The Douglass Institute: An Address Delivered in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 29, 1865
THE DOUGLASS INSTITUTE: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
IN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, ON 29 SEPTEMBER 1865
Liberator, 13 October 1865. Other texts in Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser,
30 September 1865; Speech File, reel 14, frames 487-502. FD Papers, DLC; Philip
S. Foner, ed., “Address of Frederick Douglass at the Inauguration of Douglass Institute,
Baltimore, October 1, 1865,” Journal of Negro History, 54: 174-83 (April 1969); idem,
Life and Writings, 4: 174-81, misdated October 1865.
The Douglass Institute, established by a group of Baltimore blacks concerned
with the intellectual and moral development of their youth, formally opened
on 29 September 1865. The Institute’s building on Lexington Street, which
the association had purchased from Newton University and renovated, in-
cluded a lecture and exhibition hall, a library, classrooms, and a music depart-
ment. Douglass, who had been on a lecture tour of Vermont, Pennsylvania,
and Maryland, was the honored guest and speaker at the dedication. Some six
hundred blacks and two hundred whites attended the evening ceremony,
which Bishop Alexander Wayman of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
opened with prayer. Introduced by J. Henry Butler, president of the Institute’s
board of directors, and speaking beneath a full-length portrait of Abraham
Lincoln, Douglass delivered what the Boston Commonwealth described as “a
brilliant lecture . . . saluted with tempestuous applause.” Other speakers fol-
lowed, including the Reverend Mr. Lynch, John Needles, and Henry Stock-
bridge, whom Douglass called “the [Wendell] Phillips of our cause in Bal-
timore.” According to the Commonwealth’s correspondent, who also spoke,
these later speeches “served to wake up Mr. Douglass,” who “took the floor
by way of driving the nails home and clinching them. He kept his audience
enchained till midnight” with impromptu remarks on black suffrage and
Reconstruction policy that “for fervid eloquence and sledge-hammer logic.
surpassed any thing of the kind I have ever heard.” Douglass to Gerrit Smith.
8 October 1865, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU; Baltimore Sun, 30 September
1865; Boston Commonwealth, 7 October 1865; Nashville Colored Tennes-
sean, 14 October 1865.
I have, during my public career, had the honor to address many assemblies,
both at home and abroad, and in furtherance of various objects; but I do not
remember ever to have appeared anywhere under a deeper sense of the
importance of the occasion than I feel tonight. I know it is common to call
all occasions, upon which we assemble in large numbers, great and important,
and in some sense the characterization is just and proper; for the
movement of large bodies of men in this or that direction, for any purpose,
good or ill, is always important, and worthy of note. But the present
occasion is one of no ordinary character. We come here to dedicate an
institution which, in my opinion, is destined to play an important part in
promoting the freedom and elevation of the colored people of this city and
State, and I may say of the whole Union.
Let me at the outset put myself at ease by expressing to the founders of
this Institution my sincere and heartfelt thanks for assigning to me the high
place I occupy on this occasion, and above all, for associating my name
with the Institute here established. It is an honor. I look upon this proceed-
ing on your part not merely as a compliment to me personally, but as an
open avowal of the great principles of progress, liberty, justice and equal-
ity, which I have for years endeavored to advocate. When I left Maryland,
twenty-seven years ago, I did so with the firm resolve never to forget my
brothers and sisters in bondage, and to do whatever might be in my power
to accomplish their emancipation; and I have to say to-night, that in what-
ever else I may have failed, in this at least I have not failed. No man can
truthfully say I ever deserted the post of duty.
