Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country: An Address Delivered in Syracuse, New York, on September 24, 1847
LOVE OF GOD, LOVE OF MAN, LOVE OF COUNTRY: AN
ADDRESS DELIVERED IN SYRACUSE, NEW YORK,
ON 24 SEPTEMBER 1847
National Anti-Slavery Standard, 28 October 1847. Another text in Foner, Life and Writ-
ings, 1: 269—78.
Douglass’s target in the two speeches that he delivered at Syracuse on 24
September 1847 was the American church and its complicity with slavery.
The meetings, arranged and zealously publicized by Samuel J. May, were
held in the Market Hall. Douglass’s traveling and lecture companion in New
York state was Joseph Hathaway, a Quaker farmer from Waterloo. They drew
audiences of 300 and 600 at the afternoon and evening meetings, many
spectators traveling as far as twenty-five miles to attend. In a letter to Sydney
Gay, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, describing Douglass and
Hathaway’s visit to the city, May lavished praise on the reports of the
speeches by William Burr, “a very ready and accurate phonographic report-
er.” According to May, Hathaway’s evening speech was “devoted to the
question of dissolution,” a thematic continuation of his afternoon discussion
on the philosophy of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Of Douglass’s
speech, May remarked that doubtless some in the audience “winced not a
little at his ridicule of the current religion of our country," but added that
“most of his audience felt that what he said was too true. ” Newspaper reports
agree that Douglass made a deep impression on his Syracuse audience. NASS,
7 October 1847; Samuel May to Sydney Gay, 5 October 1847, in NASS, 14
October 1847.
I like radical measures, whether adopted by Abolitionists or slaveholders. I
do not know but I like them better when adopted by the latter. Hence I look
with pleasure upon the movements of Mr. Calhoun and his party. I rejoice
at any movement in the slave States with reference to this system of Slav-
ery. Any movement there will attract attention to the system—a system, as
Junius once said to Lord Granby, “which can only pass without condemna-
tion as it passes without observation.”1John Manners, marquis of Granby (1721-70), lieutenant general and colonel of the Royal Horse Guards (blues), commanded British forces in Germany during the Seven Years' War and was appointed commander in chief of British forces in 1766. The pamphleteer “Junius” publicly attacked Granby in 1769, and the quotation to which Douglass refers comes from “Junius's” public letter of 3 March 1769 to Sir William Draper, who had rushed to Granby's defense. The Political Contest; Containing a Series of Letters Between Junius and Sir William Draper, 3d ed. (London, 1769), 29; DNB, 17: 937—39. I am anxious to have it seen of all
men: hence I am delighted to see any effort to prop up the system on the part
of the slaveholders. It serves to bring up the subject before the people; and
hasten the day of deliverance. It is meant otherwise. I am sorry that it is so.
Yet the wrath of man may be made to praise God. He will confound the
wisdom of the crafty, and bring to naught the counsels of the ungodly. The
slaveholders are now marshalling their hosts for the propagation and exten-
sion of the institution—Abolitionists, on the other hand, are marshalling
their forces not only against its propagation and extension, but against its
very existence. Two large classes of the community, hitherto unassociated
with the Abolitionists, have come up so far towards the right as to become
opposed to the farther extension of the crime. I am glad to hear it. I like to
gaze upon these two contending armies, for I believe it will hasten the
dissolution of the present unholy Union, which has been justly stigmatized
as “a covenant with death, an agreement with hell."2Douglass quotes from a resolution adopted by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in January 1843 and later printed as a motto above the editorial column of the Liberator: “Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is ‘a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell’—involving both parties in atrocious criminality; and should be immediately annulled." Lib., 3 February 1843; Walter M. Merrill, Against Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison (Cambridge, Mass, 1963), 204-05. I welcome the bolt,
either from the North or the South, which shall shatter this Union; for under
this Union lie the prostrate forms of three millions with whom I am iden-
tified. In consideration of their wrongs, of their sufferings, of their groans,
I welcome the bolt, either from the celestial or from the infernal regions,
which shall sever this Union in twain. Slaveholders are promoting it—
Abolitionists are doing so. Let it come, and when it does, our land will rise
up from an incubus; her brightness shall reflect against the sky, and shall
become the beacon light of liberty in the Western world. She shall then,
indeed, become “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
For sixteen years, Wm. Lloyd Garrison and a noble army of the friends
of emancipation have been labouring in season and out of season, amid
smiles and frowns, sunshine and clouds, striving to establish the conviction
through this land, that to hold and traffic in human flesh is a sin against
God. They have been somewhat successful; but they have been in no wise
so successful as they might have been, had the men and women at the North
rallied around them as they had a right to hope from their profession. They
have had to contend not only with skilful politicians, with a deeply preju-
diced and pro-slavery community, but with eminent Divines, Doctors of
Divinity, and Bishops. Instead of encouraging them as friends, they have
acted as enemies. For many days did Garrison go the rounds of the city of
Boston to ask of the ministers the poor privilege of entering their chapels
and lifting up his voice for the dumb. But their doors were bolted, their
gates barred, and their pulpits hermetically sealed. It was not till an infidel
hall was thrown open, that the voice of dumb millions could be heard in
Boston.3In the mid-1830s virtually all of Boston's churches had closed their doors to the annual conventions of the New England (later Massachusetts) Anti-Slavery Society.
