Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-10-15
The Pleasures of scrvlIe Insurrectrc

anu Htehsuhcs oI n SerVHc lnBurrecBt0u
They who have advised measures on the
part of the Government to excite and assist
a rising of the negroes of the Confederacy,
3 have done so because, in their opinion, those
negroes, once engaged in insurrectionary
proceedings, would fight desperately and
uuscrupulously against their masters and
their families, and the entire white popu-
latioD. We have seen and heard attempts to
describe what they would do, how effect.
lively they would proceed with the work of
providing for their present and future free
dom, and how thoroughly efficient they
would be, as auxilisries of the Government
in restoring the Union. 1t has not been
heretofore supposed that servile insurrec-
tion was pleasant affair. 1t is an impress
sion pretty generalamong mankind that wars
of races-when people of two distinct breeds
are striving for the mastery-are rather
cruel than otherwise: that they are more
apt to be carried to violent and inhuman ex-
tremes than other contests. This idea has
obtained, and seems to be pretty generally
accepted among mankind as correct-being
derived, probably, from past recollections
and experiences of some kind or other.
The Gazette, however, fails to discover in
the prospect of a servile insurrection any
thing SO very terrible. "The negroes" it
says, care a mild, kindly, inoffensive race;
probably too kindly in their disposition to
ever resort to the determined and cruel meas
uIes that are necessary to successful do
mestic insurrection. There is nothing in the
disposition of the naturally cruel, noble
Anglo Saxon race, to quake at negro atroci-
ties "In this country all the horrors of
servile insurrection have been the horrible
penalties inflicted by the masters" A truly
humane and Christian gentleman would be
opposed to every measure calculated to pro-
mote servile insurrection in the South
upon the score of the penalties alone which
are visited upon the insurrectionists; and
how any one who knows sught of these pen
alties, and thinks that the negroes are too !
kindly in their disposition ever to resort to
the determined and cruel measures neces-
sary to successful domestic insurreetion,
can countenauoe OF desire the adoption of
means TO promote such an insurrection,
passes our understanding.
The Gazette admits that determined and
cruel measures are necessary to successful
insurIectiop; that the horrors which Others
have imagined as attending such events
should come in order to render them effect
ual; but thinks that in the case of the ne
groes in the South, they will not come, on
account of the humanity of the negroes, or
will only be practiced upon the negroes by
the sayageness Of their masters in reducing
them to obedience. The Gazette is in favor
OF a proclamation of universal freedom by
the President, and other measures calculated
to awaken an insurrecdon in the South, and
that under pretense of philanthronv. II
is great friend to the negro; but little
should negroes care for friends who aav;.a
them into insurrections in which they must
eventually be overcome, with the certainty,
when overcome, of being made victims of the
cruelty Of tyrannical and overbesriug race,
ready to destroy every thing which stands in
the way of then safety or their ambition.
Slavery is pretty cruel; but it must hide
its head in the presence Of the more refined
and searching cruelty of philanthropy. The
Gazette fully proves its AnglO-saxon affini-
ties. 1t wants the negroes of the South to
fight our battles, with the prospect of incur
ring penalties from which we, even if we
would, can not protect them. The negroes