A Friendly Word to Maryland: an Address Delivered in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 17, 1864
A FRIENDLY WORD TO MARYLAND: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND,
ON 17 NOVEMBER 1864
A Friendly Word to Maryland: A Lecture, Delivered by Fred’k Douglass. Esq. in Bethel
Church, on the 17th of November, 1864 (Baltimore, 1864) and Liberator, 23 December
1864.
Barely a fortnight had passed since the ratification of Maryland’s “Free
Constitution” when Frederick Douglass, in the words of the Syracuse Jour-
nal, returned to his home state “bold as a lion, and fearless of molestation.”
Of the six speeches Douglass gave in Baltimore, including a delivery of his
“Mission of the War” lecture, attention focused on his opening appearance on
17 November at Bethel A. M. E. Church on Saratoga Street in Fells Point.
There, a large audience, mostly black but including prominent white citizens
as well, gathered to welcome the “illustrious exile.” Douglass entered the
church of his youth arm-in-arm with his sister, Eliza Bailey Mitchell, from
whom he had been separated for nearly thirty years. As they walked up the
aisle, the choir sang “Home, Sweet Home!” and the assembled well-wishers,
according to the Cambridge (Md.) Intelligencer, “gave vent to their feelings
in joyous bursts of enthusiasm.” A “perfect torrent of rapturous applause”
greeted Douglass’s formal introduction. During the three hours the former
slave spoke from a podium bedecked with flags and a “Welcome Home” sign,
“not a man or woman left the church; nor . . . evinced the faintest indication
of weariness,” reported the Intelligencer’s editor. “Securing from the first the
earnest attention of his auditors, they soon became oblivious to all else but the
orator and his theme.” Douglass’s speech soon appeared as a pamphlet. That
text remains the most complete record of this lecture, but it includes only the
remarks Douglass directed to white Marylanders and omits the “few things”
he indicates he wishes to say to the “colored citizens of this State.” Over a
month later, on 23 December 1864, the Liberator published the “excellent
advice to the colored people of Maryland” that Douglass had offered “in a
recent lecture in Baltimore.” Although that excerpt has not been definitively
dated, its form and content strongly suggest that it is the missing conclusion of
Douglass’s address of 17 November, the most frequently reported of his
Baltimore speeches, and it is printed as such here. Douglass’s homecoming
was marred when a planned reunion with his former mistress, Sophia Auld,
was angrily prevented by her son Benjamin. Following his Baltimore ap-
pearances, Douglass lectured in Washington, DC, and Virginia. Lib., 2
November, 2 December 1864; Syracuse (NY) Journal, 19 November 1864;
Boston Commonwealth, 26 November 1864; NASS, 26 November, 3, 10
December 1864; New York Independent, 1 December 1864; Douglass to [?],
1 January 1865, in Syracuse (NY) Journal, 20 March 1865; Benjamin F.
Auld to Douglass, 11 September 1891, General Correspondence File, reel 6,
frames 240-41, and undated newspaper clipping, Subject File, reel 9, frame
791, FD Papers, DLC; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 149-50,
161-66.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: My first sentiment is one of gratitude. I
rejoice exceedingly in the privilege now afforded me. I thank you for the
warmth and earnestness of this welcome.
Looking forward with much interest to this visit to the city of my
boyhood, I expected a cordial welcome at the hands of the companions of
my youth; but I could not anticipate the extent and depth of this welcome.
From my heart, I thank you for this expression of your good will.
Now I owe you a little debt, and perhaps, I ought to pay it at once, since
short credit makes lasting friends. I owe you an apology, not a long one—
for even a short apology is distasteful and tedious.
First of all, let me say I am not responsible for all that you may have
heard and read concerning me—certainly not for the hand-bill announcing
me for a speech this evening.