I take it that all who have heard at all on this subject, are well convinced
that the stronghold of Slavery is in the pulpit. Say what we may of politi-
cians and political parties, the power that holds the keys of the dungeon in
which the bondman is confined, is the pulpit. It is that power which is
dropping, dropping, constantly dropping on the ear of this people, creating
and moulding the moral sentiment of the land. This they have sufficiently
under their control that they can change it from the spirit of hatred to that of
love to mankind. That they do it not, is evident from the results of their
teaching. The men who wield the blood-clotted cow-skin come from our
Sabbath schools in the Northern States. Who act as slave-drivers? The men
who go forth from our own congregations here. Why, if the Gospel were
truly preached among us, a man would as soon think of going into down-
right piracy as to offer himself as a slave-driver.
In Farmington, two sons of members of the Society of Friends are
coolly proposing to go to the South and engage in the honourable office of
slave-driving for a thousand dollars a year. People at the North talk coolly
of uncles, cousins, and brothers, who are slaveholders, and of their coming
to visit them. If the Gospel were truly preached here, you would as soon
talk of having an uncle or brother a brothel keeper as a slaveholder; for I
hold that every slaveholder, no matter how pure he may be, is a keeper of a
house of ill-fame. Every kitchen is a brothel, from that of Dr. Fuller’s*4Douglass apparently refers to the Reverend Richard Fuller, D.D. (1804—76), a slaveowning Baptist minister of Beaufort, South Carolina. During 1844-45 Fuller and the Reverend Francis Wayland, president of Brown University, debated the issue of slavery in lengthy public correspondence. While admitting that Wayland exposed certain “abuses not to be defended" in southern slavery, Fuller denied that most masters were guilty of “atrocities” like the “prohibition of marriage and the defence of profligacy in the abuse of female slaves for purposes of convenience and pecuniary advantage." Richard Fuller and Francis Wayland, Domestic Slavery Viewed As A Scriptural Institution: In A Correspondence Between the Rev. Richard Fuller of Beaufort, S.C., and the Rev. Francis Wayland of Providence. R.I., 5th ed. (New York, 1847), 221; William Cathcart, ed., The Baptist Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1883), 1: 423-24, 2 : 1220-22; DAB, 7 : 62-63. to
that of James K. Polk’s. (Applause) I presume I am addressing a virtuous
audience—I presume I speak to virtuous females—and I ask you to con-
sider this one feature of Slavery. Think of a million of females absolutely
delivered up into the hands of tyrants, to do what they will with them—to
dispose of their persons in any way they see fit. And so entirely are they at
the disposal of their masters, that if they raise their hands against them, they
may be put to death for daring to resist their infernal aggression.
We have been trying to make this thing appear sinful. We have not
been able to do so yet. It is not admitted, and I hardly know how to argue
against it. I confess that the time for argument seems almost gone by. What
do the people want? Affirmation upon affirmation,—denunciation upon
denunciation,—rebuke upon rebuke?
We have men in this land now advocating evangelical flogging. I hold
in my hand a sermon recently published by Rev. Bishop Meade, of
Virginia. Before I read that part in favour of evangelical flogging, let me
read a few extracts from another part, relating to the duties of the slave. The
sermon, by the way, was published with a view of its being read by
Christian masters to their slaves. White black birds! (Laughter.)
