Our Destiny is Largely in Our Own Hands: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 1883
OUR DESTINY IS LARGELY IN OUR OWN HANDS:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN WASHINGTON, D.C.,
ON 16 APRIL 1883
(Wash-
ington, DC, 1883). Other texts in Washington , 17 April 1883;
Washington , 21 April I883; Philip S. Foner, ed., , 5 vols. (1950-75), 4: 354-71 (hereafter cited as ).
The celebration of the twenty-first anniversary of the emancipation of slaves
in the District of Columbia, the Washington reported, far
exceeded in “imposing character” any previous one. The major event of the
day was a long parade with marching bands, militia units, labor unions,
benevolent associations, social clubs, and decorated floats. Despite a driz-
zling rain, large and enthusiastic crowds lined the parade route. Douglass
observed the parade from the comer of Fifth and K streets. The major or-
atorical exercises in the evening were held at the First Congregational Church
which, the Washington noted, “was well filled, there being a fair propor-
tion of white people in the audience.” At 8 P.M. the services began with a
musical selection and prayer by the Reverend Jeremiah E. Rankin. William
Calvin Chase, editor of the Washington , then read letters of regret and
resolutions decrying racial discrimination, calling for the right to vote in the
District of Columbia, and criticizing the failure of the Republican party to
protect the rights of blacks. George W. Stewart next presented flowers to
Douglass on behalf of the Young Men’s Citizen’s Club of the District of
Columbia. Milton M. Holland followed with a brief introduction of Douglass
as “a man whose name is inseparable with the cause we celebrate.” Several
musical selections and a speech by the Reverend Robert S. Laws followed
Douglass’s address. The Washington contended that Doug-
lass’s speech “was one of the very best of his efforts, the clearest as well as the
boldest, one which was most enthusiastically received and universally ap-
proved.” Douglass later received letters of congratulations from old friends,
including one claiming that his “words have the true ring yet, and the force
and fire of earlier years have not been dimmed by the rages of the sunset you
are so gently nearing.” A committee of prominent Washington blacks re-
quested a copy of Douglass’s speech which they published in pamphlet form.
George A. Rice to Douglass, 21 April 1883, Albert D. Shaw to Douglass, 4
May 1883, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 704, 718-20, FD
Papers, DLC; Washington , 16, 17 April 1883; Washington ,
16, 17 April 1883; Washington , 21 April 1883; New York
, 21 April 1883.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS: I could have wished that some one from
among the younger men of Washington, some one with a mind more
fruitful, with a voice more eloquent, with an oratorical ambition more
lofty, more active, and more stimulating to high endeavor than mine, had
been selected by your Committee of Arrangements, to give suitable utter-
ance to the thoughts, feelings, and purposes, which this 21st anniversary of
Emancipation in the District of Columbia is fitted to inspire. That such an
one could have been easily found among the aspiring and promising young
colored men of Washington, I am happy to know and am proud to affirm.
They are the legitimate children of the great act we are met to celebrate.
They have been reared in the light of its new born freedom, qualified by its
education, and by the elevating spirit of liberty, to speak the wise and
grateful words befitting the occasion. The presence of one such, as your
orator to-night, would be a more brilliant illustration of the wisdom and
beneficence of the act of Emancipation, than any words of mine, however
well chosen and appropriate. I represent the past, they the present. I repre-
sent the downfall of slavery, they the glorious triumphs of liberty. I speak of
deliverance from bondage, they speak of concessions to liberty and equal-
ity. Their mission begins where my mission ends.
Nevertheless, while I would have gladly given place to one of these
rising young men, I could not well decline the duty and the honor of
appearing here to-night. It may, after all, be well to have something of the
past mingled with the present, well that one who has had some share in the
conflict should share also in the public joy of the victory.
At the outset, as an old watchman on the walls of liberty, eagerly
scanning the social and political horizon, you naturally ask me, What of the
night?1An adaptation of Isa. 21: 11. It is easy to break forth in joy and thanksgiving for Emancipation in
the District of Columbia. It is easy to call up the noble sentiments and the
startling events which made that grand measure possible. It is easy to trace
the footsteps of the Negro in the past, marked as they are all the way along
with blood. But the present occasion calls for something more. How stands
the Negro to-day? What are the relations subsisting between him and the
powerful people among whom he lives, moves, and has his being? What is
the outlook, and what is his probable future?
You will readily perceive that I have raised more questions than I shall
be able for the present to answer. My general response to these inquiries is a
mixed one. The sky of the American Negro is dark, but not rayless; it is
stormy, but not cheerless. The grand old party of liberty, union, and prog-
ress, which has been his reliance and refuge so long, though less cohesive
and strong than it once was, is still a power and has a future. I give you
notice, that while there is a Democratic party there will be a Republican
party. As the war for the Union recedes into the misty shadows of the past,
and the Negro is no longer needed to assault forts and stop rebel bullets, he
is in some sense, of less importance. Peace with the old master class has
been war to the Negro. As the one has risen, the other has fallen. The
reaction has been sudden, marked, and violent. It has swept the Negro
from all the legislative halls of the Southern States, and from those of the
Congress of the United States. It has, in many cases, driven him from the
ballot box and the jury box. The situation has much in it for serious
thought, but nothing to cause despair. Above all the frowning clouds that
lower about our horizon, there is the steady light of stars, and the thick
clouds that now obscure them, will in due season pass away.
In fact, they are already passing away. Time and events which have
done so much for us in the past, will, I trust, not do less for us in the future.
The moral government of the universe is on our side, and co-operates, with
all honest efforts, to lift up the down-trodden and oppressed in all lands,
whether the oppressed be white or black.
ln whatever else the Negro may have been a failure, he has, in one
respect, been a marked and brilliant success. He has managed by one
means or another to make himself one of the most prominent and interest-
ing figures that now attract and hold the attention of the world.
Go where you will, you will meet with him. He is alike present in the
study of the learned and thoughtful, and in the play house of the gay and
thoughtless. We see him pictured at our street comers, and hear him in the
songs of our market places. The low and the vulgar curse him, the snob and
the flunky affect to despise him, the mean and the cowardly assault him,
because they know that his friends are few, and that they can abuse him
with impunity, and with the applause of the coarse and brutal crowd. But,
despite of it all, the Negro remains like iron or granite, cool, strong,
imperturbable and cheerful.
