Disunion Feed

"The Cotton States having now formally seceded, and set up a separate and Independent Government for themselves, the idea of Reconstruction is beginning to be the rallying cry of many at the North who have done their utmost in cheering on the rebels and traitors in their work of demolishing the present Government. [...] We are, therefore, now in danger of having an open palpable Covenant with Death, and Agreement with Hell. [...] The Union has fallen apart, and must be again cemented with the slave's blood!"

Douglass takes the Montgomery government as an accomplished fact and turns to the danger he thinks larger: that the North will buy the South back by writing slavery deeper into the Constitution. "A Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell" is Garrison's formula for the existing Constitution (from Isaiah 28); Douglass's point is that reconstruction would make it explicit. Written before the inaugural — the March issue predates March 4, so there is no in-window Douglass response to Lincoln's speech; his came in the April issue, outside this chapter. Non-contiguous passages from the one editorial joined with [...]. OCR fixes: "Cove-nant" line-wrap rejoined; "Axreement with Fell" read as "Agreement with Hell" (Garrison's standing formula, so the reading is secure); "bas" read as "has."

Read it in the original — Douglass' Monthly, Mar 1861 ↗

Next post: Abraham Lincoln, Mar 4, 1861 →

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. [...] It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances. [...] In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors."

The North's formal answer to the new nation, and it is two answers in one breath: slavery is safe where it stands, and secession is legally void. Both halves are the platform he ran on. The seven states at Montgomery had a government, a president, and a constitution before the man they seceded over took office. Non-contiguous passages from the one address joined with [...].

Read it in the original — First Inaugural Address, Mar 4, 1861 ↗