Frederick Douglass to Montgomery Blair, September 16, 1862
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MONTGOMERY BLAIR1Blair’s letter to Douglass is reproduced immediately above in this volume.
Rochester, [N.Y.] 16 Sept[ember] 1862.
HON. MONTGOMERY BLAIR,
DEAR SIR:—
I have duly received your calm and courteous letter of September 11th, in which you ably advocate the new popular scheme of colonizing the free colored people of the United States in some yet unselected part of Central America, and the founding of a new Empire, to be composed exclusively of this description of people.
Being sensible of the high honor conferred upon me by this special effort on your part, to remove what you suppose to be my objections to
this new enterprise, and thus to secure my hearty co-operation in the efforts of its friends to make it successful, I have read your statements and reasonings with very great respect, and perhaps with a spirit of deference for your ability and position as a statesman, not altogether favorable to such a presentation of my views as the importance of the subject demands.
Nevertheless I sincerely thank you for your letter, first because it gives me an occasion for expressing more fully than I have yet done, the sentiments I entertain respecting this new scheme, and secondly because it is a mark of consideration towards the race of which I am in part a representative. I am not sure that you will not subject yourself to harsh criticism for condescending to address me at all; but you are not alone in this sort of recognition of the manhood and moral agency of the negro. The great Thomas Jefferson, whose name you reverentially mention in your letter, once wrote to Benjamin Bannecker,2Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), a free black from Maryland, received very little formal education, but taught himself both mathematics and astronomy. He assisted Andrew Ellicott in surveying the District of Columbia in the early 1790s. From 1792 until 1797, Banneker published a highly respected almanac for the Chesapeake Bay region; he continued to provide ephemerides for other almanacs until 1804. In 1792, Banneker wrote Thomas Jefferson, the secretary of state, pleading for African American rights and enclosing a copy of his almanac. In reply, Jefferson praised the talents Banneker displayed as a credit to his race. Silvio A. Bedini, (New York, 1972); P. Lee Phillips, “The Negro, Benjamin Banneker; Astronomer and Mathematician, Plea for Universal Peace,” , 20:114–20 (1917); , 1:159; , 22–25. a black mathematician of Maryland, my native State, a noble letter, warmly commending his talents and learning; and General Andrew Jackson on the banks of the Mobile was not ashamed to address colored men as fellow-citizens and to call upon them in the sacred names of Liberty and Country, to assist their white fellow-citizens in repelling a proud and powerful enemy.3In 1814, Andrew Jackson led the Tennessee militia against a rebellion of Creek Indians. After being commissioned a major general in the U.S. Army, Jackson, needing to strengthen his forces in the autumn of 1814, appealed to the free blacks of Louisiana to join him. He promised them the same pay as whites and said their noncommissioned officers would be chosen from their ranks. Several units joined, and they played an important role in the Battle of New Orleans (January 1815). Jackson placed black troops on the left bank of the Mississippi River, just to the right of the advancing left column of the British. As the British assaulted Jackson’s position, these troops opened up a counterattack that was disastrous for the British. Franklin and Moss, , 109–10. The conduct of both these representatives of the earlier and better days of the Republic will shine even in the light of the highest future civilization. If therefore in consenting to appeal to my reason when you might have appealed to a less worthy consideration, you displease the mobocratic element of American society, I commend you to the fact that you letter places you in this respect as one of an illustrious trio of American statesmen.
In reference to my letter to General Pomeroy,4Samuel C. Pomeroy. which you mention as the occasion of your writing to me, it is proper to state, that though it does not contradict my sentiments touching this new colonization enterprise, it does not fully and clearly express them. It was meant to be a simple note of introduction of my sonLewis H. Douglass. to General Pomeroy as one desirous to join this contemplated Central American colony. My son is of age, forms his own opinions, pursues his own plans and agrees with me, and differs from me in the exercise of that liberty accorded to American young men generally, who have their own way to make in the world.
It is hardly necessary for me to say that against natural, self-moved, spontaneous emigration, where no pressure of legislation or public opinion is exerted to compel it, and colored men are left perfectly free to consult, their own interests and inclinations as to where they shall go, and in what lands they shall make their homes, there can be no objection whatever. Such emigration is going on every year, with benefit to those who go and without detriment to those who stay.