I have sometimes seen myself referred to as an orator, but for the life of
me, I cannot tell why that reputation is accorded me. I have excited some
interest years ago in telling a simple story of human bondage, such as a
thousand other Maryland colored boys could have told with equal skill and
effect—but beyond that there is little excuse for making this noise and
getting together this vast audience to-night. If I could make a speech any
where, you would think I could do it right here, in this city of Baltimore,
here among my old friends, in this church, standing on the very spot where
I first came to worship, more than thirty years ago, where I listened to the
gentle voice of father Waters,1Douglass probably refers to Edward Waters (1780-1847), who was born a slave in West River, Maryland. An early leader ofthe A. M. E. Church, Waters was licensed as a local preacher in 1810 and later ordained a deacon (1818) and an elder (1820). In response to the denomination’s growing episcopal demands, he was elected the third bishop of the A. M. E. Church in 1836. During his episcopate he left the Baltimore area only to attend the Philadelphia and New York annual conferences. He often preached at Bethel and made an impression similar to Douglass’s on another Baltimorean, the future bishop James A. Handy. Bishop Waters resigned in 1845 and died two years later of injuries sustained in an accident. George F. Bragg, Men of Maryland (Baltimore, 1925), 145; Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1891 ; New York, 1969), 16, 19, 94, 112-13; R. R. Wright, The Bishops of the African Methodist Church (Nashville, 1963), 22, 203-04, 355-56. for the first time; where I heard Peck2A free-bom Maryland black, Nathaniel Charles Peck (1789-1867) had accompanied an expedition led by Daniel Coker to Liberia in 1820 but soon returned to Baltimore. Peck later became a minister in the A. M. E. Church and was a popular class leader in the Bethel Church in the early 1840s. When Daniel A. Payne became pastor of Bethel in 1844, he quarreled with Peck about the need to construct a new larger building for the congregation. After Payne‘s triumph on this issue, Peck seceded and founded the First Colored Methodist Protestant Church in the city. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 232-34; Bragg, Men of Maryland, 145-46; Leroy Graham, Baltimore: The Nineteenth Century Black Capital (New York, 1982), 73-76, 119; Charles D. Killian, “Bishop Daniel A. Payne: Black Spokesman for Reform" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1971), 38-39. and
Cannon thunder the gospel into sinners’ ears; here in this city, where in my
boy days I listened to the eloquence of Lewis G. Wells,3Lewis G. Wells (?— 1832) was a native of Baltimore who had studied at that city‘s Washington Medical College in preparation for migrating to Liberia. Wells instead remained in Baltimore to practice medicine and also became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church and a leading black mason. On another occasion Douglass recalled that Wells was the first black he had ever seen deliver a lecture using a written manuscript. Wells died while fighting Baltimore’s cholera epidemic of 1832. Bragg, Men ofMaryland, 131; Graham, Baltimore, 95, 109, 215-16. Joseph Wilson,
William Douglass,4William Douglass (1805—62) was bom in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a blacksmith. Educated at the school taught by Daniel Coker, Douglass was the first ordained black minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the South. Shortly after becoming a deacon in 1834, he assumed the rectorship of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. This parish, established in 1793, grew out of the Free African Society where Absalom Jones had served as Douglass‘s predecessor. In 1836 Douglass was raised to the priesthood. An early critic of colonization, Douglass was a race leader in Philadelphia, and a skilled orator and author. In 1854 he published Sermons Preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and in 1862, Annals of the First African Church. in the United States of America, Now Styled the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Philadelphia. Bragg, Men ofMaryland, 62-65; William Wells Brown, The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (New York, 1863), 271-73; Carol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches, 1760-1840 (New York, 1973), 156-57, 178-79; Vernon Loggins, The Negro Author: His Development in America (New York, 1931), 190-91. and other eminent colored preachers; here in this city
where I have followed the soldiers all day, to take a whipping for my
absence at night; here where I have fought the “town boys” on city block,
on Sunday, and limped home to bed at night bruised and marred for my
pains; here in this city where I abandoned all these evil courses, and
became a thoughtful boy. Well, just for this reason, you must not expect
much at my hands this evening.
