Prejudice and Opportunity: Addresses Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 2, 3, 4, 1853
PREJUDICE AND OPPORTUNITY: ADDRESSES DELIVERED IN
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, ON 2, 3, 4 AUGUST 1853
Frederick Douglass' Paper, 12 August 1853.
Reprinted here is an account of three Douglass speeches made in Boston on 2,
3, and 4 August 1853 as they were reported by William J. Watkins. Although
the texts are incomplete, they provide a rare record of Douglass’s remarks
before predominantly black audiences and give an indication both of his views
on integration and separation and of his widening split from Garrisonian
abolitionism. Holding forth at Twelfth Baptist Church on Tuesday and at
Belknap Street African Baptist Church on Wednesday and Thursday, Doug-
lass found “the response to [his] appeals most gratifying.” Nonetheless, he
drew criticism throughout his visit, particularly for his advocacy of a black
manual-labor school. “[I]t will hardly be believed, by the anti-slavery
reader,” he wrote on 6 August, “that much of my work has been to defend the
late Colored National Convention, from the . . . treacherous misrepre-
sentations of its public and private enemies.” For the second time that week,
Douglass also had to justify editorials on members of the American Anti-
Slavery Society that he had published after breaking with the Garrisonians.
Quarles, FD, 76-77; Lib., 26 August 1853; William C[ooper] Nell to Doug-
lass, 13 August 1853, in Lib., 2 September 1853.
The colored citizens of Boston, anxious once more to gaze upon the manly
form, and listen to the thrilling eloquence of Frederick Douglass, invited
him, while at New Bedford, to favor them with a visit when on his return.
In conformity with this invitation, he arrived in the city on the evening of
the 2d ult. A meeting was held in Rev. Mr. Grimes'1A free black born in Leesburg., Virginia, Leonard A. Grimes (1815-73), pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church, spent his early years in Washington, D.C., where he worked for a butcher and a druggist. After traveling through the South in the employ of a slaveholder, Grimes returned to Washington and began his active participation in the movement to assist fugitive slaves. While working as a hackman, he was charged in the escape of a family of eight slaves and after conviction served two years in a Richmond prison. Upon his release, around 1845, he moved first to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and then to Boston, where from 1848 until his death he ministered to the Twelfth Baptist Church. Grimes frequently hosted abolitionist meetings at his church and in 1851 unsuccessfully plotted to rescue the incarcerated fugitive Thomas Sims. In 1854 he organized the attempt by Boston merchants and brokers to buy the imprisoned Anthony Burns before he was returned to slavery. The effort failed, but the following year Grimes traveled to Baltimore and ransomed Burns from his new owner. Grimes was an unsuccessful candidate for the post of chaplain to the Massachusetts legislature in 1864. Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 82, 146, 206, 209; Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, The Fugitive Slave Law and Anthony Burns: A Problem in Law Enforcement (Philadelphia, 1975), 39-41; idem, They Who Would Be Free, 229; William Wells Brown, The Rising Son; or, The Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race (Boston, 1876), 534-35; Daniels, In Freedom’s Birthplace, 64, 452; Boston Commonwealth, 12 February 1864. Church, and everybody
was on the qui vive to hear the colored man eloquent—the man who stands
forth in the sunlight, a living and terrible witness of the truthfulness (?) of
the precious doctrine of the innate inferiority of the colored race, who are,
to use the language of a certain “Reverend,” “so low in their debase-
ment, as scarcely to be reached by the heavenly light.”