Man is emphatically a migratory animal, and by virtue of the possession of reason, he is master of all latitudes, longitudes, and altitudes. He can guard himself against nearly all the extremes of heat and cold, and other vicissitudes of climate. The negro in common with all other men possesses this divine faculty, and therefore can live any where in common with other men. Very evidently his choice of location should be left as it is to others, exclusively to himself. Neither the direct force of public law, nor the indirect but equally certain force of political theories should be wielded for his removal from the land of his birth. The negro has withstood under the most unfavorable conditions the rigors of this North American climate, for the space of more than two hundred years—From a company of twenty, landed on the banks of the James River in 1620,6In August 1619, a Dutch man-of-war brought twenty Africans to the Virginia colony of Jamestown. The colonial leader John Rolfe first wrote about this shipment of Africans in a January 1620 letter to Sir Edwin Sandys, the treasurer of the Virginia Company, which probably led Douglass to believe that the group of Africans landed in 1620 rather than 1619. John B. Boles, (Lexington, Ky., 1984), 3, 9; Nicholas J. Santoro, > (Lincoln, Neb., 2006), 6; Alden T. Vaughan, “Blacks in Virginia: A Note on the First Decade,” , 29:470 (July 1972). they have risen to be a mighty multitude, between four and five millions. If any people can ever become acclimatized, I think the negro can claim to be so in this country.
DEAR SIR: I am aware that I am writing to a statesman, and therefore desire to discuss this question of the removal of the colored people from this their native land, on a comprehensive basis. The idea of confining different varieties of men to different belts of the earth’s surface, with a view to keeping them separate and distinct, is chimerical in the extreme, and is ridiculously out of joint with this age of progress, and practical science.—By the triumphs of art and invention, the globe is no longer of incomprehensible dimensions, but familiar in all its parts. The ends of the earth have been brought together—The whole tendency of modern civilization, it seems to me is at war with this isolating and classifying of races. If such a process were resorted to and carried out in Russia, half
the grandeur and power of that great nation would vanish from the vision of the world.—Think of the Caucasians of that country sending off the Mongolians,7A historically nomadic Central Asian people chiefly inhabiting Mongolia, a large territory between China and Siberia. the Muscovites8The term “Muscovite” may refer to Russians in general, or it may refer specifically to the period known as “Muscovite Russia,” from approximately 1240 to 1613. Charles E. Ziegler, (Westport, Conn., 1999), 25. proposing the removal of the Finns,9Finnish Lutherans settled in the Ingrian region of Sweden from as early as 1617, but the area became part of the Russian Conquest and was annexed into the Russian Empire in 1721. The Ingrian Finns remained in the region and retained their dialect. Ian M. Matley, “The Dispersal of the Ingrian Finns,” , 38:1–16 (March 1979). and so on to the end of the chapter, and the absurdity of our sending off the blacks will readily appear.
You, my dear sir, put the necessity of colonizing the free negro not upon the ground that there is not room in this country to contain the growing population, not upon the ground of climate, not upon the ground that the colored people wish to leave, not upon the ground of their inferiority, but simply upon that of difference. I thank you for the admission that it is not because of the alleged inferiority of our race, that you and others press this new emigration scheme. Your ground is strictly ethnological. Briefly stated it is this:—We differ, and therefore ought not to live in the same country, and as the white race is the more powerful of the two, the colored race should go and leave this land entirely to the white race. So the matter stands. There is something a little grating in this allotment, but I am quite willing to admit that we, the colored people are the party whose business it is to go, if there is really any necessity for the separation; but I see nothing in the nature of the difference between the two races, to prevent their living peaceably and happily in the same country, under the same government.
It is you who with to get rid of us, not we who wish to get rid of you. We have readily adapted ourselves to your civilization, have carefully copied your manners and customs. We are Americans by birth and education, and have a preference for American institutions as against those of any other country. That we should wish to remain here is natural to us and creditable to you, and I repeat, I see no necessity for the separation.
