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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

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her emancipation came in peace, and ours in war; though hers cost treasure,
and ours blood; though hers was the result of a sacred preference, and ours
resulted in part from necessity, the motive and mainspring of the respective
measures were the same in both.

The abolitionists of this country have been charged with bringing on the
war between the North and South, and in one sense this is true. Had there
been no anti-slavery agitation at the North, there would have been no active
anti-slavery anywhere to resist the demands of the slave-power at the South,
and where there is no resistance there can be no war. Slavery would then
have been nationalized, and the whole country would then have been sub-
jected to its power. Resistance to slavery and the extension of slavery invited
and provoked secession and war to perpetuate and extend the slave system.
Thus in the same sense, England is responsible for our civil war. The aboli-
tion of slavery in the West Indies gave life and vigor to the abolition move-
ment in America. Clarkson of England gave us Garrison of America;
Granville Sharpe of England gave us our Wendell Phillips; and Wilberforce
of England gave us our peerless Charles Sumner.

These grand men and their brave co-workers here, took up the moral
thunder-bolts which had struck down slavery in the West Indies, and hurled
them with increased zeal and power against the gigantic system of slavery
here, till, goaded to madness, the traffickers in the souls and bodies of men
flew to arms, rent asunder the Union at the center, and filled the land with
hostile armies and the ten thousand horrors of war. Out of this tempest, out
of this whirlwind and earthquake of war, came the abolition of slavery, came
the employment of colored troops, came colored citizens, came colored jury-
men, came colored congressmen, came colored schools in the South, and
came the great amendments of our national constitution.

We celebrate this day, too, for the very good reason that we have no other
to celebrate. English emancipation has one advantage over American eman-
cipation. Hers has a definite anniversary. Ours has none. Like our slaves, the
freedom of the negro has no birthday. No man can tell the day of the month,
or the month of the year, upon which slavery was abolished in the United
States. We cannot even tell when it began to be abolished. Like the movement
of the sea, no man can tell where one wave begins and another ends. The
chains of slavery with us were loosened by degrees. First, we had the struggle
in Kansas with border ruffians; next, we had John Brown at Harper's Ferry;
next, the tiring upon Fort Sumter; a little while after, we had Frémont's order,
freeing the slaves of the rebels in Missouri. Then we had General Butler
declaring and treating the slaves of rebels as contraband of war; next we had