The meeting was organized by the appointment of Robert Morris,
Esq.,2Robert Monis (1823—82), one of the nation’s first black lawyers, was a leader in the movement to integrate Boston schools. As a table boy in Salem, Massachusetts, he attracted the attention of Boston attorney Ellis Gray Loring, who employed him first as a servant and then as an office boy. Morris studied law while working for Loring and passed the bar in 1847. The following year. Morris, who had participated in petition campaigns against Boston‘s segregated schools as early as 1844, served as counsel for Benjamin Roberts, a black printer who sued the city after his daughter Sarah was refused admission to a white primary school. After losing in the court of common pleas, Morris filed an appeal and assisted Charles Sumner in arguing the case before the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1849. Again Roberts lost. In 1853 Morris represented Edward Pindall in a similar case with the same result. In addition to his active protests against segregated education, Mom's also initiated legal actions against discrimination in public transportation and accommodations. He defended the fugitive Shadrach in 1851 and may have given the signal for a crowd to free him. Tried but cleared for his role in that case, Morris continued to counsel fugitives, including Anthony Burns. In 1852 and 1853 he petitioned the state legislature for the formation of a black militia company and during the late 1850s he advocated military preparedness. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Morris offered to raise a regiment of black recruits if they were to be paid and treated like white troops. When the governor of Massachusetts refused to meet those conditions, Morris reacted by discouraging enlistment. After the war Morris converted to Catholicism and supported political independence by black Americans. Pauline E. Hopkins, “Famous Men of the Negro Race: Robert Morris," Colored American Magazine, 3: 337-42 (September 1901); Mabee, Black Freedom, 166, 173—80, 405, 420; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 111, 145, 153, 205, 230—31; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 228, 237, 242; White, "Blacks and Education in Massachusetts," 257—58, 265—77, 317, 350. President, and Mr. W. J. Watkins,3William J. Watkins (c. 1828—?), a black machinist and author of this account of Douglass's Boston speeches, was soon to move to Rochester to assist in the editing of Frederick Douglass' Paper. Born in Baltimore to a family active in abolitionism, the young Watkins idolized Garrison, who had once befriended his parents. After moving to Boston, he entered public life by debating the issue of school integration with Thomas Paul Smith, an advocate of separate black schools. Watkins, who was active in the Underground Railroad, supported the Free Soil candidates in the 1852 elections and completed his break from Garrison by associating with Douglass the following year. In 1853 he joined Robert Morris in petitioning the Massachusetts legislature for a black militia unit. During the same year, after moving to Rochester, he served as a secretary at the New York women's rights convention. In 1858 Watkins not only campaigned for Republican candidates but also endorsed the right of slaves to resist bondage by force of arms “when it was feasible." After years of writing against emigrationism, Watkins in 1861 embraced J. Theodore Holly's plan for migration to Haiti. Arguing that the emigration movement could hasten abolition, Watkins acted as traveling agent in Canada, where he raised a colony of prospective emigrants, who were, however, eventually dissuaded from migrating by negative reports from earlier emigrants. By 1865 Watkins had returned to Boston and passed the bar, becoming one of the earliest black American lawyers. Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 4: 427-28; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 178, 187-89, 230; Jacobs, “Boston Negro," 315; White, “Blacks and Education in Massachusetts," 291—93; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 243, 275-76; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 139-40, 243-47. Secretary. The President, in a
neat and pertinent address, introduced the eloquent advocate of freedom,
Yes! the advocate of freedom. And who is better qualified to speak in its
advocacy than he? Had not the great Juggernaut of the peculiar Institution
rolled its ponderous weight across his soul with fearful power? Had he not
passed through the fiery ordeal? Had he not lived through the winter of the
bondman’s discontent? Had he not leaped forth from the darkness into
the sunlight, and the sunlight into him? Had he not been the recipient of the
wrongs and iniquities, and crushing cruelties of that system which would
have annihilated his inborn aspirations after freedom, but for the recupera-
tive energy God had given him?
And now, behold the manacles are broken; the sunshine smiles upon
him; he drinks from the perennial stream; he plucks ambrosial fruits, and
culls delightful flowers in freedom’s garden. What he tells us about the Hell
of Slavery, and the Heaven of Freedom, is the result of a bitter and sweet
experience. In the former, he helped take care of his master, and his
master’s wife and children; in the latter, he takes care of himself, and his
own wife and children, without the extraneous intervention of the man who
“owned” him.
But to the meeting. Frederick Douglass arose, and was greeted with the
most rapturous applause. He spoke for more than an hour upon the condi-
tion ofthe colored people, and the means to be employed for our elevation,
and held up a most vivid portraiture of the evils of American slavery, and
the relentless cruelty of the bloody hyena of American prejudice. “The
prejudice against our complexion, is,” said he, “of the most virulent
character. The spirit of Caste permeates throughout the ramifications of
society. Even abolitionists do not reduce their theory to practice. They will
not take us into their stores, their counting-houses, as clerks, book-
keepers, &c., because, say they, ‘it will hurt our business.’ They will not
take our children into their work-shops, for their hands will not allow it.
