Appendix B. Letter to President Andrew Johnson From George T. Downing, John Jones, William Whipper, Frederick Douglass, Lewis H. Douglass, and Others, Dated 7 February 1866
Appendix B. LETTER TO PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON FROM
GEORGE T. DOWNING, JOHN JONES, WILLIAM WHIPPER,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, LEWIS H. DOUGLASS,
AND OTHERS, DATED 7 FEBRUARY 1866
Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 8 February 1866.
Mr. President—In consideration of a delicate sense of propriety, as well as
your own repeated intimations of indisposition to discuss or to listen to a reply to
the views and opinions you were pleased to express to us in your elaborate speech
to-day, the undersigned would respectfully take this method of replying thereto.
Believing, as we do, that the views and opinions you expressed in that address are
entirely unsound and prejudicial to the highest interests of our race as well as our
country at large, we cannot do other than arrest their dangerous influences. It is not
necessary at this time to call attention to more than two or three features of your
remarkable address:
1. The first point to which we feel especially bound to take exception is your
attempt to found a policy opposed to our enfranchisement, upon the alleged
ground of an existing hostility on the part of the former slaves toward the poor
white people of the South. We admit the existence of this hostility, and hold that it
is entirely reciprocal. But you obviously commit an error by drawing an argument
from an incident of a state of slavery, and making it a basis for a policy adapted to a
state of freedom. The hostility between the whites and blacks of the South is easily
explained. It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited on both
sides by the cunning of the slave masters. Those masters secured their ascendancy
over the poor whites and the blacks by putting enmity between them.
They divided both to conquer each. There was no earthly reason why the
blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery, for it
was from this class that their masters received their slave-catchers, slave-drivers
and overseers. They were the men called in upon all occasions by the masters when
any fiendish outrage was to be committed upon the slave. Now, sir, you cannot but
perceive that, the cause of this hatred removed, the effect must be removed also.
Slavery is abolished. The cause of antagonism is removed and you must see that it
is altogether illogical (and “putting new wine into old bottles,” “mending new
garments with old cloth”) to legislate from slave-holding and slave-driving prem-
ises for a people whom you have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in
freedom.
2. Besides, even if it were true, as you allege, that the hostility of the blacks
toward the poor whites must necessarily project itself into a state of freedom, and
that this enmity between the two races is even more intense in a state of freedom
than in a state of slavery, in the name of Heaven, we reverently ask, how can you,
in view of your professed desire to promote the welfare of the black man, deprive
him of all means of defence, and clothe him whom you regard as his enemy in the
panoply of political power? Can it be that you would recommend a policy which
would arm the strong and cast down the defenceless? Can you, by any possibility
of reasoning, regard this as just, fair or wise? Experience proves that those are
oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped
oftenest who are whipped easiest. Peace between races is not to be secured by
degrading one race and exalting another, by giving power to one race and with-
holding it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all
classes. First pure, then peaceable.
3. On the colonization theory you were pleased to broach very much could be
said. It is impossible to suppose, in view of the usefulness of the black man in time
of peace as a laborer in the South, and in time of war as a soldier at the North, and
the growing respect for his rights among the people, and his increasing adaptation
to a high state of civilization in this his native land, there can ever come a time
when he can be removed from this country without a terrible shock to its prosperity
and peace. Besides, the worst enemy of the nation could not cast upon its fair name
a greater infamy than to suppose that negroes could be tolerated among them in a
state of the most degrading slavery and oppression, and must be cast away, driven
into exile, for no other cause than having been freed from their chains.
GEORGE T. DOWNING.
JOHN JONES.
WILLIAM WHIPPER.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
LEWIS H. DOUGLASS.
And others.
Washington, February 7, 1866.