The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 02, December, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 02, December, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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