Everything is seemingly against us.4The accusation—far from a groundless one—of job discrimination by white abolitionists had received attention in 1852 when the black abolitionists Edward V. Clark and James McCune Smith rose in the annual meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to level such a charge against the organization’s officers. Proponents of the industrial college counted bias in hiring by white employers as one reason for the establishment of an independent black institution to teach trades to black youths. Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 85; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 180; FDP, 21, 28 July 1854.
“We must, then, do something for ourselves. Some of us have trades.
We must teach them to our children. They must be taught to make boots, as
well as black them; to construct bridges, as well as walk over them.”
He then alluded to the recent National Convention,5The Colored National Convention had met in Rochester on 6, 7, and 8 July 1853. which he charac-
terized a great movement, and one that must, from the very nature of it,
exert a powerful and favorable influence upon our future destiny.
The lecture was replete with solid information, and salutary advice,
which, if properly heeded, will do much towards developing the talents of
our people, and arousing us from that profound repose, into which we had
almost unconsciously fallen. Mr. Douglass resumed his seat amid the
plaudits of the audience, and all seemed to think, “a great man has spo-
ken.”
Mr. W. H. Logan,6A veteran Boston abolitionist, William H. Logan (?-c. 1870) was a waiter who had begun working to end segregated schools in 1844. As a member of the twelve-man black committee selected to supervise the integration movement in 1849, he spoke at the victory celebration marking the end of separate schools in 1855. Logan‘s identification with abolitionism dated from as early as 1835, when, after Garrison lost his pants to a Boston mob, he recovered the pants from police authorities and preserved them as an antislavery keepsake. FDP, 7 September 1855; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 21; White, “Blacks and Education in Massachusetts," 289; The Boston Directory, Embracing the City Record, A General Directory of the Citizens, and a Business Directory (Boston, 1871), 435. a man whom all esteem for his inflexible adherence
to principle, was the next speaker. He was eloquent, for nature spoke
through him. His words came leaping from the cavern of his heart, as tho‘
the hand of Omnipotence had formed them. He was happy Mr. Douglass
had thrown his whole soul, and mind, and strength, into the work of our
elevation. He concluded by urging upon our people the necessity of giving
our children trades; and adverted particularly to the wicked neglect of
parents, who suffer their children to roam the streets, coming in contact
with all manner of vicious associations, when they should be pursuing an
honorable employment, reflecting credit upon themselves, and those with
whom they are by complexion and position identified.
Mr. Lewis Hayden7Lewis Hayden (1815-89) escaped slavery in Kentucky in 1844 and, after brief stays in Michigan and New York, enjoyed a successful career as a clothier and public official in Boston. Hayden, whose own escape was a celebrated one because it led to the arrest of Calvin Fairbank, raised money to reimburse his former owner and helped to secure Fairbank’s release. In Boston, Hayden was one of the main agents of the Underground Railroad and was himself tried, but released, for his role in the 1851 rescue of the fugitive slave Shadrach. Hayden was a leader in the petition drives against segregated schools in Boston. A supporter of Garrison, he joined William Cooper Nell in opposing Douglass's plans for a black manual-labor school. In 1859 Hayden received an appointment as messenger to the secretary of state, a minor post that nonetheless made him the lone black state official in antebellum Massachusetts. After acting as a recruiter during the Civil War, Hayden won election to the Massachusetts legislature in 1873. He held the office of grand master ofthe Prince Hall Masonic Lodge from 1855 until 1870 and continued in his position of messenger to the secretary of state until 1889. FDP, 31 March 1854; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 164—65; William H. Grimshaw, Official History of Freemasonry Among the Colored People in North America (1903; New York, 1969), 100, 105, 190; Daniels, In Freedom’s Birthplace, 58, 73, 97, 101, 113, 453-54; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 220; White, “Blacks and Education in Massachusetts," 47, 265-66, 276; Jacobs, “Boston Negro," 291-92. followed in an effective speech, urging the neces-
sity of individual as well as of united action. Our individuality must stand
out in bold relief. Each man and each woman can and must do something to
secure the ultimate success of the anti-slavery enterprise. We must elevate
ourselves. Our destiny is in our own hands, and we must work out that
destiny. He fully concurred in the remarks of the gentlemen who had
preceded him.
Mr. Hayden is a man of a fine mind; he reasons well; in fact, he could
not very well do otherwise, for phrenologically considered, nature, in the
manufacture of her noblemen, has given him more than his share of the
reasoning faculty.
