The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1861-02-25
The Abolition Marat " Pleading Not
Guilty"


The Abolition Marat "PIesdtng Not
Guilty"
Almost every culprit denies his guilt, no mat
ter how his hands may be stained with crime.
Garrison, the Marat of the ant-glavery revoln-
ton, denies In his Liberator, with great show
of affected indignation, the statements we re
Gently published in our History of Abolition
ISM touching him and his bloodthirsty party
of the Mountain, who are ever denouncing the
Girondist school of moderate republicans as
not going far enough or fast enough, AMI
as being traitors to the good cause. There is
not statement we made that we caan3f
prove-we challenge him to point out one.
We have the documents, and we have other
materials not yet published which will beeome
cumulative evidence against him. Does he
foresee the coming tempest, aud does ne shrink
from the consequences OF bis own acts-his long
career of atrocious agitation by which he has
been only too successful in breaking up the
government and precipitating the country into
revolution!
OF course he denies his accountability, just
as did the revolutionary propaganda In Paris
in 1898. When the accusation against Robes
pierre-that he aspired to be the Dictator OF
France-was unattended by any punishment
it fell back upon Marat, who had recommended
the Dictatorship ia his newspaper, the Friend
Of the People, who had applauded- the massa-
ores and denounced for the guillotine
the best citizens Of the land. Marat
came forward to justify himself before the Con-
vention. He reminded them Of what he had
done in the cause of liberty, and by his
sophistry and cold blooded self possession he
escaped from the retribution which his crimes
deserved Yet he had demanded the heads
of thousands of individuals in his journal, and
he had prepared the multitude for the massa
ores of September He depraved the public
morals; he said the Revolution had its enemies,
and in order to insure its duration those enc
mics were to be destroyed. He thought the
most obvious means was to exterminate them
and to name dictator whose function should
be prescription. Thus to- Marat were owing
the two ideas which "the Committee of Safety"
carried into effect at later period-the dicta-
tOrship and the determination Of multitudes.
Marat fell at last by the hand Of Charlotte
Corday; but his principles unfortunately lived
after him, and his death accomplished more Of
atrocity than his life.
In like manner Garrison has denounced
Southern citizens in his journal; he has pro
claimed eternal hostility to the South and its in
situations, applauded the assassin John Browns
invasion of Virginia to kindle servile insur-
rection and to massacre the white race He has
canonized the cutthroat as a saint and as one Of
"the noble army of martyrs" He has excited
the fanatics of the North against the people
OF the South, proclaiming the constitution
which bound them together as "a cove
nant with death and an agreement with hell"
And, under the influence of his teachings have
not thousands in Massachusetts, celebrated the
Fourth of July by trampling under foot, spit
ting on and burning the constitution? Does
not Garrison, and do not all his infdel disci
ples execrate the Bible, on the ground that it is
a Shareholders book, just as the JacObins at
Lyons, backed by republican army of "ven-
geance," burned the Scriptures and other holy
books at the grave of "Chalier, the martyr"
the John Brown of that time, and scattered the
ashes to the winds, and just as at Paris they set
up on the altar Of Notre Dame a rouged harlot,
Demoiselle Caudrille, with red woollen night
cap, and worshipped her as the Goddess of
Reason? Has not Garrison prepared the way
for the invasion of the South now contemplated
by the radical wing of the republican party,
by AL army which is to be we'll provided with
halters, sparing neither age nor sex, in order
in the language of the Tribune, "to crush the
eggs of the reptile that has Matched the brood
of traitors" like the republican army Of the
French Revolution, which invaded the Girondist
cities of the South, taking with it portable
aged and of women and little children? AS in
the Reign of Terror, in 1898, so now the inscrip-
ton on the bloody banners of the invading army
is to be, !" The republic, one and indivisible,
liberty, equality, fraternity, or death" The
emancipation of the blacks, their equality wits
the whites, and the amalgamation of both is as
much the Gospel, according to Saint Garrison,
as the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau were
the evangelism of the French Revolution. His
beloved Robespierre is Wendell Phillips, who
delights to lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture,
the black chieftain Of the st. Domingo massacre,
as the greatest Of heroes, exceeding Tell,
Kosciusko and Washington, and glorifes that
darkest deed in the records OF human crime as
the most illustrious Of human achievements.
There can be no doubt that similar mas
sacre in the Southern States, on larger scale
and under more horrible circumstances, is now
meditated. The New York Tribune foreshadows
it, and all the Mountain" party, in and out
OF Congress, are clamorous for blood, like the
Jacobins of the French Revolution. But they
know not the temper of the American people
OF the principles which control them. The
people of the United States never will return
to the exploded dogma of "might makes
right" which their ancestors expended SO
much blood and endured SO many sufferings to
overthrow. And the day is not far distant
xxl,., ,ba eanc,,tnaru athaiatinal oravv Uho ra