Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1855-10-13
COMPROMISE

Our revolutionary fathers, by a guilty and
chattel slavery the upper hand in the government
at the very outset of our national career. Tho
wise maxim of the ancients, "Resist beginnings"
they neglected, either deficient in those statesman
like qualities Of mind which would have led
them to see the end from the commencement, or
wanting in that inexorable virtue which refuses to
be bribed into the abandonment of eternal truth
for the sake of a fancied present good.
This was a capital error, the effects of which
the philosophical mind traces with painful certain
ty through our whole national career, from the or
ganization of the Federal Government down to
the present day when we find ourselves bound
hand and foot in the tolls of a bastard democracy.
1t has been customary to saddle the blame of in
itiating this policy of compromise upon Henry
Clay, who has even won for himself the unenvia-
bic title OF the Great COMPROMISED, a title which
he richly deserved, it is true; but instead Of origi-
mating the doctrine, he was nothing more than an
imitator on a small scale, of a policy already grown
arrogant in the assurance of undisputed DONNA
ton and CT which his own character was only one
insulated effect; for the sins of the father are visi-
ted on the children, with unerrihg certainty even
to the third and fourth generation.
The practical effects of this policy, ~contompora-
neous with our existence as a people,are just what
might have been expected, and what the true
statesmen would have predicted from the begin
ming. Slavery has fashioned Church and State
according to its supreme will, and stamped itself
Enthusiastically upon our national character. 1t has
led the Church into a tacit connivance, where it
was not bold enough to undertake the open de-
fence of a system which one of the brightest orna-
ments of that church, in those good old days, WHEN
the virus of slavery had not yet done its perfect
work, intelligently denounced as 'the sum of all
villnnies," and has moulded for us, by scores, such
characters as Samuel Cox, sometimes, by a figure
of rhetoric, called Reverend, and who, after they
have in their unwary moments been induced to
espouse the anti-slavery cause, have fallen from
grace, sad monuments of that instability to which
all things human are liable, even n Doctor OF Di-
witty.
In the place of a Jay,-grandest and purcst of
revolutionary characters, and the host of others
who strove, with greater or less success, to keep
their garments unspotted from the deflements
of slavery, we have had under the influence of this
overshadowing despotism a Webster who on his
death-bed, drained to the dregs the cup Of defeat
and disgrace, rendered doubly bitter by the con,
viction that his abjeet, yet unavailing prostration
was before a giant Wrong; a Buchanan who, hav'
ing commenced his career as an abolitionist, be
comes, as he draws near its close, one of the most
degraded and supple tools of slavery, a Van Blu
rem, ever watching, with fox-like cunning for ''gol
den opportunity, 4" Indifferent alike to the cause OF
liberty and that Of slavery, to say nothing of the
"curs of low degree" who wait in troops round
the mansions in which these htpe to eat drink and
be merry, and who are amply satisfied with the
bones flung to them from the groaning tables, bat
over which, nevertheless, they have many a snar
ling and currish contest.
Even the Republican Movement, the latest sin
cere effort Tor the overthrow ofDespotism in Amer
lea, has, like all others, of a political nature thai
have preceded it, been silently, but with unrelent
ing certainty overpowered and compelled to rangC
itself under the banner of Compromise, the arms
of its partisans are p~aralysed in all their attacks
against Slavery in its stronghold.
Thus it is that Compromise with Despotisn
has debauched and belittled our character a
a people, until, in the effort to reconcile our il
reconcilable theory and practice, we are dwarfed
down into a race of theological hair-splitters ant
: political pettifoggers. l..
Could NOT SERVE TWO MAsTERs,-A few day
: since we stated that a conductor on the Madison
and indianapolis Railroad had arrested two run
away negroes. and returned them to Slavery il
Kentucky. The Louisville Courier of Friday say
d the managers of the road have discharged til
e conductors, and heads the announcement with
"a railroad for southerners to avoid
: Thus are southern shareholders always true t
therse'res ard he mediation Of Slavery. A rail