The establishment of an Institute bearing my name by the colored
people in the city of my boyhood, so soon after the act of emancipation in
this State, looms before me as a first grand indication of progress. I say it is
a first, and first indications, whether observed in the silent, mysterious
phenomena of physical nature, or in the moral or intellectual developments
of human society, are always interesting to thoughtful men. Every age has
its prophet or its Messiah. We are ever waiting and watching like good old
Simeon for our babe of Bethlehem.1Douglass alludes to the recognition of the child Jesus as the long awaited Messiah by the holy man Simeon in the Temple at Jerusalem. Luke 2: 25-35. John Brown used to say he had looked
over our people as over a dark sea, in the hope of seeing a head rise up with
a mind to plan and a hand to deliver. Any movement of the water arrested
his attention2In his autobiography Douglass recalls that at their first meeting in 1847 Brown "said he had been for some time looking for Negro men to whom he could safely reveal his secret, and at times he had almost despaired of finding such men; but that now he was encouraged, for he saw heads of such rising up in all directions." Douglass, Life and Times, 303. In all directions, we desire to catch the first sign. The first
sign of clear weather on the ocean after a season of darkness and storm; the
first sign of returning health after long and weary months of wasting fever;
the first sign of rain after a famine, threatening drouth; the first indication
of spring, silently releasing the knotty and congealed earth from the frosty
fetters of winter; the first sign of peace after the ten thousand calamities,
horrors, desolations and alarms of war, evermore bring joy and gladness to
the human heart.
The mind of man has a special attraction towards first objects. It
delights in the dim and shadowy outlines of the coming fact. There is a
calm and quiet satisfaction in the contemplation of present attainments; but
the great future, and the yet unattained, awaken in the soul the deepest
springs of poetry and enthusiasm.
The occasion that brings us here this evening may be properly viewed
in the spirit of these brief reflections. It is an indication of the rise of a
people long oppressed, enslaved and bound in the chains of ignorance, to a
freer and higher plane of life, manhood, usefulness and civilization.
Peace, says the noble Sumner, has its triumphs no less than war.3Senator Charles Sumner often quoted John Milton, whose poem “To the Lord General Cromwell" (1652) contains the lines: “Peace hath her Victories / No less than those of War." The Works of John Milton in Verse and Prose, 8 vols. (London, 1851), 1: 166-67; Charles Sumner: His Complete Works, Statesman, ed., 20 vols. (Boston, 1900), 1: 128. I
avail myself of the aphorism, and claim the dedication of the Douglass
Institute in this, the city of Baltimore, in the State of Maryland, dedicated
as it will be to knowledge, virtue and liberty, as one such triumph. I think it
quite difficult to over estimate the importance and significance of the first
effort of the kind in the city of Baltimore. I confess that the establishment of
such an Institution here and now was a source of apprehension as well as
joy; joy in the thought of its success, apprehension lest the effort should
fail. It seemed too much to expect.
A people hitherto pronounced by American learning as incapable of
any thing higher than the dull round of merely animal life—held to be
originally and permanently inferior—fit only for the coarser and heavier
labors of human society—shut out for ages from the arts, from science,
and from all the more elevating forms of industry—deprived of the social
incentive to excellence which everywhere act upon other men, dare here
and now to establish an Institute, devoted to all the higher wants and
aspirations of the human soul. It is a great fact.
Your very enemies, looking upon this event, will admit that it speaks
well for the colored people of Baltimore. It is in itself a powerful appeal
from the popular judgment under which the colored people of this city and
of this State, and of the whole country, have staggered during more than
two hundred years. I would bestow no extravagant and indiscriminate
praise upon the founders of the Douglass Institute. You are sensible men,
and would not thank me if I did. The colored people of this country have as
much reason to deprecate flattery as they have disparagement. What they
want is the simple truth, and this renders honor where honor is due.4Rom. 13: 7. I say
to you, gentlemen, what you all know, that this institution, viewed in
comparison with those established by our white fellow citizens for similar
objects, stands but as a dwarf to a giant; but regarded in the light of our
history, in view of our numbers and opportunities, the Douglass Institute is
the equal of any in credit, and far more significant than most of them. It is a
beginning, and though like all beginnings it is small, it is, nevertheless, a
prophecy of larger and better things. It represents something, and impor-
tant as it is for itself, it is ten fold more important for what it represents in
the character of its founders. It implies something. It implies that the
colored people of Baltimore not only have the higher qualities attributed to
the white race, but that they are awakening to a healthy consciousness of
those qualities in themselves, and that they are beginning to see, as the dark
cloud of slavery rolls away, the necessity of bringing those qualities into
vigorous exercise. It implies an increased knowledge of the requirements
of a high civilization, and a determination to comply with them. This
Institute, in character and design, in some measure represents the abilities
and possibilities of our race.
