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262 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

had been seized from the Union,' and his call upon the militia of the several
States to the number of 75,000 men — a paper which showed how little even
he comprehended the work then before the loyal nation. It was perhaps better
for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end
from the beginning. Had he foreseen the thousands who must sink into
bloody graves; the mountains of debt to be laid on the breast of the nation;
the terrible hardships and sufferings involved in the contest; and his own
death by an assassin's hand, he too might have adopted the weak sentiment
of those who said 'Erring sisters depart in peace.'"

From the first, I for one, saw in this war the end of slavery; and truth
requires me to say that my interest in the success of the North was largely
due to this belief. True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing
events, but never destroyed. When Secretary Seward instructed our ministers
to say to the governments to which they were accredited, that, "terminate
however it might, the status of no class of the people of the United
States would be changed by the rebellion — that the slaves would be slaves
still, and that the masters would be masters still" — when General McClellan
and General Butler warned the slaves in advance that if any attempt was
made by them to gain their freedom, it would be suppressed "with an iron
hand" — when the government persistently refused to employ colored
troops — when the emancipation proclamation of General John C. Fremont
in Missouri was withdrawn — when slaves were being returned from our
lines to their masters — when Union soldiers were stationed about the farm
houses of Virginia to guard and protect the master in holding his slaves—
when Union soldiers made themselves more active in kicking colored men
out of their camps than in shooting rebels — when even Mr. Lincoln could
tell the poor negro that "he was the cause of the war," I still believed, and
spoke as I believed, all over the North, that the mission of the war was the
liberation of the slave, as well as the salvation of the Union; and hence from
the first I reproached the North that they fought the rebels with only one
hand, when they might strike effectually with two — that they fought with
their soft white hand while they kept their black iron hand chained and helpless
behind them — that they fought the effect while they protected the cause.
and that the Union cause would never prosper till the war assumed an anti-
slavery attitude, and the negro was enlisted on the loyal side. In every way
possible, in the columns of my paper and on the platform, by letters to
friends, at home and abroad, I did all that I could to impress this conviction
upon this country. But nations seldom listen to advice from individuals,