The Future of the Colored Race in America - William Aikman (e book reader .TXT) 📗

opposite direction, the significance of which we have but just begun to measure. The mind of the whole nation has been directed now for one year, with great steadiness to the contemplation of slavery from an entirely new stand-point, and divested of the cloud of prejudice which has for nearly a century, been thrown over it. The word abolitionist has lost its secret potency.

In this line of thought the present attitude of our government is of immeasurable importance. We are as likely to undervalue as to over estimate events which occur just beneath our eye. A few weeks since President Lincoln sent quietly into the houses of Congress a message of strangely straightforward character, clothed in very plain and homely garb, but of meaning not to be misunderstood, and admitting of no misconstruction. It asked that Congress should simply resolve that the government was willing to lend its aid to any State of the Union which should desire to bring slavery to an end. That was all. But that simple message marked an era in the history of the world, and will be looked upon in all future time as one of the grand events of this century. It was unlooked for, sudden, so that the country stood confounded for the moment, but the next was ready to adopt it. It quickly became the policy of the government and of the people, without, so far as we know, a single voice of moment raised against it. The people have not yet begun to understand all its great meaning. What is it? It is that the government of these United States deems slavery an evil, wishes it to cease , and will do what it can to help it to an end. It is the first time in all our history that this was true. The government has never so spoken before. Henceforth its policy is to help emancipation . It is a risen sun, it has brought a day whose glorious light we have not yet appreciated. Hereafter all its patronage, and power, and prestige will be thrown on the side of freedom, and no man can accurately measure the result.

The President has, by this great act of his, lifted the moral sense of the nation to a position to which years could not otherwise have brought it. It was one of those strokes of God-inspired genius which once in a century or so, changes the face of the world. Like many other acts of this truly great man, it was wonderfully timely, put forth at the moment, the fulness of time, it was not too soon, it was not too late. The sense and the thought of the people needed to be advanced up to its reception and had not wildly gone beyond the point of wisdom, the moment with a deep intuition was recognized, seized upon, and by a few words talismanic, the forming elements were crystallized. So they will remain. For all the coming time this people will look forward to the abolition of slavery. Freedom is the American watch-word, freedom for all men.

But a few weeks have gone, yet the change is wonderful already. The atmosphere is clearer and purer. The writer of this is living in a slave state, and is able to mark the changes better than those in places more remote from the influences of slavery. While a few months since no prominent men or class of men would venture to plant themselves openly on the platform of emancipation, now there is a great party forming in this state, (Delaware,) and at the coming elections in the autumn of this year, it will go into the canvass with Emancipation for its watch-word. The stigma which slavery has succeeded in attaching to the word "abolition" is already passing away, and it is no longer dangerous to one's reputation to be considered an emancipationist.

What is true in a slave state will be as true everywhere in the land. The presidential word has brushed away a world of sophisms, and settled a thousand pleas against dealing with slavery; it has declared not only expedient, but possible, immediate emancipation. The abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia following so quickly upon the message of the President, and the adoption by Congress of its recommendation, have made its words facts and demonstrations. Slavery has been abolished with a word, and in a moment, over a whole district of country --here is a fact to make the ages sing over in this land. We do not even think of the fifteen hundred or so captives set free; they are as nothing, except as occasions for the bringing into existence the momentous and glorious fact that this government is on the side of freedom, and its strength will be given to it henceforth. It is difficult to measure the import of all this, even as it is difficult to foresee the sweep of a mighty current which has just begun to rush in a new channel; that it is destined to sweep slavery from this country, no one now can have a doubt.

Hereafter the thinking on the subject of American Slavery will be only in one line--how shall it be done away? If we would have an understanding where a few weeks may advance us, we have only to remember what was the point of thought in relation to this matter. It was, how shall slavery be kept from extending itself. We were content to let it live if it did not subjugate other lands, but the events have crowded us far beyond that, we have gotten past a thought of it, no living man fears now, or even dreams of it, it has simply gone forever out of a sane man's mind. What an advance a year has made! We have been hurried past the place of argument against slavery. We are done with all that; the books and the pamphlets, the documents and the statistics are growing quickly obsolete, for they have done their work; we need not be careful of them for our future use. We shall not need them except as relics of a well fought field.