Robert Morris, Esq., then gave in his adhesion to the sentiments ad-
vanced by the various speakers. He had listened to Mr. Douglass with
special delight; but a remark had fallen from him relative to colored
schools, which he could not conscientiously endorse; a remark he consid-
ered as a virtual recognition of the righteousness of the exclusive, or
proscriptive principle. He deprecated the establishment of a Manual Labor
College, in which white children were to be excluded. He thought it fa-
vored proscription. He then alluded to the fact that the Smith School of this
city still remained a foul blot upon the city of Boston. He hoped to see the
day when this relic of oppression would be swept from among us as with the
besom of destruction.8A paraphrase of Isa. 14: 23.
Mr. Douglass remarked it was absurd to talk of colored people pro-
scribing white people. He thought with Mr. Morris, there was no necessity
for the existence of separate schools for colored children in Massachusetts,
but the exigency of the case might demand it in other States of the Union.9At the time Douglass spoke, school integration was already a fact in all Massachusetts towns outside Boston, with Salem, New Bedford, Nantucket, Worcester, and Lowell all having integrated by 1845. Boston. on the other hand. maintained the separate Smith School. which was founded in 1801 by a group of blacks and white philanthropists and taken into the jurisdiction of the municipal school committee in 1812. Named for the merchant Abiel Smith, who bequeathed $5,000 to the school. Smith School won plaudits from abolitionists, including Garrison, in the 1830s. However, by 1840 some protested against the exclusive character of the school. In 1844 local reformers, especially the black abolitionists William Cooper Nell and John T. Hilton, began a protracted movement to integrate Boston schools. A series of boycotts, petitions, demonstrations. and lawsuits—including the famous 1849 case involving Sarah Roberts—followed during the next decade. Although the courts and school committee remained unmoved, the protesters succeeded in cutting Smith School enrollment from a high of 217 to a low of 60 and in discrediting the efforts of Thomas Paul, Jr., and Thomas Paul Smith to solve the crisis by arranging for the appointment of a black principal—Paul, Jr., himself—at Smith School. The controversy ended in 1855 when a Massachusetts law provided for the integration of Boston schools. Massachusetts was an exception to the general pattern of segregated, unequal education for free blacks in the antebellum North. Litwack, North of Slavery, 113-52; White, “Blacks and Education in Massachusetts," 99-102, 171-348; Donald M. Jacobs, “The Nineteenth Century Struggle Over Segregated Education in the Boston Schools,” Journal of Negro Education, 39: 76-79 (Winter 1970).
Mr. Logan fully concurred with Mr. Morris in his views relative to
colored schools, and thought his friend Douglass had somehow missed the
mark. After some general remarks from Mr. M. M. Taylor, the claims of
Frederick Douglass’ Paper were presented. Mr. D[ouglass] obtained sev-
eral subscribers, whereupon the meeting adjourned, to meet in Belknap
Street Church, the following evening, at half-past 7 o’clock.
Pursuant to adjournment, the citizens of Boston assembled to listen
again to the voice of Douglass. The President being absent, Rev. Leonard
Grimes was called to the chair.
Mr. W[illia]m. J. Watkins informed the audience, that Rev. A. R.
Foss,10The reference is to Andrew Twombly Foss (1803-75), a Baptist minister turned Garrisonian abolitionist. Born in Dover, New Hampshire, Foss was ordained in 1827 and held pastorates in Dover, Hopkinton, New Boston, and Manchester, New Hampshire, and South Parsonfield, Maine. In 1846 he was among the founders of the American Baptist Free Mission Society, an antislavery schism from the regular Baptist foreign and domestic mission organizations. After 1847 Foss worked as an antislavery agent, first for Baptist groups and then for the Massachusetts and the American Anti-Slavery Societies. He was a convert to Garrison's ideas by 1854, when he appeared at the American Anti-Slavery Society's convention in Syracuse and argued, against Douglass, that the Constitution supported slavery. In 1855 he justified his decision to leave denominational activities in order to support the American Anti-Slavery Society by arguing that the Free Mission Society had not broken all ties with churches favoring slavery. Until the final abolition of slavery he spoke and organized for the Garrisonians, working mainly in the midwestem states. A nonresistant when he participated in the attempted rescue of Anthony Burns in 1854, Foss was a spokesman for those opposing any reaffirmation of nonresistance by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1859. He campaigned actively for Lincoln in 1864 and after the war pursued interests in spiritualism and rational theology. John R. McKivigan, “The American Baptist Free Mission Society: Abolitionist Reaction to the 1845 Baptist Schism," Foundations: The Journal of the American Baptist Historical Society, 21: 346-49 (October—December, 1978); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 4: 314—17, 545; Mabee, Black Freedom, 324-29; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 269, 284; Andrew T. Foss to Garrison, 24 February 1855, in Lib., 9 March 1855; FDP, 6 October 1854; ASB, 16 August, 6 December 1856. the uncompromising friend of the slave, was present; and he hoped
the gentleman would favor the meeting with a few remarks. Mr. Foss
declined; but after having been insisted on, complied with the request in a
manner that redounded to his credit, and fired the whole audience.