My friends, the present is a critical moment for the colored people of
this country; our fate for weal or for woe, it may be yet for many genera-
tions, trembles now in the balance. No man can tell which way the scale
will turn. There is not a breeze that sweeps to us from the South, but comes
laden with the wail of our suffering people. Heaven only knows what will
be in store for our people in the South. But dismal as is the hour, troubled
and convulsed as are the times, we may congratulate ourselves upon the
establishment of this institution. It comes as a timely argument on the right
side of the momentous questions which now agitate the nation. It comes at
a time when the American people are once more being urged to do from
necessity what they should have done from a sense of right, and of sound
statesmanship. It is the same old posture of affairs, wherein our rulers do
wrong from choice and right from necessity. They gave us the bullet to save
themselves; they will yet give the ballot to save themselves. My hope of the
future is founded just where it was during the war. I always said that I had
much faith in the virtue of the great North, but that I had incomparably
more in the villainy of the South. The South is now on its good behavior,
we are told. They have been invested with powers merely to see how they
will use them. If they do certain things, we are told, it will be well, but if
they do certain other things—well. somebody will interfere. Very well. I
expect to see the rebels consistent with their whole past. They are sworn
now as at the beginning of the war, and with like results. They take the oath
to support a Government they hate. They are sure to abuse the power given
them, and I believe there will be virtue enough in the country, when it shall
see that the loyal whites can only be saved by giving the ballot to the negro,
to do the thing now called impossible.
This Institute comes to our help. It comes at a time when hesitation to
extend suffrage to the colored people finds its best apology in our alleged
incapacity. I deem it fortunate that, at such a time as this, in such a city as
this, so near the capital of the nation as this, there has arisen here an
Institution in which we can confront ignorance and prejudice with the light
and power of positive knowledge, and array against brazen falsehood the
rightful influence of accomplished facts.
The very existence of this Institution, established and sustained by
colored men in this city, so recently a slaveholding city—in this State, so
recently a slaveholding State—in this community, among whom freedom
of speech was scarcely known by even the white citizens only a few months
ago—is a most striking, cheering and instructive fact. It attests the pro-
gressive spirit, the sagacity, the courage, the faith, the intelligence and
manly ambition of the colored people of this city and State, and reflects
credit upon the colored people of the country generally. Its effects upon
those who disparage us will be good, but its effects upon ourselves will, I
trust, be far better. While to them it will be a standing contradiction, to us it
will be a happy concurrence with all our hopes, with all that is high, noble
and desirable.
The colored boy and girl now, as they walk your streets, will hold
themselves in higher estimation and assume a prouder and a more elastic
step as they look up to the fine proportions of this ample and elegant
building, and remember that from foundation to roof, from corner-stone to
coping, in purpose and in value, in spirit and in aspiration, it is all the
property of the colored citizens of Baltimore.
The establishment of this Institution may be thought by some a thing of
doubtful expediency. There was a time when I should have thought it so
myself. In my enthusiasm, perhaps it was my simplicity, it is not material
which, I once flattered myself that the day had happily gone by when it
could be necessary for colored people in this country to combine and act
together as a separate class, and in any representative character whatever. I
would have had them infuse themselves and their works into all the politi-
cal, intellectual, artistical and mechanical activities and combinations of
their white fellow countrymen. It seemed to me that colored conventions.
colored exhibitions, colored associations and institutions of all kinds and
descriptions had answered the ends of their existence, and might properly
be abandoned; that, in short, they were hindrances rather than helps in
achieving a higher and better estimation in the public mind for ourselves as
a race.