My Friends: This occasion is suggestive of many reminiscences, com-
parisons, and contrasts—some pleasant, some sad—but all instructive.
I left the State of Maryland more than a quarter of a century ago, I was
then in the full fresh bloom of early manhood, when each sense and faculty
of the mind is wide awake, keenly alive and intensely active—not one lock
of all my hair, was tinged by time or sorrow—I was full of the aspirations
of youth, and perhaps ambition also. But now though not old, I am not
young, and the early frosts of winter are already beginning to thicken
visibly on my head, and many of the fancies of youth have yielded to the
disenchanting power of time, and the stern realities of practical life.
Time has, I am glad to see, touched many of you gently— I see a few
faces here that I saw thirty years ago, some of them but slightly changed.
They are lit up by the same fires that warmed and cheered me in youth, but
alas! I miss from this congregation many who would have been here were
they still among the living. But I will not trust myself with the train of
thought and feeling which rises in this direction. I rejoice that any of us
have been spared to meet again on earth, and especially that we are permit-
ted to meet here on the soil of our birth—to meet not only as men, but as
Marylanders—children of Maryland—the land at whose sparkling foun-
tains we first quenched our thirst—the land whose fields, when we were
hungry, first gave us bread—to meet here, upon our own dear native soil,
overspread with the holiest recollections both of joy and sorrow is an high
privilege and one never to be forgotten. No speaker, I think, ever appeared
before a public assembly, in circumstances more unusual and striking than I
do this evening.
Had any man told me, four years ago, that I should be here to-night,
speaking to a Baltimore audience, I should have thought him about as
insane as if he had predicted that I should some day go on a mission to the
inhabitants of the moon!
But this is a day of wonders. We are surprised by some strange occur-
rence, some unlooked for event, some startling change, almost every hour.
I detest egotism, in a public speaker, but the circumstances are person-
al. The fact that I am where I am, is really the subject, and the whole
subject for our consideration this evening. My life has been distinguished
by two important events, dated about twenty-six years apart. One was my
running away from Maryland, and the other is my returning to Maryland
to-night.
How shall I speak to you, on such an occasion? All former experience
at public speaking, avails me nothing here. The very interest of the occa-
sion is a check on speech.
When a man confronts Niagara, for the first time in his life, he is awed
into silence by the grandeur and sublimity of the scene. The voice of nature,
so august and impressive, overwhelms the voice of art.5Douglass describes his own first impressions of Niagara Falls in a holograph dated 2 December 1843 that was preserved in a bound volume of autographs collected by the Western Anti-Slavery Society. “When I came into its awful presence,” Douglass writes, “the power of discription failed me, an irrisistible power closed my lips completely." Frederick Douglass, “Niagara,” in “An Anti-Slavery Album of Contributions from Friends of Freedom,“ folio 183. Benjamin Jones Papers. DLC; Sylvia Lyons Render, "Freedom." Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 31: 161-65 (July 1974).
You have called upon me to speak, and I have obeyed your call; but
what can I say, which will be half so eloquent, commanding or touching, as
the thought that now fills every mind and thrills every heart. Even these
dumb walls, and this silent air in all their stillness, are full of most eloquent
and convincing speech. They whisper to our very inmost souls, that the
spirit of liberty has been here, and like the breath of the Almighty, has
touched our chains, and left them broken.
That Maryland is now a glorious Free State, that the revolution is
genuine, full and complete, that there need be no doubt of it whatever, on
the subject, the fact that I speak here to-night, and that you listen, with
none to molest, or make us afraid, is a satisfactory attestation, and will be
so regarded wherever the fact is known.