But if we really wished to get away from this great Anglo Saxon race, the plan now commended to the free colored people would be unavailing. Indeed no plan of separation can permanently be successful. The white man’s face is seen, and the white man’s hand is felt in every part of the habitable globe. Asia bows to Teutonic sway, Europe acknowledges no other than Caucasian power, Africa is invaded by the white race on all sides,10In the second half of the nineteenth century, European influence in Africa began to rise. For centuries, Europeans had depended on an extensive trade network that brought slaves from the interior of Africa for export to their American colonies. Its population drained, and its governmental order weakened following years of warfare caused by the human slave trade, the continent became increasing susceptible to European hegemony. With the legal prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade in the early nineteenth century, European powers began to view Africa in economic terms beyond slavery. This increased interest in Africa manifested itself in the demand for further exploration as a means to chart the unknown areas of the continent. The invention of the steam engine and medication to combat malaria allowed Europeans to penetrate deeper into tropical Africa. By 1850, British influence had expanded along the Atlantic Coast as well as into the interior. France revived its trading posts in places such as Gambia and seized Algiers. Aided by superior industrial and military strength, these European countries made territorial claims in Africa and began to establish colonies there. Soon leaders in Belgium, Italy, and Germany took an interest in Africa, out of a desire to expand their empires as well. At the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called Scramble for Africa occurred, which led to the European powers colonizing most of the continent. Alice L. Conklin and Ian Christopher Fletcher, eds., (New York, 1999), 4; John E. Flint, ed., (Cambridge, 1976), 5:460, 464; J. F. A. Ajayi, “Africa at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century: Issues and Prospects,” in J. F. Ade Ajayi, ed., , 8 vols. (Berkeley, Calif., 1981–1993)) 6:6–9; Edward Bever, (Phoenix, Ariz., 1996), 24–25, 32–33. and the Celestial Empire,11For centuries, Chinese philosophy and religion emphasized heaven as a deity and as a central cultural theme. The term “celestial” is most associated with Daoism, a religion established during the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 C.E.), hence the reference to China as the Celestial Empire. In the early nineteenth century, European powers increased their interaction with China. In 1813 the British Parliament abolished the East India Company’s monopoly on trade with China, thus opening the Chinese market. With increased demand for Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain exports, the British found some Chinese eager to trade for opium, which had been long banned there. In an attempt to curb opium’s use, China ended all trade with Britain in December 1839, causing the British to declare war. Outmatched by the British, China ended the so-called Opium Wars in 1843 with a treaty that once again opened the country to trade. Other Western nations, eager to make a profit, signed similar treaties with China in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1856, war again erupted between Britain and China, with the French joining British incursions into the country. The war ended in 1860 with a new treaty, which further infringed on China’s sovereignty. Alan K. L. Chan and Yuet-Keung Lo, eds., (Albany, N.Y., 2010), 10; Benjamin I. Schwartz, (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 29, 43, 50–51, 316; Morris Rossabi, (Malden, Mass., 2014), 291, 294–97; C. P. Fitzgerald, , 3d ed. (New York, 1961), 557, 564. locked in unbroken mystery for ages, now sees all her gates opening and her walls falling down, as the white man approaches. You may send us to Central America this year, and the white man will be at our elbow next year. Indeed colonies of white men have already gone and are still going. I do not myself care to go into the water to get out of the rain. I have as much reason to expect that justice and civilization will eventually do their work on North Americans, as upon Central and South Americans. For after all, the trouble is that our white fellow countrymen have not yet reached the sublime height of civilization, at which each man is contented with his just proportion of the means of comfort and happiness.
But why, oh why! [M]ay not men of different races inhabit in peace and happiness this vast and wealthy country? Different races have lived in it very comfortably, and with one exception do now manage so to live.—What is it in the American branch of the Anglo-Saxon race which renders it incapable of tolerating the presence of any people in the country different from themselves? Are not Americans themselves a composite race?
