The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity. William Wells Brown
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demonstrations were caused more by sympathy with the South, and the long-accustomed subserviency of the Northern people to slaveholding dictation, than to any real hatred to the negro.
During all this time the Abolitionists were laboring faithfully to widen the gulf between the North and South.
Towards the close of the year 1860, the spirit of compromise began to show itself in such unmistakable terms as to cause serious apprehension on the part of the friends of freedom for the future of American liberty. The subdued tone of the liberal portion of the press, the humiliating offers of Northern political leaders of compromises, and the numerous cases of fugitive slaves being returned to their masters, sent a thrill of fear to all colored men in the land for their safety, and nearly every train going North found more or less negroes fleeing to Canada.
At the South, the people were in earnest, and would listen to no proposals whatever in favor of their continuance in the Union.
The vast wealth realized by the slave-holder had made him feel that the South was independent of the rest of the world.
Prosperity had made him giddy. Cotton was not merely king: it was God. Moral considerations were nothing. The sentiment of right, he argued, would have no influence over starving operatives; and England and France, as well as the Eastern States of the Union, would stand aghast, and yield to the masterstroke which should deprive them of the material of their labor. Millions were dependent on it in all the great centres of civilization; and the ramifications of its power extended into all ranks of society and all departments of industry and commerce. It was only necessary to wave this imperial sceptre over the nations; and all of them would fall prostrate, and acknowledge the supremacy of the power which wielded it. Nothing could be more plausible than this delusion. Satan himself, when about to wage war in heaven, could not have invented one better calculated to marshal his hosts, and give promise of success in rebellion against the authority of the Most High. But, alas! the supreme error of this anticipation lay in omitting from the calculation all power of principle. The right still has authority over the minds of men and in the counsels of nations. Factories may cease their din; men and women may be thrown out of employment; the marts of commerce may be silent and deserted: but truth and justice still command some respect among men; and God yet remains the object of their adoration.
Drunk with power, and dazzled with prosperity, monopolizing cotton, and raising it to the influence of a veritable fetich, the authors of the Rebellion did not admit a doubt of the success of their attack on the Federal Government. They dreamed of perpetuating slavery, though all history shows the decline of the system as industry, commerce, and knowledge advance. The slave-holders proposed nothing less than to reverse the currents of humanity, and to make barbarism flourish in the bosom of civilization.
Weak as were the Southern people in point of numbers and political power, compared with those of the opposite section, the haughty slave-holders easily persuaded themselves and their dependents that they could successfully cope in arms with the Northern adversary, whom they affected to despise for his cowardly and mercenary disposition. Proud and confident, they indulged the belief that their great political prestige would continue to serve them among their late party associates in the North, and that the counsels of the adversary would be distracted, and his power weakened, by the fatal effects of dissension.
The proslavery men in the North are very much to blame for the encouragement that they gave the rebels before the breaking out of the war. The Southerners had promises from their Northern friends, that, in the event of a rebellion, civil war should reign in the free States—that men would not be permitted to leave the North to go South to put down their rebellions brethren.
All legitimate revolutions are occasioned by the growth of society beyond the growth of government; and they will be peaceful or violent just in proportion as the people and government shall be wise and virtuous or vicious and ignorant. Such revolutions or reforms are generally of a peaceful nature in communities in which the government has made provision for the gradual expansion of its institutions to suit the onward march of society. No government is wise in overlooking, whatever may be the strength of its own traditions, or however glorious its history, that human institutions which have been adapted for a barbarous age or state of society will cease to be adapted for more civilized and intelligent times; and, unless government makes a provision for the gradual expansion, nothing can prevent a storm, either of an intellectual or a physical nature. Slavery was always the barbarous institution of America; and the Rebellion was the result of this incongruity between it and freedom.
The assault on Fort Sumter on the 12th of April, 1861, was the dawn of a new era for the negro. The proclamation of President Lincoln, calling for the first 75,000 men to put down the Rebellion, was responded to by the colored people throughout the country. In Boston, at a public meeting of the blacks, a large number came forward, put their names to an agreement to form a brigade, and march at once to the seat of war. A committee waited on the Governor three days later, and offered the services of these men. His Excellency replied that he had no power to receive them. This was the first wet blanket thrown over the negro’s enthusiasm. “This is a white man’s war,” said most of the public journals. “I will never fight by the side of a nigger,” was heard in every quarter where men were seen in Uncle Sam’s uniform.
Wherever recruiting offices were opened, black men offered themselves, and were rejected. Yet these people, feeling conscious that right would eventually prevail, waited patiently for the coming time, pledging themselves to go at their country’s call, as the following will show:—
“Resolved, That our feelings urge us to say to our countrymen that we are ready to stand by and defend the Government as the equals of its white defenders; to do so with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, for the sake of freedom and as good citizens; and we ask you to modify your laws, that we may enlist—that full scope may be given to the patriotic feelings burning in the colored man’s breast.”—Colored Men’s Meeting, Boston.
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