Douglass was one of the first journalists to recognize that the war created a social revolution in the North. In making war on the slaveholding South, the government also fought for liberty, Douglass notes. As a result, abolitionists enjoyed newfound respect.
SOURCE: Douglass’ Monthly, May 1861
As a friend of freedom, earnestly laboring for the abolition of slavery, we have no tears to shed, no lamentations to make over the fall of Fort Sumter. By that event, one danger which threatened the cause of the American slave has been greatly diminished. Through many long and weary months, the American people have been on the mountain with the wily tempter, and have been liable at any moment of weakness to grant a new lease of life to slavery. The whole power of the Northern proslavery press, combined with the commercial and manufacturing interests of the country, has been earnestly endeavoring to purchase peace and prosperity for the North by granting the most demoralizing concessions to the insatiate Slave Power. This has been our greatest danger. The attack upon Fort Sumter bids fair to put an end to this cowardly, base and unprincipled truckling. To our thinking, the damage done to Fort Sumter is nothing in comparison with that done to the secession cause. The hail and fire of its terrible batteries has killed its friends and spared its enemies. Anderson lives, but where are the champions of concession at the North? Their traitor lips are pale and silent.
While secession confined its war operation to braggart threats, pompous declarations, exciting telegrams, stealing arms, planting liberty poles, wearing cockades, and displaying palmetto and rattlesnake flags, it exercised a potent influence over the public mind, and held the arm of the Government paralyzed. It commanded the artillery of a thousand cannon. But the secessionists themselves have now “smashed” up these magnificent machines, and have spiked their own most efficient guns. They have completely shot off the legs of all trimmers and compromisers, and compelled everybody to elect between patriotic fidelity and proslavery treason.
For this consummation we have watched and wished with fear and trembling. God be praised! that it has come at last. We should have been glad if the North, of its own proper virtue, had given this quietus to doubt and vacillation. She did not do it, and perhaps it is best that she did not. What her negative wisdom withheld has now come to us through the vengeance and rashness of slaveholders. Another instance of the wrath of man working out the purposes and praise of eternal goodness!
Had Mr. Jefferson Davis continued to allow Major Anderson, with his harmless garrison, to receive his daily bread from the markets of Charleston, or even permitted the Government at Washington to feed his men, the arm of the nation might have slept on, and the South might have got the most extravagant concessions to its pet monster, slavery. Every Personal Liberty Bill might have been swept from the statute books of the North, and every trembling fugitive hunted by Northern bloodhounds from his hiding place to save the Union. Already the hateful reaction had begun. Chicago and Cleveland, headquarters of Republicanism, had both betrayed innocent blood, while “down with Abolition” was fast becoming the cry of the mob on the one hand, and clergy on the other. The color of the Negro, always hated, was fast becoming more hated, and the few rights and liberties enjoyed by the free colored citizen were threatened. But now, thanks to the reckless impetuosity of the dealers in the bodies and souls of men, their attack upon Sumter has done much to arrest this retrograde and cowardly movement, and has raised the question as to the wisdom of thus pampering treason. Our rulers were ready enough to sacrifice the Negro to the Union so long as there was any hope of saving the Union by that means. The attack upon Sumter, and other movements on the part of the cotton lords of the lash, have about convinced them that the insatiate slaveholders not only mean peace and safety of slavery, but to make themselves masters of the Republic. It is not merely a war for slavery, but it is a war for slavery dominion. There are points in which different nations excel.—England is mighty on the land, but mightier on the water. The slaveholders have always surpassed the North in the matter of party politics. In the arts of persuasion, the management of men, in tact and address, they have ever been remarkably successful. Accustomed to rule over slaves, and to assume the airs of vaunted superiority, they easily intimidate the timid, overawe the servile, while they artfully cultivate the respect and regard of the brave and fearless.
It remains to be seen whether they have acted wisely in transferring the controversy with the North from the halls of diplomacy, to the field of battle. They were not forced to the measure. The Government at Washington stood waiting to be gracious. It treated treason in its embryo form, merely as an “eccentricity,” which a few months would probably cure. They had no purpose to resort to the straight jacket. To some of us there was far too little importance attached to the slaveholding movement by the Government at Washington. But all is changed now. The Government is active, and the people aroused. Again, we say, out of a full heart, and on behalf of our enslaved and bleeding brothers and sisters, thank God!—The slaveholders themselves have saved our cause from ruin! They have exposed the throat of slavery to the keen knife of liberty, and have given a chance to all the righteous forces of the nation to deal a death-blow to the monster evil of the nineteenth century.—Friends of freedom! be up and doing;—now is your time. The tyrant’s extremity is your opportunity! Let the long crushed bondman arise! and in this auspicious moment, snatch back the liberty of which he has been so long robbed and despoiled. Now is the day, and now is the hour!
Is it said that we exult in rebellion? We repel the allegation as a slander. Every pulsation of our heart is with the legitimate American Government, in its determination to suppress and put down this slave-holding rebellion. The Stars and Stripes are now the symbols of liberty. The Eagle that we left last month something like as good as dead, has revived again, and screams terror in the ears of the slaveholding rebels. None but the worst of traitors can now desire victory for any flag but that of the old Confederacy. He who faithfully works to put down a rebellion undertaken and carried on for the extension and perpetuity of slavery, performs an anti-slavery work. Even disunion Abolitionists, who have believed that the dissolution of the Union would be the dissolution of slavery, will, we have no doubt, rejoice in the success of the Government at Washington, in suppressing and putting down this slaveholding rebellion.