Self-made Men: An Address Delivered in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in March 1893
SELF-MADE MEN: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN CARLISLE,
PENNSYLVANIA, IN MARCH 1893
(Carlisle, Pa., [1893]).
Since its original composition and delivery in 1859, Douglass read his lecture
“Self-Made Men” more than fifty times to audiences across the United
States, Canada, and Great Britain. Douglass often selected this address when
called upon to speak before black religious or educational bodies. The bulk of
the lecture changed quite little over thirty-five years but Douglass continually
added observations about the changing circumstance of blacks after eman-
cipation. The text reproduced below is the last known delivery of the lecture,
made before the students of the Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsyl-
vania. Little precise information about this address has survived. Even the
date is a surmise based on a letter to Douglass from Edouard Remenye, a
popular musician, who expressed regret at missing the opportunity to hear the
famous “Self-Made Men” lecture scheduled to be given at the Carlisle
school. From the introduction to the pamphlet that reproduced Douglass’s
lecture, it appears that he spent the entire day touring the school and listened to
a student concert before his lecture in the evening. See Appendix A, text 5, for
a précis of an alternate text. Edouard Remenye to Douglass, 23 March 1893,
General Correspondence File, reel 7, frames 126-27, FD Papers, DLC;
Louisville (Ky.) , 23 April 1873; Douglass, , 413.
The subject announced for this evening’s entertainment is not new. Man in
one form or another, has been a frequent and fruitful subject for the press,
the pulpit and the platform. This subject has come up for consideration
under a variety of attractive titles, such as “Great Men,” “Representative
Men,” “Peculiar Men, Scientific Men,” “Literary Men,” “Successful
Men,” “Men of Genius,” and “Men of the World;” but under whatever
name or designation, the vital point of interest in the discussion has ever
been the same, and that is, manhood itself, and this in its broadest and most
comprehensive sense.
This tendency to the universal, in such discussion, is altogether natural
and all controlling; for when we consider what man, as a whole, is; what he
has been; what he aspires to be, and what, by a wise and vigorous cultiva-
tion of his faculties, he may yet become, we see that it leads irresistibly to
this broad view of him as a subject of thought and inquiry.
The saying of the poet that “The proper study of mankind is man,”1Pope, , Epistle II, lines 1-2.
and which has been the starting point of so many lectures, essays and
speeches, holds its place, like all other great utterances, because it contains
a great truth and a truth alike for every age and generation of men. It is
always new and can never grow old. It is neither dimmed by time nor
tarnished by repetition; for man, both in respect of himself and of his
species, is now, and evermore will be, the center of unsatisfied human
curiosity.
The pleasure we derive from any department of knowledge is largely
due to the glimpse which it gives to us of our own nature. We may travel far
over land and sea, brave all climates, dare all dangers, endure all hard-
ships, try all latitudes and longitudes; we may penetrate the earth, sound
the ocean’s depths and sweep the hollow sky with our glasses, in the pursuit
of other knowledge; we may contemplate the glorious landscape gemmed
by forest, lake and river and dotted with peaceful homes and quiet herds;
we may whirl away to the great cities, all aglow with life and enterprise; we
may mingle with the imposing assemblages of wealth and power; we may
visit the halls where Art works her miracles in music, speech and color, and
where Science unbars the gates to higher planes of civilization; but no
matter how radiant the colors, how enchanting the melody, how gorgeous
and splendid the pageant; man himself, with eyes turned inward upon his
own wondrous attributes and powers surpasses them all. A single human
soul standing here upon the margin we call TIME, overlooking, in the
vastness of its range, the solemn past which can neither be recalled nor
remodelled, ever chafing against finite limitations, entangled with inter-
minable contradictions, eagerly seeking to scan the invisible past and to
pierce the clouds and darkness of the ever mysterious future, has attractions
for thought and study, more numerous and powerful than all other objects
beneath the sky. To human thought and inquiry he is broader than all visible
worlds, loftier than all heights and deeper than all depths. Were I called
upon to point out the broadest and most permanent distinction between
mankind and other animals. it would be this; their earnest desire for the
fullest knowledge of human nature on all its many sides. The importance of
this knowledge is immeasurable, and by no other is human life so affected
and colored. Nothing can bring to man so much of happiness or so much of
misery as man himself. Today he exalts himself to heaven by his virtues and
achievements; to-morrow he smites with sadness and pain, by his crimes
and follies. But whether exalted or debased, charitable or wicked; whether
saint or villain, priest or prize fighter; if only he be great in his line, he is an
unfailing source of interest, as one of a common brotherhood; for the best
man finds in his breast the evidence of kinship with the worst, and the worst
with the best. Confront us with either extreme and you will rivet our
attention and fix us in earnest contemplation, for our chief desire is to know
what there is in man and to know him at all extremes and ends and op-
posites, and for this knowledge, or for the want of it, we will follow him
from the gates of life to the gates of death, and beyond them.
As this subject can never become old, so it can never be exhausted.
Man is too closely related to the Infinite to be divided, weighed, measured
and reduced to fixed standards, and thus adjusted to finite comprehension.
No two of anything are exactly alike, and what is true of man in one
generation may lack some degree of truth in another, but his distinctive
qualities as man, are inherent and remain forever. Progressive in his nature,
he defies the power of progress to overtake him to make known, definitely,
the limits of his marvellous powers and possibilities.
From man comes all that we know or can imagine of heaven and earth,
of time and eternity. He is the prolific constituter of manners, morals,
religions and governments. He spins them out as the spider spins his web,
and they are coarse or fine, kind or cruel, according to the degree of
intelligence reached by him at the period of their establishment. He com-
pels us to contemplate his past with wonder and to survey his future with
much the same feelings as those with which Columbus2Christopher Columbus. is supposed to have
gazed westward over the sea. It is the faith of the race that in man there
exists far outlying continents of power, thought and feeling, which remain
to be discovered, explored, cultivated, made practical and glorified.
Mr. Emerson has declared that it is natural to believe in great men.3Douglass quotes the first sentence of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay “Uses of Great Men." , 4: 3.
Whether this is a fact, or not, we do believe in them and worship them. The
Visible God of the New Testament is revealed to us as a man of like
passions with ourselves. We seek out our wisest and best man, the man
who, by eloquence or the sword compels us to believe him such, and make
him our leader, prophet, preacher and law giver. We do this, not because he
is essentially different from us, but because of his identity with us. He is our
best representative and reflects, on a colossal scale, the scale to which we
would aspire, our highest aims, objects, powers and possibilities.
This natural reverence for all that is great in man, and this tendency to
deify and worship him, though natural and the source of man’s elevation,
has not always shown itself wise but has often shown itself far otherwise
than wise. It has often given us a wicked ruler for a righteous one, a false
prophet for a true one, a corrupt preacher for a pure one, a man of war for a
man of peace, and a distorted and vengeful image of God for an image of
justice and mercy.
But it is not my purpose to attempt here any comprehensive and ex-
haustive theory or philosophy of the nature of manhood in all the range I
have indicated. I am here to speak to you of a peculiar type of manhood
under the title of
SELF-MADE MEN.
That there is, in more respects than one, something like a solecism in
this title, I freely admit. Properly speaking, there are in the world no such
men as self-made men. That term implies an individual independence of
the past and present which can never exist.