Men of all lands and languages make him a subject of profound thought
and study. To the statesman and philosopher he is an object of intense
curiosity. Men want to know more of his character, his qualities, his
attainments, his mental possibilities, and his probable destiny. Notwith-
standing their black faces, the Jubilee singers, with their wild and plaintive
music, thrill and charm the most refined and cultivated of the white race,
both here and in Europe.2The enthusiastic reception accorded to a choir formed by Fisk University treasurer George L. White inspired the idea that a singing group go on tour to raise funds for the financially beleaguered school. During the Jubilee Singers' seven-year career, which commenced in 1871, they acquired worldwide fame for their successful tours of northern states and Europe and raised about $150,000. J. B. T. Marsh, (Boston, 1880); A. A. Taylor, “Fisk University and the Nashville Community, 1866-1900," , 39: 111-26 (April 1954). Generous and brave men like Andrew Jackson,
Benjamin F. Butler, and General Grant, have borne ample testimony to the
courage of the Negro, to his gallantry, and to his patriotism.3Andrew Jackson had been very laudatory of the performance of free black troops at the Battle of New Orleans in 1814. Union army general Benjamin F. Butler actively recruited black soldiers in both Louisiana and Virginia. Butler‘s lingering doubts about the fighting qualities of black troops disappeared after witnessing them in combat at New Market Heights, Virginia, on 28-30 September 1864, and thereafter he warmly praised their military conduct. Although initially reluctant to recruit blacks into his army along the Mississippi River in 1863, Ulysses S. Grant later commended their performance there and in Virginia. Cornish, , 65, 121-23, 145, 274, 279-80, 290; Benjamin Quarles, (Boston, 1953), 116-18, 297-98, 304-05; Joseph T. Wilson, (Hartford, Conn, 1890), 83-86; Roland C. McConnell, (Baton Rouge, 1968), 56-91. Of the books,
pamphlets, and speeches concerning him, there is, literally, no end. He is
the one inexhaustible topic of conversation at our firesides and in our public
halls.
Great, however, as is his advantage at this point, he is not altogether
fortunate after all, as to the manner in which his claims are canvassed. His
misfortune is that few men are qualified to discuss him candidly and
impartially. They either exalt him too high or rate him too low. Americans
can consider almost any other question more calmly and fairly than this
one. I know of nothing outside of religion which kindles more wrath,
causes wider differences, or gives force and effect to fiercer and more
irreconcilable antagonisms.
It was so in the time of slavery, and it is so now. Then, the cause was the
interest, now, the cause is pride and prejudice. Then, the cause was proper-
ty. He was then worth twenty hundred millions to his owner. He is now
worth uncounted millions to himself. While a slave there was a mountain of
gold on his breast to keep him down—now that he is free there is a
mountain of prejudice to hold him down.
Let any man now claim for the Negro, or worse still, let the Negro now
claim for himself, any right, privilege or immunity which has hitherto been
denied him by law or custom, and he will at once open a fountain of
bitterness, and call forth overwhelming wrath.
It is his sad lot to live in a land where all presumptions are arrayed
against him, unless we except the presumption of inferiority and worth-
lessness. If his course is downward, he meets very little resistance, but if
upward, his way is disputed at every turn of the road. If he comes in rags
and in wretchedness, he answers the public demand for a Negro, and
provokes no anger, though he may provoke derision, but if he presumes to
be a gentleman and a scholar, he is then entirely out of his place. He excites
resentment and calls forth stern and bitter opposition. If he offers himself to
a builder as a mechanic, to a client as a lawyer, to a patient as a physician,
to a university as a professor, or to a department as a clerk, no matter what
may be his ability or his attainments, there is a presumption based upon his
color or his previous condition, of incompetency, and if he succeeds at all,
he has to do so against this most discouraging presumption.
It is a real calamity, in this country, for any man, guilty or not guilty, to
be accused of crime, but it is an incomparably greater calamity for any
colored man to be so accused. Justice is often painted with bandaged eyes.
She is described in forensic eloquence, as utterly blind to wealth or pover-
ty, high or low, white or black, but a mask of iron, however thick, could
never blind American justice, when a black man happens to be on trial.
Here, even more than elsewhere, he will find all presumptions of law and
evidence against him. It is not so much the business of his enemies to prove
him guilty, as it is the business of himself to prove his innocence. The
reasonable doubt which is usually interposed to save the life and liberty of a
white man charged with crime, seldom has any force or effect when a
colored man is accused of crime. Indeed, color is a far better protection to
the white criminal, than anything else. In certain parts of our country, when
any white man wishes to commit a heinous offence, he wisely resorts to
burnt cork and blackens his face and goes forth under the similitude of a
Negro. When the deed is done, a little soap and water destroys his identity,
and he goes unwhipt of justice. Some Negro is at once suspected and
brought before the victim of wrong for identification, and there is never
much trouble here, for as in the eyes of many white people, all Negroes
look alike, and as the man arrested and who sits in the dock in irons is
black, he is undoubtedly the criminal.
A still greater misfortune to the Negro is that the press, that engine of
omnipotent power, usually tries him in advance of the courts, and when
once his case is decided in the newspapers, it is easy for the jury to bring in
its verdict of “guilty as indicted.”
In many parts of our common country, the action of courts and juries is
entirely too slow for the impetuosity of the people’s justice. When the
black man is accused, the mob takes the law into its own hands, and whips,
shoots, stabs, hangs or burns the accused, simply upon the allegation or
suspicion of crime. Of such proceedings Southern papers are full. A crime
almost unknown to the colored man in the time of slavery seems now, from
report, the most common. I do not believe these reports. There are too
many reasons for trumping up such charges.
Another feature of the situation is, that this mob violence is seldom
rebuked by the press and the pulpit, in its immediate neighborhood. Be-
cause the public opinion which sustains and makes possible such outrages,
intimidates both press and pulpit.
Besides, nobody expects that those who participate in such mob vio-
lence will ever be held answerable to the law, and punished. Of course,
judges are not always unjust, nor juries always partial in cases of this class,
but I affirm that l have here given you no picture of the fancy, and I have
alleged no point incapable of proof, and drawn no line darker or denser
than the terrible reality. The situation, my colored fellow citizens, is dis-
couraging, but with all its hardships and horrors, I am neither desperate nor
despairing as to the future.
One ground of hope is found in the fact referred to in the beginning,
and that is, the discussion concerning the Negro still goes on.
