Abolition under the war-making power — Abolition now or never.
The anti slavery society of the
United States, has called an early meeting of the fraternity in New York, to take into consideration the great issues of Abolition pending in Congress.
Strong appeals are made for a full attendance, and extraordinary vigilance enjoined.
‘"Special earnestness and activity are demanded,"’ says their bulletin, ‘"of every friend of freedom and of just Government to secure the
speedily abolition of slavery under the war-making power. The present and future well-being of not only four millions of slaves, but of every inhabitant of the land, is at stake.
The dangerous and fatal spell of submission to slavery
must now be broken; the slave rescued from the vile grasp of
traitorousoppressors, and thus, justice having been done, an abiding peace be ensured."’
The anti-slavery leaders of the
Puritan race have made a great many efforts to convince themselves that slavery was unconstitutional; but these efforts have always failed of success.
After prodigious intellectual efforts on the subject, many of them have given up in despair, and, in the fury of disappointed passion, have been willing to curse the
Constitution as a ‘"league with the devil and covenant with hell."’ Others, more moderate, have toiled on in the painful argumentation, and one Bostonian, by the name of
Spooner, a lawyer and a jurist, has written a thick volume of three hundred pages demonstrating to his own satisfaction that slavery is an unconstitutional condition, and may be abolished by authority of that instrument.
It is very certain, however, that the learned
Spooner has been able to make very few converts, and it is a matter of question whether there are not more leaves in his book than disciples of his creed.
The consequence of the poor success of the Abolition party in reconciling their purposes with the organic law of the Federal Union has been, in past times, to set them at war with that Union itself; and many have been the rash speeches and thundering fulminations they have launched against it. In the blind fury of fanaticism they have been willing to send to perdition not only the
Union which upheld slavery, but the
Bible that sanctioned it; and in their blasphemous ravings they have even impeached the God who regius in Heaven and permits the existence of such an institution upon his earthly footstool.
But there is at last a prospect of reconciling themselves to the
Constitution of their country, the
Union which they have parricidally assailed, the
Bible which they have trampled under foot, and the God whom they have blasphemed.
The war has come to relieve them of all their troubles, and, by the œgis of its authority, to make their schemes of abolition constitutional.
The war making power has, in all ages and by the uniform practice among all nations, been held to embrace the power of confiscation; and it was not to have been expected that Abolitionists would have failed to discover in this element of war the long sought and long craved authority to wreak their vengeance against the slaveholder.
They have suddenly, therefore, from waring furiously against the
Constitution and the
Union, both of which they were formerly anxious to let ‘"slide,"’ become warm supporters of both, and have put up the lives and souls of six hundred thousand white soldiers for sacrifice, to accomplish the liberation of as many Southern blacks.
They are now willing to sing hosannas to a Union which formerly was the object of bitter anathemas and they gladly invoke the most cruel and barbarous expedient of war to accomplish that abolition, which the
Constitution, the laws, the
Bible, and their own loyalty to the country formerly forbade.
Having as they think at least the authority and sanction of law for their schemes it now remains to see whether they will be able to execute them.
Their best authorities declare that the war is too costly to be protracted longer than the present year 1862.
The greater portion of that time will be expended in angry congressional debate of the wholesale policy of slave confiscation, and the period then remaining will be too brief to admit the accomplishment of the undertaking.
The mere agitation of the subject will drive away from their support the slaveholding border States now in dispute, and every step taken to carry out their barbarous programme will send so mark more and more the line of this confect between slaveholding and free States.
In fact events have already blazed out this line as the boundary finally to be settled on between the
Federal and
Confederate States.
This war is not likely to end until the
South shall be altogether slave and the
North altogether free soil.
The lines between these territories have been long defined, and they are likely to remain the permanent boundary of the two Unions.
