Let the Negro Alone: An Address Delivered in New York, New York, on May 11, 1869
LET THE NEGRO ALONE: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
IN NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ON 11 MAY 1869
National Anti-Slavery Standard, 29 May 1869. Other texts in New York Herald, 12 May
1869; New York Times, 12 May 1869; New York Tribune, 12 May 1869.
On 11 May 1869 the American Anti-Slavery Society met in New York City’s
Steinway Hall to open its thirty-sixth anniversary meeting, “one of the most
interesting and important ever held,” according to the National Anti-Slavery
Standard. The morning session was called to order at 10:30 A.M. by Wendell
Phillips, who read eleven resolutions reflecting the Society’s commitment to
end discrimination in all aspects of public life and its appreciation of President
Ulysses S. Grant’s support for the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. At
the evening session, which “attracted a much larger audience than had been
present during the day,” Douglass opened the program. Also on the platform
were speakers from the morning session, including Lucy Stone and Frances
E. W. Harper. Following Douglass’s speech, Mrs. David Tappan and Senators
Henry Wilson and William M. Stewart urged the delegates to support the
Society’s efforts to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment. The New York Herald
disapproved of Douglass’s well-received speech: “[He] is not satisfied” with
the “recognition of the legal and political rights of the negro . . . [but] amal-
gamation is the ultimatum of Fred. Douglass.” New York World, 12 May
1869; New York Tribune, 13 May 1869; New York Herald, 13, 14 May 1869;
New York Times, 14 May 1869; NASS, 22 May 1869.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:—It has been a long time since I had
the honor to appear among the regular speakers of the American Anti-
Slavery Society on an anniversary occasion like the present. So long,
indeed, has it been, and so vast and wonderful have been the changes which
have taken place since then, that I almost hesitate to speak at all, although I
appreciate very highly the sentiment to which I owe my invitation to be
present on this occasion. The arguments which I once could use with some
little skill and effect on occasions like this are no longer pertinent. We stand
to-night amid the bleaching bones of dead issues. Where are the arguments
by which we were once confronted?—the political argument, the moral
argument and the religious argument, especially? Where now are the cun-
ning and subtle arguments framed by our Doctors of Divinity in defence of
slavery, affirming it to be a divine institution against which the gates of hell
should not prevail? They are all gone. I have nothing to kick against. How
can I speak on the platform of the American Anti-Slavery Society when all
our opponents are in full retreat, scarcely taking the time to look for new
positions? Where is slavery itself? Gone—gone, I trust, forever. Its
“cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces,”1Douglass slightly alters The Tempest, act 4, sc. 1, line 152. stained with blood, are dis-
solved; and if we have any vocation here at all, any mission here, it is to see
that not a rack is left behind (applause); that not one of the elements of the
slave system is suffered to remain, obstructing the pathway of human
progress in the future.
I am quite aware that in the minds of some, the name “American Anti—
Slavery Society” is an anachronism and an impertinence. Some of my
fellow-citizens tell me that slavery is dead, that it died some time ago, and
that the American Anti-Slavery Society ought to have died with it. The
logic would be perfect, if the premises were correct. Had slavery died an
honest death, the Anti-Slavery Society might have died with it. But slavery
is not honestly dead, to-night. It did not die honestly. Had its death come of
moral conviction instead of political and military necessity; had it come in
obedience to the enlightenment of the American people; had it come at the
call of the humanity and the morality and the enlightenment of the slave-
holder, as well as of the rest of our fellow-citizens, slavery might be looked
upon as honestly dead; but there is no such thing conceivable, as a practical
result, as the immediate, unconditional abolition of slavery. In the nature of
the case, there can be no such thing as the immediate, unconditional,
complete abolition of slavery, any where in the world. It would be to
contradict human nature, and all the social forces of which we have any
knowledge, to assume such a possibility. There is no such thing. An instant
may snap the chain, but a century is not too much to obliterate the traces of
a former bondage. Slavery, to be sure, is abolished. The legal relation of
master and slave is abolished; but that out of which slavery sprung, that by
which it was sustained, the selfishness, the arrogance of the master, still
remain; the ignorance and servility of the slave still remain; and while the
ignorance and servility of the slave, and the arrogance of the master, with
his custom to bear sway over his fellows, remain, and manifest themselves
to the eye in the forms in which we now see them all over the South, in
rendering the former bondman insecure in his life and property, and making
it impossible for a Northern man, possessed of the ideas of freedom, to go
safely into that country,—while, I say, this state of facts exists, it is not
correct to assume that slavery is entirely out of the field.