The country in which we live is happily governed by ideas as well as by
laws, and no black man need despair while there is an audible and earnest
assertion of justice and right on his behalf. He may be riddled with bullets,
or roasted over a slow fire by the mob, but his cause cannot be shot or
burned or otherwise destroyed. Like the impalpable ghost of the murdered
Hamlet,4, act 1, sc. 5. it is immortal. All talk of its being a dead issue is a mistake. It
may for a time be buried, but it is not dead. Tariffs, free trade, civil service,
and river and harbor bills, may for a time cover it, but it will rise again, and
again, and again, with increased life and vigor. Every year adds to the
black man’s numbers. Every year adds to his wealth and to his intelligence.
These will speak for him.
There is a power in numbers, wealth and intelligence, which can never
be despised nor defied. All efforts thus far to diminish the Negro’s impor-
tance as a man and as a member of the American body politic, have failed.
We are approaching a momentous canvass. If I do not misread the signs of
the times, he will play an important part in the politics of the nation during
the next Presidential campaign, and will play it well.
When that crisis shall come, neither of the great political parties will
fail to appreciate the influence of his voice and his vote. It would not be
strange or surprising, if even the Democratic party should be seized with an
appetite of unusual intensity for these colored votes. From present indica-
tions, too, I apprehend that his vote will be employed in such manner as to
more fully open the gates of progress, and secure for himself a better
position among his fellow countrymen than heretofore.
Without putting my head to the ground, I can even now hear the
anxious inquiry as to when this discussion of the Negro will cease. When
will he cease to be a bone of contention between the two great parties?
Speaking for myself I can honestly say I wish it to cease. I long to see the
Negro utterly out of the whirlpool of angry political debate. No one will
rejoice more heartily than I shall when this consummation is reached. I
want the whole American people to unite with the sentiment of their
greatest captain, U. S. Grant, and say with him on this subject, “Let us
have peace.”5Douglass quotes Ulysses S. Grant's letter of 29 May 1868 to Joseph R. Hawley, accepting the Republican party‘s presidential nomination. , 745. I need it; you need it; the Negro needs it; and every lover of
his country should endeavor to withdraw the Negro from this angry gulf.
But it is idle, utterly idle to dream of peace anywhere in this world, while
any part of the human family are the victims of marked injustice and
oppression.
In America, no less than elsewhere, purity must go before tranquility.
Nations, no more than individuals, can reverse this fundamental and eter-
nal order of human relations. There is no modern Joshua who can com-
mand this resplendent orb of popular discussion to stand still.6An allusion to Josh. 3: 8. As in the
past, so in the future, it will go on. It may be arrested and imprisoned for a
while, but no power can permanently restrain it.
If you wish to suppress it, I counsel you, my fellow citizens, to remove
its cause. The voice of popular complaint, whether it is heard in this
country or in other countries, does not and can not rest upon dreams,
visions, or illusions of any kind. There must be solid ground for it.
The demand for Negro rights would have ceased long since but for the
existence of a sufficient and substantial cause for its continuance.
Fellow citizens, the present hour is full of admonition and warning. I
despise threats, and remembering as I do the depths from which I have
come, and the forlorn condition of those for whom I speak, I dare not
assume before the American people an air of haughtiness, but on the other
hand I can not forget that the Negro is now, and of right ought to be, an
American citizen in the fullest sense of the word. This high position, I take
it, was not accorded him in sport, mockery or deception. I credit the
American people with sincerity.
No matter what the Democratic party may say; no matter what the old
master class of the South may say; no matter what the Supreme Court of the
United States may say, the fact is beyond question that the loyal American
people, in view of the services of the Negro in the national hour of peril,
meant to make him, in good faith and according to the letter and spirit of the
Constitution of the United States, a full and complete American citizen.
The amendments to the Constitution of the United States mean this, or
they are a cruel, scandalous and colossal sham, and deserve to be so
branded before the civilized world.7The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. What Abraham Lincoln said in respect
of the United States is as true of the colored people as of the relations of
those States. They cannot remain half slave and half free.8Douglass adapts Lincoln's “House Divided" speech of 16 June 1858. Basler, , 2 : 461. You must give
them all or take from them all. Until this half-and-half condition is ended,
there will be just ground of complaint. You will have an aggrieved class,
and this discussion will go on. Until the public schools shall cease to be
caste schools in every part of our country, this discussion will go on. Until
the colored man’s pathway to the American ballot box, North and South,
shall be as smooth and as safe as the same is for the white citizen, this
discussion will go on. Until the colored man’s right to practice at the bar of
our courts, and sit upon juries, shall be the universal law and practice of the
land, this discussion will go on. Until the courts of the country shall grant
the colored man a fair trial and a just verdict, this discussion will go on.
Until color shall cease to be a bar to equal participation in the offices and
honors of the country, this discussion will go on. Until the trades-unions
and the workshops of the country shall cease to proscribe the colored man
and prevent his children from learning useful trades, this discussion will go
on. Until the American people shall make character, and not color, the
criterion of respectability, this discussion will go on. Until men like
Bishops Payne9Daniel Alexander Payne (1811-93) began a career that emphasized educational and cultural uplift in his native Charleston, South Carolina, where he initiated a school for fellow blacks in 1828. After legislative restrictions spelled the school's demise, the free-born Payne moved to Pennsylvania where he received a Lutheran seminary training previous to his 184l association with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His 1848 appointment as church historian preceded by four years his election as bishop. In 1863 he seized an opportunity to purchase Wilberforce University, in Greene County, Ohio, and became the nation's first black president of a black institution of higher education. The incident referred to by Douglass occurred on 25 February 1882, when Payne, who had purchased a first-class ticket on a train from Jacksonville to Fernandina, Florida, encountered a conductor who ordered him to move to a car reserved for blacks. The septuagenarian refused and returned to Jacksonville on foot. Philadelphia , 3 August 1882; William J. Simmons, (1887; New York. 1968), 1078-85; Daniel A. Payne, (Nashville, 1888); , 484; , 4: 685; , 4: 188. and Campbell10Born to a free black preacher from Slaughter, Kent County, Delaware, Jabez Pitt Campbell (1815-91) ran away to Pennsylvania at age thirteen on account of fear of enslavement to pay for his father‘s debts. The African Methodist Episcopal Church licensed him to preach in 1839 and he served that body as an itinerant minister in assignments from Baltimore to Massachusetts. He headed the church’s publishing activities from 1856 to 1858 and won election as bishop in 1864. In addition to his episcopal duties, Campbell worked hard to elevate the educational dimension of the Sunday school department of the church. Cleveland , 16 August l884; Daniel A. Payne, (1891; New York, 1969), 135, 142-43, 159, 333-34; R. R. Wright, Jr, ([Nashville], 1963), 123-26. shall cease to be driven from respectable
railroad cars at the South. this discussion will go on. In a word, until truth
and humanity shall cease to be living ideas, and mankind shall sink
back into moral darkness, and the world shall put evil for good, bitter for
sweet, and darkness for light, this discussion will go on. Until all humane
ideas and civilization shall be banished from the world, this discussion
will go on.
