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Monarchies and Freedom, Republics and Slavery: An Address Delivered in Bristol, England, on April 1, 1847

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MONARCHIES AND FREEDOM, REPUBLICS AND SLAVERY: AN
ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BRISTOL, ENGLAND, ON 1 APRIL 1847

Bristol Mercury and Western Counties Advertiser, 3 April 1847. Another text in Bristol
Gazette, 8 April 1847.

Douglass delivered his farewell address to the British people on 30 March
1847. His farewell address to Bristol took place two days later. He had been
working at a feverish pace, speaking at least two hours nightly during the
month of March. The Bristol meeting, sponsored by the Bristol Auxiliary
Anti-Slavery League, was chaired by Edward Thomas, who called for a series
of resolutions to be passed that would express the audience’s “feelings of
sympathy and congratulation towards” Douglass. Thomas told those assembled
that it was Douglass’s intention “when he arrived in America to open a
‘coloured’ press.” He hoped, he continued, that the meeting would help “in
such a desirable undertaking.” J. B. Estlin then remarked on the “effect
which such meetings would have on the state of feeling in America.” He
moved that Douglass be extended thanks and “a cordial welcome” for “paying
Bristol a farewell visit.” R. Norris seconded the motion. Two more
resolutions, “in a similar spirit, were then successively proposed, seconded,
and carried with much enthusiasm. ” After Douglass’s speech, C. J. Thomas
“moved a vote of thanks to Frederick Douglass, which was carried with much
applause.” Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, 1948),
53-54 (hereafter cited FD).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS then came forward amidst loud cheers, and commenced
his address with some remarks on the inveterate prejudice entertained
against the negroes by the white population of the United States; a
feeling that met the black man everywhere, and, following him through
life, did not cease even in the grave-yard, where his bones were not allowed
to rest in proximity with those of the whites. In view of this indomitable
hate and prejudice, and of the power which must be exerted by the British to
overcome it, he felt deeply grateful to the audience for the sympathy they
had shown him. The feeling alluded to was not a prejudice against colour,

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though it assumed to be. It assumed that God had implanted in the bosom of
the white a strong aversion to the black, that there was between the two an
impassable barrier, and that they could not live together in a community on
equal terms. So they reasoned in the United States; but the prejudice was
not against the colour, for men liked black in itself well enough, and had no
objection to black hats or clothes, but it was against the condition in which
black was found in that land. While the black was [in] what was regarded as
his proper position, a slave, no one shrunk from him. While he himself was
a slave, his master, and even his sensitive mistress, had no objection to sit
beside him in the same carriage.

How, then, was the prejudice accounted for in the Northern States?
Colour of skin had identified people with a certain condition, that condition
was a degraded one, and while in it the black was considered in his appropriate
place. The moment, however, that he attempted to raise himself from
that degraded position, then the concentrated force of public scorn was
brought into play to crush him back again. This feeling was almost as cruel
as slavery itself, and it made only this difference in the situation of the free
coloured man, that he was the slave not of an individual, but of the community.
No matter how mean, debased, or dissolute a white man might be, he
had full license to beat, insult, and trample on a free coloured man, how-
ever respectable. Society looked down upon him, he was repulsed from
learning handicrafts, and, even in free New York, he was not allowed to
drive a horse or cart on his own account.1During the 1830s and 1840s official New York City policy prevented virtually all Negroes from working as legally licensed cartmen. The color barrier was lowered slightly during the 1850s when Mayor Fernando Wood granted licenses to a few blacks. Some 65 black New Yorkers listed their occupation as cartman in 1855 and a total of 46 Negroes held city licenses five years later. Rhoda G. Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era Before the Civil War" (PhD. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 291-95. In no part of America were
negroes allowed to enjoy any of the common privileges of citizens except-
ing in Massachusetts, and there only till lately.2Massachusetts blacks enjoyed greater civil and political rights than Negroes in other states of the antebellum North. In theory at least, Bay State blacks could vote, hold office, and serve on juries, but hostile public opinion often impeded the exercise of these rights. The situation gradually improved from the 1820s onward, however, and during the 1840s segregation in public transportation was ended and a state law against interracial marriage was repealed. Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago, 1961), 16, 75, 91-97, 104-11. In railway trains they paid
highly for inferior accommodation in a proscribed car, and on board steam-
boats they were driven to take their stand amongst cattle on the fore-deck.
The feeling was universal, and the question, “Would you have the negro

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enjoy equal rights with us?” was deemed a sufficient answer to all
abolitionists.