The American Anti-Slavery Society, however, is only an instrument; it
is only an agent. Its value consists in its efficiency. If it is efficient, it has a
reason for existing; when it ceases to be efficient, let it perish, like any
other instrumentality. It has had a glorious history. For thirty-six years, it
has been constructing a magnificent arch to bridge the howling chasm of
slavery, over which four millions of joyful bondmen might pass to liberty.
(Applause.) The arch has been built. It is beautiful to behold. Only one
thing remains, and that is to insert the keystone of the arch. That keystone is
the Fifteenth Amendment.2The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, recommended to the states by Congress on 26 February 1869, guaranteed that the voting rights of U.S. citizens could not be denied or abridged on account of race or previous condition of servitude. It was declared ratified on 30 March 1870. (Applause.) Until that Fifteenth Amendment
becomes part of the Constitution of the United States, this Society has an
excellent apology for continued existence. When it is made a part of the
Constitution, I shall be prepared to consider whether it is best to dispense
with the use of this Society or not. That is a very diplomatic statement: I
shall be ready to consider it. Not quite ready to decide, but ready to
consider it. I would not dare, however, to decide that question, until I had
heard the judgment of Wendell Phillips at considerable length. (Applause.)
I do not know what more there is to say. They have all said to-day, that
it was no use to argue the wisdom of the Fifteenth Amendment. What are
we to argue, then? I shall not, however, go into any argument, for I know
who are to come after me. I am merely put forward here to-night to open the
ceremonies. There is a long and brilliant list of speakers behind me, to
whom you are eager to listen; to whom I am eager to listen, if you are not.
I have but one theory in regard to the negro, and that seems to be
conceded, by Democrats as well as Republicans. It is summed up in one
word—Let him alone! That is about your whole duty in regard to the
negro—to let him alone. You want to be doing something for him and with
him; and your doing something for us, with us and by us has played the
mischief with us already (applause); and what we most need at this time is
to be let alone. My politics in regard to the negro is simply this: Give him
fair play and let him alone, but be sure you give him fair play. He is now a
man before the law. I rejoice at it. What we want, what we are resolved to
have, is the right to be men among men; men everywhere. Our wants, I
grant you, are many. One of our first wants is money. No people ever yet
made any considerable progress in civilization or in the estimation of their
fellow-men who had not money, and what the negro wants, especially just
now, is money. Without money, he has no leisure; without money, the
whole struggle of life is to live, and while he is contending for bread, his
brains are neglected; and until we can have, as you have, a class of men of
wealth, we can never have a leisure class; and until we have a leisure class,
we can never have a very intelligent class; and until we have an intelligent
class, we shall never be respected among our fellows. Until we can present
an intelligent class, while we are all, as a race, as a class, mere hewers of
wood and drawers of water,3An excerpt from Josh. 9: 21. we shall be forever a despised race; and
therefore I like my friend Foster’s proposition (not, perhaps, in the full
length to which he carried it, but it embodies a truth), that the negro must
have a right to the land.4In a speech during the morning session Stephen Symonds Foster urged that the American Anti-Slavery Society not disband until every ex-slave had been provided with a homestead. New York Tribune, 12 May 1869. At least, I demand for him the same right to the
land, the same opportunity, and the same chance to get possession of the
land that other people have. All over the South, it is well known, notorious,
that the old planters, who own their ten and fifteen thousand acres of land,
have banded together and determined not to sell it in small parcels or in
large parcels to colored men—to keep possession of the land. Therefore,
this government is bound to see, not only that the negro has the right to
vote, but that he has fair play in the acquisition of land; that when he offers a
fair price for the land of the South, he shall not be deprived of the right to
purchase, simply because of his color.