Why may not men of different colors as well as well as men of different religions live civilly together under the same Government?—Was the spirit of nativism which swept ever our country a few years ago12There were numerous earlier episodes of nativist violence, but Douglass probably alludes to events in the 1850s. Irish and German Americans in virtually every American city were principal targets for Election Day violence. Though some of the violence might have been instigated by Democrats, most is believed to have been committed on behalf of the American, or Know-Nothing, party. Ray Allen Billington, (1938; Chicago, 1963), 180–81, 196–97, 275, 279, 420–21; Gary Lawson Browne, (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980), 191, 204–05. a beneficial spirit to be cherished, or a malignant spirit to be frowned upon by all generous men? Are there not tens of thousands in this country who shudder at the idea of association with an Irishman, and regret every ship’s company that lands upon our shores from the Emerald Isle?13Around 1795, William Drennen gave the nickname “Emerald Isle” to Ireland because of its widespread lush green fields. William Morris and Mary Morris, (New York, 1977), 201. Is not this an unworthy feeling and is it not very rapidly disappearing from amongst us, because of the great services the sons of that glorious Island are now performing for this country? Why should Americans be less tolerant of national differences in forms, features and complexion, than other nations of the white race, which in many other respects are far less enlightened that we?—Why is it that we hear of no schemes for getting rid of the free colored people of Cuba, or of the free colored people of Brazil? In the latter country where there are more than four million negro slaves,14Estimates of the number of black slaves in Brazil at particular times vary from source to source. No official governmental records were available before 1872. Most of the accounts that Douglass would have had access to estimated that between 2.5 million and 4 million slaves lived in Brazil in the middle of the nineteenth century. Douglass wrote several newspaper articles on Brazil, although he rarely mentioned the slave population. In February 1852, he estimated that between 3 million and 3.5 million slaves lived in Brazil. In 1858 another contemporary source, the Charleston (South Carolina) , claimed that the Brazilian slave population numbered around 2.5 million. When the first Brazilian census was completed in 1872, it recorded approximately 1.5 million slaves. Current historians are still unsure of the exact number of slaves in Brazil during the first half of the nineteenth century. , 19 February 1852; Charleston (S.C.) , 22 January 1858; William Dougal Christie, (London, 1865), 69–70; Robert Conrad, (Berkeley, Calif., 1972), 40; Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, (New York, 2010), 78; Herbert B. Alexander, “Brazilian and United States Slavery Compared,” , 7:350–51 (October 1922); Mary Wilhelmine Williams, “The Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Brazilian Empire: A Comparison with the United States of America,” >, 15:315 (July 1930). the free colored man is not subjected to expatriation. The moment the chains are taken from his limbs, he is at full liberty to rise to any position for which his talents and acquirements fit him.—Why should not the same be the case here? The white Brazilian is as white as the white American, and the black man in Brazil is as black as the black man here. What makes the difference? Is Protestantism less tolerant of national differences than Catholicism? Are Republics less liberal than monarchies? I will not believe anything so disgraceful to either. Political causes have operated against us and stirred up this spirit of colonization.—The same malign feelings and plottings which have brought this country to the brink of ruin, have operated against the free colored people. I am old enough to remember seeing black men on American war ships, uniformed and treated precisely as other marines.15While the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps denied enlistment to blacks after the Revolutionary War, navy recruiters continued to accept them into service. The navy had more difficulty than the other branches in recruiting servicemen, because of the nature of a sailor’s work. A sailor faced long cruises, harsh discipline, and dangerous work, which forced the navy to accept anyone willing to serve, regardless of color. In the War of 1812, blacks in the navy proved valuable crew members. For example, Oliver Hazard Perry praised black sailors and their performance in the defeat of the British at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie. Congress approved a practice that allowed native-born blacks to enlist—or reenlist—in the navy once the war ended. Blacks continued to serve on vessels, either in the navy or as privateers, well into the nineteenth century. In 1842, Senator John C. Calhoun failed in his attempt to ban from the naval service any blacks who were not cooks or servants. While the navy accepted black sailors more out of necessity than as recognition for their efforts in previous conflicts, blacks enjoyed relative equality with whites aboard warships and other vessels in the early nineteenth century. Bernard