Whence came this hate? The negroes had not injured them; no, they
had injured the negroes; and, seeing in many coloured men a contradiction
to their theory of the black inferiority, it made them the more angry, and the
more resolute to crush it. No coloured man was allowed by government to
bear a mail bag, or to do anything implying trust, the object being to
impress him with the notion that he was inferior.3A federal law of 1810 provided that “no other than a free white person shall be employed in conveying the mail." The statute was reenacted without change in 1825 and remained in force until 1862. The only exception came in 1828 when the postmaster general permitted the use of Negro labor to carry mail from stagecoaches into post offices, under the direction of a responsible white person. Litwack, North of Slavery, 58. They degraded him in all
possible ways, and then made degradation a pretext for oppression. They
said the negro was morally and religiously inferior to themselves, and
penalties were enacted, in some parts reaching even to death, against
instructing him.

In some of the New England States the negroes had succeeded in
getting schools, and statistics showed that, from 5 to 8 or 10 years, black
children were as apt to improve as white, but as soon as they passed 12 the
white overtook them and left them behind.4A specific source for Douglass's statistics has not yet been determined, but official school reports—particularly those of Boston—frequently included comparable data indicating that as black children grew older they generally fell behind white students in academic achievement. As early as 1822 Boston educators reported that 84 percent of the black students between the ages of 7 and 16 were still enrolled in classes intended for younger pupils. During the 1840s students at the black grammar school consistently scored the lowest on citywide examinations. In an 1846 report defending segregated education—a report with which Douglass may have been familiar—Boston's Primary School Committee explained that black children could keep pace with white children when memory or imitative skills were involved, “but when progress comes to depend chiefly on the faculties of invention, comparison and reasoning, they quickly fall behind." School officials in other northern communities also acknowledged that black students, sometimes praised for their “ambition to learn," commonly failed to master the subject matter of the advanced grades. Although most people attributed this to the blacks' supposed intellectual inferiority, some commentators, including David Walker, blamed the demonstrable decline in academic performance on the prejudice and discrimination that resulted in the often inferior teaching, limited curricula, and inconvenient locations of segregated schools. Abner Forbes, master of Boston's all-black Smith School, noted that late enrollment, irregular attendance, and high dropout rates contributed to poor achievement: “[M]ost of them leave before they are ten, or eleven years old and what is the more unpropitious the brightest and most intelligent are the most likely to leave; and for the obvious reason they more readily find employment." Arthur O. White, “Blacks and Education in Antebellum Massachusetts: Strategies for Social Mobility" (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1971), 108-70, 239-56; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City," 315-74; David Walker's Appeal, ed. Charles M. Wiltse (New York, 1965), 33; Massachusetts Board of Education, Abstract of the Massachusetts School Returns,for 1845-46 (Boston, 1846), 78; Common School Journal, 7: 329 (1 November 1845); Litwack, North of Slavery, 113-52. Why was this? The child of 8,

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10, or 12 years learned because it was taught; when older, it began to look
forward to the future, to ask itself why it learned—to mark out some field of
usefulness. All this formed a stimulant to the white child to improve; but
the coloured child found he could have no standing in business or anything
else, and he lost all inducement to learn.

The same feeling against the black was the origin of further disabilities.
There were 71 crimes for which a black was punishable by death, one only
of which entailed the same penalty on a white. In no case could a black give
testimony against a white, and, in the Southern States, seven or eight
negroes who met together for purposes of improvement, were liable to be
taken up and sentenced to 39 lashes each. And, even granting the inferiority
of the negroes for which the American contended, where in the Old or New
Testament could a pretext be found for crushing them on account of their
weakness?