This may not seem to be consistent with my first proposition,—to let
the negro alone; but it is quite consistent with what should be the first
proposition—Give him fair play, and let him alone. If you see a negro
wanting to purchase land, let him alone; let him purchase it. lfyou see him
on the way to school, let him go; don’t say he shall not go into the same
school with other people. If anybody has a right to schooling, he has; if
anybody needs schooling, he does. If you see him on his way to the
workshop, let him alone; let him work; don’t say you will not work with
him; that you will “knock off” if he is permitted to work. The newspapers
of to-day tell us that some thirty-six printers in the Government printing
office at Washington are utterly disgusted by the employment of a single
negro printer in that establishment, and one paper states that they had leave
to withdraw.5Considerany different reports of this incident appeared in New York City newspapers on the day of Douglass's speech. The man referred to was Douglass's son Lewis, whose problems in attempting to join the local typographical union Douglass discussed at length in his speech of 3 August 1869 at Medina, New York. New York Herald, 11 May 1869; New York Tribune, 11 May 1869. I hope it is so. (Applause.) The difficulty with us is, that we
are a poor people, and have but few opportunities to obtain anything like a
competency in the North. We are restricted to two or three employments.
We do all the whitewashing. We are great on white! (Laughter.) I saw a
colored man the other day, and says he, “As to this thing you call learning,
book learning, I ain’t much at that; but that thing you call laying whitewash
on the wall, I am dar.” (Merriment.) We are there. We have been ruled out
of the workshop. It is easier to-day to get a negro boy a seat by the side of a
lawyer to study law, than it is to get him a place at a blacksmith’s anvil, to
hammer iron. I can more easily to-day enter my son in a law office in
Rochester, than I can get him into a shipyard to help build ships. The reason
is, that the higher you go up in the gradations of intelligence, the further
you get from prejudice, the more reasonable men are. I find it far less
difficult to get along with educated men, ignorant as I am, than to get along
with uneducated men. The educated men of the country are in advance of
the masses. You have only to stand out among the stumps of Ohio and sing
out to an ignorant crowd, “Is there any man in this land who wants to be
ruled over by a nigger?” to carry the whole crowd against the suffrage
amendment. That is enough. But with thinking men, that does not amount
to much.
What colored men want is elbow room, and enlarged opportunities.
Give them employments by which they can obtain something like a re-
spectable living. That has been done in Washington, of late. A black man
has been put into the Government printing ofiice, another has been sent as
Minister Plenipotentiary (I don’t know what that may all mean) to Hayti,
and another to that exotic Republic over the sea, Liberia.6Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett became the first black minister from the United States to Haiti in 1869. However, James Milton Turner, the first black U.S. minister to Liberia, was not appointed until 1871. Rayford W. Logan, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776-1891 (Chapel Hill, 1941), 341; John Findling, Dictionary of American Diplomatic History (Westport, Conn., 1980), 38, 480-81. In 1839, I
believe, John Quincy Adams brought forward a proposition to recognize
the independence of Hayti, and in a moment, the House of Representatives
was a scene of unparalleled confusion. The whole South started angrily to
its feet, and hurled at the “old man eloquent” the wildest and most wither-
ing denunciations. He bore it all.7Beginning in December 1838 and for several years thereafter, John Quincy Adams and a few other northern congressmen presented petitions to the House of Representatives calling for the diplomatic recognition of Haiti. Adams successfully blocked efforts by southerners to have the petitions immediately tabled but was unable to persuade the House to order its Committee on Foreign Affairs to make a report upon the petitions. Congressional Globe, 35th Cong., 3d sess., 41, 47-48, 56, 61-62; Ludwell Lee Montague, Haiti and the United States, 1714-1938 (Durham, N.C., 1940), 55-56. Henry Clay said, “It is true, we are told
that this black Republic has maintained its liberty for forty years. I care not
for it. Should Time himself confront me, and shake his hoary locks at my
position, I should still oppose the acknowledgment of the independence of
Hayti.” Hayti is to-day acknowledged. The negro Republic is on a footing
of equality with other nations, and is acknowledged to be one of the
sisterhood of nations; and, withal, the freest and mightiest Republic on the
globe, and now or rapidly becoming recognized as the mightiest nation on
the globe, the nation that is to dictate the law to the nations of Europe, the
nation which more than any other beneath the sky is to give direction to the
civilization of the next fifty years,—that nation sends a black Minister to
Hayti (applause), and is getting ready, I trust, to reach out its hand to those
brave, those heroic and noble Cubans, who are now defending the cause
which this Society and all America have sworn to support.8On 10 October 1868 a group of Cuban planters launched a revolution for independence from Spanish rule. The revolutionaries' provisional government took an ambiguous position toward the abolition of slavery on the island, however, costing them any chance of U.S. intervention on its behalf. After a ten-year struggle, Spain ended the Cuban insurgency through a combination of military force and political reform. Helen Delpar, ed., Encyclopedia of Latin America (New York, 1974), 2, 580; Michael Rheta Martin and Gabriel H. Lovett, Encyclopedia of Latin-American History (Indianapolis, Ind., 1968), 1, 111-12.
