2

One Stain Erased.

Who does not rejoice that the national capital is at last purged from the curse and the loathsome stain of human slavery? Boasting of this as a free country, we have exhibited the strange, disgraceful and demoralizing spectacle of maintaining slavery (through Democratic influence) long after every other capital of the civilized world has driven it forth as unfit for toleration!

Yet there are some, who, claiming to be loyal and patriotic, do not rejoice at this onward step in civilization. Some of these men have been hoping and laboring for a veto, and now that it has not come, are privately cursing and publicly abusing the President as if he were a felon. Corrupt themselves, and concious that their rotten party lives only by pandering to prejudices against the negro, they can appreciate no such glorious act as that which recognizes the "rights" which Jefferson declared were self-evident — that to every man belonged "liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These men are around and among us, and if they could would make this a slave State also, and hang those who opposed the scheme. Such is the tenor of Democratic editorials concerning men who are prominent in sustaining such sentiments as Jefferson proclaimed in his "Notes on Virginia," or the doctrines of Clarkson, Wilberforce or Wesley. Judged by that standard of morals which goes for shielding treason, such men as Wilberforce are worse than Jeff. Davis, and if Democrats ever secure the political power, are to be hung as traitors. We fear they have begun the work at rather a late hour, still it is useful in showing how narrow has been our escape from that complete public demoralization which a few more years of pro-slavery misrule would have insured.

Thank God! the national capital is free — emancipation is"initiated." The President has shown himself true to freedom, and Kentucky is disappointed. Only a few hundred slaves — perhaps a thousand — will be made free by this act, but that is not the great point gained. The national reproach is wiped out — the national flag no longer upholds human bondage. The political atmosphere of Washington will become purer. Southern "gentleman" living on the earnings of negroes, will no longer bring their "servants" to Washington and hold them. "Agitation" has done something at last, however much it is falsely claimed by some to have riveted the chains of the slave.