C. Nalty, (New York, 1986), 21, 26–27; Herbert Aptheker, “The Negro in the Union Navy,” , 32: 171, 173–74 (April 1947); Harold D. Langley, “The Negro in the Navy and Merchant Service, 1789–1860,” , 52:274, 276–77 (October 1967). At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, black men were legal voters in Virginia, North Carolina and a majority of the then United States.16After the adoption of the Constitution, most states in the North allowed black residents to vote as long as they met certain property requirements. Pennsylvania and New York, for example, established a property requirement for suffrage with no restrictions on race. Northern states started revoking black suffrage during the calls for universal white male suffrage in the 1820s and 1830s. States often removed property requirements for whites, but left them in place for free blacks. New York maintained its property requirement of $200 for blacks in 1822, making suffrage unattainable for all but the wealthy. Mary Frances Berry, Karen McGill Arrington, and William L. Taylor, eds.,
(Washington, D.C., 1992), 43–46; Winch, , 135. What has wrought the change in their position? I answer: the same causes which have changed us from a nation gradually becoming free from slavery into a nation rapidly becoming a vast slaveholding Empire, as we were before this tremendous rebellion broke out. The fact that colored men fought for this country in common with others, in the revolution, the fact that neither General Washington17George Washington. nor General Jackson were ashamed to fight by the side of black soldiers in the wars of seventy-six and 1812,18 African American soldiers served in both the army and navy during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Alexander Hamilton first proposed the recruitment of black slaves, offering freedom in exchange for military service. Slave owners would often send slaves to serve in their stead, and many saw action at the Battle of Monmouth, in 1778. The First Rhode Island Regiment was one of the first American regiments with companies composed almost entirely of black soldiers. During the War of 1812, two battalions of free blacks served with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, where they helped repulse the British attack. , ser. 1, 2:180; Gail Buckley, (New York, 2001), 24–25, 50–52. and the fact that colored men are not called to bear the same honorable part now in defense of the country and its institutions are explained by the same cause. Mr. Calhoun19Best known for his advocacy of states’ rights, John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850), a prominent politician from South Carolina, appeared on the national political scene in 1812 as one of the “war hawks” who entered Congress on a platform that supported the War of 1812. Calhoun quickly rose to prominence, and in his third congressional term, James Monroe appointed him secretary of war. In 1824 and 1828 his popularity allowed him to be elected vice president (under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson); however, Calhoun resigned that post and returned to defend the rights of his home state of South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis of 1831 and 1832. Election to the Senate from South Carolina ensured that Calhoun would remain on the national political scene, and he returned to the cabinet as secretary of state under John Tyler. John Niven, > (Baton Rouge, La., 1988); Charles M. Wiltse, , 3 vols. (New York, 1944–51); , 3:410–19. began a war upon free negroes about the same time that he began his war upon the American Union, and the results of his theories are patent to the world. To put enmity between the white people and the free colored people was an important element in the success of his ambitious plans. He would not allow them to bear arms or perform any but menial offices on board our ships or in our army.20Secretary of War Calhoun was asked on several occasions about the use of black troops in the U.S. Army. Calhoun issued directives that allowed African Americans to serve only as teamsters and laborers assisting the building of fortifications. Several subordinates complained to Calhoun that Northern recruiters were sending blacks into the military as soldiers against his directives. Clyde N. Wilson et al., eds., , 28 vols. (Columbia, S.C., 1959–2003), 6:148–49, 547–49. The teachings of this mighty man are not confined to the limits of the Southern Confederacy, but extend over the Northern States as well.
You are dear sir, quite right in supposing that one ground of my opposition to this colonization scheme is the belief that in some way it favors African slavery[.] I certainly do think it liable to this objection, and I am very glad to notice that you fully recognize the justness of indignant opposition to whatever may favor such slavery. But you deny that this plan of Colonization is properly liable to this objection, and on the contrary contend that it will certainly operate against slavery, since it will bring the products of free labor in competition with slave labor. I admit the force of this last argument, but I think that the good it will do in this respect, will be entirely outweighed by the immediate evil it will do in confusing the public mind as to the high moral duty of putting down slavery without delay.