Our best and most valued acquisitions have been obtained either from
our contemporaries or from those who have preceded us in the field of
thought and discovery. We have all either begged, borrowed or stolen. We
have reaped where others have sown, and that which others have strown,
we have gathered.4Douglass probably paraphrases Matt. 25: 26. It must in truth be said though it may not accord well
with self-conscious individuality and self-conceit, that no possible native
force of character, and no depth or wealth of originality, can lift a man into
absolute independence of his fellow-men, and no generation of men can be
independent of the preceding generation. The brotherhood and inter-de-
pendence of mankind are guarded and defended at all points. I believe in
individuality, but individuals are, to the mass, like waves to the ocean. The
highest order of genius is as dependent as is the lowest. It, like the loftiest
waves of the sea, derives its power and greatness from the grandeur and
vastness of the ocean of which it forms a part. We differ as the waves, but
are one as the sea. To do something well does not necessarily imply the
ability to do everything else equally well. If you can do in one direction that
which I cannot do, I may in another direction, be able to do that which you
cannot do. Thus the balance of power is kept comparatively even, and a
self-acting brotherhood and inter-dependence is maintained.
Nevertheless, the title of my lecture is eminently descriptive of a class
and is, moreover, a fit and convenient one for my purpose, in illustrating
the idea which I have in view. In the order of discussion I shall adopt the
style of an old-fashioned preacher and have a “firstly,” a “secondly,” a
“thirdly,” a “fourthly” and, possibly, a “conclusion.”
My first is, “Who are self-made men?” My second is, “What is the
true theory of their success?” My third is, “The advantages which self-
made men derive from the manners and institutions of their surroundings,”
and my fourth is, “The grounds of the criticism to which they are, as a
class, especially exposed.”
On the first point I may say that, by the term “self-made men,” I mean
especially what, to the popular mind, the term itself imports. Self-made men
are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of
favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and
position and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can be
put in this world, and in the exercises of these uses to build up worthy
character. They are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship,
friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of
education; who are what they are, without the aid of any of the favoring
conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great
results. In fact they are the men who are not brought up but who are obliged to
come up, not only without the voluntary assistance or friendly co-operation
of society, but often in open and derisive defiance of all the efforts of society
and the tendency of circumstances to repress, retard and keep them down.
They are the men who, in a world of schools, academies, colleges and other
institutions of learning, are often compelled by unfriendly circumstances to
acquire their education elsewhere and, amidst unfavorable conditions, to
hew out for themselves a way to success, and thus to become the architects of
their own good fortunes. They are in a peculiar sense, indebted to themselves
for themselves. If they have travelled far, they have made the road on which
they travelled. If they have ascended high, they have built their own ladder.
From the depths of poverty such as these have often come. From the heartless
pavements of large and crowded cities; barefooted. homeless, and friend-
less, they have come. From hunger, rags and destitution, they have come;
motherless and fatherless, they have come, and may come. Flung overboard
in the midnight storm on the broad and tempest-tossed ocean of life;5Douglass possibly adapts , act 1, sc. 3, lines 24-25. left
without ropes, planks, oars or life-preservers, they have bravely buffetted
the frowning billows and have risen in safety and life where others, supplied
with the best appliances for safety and success, have fainted, despaired and
gone down forever.
Such men as these, whether found in one position or another, whether
in the college or in the factory; whether professors or plowmen; whether
Caucasian or Indian; whether Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African, are self-
made men and are entitled to a certain measure of respect for their success
and for proving to the world the grandest possibilities of human nature, of
whatever variety of race or color.
Though a man of this class need not claim to be a hero or to be
worshiped as such, there is genuine heroism in his struggle and something
of sublimity and glory in his triumph. Every instance of such success is an
example and a help to humanity. It, better than any mere assertion, gives us
assurance of the latent powers and resources of simple and unaided man-
hood. It dignifies labor, honors application, lessens pain and depression,
dispels gloom from the brow of the destitute and weariness from the heart
of him about to faint, and enables man to take hold of the roughest and
flintiest hardships incident to the battle of life, with a lighter heart, with
higher hopes and a larger courage.
But I come at once to the second part of my subject, which respects the
THEORY OF SELF-MADE MEN.
“Upon what meat doth this, our CAESAR, feed, he hath grown so
great‘?”6Douglass slightly misquotes , act 1, sc. 2, lines 150-51. How happens it that the cottager is often found equal to the lord,
and that, in the race of life. the sons of the poor often get even with, and
surpass even, the sons of the rich? How happens it from the field often
come statesmen equal to those from the college? I am sorry to say that,
upon this interesting point, I can promise nothing absolute nor anything
which will be entirely satisfactory and conclusive. Burns says:
“I see how folks live that hae riches,
But surely poor folks maun be witches.”7By substituting "witches" for “wretches,” Douglass misquotes lines 101-02 from the poem “The Twa Dogs" by Robert Burns. Smith, , 3.
The various conditions of men and the different uses they make of their
powers and opportunities in life, are full of puzzling contrasts and contra-
dictions. Here, as elsewhere, it is easy to dogmatize, but it is not so easy to
define, explain and demonstrate. The natural laws for the government,
well-being and progress of mankind, seem to be equal and are equal; but
the subjects of these laws everywhere abound in inequalities, discords and
contrasts. We cannot have fruit without flowers, but we often have flowers
without fruit. The promise of youth often breaks down in manhood, and
real excellence often comes unheralded and from unexpected quarters.
The scene presented from this view is as a thousand arrows shot from
the same point and aimed at the same object. United in aim, they are
divided in flight. Some fly too high, others too low. Some go to the right,
others to the left. Some fly too far and others, not far enough, and only a
few hit the mark. Such is life. United in the quiver, they are divided in the
air. Matched when dormant, they are unmatched in action.
When we attempt to account for greatness we never get nearer to the
truth than did the greatest of poets and philosophers when he classified the
conditions of greatness: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and
some have greatness thrust upon them.”8, act 2, sc. 5, lines 145-46. We may take our choice of these
three separate explanations and make which of them we please, most
prominent in our discussion. Much can certainly be said of superior mental
endowments, and I should on some accounts, lean strongly to that theory,
but for numerous examples which seem to, and do, contradict it, and but
for the depressing tendency such a theory must have upon humanity gener-
ally.
This theory has truth in it, but it is not the whole truth. Men of very
ordinary faculties have, nevertheless, made a very respectable way in the
world and have sometimes presented even brilliant examples of success.
On the other hand, what is called genius is often found by the wayside, a
miserable wreck; the more deplorable and shocking because from the
height from which it has fallen and the loss and ruin involved in the fall.
There is, perhaps, a compensation in disappointment and in the contradic-
tion of means to ends and promise to performance. These imply a constant
effort on the part of nature to hold the balance evenly between all her
children and to bring success within the reach of the humblest as well as of
the most exalted.
From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells, and
we are taught respect from simple manhood when we see how, from the
various dregs of society, there come men who may well be regarded as the
pride and as the watch towers of the race.
Steel is improved by laying on damp ground, and the rusty razor gets a
keener edge after giving its dross to the dirt in which it has been allowed to
lie neglected and forgotten. In like manner, too, humanity, though it lay
among the pots, covered with the dust of neglect and poverty, may still
retain the divine impulse and the element of improvement and progress. It
is natural to revolt at squalor, but we may well relax our lip of scorn and
contempt when we stand among the lowly and despised, for out of the rags
of the meanest cradle there may come a great man and this is a treasure
richer than all the wealth of the Orient.
I do not think much of the accident or good luck theory of self-made
men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value. An apple
carelessly flung into a crowd may hit one person, or it may hit another, or it
may hit nobody. The probabilities are precisely the same in this accident
theory of self-made men. It divorces a man from his own achievements,
contemplates him as a being of chance and leaves him without will,
motive, ambition and aspiration. Yet the accident theory is among the most
popular theories of individual success. It has about it the air of mystery
which the multitude so well like, and withal, it does something to mar the
complacency of the successful.
