Frederick Douglass Samuel P. Allen, October 31, 1859
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL P. ALLEN1Founded in 1836, the Rochester was a long-established city paper. It was purchased in 1846 by Alva Strong, Samuel P. Allen, and Henry Strong. By the late 1850s, the paper had morning, triweekly, and weekly editions. In 1857, the absorbed a rival, the , and became know as the Rochester and the weekly . Under the editorial direction of Allen (1814–?), the upheld first the Whig and then the Republican party standard in the city. A career journalist, Allen won patronage appointments as clerk of the state senate and collector of internal revenue for Monroe and Orleans counties, New York, as rewards for his political service. The issue of the publishing Douglass’s letter has not been located, so the oldest complete text from the New York has been reproduced. French, , 396; James H. Smith, (Syracuse, N.Y., 1881), 388; Aida DiPace Donald, “The Decline of Whiggery and the Formation of the Republican Party in Rochester, 1848–1856,” [RH], 20:4–5, 15 (July 1958).
Canada West. 31 Oct[ober] 1859.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT:
I notice that the telegraph makes Mr. Cook,2Born in Haddam, Connecticut, John Edwin Cook (1830–59) studied for a time at Yale Univer-sity and then worked as a law clerk in Brooklyn, New York. By 1855, Cook had migrated to Kansas and was among the first to volunteer to assist Brown in his plan to raid the South. Brown sent Cook ahead to live in Harpers Ferry for more than a year before the raid. A genial and observant young man, Cook worked as a lock tender, married a local woman, and surreptitiously gathered information about the armory and its watch patrols. Part of the rear guard during the raid, he managed to escape as far north as Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, before being captured. While in jail, he wrote a public confession that implicated several of Brown’s abolitionist supporters, including Douglass, whom Cook accused of failing to bring promised reinforcements for the raid. At his trial, Cook pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he had not been informed of Brown’s true intentions until the time of the attack. After an unsuccessful escape attempt, he was executed on 16 December 1859. Hinton, , 78–79, 110, 329, 561–64; Oates, , 218–19, 251–52, 275, 286, 298, 315–16, 328; Villard, , 307–08, 338, 344, 408, 446–47, 570–73. (one of the unfortunate insurgents at Harper’s Ferry, and now a prisoner in the hands of the thing calling itself the Government of Virginia, but which in fact is but an organized conspiracy by one party of the people, against the other and weaker,) denounces me as a coward—and to assert that I promised to be present in person at the Harper’s Ferry Insurrection.3John Brown led a party of twenty-one men on a raid of Harpers Ferry on 16–17 October 1859. Seven of his followers escaped, but Pennsylvania authorities later captured two of them. Oates, , 299–309, 324–27, 34–52. This is certainly a very grave impeachment, whether viewed in its bearings upon friends, or upon foes, and you will not think it strange that I should take a somewhat serious notice of it. Having no acquaintance, whatever, with Mr. COOK, and never having exchanged a word with him about the Harper’s Ferry insurrection, I am disposed to doubt that he could have used the language concerning me, which the wires attribute to him.—The lightning, when speaking for itself, is among the most direct, reliable and truthful of things; but when speaking for the terror stricken slaveholders at Harper’s Ferry, it has been made the swiftest of liars. Under their nimble and trembling fingers, it magnified seventeen men into seven hundred—and has since filled thecolumns of the New York Herald for days with interminable contradictions.4John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry caused considerable confusion in the Northern press and led to many inaccurate reports on the number and methods of Brown and his men. The New York emphasized that the raid was “led by white men,” and greatly exaggerated the number of men involved in the raid. According to the , there were “several hundred negros” involved in the fighting, and escaped slaves would then reinforce this number. Before U.S. military forces recaptured the arsenal, the reported that there were enough men at Harpers Ferry to threaten Washington and that the city was erecting fortifications in preparation of such an attack in the next few days. New York , 18, 20 October 1859. But assuming that it has told only the simple truth, as to the sayings of Mr. COOK in this instance, I have this answer to make to my accuser: Mr. COOK may be perfectly right in denouncing me as a coward. I have not one word to say in defense or vindication of my character for courage. I have always been more distinguished for running than fighting—and tried by the Harper’s Ferry insurrection test, J am most miserably deficient in courage—even more so than COOK, when he deserted his brave old captain and fled to the mountains. To this extent, Mr. COOK is entirely right, and will meet no contradiction from me or from anybody else. But wholly, grievously, and most unaccountably wrong is Mr. COOK, when he asserts that I promised to be present in person at the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. Of whatever other imprudence and indiscretion I may have been guilty, I have never made a promise so rash and wild as this. The taking of Harper’s Ferry was a measure never encouraged by my word or by my vote, at any time or place; my wisdom or my cowardice, has not only kept me from Harper’s Ferry, but has equally kept me from making any promise to go there. I desire to be quite emphatic here—for of all guilty men, he is the guiltiest who lures his fellow men to an undertaking of this sort, under promise of assistance, which he afterwards fails to render. I therefore declare that there is no man living, and no man dead, who if living, could truthfully say that I ever promised him or anybody else, either conditionally or otherwise, that I would be present in person at the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. My field of labor for the abolition of Slavery has not extended to an attack upon the United States’ arsenal. In the teeth of the documents already published, and of those which may hereafter be published, I affirm that no man connected with that insurrection, from its noble and heroic leader down, can connect my name with a single broken promise of any sort whatever. So much I deem it proper to say negatively.