Those of us who have for a life time been doing what we could to hasten forward this day, who have spoken and written and suffered for it, in the new atmosphere which we breathe are like men that dream. We know that it would come, we hoped to live long enough to see the day. We see it and are glad, we did not think to see it soon, it has come so suddenly, it shines so broadly and with so rich a promise that we recognize it as God's day; we see his wonder-working power moving marvellously, making--was it ever shown so before?--the wrath of man to praise him; we behold how God has taken the work into his own hand; how he has made slavery destroy itself. More than human wisdom, and beyond human guidance is here, the thick night would not have gone so wondrously had not He rolled it away, we hail the light. This is the day the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.

But like all of God's gifts, it demands work and gives responsibility, responsibility and work proportionate to the boon.

He has given us a day, but it brings with it work of which perhaps we have gotten only a mere glimpse. It is well that we should endeavour to understand and appreciate what that work is, for it is no holiday that He has given us. We have asked in many a prayer that it might come, and having come we must see what is to be done, and manfully deal with it.

It is easy to talk of emancipation, but he has thought loosely and ill who sees no great difficulties in bringing it to a happy issue; who has not questions arise in his mind to give him pause when he contemplates a social change so vast in state of a race of twelve millions of men. Let not the reader suppose a mistake in the figures, we mean twelve millions, and not four; there are, indeed, four millions of slaves to be made free, but a change is to be wrought in the social state of the eight millions of the whites, which is only less than that of the blacks. To alter radically, to remodel the whole social fabric of a great and numerous people, to shift the foundation stones, remove them, and place others in their palaces, without racking the edifice or tumbling it in a hideous ruin, is the work of no inexperienced or careless architect.

The gigantic war which has been desolating one half of this land, has been, as we have said, simply the mighty frantic effort of a social state to establish itself; of a peculiar civilization to consolidate its power. The result of the war will be the total defeat of this attempt; the very endeavor, the waging of the war has shaken its foundation, its end will remove it entirely. This civilization, whose basis is slavery, has chosen to risk its existence on the issue of the war: it must accept the alternative which it has raised, and be content to pass away.

The war will decide the question of slavery, and with it alter the whole form of society at the South which rests upon it. But one civilization cannot pass away and leave a vacuum; one state of society cannot cease and have no other in its palace. It is only changes, not new creations which take place in the social world; one civilization gives place to another; society passes from one state into another . We are, then, on the eve of a mighty change, perhaps the greatest ever seen in the world before. That it can or could take place without an awful struggle, pangs which are the birth-thores of a nation, let no one imagine; that it will be done in a few brief months is impossible. While we write, victories have just been gained, the great city of the South has passed into the hands of our army, and men begin to predict the speedy downfall of the rebellion; but, alas, we cannot felicitate ourselves with any such prospect. The great class which has made the war to maintain its existence, will not consent to die thus; every element of human nature in its fallen form is against it. It will yield to nothing but simply irresistible force, it will die only as it is killed. We confess, as we look over the whole ground and weigh well as we can the origin and caused of this gigantic war, to a feeling, not of despondency or uncertainty, for we believe that God will one day bring it to a happy end, but of heart-sorrow and care, even as a woman has sorrow and foreboding at the inevitable agony ere a man is born into the world. To lift twelve millions of men to a new better place, to open before them a good and happy future, instead of certain prospective woe and final dissolution, is a work worth the tears and groans of a nation, and they can well afford to be patient till the time has come. At present let not one's heart fail him if the horizon grows dark and hope seems at times blotted out; let him remember well what the meaning of the strife is, that it is no accident, but the death-struggle of a civilization two hundred years old, and based on all the worst and strongest elements of human nature. It can have no easy death.

Taking it for granted, then, that a great change is about to take place in the social