I may say that I still hold this opinion in a modified degree. The latent
contempt and prejudice towards our race, which recent political doctrines
with reference to our future in this country have developed, the persistent
determination of the present Executive of the nation,5Andrew Johnson (1808-75) assumed the presidency on 15 April 1865, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, the self-educated Johnson served in the Tennessee legislature (1835-37, 1839-43) prior to being elected a Democratic congressman (1843-53), governor (1853-57), and U.S. senator (1857-62). In 1862 Lincoln appointed Johnson. a Unionist, military governor of Tennessee, and two years later Johnson was elected as Lincoln’s vice president. Radical Republicans opposed Johnson‘s Reconstruction policies and in 1867, after the president had attempted to oust Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, succeeded in impeaching him. At the Senate trial in 1868 conviction failed by one vote. After his presidential term Johnson returned to Tennessee, which elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1874. Robert W. Winston, Andrew Johnson: Plebeian and Patriot (New York, 1928); James E. Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Boston, 1980). and also the apparent
determination of a portion of the people to hold and treat us in a degraded
relation, not only justify for the present such associate effort on our part,
but make it eminently necessary.
It is the misfortune of our class that it fails to derive due advantages
from the achievements of its individual members, but never fails to suffer
from the ignorance or crimes of a single individual with whom the class is
identified. A Benjamin Franklin could redeem, in the eyes of scientific
Europe, the mental mediocrity of our young white Republic, but the genius
and learning of a Benjamin Banneker of your own State of Maryland, the
wisdom and heroism of Toussaint,6Franςois Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture. are not permitted to do the same service
for the colored race to which they belong. Wealth, learning and ability
made an Irishman an Englishman. The same metamorphosing power con-
verts a negro into a white man in this country. When prejudice cannot deny
the black man’s ability, it denies his race, and claims him as a white man. It
affirms that if he is not exactly white, he ought to be. If not what he ought to
be in this particular, he owes whatever intelligence he possesses to the
white race by contract or association. Great actions, as shown by Robert
Small,7One of the first black heroes of the Civil War, Robert Smalls (1839-1915) was born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina. When his master moved to Charleston in 1851, Smalls was brought to that city and permitted to hire himself out as a sail-rigger and sailor. At the beginning of the war Confederate authorities impressed Smalls into service aboard the Planter, a Charleston harbor steamer. On the night of 12-13 May 1862 Smalls and other black crewmen, together with their families, sailed the vessel past Confederate defenses and delivered themselves to the Union fleet blockading the harbor. The Northemers appointed Smalls pilot and later captain of the Planter and used his knowledge of South Carolina coastal waters to great advantage. In August 1862 General David Hunter sent Smalls to Washington. where he attempted to persuade Lincoln to enlist runaway slaves in the Union army. After the war Smalls became a leading Republican in South Carolina, serving in the state constitutional convention of 1868, the state legislature (1868-74), and the U.S. House of Representatives (1875-79, 1882-83, 1884-87). Appointed customs collector of the port of Beaufort in 1889, he held that position, except during Grover Cleveland's second administration, until 1913. Okon Edet Uya, From Slavery to Public Service: Robert Smalls, 1839-1915 (New York, 1971); Benjamin Quarles, “The Abduction of the ‘Planter,’ " Civil War History, 4: 5-10 (March 1958); Maurine Christopher, Black Americans in Congress, rev. ed. (New York, 1976), 38-54; Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York. 1982), 560-61; BDAC, 1611; ACAB, 5: 553-54; DAB, 17: 224-25. the gallant captain of the Planter, and by William Tilghman,8A northem free-born black, William Tillman (1844-?) was steward of the U.S. merchant vessel S. J. Waring when the Confederate privateer Jeff Davis captured it on 7 July 1861. Most of the Waring's original crew were