Mr. Douglass was next introduced to the meeting, and discoursed in
his characteristic manner upon the horrors of American Slavery. At the
conclusion of his address, the claims of his paper were again brought
forward. The object of his paper, its nature, and peculiar claims upon them
were lucidly presented.
Mr. W[illia]m. C. Nell,11William Cooper Nell (1816—74), black Garrisonian abolitionist, was the original publisher of the North Star. A graduate of Boston's segregated Smith School, Nell studied, but never practiced law, refusing, on Wendell Phillips's advice, to take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. During the early 1840s he worked for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and the Liberator. From 1847 to 1851 he assisted Douglass on the North Star and served as acting editor when Douglass was absent on speaking tours. Although he unsuccessfully ran for the Massachusetts legislature on the Free Soil platform in 1850, Nell remained a Garrisonian loyalist and severed his ties to the North Star when Douglass shifted his allegiance to the political abolitionist faction led by Gerrit Smith and William Goodell. The final break between Douglass and Nell came in 1853. At meetings of the Colored National Convention and its Council in the 1850s, Nell, an opponent of racially exclusive organizations. attacked Douglass‘s plans for a black manual-labor college on the grounds that it would hinder, not help, the movement for racial equality. After Nell advised Boston blacks not to subscribe to Douglass's newspaper, Douglass branded his former associate as a “hanger on" and “contemptible tool" of Garrison. In addition to his abolitionist activities, Nell wrote important histories of American blacks. His Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 (Boston, 1851) and The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (Boston, 1855) detailed the contributions of little-known blacks to the nation's founding. In 1858 Nell staged the first Crispus Attucks celebration. During Lincoln’s administration Nell was appointed a clerk in the Boston post office. One of the first blacks to hold a federal post, Nell remained there until his death. Robert P. Smith, “William Cooper Nell: Crusading Black Abolitionist," JNH, 55: 182—99 (July 1970); Quarles, FD, 77; idem, Black Abolitionists, 111-12; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 86, 245, 254; NS, 16 February 1849; FDP, 12, 19 August, 9 December 1853, 28 February, 31 March 1854, 12 January 1856; San Francisco Elevator, 27 June 1874; NCAB, 14: 306; ACAB, 4: 489; DAB, 13: 413. the man whom all know, but to love him,
arose at this crisis, and remarked that a very unpleasant duty devolved upon
him. He felt called upon to say a word in reference to Mr. Douglass and his
paper; and what he said would be said in a spirit of kindness. He thought
Mr. D[ouglass] had been unkind, ungenerous, and ungrateful to his old and
tried friends, particularly to Mr. Garrison. He said this was his opinion—an
opinion formed by reading the very paper the claims of which have been
presented before us. If he was wrong he was willing to be corrected, and he
hoped Mr. D[ouglass] would now feel called upon to define his position,
and explain, if he could, to the satisfaction of Mr. Garrison’s friends, the
obnoxious article upon which he had based his opinions.
Mr. D[ouglass] called for the articles. Mr. Nell remarked that as he had
not come thither with the desire, or expectation of provoking a discussion,
he had not brought the articles to the meeting.
Mr. D[ouglass] informed him that opportunity should be presented for
the investigation of the whole matter.
He then deliberately reviewed his whole course in reference to the “old
organization,"12American Anti-Slavery Society. and their course in reference to him. After some desultory
remarks from others, the claims of the paper were again presented and
several subscribers obtained. The meeting then adjourned.
Mr. Douglass being unavoidably detained in the city, another meeting
was held on Thursday evening, 6th ult., in Belknap Street Church, Lewis
Hayden in the chair, and W. J. Watkins Secretary.