There never was a time when this great lesson could be more easily
learned than now. Events are transpiring all around us that enforce consid-
eration of the oppressed classes. In one form or another, by one means or
another, the ideas of a common humanity against privileged classes, of
common rights against special privileges, are now rocking the world.
Explosives are heard that rival the earthquake. They are causing despots to
tremble, class rule to quail, thrones to shake and oppressive associated
wealth to turn pale. It is for America to be wise in time. For the present our
institutions are not likely to be shaken by dynamite or daggers. We have
free speech and a free press.
“Weapons of war we have cast from the battle.” With us there is no
apology for violence or crime. Happily we are in a position to win by
peaceful means those victories more renowned than any secured by war.
The gates of reason are still open to us; and, while we may speak and
vote, we need not despair.
When the nation was in peril; when the country was rent asunder at the
center; when rebel armies were in the field, bold, defiant and victorious;
when our recruiting sergeants were marching up and down our streets from
early morn till late at night, with drum and fife, with banner and badge,
footsore and weary; when the fate of the Republic trembled in the balance,
and the hearts of loyal men were failing them for fear; when nearly all hope
of subduing the rebellion had vanished, Abraham Lincoln called upon the
colored men of this country to reach out their iron arms and clutch with
their steel fingers the faltering banner of the Republic; and they rallied, and
they rallied, full two hundred thousand strong. Ah! then, my friends, the
claims of the Negro found the heart of the nation a little more tender and
responsive than now. But I ask Americans to remember that the arms
that were needed then may be needed again; and it is best that they do
not convert the cheerful and loyal brows of six millions into a black
Ireland.
A nation composed of all classes should be governed by no one class
exclusively. All should be included, and none excluded. Thus aggrieved
classes would be rendered impossible.
The question is sometimes asked, when, where and by whom the
Negro was first suspected of having any rights at all? In answer to this
inquiry it has been asserted that William Lloyd Garrison originated the
Anti-slavery movement, that until his voice was raised against the Ameri-
can slave system, the whole world was silent. With all respect to those who
make this claim I am compelled to dissent from it. I love and venerate the
memory of William Lloyd Garrison. I knew him long and well. He was a
grand man, a moral hero, a man whose acquaintance and friendship it was a
great privilege to enjoy. While liberty has a friend on earth, and slavery an
earnest enemy, his name and his works will be held in profound and
grateful memory. To him it was given to formulate and thunder against
oppression and slavery the testimonies of all ages. He revived, but did not
originate.
It is no disparagement to him to affirm that he was preceded by many
other good men whom it would be a pleasure to remember on occasions like
this. Benjamin Lundy, an humble Quaker, though not the originator of the
Anti-slavery movement, was in advance of Mr. Garrison. Walker,11Black activist David Walker (1785-1830), the son of a free black woman and her enslaved husband, was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. After traveling in various southern states, he moved to Philadelphia, where he became a devoted follower of black African Methodist Episcopal Church bishop Richard Allen. By 1825 Walker had relocated to Boston and opened a shop on Brattle Street in which he sold new and used clothing and cleaned woolen garments. He encouraged local support for the black newspaper and its successor , serving as agent for both papers and regularly placing ads in their columns. He became an outspoken member of the anti-colonizationist General Colored Association of Massachusetts, formed in Boston in 1826. In September 1829 Walker printed the first of three editions of his pamphlet, . After Walker was found dead in front of his shop on 28 June 1830, rumors circulated that southern planters had offered a reward of three-thousand dollars for his murder. , ed. Charles M. Wiltse (New York, 1965), vii-xii, 71; Sterling Stuckey, (Boston, 1972), 8-13; John Daniels, (Boston, 1914), 36-38; Donald M. Jacobs, “A History of the Boston Negro from the Revolution to the Civil War" (PhD. diss., Boston University, 1968), 59-79. a
colored man, whose appeal against slavery startled the land like a trump of
coming judgment, was before either Mr. Garrison or Mr. Lundy.
Emancipation, without delay, was preached by Dr. Hopkins,12Samuel Hopkins. of
Rhode Island, long before the voice of either Garrison. Lundy or Walker
was heard in the land. John Wesley, a hundred years before, had denounced
slavery as the sum of all villainies.13John Wesley condemned the slave trade, not slavery, as “that execrable sum of all villainies." , 3: 453. Adam Clark had done the same. The
Society of Friends had abolished slavery among themselves and had borne
testimony against the evil, long before the modern Anti-slavery movement
was inaugurated.
In fact, the rights of the Negro, as a man and a brother, began to be
asserted with the earliest American Colonial history, and l derive hope
from the fact, that the discussion still goes on, and the claims of the Negro
rise higher and higher as the years roll by. Two hundred years of discussion
has abated no jot of its power or its vitality. Behind it we have a great cloud
of witnesses, going back to the beginning of our country and to the very
foundation of our government. Our best men have given their voices and
their votes on the right side of it, through all our generations.
It has been fashionable of late years to denounce it as a product of
Northern growth, a Yankee device for disturbing and disrupting the bonds
of the Union, and the like, but the facts of history are all the other way. The
Anti-Slavery side of the discussion has a Southern rather than a Northern
origin.
The first publication in assertion and vindication of any right of the
Negro, of which I have any knowledge, was written more than two hundred
years ago, by Rev. Morgan Godwin, a missionary of Virginia and Jamai-
ca.14Douglass refers to Morgan Godwyn's (London, 1680). This was only a plea for the right of the Negro to baptism and church
membership. The last publication of any considerable note, of which I have
any knowledge, is a recent article in the Popular Science Monthly, by Prof.