(Mr. Douglass here assumed a most grotesque look, and with a canting
tone of voice, read as follows:)
“Having thus shown you the chief duties you owe to your great Master
in Heaven, I now come to lay before you the duties you owe to your masters
and mistresses on earth. And for this you have one general rule that you
ought always to carry in your minds, and that is, to do all service for them ,
as if you did it for God himself. Poor creatures! you little consider when
you are idle, and neglectful of your master’s business; when you steal,
waste, and hurt any of their substance; when you are saucy and impudent;
when you are telling them lies and deceiving them; or when you prove
stubborn and sullen, and will not do the work you are set about, without
stripes and vexation; you do not consider, I say, that what faults you are
guilty of towards your masters and mistresses, are faults done against God
himself, who hath set your masters and mistresses over you in his own
stead, and expects that you will do for them just as you would do for him.
And pray, do not think that I want to deceive you, when I tell you that your
masters and mistresses are God's overseers; and that if you are faulty
towards them, God himself will punish you severely for it.''5Douglass quotes William Meade, ed., Sermons Addressed to Masters and Servants and Published in the Year 1743, by the Rev. Thomas Bacon, Minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland, Now Republished With Other Tracts and Dialogues 0n the Same Subject, and Recommended to all Masters and Mistresses, To Be Used in their Families (Winchester, Va., 1813), 104.
This is some of the Southern religion. Do you not think you would
“grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth?”6A close paraphrase of 2 Pet. 3: 18: “But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. "—(Applause.)
I come now to evangelical flogging. There is nothing said about
flogging—that word is not used. It is called correction; and that word as it is
understood at the North, is some sort of medicine. (Laughter.) Slavery has
always sought to hide itself under different names. The mass of the people
call it “our peculiar institution.” There is no harm in that. Others call it
(they are the more pious sort), “our Patriarchal institution.” (Laughter.)
Politicians have called it “our social system;” and people in social life
have called it “our domestic institution.” Abbot Lawrence7Abbott Lawrence (1792—1855), Massachusetts textile-mill magnate, Whig congressman (1834-36, 1839-40), and minister to the Court of St. James (1849-52), was a leading political spokesman for Boston merchants. An advocate of both protective tariffs and internal improvements, Lawrence addressed a series of letters on the two issues to Virginian William Cabell Rives early in 1846. First appearing in the Richmond Whig and later republished in pamphlet form, the letters deplored the low duties of the soon-to-be-enacted Walker Tariff and argued that expanded home markets, internal improvements, and industrial diversification would best guarantee southern prosperity. Establish “such Manufactures as may be adapted to the peculiar condition of your labor." Lawrence advised Rives, adding: “There are two classes of labor; intelligent and unintelligent; the former is that kind of labor which requires a considerable amount of mental culture, with active physical power. . . . The latter description of labor, is of that character which depends principally upon physical strength; this quality of labor you have in abundance. ” Letters from the Hon. Abbott Lawrence to the Hon. William C. Rives. of Virginia (Boston, 1846), 5; Hamilton Andrews Hill, Memoir of Abbott Lawrence (Boston, 1884), 9-38; DAB, 11: 44-46. has recently
discovered a new name for it—he calls it “unenlightened labour. ” (Laugh-
ter.) The Methodists in their last General Conference, have invented a new
name—“the impediment."8A reference to the resolution passed by the Methodist General Conference of 1844 instructing Bishop James Osgood Andrew to “desist from the exercise of this office so long as this impediment [i.e. , slaveholding] remains." “Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Held in the City of New York, 1844," Journals of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 2: 84. (Laughter.) To give you some idea of evan-
gelical flogging, under the name of correction, there are laws of this
description,—“any white man killing a slave shall be punished as though
he shall have killed a white person, unless such a slave die under moderate
correction."9From a North Carolina statute quoted in [Weld], American Slavery, 147-48. It commences with a plain proposition.
“Now when correction is given you, you either deserve it, or you do
not deserve it. ”—(Laughter.)