Mr. Douglass delivered an impressive and eloquent address upon the
National Convention, the Council,13Formed by the Colored National Convention at Rochester in 1853, the National Council of the Colored People originally consisted of two elected delegates from each represented state. The convention charged the National Council with the responsibility of “improving the character, maintaining the rights, and organizing a Union of the Colored People of the Free States" and stipulated that at least once during each six months a minimum of eleven delegates should meet to transact business. Council work was to be divided among committees dealing with the manual-labor school, publications. business and jobs, and other concerns. Although the National Council met three times before its demise in 1855, it never overcame divisions between supporters of Douglass, who advocated a powerful Council and supported the industrial school, and an opposition group led by William Cooper Nell and William Day. Problems in attracting a quorum of delegates to each meeting further plagued the Council, whose most significant act was probably the calling of the Colored National Convention at Philadelphia in 1855. Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, Held in Rochester, July 6th, 7th, and 8th, 1853 (Rochester, 1853), 18-20, 40, 45-46; Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, Held in Franklin Hall, Sixth Street, Below Arch, Philadelphia, October 16th, 17th, and 18th, 1855 (Salem, N.J., 1856), 3; FDP, 21, 28 July 1854; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 253—55. Industrial College,14The 1853 Colored National Convention, meeting in Rochester, approved proposals by a committee consisting of Charles L. Reason, George B. Vashon, and Charles H. Langston to establish an industrial college. Appended to the committee's report was a long letter from Douglass to Harriet Beecher Stowe advising her that such a school was the best object of her philanthropic desire "to improve the condition of the free colored people." Douglass and the committee envisioned a school concentrating on agriculture and on “several important branches of the mechanic arts," and Douglass suggested Rochester as an appropriate site. The idea of an industrial college generated much debate during the next two years. Douglass defended the plan against both black abolitionists—especially William Cooper Nell, Robert Purvis, and William Day—and white abolitionists, including Maria Chapman. Most objections centered on the orientation of the projected school to the particular needs of black students. In addition to the charge of racial exclusivism, opponents argued that financing for such an ambitious program could not be arranged, that money would be better spent elsewhere, and that a single, national school would not serve black students from distant states. At the national convention in Philadelphia in 1855, the committee on the manual-labor school reported against going ahead with plans for such an institution and instead suggested decentralized associations to help provide training and funding for black apprentices. Although the full convention took a noncommittal stance on the issue, plans for an industrial college excited little support thereafter. Dick, Black Protest, 186—93; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 136—42; FDP, 21, 28 July 1854; Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, 1853, 30-46; Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, 1855, 11-13, 27-28. etc. Speaking of
the character of the Convention, he said it would compare favorably with
any body whose deliberations he had ever witnessed. He had listened to the
eloquence of O’Connell,15Daniel O‘Connell. Brougham,16Lord Henry Peter Brougham. Webster,17Daniel Webster. Cobden,18 Richard Cobden. and Sir
Robert Peel19Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), Tory (Conservative) politician and reformer, entered the House of Commons at twenty-one and held a succession of public offices, including chief secretary for Ireland, home secretary, first secretary of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, and, through much of the 1840s, prime minister. DNB, 15: 655-68. in debate; and the debates of this Convention would compare
favorably with any to which he had ever listened. The effect of the Conven-
tion, he remarked, is of the most gratifying character. Its local and moral
effect is all that can be desired. Some have said it was a Colored Conven-
tion. This is true; but whose fault is it? It was a Convention of Condition.
Color is the badge of that Condition. The National Council has been
[charged with an] attempt to build up a Nation within a Nation. The charge
is absurd. It was simply a National Association, and he who charges the
Convention with this absurdity, might as well charge the Anti-Slavery
Society with the same, no such thing was contemplated. On the contrary,
we asserted boldly that we are American Citizens.20Criticism of Negro conventions as racially exclusive groups dates from the 1830s and the writings of William Whipper. William Cooper Nell and others leveled such charges against the Rochester convention and especially against the National Council. In his defense of the conventions Douglass uses an argument made as early as 1837 by Lewis Woodson. Douglass is correct in his claim that the Rochester delegates asserted their American citizenship. Sterling Stuckey, ed., The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism (Boston, 1972), 145, 253-60; Smith, “William Cooper Nell," 184, 189-91; Jacobs, “Boston Negro," 318-19; Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, 1853, 7-9; FDP, 28 July 1854; NASS, 10 August 1843.