The return of the dove to the ark, with a leaf, was no surer sign that the
flood had subsided from the mountains of the east,6This incident is described in Gen. 8: 8-11. than my coming
among you is a sign that the bitter waters of slavery have subsided, from the
majestic hills, and fertile valleys of Maryland. Since I came to manhood,
slavery and I could not live in peace in the same State, and I could not now
be here but that slavery is absent. Do you want to know why I left my native
State for a strange land? I will tell you who are to blame for it. The fathers
of this republic waged a seven years war for political liberty. Thomas
Jefferson taught me that my bondage was, in its essence, worse than ages of
that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose. Your statesmen and
orators, your poets and songsters, your press and your pulpit, were con—
stantly glorifying the blessings of liberty. “Where liberty dwells, there is
my country”7The origin of this phrase is unknown, but English soldier and politician Algernon Sidney (1622-83) popularized it as his motto. DNB, 18: 202-10. was whispered in my ears, by a thousand invisible speakers.
But above all, there was one idea, rule or principle, call it what you will,
which entirely took possession of me, even in childhood, and which stood
out strongly, invincible against every argument drawn from nature and
scripture in favor of slavery. What was that idea, rule, or principle? This it
was: “Every man is the original, natural, rightful, and absolute owner of
his own body; or in other words, every man is himself, is his self, if you
please, and belongs to himself, and can only part from his self ownership,
by the commission of crime. This idea was as deeply fixed in my mind
forty years ago, when living with my old master8Aaron Anthony. on Col. Edward Lloyd’s
estate, as it ever was after going North and listening to the arguments of
William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, and Wendell Phillips. My right to
seek a free country was as palpable, as my desire to be free was irresistible.
I own that some violence was done to my feeling and sense of honor, in
leaving without giving notice of the fact, and without saying good-bye, to
many of my old friends. But greater men than I have taken a hasty plate of
soup, and had their movements controlled by necessity, military and
otherwise.
Among the contrasts suggested by this occasion, is the fact, that I left
here a slave, a fugitive slave, I return to you a freeman, doubly a freeman;
first in that I was by nature born free, and was bought out of slavery by
generous friends in England; and now, secondly, by the free constitution
which Maryland has just adopted and proclaimed as the law of the State.
Then Maryland was a Slave State, now Maryland is a Free State. Then
freedom was the dream, the hope and the prayer of the colored people—
now it is a glorious fact accomplished. Then I left the State in a hurry—but
now I can leave it by easy stages and at my leisure. Then I left, shaking the
dust from my feet, as leaving a doomed city, now I return to greet with an
affectionate kiss, the humblest pebble from the shores of your glorious
Chesapeake. I did not leave because I loved Maryland less, but freedom
more. Then the word emancipation could not be spoken safely, now it is the
acknowledged law. Then the spread of knowledge among colored people
of this State was esteemed as dangerous to the institutions of the State—
now the chief danger is from the prevalence of ignorance. Then, even the
Sabbath School was, in the rural districts, prohibited; now it may spring up,
unchecked everywhere. Then, I taught school in this city, by stealth;37Douglass’s first experience as a teacher probably occurred during his earliest residence in Baltimore from 1826 to 1833. In his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass recalls that “in Baltimore, I could, occasionally, get into a Sabbath school, among the free children, and receive lessons, with the rest; but, having already learned to read and to write, I was more of a teacher than a pupil, even there." Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York, 1855), 199; idem, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1893; New York, 1941), 125. now
the same can be done openly. Then, Mr. Austin Woolfolk traded openly, in
the bodies and souls of men. as though they were horses, sheep, or swine;
now this infernal traffic, even then despised by respectable society, in this
State, has come to an end. Then, a whipping post stood opposite the county
wharf, on Fell’s Point, and was thought to be essential to good order; but
now the barbarous relict has no existence. Then, the colored man was
viewed with distrust by the white people generally; now, thank Heaven, he
excites no alarm even in the breasts of the most timid. Then, we had few
friends in Maryland; now Maryland is herself our friend, and extends her
broad and benevolent shield over our heads to protect us from that bondage,
which rebels and traitors are endeavoring to establish upon everlasting
foundations.
