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The American Ruin and Its Lasting Carnage
The Run-Up to A Civil War
“let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin!” -Fredrick Douglass
Oh god, the last thing I needed right now was to stumble upon this speech by Douglass and read it. I’m inflamed enough and suffering from some recent back pains and car troubles. Now I just learned we are facing a Civil War, not just some measly insurrection.
Irrevocable ruin — it sounds like that to me. That’s what Douglass was saying on the verge of the last one: Dire warning America, American Carnage is coming. I suppose it was, having spoken on the Fourth of July to a crowd of whites. Just a handful of years later, we were actually in the bloodbath of the first Civil War, a real American slaughterfest.
Why did a bunch of whites pay this Douglass dude to speak to them? What are they crazy? At that point in his career as an orator, they knew he would blast the truth out masterfully. Maybe he felt they — this group of white abolitionists and allies — were pushing it though, aggravating the Southern white beast. Could they not have refrained and gotten one of those white ladies to speak instead? I suppose they wanted to feel revolutionary, rile up the crowd…