That is very plain, almost as safe as that of a certain orator:—“Ladies
and Gentlemen, it is my opinion, my deliberate opinion, after a long
consideration of the whole matter, that as a general thing, all other things
being equal, there are fewer persons to be found in towns sparsely popu-
lated, than in larger towns more thickly settled. ” (Laughter.) The Bishop
goes on to say—
“Whether you really deserve it or not,” (one would think that would
make some difference), “it is your duty, and Almighty God requires that
you bear it patiently. You may perhaps think that this is a hard doctrine,”
(and it admits of little doubt), “but if you consider it right you must needs
think otherwise of it.” (It is clear as mud. I suppose he is now going to
reason them into the propriety of being flogged evangelically.) “Suppose
you deserve correction; you cannot but see it is just and right you should
meet with it. Suppose you do not, or at least so much or so severe; you per-
haps have escaped a great many more, and are at last paid for all. Suppose
you are quite innocent; is it not possible you may have done some other bad
thing which was never discovered, and Almighty God would not let you
escape without punishment one time or another? Ought you not in such
cases to give glory to Him?"10Meade, Sermons Addressed to Masters and Servants, 132—33. (Glory!) (Much laughter.)
I am glad you have got to the point that you can laugh at the religion of
such fellows as this Doctor. There is nothing that will facilitate our cause
more than getting the people to laugh at that religion which brings its
influence to support traffic in human flesh. It has deceived us so long that it
has overawed us.
For a long time when l was a slave, I was led to think from hearing such
passages as “servants obey,"11Eph. 6: 5. Col. 3: 22, or Titus 2: 9. &c.” that if I dared to escape, the wrath of
God would follow me. All are willing to acknowledge my right to be free;
but after this acknowledgment, the good man goes to the Bible and says,
“After all I see some difficulty about this thing. You know, after the
deluge, there was Shem, Ham, and Japhet; and you know that Ham was
black and had a curse put upon him;12Based upon Gen. 9: 18—27.and I know not but it would be an
attempt to thwart the purposes of Jehovah, if these men were set at liberty.”
It is this kind of religion I wish to have you laugh at—it breaks the charm
there is about it. If I could have the men at this meeting who hold such
sentiments and could hold up the mirror to let them see themselves as others
see them, we should soon make head[way] against this pro-slavery religion.
I dwell mostly upon the religious aspects, because I believe it is the
religious people who are to be relied on in this Anti-Slavery movement. Do
not misunderstand my railing—do not class me with those who despise
religion——do not identify me with the infidel. I love the religion of
Christianity—which cometh from above—which is pure, peaceable, gen-
tle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy.13A paraphrase of James 3: 17. I love
that religion which sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of those who
have fallen among thieves. By all the love I bear to such a Christianity as
this, I hate that of the Priest and Levite, that with long-faced Phariseeism
goes up to Jerusalem and worship[s], and leaves the bruised and wounded
to die.14A reference to Luke 10: 30—35. I despise that religion that can carry Bibles to the heathen on the
other side of the globe and withhold them from heathen on this side15Probably a reference to the American Bible Society's repeated refusal to distribute Bibles among slaves.—
which can talk about human rights yonder and traffic in human flesh here. I
love that which makes its votaries do to others as they would that others
should do to them.16A paraphrase of Matt. 7: 12. I hope to see a revival of it—thank God it is revived. I
see revivals of it in the absence of the other sort of revivals. I believe it to be
confessed now, that there has not been a sensible man converted after the
old sort of way, in the last five years. Le Roy Sunderland, the mesmerizer,
has explained all this away, so that Knapp and others who have converted
men after that sort have failed.17As evangelism became more professional, urban, and institutionalized during the 1840s, many complained that revivalistic fervor had declined. The Reverend Jacob Knapp (1799—1874) of New York state is generally recognized as the first professional evangelist among American Baptists. He was educated at Madison University and entered the ministry in 1825, becoming a revivalist seven years later. Working chiefly in New York villages during the 1830s, he later held meetings in northern and midwestem cities from Boston to St. Louis. Frequently mobbed, once kidnapped, and accused by fellow clergymen in 1842 of wearing old clothes in the pulpit merely to generate sympathy, Knapp reputedly preached 16,000 sermons, brought 200 men into the ministry, and baptized some 4,000 people. La Roy Sunderland (1804—85), a native of Exeter. Rhode Island, entered the Methodist ministry in Massachusetts during the 1820s and quickly established a reputation as an intense and effective revivalist. An early advocate of both temperance and abolitionism, he helped organize the first Methodist antislavery society in 1834 and two