I have some sympathy with my Democratic brethren, after all. There is
one thing about them—they have always been logical; and seen a little
further than the Abolitionists themselves, just a little. Long before Wendell
Phillips announced the doctrine of the dissolution of the Union, John C.
Calhoun saw that was just what it would come to. Long before Mr. Seward9William H. Seward.
announced the doctrine of the “irrepressible conflict,” Mr. Calhoun saw
that “irrepressible conflict,” and saw that this country must be all slavery
or all freedom, or there would be no going on; there must be fighting. I say I
have sympathy for my Democratic friends when they say to me, “Doug-
lass, that is all right enough, but we see where it leads.” They do see where
it leads. Mr. Hendricks,10Among the many political offices held by Indiana Democrat Thomas Andrews Hendricks (1819-85) were those of U.S. representative (1851-55), commissioner of the General Land Office (1855-59), U.S. senator (1863-69), governor of Indiana (1873-76), and vice president under Grover Cleveland (1885). BDAC, 1041; DAB, 8: 534-35. on the floor of the Senate, said, “Gentlemen,
this thing, suffrage for the blacks, is impossible, for it means the bringing
of a black Senator into this House, to be seated in one of these chairs; it is
impossible.”11As a senator, Hendricks took a leading role in the debate over congressional passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, advancing a host of constitutional and racist arguments against the measure. The remarks Douglass ascribes to Hendricks do not, however, appear in the official reports of this debate, although conservative Republican senator James R. Doolittle did make a very similar remark on 8 February 1869. Congressional Globe, 40th Cong., 3d sess., 1011. He was right; it means all that, and I am just the man that is
coming. (Laughter and applause.) I am like the boy who said he would go
home and live with his uncle Albert, but he meant to do just what he
pleased, if his uncle Albert would let him. (Laughter.) It means that, and it
means more. You take a step in the right direction, and another opens to
you evermore; take one in the wrong direction, and another and still an-
other opens before you, until you reach the bottom, if there is any bottom,
of the bottomless pit. There is no stopping. Let the negro vote, and he will
be voted for; and if voted for, he will go to Congress; and if to Congress,
there is no telling where he won’t go. (Applause.)
The Democrat said, “The right to vote means amalgamation.” The
Abolitionist said, “No, that don’t follow.” “It will dissolve the Union.”
“No it won’t.” “It will lead to amalgamation.” “No, it won’t.” But it will
lead just there. Don’t be afraid. There was a beautiful speech made here to-
day by Mrs. Blackwell.12In September 1853, Oberlin-educated Antoinette Louisa Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) became the first ordained woman minister in U.S. history. Earlier she had been a successful lecturer on behalf of temperance, abolition, and women's rights. Blackwell resigned her Congregational pulpit in Butler, New York, after only one year when she converted to Unitarianism. For the next two decades she devoted her life to her marriage to Samuel Blackwell, brother of the nation's first female physician, and to study and writing. Her published books demonstrated a wide grasp of philosophical, scientific, and religious topics. In later years she returned to a more public life, lecturing on behalf of feminism and preaching occasionally at Unitarian churches. James et al., Notable American Women, 1: 158-61; ACAB, 1: 274. She has a theory, that all races have some
distinctive peculiarity, which can be made promotive of civilization, provided
they do not imitate.13Newspaper reports of Antoinette Brown Blackwell's speech at the morning session of the American Anti-Slavery Society's anniversary meeting are very fragmentary. In the same year as this convention, Blackwell published Studies in General Science, which contains remarks on the black race quite similar to Douglass’s characterization of her speech. New York Times, 12 May 1869; Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Studies in General Science (New York, 1869), 330-31. I believe in imitation. I think the disposition to
imitate what is a little in advance of what we before knew is one of the most
civilizing qualities of the human mind, and I am going to imitate all the
good I can, and leave unimitated all the bad I find in the world.