transferred to the Jeff Davis as prisoners, but Tillman was left behind to cook for a five-man Confederate prize crew that planned to take the ship to Charleston, South Carolina. Fearing that he would be enslaved when the ship reached a Southern port, Tillman singlehandedly recaptured the Waring just before midnight on 16 July 1861 by killing three sleeping members of the prize crew with a hatchet. He forced one of the two remaining sailors to make for New York City, where the ship arrived on 21 July 1861. Tillman immediately became a popular hero whom Phineas T. Barnum paid to appear, with his hatchet, at the American Museum. Tillman eventually received a six thousand-dollar reward for his safe return of the Waring. New York Daily Tribune, 22 July 1861; New York Harper's Weekly, 3 August 1861; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 32-35; Wesley and Romero, Negro Americans in the Civil War, 35-36. and
other brave colored men, which by the war slavery has tossed to the
surface. have not been sufficient to change the general estimate formed of
the colored race. The eloquence and learning of Doctor Smith,9James McCune Smith. Professors
Vashon,10George Boyer Vashon (1824-78), lawyer, educator, and poet, was the son of John B. Vashon, a leader of the antebellum black community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The first black graduate of Oberlin College (1844), George Vashon studied law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1848. From 1848 to 1850 he was an instructor at College Faustin in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. After returning to the United States he taught and practiced law in Syracuse, New York, and from 1854 to 1857 was a professor of belles lettres at New York Central College in McGrawville, New York. Vashon then moved to Pittsburgh, taking positions as a teacher and principal in that city’s black schools. In 1860 he settled in Washington, D.C., where he first ran a law practice and later (1867-68) assumed a professorship at Howard University. Active in the postwar conventions of the Colored Men of America. Vashon was teaching at Alcorn University in Rodney, Mississippi, when he died of yellow fever. FDP, 8 September 1854; Brown, Black Man, 223-27; Benjamin Brawley, The Negro Genius: A New Appraisal of the Achievements of the American Negro in Literature and the Fine Arts (New York, 1937), 83-87; “Higher Strivings in Education," NHB, 3: 19-20 (November 1939); DANB, 617. Reason, Garnet, Remond, Martin,11Charles Lewis Reason, Henry Highland Garnet, Charles Lenox Remond, and John Sella Martin. Rock,12John Sweat Rock (1825-66) was born to free black parents in Salem, New Jersey. From 1844 to 1848 he taught public school while studying dentistry in his spare time. In 1850 Rock opened a dental practice in Philadelphia and enrolled in the American Medical College. Following graduation in 1852, he moved to Boston, where he practiced both medicine and dentistry. When his health declined in 1858, Rock journeyed to France; upon his return he began studying for a less arduous career as a lawyer. He was admitted to practice before the Massachusetts bench in 1861 and before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1864. Rock also was widely known as a lecturer on both scholarly and antislavery topics, sharing the platform with Douglass on several occasions. During the Civil War he served as a recruiting agent for Massachusetts‘s black regiments.NASS, 15 December 1866; Brown, Black Man,, 266-70; Eugene P. Link, “The Civil Rights Activities of Three Great Negro Physicians, (1840-1940)," JNH, 52: 169-84 (July 1967); “Do You Know That?" NHB, 5: 3, 9 (October 1941); DANB, 529-31. Crummell,13Alexander Crummell. and
many others, have done us service; but they leave us yet under a cloud. The
public, with the mass of ignorance—notwithstanding that ignorance has
been enforced and compelled among our people, hitherto—has sternly
denied the representative character of our distinguished men. They are
treated as exceptions, individual cases, and the like. They contend that the
race, as such, is destitute of the subjective original elemental condition of a
high self-originating and self-sustaining civilization.
Such is the sweeping and damaging judgment pronounced in various
high quarters against our race; and such is the current of opinion against
which the colored people have to advance, if they advance at all. A few
years ago, we met this unfavorable theory as best we could in three ways.