It is said we do wrong to separate ourselves. A colored man is as good
as a white man, and a white man is as good as a colored man, and in a
natural state of society, there would be no necessity of separate action. This
does not exist. It must be made to exist. How shall it be done? Some say,
work with the Abolitionists. I say yes. Of course, we should work with
them. But we must do something they never have done. We must promote
mechanical trades. Does any existing organization, do the Anti-Slavery
Societies contemplate this? Have they ever passed any resolution to that
effect? No. The Convention recommended the establishment of an Indus-
trial College where our children can become workers in wood, brass, iron
and silver. So we are going on ground not pre-occupied. We are simply
doing for ourselves, what no others have proposed to do for us.21Douglass is not strictly correct. In the early 1830s the New England Anti-Slavery Society, as well as individual white abolitionists, including Garrison, had supported unsuccessful efforts to begin manual-labor colleges for young blacks. Dick, Black Protest, 186-93; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 136-38. We have a
right to associate with each other to promote our interests. Mr. Douglass sat
down amid the applause of the delighted audience. The President remarked
there was perfect liberty for any who had a remark to make.
Mr. Douglass stated that he considered it a duty devolving upon Mr.
W. C. Nell either to retract, or endeavor to substantiate the accusations he
had brought against him.
Mr. Nell promptly responded, by remarking he was not conscious of
having brought any accusations against Mr. Douglass. He had merely
stated his opinions with reference to certain matters. He considered that he
had a right to his opinion, and a right to express it. He then read an article
from “Frederick Douglass’ Paper,” and alluded to others which in his
judgment justified the opinion he had formed of Mr. D[ouglass]. The
latter gentleman explained the meaning of the articles which appeared to
some obnoxious.22Nell later recalled making brief allusions to articles by Douglass that criticized British abolitionist George Thompson and to an article that allegedly sought to provoke an ex-supporter of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to renew his activity against the Garrisonians. The article that Nell most likely read aloud, however, was a column entitled “Infidelity” that had appeared in Frederick Douglass’ Paper on 27 May 1853. Douglass therein implied that Stephen S. Foster, Parker Pillsbury, and Henry C. Wright had been encouraged to miss recent meetings of the American Anti-Slavery Society in order to quiet charges of religious infidelity against the group. Douglass cast his remarks as a defense of the right of Foster, Pillsbury, and Wright to attend any antislavery meeting regardless of their beliefs, but followers of Garrison resented the implication that the three men had been pressured into absence. Garrison himself also objected that Douglass gave credence to the allegation of infidelity, a “threadbare” charge usually raised by opponents of abolitionism. Nell's public criticism of the column was not the first that Douglass had encountered. At the West Indian Emancipation celebration at Framingham, Massachusetts, on 2 August 1853, Wendell Phillips departed from his prepared text and. referring to the May editorial as “a personal imputation," demanded that Douglass, who was not scheduled to speak, explain himself. Although Douglass “did not admit the right of any individual to summon him on that platform to answer questions that categorically put," he replied that “the remarks thrown out incidentally in respect to that matter, had no personal reference to any individuals connected with the American Anti-Slavery Society." He nevertheless insisted that he remained “at liberty to criticize the character of any anti-slavery effort or any anti-slavery Society in existence." In the 19 August issue of his newspaper, Douglass reprinted and explained the offensive editorial and commented further on the “ungracious and unprovoked attack" that Phillips had leveled. FDP, 27 May, 12, 19 August 1853; Lib., 10 June, 12 August 1853; William C[ooper] Nell to Douglass. 13 August 1853, in Lib., 2 September 1853.
Robert Morris, Esq. then arose and made what we conceive to be a
most ungenerous and ungentlemanly attack upon Mr. Nell; descending to
personalities of the grossest character. His remarks were upon a subject of
an extraneous nature, and his attack wholly gratuitous. We must learn to be
more united. In Union, there is strength. The converse of this proposition is
also true. In disunion, there is weakness.
We can not all think alike, because of a diversity of our mental constitu-
tion. Show me a race of people, made alike in every respect, mentally,
morally, physically, and I will show you a people who think alike. Till the
hour comes when we shall all think alike, we will continue to act dif-
ferently.