Frederick Douglass William J. Wilson, August 8, 1865
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM J. WILSON1William Joseph Wilson (1818-?), a free black man from New Jersey, operated a boot- making shop in New York City as early as the 1830s. In the 1840s, he became a secondary school teacher and later the principal of a black school in Brooklyn. He was an advocate for black education and encouraged greater access and increased attendance. Eventually, he opened his own library. Wilson campaigned to secure the franchise for New York African Americans, and he served as a member of the Committee of Thirteen, organized by New York black leaders to stop enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. In the early 1850s, Wilson’s letters appeared frequently in , and Douglass referred to him as the newspaper’s “Brooklyn correspondent.” Wilson’s letters to the newspaper, published under the pseudonym “Ethiop,” were often part of an ongoing debate on the condition of blacks in New York and the United States. Wilson’s most frequent sparring partner in the war of letters was “Communipaw,” actually James McCune Smith, a prominent black physician in New York City. Carleton Mabee, (Syracuse, N.Y., 1979), 54, 63-67, 123, 129, 155, 158; Foner and Walker, , 1:79-88; Quarles, , 87, 212, 229; Ripley, , 4:144-45n.
Rochester, N.Y. 8 Aug[ust] 1865.
W. J. WILSON, ESQ.—
MY DEAR SIR:
In answer to your note requesting me to allow my name to stand as one
of the officers of the “Educational Monument Association,”2 In the spring of 1865, Henry Highland Garnet and other prominent black leaders in Washington, D.C., formed the Colored People’s Educational Monument Association. The main purpose of this organization was to establish a school for the children of freedmen as a memorial to Lincoln and his leadership in the movement to emancipate the slaves. Following its foundation, the association began to collect funds for the proposed National Lincoln Memorial Institute. In the spring of 1866, advertisements for donations ceased, and the proposed school was never constructed. Kirk Savage, (Princeton, N.J., 1997) 93; , 34; Holzer, Medford, and Williams, , 42-43. I beg to state
that I cannot allow my name as you request, nor can I, with my present
views, favor the plan adopted by the Association. On many accounts, I
wish I could unite with you in this enterprise, and not the least among
them is the pleasure I experience in finding myself cooperating with yourself,
and other gentlemen connected with this Educational Monument Association,
for the common elevation and improvement of our condition as
a people. But I must be true to my conviction of fitness.
When I go for anything, I like to go strong, and when I cannot go thus,
I had better not go at all. You cannot want a man among you who cannot
bring his whole heart to the work. I can’t do this, and hence will not fill the
place, which, if filled at all, should be filled more worthily.
You will, my old friend, naturally inquire why I cannot do this? Here
there is no difficulty but the time required to answer. There is much I could
say, but I must be brief. First of all, then, I must say, this whole monument
business, in its present shape, strikes me as an offence against good taste,
and as calculated to place the colored people in an undesirable and discred-
itable position before the country. Such, I say, is my present conviction. Do
not consider me hostile to monuments nor to colleges; I am not to either.
Things good in standing alone are not always good when .
Now, a monument by the colored people, erected at the expense of the
colored people, in honor of the memory of Abraham Lincoln, expressive
of their gratitude and affection for their friend and great benefactor, how-
ever humble and inexpensive the marble, I could understand and appreci-
ate, and the world would understand and appreciate the effort.3 While the entire country mourned Lincoln’s death, the reaction of African Americans to his death was particularly strong. Since many blacks viewed Lincoln as their great benefactor and emancipator, they felt immensely loyal to him and publicly mourned his loss. When Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy, went to the White House on 15 April 1865, the morning of the president’s death, he encountered a group of several hundred blacks standing in the rain, weeping for their loss. An emotional Welles remarked that the group’s “hopeless grief affected me more than almost anything else.” At a meeting in Rochester on 17 April, Douglass called Lincoln’s death “a personal as well as national calamity.” He continued: “Yet I feel that though Abraham Lincoln dies the Republic lives;
though that great and good man . . . is struck down by the hand of the assassin, yet I know that the nation is saved and liberty is established forever.” His words reflected the sentiments of many freedmen toward Lincoln and demonstrated why they reacted so strongly to his death. Milwaukee (Wisc.) , 25 April 1865; Gideon Welles, , ed. Edgar Thaddeus Welles, 3 vols. (Boston, 1911), 2:287-88, 290; Thomas Goodrich, (Bloomington, Indiana, 2005), 141, 149; Thomas Reed Turner, (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), 27.
