The names of the prominent slave-traders, their residences and places of business, are known to the marshal. Several of them have fled from the city; among them, a woman of wealth residing in St. Mark's Place. Their operations have been largely curtailed, and it has become almost impossible for a slaver to leave New York. With the concert of action agreed upon by the convention at Burton's Theatre, it is to be hoped that the slave-trade will be exterminated in every Northern port. Some legislation by Congress to increase the powers of the marshals, and efficient action on the part of the executive, are all that is now required to sweep the infamous commerce from the ocean.
Since the above was written, Captain Gordon, of the slaver Erie, has been convicted of piracy, before the United States Court for the Southern District of New York. It is needless to say that this conviction is the completest triumph which Freedom has yet gained in our country against her adversary. It indicates more clearly even than any event of the war, that Southern social influences are yielding, and that ere long we shall be free from all their taint. Like the defeat of Fernando Wood, like the breaking up of the Peace Party, like the rapidly progressing crusade against old political corruption, it shows that there is a reformation afoot which will work wonders, and prove to the world that the mass of corruption in this country, so generally attributed to the working of republican institutions, is in reality due to a diametrically opposite cause—to the influence of a party which in all its feelings is essentially that of despotism. May we all live to see its last trace obliterated from the free North.
LITERARY NOTICES
The Rejected Stone: or, Insurrection vs. Resurrection. By a Native of Virginia. Boston: Walker, Wise & Company, 245 Washington Street.
It is to be regretted that the native of Virginia who penned this volume has not published his name, that the world might know who it was that produced the most vigorous, unflinching, and brilliant work which has thus far resulted from the war. In sober seriousness, we have not as yet, in any journal or in any quarter, encountered such a handling of facts without gloves; such a rough-riding over old prejudices, timidities, and irresolution; such reckless straight-forwardness in declaring what should be done to settle the great dispute, or such laughing-devil sarcasm in ripping up dough-face weakness and compromising hesitation. Its principle and refrain, urged with abundant wit, ingenuity and courage, is simply EMANCIPATION—not on the narrow ground of abolition, but on the necessity of promptly destroying an evil which threatens to vitiate the white race. In the beginning the author points out the inevitableness of the present war, and that our political system has been hitherto a sacrifice to Slavery for the time, but also a running up of arrears in favor of Liberty.
'In forming this government, Slavery clutched at the strength of the law; Freedom relied on the inviolable justice of the ages. They have both had, they must have, their reward. That it was and is thus, is apparent from the very clauses under which Slavery claims eminent domain in this country; they are all written as for an institution passing away; the sources of it are sealed up so far as they could be; and all the provisions for it—the crutches by which it should limp as decently as possible to the grave—were so worded that, when Slavery should be buried, no dead letter would stand in the Constitution as its epitaph. It is even so. No historian a thousand years hence could show from that instrument that a single slave was ever held under it.' ... 'Slavery now appeals to arms because Freedom, in her slow but steady progress, has left no informality—no flaw—which can be seized on to reverse the decision she has gained in any higher court.'
The style of this book is remarkable. The wealth of simile which bursts out genially and involuntarily is only paralleled by its strange variety, recalling Carlyle in pleasant, piquant singularity. Its humor is irresistible; none the less so for being keenly satirical. We regret that our limits forbid copious extracts from these treasures, but do the more earnestly entreat the reader to buy the volume and make himself familiar with it. Whoever our Virginian may be, he is a rising star, well worth observing. We find him at times a gleaming enthusiast,—a man burning with the spirit of the war, involuntarily uttering the most thrilling passages of Scripture,—and again provoking laughter by dry humor and cutting jests. Let the reader in illustration take the following paragraphs in the same sequence in which they occur in the original work.
'"Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" said dying Julian the apostate. The North may, and will, now collect the bones of her great-browed children who yielded because she said yield; the fallen pillars of her crumbled church; her children whose wounds yet smoke fresh from the state of Slavery;—and broken now upon the stone she so long refused, shall write as their epitaph.
Vicisti Humanitas!