There is no such thing as our living in this world anywhere else than
right among people, part of them. The only reason why the negro has not
been killed off, as the Indians have been, is, that he is so close under your
arm, that you cannot get at him. If we had set up a separate nationality,
gone off on the outer borders of your civilization, right before your bay-
onets and swords, we should have been pushed off, precisely as the Indians
have been pushed off. Our salvation, the salvation of every race in this
country, is in becoming an integral part of the American government,
becoming incorporated into the American body politic, incorporated into
society, having common aims, common objects, and common instrumen-
talities with which to work with you, side by side. The further we get apart,
the more we are hated; the nearer we come together, the more we are loved.
Cooperation brings together. That feeling of common regard and common
interest, is necessary to our salvation, necessary to that of the Indian.
Senator Doolittle14James Rood Doolittle. (I think it was) said to Mr. Sumner,15Charles Sumner. after he had made
a speech in favor of the elective franchise, “Mr. Sumner, all this concern
about the negro is absurd; he will die off in a few years. Thousands of them
have already disappeared, and they are rapidly disappearing. No use to
make any ado about incorporating them with this government; they will die
out.”16Douglass very roughly paraphrases the speech that conservative Republican senator James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin made on 8 February 1869 in opposition to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Congressional Globe, 40th Cong., 3d sess., 1010-12. That was his theory.
I have been travelling over the Western States lately, and have had
occasion to observe the presence of vast numbers of colored people where I
have not seen them before; and I think this accounts, in part, for the “dying
out” of the negro at the South. They followed the Union army home by
thousands, they have taken up their abodes at the North, and their old slave
masters at the South regard them as dead. But they still live, and will
reappear at the right time. They would die if put in the same condition with
the Indian. You might plant on the outer borders of American civilization a
race of angels, if you please, and it would be impossible to keep the peace
between those angels and this progressive Anglo-Saxon nation. They
would find some bad angels among them, or make them bad, and then use
their badness as an apology for waging war upon them. They could not live
in that way, and if angels could not, negroes could not, for we are too much
like other people (laughter and applause); for if the negro cannot show his
identity with the human family by his virtues, he can at least by his vices. I
do not know any wickedness that any white man can commit that a black
man cannot commit also,—they are so much alike, in all things! (Laugh-
ter.) And I know of no heroic or manly act that a white man can do, that a
negro cannot do the same.
We are not going to die out, I say. Those who liken us to the Indians
make one mistake. They overlook the fact that the negro is more like the
white man than the Indian, in his tastes and tendencies, and disposition to
accept civilization. You see the Indian, too proud to beg, disdaining your
civilization, standing at the corners of the streets, wrapped in his blan-
ket,—refusing to imitate, refusing to follow the fashion,—with a few
bead purses and baskets to sell. In his dignity and destitution, he rejects
our civilization, and the consequence is, that he dies or retreats before the
onward march of your civilization, from the Atlantic to the lakes, and
from the lakes to the great rivers. He sees with no complacency your
railroads, your steamboats, your canals, your electric wire. No thrill of
joy is awakened in his heart by the announcement of any improvement in
the means of transmitting intelligence or spreading civilization among
men. He sees the ploughshare of American civilization tearing up the
venerated graves of his ancestors, his heart sickens, and he retreats before
the onward march of civilization. Taking warning by the appearance of
the honey bees, six months in advance of your coming, he disappears on
the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. He dislikes your civilization,
dislikes and distrusts you.
