Principles of Temperance Reform: An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on March 5, 1848
PRINCIPLES OF TEMPERANCE REFORM: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, ON 5 MARCH 1848
North Star, 10 March 1848.
On the evening of 5 March 1848 Frederick Douglass lectured to the Rochester
Temperance Society in the Rochester Court House. William Cooper Nell,
who reported on the event, described the audience as “highly respectable and
intelligent.” After an interlude of song and prayer, Douglass was introduced
by the president of the Society. When the lecture ended, “a vote of thanks was
unanimously tendered.” A discussion concerning the suitability of various
candidates in an upcoming city election then ensued. A Mr. Grieg “congratulated
the meeting on the union now so happily manifested by advocates of
Temperance, Antislavery, and other reforms.” Several members of the audience
signed a temperance pledge, and the meeting ended, Nell concluded,
“evidently feeling that the cause of temperance had gained a day.”
It is with emotions of sincere pleasure that I rise to address you this evening.
Added to the satisfaction which I ever experience in advocating any
movement intended to promote the well-being and happiness of my
fellow-countrymen, is that arising out of the fact of being invited to address
a white audience wholly unconnected with the movement with which I am
especially and peculiarly identified. It is quite a period in my own, as well
as the history of the progress of free principles in this city, for one of my
complexion to be thus invited and thus honored. This pleasure and
privilege I frequently enjoyed while in another country; but I believe it is
the first time I have been so honored in this my own, my native land.1During his 1845-47 tour of the British Isles Douglass addressed temperance gatherings in Ireland, Scotland, and England. In a 7 August 1846 speech to the World's Temperance Convention in London he criticized the American temperance movement for excluding blacks. I
must, however, be allowed to say, that though this is a somewhat new
theme for me, I cannot promise to say anything new or original upon it. The
subject has been in one shape or another, before the public nearly thirty
years. During this time it has occupied the minds of many of the wisest and
best men of the nation. It may be fairly questioned if any one popular
movement in this country ever drew out an equal amount and variety of
talent in its behalf. The bench, bar, and pulpit have all contributed their
eloquent streams to the cool and ever refreshing tide of living water.
Mighty, however, as has been all this combination, a mightier and more
thrilling eloquence is that which has come up from the dram-shop and
gutter. The simple, straightforward, unvarnished narration of individual
suffering—the graphic pictures of family distress and ruin—the painful
exhibitions of shattered and broken constitutions—the powerful exposures
of the subtle schemes and alluring charms of rum-venders, have nearly all
come from this class of persons; men who have seen, heard, and felt, the
workings of the prison-house. These have reasoned where reasoning was
necessary; they denounced where denunciation and rebuke were necessary.
I therefore cannot flatter myself with the hope of saying anything new; nor
do I deem it necessary. It will be time enough to utter new truths, when the
old ones are admitted. The evil of intemperance is just what it was ten years
ago. A man drunk now behaves with the same folly and extravagance as ten
years ago. Intemperance now is as much the parent of wretchedness, want
and idleness, as ever it was. The evil calls as loudly for removal, as ever it
did; and the means of opposing it are as powerful as ever they were. This
general sameness almost precludes the possibility of saying anything new
or striking on this subject.
Of the effects of intemperance, he remarked, his audience could testify
to them as well as himself, for they were visible in every phase of life—the
object of every day’s observation; he would therefore content himself on
the present occasion with referring to the true policy of operating against it;
on which point he would speak with plainness, which he hoped they would
appreciate, when reflecting that he could have no party purposes in view.
After illustrating the position of the wholesale vender, the dram-shop
and bar-room retailer, the genteel and respectable moderate drinker, the
eager aspirant for political office, the church-members and deacons, whose
proper influence was withheld from reforming the drunkard, and whose
example, in too many instances, had sealed his ruin; all and each of these
classes would ofttimes evade the pointed rebuke, and transfer responsibility
from themselves to their neighbors, and were all in a degree guilty; yet
no one class was wholly and only to blame; but the drinking system was the
foundation of existing evils; and this system it was the appropriate mission
of the friends of humanity to exert themselves zealously to abolish.
After alluding to the many and effectual ways of discountenancing the
use of alcohol—of rendering the trade, in its every manifestation,
disreputable—and of extending, in the true Washingtonian style, the hand
of sympathy and encouragement to a fallen brother,2Founded in 1840, the Washington Temperance Society was an organization of self-proclaimed “reformed drunkards" who sought to rescue others from the ravages of drink. A central feature of the Washingtonian Movement was the “experience meeting" at which former drinkers related their personal histories in the hope of winning converts. Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment: Phases of American Social History to 1860 (Minneapolis, Minn. 1944), 338-40. the lecturer adverted
to the injury which the cause had sustained by being blended with politics.
The reformation had been retarded, instead of accelerated. It had been
dragged down from its once lofty position, and been made the tool of
demagogues—a stepping-stone on which many had been promoted to of-
fice; while the cause itself was under no obligation to them for advance-
ment. It is probably one of the most difficult things in the world to save a
reformatory movement from corruption. The thousands who may flock
around its standard, are led there from various motives aside from promoting
the cause itself. No moral reformation was ever consummated by
political manœuvring, as the facts in the history of the anti-masonic,3Originating in the “burned over" district of western New York, the Antimasonic movement grew out of a local controversy surrounding the abduction and alleged murder of a disaffected Mason in 1826. Quickly assuming partisan overtones, Antimasonry became a vehicle for the political ambitions of Thurlow Weed, William H. Seward, Thaddeus Stevens, and other opponents of Jacksonian Democracy. Although Stevens kept the movement alive in Pennsylvania until 1837, the party disintegrated at the national level after nominating William Wirt for president in 1831. Tyler, Freedom's Ferment, 351-52.
anti-slavery, and the various other reforms, abundantly proved. Moral
suasion was the God-appointed means for reforming the world. The mild
and peaceful weapons of love are more efficacious than those of force. He
thought, the Temperance party, in relying upon politics to advance the
cause, were expecting more purity in the ballot-box than in the church; but
it is vain to expect the stream to rise higher than the fountain. If the church
occupied a right position, its influence would be powerfully felt on this
question. In thus expressing his dissent from what he presumed to be the
conviction of many of the audience, he asked only to be regarded as honest
and sincere, feeling assured of their concurrence with him in the sentiment,
that even error might be safely tolerated, where truth is free to combat it.
In the course of his remarks, Mr. Douglass awarded an eloquent tribute
to the rare virtues and zeal of Father Matthew,4Actually Father Theobald Mathew. as the Temperance redeemer
of Ireland. His labors and sacrifices—his devotion to the cause,
could not be over-estimated. He had seen him administer the pledge to
thousands, and had himself been presented with one of the Temperance
medals, by the venerable father’s own hand. His manner of appeal was
original and impressive, and generally succeeded in persuading the multitude
before him to kneel down and receive the temperance pledge.
Mr. Douglass, observing many colored citizens present, improved the
opportunity of enforcing upon them, in a special manner, their being enlisted
under the Temperance banner, for this one, among other reasons, that
by their peculiar position in the land, they could not afford to be otherwise.
He would have the colored people occupy a moral eminence so high as to
command the respect of an entire community. He invoked the cooperation
of all, both white and black, in the great cause of temperance; for as all who
used the intoxicating cup were degraded, in like degree would the condition
of all be elevated by abstaining entirely from its pernicious influence; and
this fact, he thought, was potent in itself in establishing the identity of the
human family.