The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 55, May, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Philosophy
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 55, May, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
We admit that to strike at the root is a very difficult operation. In
the present condition of the country it may present obstacles which will
practically prove insuperable. But it is plain that we can strike lower
than the blossom; and it is also plain that we must, as practical
men, devise some method by which the existence of the Slavocracy as a
political power may be annihilated. The President of the United States
has lately recommended that Congress offer the cooperation and financial
aid of the whole nation in a peaceful effort to abolish Slavery,--with
a significant hint, that, unless the loyal Slave States accept the
proposition, the necessities of the war may dictate severer measures.
Emancipation is the policy of the Government, and will soon be the
determination of the people. Whether it shall be gradual or immediate
depends altogether on the slaveholders themselves. The prolongation of
the war for a year, and the operation of the internal tax bill, will
convert all the voters of the Free States, whether Republicans or
Democrats, into practical Emancipationists. The tax bill alone will
teach the people important lessons which no politicians can gainsay.
Every person who buys a piece of broadcloth or calico,--every person who
takes a cup of tea or coffee,--every person who lives from day to day
on the energy he thinks he derives from patent medicines, or beer, or
whiskey,--every person who signs a note, or draws a bill of exchange, or
sends a telegraphic despatch, or advertises in a newspaper, or makes a
will, or "raises" anything, or manufactures anything, will naturally
inquire why he or she is compelled to submit to an irritating as well as
an onerous tax. The only answer that can possibly be returned is this,--
that all these vexatious burdens are necessary because a comparatively
few persons out of an immense population have chosen to get up a civil
war in order to protect and foster their slave-property, and the
political power it confers. As this property is but a small fraction of
the whole property of the country, and as its owners are not a hundredth
part of the population of the country, does any sane man doubt that the
slave-property will be relentlessly confiscated in order that the Slave
Power may be forever crushed?
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