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"One of the most sensible, prudent, and praiseworthy acts of the government of the United States, which has come under our observation, for a long time, is that of sending Captain G. V. Fox, formerly of Massachusetts, on a secret mission of observation to Fort Sumter, to ascertain and report, from actual personal inspection, the practicability of reinforcing that fortress, as well as the present ability of Major Anderson to sustain himself and his men within its walls."

The secret mission is in the newspaper. Gustavus V. Fox had visited Sumter on March 21 and reported that the fort could be resupplied by sea; his plan became the expedition that sailed in April. A paper praising the mission's prudence is also, unavoidably, announcing it. One contiguous passage, no splice.

Read it in the original — Boston Daily Courier, Mar 29, 1861 ↗

Next post: Frederick Douglass, Apr 1, 1861 →

"He reached the Capital as the poor, hunted fugitive slave reaches the North, in disguise, seeking concealment, evading pursuers, by the underground railroad, between two days, not during the sunlight, but crawling and dodging under the sable wing of night. [...] We have no censure for the President at this point. He only did what braver men have done. [...] we must declare the address to be but little better than our worst fears, and vastly below what we had fondly hoped it might be. It is a double-tongued document, capable of two constructions"

Douglass reviews the same inaugural the North and South each read as their own (se-039). He likens the President's night arrival in Washington to a fugitive slave's, then declines to censure it ("He only did what braver men have done"); his censure is for the speech that followed, which says two things at once. Three passages joined with [...]. The scan is rough; OCR line-wraps and artifacts fixed silently in the excerpt are "evad- ing"→"evading", "ad- dress"→"address", "and- vastly"→"and vastly", "wehad"→"we had", "ca- pable"→"capable", "constructiogs"→"constructions". No words added or dropped.

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