Gilliam.15Douglass alludes to “The African in the United States," an article by “Professor E. W. Gilliam," which appeared in the February 1883 issue of . Gilliam is probably Edward Winslow Gilliam (1834-1925), a South Carolina-born novelist and physician who often wrote on racial themes and practiced medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. In his article, Gilliam analyzed the implications of the 1880 census returns and, after acknowledging the reported disproportionate growth of the black population relative to whites. predicted that blacks would continue to advance themselves as they grew in numbers. Eventually, he believed, they would be numerically dominant in the South where social disparities would breed interracial violence. E. W. Gilliam, “The African in the United States," , 22: 433-44 (February 1883); W. Stewart Wallace, ed., (Toronto, 1951). 171; , 8 vols. (Detroit, 1940-67), 1: 488. The distance and difference between these two publications, in
point of time, gives us a gauge by which we may in good degree measure
the progress of the Negro. The book of Godwin was published in 1680, and
the article of Gilliam was published in 1883. The space in time between the
two is not greater than the space in morals and enlightenment. The ground
taken in respect to the Negro, in the one, is low. The ground taken in
respect to the possibilities of the Negro, in the other, is so high as to be
somewhat startling, not only to the white man, but also to the black man
himself.
The book of Morgan Godwin is a literary curiosity and an ethical
wonder.
I deem myself fortunate in being the owner of a copy of it. I met with it
while in White Haven, England, thirty-seven years ago. I was then abroad
for safety rather than for health, for at that time there was no place of safety
for me anywhere under the American flag or on American soil. An Irish
Number 1 is safer here now, than I was then. Our Government then had no
tenderness for refugees, however innocent of crime, if their skins happened
to be slightly tanned or their hair a trifle woolly. But to return to Dr. Godwin
and his book. He very evidently was not a Negro worshiper, nor what in our
day would be called an abolitionist. He proposed no disturbance of the
relation of master and slave. On the contrary, he conceded the right of the
master to own and control the body of the Negro, but insisted that the soul
of the Negro belonged to the Lord. His able reasoning on this point, it is
true, left the Negro for himself neither soul nor body. When he claimed his
body, he found that [it] belonged to his earthly master, and when he looked
around for his soul, he found that that belonged to his master in Heaven.
Nevertheless the ground taken in this book by Dr. Godwin was immensely
important. It was, in fact, the starting point, the foundation of all the grand
concessions yet made to the claims, the character, the manhood and the
dignity of the Negro. In the light of his present acknowledged position
among men, here and elsewhere, a book to prove the Negro’s right to
baptism seems ridiculous, but so it did not seem two hundred years ago.
Baptism was then a vital and commanding question, one with which the
moral and intellectual giants of that day were required to grapple.
The opposition to baptizing and admitting the Negro to membership in
the Christian church, was serious, determined and bitter. That ceremony
was, in his case, opposed on many grounds, but especially upon three.
First, the Negro’s unfitness for baptism; secondly, the nature of the ordi-
nance itself; and thirdly, because it would disturb the relation of master and
slave. The wily slaveholders of that day were sharp-eyed and keen-scented,
and snuffed danger from afar. They saw in this argument of Godwin the
thin edge of the wedge which would sooner or later rend asunder the bonds
of slavery. They therefore sought in piety to heaven security for their
possessions on earth; in reverence to God contempt for man. They sought
in the sacredness of baptism the salvation of slavery.
They contended that this holy ordinance could only be properly admin-
istered to free and responsible agents, men who, in all matters of moral
conduct, could exercise the sacred right of choice; and this proposition was
very easily defended. For, plainly enough, the Negro did not answer that
description. The laws of the land did not even know him as a person. He
was simply a piece of property, an article of merchandise, marked and
branded as such, and no more fitted to be admitted to the fellowship of the
saints than horses, sheep or swine.
When Chief Justice Taney said that Negroes in those early days had no
rights which white men felt bound to respect,16Douglass summarizes the opinion of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the 1857 Dred Scott decision. Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford, 19 Howard 393 (1857), 407. evil purpose, and made to
serve an evil purpose. The slave was solely answerable for his conduct to
his earthly master. To thrust baptism and the church between the slave and
his master was a dangerous interference with the absolute authority of the
master. The slave-holders were always logical. When they assumed that
slavery was right, they easily saw that everything inconsistent with slavery
was wrong.
But deeper down than any modification of the master’s authority, there
was a more controlling motive for opposing baptism. Baptism had a legal
as well as a religious significance. By the common law at that time,
baptism was made a sufficient basis for a legal claim for emancipation. I
am informed by Hon. A. B. Hagner,17Alexander Burton Hagner (1826-1915) was born in Washington. D.C., the son of Peter Hagner, the third auditor of the U.S. Treasury for more than three decades. Hagner had already been a member of the Maryland legislature, a presidential elector, and a prominent lawyer when, in 1879, he won appointment as associate justice of the supreme court of the District of Columbia. A founder and president of the Columbia Historical Society, Judge Hagner had a reputation for historical acumen. (Baltimore, 1879), 67; , 19: 204 (1916); John W. Leonard, ed., (Chicago, 1899), 238. one of the Judges of the Supreme
Court of this District, that there is now an old law in the State of Maryland,
reversing the common law at this point.18Common law bases for the relationship between baptism and emancipation suggested by Douglass can be found in such colonial era legal decisions as Butts v. Penny (1677), Noel v. Robinson (1687), and Gelly v. Cleve (1694) which sanctioned slaveholding by virtue of the slaves' heathenism. Douglass probably refers to legislation passed in Maryland in 1664 and extended in 1692 that explicitly denied that freedom was an entitlement of baptism as had been suggested by the judiciary. A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., (New York, 1978), 21, 321 -24; Jeffrey R. Brackett, (Baltimore, 1889), 26-31.
Had I lived in Maryland before that law was enacted, I should have
been baptized if I could have gotten anybody to perform the ceremony.
For in that day of Christian simplicity, honest rules of Biblical in-
terpretation were applied. The Bible was thought to mean just what it said.
When a heathen ceased to be a heathen and became a Christian, he could no
longer be held as a slave. Within the meaning of the accepted word of God
it was the heathen, not the Christian, who was to be bought and sold, and
held as a bondman forever.
This fact stood like a roaring lion ready to tear and devour any Negro
who sought the ordinance of baptism.