The time for a full statement of what I know, and of all I know, of this desperate but sublimely disinterested effort to emancipate the slaves of Maryland and Virginia, from their cruel task masters, has not yet come, and may never come. In the denial which I have now made, my motive is more a respectful consideration for the opinions of the slave’s friends, than from my fear of being made an accomplice in the general conspiracy against Slavery. I am ever ready to write, speak, publish, organize, combine, and even to conspire against Slavery, when there is a reasonable hope for success. Men who live by robbing their fellow men of their labor and liberty, have forfeited their right to know any thing of the thoughts, feelings or purposes of those whom they rob and plunder. They have by the single act of slaveholding, voluntarily placed themselves beyond the laws of justice and honor, and have become only fitted for companionship with thieves and pirates—the common enemies of God and of all mankind. While it shall be considered right to protect oneself against thieves, burglars, robbers and assassins, and to slay a wild beast in the act of devouring his human prey, it can never be wrong for the imbruted and whip-scarred slaves, or their friends, to hunt, harrass and even strike down the traffickers in human flesh.—If any body is disposed to think less of me on account of this sentiment; or because I may have had a knowledge of what was about to occur, and did not assume the base and detestable character of an informer, he is a man whose good or bad opinion of me may be equally repugnant and despicable. Entertaining this sentiment, I may be asked, why I did not join John Brown—the noble old hero whose one right hand has shaken the foundation of the American Union, and whose ghost will haunt the bed-chambers of all the born and unborn Slaveholders of Virginia through all their generations, filling them with alarm and consternation! My answer to this has already been given, at least impliedly given. “The tools to those that can use them.”5This expression is commonly attributed to the English writer Thomas Carlyle. Steven Marcus, “Conceptions of the Self in an Age of Progress,” in , ed. Gabriel A. Almond, Marvin Chodorow and Roy Harvey Pearce (Berkeley, Calif., 1992), 437. Let every man work for the abolition of Slavery in his own way. I would help all, and hinder none. My position in regard to the Harper’s Ferry Insurrection, may be easily inferred from these remarks, and I shall be glad if those papers which have spoken of me in connection with it, would find room for this brief statement.
I have no apology for keeping out of the way of those gentlemanly United States Marshals, who are said to have paid Rochester a somewhat protracted visit lately, with a view to an interview with me.6Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia requested federal help in apprehending Douglass, and federal officials visited Rochester, reportedly to seize Douglass. , 2:162–63 (November 1859); Quarles, , 114–15; idem, , 178–85. A government recognizing the validity of the Dred Scott decision, at such a time as this, is not likely to have any very charitable feelings towards me; and if I am to meet its representatives, I prefer to do so, at least, upon equal terms. If I have committed any offense against Society, I have done so on the soil of the State of New York, and I should be perfectly willing there to be arraigned before an impartial jury; but I have quite insuperable objections to being caught by the hands of Mr. BUCHANAN,7President James Buchanan. and “bagged” by GOV. WISE.8Henry Alexander Wise (1806–76), governor of Virginia from 1856 to 1860, graduated from Washington College in Pennsylvania, studied law under the famed jurist Henry St. George Tucker, and briefly practiced law in Nashville, Tennessee, before entering Virginia politics as a Jacksonian Democrat and opponent of nullification. Serving in Congress from 1833 to 1844, he attracted considerable notoriety for his impassioned defense of slavery and Southern rights. Wise switched allegiances for a time to the Whig party, supporting the Harrison-Tyler presidential campaign of 1840, and served as ambassador to Brazil in the Tyler administration. During the 1850s, Wise, again a Democrat, successfully opposed Know-Nothingism in Virginia, arguing in part that the new party harbored antislavery sentiments. As governor, Wise reacted zealously to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and desired particularly to implicate Douglass. He requested that President Buchanan hire two Virginia detectives as special federal agents to capture Douglass and deliver him to Virginia authorities. Even after Douglass left the United States, Wise employed a detective “to find out the of the Negro Frederick Douglass and keep an eye on his movements and associates.” The Northern press reported that a group of prominent Southerners, including Wise, had offered $50,000 for Douglass’s capture. After his term as governor, Wise served as a delegate to the Washington Peace Convention of 1861 and as a general in the Confederate army. Douglass to the editor of the Rochester Democrat (and American), 31 October 1859, in Montreal Daily Transcript, 5 November 1859; DM, 2:162–63 (November 1859); Lib., 23 December 1859; FDP, 5 January 1860; Barton H. Wise, (New York, 1899); Quarles, , 180–85; idem, , 115; , 6:579–80; , 20:423–25. For this appears to be the arrangement—BUCHANAN does the fighting and hunting, and WISE “bags” the game.
Some reflections may be made upon my leaving on a tour to England, just at this time. I have only to say, that my going to that country has been rather delayed than hastened by the insurrection at Harper’s Ferry. All knew that I had intended to leave here in the first week of November.9On 12 November 1859, Douglass took passage from Quebec on board the steamer of the Allan Line, disembarking at Liverpool, England, on 24 November 1859. New York, 15 November 1859.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
PLSr: New York , 3 November 1859. Other texts in Rochester , 2 November 1859; Toronto , 4 November 1859; Halifax (Eng.) , 3 December 1859.