The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 2, December, 1857 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 311 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 2, December, 1857.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 2, December, 1857 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 311 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 2, December, 1857.
not yet over in Kansas, for the compulsory establishment of Slavery there by the interposition of the Federal arm, will be renewed in every Territory as it is ripening into a State.  Already warning voices are heard in the air, presaging such a conflict in Oregon.  Parasites everywhere instinctively feel that a zeal for the establishment of Slavery where it has been abolished, or its introduction where it had been prohibited, is the highest recommendation to the Executive favor.  The rehabilitation of the African slave-trade is seriously proposed and will be furiously urged, and nothing can hinder its accomplishment but its interference with the domestic manufactures of the breeding Slave States.  The pirate Walker is already mustering his forces for another incursion into Nicaragua, and rumors are rife that General Houston designs wresting yet another Texas from Mexico.  Mighty events are at hand, even at the door; and the mission of them all will be to fix Slavery firmly and forever on the throne of this nation.

Is the success of this conspiracy to be final and eternal?  Are the States which name themselves, in simplicity or in irony, the Free States, to be always the satrapies of a central power like this?  Are we forever to submit to be cheated out of our national rights by an oligarchy as despicable as it is detestable, because it clothes itself in the forms of democracy, and allows us the ceremonies of choice, the name of power, and the permission to register the edicts of the sovereign?  We, who broke the sceptre of King George, and set our feet on the supremacy of the British Parliament, surrender ourselves, bound hand and foot in bonds of our own weaving, into the hands of the slaveholding Philistines!  We, who scorned the rule of the aristocracy of English acres, submit without a murmur, or with an ineffectual resistance, to the aristocracy of American flesh and blood!  Is our spirit effectually broken? is the brand of meanness and compromise burnt in uneffaceably upon our souls? and are we never to be roused, by any indignities, to fervent resentment and effectual resistance?  The answer to these grave questions lies with ourselves alone.  One hundred thousand, or three hundred thousand men, however crafty and unscrupulous, cannot forever keep under their rule more than twenty millions, as much their superiors in wealth and intelligence as in numbers, except by their own consent.  If the growing millions are to be driven with cartwhips along the pathway of their history by the dwindling thousands, they have none to blame for it but themselves.  If they like to have their laws framed and expounded, their presidents appointed, their foreign policy dictated, their domestic interests tampered with, their war and peace made for them, their national fame and personal honor tarnished, and the lie given to all their boastings before the old despotisms, by this insignificant fraction of their number,—­scarcely visible to the naked eye in the assembly of the whole people,—­none can gainsay or resist their pleasure.

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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 2, December, 1857 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.