We pointed our assailants and traducers to the ancient civilization of North-
ern Africa. We traced the entangled threads of history and of civilization
back to their sources in Africa. We called attention to the somewhat dis—
agreeable fact—agreeable to us, but not so to our Teutonic brethren—that
the arts, appliances and blessings of civilization flourished in the very heart
of Ethiopia, at a time when all Europe floundered in the depths of ignorance
and barbarism. We dwelt on the grandeur, magnificence and stupendous
dimensions of Egyptian architecture, and held up the fact, now generally
admitted, that that race was master of mechanical forces of which the
present generations of men are ignorant.14Douglass lectured on the topic of ethnology in his 12 July 1854 address to the literary societies of Western Reserve College. The lecture was later published in pamphlet form, as was a popular adaptation, variously titled “The Races of Man" or “The Brotherhood of Man," which he Chicago on 4 February 1859 and on other occasions. Chicago Daily Press and Tribune, 5 February 1859; Speech File, reel 14, frames 193-205, reel 19, frames 325-33, 334-51, 546-79, FD Papers, DLC.
We pointed to the nautical skill, commercial enterprise and military
prowess of Carthage,15Carthage, a North African city state founded by the Phoenicians in 814 B.C., was a major commercial center and naval power in the western Mediterranean. A series of wars with Rome in the third and second centuries B.C. led to its total destruction in 146 ac. A Roman city occupied the site from 29 B.C. to A.D. 698. B. H. Warmington, Carthage, 2d ed. (London, 1969); Orville H. Bullitt, Phoenicia and Carthage: A Thousand Years to Oblivion (Philadelphia, 1978). and justly claimed relationship with those great
nations of antiquity. We are a dark people—so were they. They stood
between us and the Europeans in point of complexion, as well as in point of
geography. We have contended—and not illogically—that if the fact of
color was no barrier to civilization in their case, it cannot be in ours.
Our second answer has been drawn from modern examples. These
have not, I confess, been very numerous or striking, but enough to demon-
strate the presence of highly progressive and civilizing elements in the
colored race. We find them in Africa—we find them written down in the
interesting travels of Barth, Livingston and Wilson.16Douglass refers to three well-known explorers of Africa. Heinrich Barth (1821-65), a German archaeologist at the University of Berlin, was the sole survivor of a British expedition that between 1849 and 1855 explored the western Sahara and negotiated trade agreements with its inhabitants. Barth’s five-volume Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (London, 1857-58) described the geography and history of Timbuktu, Lake Chad, and other interior points rarely visited by Europeans. David Livingstone (1813-73) was born in Glasgow, Scotland, where he trained as both a minister and a physician. In 1840 he emigrated to South Africa to conduct a mission among the native tribes. During the 1850s Livingstone explored south-central Africa, becoming the first man to walk across the entire continent. He described his explorations in Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (London, 1857). In the late 1860s Livingstone embarked on an expedition to map the complicated river systems of central Africa but died in the effort. John Leighton Wilson (1809-86), a Presbyterian minister, was born in Salem, South Carolina, and educated at Union College in Schenectady, New York. He labored as a missionary in West Africa from 1834 to 1853, during which time he wrote a widely circulated pamphlet that called for stronger naval patrols to halt the slave trade. Returning to the United States, Wilson published an account of his missionary career in Western Africa: Its History, Conditions and Prospects (New York, 1856). David Mountfield, A History of African Exploration (London, 1976), 90-102, 107-21, 135-43; idem, Exploring Africa and Asia (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), 222-37, 271-79,459-65; DNB, 11: 1263-75; ACAB, 6: 554-55; NCAB, 21: 226; DAB, 20: 337-38. We find them in
Hayti, and we find them in our own country. Our third answer has been the
unfavorable influences under which our race has been placed by Christen-
dom during the last three centuries. Where under the whole heavens was
there ever a race so blasted and withered, so shorn and bereft of all oppor-
tunities for development as ourselves? It would seem that the whole Chris-
tian world had combined for the destruction of our race, and had sum-
moned heaven and hell, philosophy and revelation, to assist in the work.
