August 26, 1864
Under the Refuge of Oppression column, is a poem, from the Mobile Southern Tribune.
It is titled, The Heavy Curse, and is seven verses. For flavor of it here are the first and last verses:
May Heaven’s curses, dark and dire,
Commingled with almighty fire,
Fall on your head and press you down
With dreadful torture to the ground.
And if there be a curse more dire
Than hell with all its liquid fire,
Oh, may it in your soul e’en creep,
And hellish fiends their nightly orgies keep!
January 1, 1864
Under the Refuge of Oppression column, is an article from the Boston Pilot.
Addressing the “dire distress” of the time, it calls upon “men who govern” to ponder the “the golden opportunity (which) trembles in the hour”…It explains its concern: “One would infer that the relative numbers of the white and black races are the reverse of the reality, that there are twenty-five negroes to every white man in the land, if he might judge from our legislation.” The article goes on to contend that “the idolatry for negroes” is due to the fanatical abolitionists, and that fanatics are invariably seditious. It concludes: “We invoke the little patriotism that lingers at Washington to lift itself above the African slough, and to legislate for white men, by which course alone the national authority can be vindicated, treason silenced, and the blessings of equal liberty preserved to ourselves and our posterity.”
July 17, 1863
Here is action by the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society, relative to the proposition of the Rev. Moncure D. Conway who, has proposed that abolitionists would oppose the prosecution of the war if the Confederate States would agree to emancipate the slaves. The statement, signed by Garrison, repudiates all such ideas, and also the representation by Conway, in England, that he represents wide abolitionist sentiment.
May 15, 1863
Under the Refuge of Oppression, from the Manchester Union, “The Abolitionists will fail. They accepted war, which might have been avoided with honor, because they thought it would furnish an occasion to strike at slavery…..Slavery will not be abolished by this war, and our sacrifices of men and women will be in proportion to the extent to which that purpose is carried in its management…..A majority of our people will not willingly take any part in any war whose purpose is not the restoration of the old Union.”
January 16, 1863
Under the Refuge of Oppression column, from the New Hampshire Patriot, this article begins: “The greatest crime ever committed by a Chief Magistrate of a free people has been perpetrated by the President in the promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation….the abolition scheme, unconstitutional, partisan, and atrocious in itself, cannot do any good, but is sure to produce immense harm to the cause of the Union, at home and abroad; and only those who are blind to the most patent facts, and deaf to all the appeals of reason and patriotism, can doubt it…”
July 18, 1862
In the Refuge of Oppression column, from the Dayton Empire, here are some of the words: “Down with Abolitionism! Let this be the motto of the truly loyal and conservative men of the North and the West, until the monster is not only crushed, but killed. It was scotched at the spring elections - let us finish the job in the fall….Down with the Abolitionists , and down with the men and presses who directly or indirectly endorse and sustain them! They must go down or our country will go down. They must go down, or the Constitution will go down. They must go down or the rights and liberties of the people will go down…..”
April 4, 1862
From the New York Herald comes an item which tells of the way Phillips was greeted when he attempted “do deliver one of his revolutionary lectures in that city.” “The abolition lectures in this city were not attended by the people. Cheever, Garrison and the rest have been only beating the air. …In the West they are regarded as dangerous lunatics, who ought not to be allowed to be at large….”
July 26, 1861
Under the Refuge of Oppression column, from the Bloomington (Ill) Times, is a sarcastic article about “this barbarous civil war”… “Let’s smash up things generally, and return civilization on its tracks a thousand years. Let’s show the ‘rebels’ and the rest of the world that we have a government, by tearing down the Constitution and setting up a military dictatorship…… Let’s shut up all the churches; turn all the schools into recruiting stations….”
April 12, 1861
In the Refuge of Oppression column, from the Savannah Republican, is a brief article in which a slave, Harrison Berry, is cited as having written why “slavery is the proper status for the black man”, a status which no one can doubt “who will properly investigate the subject”. According to this account, Berry says “that the Abolitionists are his worst enemies, inasmuch as all their efforts only tend to draw the cords of servitude more tightly around him, and deprive him of many indulgences that he would otherwise enjoy.”
December 7, 1860
The meeting was to be a third anniversary of the Martyrdom of John Brown, to be held at Tremont Temple. The content of the long article is captured in these headings at the beginning of the article: “The Meeting forcibly suppressed by order of Mayor Lincoln, who thus virtually headed the mob, but who is soon to receive his ‘walking ticket’- Resolutions adopted by the rioters, free Anti-Slavery Speech no longer to be tolerated, yet triumphant in the evening at the Joy Street Church - brutal assault upon colored citizens –Second Battalion under arms…”