It is one of the easiest and commonest things in the world for a suc-
cessful man to be followed in his career through life and to have constantly
pointed out this or that particular stroke of good fortune which fixed his
destiny and made him successful. If not ourselves great, we like to explain
why others are so. We are stingy in our praise to merit, but generous in our
praise to chance. Besides, a man feels himself measurably great when he
can point out the precise moment and circumstance which made his neigh-
bor great. He easily fancies that the slight difference between himself and
his friend is simply one of luck. It was his friend who was lucky but it might
easily have been himself. Then too, the next best thing to success is a valid
apology for non-success. Detraction is, to many, a delicious morsel. The
excellence which it loudly denies to others it silently claims for itself. It
possesses the means of covering the small with the glory of the great. It
adds to failure that which it takes from success and shortens the distance
between those in front and those in the rear. Even here there is an upward
tendency worthy of notice and respect. The kitchen is ever the critic of the
parlor. The talk of those below is of those above. We imitate those we
revere and admire.
But the main objection to this very comfortable theory is that, like most
other theories, it is made to explain too much. While it ascribes success to
chance and friendly circumstances, it is apt to take no cognizance of the
very different uses to which different men put their circumstances and their
chances.
Fortune may crowd a man’s life with favorable circumstances and
happy opportunities, but they will, as all know, avail him nothing unless he
makes a wise and vigorous use of them. It does not matter that the wind is
fair and the tide at its flood, if the mariner refuses to weigh his anchor and
spread his canvas to the breeze. The golden harvest is ripe in vain if the
farmer refuses to reap. Opportunity is important but exertion is indispens-
able. “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at its flood, leads on
to fortune;”9, act 4, sc. 2, lines 294-95. but it must be taken at its flood.
Within this realm of man’s being, as elsewhere, Science is diffusing its
broad, beneficent light. As this light increases, dependence upon chance or
luck is destined to vanish and the wisdom of adapting means to ends, to
become more manifest.
It was once more common than it is now, to hear men religiously
ascribing their good or ill fortune directly to supernatural intervention.
Success and failure, wealth and poverty, intelligence and ignorance, liberty
and slavery, happiness and misery, were all bestowed or inflicted upon
individual men by a divine hand and for all-wise purposes. Man was, by
such reasoners, made a very insignificant agent in his own affairs. It was all
the Lord’s doings and marvellous to human eyes. Of course along with this
superstition came the fortune teller, the pretender to divination and the
miracle working priest who could save from famine by praying easier than
by under-draining and deep plowing.
In such matter a wise man has little use for altars or oracle. He knows
that the laws of God are perfect and unchangeable. He knows that health is
maintained by right living; that disease is cured by the right use of reme-
dies; that bread is produced by tilling the soil; that knowledge is obtained
by study; that wealth is secured by saving and that battles are won by
fighting. To him, the lazy man is the unlucky man and the man of luck is the
man of work.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”10, act 1, sc. 2, lines 141-42.
When we find a man who has ascended heights beyond ourselves; who
has a broader range of vision than we and a sky with more stars in it than we
have in ours, we may know that he has worked harder, better and more
wisely than we. He was awake while we slept. He was busy while we were
idle and he was wisely improving his time and talents while we were
wasting ours. Paul Dunbar,11The child of ex-slaves who had settled in Dayton, Ohio, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) received a high school education but could not afford to attend college. Instead Dunbar found jobs as an elevator operator and a courthouse messenger in his hometown, while he devoted his free hours to writing poetry. In the spring of 1893, he travelled to Chicago to seek work at the World's Columbian Exposition. There Dunbar met Douglass who hired him as his secretary at the Haitian Exhibition Building and encouraged his literary ambitions. Popular success as a poet soon followed. Dunbar's verse appeared in many magazines and in several published collections including (1895) and (1896). He contracted pneumonia in 1899 and subsequent heavy drinking prevented his full recovery. He nonetheless continued to produce a large number of short stories and novels as well as poems before his death at thirty-four. Paul Dunbar to Douglass, 30 December 1893, 7 September 1894, General Correspondence File, reel 7, frames 470-71, reel 8, frames 106-07, FD Papers, DLC. Peter Revell, (Boston, 1979); Benjamin Brawley, (Chapel Hill, 1936); , 200-03. the colored poet, has well said:
“There are no beaten paths to glory’s height,
There are no rules to compass greatness known;
Each for himself must cleave a path alone,
And press his own way forward in the fight.
Smooth is the way to ease and calm delight,
And soft the road Sloth chooseth for her own;
But he who craves the flow’r of life full-blown
Must struggle up in all his armor dight.
What tho’ the burden bear him sorely down,
And crush to dust the mountain of his pride,
Oh! then with strong heart let him still abide
For rugged is the roadway to renown.
Nor may he hope to gain the envied crown
Till he hath thrust the looming rocks aside.”12Douglass recites Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “The Path." (1913; New York, 1976), 33.
I am certain that there is nothing good, great or desirable which man
can possess in this world, that does not come by some kind of labor, either
physical or mental, moral or spiritual. A man may, at times, get something
for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing. What is true in the
world of matter, is equally true in the world of mind. Without culture there
can be no growth; without exertion, no acquisition; without friction, no
polish; without labor, no knowledge; without action, no progress and
without conflict, no victory. The man who lies down a fool at night, hoping
that he will waken wise in the morning, will rise up in the morning as he
laid down in the evening.
Faith, in the absence of work, seems to be worth little, if anything. The
preacher who finds it easier to pray for knowledge than to tax his brain with
study and application will find his congregation growing beautifully less
and his flock looking elsewhere for their spiritual and mental food. In the
old slave times colored ministers were somewhat remarkable for the fervor
with which they prayed for knowledge, but it did not appear that they were
remarkable for any wonderful success. In fact, they who prayed loudest
seemed to get least. They thought if they opened their mouths they would
be filled. The result was an abundance of sound with a great destitution of
sense.
Not only in man’s experience, but also in nature do we find exemplified
the truth upon which I have been insisting. My father worketh, said the
Savior, and I also work.13John 5: 17. In every view which we obtain of the perfections
of the universe; whether we look to the bright stars in the peaceful blue
dome above us, or to the long shore line of the ocean, where land and water
maintain eternal conflict; the lesson taught is the same; that of endless
action and reaction. Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather
on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding
smoothness, were chiseled into their varied and graceful forms by the
ceaseless action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker and
never tolerates, without certain rebuke, any contradiction to her wise ex-
ample. Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by
pestilence and pestilence is followed by death. General Butler, busy with
his broom, could sweep yellow fever out of New Orleans, but this dread
destroyer returned when the General and his broom were withdrawn, and
the people, neglecting sanitary wisdom, went on ascribing to Divinity what
was simply due to dirt.14While commander of the Union army occupation forces in New Orleans, Louisiana, General Benjamin F. Butler ordered a thorough clean-up of the city's marketplaces, canal basins, and open sewers. Butler's father had died of yellow fever and the general incorrectly believed that foul air was the cause of that disease as well as of malaria. Although Butler’s diagnosis was faulty, the deployment of more than two thousand men in the city's new sanitary commission to clean pest-infested areas reduced the number of yellow fever cases in New Orleans in 1862 to just two. Nash, , 158-61; West, , 147-48.
From these remarks it will be evident that, allowing only ordinary
ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and
that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and
fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable
work, into which the whole heart is put, and which, in both temporal and
spiritual affairs, is the true miracle worker. Every one may avail himself of
this marvellous power, if he will. There is no royal road to perfection.
Certainly no one must wait for some kind of friend to put a springing board
under his feet, upon which he may easily bound from the first round of the
ladder onward and upward to its highest round. If he waits for this, he may
wait long and perhaps forever. He who does not think himself worth saving
from poverty and ignorance, by his own efforts, will hardly be thought
worth the efforts of anybody else.