Let me be fully and clearly understood; I do not come here to reproach
Maryland for what happened within her borders in years gone by. Let the
dead past bury its dead.10This line is from the sixth stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's “A Psalm of Life." Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Philadelphia, 1845), 22. I come not to condemn the past but to commend
and rejoice over the present. Even in the gloomiest days of her history, and
of my own, I have felt an inexpressible affection for my native State, and
hailed with the joy of an exiled son, every indication of progress and
civilization she has presented. I have not now, and never had any malice to
gratify; I loved Maryland, but hated slavery. “The head and front of my
offending hath this extent no more.”11Douglass slightly misquotes Othello, act 1, sc. 3, lines 80-81. I never have known the hour, when I
would not have performed, for my old master himself, any friendly office,
within the range of my ability, had he required it at my hands. At home or
abroad, in public and in private, I have continually carried with me a deep
and sincere interest in the welfare of my native State. But enough of this.
I did not come here to make professions, or to make a display of any
kind; but to throw out a few thoughts upon the new relations and duties
involved in the emancipation policy just adopted in this State.
I have a few things to say both to the white and colored citizens of this
State, and I crave the indulgence of both classes, and the attention of both
classes, for I have at heart the welfare and happiness of both classes.
You, my white fellow-citizens, under the guidance of an enlightened
conscience, and a wise patriotism, have by your sulfrages, and without
dictation or coercion, made the State of Maryland a free State. You have, as
a loyal State, in accordance with all the requirements of your constitution,
in the exercise of your rights as the citizens of the State, as well as of the
United States, to manage your own State affairs, without any interference
by the Federal Government, through any one of its departments of power,
have decreed in the most solemn and august manner possible, that slavery
shall at once, and forever, cease, and have thus placed Maryland, in all her
activities, life and destiny, in peace and in war, with the free States of the
Union.
You are no longer a border slave State, vexed between two extremes,
enduring all the evils of slavery, without sharing one of its supposed advantages
but a central Free State, destined, in my opinion to become morally,
and politically, as you are geographically, the keystone State of the Union.
In the very sense of honor which bowed the State so long to the fortunes of
the slave States, I behold the gem of your greatness. Having slavery
among you, you felt bound to stand by every section identified with you in
that respect. It was a sense of honor, and honorable to your honor, but it was
also a misdirected sense of honor. But what a foundation is here to build
upon. To a man without a conscience it is idle to talk of an educated
conscience. Where there is a high sense of honor, there is ample foundation
for every virtue and for every height of greatness.
I speak only the words of truth and soberness, when I say, that if I were
called upon to designate the particular part of this country, indicated by
nature, by climate, by soil, by its lofty mountains, and its rich valleys, by
its rivers, inlets and bays, by all its relations geographically, and morally,
to be the cradle of the highest type of manhood on this continent, I should
point to Maryland. You are free alike from the enervating and protracted
heat of the South, and from the protracted and paralyzing cold of the North,
while your central position, makes you broader in your tolerance and freer
from sectional prejudices, than other and more outlying States. In fact,
Maryland is in every way, suited to be intensely American, extending her
sympathy and affections, to all extremes and ends of the Republic.
Having lived to see slavery abolished in Maryland, I expect now to live
to see the day, when the former slaveholders of this State, will rejoice as
heartily as we do, that this system has been swept from the State. For
though the slave suffered by slavery, the master suffered also. If the chain
was on the slave’s ankle, it was also on his master’s neck. I have often said
when speaking on this subject at the North, that of the two, I preferred the
condition of the slave, to that of the slaveholder. There is sound philosophy
in the lines of Cowper:
“I would not have a slave,” &c.12Douglass quotes line 29 from The Time Piece by William Cowper. J. C. Bailey, ed., The Poems of William Cowper (London, 1905), 267.
