Frederick Douglass James Redpath, June 29, 1860
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JAMES REDPATH1Born in Berwick-on-Tweed, Scotland, James Redpath (1833-91) immigrated with his family to the United States about 1850 and soon found work as a reporter for Horace Greeley’s New York . In the mid-1850s, he traveled throughout the South, reporting on the institution of slavery and calling for its immediate abolition. By the late 1850s, Redpath had moved to Kansas, where he edited the Doniphan and supported the fight to make the territory a nonslaveholding state. Redpath befriended John Brown in Kansas; after the latter’s execution, Redpath became his first biographer, writing (Boston, 1860). In 1859 and 1860, Redpath toured Haiti as a reporter and returned to the United States as the official Haitian lobbyist for diplomatic recognition, a status he secured within two years. During the Civil War, he was a front-line correspondent with the Union army commanded by William Tecumseh Sherman, who in 1865, when South Carolina was under federal military occupation, appointed Redpath superintendent of public schools in that state. Returning north, Redpath in 1868 organized the first professional lecturing bureau, which included Douglass among its clients. During the 1880s, he returned to his earlier career as a journalist-activist by editing newspapers and writing books and pamphlets on behalf of Irish nationalism, woman suffrage, and socialism. Douglass to James Redpath, 10 April 1869, Miscellaneous Mss., ICIU; John R. McKivigan, (Ithaca, N.Y., 2008); Charles F. Horner, (New York, 1926); Willis D. Boyd, "James Redpath and American Negro Colonization in Haiti, 1860-1862,” , 12:169-82 (October 1955); , 15:443-44.
Rochester, [N.Y.] 29 June 1860.
JAMES REDPATH, ESQ.:
MY DEAR SIR,—
Your kind note,2 Redpath’s invitation to Douglass has not been located. inviting me to meet with yourself and other friends on
the 4th of July, at North Elba,3 In the September issue of his , Douglass reprinted a lengthy report of the Boston ’s account of the dedication ceremony for John Brown’s gravesite in New Elba, New York, on 4 July 1860. Several of Brown’s sons and a couple of his old antislavery associates from Kansas days spoke at the event. One of the latter, Richard J. Hinton, read a number of letters from prominent abolitionists, including this one from Douglass, sending regrets for not attending. ., 27 July 1860; , 3:331—33 (September 1860). came into my hands only yesterday. Had it reached me only a day or two earlier, I certainly should have complied with it. Very gladly would I assemble with you and others on that revolutionary day, to do honor to the memory of one whom I regard as man
of this nineteenth century. Little, indeed, can you and I do to add lustre to his deathless fame. The principles of John Brown, attested by a life of spotless integrity and sealed by his blood, are self-vindicated. His name is covered with a glory so bright and enduring, as to require nothing at our hands to increase or perpetuate it. Only for our own sake, and that of enslaved and imbruted humanity, need we assemble. To have been acquainted with John Brown, shared his counsels, enjoyed his confidence, and sympathized with the great objects of his life and death, I esteem as among the highest privileges of my life. We do but honor ourselves in doing honor to him, for it implies the possession of qualities akin to his.
I have little hope of the freedom of the slave by peaceful means. A
long course of peaceful slaveholding has placed the slaveholders beyond
the reach of moral and humane considerations. They have neither ears
nor hearts for the appeals of justice and humanity. While the slave will
tamely submit his neck to the yoke, his back to the lash, and his ankle
to the fetter and chain, the Bible will be quoted, and learning invoked to
justify slavery. The only penetrable point of a tyrant is the .
The outcry that they make, as to the danger of having their ,
is because they know they deserve to have them . The efforts of John
Brown and his brave associates, though apparently unavailing, have done
more to upset the logic and shake the security of slavery, than all other
efforts in that direction for twenty years.
The sleeping dust, over which yourself and friends propose to meet on
the 4th, cannot be revived; but the noble principles and disinterested devo-
tion which led John Brown to step serenely to the gallows and lay down
his life, will never die. They are all the more potent for his death.
Not unwisely are the eyes and hearts of the American slaves and their
friends turned to the lofty peaks of the Alleghanies. The innumerable
glens, caves, ravines and rocks of those mountains, will yet be the hiding-
places of hunted liberty. The eight-and-forty hours of John Brown’s school
in the mountains of Virginia, taught the slaves more than they could have
otherwise learned in a half century. Even the mistake of remaining in the
arsenal after the first blow was struck, may prove the key to future suc-
cess. The tender regard which the dear old man evinced for the lives of the
tyrants—and which should have secured him his life—will not be imi-
tated by future insurgents. Slaveholders are as insensible to magnanimity
as to justice, and the measure they mete must be meted to them again. My
heart is with you.
Very truly,
FRED’K DOUGLASS.
PLSr: ., 29 June 1860.