The speaker then contrasted his reception in this country. He had been
here nineteen months, during which time he had delivered probably as
many as 300 addresses; he had travelled through all parts of the United
Kingdom, and by all modes of conveyance, and never had he met with one
in whom he could discern the slightest dislike towards him on account of
his colour. He would go back to America and make them acquainted with
the fact, that in England the negro was regarded as a man. And this would
tell, for Americans could not be insensible to the fact that liberty in Hyde-
park was worth more than slavery in Columbia—that freedom in a
monarchy was better than servitude in a republic. He would make them
acquainted with what he had met with, and wring from shame what was
denied to justice. He was not there to stir up hatred against America, or to
invoke political or military power in support of the slave; he was there to
tell them, and (through them) America, the truth, and to express his honest
feelings about that nation, which would, he believed, be soon rebuked, and
rebuked faithfully, for her slave system.

Mr. Douglass then proceeded to narrate how prejudice followed the
negro to the churches, and forbad his kneeling down in communion with
the white, except among the Roman Catholics, where no distinction of
persons was known. The uniformity of this treatment had in a great degree
driven them to infidel halls, where all were considered on a level. After
anecdotes illustrating this, he passed to the position of the anti-slavery
question in America.

The war at present waged by the Americans with the Mexicans was
carried on with no higher or holier motive than that of upholding and

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propagating slavery. In 1829 Mexico, although a semi-barbarous state, had
declared the entire abolition of slavery in her territories. The consequence
was a decrease in the value of slaves in the border states of America, as the
liability of escape to the land of liberty was increased. What was the
desperate purpose of the United States? By conniving with their emigrant
citizens, they stirred up a revolt against Mexico in Texas, which, by the
battle of San Jacinto, was ultimately severed from the mother country.
Their next step was kindly to recognise the independence of Texas, and in
1844 it was annexed to the Union. An army of men was sent to protect the
Texians; they crossed the boundary of the Rio del Norte, and the Mexicans
firing at the invaders, the United States at once recognised a war, waged for
no other purpose than that of extending and perpetuating slavery.

But the wisdom of the crafty had been confounded; for the non-
slaveholding states—though not from any great hatred of slavery—had, in
several legislatures, resolved not to allow any servitude to exist in lands
acquired by conquest from the Mexicans; and it was his opinion that this
resolution of the House of Representatives would be ratified by the Senate.5Introduced by Pennsylvania Democratic congressman David Wilmot in August 1846, the Wilmot Proviso initially took the form of an amendment to a bill appropriating $2,000,000 for President James K. Polk to use in negotiating an end to the Mexican War. As originally worded, the amendment made the exclusion of slavery or involuntary servitude an “express and fundamental condition" for acquiring any territory from Mexico. Later broadened to encompass all future territorial acquisitions on the North American continent, the Proviso twice passed the House only to be rejected by the Senate. During the first three months of 1847 nine northern state legislatures, including those of New York and Ohio, officially endorsed the Proviso. The question was before Congress during most of 1847 and became a central issue in the presidential election of 1848. Ohio General Assembly, Acts of a Local Nature, Passed by the Forty-Fifth General Assembly. . . (Columbus, 1847), 214; Edgar Allen Holt, “Party Politics in Ohio, 1840-1850," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 38: 153, 155-56 (1929); Joseph G. Rayback, Free Soil: The Election of 1848 (Lexington, Ky., 1970), 26-27.
Slavery would be thus circumscribed, and a mark of national disapprobation
would be set upon it, from which it could never recover.

Another point of success he had to narrate was, the abolition of slavery
in the state of Delaware.6Probably a reference to the steady decline of Delaware's slave population, which numbered only 2,000 by 1860. Slavery was legally ended there by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Here he took it that the brick was knocked down
at the end of the row, by which all the others would come down. The
speaker then noticed the progress which the anti-slavery question had made
within the last six years, and proceeded triumphantly to rebut the charge of
infidelity which had been brought against the abolitionists.

Mr. Douglass then referred, with hope, to the effects which would be

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produced by increased contact between this country and America, arising
from our abandonment of the restrictive system, mutual exchange of literatures,
the holding of meetings such as the National Convention and
World’s Temperance Convention, and the frequent visits of literary and
pleasure-taking tourists. After some further remarks, Mr. Douglass concluded
his address (which lasted nearly two hours), by expressing, in a
strain of much impassioned eloquence, his grateful thanks for the reception
he had met with from the citizens of Bristol.

Creator

Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

Date

1847-04-01

Publisher

Yale University Press 1982

Type

Speeches

Publication Status

Published