The very idea of holding property in man is revolting. Property in man;
the first time I heard that word, said Daniel O’Connell, it sounded as if
some one were stamping upon the grave of my mother. Henry Ward
Beecher says, the thought of a little child sold at auction, made him feel as
if looking at a tender sister being bled. Look at the system as a statesman
and a lawyer, Lord Brougham, when he was Henry Brougham, thus
scouted the pretensions of slavery: “Tell me not of rights, talk not of the
property of the planter in his slaves, I deny the right, I acknowledge not the
property. In vain, you appeal to laws and statutes that sanction such a
claim. There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, the same
throughout the world, the same in all time, such as it was before the daring
genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the
sources of power, wealth and knowledge; to another all unalterable codes:
such it is at this day; and by that law unchangeable and eternal, while men
despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject, with
indignation, the wild and guilty phantasy, that man can hold property
in man.”13Douglass is substantially correct in quoting from Lord Brougham's parliamentary speech of 13 July 1830 but misquotes the following: “In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim! There is a law about all the enactments of human codes—the same throughout the world, the same in all times—such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth, and knowledge; to another, all unutterable woes; . . . ." [Henry Peter Brougham], Works of Lord Brougham, 11 vols. (Edinburgh, 1873), 10: 216-17.
Thomas Jefferson, looking upon slavery, said he trembled for his coun-
try, when he reflected that God was just, and that his justice could not sleep
forever.14Douglass closely paraphrases a passage from Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden (1787; Chapel Hill, 1955), 163. In getting rid of slavery, you have placed the State of Maryland,
in harmony with the views and wishes, of the noblest of the national
fathers, and what is far more important, in harmony with the eternal laws of
the moral universe.
So much, my white fellow-citizens, you have done and well done,
there is however one other thing needed, to make your good work complete
and perfect. Liberty is logical, as well as slavery; the one demands the
restoration of all rights, as sternly as the other demands the destruction of
all rights. In a state of slavery, any degree of liberty to the slave is dan-
gerous to the master, but in a state of freedom, every invidious abridgement
or limitation of liberty is dangerous and hurtful to the welfare of society.
I stand here, therefore, to advocate, as the soundest policy, for free
Maryland, the doctrine and practice of absolute civil and political equality;
I would sweep away all those laws by which any class of your people,
innocent of crime, have been deprived of the right to testify in certain
cases, in your courts of law, I would put away entirely the old man with his
deeds, and assume the logical ultimate of a free constitution. Don’t put this
new wine of liberty, into the old bottles of slavery. Don’t mend this new
garment with old cloth.15An adaptation of Matt. 9: 17, Mark 2: 22, and Luke 5: 37, 38. Don’t keep any part of slavery above ground,
now that the monster is dead. Let the shadow and the substance go down
together, and let them sleep forever, in a common grave. You don’t need
the smoke, when the candle has gone out.
While slavery existed in the State, there was a plausible argument
against allowing colored men to testify against white men in courts of law,
but now that the State is free, these arguments can have no force whatever.
There is no longer any special motive for falsehood on the part of black
men any more than white, and each has an equal motive for promoting the
ends of justice. Since both must fall or flourish by the same law, both
should stand equal before the law, receiving alike its rewards and its
penalties.
I am an advocate of free trade, as well as of freemen. I am no protec-
tionist. In respect to the rights of men I am more opposed to the doctrine of
protection than in respect to anything else. I would have no discriminating
tariff protecting iron, at the expense of wool, or wool, at the expense of
iron. He who calls for protection, confesses his weakness. Fair play is all
that any should ask; every man on his own merits. The same principle
applies to men and things.
