defense of these or to fall with
them, victims of the same violence that for two centuries has held the
black man a prisoner of war. While the South has waged this war
against human rights, the North has stood by holding the garments of
those who were stoning liberty to death. It was in vain that a few at
the North denounced the system, and called the people to repentance.
In vain did they point to the progress of the slave power, and warn
the people that their own liberties were being cloven down. The North
still went on, throwing sop after sop to the Cerberus of slavery that
hounded her through the wilderness of concession and compromise, until
the crash of Sumter taught her that with the slaveocracy _no_ rights
are sacred. The Government, attacked by assassins, was forced to fight
for its own life. The progress of the war has proved that slavery is
the life-blood of the rebellion. Hence the necessity of the
President's Proclamation of Freedom to the slaves.

The nation is in a death-struggle. It must either become one vast
slaveocracy of petty tyrants, or wholly the land of the free. The
traitors boast that they have swept from the national firmament
one-third of its stars, but they have only darkened them with clouds,
which the sun of liberty will scatter, revealing behind them the
eternal pillars of Justice, emblazoned with liberty, equality,
fraternity.

Soldiers of this revolution, to your hands is committed the sacred
duty of carrying out in these latter days the ideal of our fathers,
which was to secure to ALL "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness," and to every State "a republican form of government." To
break the power of this rebellion, calls for every available force.
You know how extensively black men are now being armed. Some regiments
are already in the field; twenty more are now under drill. Will you
not, in this hour of national peril, gratefully welcome the aid which
they so eagerly proffer, to overthrow that slave power which has so
long ruled the North, and now, that you spurn its sway, is bent on
crushing YOU? Will you not abjure that vulgar hate which has conspired
with slavery against liberty in our land, and thus roll from the
sepulcher, where they have buried it alive, the stone which has so
long imprisoned their victim? The army of the North will thus become
the angel of deliverance, rescuing the nation from the shifting sands
of compromise, and refounding it upon the rock of justice