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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 407 Print image (107K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 407 Print image (107K) |
| Untitled 11/7/99 9:52 PM that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact ky the war. There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an irrpressive teach' though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has core to us, and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never a day before its time, for it cones only when all other means of progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress Ms deep yearnings for rrBrihood, or the tyrant, in Ms pride and inpatience, takes the initiativ and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the result is the same,—society is instructed, or may be. Such are the limitations of the cannon mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of cannon life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of ^proaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the irariner until the storm calls all hands to the purrps. Prophets, indeed, were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while their predictions renain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity? It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a marorable occasion, Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered ty fifty years of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists,—poured out against slavery during thirty years,— even they rmst confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case, that systan of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed. It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing wDrse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains new to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely rsnoved from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire purification Congress mist now address Itself, with full purpose that the work shall this time be thoroughly done. The deadly upas, root and branch, leaf and fibre, body and sap, most be utterly destroyed. The country is evidently http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/Afro-Amer/dugI210.txt Page 13 of 17 |