The lesson taught at this point by human experience is simply this, that
the man who will get up will be helped up; and that the man who will not get
up will be allowed to stay down. This rule may appear somewhat harsh, but
in its general application and operation it is wise, just and beneficent. I
know of no other rule which can be substituted for it without bringing
social chaos. Personal independence is a virtue and it is the soul out of
which comes the sturdiest manhood. But there can be no independence
without a large share of self-dependence, and this virtue cannot be be-
stowed. It must be developed from within.
I have been asked “How will this theory affect the negro?” and “What
shall be done in his case?” My general answer is “Give the negro fair play
and let him alone. If he lives, well. If he dies, equally well. If he cannot
stand up, let him fall down.”
The apple must have strength and vitality enough in itself to hold on, or
it will fall to the ground where it belongs. The strongest influence prevails
and should prevail. If the vital relation of the fruit is severed, it is folly to tie
the stem to the branch or the branch to the tree or to shelter the fruit from the
wind. So, too, there is no wisdom in lifting from the earth a head which
must only fall the more heavily when the help is withdrawn. Do right,
though the heavens fall; but they will not fall.
I have said “Give the negro fair play and let him alone.” I meant all that
I said and a good deal more than some understand by fair play. It is not fair
play to start the negro out in life, from nothing and with nothing, while
others start with the advantage of a thousand years behind them. He should
be measured, not by the heights others have obtained, but from the depths
from which he has come. For any adjustment of the scale of comparison,
fair play demands that to the barbarism from which the negro started shall
be added two hundred years heavy with human bondage. Should the Amer-
ican people put a school house in every valley of the South and a church on
every hill side and supply the one with teachers and the other with preach-
ers, for a hundred years to come, they would not then have given fair play
to the negro.
The nearest approach to justice to the negro for the past is to do him
justice in the present. Throw open to him the doors of the schools, the
factories, the workshops, and of all mechanical industries. For his own
welfare, give him a chance to do whatever he can do well. If he fails then,
let him fail! I can, however, assure you that he will not fail. Already has he
proven it. As a soldier he proved it. He has since proved it by industry and
sobriety and by the acquisition of knowledge and property. He is almost the
only successful tiller of the soil of the South, and is fast becoming the
owner of land formerly owned by his old master and by the old master
class. In a thousand instances has he verified my theory of self-made men.
He well performed the task of making bricks without straw;15Exod. 5: 7-18. now give
him straw. Give him all the facilities for honest and successful livelihood,
and in all honorable avocations receive him as a man among men.
I have by implication admitted that work alone is not the only explana-
tion of self-made men, or of the secret of success. Industry, to be sure, is the
superficial and visible cause of success, but what is the cause of industry?
In the answer to this question one element is easily pointed out, and that
element is necessity. Thackeray16William Makepeace Thackeray. very wisely remarks that “All men are
about as lazy as they can afford to be.” Men cannot be depended upon to
work when they are asked to work for nothing. They are not only as lazy as
they can afford to be, but I have found many who were a great deal more so.
We all hate the task master, but all men, however industrious, are either
lured or lashed through the world, and we should be a lazy, good-for-
nothing set, if we were not so lured and lashed.
Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but the mainspring of
exertion. The presence of some urgent, pinching, imperious necessity, will
often not only sting a man into marvellous exertion, but into a sense of the
possession, within himself, of powers and resources which else had slum-
bered on through a long life, unknown to himself and never suspected by
others. A man never knows the strength of his grip till life and limb depend
upon it. Something is likely to be done when something must be done.
If you wish to make your son helpless, you need not cripple him with
bullet or bludgeon, but simply place him beyond the reach of necessity and
surround him with ease and luxury. This experiment has often been tried
and has seldom failed. As a general rule, where circumstances do most for
men, there man will do least for himself; and where man does least, he
himself is least. His doing or not doing makes or unmakes him.
Under the palm trees of Africa man finds, without effort, food, raiment
and shelter. For him, there, Nature has done all and he has done nothing.
The result is that the glory of Africa is in her palms,—and not in her men.
In your search after manhood go not to those delightful latitudes where
“summer is blossoming all the year long,” but rather to the hardy North, to
Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, to the coldest and flintiest parts of
New England, where men work gardens with gunpowder, blast rocks to
find places to plant potatoes; where, for six months of the year, the earth is
covered with snow and ice. Go to the states which Daniel Webster thought
good enough to emigrate from,17Born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, Daniel Webster established a law practice in Portsmouth and represented his native state in the U.S. House of Representatives (1813-17) before relocating his legal and political careers to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1817. , 19: 585-92. and there you will find the highest type of
American physical and intellectual manhood.
Happily for mankind, labor not only supplies the good things for which
it is exerted, but it increases its own resources and improves, sharpens and
strengthens its own instruments.
The primary condition upon which men have and retain power and skill
is exertion. Nature has no use for unused power. She abhors a vacuum. She
permits no preemption without occupation. Every organ of body and mind
has its use and improves by use. “Better to wear out than to rust out,”18The best known source for this proverb is , Part II, act I, sc. 2, lines 249-51. is
sound philosophy as well as common sense. The eye of the watch-maker is
severely taxed by the intense light and effort necessary in order to see
minute objects, yet it remains clear and keen long after those of other men
have failed. I was told at the Remington Rifle Works, by the workmen there
employed who have to straighten the rifle barrels by flashing intense light
through them, that, by this practice, severe as it seems, their eyes were
made stronger.
But what the hands find to do must be done in earnest. Nature tolerates
no halfness. He who wants hard hands must not, at sight of the first blister,
fling away the spade, the rake, the broad axe or the hoe; for the blister is a
primary condition to the needed hardness. To abandon work is not only to
throw away the means of success, but it is also to part with the ability to
work. To be able to walk well, one must walk on, and to work with ease and
effect, one must work on.
Thus the law of labor is self-acting, beneficent and perfect; increasing
skill and ability according to exertion. Faithful, earnest and protracted
industry gives strength to the mind and facility to the hand. Within certain
limits, the more that a man does, the more he can do.
Few men ever reach, in any one direction, the limits of their pos-
sibilities. As in commerce, so here, the relation of supply to demand rules.
Our mechanical and intellectual forces increase or decrease according to
the demands made upon them. He who uses most will have most to use.
This is the philosophy of the parable of the ten talents. It applies here as
elsewhere. “To him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall
be taken even that which he hath.”19A slight variation of Matt. 25: 29 and Luke 19: 26.
Exertion of muscle or mind, for pleasure and amusement alone, cannot
bring anything like the good results of earnest labor. Such exertion lacks
the element attached to duty. To play perfectly upon any complicated
instrument, one must play long, laboriously and with earnest purpose.
Though it be an amusement at first, it must be labor at the end, if any
proficiency is reached. If one plays for one’s own pleasure alone, the
performance will give little pleasure to any one else and will finally become
a rather hard and dry pleasure to one’s self.
In this respect one cannot receive much more than one gives. Men may
cheat their neighbors and may cheat themselves but they cannot cheat
nature. She will only pay the wages one honestly earns.
In the idea of exertion, of course fortitude and perseverance are in-
cluded. We have all met a class of men, very remarkable for their activity,
and who yet make but little headway in life; men who, in their noisy and
impulsive pursuit of knowledge, never get beyond the outer bark of an
idea, from a lack of patience and perseverance to dig to the core; men who
begin everything and complete nothing; who see, but do not perceive; who
read, but forget what they read, and are as if they had not read; who travel,
but go nowhere in particular, and have nothing of value to impart when they
return. Such men may have greatness thrust upon them but they never
achieve greatness.
As the gold in the mountain is concealed in huge and flinty rocks, so
the most valuable ideas and inventions are often enveloped in doubt and
uncertainty. The printing press, the sewing machine, the railroad, the
telegraph and the locomotive, are all simple enough now, but who can
measure the patience, the persistence, the fortitude, the wearing labor and
the brain sweat, which produced these wonderful and indispensable addi-
tions to our modern civilization.