I take it that of all the apologies for the continuance of slavery in this country, there is not one which so readily and completely blunts the moral sense and perverts the judgment as to the proper application of the principles of justice and liberty, as the ethnological apology. Difference of race is claimed by the superficial as a justification of almost every species of injustice and cruelty, and it is this difference of race which is at bottom of the present colonization scheme. It requires very little power of discrimination to detect the sympathetic relation between the doctrines of colonization and the doctrines of slavery. The argument that makes it necessary for the black man to go away when he is free, equally makes it necessary for him to be a slave while he remains here. I do not understand you or any as advocating the removal of the slaves from the United States. If the plan contemplated the removal of the whole colored population, slave and free simultaneously, the question would wear to my eyes a very different aspect. So far as I know, however, the first legislation for removing the slave colored population from the United States, has yet to be proposed. Of such a measure neither in the slave States nor in the free, has there arisen a single advocate. So far from wishing to send away their slaves, because of a difference of race, it is a standing complaint of the white people of the South that they are legally deprived of the privilege of bringing more of them from Africa. In this respect Central American colonization stands on the same footing with all its predecessors. The free colored man, not the slave colored man, has been the special object of all schemes of colonization. It was in perfect keeping with this spirit of colonization for Mr. Doolittle,21 James Rood Doolittle (1815–97) was born in Hampton, New York, and graduated from Geneva (Hobart) College in 1834. After practicing law in western New York for thirteen years, he moved to Racine, Wisconsin, in 1851. Originally a Democrat with free-soil principles, Doolittle joined the Republican party in 1856 and was elected to the U.S. Senate the following year. Although a supporter of a vigorous military effort in the Civil War, he favored gradual emancipation and colonization, changing his views with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. When he refused to follow the Wisconsin legislature’s instructions to support the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, that body called on him to resign. Doolittle voted for acquittal in Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial. Aligning himself with the Democrats after 1868, he lost his Senate seat and subsequent races for governor and the U.S. House of Representatives. LaWanda C. Fenlason Cox and John Henry Cox, (1963; New York, 1976), 215–16, 224, 227; Howard K. Beale, (1930; New York, 1958), 123–31; , 2:201–02; , 5:274–75. a Republican Senator, to give out as he was understood to do, that he was opposed to all measures for Emancipation not coupled with a measure for colonizing the freed persons.—You can hardly blame me I think, for believing the colonization scheme favorable to slavery. The theory that the slaves should remain slaves until provision can be made for getting them out of the country, thrusts between them and liberty all the mountains of expense and difficulty necessary to be overcome, before they can be removed, and as these difficulties cannot be overcome in any conceivable time, so slavery has a lease of life given it by colonization, of inconceivable duration. The whole scheme therefore, becomes an opiate to the troubled conscience of the nation and barricades with insurmountable difficulties the natural course of freedom to the slave. Besides many other objections to this scheme for which you ask my support and co-operation, I have one which I trust, will commend itself to you both as a Statesman and a Philanthropist. This it is, the measure serves the bad purpose of keeping the free colored people in an unsettled condition, in a constant state of alarm, paralyses their energies, arrests the natural development of their resources, hinders the acquisition of property, and breaks up and destroys the sentiment of patriotism. You, dear sir, understand the constitution of the human mind too well, and have too long studied the effects of social forces, to make it necessary for me to dwell even for a moment on the importance of this point. A Government, a country, assured protection and permanence of location, are the essential social conditions to that steady exertion out of which character and wealth arise. For more than forty years the free colored people of this country had been systematically pursued by these crippling schemes of colonization. Men professing to interpret the designs of Divine Providence towards them, have continually beset them with such schemes, till they have almost dropped their hold on the only solid means of disproving the necessity of their removal from the country.
In conclusion, throwing out of sight all questions of justice, all deficiencies in the present scheme of colonization, all violence done to our love of home and country, all considerations of past services, pushing aside the fact that we are now asked to go, nobody knows where, and to establish an Empire within an Empire already existing, to go, where perhaps we are not wanted, making no account of the expense and trouble of the undertaking and the great fact that colored laborers are and must be a constant source of wealth to this nation, the folly of sending away the wealth of the country, saying nothing of the millions of broad acres, which with all the Emigration from the old world will remain untilled for centuries to come, I consider this new scheme of colonization in view of the tremendous crisis now upon the nation, most shockingly inconsistent. Instead of sending any of the loyal people out of the country, it seems to me that at this time our great nation should hail with joy every loyal man, who has an arm and a heart to fight as a kinsman and clansman, to be marshaled to the defence and protection of a common country.
Confidently believing that out of this terrible baptism of blood and fire, through which our nation is passing, and into which it has been plunged, not as has been most cruelly affirmed, because of the presence of men of color in the land, but by malignant and potent vices, nursed into power and activity at the poisoned breast of slavery it will come at last, renewed in its health, purified in its spirit freed from slavery, vastly greater and higher than it ever was before in all the elements of advancing civilization.
I am, dear sir, respectfully, Your obedient servant,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
PLSr: , 5:724–26 (October 1862).