It is not so with the negro. He loves you and remains with you, under
all circumstances, in slavery and in freedom. You do not see him wearing a
blanket, but coats cut in the latest European fashion. If you should see him
going down [a] street on a rainy day, you would think there was a man
walking there, if he had his back to you. He looks like a man, acts like a
man, feels like a man, and the office of this Society is to make him a man
among men. (Applause.) He does not die out. Some have predicted that if
he only broke his fetters, he would run back to Africa, clear out to Liberia,
or somewhere else. There is no such disposition in the negro. He will not
die out. No race, with any such physical energy as the negro possesses,
having the advantage of the cultivation of muscle for 250 years, is going to
die out in a few months or years. The whole shipping of the United States
would not be sufficient to carry off from the United States the average
increase of this race. They are here; love to be here; like your civilization;
accept it; become a part of it. Where there are Methodists, the negro is a
Methodist; where there are Baptists, he is a Baptist; where there are
Quakers, he is not exactly a Quaker, because they do not make noise
enough for him (laughter), but he wears at least a plain coat. In short, he
becomes just what other people become, and herein is the security for his
continued life. He will not die out, because he has a vitality that will
compare favorably with that of any other race on the globe. He cannot fade
out at the South just now, because Slavery is abolished. He will not go to
Liberia, because he has immense love of country. There is nothing left for
you, but to incorporate him completely into the American body politic:
admit him to the ballot-box, admit him to Congress, give him a seat on the
benches of your courts, let him ride upon your highways and your byways
and your railroads and everywhere, on equal terms with everybody else,
and you will soon begin to find that Mr. Bluebeard’s beard is not quite so
blue after all.17A character of myth and fiction with a distinctive blue-colored beard who was reputed to have murdered numerous wives. E. Cobham Brewer, The Reader's Handbook of Famous Names in Fiction, Allusions, References, Proverbs, Plots, Stories, and Poems, rev. ed. (London, 1911), 130-31.
I know there is prejudice here; there has always been prejudice. The
only way to get rid of your prejudice is to begin to treat the negro as though
you had no prejudice, and very soon you will find that you have got none.
There is no better way for a man to cure his prejudice than to begin to do
good to the victim of that prejudice. The moment you do that, that moment
you find your prejudice vanish.
I went once up into Pittsfield, N.H., to deliver a lecture. While there, I
called upon a good anti-slavery man, at least, a man who took the Liber-
ator, and that was sufficient for me; but, although quite willing to have the
negroes freed, he did not want to have them just here. I was just out of
slavery, and went up there under the direction of the Board of Managers of
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to deliver three lectures on Sun-
day. I called, as l have said, upon this man, and he told me, frankly, that he
would like to have had it otherwise, but since I was there, I might stay.
(Laughter.) I did stay; stayed until tea time. I found that everybody about
the house had lost their appetite; nobody could eat; and I almost lost my
own, just out of sympathy with my friends. (Laughter.) I managed, how-
ever, to take a cup of tea. The next morning, my good friend got his horse
out, got his wife into the carriage, and started for meeting. His wife,
excellent woman! wanted to hear me speak (of course she was excellent,
because she wanted to hear me), and so they were going to the meeting, and
the gentleman, after he had got into the carriage, looked out and said, “I
suppose you can find your way down?” “Yes,” said I, “I guess I can.” It
was about two miles. I started and went down to the hall where I was to
speak. I found about fifteen assembled to hear me, which was no incon-
siderable congregation for that day, and I went to work to preach to them on
slavery.
At the close of my discourse, my congregation separated and left me at
the door of the Town Hall. My good friend Mr. Hillis18Other versions of this anecdote appear in Douglass's speech of 31 May 1849 in Boston, Massachusetts, and in Life and Times, 501-05, where the abolitionist is identified as Hilles. Douglass's benefactor was Moses Norris, Jr. did not even think to
say, “Well, you can find your way back again,” so I didn’t find my way
back. (Laughter.) I was to speak again at two o’clock. The time came for
the meeting, the audience came together, and I spoke until about four
o’clock. I was to have another meeting at five, and the congregation
separated and left me at the door. I felt by this time a little hungry. With no
supper the night before, very little breakfast, and no dinner, I began to feel
the want of something to eat. I went over to the hotel, and asked if I could
be accommodated with some food there. The hotel-keeper said, “We don’t
accommodate niggers here.” So I had to leave there. I went back to the
Town House and stood around there for awhile. I felt somewhat desolate. I
could see the good Christian people looking out of their windows at me
from all directions, as if some menagerie had broken loose, and one of the
wild animals had made his appearance among them. They kept their doors
shut, and looked at me from the safe position of their windows. I went into
a grave-yard near by. I felt somewhat subdued, and there was some attrac-
tion to that spot, where I could see the end of all distinctions—the short
graves and the long ones, the mighty men as well as those who were not
mighty, all on a level. I felt then that I was suffering for righteousness’ sake.