years later began a nine-year term as editor of the Methodist antislavery journal Zion’s Watchman. Repeatedly at odds with nonabolitionist churchmen of the New England Methodist Conference, Sunderland, Orange Scott, and other antislavery ministers founded the Wesleyan Methodist Connection in 1843. By this time Sunderland had withdrawn from the active ministry, having become convinced that his evangelistic powers and the trances, dreams. and visions of camp-meeting converts were not of divine origin. Admitting “that many pious people attribute some of the exercises to the powerful influence of the Holy Spirit," Sunderland argued that such occurrences could be “rationally accounted for in some other way" and claimed that through “Pathetism," a form of hypnosis, he had “thrown numbers of persons into a state precisely similar to that in which they are said to ‘lose their strength under religious excitement.' " Bernard A. Weisberger, They Gathered at the River: The Story of the Great Revivalists and Their Impact Upon Religion in America (Boston, 1958), 136—40, 150; Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and American Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York, 1957), 47-48, 59, 72-73; Whitney R. Cross, The Burned Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (1950; New York, 1965), 223, 268—69, 325, 344; J. R. Jacobs, “La Roy Sunderland: The Alienation of An Abolitionist," Journal of American Studies, 6: 1—17 (April 1972); Charles Burchard, A Statement of Facts in Relation to the Case of Rev. Jacob Knapp (New York. 1846); Emory Stevens Bucke et al., eds., The History of American Methodism, 3 vols. (New York, 1964), 2: 32, 34, 36; La Roy Sunderland, The Testimony of God Against Slavery. . ., 2nd ed. (Boston, 1836); idem, Pathetism; With Practical Instructions Demonstrating the Falsity of the hitherto prevalent assumptions in regard to what has been called “Mesmerism” and "Neurology" . . . (New York, 1843), 56—57; idem, “Confessions of A Magnetizer" Exposed. . . (Boston, 1845); ACAB, 3: 560, 6: 1; NCAB, 5: 354-55; DAB, 18: 222.
There is another religion. It is that which takes off fetters instead of
binding them on—that breaks every yoke—that lifts up the bowed down.
The Anti-Slavery platform is based on this kind of religion. It spreads its
table to the lame, the halt, and the blind. It goes down after a long neglected
race. It passes, link by link till it finds the lowest link in humanity’s
chain—humanity’s most degraded form in the most abject condition. It
reaches down its arm and tells them to stand up. This is Anti-Slavery—this
is Christianity. It is reviving gloriously among the various denominations.
It is threatening to supercede those old forms of religion having all of the
love of God and none of man in it. (Applause)
I now leave this aspect of the subject and proceed to inquire into that
which probably must be the inquiry of every honest mind present. I trust I
do not misjudge the character of my audience when I say they are anxious to
know in what way they are contributing to uphold Slavery.
The question may be answered in various ways. I leave the outworks of
political parties and social arrangements, and come at once to the Constitu-
tion, to which I believe all present are devotedly attached—I will not say
all, for I believe I know some, who, however they may be disposed to
admire some of the beautiful truths set forth in that instrument, recognize
its pro-slavery features, and are ready to form a republic in which there
shall be neither tyrant nor slave. The Constitution I hold to be radically and
essentially slaveholding, in that it gives the physical and numerical power of
the nation to keep the slave in his chains, by promising that that power shall
in any emergency be brought to bear upon the slave, to crush him in
obedience to his master.18A reference to Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress power to “provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions." The language of the Constitution is you shall be a
slave or die. We know it is such, and knowing it we are not disposed to have
part nor lot with that Constitution. For my part I had rather that my right
hand should wither by my side than cast a ballot under the Constitution of
the United States.
Then, again, in the clause concerning fugitives19A reference to Article IV, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution. in this you are
implicated. Your whole country is one vast hunting ground from Texas to
Maine.
Ours is a glorious land; and from across the Atlantic we welcome those
who are stricken by the storms of despotism. Yet the damning fact remains,
there is not a rood of earth under the stars and the eagle on your flag, where
a man of my complexion can stand free. There is no mountain so high, no
plain so extensive, no spot so sacred, that it can secure to me the right of
liberty. Wherever waves the star-spangled banner there the bondman may
be arrested and hurried back to the jaws of Slavery. This is your “land of
the free,” your “home of the brave. ” From Lexington, from Ticonderoga,
from Bunker Hill, where rises that grand shaft with its cap stone in the
clouds, ask, in the name of the first blood that spurted in behalf of freedom,
to protect the slave from the infernal clutches of his master. That petition
would be denied, and he bid go back to the tyrant.