My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of
work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellec-
tual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued,
is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success. But in thus award-
ing praise to industry, as the main agency in the production and culture of
self-made men, I do not exclude other factors of the problem. I only make
them subordinate. Other agencies co-operate, but this is the principal one
and the one without which all others would fail.
Indolence and failure can give a thousand excuses for themselves. How
often do we hear men say, “If I had the head of this one, or the hands of that
one; the health of this one, or the strength of that one; the chances of this or
of that one, I might have been this, that, or the other;” and much more of
the same sort.
Sound bodily health and mental faculties unimpaired are very desir-
able, if not absolutely indispensable. But a man need not be a physical
giant or an intellectual prodigy, in order to make a tolerable way in the
world. The health and strength of the soul is of far more importance than is
that of the body, even when viewed as a means of mundane results. The
soul is the main thing. Man can do a great many things; some easily and
some with difficulty, but he cannot build a sound ship with rotten timber.
Her model may be faultless; her spars may be the finest and her canvas the
whitest and the flags of all nations may be displayed at her masthead, but
she will go down in the first storm. So it is with the soul. Whatever its
assumptions, if it be lacking in the principles of honor, integrity and
affection, it, too, will go down in the first storm. And when the soul is lost,
all is lost. All human experience proves over and over again, that any
success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonor, is
but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.
Let not the morally strong, though the physically weak abandon the
struggle of life. For such happily, there is both place and chance in the
world. The highest services to man and the richest rewards to the worker
are not conditioned entirely upon physical power. The higher the plane of
civilization, the more abundant the opportunities of the weak and infirm.
Society and civilization move according to celestial order. “Not that which
is spiritual is first, but that which is natural. After that, that which is
spiritual.” The order of progress, is, first, barbarism; afterward, civiliza-
tion. Barbarism represents physical force. Civilization represents spiritual
power. The primary condition, that of barbarism, knows no other law than
that of force; not right, but might. In this condition of society, or rather of
no society, the man of mind is pushed aside by the man of muscle. A Kit
Carson,20Born in Madison County, Kentucky, Christopher “Kit” Carson (1809-68) moved with his family to Missouri in 1811. He received no formal education before running away with a trade caravan to Santa Fe in 1826. Carson remained on the frontier trapping beaver, hunting buffalo, and trading with the Indians. In 1842, while on a trip to St. Louis, he met the explorer John C. Frémont and subsequently served as a guide on three of his expeditions (1842, 1843-44, 1845) of the Rocky Mountain territories. Carson became a popular hero as a result of his exploits in California during the Mexican War while under the command of Frémont and of General George W. Keamy. From 1854 to 1861, he held the post
of United States Indian agent for the Moache Ute, Jicarille Apache, and Pueblo tribes in New Mexico Territory. During the Civil War Carson fought against both the Confederates and hostile Indians in the West and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Union army. After the war he returned to his duties as Indian agent. M. Morgan Estergreen, (Norman, Okla., 1962); , 1: 540; , 3: 273; , 3: 530-32. far out on the borders of civilization, dexterously handling his
bowie knife, rifle and bludgeon, easily gets himself taken for a hero; but
the waves of science and civilization rolling out over the Western prairies,
soon leave him no room for his barbarous accomplishment. Kit is shorn of
his glory. A higher type of manhood is required.
Where ferocious beasts and savage inhabitants have been dispersed
and the rudeness of nature has been subdued, we welcome milder methods
and gentler instrumentalities for the service of mankind. Here the race is
not to the swift nor the battle to the strong,21A paraphrase of Eccles. 9: 11. but the prize is brought within
the reach of those who are neither swift nor strong. None need despair.
There is room and work for all: for the weak as well as the strong. Activity
is the law for all and its rewards are open to all. Vast acquirements and
splendid achievements stand to the credit of men and feeble frames and
slender constitutions. Channing was physically weak.22Although he lived more than sixty-two years, William Ellery Channing's physical constitution had been frail since early youth. Arthur W. Brown, (New York, 1961), 28, 41, 51. Milton was
blind.23English poet John Milton (1608-74) lost a twenty-year battle against total blindness in 1652. , 8 vols. (London, 1851), 1: xciv. Montgomery was small and effeminate.24Possibly an allusion to British poet James Montgomery (1771-1854). But these men were
more to the world than a thousand Sampsons.25The story of the Israelite judge of extraordinary strength is told in Judges 13-16. Mrs Stowe26Harriet Beecher Stowe. would be
nothing among the grizzly bears of the Rocky mountains. We should not be
likely to ask for her help at a barn raising, or a ship launch; but when a great
national evil was to be removed; when a nation’s heart was to be touched;
when a whole country was to be redeemed and regenerated and millions of
slaves converted into free men, the civilized world knew no earthly power
equal to hers.
But another element of the secret of success demands a word. That
element is order, systematic endeavor. We succeed, not alone by the la-
borious exertion of our faculties, be they small or great, but by the regular,
thoughtful and systematic exercise of them. Order, the first law of heaven,
is itself a power. The battle is nearly lost when your lines are in disorder.
Regular, orderly and systematic effort which moves without friction and
needless loss of time or power; which has a place for everything and
everything in its place; which knows just where to begin, how to proceed
and where to end. though marked by no extraordinary outlay of energy or
activity, will work wonders, not only in the matter of accomplishment, but
also in the increase of the ability of the individual. It will make the weak
man strong and the strong man stronger; the simple man wise and the wise
man, wiser, and will insure success by the power and influence that belong
to habit.
On the other hand, no matter what gifts and what aptitudes a man may
possess; no matter though his mind be of the highest order and fitted for the
noblest achievements; yet, without this systematic effort, his genius will
only serve as a fire of shavings, soon in blaze and soon out.
Spontaneity has a special charm, and the fitful outcroppings of genius
are, in speech or action, delightful; but the success attained by these is
neither solid nor lasting. A man who, for nearly forty years, was the
foremost orator in New England,27Probably Wendell Phillips. was asked by me, if his speeches were
extemporaneous? They flowed so smoothly that I had my doubts about it.
He answered, “No, I carefully think out and write my speeches, before I
utter them.” When such a man rises to speak, he knows what he is going to
say. When he speaks, he knows what he is saying. When he retires from the
platform, he knows what he has said.
There is still another element essential to success, and that is, a com-
manding object and a sense of its importance. The vigor of the action
depends upon the power of the motive. The wheels of the locomotive lie
idle upon the rail until they feel the impelling force of the steam; but when
that is applied, the whole ponderous train is set in motion. But energy
ought not to be wasted. A man may dispose of his life as Paddy did of his
powder,—aim at nothing, and hit it every time.
If each man in the world did his share of honest work, we should have
no need of a millennium. The world would teem with abundance, and the
temptation to evil in a thousand directions, would disappear. But work is
not often undertaken for its own sake. The worker is conscious of an object
worthy of effort, and works for that object; not for what he is to it, but for
what it is to him. All are not moved by the same objects. Happiness is the
object of some. Wealth and fame are the objects of others. But wealth and
fame are beyond the reach of the majority of men, and thus, to them, these
are not motive-impelling objects. Happily, however, personal, family and
neighborhood well-being stand near to us all and are full of lofty inspira-
tions to earnest endeavor, if we would but respond to their influence.
I do not desire my lecture to become a sermon; but, were this allowa-
ble, I would rebuke the growing tendency to sport and pleasure. The time,
money and strength devoted to these phantoms, would banish darkness and
hunger from every hearthstone in our land. Multitudes, unconscious of any
controlling object in life, flit, like birds, from point to point; now here, now
there; and so accomplish nothing, either here or there.
“For pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed!