Our history has been but a track of blood. Gaunt and hungry sharks have
followed us on slave ships by sea, and the hungrier and greedier slave-
drivers have followed us during all these years with the bloody slave-whip
on land. The question forced upon us at every moment of our generation
has not been, as with other races of men, how shall we adorn, beautify,
exalt and ennoble life, but how shall we retain life itself. The struggle with
us was not to do, but to be. Mankind lost sight of our human nature in the
idea of our being property, and the whole machinery of society was
planned, directed and operated to the making us a stupid, spiritless, igno-
rant, besotted, brutified, and utterly degraded race of men.
Thus far we have derived little advantage from any apologies we have
made or from any explanations we have patiently given. Our relationship to
the ancient Egyptians has been denied; the progress made by the emanci-
pated people of the West Indies is not believed, and men still insist that the
fault of our ignorance is not in slavery, but in ourselves. So stood the
question concerning us up to the second year of the fierce and sanguinary
rebellion now subsiding. Since, then, the colored man has come before the
country in a new light. He has illustrated the highest qualities of a patriot
and a soldier. He has ranged himself on the side of Government and
country, and maintained both against rebels and traitors on the perilous
edge of battle. They are now, many of them, sleeping side by side in bloody
graves with the bravest and best of all our loyal white soldiers, and many of
those who remain alive are scarred and battered veterans—mere stumps of
men; armless, legless, maimed and mutilated ones are met with in the
streets of every city. The veriest enemies of our race must now admit that
we have at least one element of civilization. It is settled that we have manly
courage, that we love our country, and that we will fight for an Idea. Both
Governments—the Rebel as well as the Federal—admitted the energy that
slumbered in the black man’s arm, and both, at the last, endeavored to
render that energy useful. But the charge still remains. Now, what are those
elemental and original powers of civilization about which white men claim
for themselves and deny to the negro? I answer that they are simply con-
sciousness of wants and ability to gratify them. Here the whole machinery
of civilization, whether moral, intellectual or physical, is set in motion.
Man is distinguished from all other animals, but in nothing is he
distinguished more than in this, namely, resistance, active and constant
resistance, to the forces of physical nature. All other animals submit to the
same conditions and limitations from generation to generation. The bear
to-day is as he was a thousand years ago. Nature provides him with food,
clothing and shelter, and he is neither wiser nor better because of the
experience of his bearish ancestors. Not so with man. He learns from the
past, improves upon the past, looks back upon the past, and hands down his
knowledge of the past to after-coming generations of men, that they may
carry their achievements to a still higher point. To lack this element of
progress is to resemble the lower animals, and to possess it is to be men.
The mission of this Institution and that of the colored race are identical.
It is to develop manhood, to build up manly character among the colored
people of this city and State. It is to teach them the true idea of manly
independence and self-respect. It is to be a dispenser of knowledge, a
radiator of light. In a word, we dedicate this Institution to virtue, tem-
perance, knowledge, truth, liberty and justice:
In this fair hall, to Truth and Freedom given,
Pledged to the right before all earth and heaven—
A free arena for the strife of mind,
No caste, or sect, or color are confined.
We who have been long debarred the privileges of culture may assem-
ble and have our souls thrilled, with heavenly music, lifted to the skies on
the wings of poetry and song. Here we can assemble and have our minds
enlightened upon the whole circle of social, moral, political and educa-
tional duties. Here we can come and learn true politeness and refinement.
Here the loftiest and best eloquence which the country has produced,
whether of Anglo-Saxon or of African descent, shall flow as a river,
enriching, ennobling, strengthening and purifying all who will lave in its
waters. Here may come all who have a new and unpopular truth to unfold
and enforce, against which old and respectable bars and bolts are iron
gates. Here, from this broad hall, shall go forth an influence which shall at
last change the current of public contempt for the oppressed, and lift the
race into the popular consideration which justly belongs to their manly
character and achievements.