"
It would be well if such absurdities were all one had to record: some
ebullitions of abolitionist zeal will hardly bear writing down. Take one
instance. At a large Union meeting at Philadelphia, the _Reverend_ A. H.
Gilbert, speaking of the Proclamation, and its probable effects in the
South, did not deny that it might entail a repetition of the San Domingo
horrors on a vaster scale. "But," said he--"speaking calmly and as a
Christian minister--I affirm that it would be better that every woman
and child in the South should perish, than that the principles of
Confederate Statesmen should prevail."
In all that huge assembly, there was not one man found who--for the love
of wife, or sister, or daughter, or mother--would rise to smite the
brutal blasphemer on the mouth; nay, the Quaker brood cheered him to the
echo.
That same Proclamation has done less harm than was expected, after all.
Maryland has suffered, perhaps, most: the whole Constitution is rendered
null and void there now, without her gaining any European credit as a
voluntary free State. The negroes stay or run away according to their
fancy, and work as it suits their convenience; the chances against
recapture being about 1000 to 1, so it says something for the system,
that so many have chosen to remain: hardly any household or domestic
servants are found among the fugitives.
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