While I was there, a man, with not much of the humanitarian in his
appearance, came up to me and said, “Your name is Douglass?” Said I,
“That is my name.” Said he, “Mr. Douglass, you seem to have nowhere to
go, no place to stay.” Said I, “That is quite true; I have no place to go, no
place to stay.” Said he, “Mr. Douglass, I am not an abolitionist, but I am a
man, and if you will go to my house, you shall be taken care of while you
stay in town.” I inquired his name. Said he, “My name is Moses Norris.”
“Moses Norris,” said I, “why, you are the gentleman who pulled George
Storrs out of the pulpit for preaching abolition.” “Well,” said he, “no
matter; I can’t stand your being out here in the rain and cold, with no place
to go.” “Well,” said I, “I will go with you.”
I went to his house, and when I got to the door, I heard the little children
shouting, “Mother, mother, there’s a nigger in the house,—there’s a nig-
ger in the house.” The mother came out, seemingly quite angry, and shut
the door behind her, as only a woman can when she is vexed. The first
chance I got, I said to the good lady, “I am suffering from a cold and
hoarseness, and I know of nothing that will ease me so readily as a little
cold water and loaf sugar. You will do me a kindness if you will give me a
little loaf sugar and cold water.” I saw, upon the instant, a change in the
whole appearance of the lady. She was before chagrined, mortified, at the
very thought of having a negro in the house, but the moment she brought
the water and the sugar, and set them down before me, and said “Help
yourself,” and I thanked her, there was a relation established between us;
there was a human heart answering to another human heart. The very
moment she performed this good deed for a suffering fellow creature, that
very moment she felt her prejudice removed. That night, at the close of my
speech, the first hand extended to me, to bid me God-speed, was the hand
of Mrs. Norris, with the request that I would come to their house and make
it my home whenever I came to Pittsfield.
About this time, brother Hillis was close at hand, and said he, “I kind
of missed you to-day.” (Laughter.) “Yes,” said I, “I thought so.”
“Come,” said he, “You must go home with me now.” At first I thought I
wouldn’t go; but when I remembered that “there is more joy in Heaven
over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just men, who
need no repentance,”19A modification of Luke 15: 7. I decided to go with him. The next day, this same
man, who was so full of prejudice the day before, took me in his carriage
over to [New] London, [N.H.], where I was to speak; and on the way, he
paid me the compliment of saying, “Mr. Douglass, this is one of the
proudest days of my life. I feel prouder to-day to have you in my carriage
than I should to have the President of the United States here.” John Tyler
was President of the United States at that time! (Roars of laughter.)
What I say to the American people every where is, “Conquer your
prejudices;” and the only way to conquer them is to begin to be just, begin
to be kind to this long-despised class. That the negro will not die out has
been proved by the manner in which he has stood slavery. Was ever a race
exposed to such elements of destruction as the negro in this country has
been for 250 years? Daniel O’Connell said, twenty years ago, speaking of
Ireland, “The history of Ireland may be traced like a wounded man through
a crowd, by the blood.” It was a strong statement of the condition of Ireland
but is it not a true statement of the history of the people to whom I belong,
and with whom I am identified? For 250 years, we have been robbed of
every right; herded with the beasts of the field; exposed to all the exter-
minating forces of slavery; deprived of marriage; deprived of the family;
deprived of all the saving influences of those institutions; loaded with
chains; scarred by the whip; driven from time to eternity in the dark, yet
where are we? Uncle Toms in Georgia; Robert Smalls in the harbor of
Charleston. That is where we are. Though laden with burdens that no other
nation ever struggled under; though outraged as no other race has ever been
outraged, we still look up and smile under it all; we still flourish under it all.
If slavery has not been able to kill us, liberty will not. (Applause.) If the
black man can stand all the enginery of slavery, he can stand at least the
appliances of civilization.
Now, we are here; we are going to live here. What is going to be done?
This—only this. Welcome the black man to any position and to every
position for which his talents and character fit him. (Applause.) Do this,
and you shall have peace. We have performed some service to this country.