My white fellow-citizens: Let me defend you from your friends. You
belong to the best branch of the Indo-caucasian race: you belong to the
Anglo-Saxon branch of the great human family. The world is rocked by
your power, and filled with your achievements. To the civilization of the
nineteenth century, your race is the main spring. Your language is the
language of history, science and song, and you are now, and in all the
likelihoods of the case will always be the all controlling race in this State,
and on this continent. Knowledge is power, and you have knowledge:
Wealth has influence, and you have wealth: Courage and skill, command
respect, and you have courage and skill: Majorities rule, under our form of
government, and you are the majority. Whatever may be the case in respect
to colored people, it may be safely affirmed that white men are fully able to
take care of themselves. The Americans go to any part of the known world
and compete with any race under heaven. Marylanders have gone to Rus-
sia, with her composite races, and confusion of tongues, and have come
home loaded with gold and live in affluence.16Douglass alludes to Thomas DeKay Winans (1820-78), the son of Ross Winans, a pioneer in the American railroad industry. Born in Vernon, New Jersey, the younger Winans went to work in his father’s train manufacturing shop after a few years of formal education. He made a fortune in the 1840s and 1850s from constructing and managing the earliest railroad system in Russia. Returning to Baltimore, he built a large mansion that he named “Alexandroffsky” to commemorate the source of his wealth. He devoted most of his remaining years to mechanical experiments that produced many successful inventions. The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and District of Columbia (Baltimore, 1879), 364-65; Clayton Colman Hall, ed., Baltimore: Its History and Its People, 3 vols. (New York, 1912), 1: 85; DAB, 20: 371-73.
But you will ask, what of all this? I will tell you: There are a class of
writers and speakers among you, who seem to distrust your ability to cope
with the colored people, without special protection. They seem to be
haunted with the idea, that to invest the colored race with equal rights, is
dangerous to the rights of white men: and it is this absurd notion, this
mischievous heresy, this slander upon the ability of the white race which I
would here and now expose and repel. I would defend you from your-
selves.
I deny that the black man’s degradation, is essential to the white man’s
elevation. I deny that, that the black man should be tied, lest he outstrip you
in the race of improvement. I deny the existence of any such necessity, and
affirm that those who allege the existence of any such, pay a sorry compli-
ment to the white race.
The old doctrine that the slavery of the black, is essential to the free-
dom of the white race, can maintain itself only in the presence of slavery,
where interest and prejudice are the controlling powers, but it stands con-
demned equally by reason and experience. The statesmanship of to-day
condemns and repudiates it as a shallow pretext for oppression. It belongs
with the commercial fallacies exposed long ago by Adam Smith. It stands
on a level with the contemptible notion, that every crumb of bread that goes
into another man’s mouth, is just so much bread taken from mine. Where-
as, the rule is in this country of abundant land, the more mouths you have,
the more bread you can put into your mouth, and the more money you can
put into your pocket, the more I can put into mine. As with political
economy, so with civil and political rights.
The more men you make free, the more freedom is strengthened, and
the more men you give an interest in the welfare and safety of the State, the
greater is the security of the State.
I shall not stop here to argue these general propositions. They rest in
the fundamental principles of republican government. If republican gov-
ernment has any foundation in reason, if its claims are good against the
claims of monarchial and despotic government, these propositions are also
founded in reason, and are good against all objections.
Do you ask me to state frankly, just what you, my white fellow-
citizens, ought to do for the colored citizens of this State? I will tell you,
without compromise, qualification or concealment. You ought just so soon
as it is possible, to get such a measure through the legal form, blot out the
law restricting the elective franchise to white men, and allow colored men
to vote, and to hold any office of honor and trust to which the people may be
pleased to elect them.17Maryland resisted black suffrage to the last. The state's Republican Union party reluctantly endorsed universal manhood suffrage in 1867, but, by then, the anti-black Democratic party was in complete political control of Maryland. In February 1870, the all-Democratic legislature unanimously refused to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment. Only when ratification of the amendment by the requisite twenty-eight states appeared certain later that year, did the Maryland legislature relent and pass a black registration bill. Baker, Politics of Continuity, 177-79, 202-03; Charles L. Wagandt, “Redemption or Reaction?—Maryland in the Post-Civil War Years," in Richard O. Curry, ed., Radicalism, Racism, and Party Realignment: The Border States during Reconstruction (Baltimore, 1969), 175-83.