In the eyes of the wise and prudent of his times, Dr. Godwin was a
dangerous man, a disturber of the peace of the church. Like our ever-faithful
friend, Dr. Rankin,19Jeremiah Eames Rankin (1828-1904) was bom in Thornton, New Hampshire, and followed his father into the Congregational ministry after graduating from Middlebury College in 1848. While pastor of churches in Potsdam, New York; St. Albans, Vermont; and Lowell and Charlestown, Massachusetts, he established credentials as an opponent of slavery. From 1869 to 1884, Rankin was pastor of the First Congregational Church in Washington, D.C., and a professor of theology at Howard University. After a five-year ministry in Orange Valley, New Jersey, he returned to Howard to serve as its president from 1890 to 1903. Rankin and Douglass were on cordial terms for more than a decade and Douglass repeatedly rebuffed suggestions that he would make a more appropriate president for Howard University than Rankin. J[eremiah] E[ames] Rankin to Douglass, 20 May 1886, 25 December 1889, 3 January, 16 December 1894, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frames 339, 341-42, reel 5, frames 625-27, reel 7, frames 483-85, reel 8, frames 199-201, Douglass to J[eremiah] E[ames] Rankin, [day and month unknown] 1889, 4 January I895, General Correspondence File, reel 11, frame 530, reel 8, frame 209, FD Papers, DLC; Jeremiah E[ames] Rankin, (Potsdam, N.Y. , 1856); Rayford W. Logan, (New York, 1969), 109-38; , 5: 180; , 15:374. he was guilty of pressing religion into an
improper interference with secular things, and making mischief generally.
In fact, when viewed relatively, low as was the ground assumed by this
good man two hundred years ago, he was as far in advance of his times then
as Charles Sumner was when he first took his seat in the United States
Senate. What baptism and church membership were for the Negro in the
days of Godwin, the ballot and civil rights were for the Negro in the days of
Sumner. Though standing two centuries apart these two men are, neverthe-
less, conspicuous links in the great chain ofcauses and events which raised
the Negro to his present level of freedom in this and other lands. Here, to-
night on the twenty-first anniversary of Emancipation in the District of
Columbia, the capital of the grandest Republic of freedom on the earth, I
kneel at the grave, amid the dust and shadows of bygone centuries, and
offer my gratitude, and the gratitude of six millions of my race, to Morgan
Godwin, as the grand pioneer of Garrison, Lundy, Goodell, Phillips,20William Goodell and Wendell Phillips.
Henry Wilson, Gerrit Smith, Joshua R. Giddings, Abraham Lincoln,
Thaddeus Stevens, and the illustrious host of great men who have since
risen to plead the cause of the Negro against those who would oppress him.
Fellow-citizens—In view of the history now referred to, the low point
at which he started in the race of life on this continent, and the many
obstacles which had to be surmounted the Negro has reasons to be proud of
his progress, if not of his beginning. He is a brilliant illustration of social
and anthropological revolution and evolution.
His progress has been steady, vast and wonderful. No people has ever
made greater progress under similar conditions. We may trace his rise from
Godwin contending for his right to baptism, to Garrison with abolitionism,
and later on to Gilliam alarmed at the prospect of Negro supremacy. His
progress is marked with three G’s, Godwin, Garrison, Gilliam. We see him
changed from a heathen to a Christian by Godwin, from a slave to a
freeman by Garrison, from a serf to a sovereign by Gilliam.
I am not a disciple of Professor Gilliam, and have neither hope nor fear
of black supremacy. I have very little interest in his ethics or his arithmetic.
It may or it may not come to pass. Sufficient unto the day is both the evil
and the good thereof.21Douglass paraphrases Matt. 6: 34. A hundred years is a little further down the steps of
time than I care to look, for good or for evil.
When father Miller22Although he was a determined reader, William Miller (1782-1849) only had the benefits of a few years of formal education when his 1816 Christian conversion drew him to concentrated Bible study. The former Poultney, Vermont, public official and captain in the War of 1812 became convinced that he had discovered a key to the Bible's prophetic numbers. In 1831 he began to preach publicly that Christ would return sometime between March 1843 and March 1844, later recalculating the second coming for the following October. The appeal of his predictions was demonstrated by the popular disruptions attributed to his prophesies, such as the donning by many of muslin ascension robes, and by the effectiveness of his call for communicants of churches to “come out" of Babylon. In 1845 his followers formally organized into the Adventist church with Father Miller as their leader. Sylvester Bliss, (Boston, 1853); James White, (Battle Creek, Mich, 1875); , 4: 329-30; , 6: 542-43; , 13: 641-43. proved by the Bible, from whose pages so many
things have been proved, that the world would come to an end in 1843, and
proved it so clearly that many began to make their robes in which they were
to soar aloft above this burning world, he was asked by a doubting Thom-
as,23An allusion to the apostle Thomas. John 20: 24-29. “But father Miller, what if it does not come?” “Well,” said the good
old man, “then we shall wait till it does come.”
The colored people of the United States should imitate the wisdom of
father Miller, and wait. But we should also work while we wait. For after
all, our destiny is largely in our own hands. If we find, we shall have to
seek. If we succeed in the race of life, it must be by our own energies, and
our own exertions. Others may clear the road, but we must go forward, or
be left behind in the race of life.
If we remain poor and dependent, the riches of other men will not avail
us. If we are ignorant, the intelligence of other men will do but little for us.
If we are foolish, the wisdom of other men will not guide us. If we are
wasteful of time and money, the economy of other men will only make our
destitution the more disgraceful and hurtful. If we are vicious and lawless,
the virtues and good behavior of others will not save us from our vices and
our crimes.
We are now free, and though we have many of the consequences of our
past condition to contend against, by union, effort, co-operation, and by a
wise policy in the direction and the employment of our mental, moral,
industrial and political powers, it is the faith of my soul, that we can blot
out the handwriting of popular prejudice, remove the stumbling-blocks left
in our way by slavery, rise to an honorable place in the estimation of our
fellow-citizens of all classes, and make a comfortable way for ourselves in
the world.
I have referred to the vast and wonderful changes which have taken
place in the condition of the colored people of this country. We rejoice in
those changes to-day, and we do well. We are neither wood nor stone, but
men. We possess the sentiments common to right-minded men.