A monu-
ment like this would express one of the holiest sentiments of the human
heart. It would be, as all such offerings should be, free from all taint of
self-love or self-interest on our part, as a class. It would be our own act and
deed, and would show the after-coming generations, in some degree, the
sentiments awakened among the oppressed by the death of Mr. Lincoln.
A monument of this kind, erected by the colored people—that is, by the
voluntary offerings of the colored people—is a very different thing from
a monument built by money contributed by white men to enable colored
people to build a monument. We should bury our own dead and build
our own monuments, and all monuments which we would build to the
memory of our friends, if we would not invite the continued contempt of
the white race upon our heads. Now, whenever a movement shall be made
for such a monument, I am with it, heart and soul, and will do my best to
make it a success. So much for the monument part of your plan.
Now a word of the college. I am heartily in favor of all needful educa-
tional institutions for the present education of colored people, even though
they be separate institutions. Present circumstances are the only apology
for such institutions. When a colored lad or girl can go to school or col-
lege with the white people of the country, it is best for all that they should
do so. Hence, I am not for building up permanent separate institutions for
colored people of any kind. Even in the matter of the college, therefore,
in so far as the idea of permanent isolation is contemplated, I am opposed
to your plan. The lesson now flashed upon the attention of the Ameri-
can people, the lesson which they must learn, or neglect to do so at their
peril, is that “equal manhood means equal rights,” and further, that the
American people must stand each for all and all for each, without respect
to color or race. The spirit of the age is against all institutions based upon
prejudice, or providing for prejudice of race. I, therefore, am opposed to
doing anything looking to the perpetuity of prejudice. I expect to see the
colored people of this country enjoying the same freedom, voting at the
same ballot-box, using the same cartridge box, going to the same schools,
attending the same churches, travelling in the same street-cars, in the
same railroad-cars, on the same steamboats, proud of the same country,
fighting the same foe, and enjoying the same peace and all its advantages.
This is no new position with me. Having held it when the prospect was
dark, I shall not relinquish it now when the clouds are disappearing and
the heavens are bright.
But, supposing the college a desirable thing, I am opposed to obtaining
it in the way proposed. As I understand the matter, you propose to
establish a general collecting agency, persons to travel and solicit from the public, white as well as colored, to enable
you to build a monument to the memory of your departed friend and benefactor,
which monument you propose shall be in the form of a college, for
the exclusive use of colored people. If I am right in this statement, I beg
you to hear me a moment further.
A college is a college, and has its own peculiar claims, and ought to
stand upon its own merits. A monument is a monument, and has its own
peculiar claims and merits. The two things spring from different motives,
and are suggestive of different ideas and sentiments. For a monument,
by itself, and upon its own merits, I say . For a college, by itself,
(with the limitations already suggested,) and upon its own merits, I say
good. But for a college-monument, or for a monument-college, I do not
say good; for the things, however good separately, are incongruous and
offensive when connected as now proposed. The whole scheme is deroga-
tory to the character of the colored people of the United States. It carries
on its front a distasteful implication.
It places the paddle-wheels of the colored man’s boat in the tide of the
popular grief, with a view to his special advantage. I am for washing the
black man’s face, (that is, educating his mind,) for that is a good thing to
be done, and I appreciate the nation’s tears for Abraham Lincoln; but Iam
not so enterprising as to think of turning the nation’s veneration for our
martyred President into a means of advantage to the colored people, and
of sending around the hat to a mourning public.
When the colored people want a college, let them beg for a college on
its own merits, and in the name of the living, and I am with them. When
they want a monument to perpetuate the memory of a good man, I am
with them. But when they want to raise a college for themselves out of the
general affection of the American people for the dead, I am not with them,
and frankness requires me to say so in all earnestness. If these views are
ill-founded, and you can show them to be so, I shall only be too happy to
abandon them.
With best wishes and great respect for you, personally, I am, dear sir,
very truly yours,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
PLSr: ., 29 September 1865.