Frederick Douglass to Julia Griffiths Crofts, January 4, 1865
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS1In an article titled “Mr. Frederick Douglass on the Prospects of Slavery,” the Leeds reproduced an excerpt from a letter from Douglass to an English friend believed to be Julia Griffiths Crofts. In a letter to Douglass dated 28 April 1865, which also appears in this volume, Crofts mentions that extracts from this letter appeared in several British newspapers, and advises Douglass not to move back to Baltimore.
Rochester, [N.Y.,] U.S., 4 January 1865.
“I long to be able to report all chains broken, and the slaves free; the end,
however, is not yet, though I believe the long prayed-for event is at hand,
and that I shall live to see it, and to tell you that the work is done. The
dreadful war in our country is drawing to a close; the rebellion will be
suppressed, and I now have high hopes that slavery will go down with it.
My reasons are, first, the re-election of Mr. Lincoln, who was mainly op-
posed on the ground of his alleged abolition designs; secondly, the eleva-
tion of your old friend and correspondent, Solman P. Chase, to the Chief-
Justiceship of the Republic, in place of Judge Taney, deceased;2 Despite some reservations, Lincoln nominated Salmon P. Chase to succeed Roger B. Taney as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The president submitted the nomination to the Senate on 6 December 1864. The Senate unanimously confirmed Chase’s appointment, and he was sworn in as the sixth chief justice on 15 December. Blue, , 242–45; Niven, , 374–75. thirdly, the
general tone of public opinion, demanding the entire abolition of slavery
and the unification of the nation on the basis of universal freedom. Any
other end of the war must brand it as murderous and useless, for the coun-
try can never be united while slavery exists. The signs of the times are
nearly all indicative of abolition. The Constitution will be changed, if not
by this congress, certainly by the next, so that no slave State can ever be a
member of the Union.3A proposal for a constitutional amendment was made in Congress by the Ohio Republican James M. Ashley very soon after Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. In early 1864, Senators John Henderson of Missouri and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts introduced similar measures, and the Senate Judiciary Committee consequently began drafting the language of a formal amendment. In April 1864, Senate Republicans joined by a few Democrats passed the measure 38–6. Opposition in the House of Representatives proved more formidable. Most Democrats argued that it would poison attempts to reach a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. On 31 January 1865, enough Democrats, through the use of considerable patronage promises and vote swapping, were enlisted to pass the measure; the 119–56 vote was exceeded the required two-thirds majority for a constitutional amendment by 2 votes. Michael Vorenberg, (New York, 2001), 48–60, 112–14, 197–210. I have recently been on a lecturing tour—where do
you suppose? In the State of Maryland and in Virginia—in Maryland, the
State of my birth and my bondage. I gave six lectures in Baltimore4 Douglass spoke on six evenings in locations throughout Baltimore on 17–29 November 1864. His speeches advocated both the acceptance of emancipation and reconciliation between whites and blacks in Maryland, a former slave state. Many city officials attended Douglass’s speeches, and no violence due to his visit was reported in the city. ., 25 November 1864; Chattanooga , 25 November 1864; , ser. 1, 4:xix–xx, 38–50. (where three years ago I should have been murdered at sight) without molestation.
The papers here have been full of my sayings and doings during my visit.
Among the most interesting incidents was meeting my dear sister Eliza,5On 17 November, Douglass lectured at Bethel Church in Baltimore. The press reported that his sister, Eliza Bailey Mitchell, accompanied him arm in arm up that church’s aisle before the start of Douglass’s three-hour talk. , ser. 1, 4:xix–xx, 38–50.
whom I had not seen for nearly thirty years, and with whom, under the
slave laws, I could not correspond, and did not know but that she was
dead. She heard of my coming to Baltimore, and at once left her home,
traveling sixty miles to see me. Our meeting can be better imagined than
described. She had (before the Act of Emancipation in the State)6 The Emancipation Proclamation did not authorize the freeing of slaves in the border states, including Maryland. Wartime economic dislocation and the Union army’s recruitment of more than ten thousand black Marylanders put the continuation of slavery in Maryland in doubt. Recognizing the inevitable, leading Marylanders such as Reverdy Johnson, Thomas Hicks, and John Pendleton Kennedy publicly advocated emancipation in late 1863. A convention in Annapolis in April 1864 approved a new state constitution, which included an article prohibiting slavery. A referendum in the following October approved the measure by an extremely narrow margin. Barbara Jeanne Fields,
(New Haven, Conn., 1985), 126–29, 133. bought
and paid for herself by her own toil, has nine children, most of them men
and women, and she is still quite straight and vigorous. From her I got
some facts concerning other members of our family, most of them pain-
ful, for they have been sold and scattered throughout the rebellious slave
States...
For my own part, time and toil begin (in spite of my determination
to be young) to leave their marks upon me. The constant travelling from
place to place, changing my bed and board every twenty-four hours—
are of themselves enough to wear an iron constitution. Most of the anti-
slavery lecturers who began when I did have withdrawn from the field, or
at least speak only occasionally. I want to hold out until the jubilee. When
that comes I hope to be able to return to the soil for my bread; to spend
what shall remain to me of life in a quiet equal to the storms through
which I have passed. Before doing this, however, you may yet see me
editing a paper in Baltimore, for there is a serious effort to have me start
one in that city.7No other details of this effort to induce Douglass to return to Baltimore to edit a newspaper have been uncovered. The matter may have been discussed between him and leaders of that city’s African American community during his lecture tour there in November 1864. , ser. 1, 4:38–39; Preston, , 160–65. I have told my friends there that if they get me one thou-
sand paying subscribers in that city, all paying in advance, I will come.
You will see that there is something poetic in the idea of my returning
to Maryland for such a purpose. Think of my going into that State from
which I escaped as from a doomed city; and after an absence of more than
twenty-six years, starting a paper to promote the elevation of my people!
I do not say, mark you, that I shall be able to do this, but only that the
thing is in contemplation. Should I go forward I know I may rely on your
hearty co-operation; for whatever you might hear or read to the contrary,
I am now as ever earnestly and actively at work in the righteous cause to
which I have pledged the best energies and years of life. I shall send you
the proceedings of the Coloured National Convention held at Syracuse in
Oct. last,8The National Convention of Colored Men met on 4–7 October 1864 in Syracuse, New York. The convention’s purpose was to urge the president and Congress to grant black soldiers serving in the Union army the right to vote. Two hundred delegates attended the convention, representing six-teen states. Frederick Douglass was elected president and served on several committees. An officer in the Second Louisiana, a black regiment that fought at Port Hudson, made one of the more significant speeches. Though there were no reports of violence at the convention, the press stayed away on the first day; it was in attendance on the following days. Lowell (Mass.) , 11 October 1864; ., 14 October 1864. by this mail. It might be well to circulate that paper in England
as the black man’s view of the state of affairs here. At any rate you can
pass this copy around among your friends: it will show that some of us
take an intelligent interest in the question of our future in this country. I
was never heard, here or elsewhere in this country, more willingly than
now. But I will not glory in this, but rather rejoice that through the all-wise
and inscrutable workings of Providence, the chains of my long enslaved
race are soon to be broken.”
PLe: Leeds , 2 February 1865. Reprinted in Leeds , 4 February 1865; Birmingham (Eng.) , 11 February 1865; Manchester (Eng.), 25 February 1865; New York , 2 March 1865; Syracuse , 20 March 1865.