrat, it is the only condition fit
for him, and all rebeldom says amen.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette,
Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, May 2, 1862, p. 2
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