I know that there are objections to this measure, of a very formidable
character, and some of my friends have kindly advised me not to present
this subject yet, for fear of prejudicing other more obvious claims.
But I know of no better time than this for pressing any claim founded in
sound policy, and in justice. The public mind is now everywhere grappling
with fundamental principles. We are looking for the solid rock, upon which
to rest the foundation of the State. I believe that the white citizens, are no
exception to the general rule. They are brave enough to hear, and earnest
enough to consider the highest claims of justice. Four years of war arising
out of old political and moral errors, must induce them to inquire diligently
for the true path to permanent peace and prosperity.
The grand mistake of the past has been the treatment of colored men as
exceptions. Principles of law and justice, readily applied to other men,
have been held to be inapplicable to them. Liberty held to be the natural
condition for other men, has been denied to the blacks, or considered a
doubtful experiment. The elective franchise, enjoyed by all other classes,
native and naturalized, has been withheld from men of color. So also with
the right to hold office, and sit on juries.
The time has arrived when this principle of exclusion should be aban-
doned by the State of Maryland, especially in respect to the elective fran-
chise. If the negro knows enough to pay taxes, he knows enough to vote; if
the negro can form an opinion respecting the claims of rival candidates and
parties, and knows good from evil, as all your laws concerning his conduct
imply, he knows enough to vote. If he knows an honest man from a thief, he
knows enough to vote. If he knows enough to commit crime and to be
hanged or imprisoned, he knows enough to vote. If he knows enough to
fight for his country when assailed by invasion from abroad, or rebellion at
home, he knows enough to vote. Talk not of his ignorance, degradation and
servility, he is a man, and if he knows as much when sober, as an Irishman
knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote on long established American
usage.
If voting is a natural right. you violate a natural right in withholding
this right from a people born among you. If it is only a conventional right,
you do us a conventional wrong in withholding it.
(I now desire to make some remarks to my colored friends. By the
adoption of the new constitution, your condition is radically changed. You
are in one sense free. But you must not think that freedom means absence
from work. Bear that in mind. I would impress it upon your minds, that if
you would be prosperous, you must be industrious. I would advise those
living in the lower counties of Maryland to stick to their agricultural
pursuits. I believe $150 in the country is better than $400 in the city. There
they can live more economically, and there are not so many temptations to
lead them astray. If the colored people of Maryland flock to this city,
crowding alleys and by-streets, woe betide them! Sad indeed will be their
fate. They must stick to the country, and work. They must be saving of their
funds, and endeavor to buy land. They must continually strive to become
landholders. Nor is this sufficient. They must build up schools and educate
their children. Hitherto you were wont to pride yourselves on your muscle.
He who could shoulder the heaviest burden was the greatest man in the
neighborhood. But you need something else now. You must have mind.
You must make yourselves capable of thinking as well as digging. If we
wish to enjoy the same privileges as the white man, we must labor to
become his equal. We must educate ourselves. Let us resolve to point the
finger of scorn at every colored man who refuses to send his children to
school. You will find that the more intelligent and refined you become, the
more your white brethren will respect you. I hold that all men are equal
naturally, but not practically. We need not strive to conceal that we are
inferior to the whites practically. They have their Clays, Websters and
Calhouns. We have not. They can build ships, while we can scarcely build a
canoe, and it will be lopsided. In fact, in all the arts and sciences they are
immeasurably our superiors. Now if we will be studious and faithful to our
interests, it will not always be so. The black man is just as capable of being
great as the white. All he needs is an effort,—a persistent, untiring effort.
You have now the opportunity, and I trust you will improve it.)18From Lib., 23 December 1864.