I never knew what freedom was till I got beyond the limits of the
American eagle. When I first rested my head on a British Island, I felt that
the eagle might scream, but from its talons and beak I was free, at least for a
time. No slaveholder can clutch me on British soil. There I could gaze the
tyrant in the face and with the indignation of a tyrant in my look, wither him
before me. But republican, Christian America will aid the tyrant in catch-
ing his victim.
I know this kind of talk is not agreeable to what are called patriots.
Indeed some have called me a traitor. That profanely religious Journal
“The Olive Branch,” edited by the Rev. Mr. Norris, recommended that I
be hung as a traitor.20From roughly 1836 to 1860 Boston clergyman Thomas F. Norris's edited the Olive Branch, a weekly journal devoted to “Christianity, mutual rights, polite literature. general intelligence, agriculture, and the arts. ” Douglass first drew Norris's editon’al fire for attacking American slavery on board the Cambria in 1845. Early the next year Norris denounced the vessel's captain for allowing Douglass, “a miserable negro," to “slander and libel" the United States. In June 1847 Norris returned to the theme of Douglass's alleged disloyalty: “Of this negro man we do not think much. His conduct has dishonored him very greatly, especially in England. He acted with traitors to our country and their abettors. He did what he could to involve our country in a war with England, by trying to the utmost of his power, . . . by lying and misrepresentation, to induce the latter country to forcibly interfere with the domestic relation and internal policy of our countrymen." Apparently Norris never went so far as to urge that Douglass be hanged. On the contrary, he acknowledged that Douglass's feelings had been “chafed by a remembrance" of slave experiences which gave “even his treason . . . a show of extenuation, if not an excuse." Adams's Boston Directory. . . 1847—1848 (Boston, 1847), 37, 166; The National Union Catalog: Pre-1956 Imprints ([London] , 1968-80), 421: 631; Edna Brown Titus, ed., Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United States and Canada (New York, 1965), 3176; Lib., 13 March 1846, 25 June 1847; “Liberty” to Editor, n.d., in Lib., 16 July 1847.
Two things are necessary to make a traitor. One is, he
shall have a country. (Laughter and applause.) I believe if I had a country, I
should be a patriot. I think I have all the feelings necessary—all the moral
material, to say nothing about the intellectual. I do not know that I ever felt
the emotion, but sometimes thought I had a glimpse of it. When I have been
delighted with the little brook that passes by the cottage in which I was
born,—with the woods and the fertile fields, I felt a sort of glow which I
suspect resembles a little what they call patriotism. I can look with some
admiration on your wide lakes, your fertile fields, your enterprise, your
industry, your many lovely institutions. I can read with pleasure your
Constitution to establish justice, and secure the blessings of liberty to
posterity. Those are precious sayings to my mind. But when I remember
that the blood of four sisters and one brother, is making fat the soil of
Maryland and Virginia,—when I remember that an aged grandmother who
has reared twelve children [for] the Southern market, and these one after
anot[her a]s they arrived at the most interesting age, were torn from her
bosom,—when I remember that when she became too much racked for toil,
she was turned out by a professed Christian master to grope her way in the
darkness of old age, literally to die with none to help her, and the institu-
tions of this country sanctioning and sanctifying this crime, I have no words
of eulogy, I have no patriotism. How can I love a country where the blood
of my own blood, the flesh of my own flesh, is now toiling under the
lash?—America’s soil reddened by the stain from woman’s shrinking
flesh.
No, I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be
heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the
lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself
discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who
rebukes and does not excuse its sins. It is righteousness that exalteth a
nation while sin is a reproach to any people.
But to the idea of what you at the North have to do with Slavery. You
furnish the bulwark of protection, and promise to put the slaves in bondage.
As the American Anti-Slavery Society says, “if you will go on branding,
scourging, sundering family ties, trampling in the dust your downtrodden
victims, you must do it at your own peril. ” But if you say, “we of the North
will render you no assistance: if you still continue to trample on the slave,
you must take the consequences, ” I tell you the matter will soon be settled.
I have been taunted frequently with the want of valour: so has my race,
because we have not risen upon our masters. It is adding insult to injury to
say this. You belong to 17,000,000, with arms, with means of locomotion,
with telegraphs. We are kept in ignorance—three millions to seventeen.
You taunt us with not being able to rescue ourselves from your clutch.