But do we know the history of those vast and marvellous changes and
the means by which they were brought about? Do we comprehend the
philosophy of our progress? Do we ever think of the time, the thought, the
labor, the pain, the self-sacrifice, by which they were accomplished? Have
we a just and proper conception of the noble zeal, the inflexible firmness,
the heroic courage, and other grand qualities of soul, displayed by the
reformers and statesmen through whose exertions these changes in our
condition have been wrought out and the victory won?
Mr. Williams, in his History of the Negro, tells his readers that it was
the dissolution of the Union that abolished slavery.24The determination that brought George Washington Williams (1849-91) to run away from his home in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, at age fourteen to enlist in the military during the Civil War enabled him during his brief life to pursue careers as a minister, lawyer, legislator, diplomat, and historian. A graduate of the Newton Theological Institution and later a student at the Cincinnati Law School, Williams held such posts as pastor of Boston's prestigious Twelfth Baptist Church from 1873 to 1875, member of the House of Representatives of Ohio from 1880 to 1881, and very briefly in 1885 U.S. minister to Haiti. Williams's (1882), to which Douglass refers, was the first major historical work produced by a black American scholar. Although warmly praised by most reviewers, Williams's comments about Douglass in the book sparked a controversy in the black community. Douglass charged that the had been unfair in characterizing his part in the debate over black migration to Kansas and in distorting his opposition to the Garrisonian doctrine of disunionism. At the time of his death, Williams was in England working to expose oppressive and exploitative conditions he had observed during a tour of the Congo. Douglass to George Washington Williams, 11 April 1883, in Washington , 5 May 1883; John Hope Franklin, (Chicago, 1985); Simmons, , 549-67; , 657-59; , 6: 522; , 20: 263-64. He might as well have
told them that Charles Sumner was a slaveholder; that Jeff Davis was an
abolitionist; that Abraham Lincoln was disloyal, and that the devil founded
the Christian church. Had the Union been dissolved you and I would not be
here this evening. Had the Union been dissolved, the colored people of the
South would now be in the hateful chains of slavery. No, no, Mr. Williams,
it was not the destruction but the salvation of the Union that saved the slave
from slavery and the country to freedom, and the Negro to citizenship.
The abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia was one of the most
important events connected with the prosecution of the war for the preser-
vation of the Union, and, as such, is worthy of the marked commemoration
we have given it to-day. It was not only a staggering blow to slavery
throughout the country, but a killing blow to the rebellion, and was the
beginning of the end to both. It placed the National dignity and the National
power on the side of emancipation. It was the first step toward a redeemed
and regenerated nation. It imparted a moral and human significance to
what at first seemed to the outside world, only a sanguinary war for empire.
This great step in National progress, was not taken without a violent
struggle in Congress. It required a large share of moral courage, large faith
in the power of truth, and confidence in the enlightenment and loyalty of
the people, to support this radical measure.
I need not tell you it was bitterly opposed on various grounds by the
Democratic members of Congress. To them it was a measure of flagrant
bad faith with the slaveholders of the District; and calculated to alienate the
border States, and drive them completely into the Confederate States, and
make the restoration of the Union impossible. There was much more force
in such arguments then than now. The situation was critical. The rebellion
was in the fullness of its strength, bold, defiant, victorious, and confident
of ultimate success. The great man on horseback25Ulysses S. Grant. had not then become
visible along the Western horizon. Sherman26William T. Sherman. had not begun his triumphant
march to the sea. But there were moral and intellectual giants in the
councils of the Nation at that time. We saw in the Senate Chamber the
towering form of the lamented Sumner, the earnest and practical Henry
Wilson, the honest and courageous Benjamin F. Wade, the strong and
fearless Zachary Chandler27Zachary Chandler (1813—79) was born in Bedford, New Hampshire, but made his financial and political fortunes in Detroit, Michigan. There. after his election as a Whig mayor in 1851, he participated in the formation of the Republican party which he served continuously in the U.S. Senate from 1857 to 1875. Chandler aligned himself with the Radicals in the Senate where he was a member of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. In this position, Chandler developed a strong disgust toward General George B. McClellan's prosecution of the war, which the Senator thought to be incompetent and desultory and based upon compromised political sympathies. In a 16 July 1862 oration on the Senate floor, he defiantly criticized the general who was relieved of his command the following November. Chandler, who also benefitth politically from his chairmanship of the patronage-rich Committee on Commerce, lost his seat in 1875, after which he served as President Grant's secretary of the interior. He won reelection to the Senate in February 1879 but died eight months later. (Detroit, 1880); Wilmer C. Harris, (n.p., 1917); , 680; , 4: 18-19; , 3: 618.—the man who took the unsuccessful General
from the head of the Army of the Potomac. In the House we had an array of
brilliant men such as Thaddeus Stevens, Owen Lovejoy and A. G. Rid-
dle,28Douglass refers to Albert Gallatin Riddle (1816-1902) who, as an Ohio representative to the Thirty-seventh Congress, was the first to argue before that body in favor of arming slaves. He also had played a leading role in passing the legislation to end slavery in the District of Columbia. Riddle's family moved from Massachusetts to Geauga County in Ohio's Western Reserve district when he was a baby. After an erratic education, he read for the law and became a lawyer in 1840. As a Whig he held elective office as prosecuting attorney of Geauga County (1840-46) and state representative (1848-50). In 1850, he moved to Cleveland and there, too, won election to the prosecuting attorney's post (1852-58). In 1859, Riddle won national attention for his legal defense of the runaway slave rescuers in the Oberlin-Wellington case. Republicans elected him to Congress the following year but his published criticism of the behavior of congressional spectators at the First Battle of Bull Run created so much resentment that he declined to run for reelection. After serving as U.S. consul at Matanzas, Cuba (1864-65), Riddle settled in Washington, D.C. to practice law. He also taught law at Howard University and was Law Officer of the District of Columbia from 1877 to 1889. In his later years, he gained a reputation as an accomplished writer of novels and biographies. Albert G. Riddle, (New York, 1895), 129-35; William Coyle, ed., (Cleveland, 1962), 529-30; , 1519; , 5: 248; , 2: 371; , 15: 591. the first to advocate in Congress the arming of the Negro in defence
of the Union. There, too, was Thomas D. Elliot,29Thomas Dawes Eliot. Henry Winter Davis,
William D. Kelley, Roscoe Conkling. than whom there has appeared in the
Senate of the nation no patriot more pure, no orator more brilliant, no
friend to liberty and progress more sincere. I speak all the more freely of
him since he is now out of politics and in some sense under the shadow
of defeat. 1 cannot forget that these brave men, and others just as worthy of
mention, fully comprehended the demands of the hour, and had the courage
and the sagacity to meet those demands. They saw that slavery was the
root, the sap, the motive, and mainspring of the rebellion, and that the way
to kill the rebellion was to destroy its cause.
