JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Dublin[, Ire.] 31 Dec[ember] 1862.

DEAR SIR

Accept my warm thanks for your very flattering [illegible] of my lecture in the number of your paper which you have done me the favour to send me.¹Cairnes addressed the Dublin Young Men’s Christian Association on 30 October 1862. His lecture was subsequently published. Douglass’s lengthy critique of the lecture was published in the December 1862 issue of under the title “Dr. Cairnes on the Rebellion,—The London Inquirer and the Proclamation.” >, 5:754–56 (December 1862); (Dublin, Ire., 1862). I have read it with extreme pleasure, not however unmingled with a sense of pain that words should have escaped me, which, I admit, when unexplained, seem to countenance a calumny, which very naturally and very properly excites your indignation. Permit me now to say, that in the phrase to which you take exception² In his lecture, Cairnes states that “four millions of the African race—a race capable,— . . . not merely of feeling the obligations and performing the duties of rational creatures, but of receiving a very considerable amount, of intellectual cultivation— . . . have . . . been reduced to a condition in which they are simply brutes, with the instincts of brutes, and with no aspiration beyond the aspiration of the brute.” , 15. nothing was further from my intention than to express an opinion derogatory to the negro race. I merely, sought to indicate the degradation to which, as I believe, human beings have been brought by the system of Southern slavery. I say as I believe, for certainly the impression left upon my mind (by a pretty extensive study of works upon the South) respecting the condition of the mass of the plantation slaves is what I described it in that passage. At the same time, I never thought of attributing this to any incapacity for civilization in the negro; and I think I may say that the whole scope of my remarks both in the lecture and in my larger work, shows that this was my meaning. If, for example, you will look to p. 15 of my lecture (of which I send you a copy) you will see that I there distinctly claim for the negro a capacity for high mental cultivation; and, if I have not expressed myself more strongly, it is only because I wished to strengthen my argument by putting the case in the lowest grounds.

As to the question of fact, you are, of course, a far better judge than I can pretend to be. I can only say that in what I said I stated my honest opinion, without the slightest wish to disparage the negro race. If its condition under slavery be not what I have described it, then the Southern system is less accursed than I have thought tt.

Should the lecture go into a fourth edition, as I think probable, I shall not fail to append an explanatory note to the the objectionable passage, and shall accompany it with an extract from your article.

The news of the catastrophe at Fredericksburgh³Confederates under General Robert E. Lee defeated Union troops led by General Ambrose E. Burnside on 13 December 1862 on the heights just south of the Rappahannock River in Virginia at the First Battle of Fredericksburg. This key battle between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac was Lee’s most one-sided victory. The following month, Lincoln replaced Burnside with General Joseph Hooker. Heidler and Heidler, , 2:774–79. has just reached me. What is to be the result? It seems to me that one hope now remains for freedom—a negro army!

Believe me, dear Sir, With warm sympathy, Very truly yrs

J. E. CAIRNES.

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 774–76, FD Papers, DLC.