Or like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.—”
They know most of pleasure who seek it least and they least who seek it
most. The cushion is soft to him who sits on it but seldom. The men behind
the chairs at Saratoga and Newport, get better dinners than the men in
them. We cannot serve two masters.28Matt. 6: 24 and Luke 16: 13. When here, we cannot be there. If
we accept ease, we must part with appetite. A pound of feathers is as heavy
as a pound of iron,—and about as hard, if you sit on it long enough. Music
is delightful, but too much of it wounds the ear like the filing of a saw. The
lounge, to the lazy, becomes like flint; and to him, the most savory dishes
lose their flavor.
“It’s true, they need na starve or sweat,
Thro’ winter’s cauld or simmer’s heat;
But human bodies are sic fools,
For all their colleges an’ schools,
That when na real ills perplex them,
They mak enow, themselves to vex them.”29Douglass adapts lines 191-97 from “The Twa Dogs," by Robert Burns. Smith, , 5.
But the industrious man does find real pleasure. He finds it in qualities
and quantities to which the baffled pleasure seeker is a perpetual stranger.
He finds it in the house well built, in the farm well tilled, in the books well
kept, in the page well written, in the thought well expressed, in all the
improved conditions of life around him and in whatsoever useful work
may, for the moment, engage his time and energies.
I will give you, in one simple statement, my idea, my observation and
my experience of the chief agent in the success of self-made men. It is not
luck, nor is it great mental endowments, but it is well directed, honest toil.
“Toil and Trust!” was the motto of John Quincy Adams, and his Presidency
of the Republic proved its wisdom as well as its truth. Great in his oppor-
tunities, great in his mental endowments and great in his relationships, he
was still greater in persevering and indefatigable industry.
Examples of successful self-culture and self-help under great difficul-
ties and discouragements, are abundant, and they vindicate the theory of
success thus feebly and with homely common sense, presented. For exam-
ple: Hugh Miller, whose lamented death mantled the mountains and valleys
of his native land with a broad shadow of sorrow, scarcely yet lifted, was a
grand example of the success of persistent devotion, under great difficul-
ties, to work and to the acquisition of knowledge. In a country justly
distinguished for its schools and colleges, he, like Robert Burns, Scotia’s
matchless son of song, was the true child of science, as Burns was of song.
He was his own college. The earth was his school and the rocks were his
school master. Outside of all the learned institutions of his country, and
while employed with his chisel and hammer, as a stone mason, this man
literally killed two birds with one stone; for he earned his daily bread and at
the same time made himself an eminent geologist, and gave to the world
books which are found in all public libraries and which are full of inspira-
tion to the truth seeker.
Not unlike the case of Hugh Miller, is that of our own Elihu Burritt.
The true heart warms with admiration for the energy and perseverance
displayed in this man’s pursuit of knowledge. We call him “The learned
blacksmith,” and the distinction was fairly earned and fitly worn. Over the
polished anvil and glowing forge; amidst the smoke, dust and din of the
blacksmith’s shop; amidst its blazing fires and hissing sparks, and while
hammering the red-hot steel, this brave son of toil is said to have mastered
twenty different languages, living and dead.
It is surprising with what small means, in the field of earnest effort,
great results have been achieved. That neither costly apparatus nor packed
libraries are necessarily required by the earnest student in self-culture, was
demonstrated in a remarkable manner by Louis Kossuth. That illustrious
patriot, scholar and statesman, came to our country from the far east of
Europe, a complete master of the English language. He spoke our difficult
tongue with an eloquence as stately and grand as that of the best American
orators. When asked how he obtained this mastery of a language so foreign
to him, he told us that his school house was an Austrian prison, and his
school books, the Bible, Shakespeare, and an old English dictionary.
Side by side with the great Hungarian, let me name the King of Ameri-
can self-made men; the man who rose highest and will be remembered
longest as the most popular and beloved President since Washington—
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. This man came to us, not from the schools or
from the mansions of ease and luxury, but from the back woods. He
mastered his grammar by the light of a pine wood torch. The fortitude and
industry which could split rails by day, and learn grammar at night at the
hearthstone of a log hut and by the unsteady glare of a pine wood knot,
prepared this man for a service to his country and to mankind, which only
the most exalted could have performed.
The examples thus far given, belong to the Caucasian race; but to the
African race, as well. we are indebted for examples equally worthy and
inspiring. Benjamin Bannecker, a man of African descent, born and reared
in the state of Maryland, and a cotemporary with the great men of the
revolution, is worthy to be mentioned with the highest of his class. He was
a slave, withheld from all those inspiring motives which freedom, honor
and distinction furnish to exertion; and yet this man secured an English
education; became a learned mathematician, was an excellent surveyor,
assisted to lay out the city of Washington, and compelled honorable recog-
nition from some of the most distinguished scholars and statesmen of that
early day of the Republic.
The intellect of the negro was then, as now, the subject of learned
inquiry. Mr. Jefferson, among other statesmen and philosophers, while he
considered slavery an evil, entertained a rather low estimate of the negro’s
mental ability. He thought that the negro might become learned in music
and in language, but that mathematics were quite out of the question with
him.
In this debate Benjamin Bannecker came upon the scene and materially
assisted in lifting his race to a higher consideration than that in which it had
been previously held. Bannecker was not only proficient as a writer, but,
like Jefferson, he was a philosopher. Hearing of Mr. Jefferson’s opinion of
negro intellect, he took no offense but calmly addressed that statesman a
letter and a copy of an almanac for which he had made the astronomical
calculations. The reply of Mr. Jefferson is the highest praise I wish to
bestow upon this black self-made man. It is brief and I take great pleasure
in presenting it.
PHILADELPHIA, August 30, 1790.
SIR:
I thank you sincerely for your letter and the almanac it contains.
Nobody more than I do, wishes to see such proofs as you exhibit, that
nature has given our black brethren talents equal to those of other colors of
men, and that the appearance of the want of them, is owing mainly to the
degrading conditions of their existence in Africa and America. I have taken
the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur Cordozett, Secretary of
the Academy of Science at Paris, and a member of the Philanthropic
Society, because I considered it a document of which your whole race had a
right, for their justification against the doubts entertained of them.
I am, with great esteem, sir,
Your most obedient servant,
THOMAS JEFFERSON.30Douglass slightly misquotes Thomas Jefferson's letter to Benjamin Banneker. Ford, , 4: 309-10.
This was the impression made by an intelligent negro upon the father of
American Democracy, in the earlier and better years of the Republic. I wish
that it were possible to make a similar impression upon the children of the
American Democracy of this generation. Jefferson was not ashamed to call
the black man his brother and to address him as a gentleman.
I am sorry that Bannecker was not entirely black, because in the United
States, the slightest infusion of Teutonic blood is thought to be sufficient to
account for any considerable degree of intelligence found under any pos-
sible color of the skin.
But Bannecker is not the only colored example that I can give. While I
turn with honest pride to Bannecker, who lived a hundred years ago, and
invoke his aid to roll back the tide of disparagement and contempt which
pride and prejudice have poured out against the colored race, I can also cite
examples of like energy in our own day.
William Dietz, a black man of Albany, New York, with whom I was
personally acquainted and of whom I can speak from actual knowledge, is
one such. This man by industry, fidelity and general aptitude for business
affairs, rose from the humble calling of house servant in the Dudley family
of that city, to become the sole manager of the family estate valued at three
millions of dollars.
It is customary to assert that the negro never invented anything, and
that, if he were today struck out of life, there would, in twenty years, be
nothing left to tell of his existence.31Douglass probably recalls a racist assertion made by Georgia Senator Robert Toombs in a speech in Boston on 26 January 1856. Robert Toombs, (Washington, D.C., 1856), 10. Well, this black man; for he was
positively and perfectly black; not partially, but WHOLLY black; a man
whom, a few years ago, some of our learned ethnologists would have read
out of the human family and whom a certain Chief Justice would have
turned out of court as a creature having no rights which white men are
bound to respect,32An allusion to Roger B. Taney‘s opinion on the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford.1l9 Howard 393 (1857), 407. was one of the very best draftsmen and designers in the
state of New York. Mr. Dietz was not only an architect, but he was also an
inventor. In this he was a direct contradiction to the maligners of his race.