Among the great names which should never be forgotten on occasions
like this, there is one which should never be spoken but with reverence,
gratitude and affection, the one man of all the millions of our countrymen to
whom we are more indebted for a United Nation and for American liberty
than to any other, and that name is Abraham Lincoln, the greatest states-
man that ever presided over the destinies of this Republic. The time is too
short, his term of office is too recent to permit or to require extended notice
of his statesmanship, or of his moral and mental qualities. We all know
Abraham Lincoln by heart. In looking back to the many great men of
twenty years ago, we find him the tallest figure of them all. His mission
was to close up a chasm opened by an earthquake, and he did it. It was his
to call back a bleeding, dying and dismembered nation to life, and he did it.
It was his to free his country from the crime, curse and disgrace of slavery,
and to lift millions to the plane of humanity, and he did it. Never was
statesman surrounded by greater difficulties, and never were difficulties
more ably, wisely and firmly met. Friends and fellow-citizens, in conclu-
sion I return to the point from which I started, namely: What is to be the
future of the colored people of this country? Some change in their condition
seems to be looked for by thoughtful men everywhere; but what that change
will be, no one yet has been able with certainty to predict.
Three different solutions to this difficult problem have been given and
adopted by different classes of the American people. 1. Colonization in
Africa; 2. Extinction through poverty, disease and death; 3. Assimilation
and unification with the great body of the American people.
Plainly it is a matter about which no man can be very positive. In
scanning the social sky he may fall into mistakes as great as those which
vexed the souls of Wiggins and Vennor30Douglass refers to two Canadian meteorologists, Ezekiel Stone Wiggins (1839-1910) and Henry George Vennor (1841-84). Born in Queen's County, New Brunswick, Wiggins taught school on Prince Edward Island before graduating from Albert College at Belleville, Ontario, in 1870. He studied medicine at the Philadelphia College of Medicine and Surgery but never graduated. From 1871 to 1874 he headed a school for the blind at Brantford, Ontario. After several more years of teaching and an unsuccessful political career, Wiggins held minor bureaucratic posts in the Canadian government. He gained considerable public attention for a series of predictions of storms published in the press. He based his weather prognostications principally on the juxtapositions of the planets. Vennor graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1860. From 1865 to 1881, he worked for the Canadian government as a geologist, studying wildlife and weather patterns as well as mineral formations. He published a widely circulated weather almanac from 1877 to his death containing predictions based on comparisons of past atmospheric conditions. New York , 19 January, 3, 22, 23 December 1882; W. Stewart Wallace, ed., , 4th ed. rev. (Toronto. 1978), 856, 887; , 6: 276-77, 500. and other weather prophets.
Appearances are deceptive. No man can see the end from the beginning.
It is, however, consoling to think that this limitation upon human
foresight has helped us in the past and may help us in the future. Could
William the Silent31William of Nassau (William the Silent). have foreseen the misery and ruin he would bring upon
his country by taking up the sword against the Spanish Inquisition, he
might have thought the sacrifice too great. Had William Lloyd Garrison
foreseen that he would be hated, persecuted, mobbed, imprisoned, and
drawn through the streets of his beloved Boston with a halter about his
neck, even his courage might have quailed, and the native hue of his
resolution been sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.32, act 3, sc. 1, line 85. Could Abra-
ham Lincoln have foreseen the immense cost, the terrible hardship, the
awful waste of blood and treasure involved in the effort to retake and
repossess the forts and arsenals and other property captured by the Confed-
erate States; could he have foreseen the tears of the widows and orphans,
and his own warm blood trickling at the bidding of an assassin’s bullet, he
might have thought the sacrifice too great.
In every great movement men are prepared by preceding events for
those which are to come. We neither know the evil nor the good which may
be in store for us. Twenty-five years ago the system of slavery seemed
impregnable. Cotton was king, and the civilized world acknowledged his
sway. Twenty-five years ago no man could have foreseen that in less than
ten years from that time no master would wield a lash and no slave would
clank a chain in the United States.
Who at that time dreamed that Negroes would ever be seen as we have
seen them to-day marching through the streets of this superb city, the
Capital of this great Nation, with eagles on their buttons, muskets on their
shoulders and swords by their sides, timing their high footsteps to the Star
Spangled Banner and the Red, White and Blue? Who at that time dreamed
that colored men would ever sit in the House of Representatives and in the
Senate of the United States?
With a knowledge of the events of the last score of years, with a
knowledge of the sudden and startling changes which have already come to
pass, I am not prepared to say what the future will be.
But I will say that I do not look for colonization either in or out of the
United States. Africa is too far off, even if we desired to go there, which we
do not. The navy of all the world would not be sufficient to remove our
natural increase to that far-off country. Removal to any of the territories is
out of the question.
We have no business to put ourselves before the bayonets of the white
race. We have seen the fate of the Indian. As to extinction, the prospect in
that direction has been greatly clouded by the census just taken, in which it
is seen that our increase is ten per cent, greater than that of the white people
of the South.
There is but one destiny, it seems to me, left for us, and that is to make
ourselves and be made by others a part of the American people in every
sense of the word. Assimilation and not isolation is our true policy and our
natural destiny. Unification for us is life: separation is death. We cannot
afford to set up for ourselves a separate political party, or adopt for our-
selves a political creed apart from the rest of our fellow citizens. Our own
interests will be subserved by a generous care for the interests of the Nation
at large. All the political, social and literary forces around us tend to
unification.
I am the more inclined to accept this solution because I have seen the
steps already taken in that direction. The American people have their
prejudices, but they have other qualities as well. They easily adapt them-
selves to inevitable conditions, and all their tendency is to progress, en-
lightenment and to the universal.
“Its comin’ yet for a’ that,
That man to man the warld o’er
Shall brothers be for a’ that.”33Douglass quotes the final three lines of Robert Burns's song, “For A' That and A' That." Alexander Smith, ed., (New York, 1884 and 1887), 228.