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
But will the many always thus submit themselves to the domination of
the few? We believe that the days of this ignominious subjection are
already numbered. Signs in heaven and on earth tell us that one of
those movements has begun to be felt in the Northern mind, which
perplex tyrannies everywhere with the fear of change. The insults and
wrongs so long heaped upon the North by the South begin to be
felt. The torpid giant moves uneasily beneath his mountain-load of
indignities. The people of the North begin to feel that they support a
government for the benefit of their natural enemies; for, of all
antipathies, that of slave labor to free is the most deadly and
irreconcilable. There never was a time when the relations of the North
and the South, as complicated by Slavery, were so well understood and
so deeply resented as now. In fields, in farmhouses, and in workshops,
there is a spirit aroused which can never be laid or exorcised till it
has done its task. We see its work in the great uprising of the Free
States against the Slave States in the late national election. Though
trickery and corruption cheated it of its end, the thunder of its
protest struck terror into the hearts of the tyrants. We hear its
echo, as it comes back from the Slave States themselves, in the
exceeding bitter cry of the whites for deliverance from the bondage
which the slavery of the blacks has brought upon them also. We
discern the confession of its might in the very extravagances and
violences of the Slave Power. It is its conscious and admitted
weakness that has made Texas and Mexico and Cuba, and our own
Northwestern territory, necessary to be devoured. It is desperation,
and not strength, that has made the bludgeon and the bowie-knife
integral parts of the national legislation. It has the American
Government, the American Press, and the American Church, in its
national organizations, on its side; but the Humanity and the
Christianity of the Nation and the World abhor and execrate it. They
that be against it are more than they that be for it.
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