The noble railroad bridge now spanning the Hudson river at Albany, was,
in all essential features, designed by William Dietz, The main objection
against a bridge across that highway of commerce had been that of its
interference with navigation. Of all the designs presented, that of Dietz was
the least objectionable on that score, and was, in its essential features,
accepted. Mr. Dietz also devised a plan for an elevated railway to be built in
Broadway, New York. The great objection to a railway in that famous
thoroughfare was then, as now, that of the noise, dust, smoke, obstruction
and danger to life and limb, thereby involved. Dietz undertook to remove
all these objections by suggesting an elevated railway, the plan of which
was, at the time, published in the and highly com-
mended by the editor of that journal. The then readers of the Scientific
American read this account of the inventions of William Dietz, but did not
know, as I did, that Mr. Dietz was a black man. There was certainly nothing
in his name or in his works to suggest the American idea of color.
Among my dark examples I can name no man with more satisfaction
than I can Toussaint L’Overture, the hero of Santo Domingo. Though born
a slave and held a slave till he was fifty years of age; though, like Ban-
necker, he was black and showed no trace of Caucasian admixture, history
hands him down to us as a brave and generous soldier, a wise and powerful
statesmen, an ardent patriot and a successful liberator of his people and of
his country.
The cotemporaries of this Haitien chief paint him as without a single
moral blemish; while friends and foes alike, accord him the highest ability.
In his eulogists no modern hero has been more fortunate than Toussaint
L’Overture. History, poetry and eloquence have vied with each other to do
him reverence. Wordsworth and Whittier have, in characteristic verse,
encircled his brow with a halo of fadeless glory,33An allusion to William Wordsworth’s poem “To Toussaint L’Ouverture" (1803) and to John Greenleaf Whittier's poem “Toussaint L'Ouverture" (1833). De Selincourt, , 112-13; , 3: 11-19. while Phillips has borne
him among the gods in something like Elijah’s chariot of fire.34Douglass compares Wendell Phillips's popular lyceum address on Toussaint L'Ouverture to the biblical story of the prophet Elijah. Wendell Phillips, (Boston, 1863), 468-94; 2 Kings 2: 11.
The testimony of these and a thousand others who have come up from
the depths of society, confirms the theory that industry is the most potent
factor in the success of self-made men, and thus raises the dignity of labor;
for whatever may be one’s natural gifts, success, as I have said, is due
mainly to this great means, open and free to all.
A word now upon the third point suggested at the beginning of this
paper; namely, The friendly relation and influence of American ideas and
institutions to this class of men.
America is said, and not without reason, to be preeminently the home
and patron of self-made men. Here, all doors fly open to them. They may
aspire to any position. Courts, Senates and Cabinets, spread rich carpets
for their feet, and they stand among our foremost men in every honorable
service. Many causes have made it easy. here, for this class to rise and
flourish, and first among these causes is the general respectability of labor.
Search where you will, there is no country on the globe where labor is so
respected and the laborer so honored, as in this country. The conditions in
which American society originated; the free spirit which framed its inde-
pendence and created its government based upon the will of the people,
exalted both labor and laborer. The strife between capital and labor is, here,
comparatively equal. The one is not the haughty and powerful master and
the other the weak and abject slave as is the case in some parts of Europe.
Here, the man of toil is not bowed, but erect and strong. He feels that
capital is not more indispensable than labor, and he can therefore meet the
capitalist as the representative of an equal power.
Of course these remarks are not intended to apply to the states where
slavery has but recently existed. That system was the extreme degradation
of labor, and though happily now abolished its consequences still linger
and may not disappear for a century. To-day, in the presence of the capitalist,
the Southern black laborer stands abashed, confused and intimi-
dated. He is compelled to beg his fellow worm to give him leave to toil.
Labor can never be respected where the laborer is despised. This is today,
the great trouble at the South. The land owners still resent emancipation
and oppose the elevation of labor. They have yet to learn that a condition of
affairs well suited to a time of slavery may not be well suited to a time of
freedom. They will one day learn that large farms and ignorant laborers are
as little suited to the South as to the North.
But the respectability of labor is not, as already intimated, the only or
the most powerful cause of the facility with which men rise from humble
conditions to affluence and importance in the United States. A more subtle
and powerful influence is exerted by the fact that the principle of measuring
and valuing men according to their respective merits and without regard to
their antecedents, is better established and more generally enforced here
than in any other country. In Europe, greatness is often thrust upon men.
They are made legislators by birth.
“A king can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke and a’ that.”35Douglass slightly misquotes Robert Burns's poem “For A‘ That and A‘ That.“ Smith, , 228.
But here, wealth and greatness are forced by no such capricious and arbi-
trary power. Equality of rights brings equality of positions and dignities.
Here society very properly saves itself the trouble of looking up a man’s
kinsfolks in order to determine his grade in life and the measure of respect
due him. It cares very little who was his father or grandfather. The boast of
the Jews, “We have Abraham for our father,"36Paraphrase of Luke 3: 8. has no practical signifi-
cance here. He who demands consideration on the strength of a reputation
of a dead father, is, properly enough, rewarded with derision. We have no
reverence to throw away in this wise.
As a people, we have only a decent respect for our seniors. We cannot
be beguiled into accepting empty-headed sons for full-headed fathers. As
some one has said, we dispense with the smoke when the candle is out. In
popular phrase we exhort every man as he comes upon the stage of active
life, “Now do your level best!” “Help yourself!” “Put your shoulder to the
wheel!” “Make your own record!” “Paddle your own canoe!” “Be the
architect of your own fortune!”
The sons of illustrious men are put upon trial like the sons of common
people. They must prove themselves real CLAYS, WEBSTERS and LIN-
COLNS, if they would attract to themselves the cordial respect and admira-
tion generally awarded to their brilliant fathers. There is, here, no law of
entail or primogeniture.
Our great men drop out from their various groups and circles of great-
ness as bright meteors vanish from the blue overhanging sky bearing away
their own silvery light and leaving the places where they once shone so
brightly, robed in darkness till relighted in turn by the glory of succeeding
ones.
I would not assume that we are entirely devoid of affection for families
and for great names. We have this feeling, but it is a feeling qualified and
limited by the popular thought; a thought which springs from the heart of
free institutions and is destined to grow stronger the longer these institu-
tions shall endure. George Washington, Jr., or Andrew Jackson, Jr., stand
no better chance of being future Presidents than do the sons of Smith or
Jones, or the sons of anybody else.
We are in this, as Edmund Quincy once said of the rapping spirits,
willing to have done with people when they are done with us. We reject
living pretenders if they come only in the old clothes of the dead.
We have as a people no past and very little present, but a boundless and
glorious future. With us, it is not so much what has been, or what is now,
but what is to be in the good time coming. Our mottoes are “Look ahead!”
and “Go ahead!” , and especially the latter. Our moral atmosphere is full of
the inspiration of hope and courage. Every man has his chance. If he cannot
be President he can, at least, be prosperous. In this respect, America is not
only the exception to the general rule, but the social wonder of the world.
Europe, with her divine-right governments and ultra-montane doctrines;
with her sharply defined and firmly fixed classes; each class content if it
can hold its own against the others, inspires little of individual hope or
courage. Men, on all sides, endeavor to continue from youth to old age in
their several callings and to abide in their several stations. They seldom
hope for anything more or better than this. Once in a while, it is true, men
of extraordinary energy and industry, like the Honorable John Bright and
the Honorable Lord Brougham,37Lord Henry Peter Brougham. (men whose capacity and disposition for
work always left their associates little or nothing to do) rise even in En-
gland. Such men would rise to distinction anywhere. They do not disprove
the general rule, but confirm it.