I do not take the extravagant view that some do, that the negro saved this
country; that without the negro, you could not have put down the rebellion.
This I do affirm, however, that we helped you put it down. When you were
at your wit’s ends for the means of carrying on this war, the negro came to
your help, and at that time you felt rather grateful to him. At that time, you
felt like enfranchising him. At that time, you were willing to bring him into
full possession of his rights. When the rebel armies were in the field, bold,
defiant, and in some instances triumphant, when Lee, and Longstreet and
Imboden were among the Allegheny Mountains,20Two of Robert E. Lee's subordinates during the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in June and July 1863 were Lieutenant General James Longstreet (1821-1904) and Brigadier General John Daniel Imboden (1823-95). West Point graduate Longstreet fought first as a division commander and then as a corp commander in Lee's army throughout the war except for a period of service in Georgia and Tennessee from September 1863 to April 1864. After the war he supported the Republican party in southern politics and was rewarded with a number of patronage appointments. Imboden, a Virginia lawyer before the war, fought under Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862 and conducted a large-scale raid into western Virginia in April and May 1863 as an anticipatory movement for Lee’s Pennsylvania campaign. Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders (Baton Rouge, 1959), 147; Donald Bridgman Sanger, James Longstreet: Soldier (Baton Rouge, 1952); DAB, 9: 460-61, 11: 391-93. thundering at the gates
of Philadelphia, when your recruiting sergeants were marching up and
down the streets from morning till night, foot sore and weary, with banner
and badge, calling for more men, young men and strong men, to go to the
front, to fill up the gaps made by rebel shot, and by pestilence, when your
sons were coming home from the war, armless, legless, maimed and
mutilated, when your churches were draped with mourning, when your
country seemed to be upon its last legs, as it were, when every breeze that
came to us from the broad Atlantic was suspected of bearing on its wings
the tidings of British or French intervention, to the destruction of your
government, when the ground trembled, as it were, beneath our feet, and,
as Wendell Phillips says, the star-spangled banner clung to the masthead
heavy with blood,—then, oh, then, there was room under our flag for all its
defenders (applause); one liberty, one government, one nationality, for all
the people of the United States. In the spirit born of affliction, born of
trouble, let us legislate and go on legislating, until we put that Fifteenth
Amendment into the organic law of the land; until every black man shall
feel, “This is my country, and this is my government.” Until you have done
this, you are weak: when you have done it, you are strong. The black man
came to you in the hour of danger, of trial, when your flag wavered,
reached out his black iron arm, and clutched your standard with his steel
fingers; and if you enfranchise him, make him a part of you, he will be
ready to serve you again; he will be ready to give you not only ramparts of
sand and ramparts of stone, but he will give you ramparts of human breasts,
broad and strong, guided by intelligence, before whose front no nation on
the earth, backed up by your intelligence, would be able to stand.
We are here to-night in the interest of the negro, but we are here also in
the interest of patriotism, in the interest of liberty; liberty in America,
liberty in Cuba, liberty the world over. Make this government a consistent
government, make it a truly Republican government. Let no man be driven
from the ballot-box on account of his color. Let no woman be denied the
ballot-box on account of her sex. (Applause.) Let the government rest on
every shoulder in it, and your government will be strong, and your country
will be secure.
Excuse me for these desultory remarks. I will take my seat, and make
room for our friend from England21Although incorrectly identified by several New York City newspapers as “Dr. Reed,” “Dr. Pease," or “Dr. Mease," the speaker following Douglass was actually Frederic Richard Lees (1815-97) of Leeds, England. Lees abandoned the law to devote his energies to the temperance movement. His pamphlets, editorials, and speeches in this cause were collected in eight volumes in 1884-87. Lees also supported Chartism, abolition, and factory reform and waged four unsuccessful campaigns as a radical for a seat in Parliament. His title "Doctor" came from an honorary doctorate degree that the University of Geissen awarded him in 1842. Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography Containing Many Thousand Concise Memoirs of Persons Who Have Died During the Years, 1851-1900, 6 vols. ([London], 1892-1921), 6: 33; Brian H. Harrison, Dictionary of British Temperance Biography (Oxford, 1973), 77-78. and our other friends who are here to
speak to you.