Shame on you! Stand aside—give us fair play—leave us with the tyrants,
and then if we do not take care of ourselves, you may taunt us. I do not mean
by this to advocate war and bloodshed. I am not a man of war. The time was
when I was. I was then a slave: I had dreams, horrid dreams of freedom
through a sea of blood. But when I heard of the Anti-Slavery movement,
light broke in upon my dark mind. Bloody visions fled away, and I saw the
star of liberty peering above the horizon. Hope then took the place of
desperation, and I was led to repose in the arms of Slavery. I said, I would
suffer rather than do any act of violence—rather than that the glorious day
of liberty might be postponed.
Since the light of God’s truth beamed upon my mind, I have become a
friend of that religion which teaches us to pray for our enemies—which,
instead of shooting balls into their hearts, loves them. I would not hurt a
hair of a slaveholder’s head. I will tell you what else I would not do. I would
not stand around the slave with my bayonet pointed at his breast, in order to
keep him in the power of the slaveholder.
I am aware that there are many who think the slaves are very well off,
and that they are very well treated, as if it were possible that such a thing
could be. A man happy in chains! Even the eagle loves liberty.
“Go, let a cage, with grates of gold,
And pearly roof, the eagle hold;
Let dainty viands be his fare,
And give the captive tenderest care;
But say, in luxury’s limits pent,
Find you the king of birds content?
No, oft he’ll sound the startling shriek,
And dash the grates with angry beak.
Precarious freedom’s far more dear,
Than all the prison’s pamp’ring cheer!
He longs to see his eyrie’s seat,
Some cliff on ocean’s lonely shore,
Whose old bare top the tempests beat,
And round whose base the billows roar,
When tossed by gales, they yawn like graves,—
He longs for joy to skim those waves;
Or rise through tempest-shrouded air,
All thick and dark, with wild winds swelling,
To brave the lightning’s lurid glare,
And talk with thunders in their dwelling."21These lines are apparently part of a longer, unidentified poem that Douglass quotes again in his speeches of 23 April 1849 and 8 February 1855. The most complete version, entitled “Give Me Freedom: A Fragment," appears in the North Star, 21 August 1848. At Cleveland, Ohio, on 13 September 1847, Douglass wrote out and signed an eight-line passage called “Liberty” that closely follows lines 11-13, 17-20 of the extract quoted here. This has led one scholar to attribute authorship to Douglass, although Douglass himself does not make such a claim. A year before Douglass's visit to Cleveland, fourteen lines of the poem, including the eight that Douglass wrote out and four that are omitted from other known versions, were quoted in Samuel Brooke, Slavery and the Slaveholder's Religion; As Opposed to Christianity (Cincinnati, 1846), 22. Brooke, an antislavery agent who accompanied Douglass and Garrison on their 1847 Ohio tour, cites no author. Ten lines from the poem were also anonymously published in William Wells Brown, The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (New York, 1863), 45. Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3: 514; "Liberty," ADS dated 13 September 1847, Heartman Collection, LNX; Thomas Bonner, .lr., ” ‘Liberty,’ A Poem by Frederick Douglass," Resources for American Literary Study, 8: 108—14 (Spring 1978).
As with the eagle, so with man. No amount of attention or finery, no
dainty dishes can be a substitute for liberty. Slaveholders know this, and
knowing it, they exclaim—“The South are surrounded by a dangerous
population, degraded, stupid savages, and if they could but entertain the
idea that immediate, unconditional death would not be their portion, they
would rise at once and enact the St. Domingo tragedy. But they are held in
subordination by the consciousness that the whole nation would rise and
crush them."22Quoted in Brooke, Slavery and the Slaveholder's Religion, 13, and Stephen Symonds Foster, The Brotherhood of Thieves; or, A True Picture of the American Church and Clergy: A Letter to Nathaniel Barney of Nantucket (Boston, 1843), 16-17. Thus they live in constant dread from day to day.
Friends, Slavery must be abolished, and that can only be done by
enforcing the great principles of justice. Vainly you talk about voting it
down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached
the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing
but God’s truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral
sentiment. Hence we ask you to support the Anti-Slavery Society. It is not
an organization to build up political parties, or churches, nor to pull them
down, but to stamp the image of Anti-Slavery truth upon the community.
Here we may all do something.
“In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb driven cattle-—
Be a hero in the strife."23Douglass quotes the fifth verse of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's “A Psalm of Life." Poems By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Philadelphia, 1845), 22.