What is, in this respect, difficult and uncommon in the Old World, is
quite easy and common in the New. To the people of Europe, this eager,
ever moving mass which we call American society and in which life is not
only a race, but a battle, and everybody trying to get just a little ahead of
everybody else, looks very much like anarchy.
The remark is often made abroad that there is no repose in America. We
are said to be like the troubled sea, and in some sense this is true. If it is a
fact it is also one not without its compensation. If we resemble the sea in its
troubles, we also resemble the sea in its power and grandeur, and in the
equalities of its particles.
It is said, that in the course of centuries, I dare not say how many, all the
oceans of this great globe go through the purifying process of filtration. All
their parts are at work and their relations are ever changing. They are, in
obedience to ever varying atmospheric forces, lifted from their lowly con-
dition and are borne away by gentle winds or furious storms to far off
islands, capes and continents; visiting in their course, mountain, valley and
plain; thus fulfilling a beneficent mission and leaving the grateful earth
refreshed, enriched, invigorated, beautiful and blooming. Each pearly
drop has its fair chance to rise and contribute its share to the health and
happiness of the world.
Such, in some sort, is a true picture of the restless activity and ever-
changing relations of American society. Like the sea, we are constantly
rising above, and returning to, the common level. A small son follows a
great father, and a poor son, a rich father. To my mind we have no reason to
fear that either wealth, knowledge or power will here be monopolized by
the few as against the many.
These causes which make America the home and foster-mother of self-
made men, combined with universal suffrage, will, I hope, preserve us
from this danger. With equal suffrage in our hands, we are beyond the
power of families, nationalities or races.
Then, too, our national genius welcomes humanity from every quarter
and grants to all an equal chance in the race of life.
“We ask not for his lineage,
We ask not for his name;
If manliness be in his heart,
He noble birth may claim.
We ask not from what land he came,
Nor where his youth was nursed;
If pure the stream, it matters not
The spot from whence it burst.”38Douglass adapts the opening lines of “The Questioner: A Chant," by Robert Nicoll (1814-37), a minor Scottish poet and minstrel. Robert Nicoll, (Edinburgh, 1842), 133.
Under the shadow of a great name, Louis Napoleon could strike down
the liberties of France and erect the throne of a despot; but among a people
so jealous of liberty as to revolt at the idea of electing, for a third term, one
of our best Presidents,39An allusion to the successful campaign within the Republican party in 1880 to block the nomination of Ulysses S. Grant for a third presidential term. Although Grant led on the first thirty-five ballots at the Republican national convention, his opponents united on the next ballot to nominate James A. Garfield of Ohio. Schlesinger, , 2: 1492-96. no such experiment as Napoleon’s could ever be
attempted here.
We are sometimes dazzled by the gilded show of aristocratic and
monarchical institutions, and run wild to see a prince. We are willing that
the nations which enjoy these superstitions and follies shall enjoy them in
peace. But, for ourselves, we want none of them and will have none of
them and can have none of them while the spirit of liberty and equality
animates the Republic.
A word in conclusion, as to the criticisms and embarrassments to
which self-made men are exposed, even in this highly favored country. A
traveler through the monarchies of Europe is annoyed at every turn by a
demand for his passport. Our government has imposed no such burden,
either upon the traveler or upon itself. But citizens and private individuals,
in their relation to each other and the world, demand of every one the
equivalent of a passport to recognition, in the possession of some quality or
acquirement which shall commend its possessor to favor. We believe in
making ourselves pretty well acquainted with the character, business and
history of all comers. We say to all such, “Stand and deliver!” And to this
demand self-made men are especially subject.
There is a small class of very small men who turn their backs upon any
one who presumes to be anybody, independent of Harvard, Yale, Prince-
ton40Three of the oldest colleges in the United States: Harvard founded in 1636, Yale founded in 1701, and Princeton founded in 1746. or other similar institutions of learning. These individuals cannot
believe that any good can come out of Nazareth.41Douglass paraphrases John 1: 46. With them, the diploma
is more than the man. To that moral energy upon which depends the lifting
of humanity, which is the world’s true advancement, these are utter strangers.
To them the world is never indebted for progress, and they may safely
be left to the gentle oblivion which will surely overtake them.
By these remarks, however, there is meant no disparagement of learn-
ing. With all my admiration for self-made men, I am far from considering
them the best made men. Their symmetry is often marred by the effects of
their extra exertion. The hot rays of the sun and the long and rugged road
over which they have been compelled to travel, have left their marks.
sometimes quite visibly and unpleasantly. upon them.
While the world values skill and power, it values beauty and polish, as
well. It was not alone the hard good sense and honest heart of Horace
Greeley, the self-made man, that made the New York Tribune; but likewise
the brilliant and thoroughly educated men silently associated with him.
There never was a self-educated man, however well-educated, who.
with the same exertion, would not have been better educated by the aid of
schools and colleges. The charge is made and well sustained, that self-
made men are not generally over modest or self-forgetful men. It was said
of Horace Greeley, that he was a self-made man and worshipped his maker.
Perhaps the strong resistance which such men meet in maintaining their
claim, may account for much of their self-assertion.
The country knows by heart, and from his own lips, the story of
Andrew Jackson. In many cases, the very energies employed, the obstacles
overcome, the heights attained and the broad contrasts at every step forced
upon the attention, tend to incite and strengthen egotism. A man indebted
for himself to himself, may naturally think well of himself.
But this is apt to be far overdone. That a man has been able to make his
own way in the world, is an humble fact as well as an honorable one. It is,
however, possible to state a very humble fact in a very haughty manner, and
self-made men are, as a class, much addicted to this habit. By this pecu-
liarity they make themselves much less agreeable to society than they
would otherwise be.
One other criticism upon these men is often very properly made.
Having never enjoyed the benefits of schools, colleges and other like
institutions of learning. they display for them a contempt which is quite
ridiculous and which also makes them appear so. A man may know much
about educating himself, and but little about the proper means for educat-
ing others. A self-made man is also liable to be full of contrarieties. He may
be large, but at the same time, awkward; swift, but ungraceful; a man of
power, but deficient in the polish and amiable proportions of the affluent
and regularly educated man. 1 think that, generally, self-made men answer
more or less closely to this description.
For practical benefit we are often about as much indebted to our en-
emies, as to our friends; as much to the men who hiss, as to those who
applaud; for it may be with men as some one has said about tea; that if you
wish to get its strength, you must put it into hot water. Criticism took
Theodore Parker from a village pulpit and gave him the whole country for a
platform and the whole nation for an audience. England laughed at Ameri-
can authorship and we sent her Emerson and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.42Douglass refers to Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel , 2 vols. (Boston. 1852). From
its destitution of trees, Scotland was once a by-word; now it is a garden of
beauty. Five generations ago, Britain was ashamed to write books in her
own tongue. Now her language is spoken in all quarters of the globe. The
Jim Crow Minstrels have, in many cases. led the negro to the study of
music; while the doubt cast upon the negro’s tongue has sent him to the
lexicon and grammar and to the study of Greek orators and orations.
Thus detraction paves the way for the very perfections which it doubts
and denies.
Ladies and gentlemen: Accept my thanks for your patient attention. I
will detain you no longer. If, by statement, argument, sentiment or exam-
ple, I have awakened in any, a sense of the dignity of labor or the value of
manhood, or have stirred in any mind, a courageous resolution to make one
more effort towards self-improvement and higher usefulness, I have not
spoken altogether in vain, and your patience is justified.