Representatives of the Future South: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 12, 1864
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE FUTURE SOUTH:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS,
ON 12 APRIL 1864
Boston Commonwealth, 29 April 1864.
On the evening of 12 April 1864, Douglass attended a dinner at the Parker
House in Boston honoring Jean-Baptiste Roudanez and Arnold Bertonneau,
representatives of the free black population of New Orleans who had recently
been in Washington lobbying for suffrage and other political rights. Accord-
ing to a local newspaper, the eighty-odd dinner guests “comprised the creme
de la creme not only of the abolition sentiment, but of the wealth and character
of Boston.” After the banquet Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts
presided over a series of speeches. Roudanez and Bertonneau, the first speak-
ers, called on their hosts to champion the cause of Louisiana blacks. Andrew
then surprised a number of diners with requests for short addresses. After John
Gorham Palfrey and William Lloyd Garrison spoke, Andrew called on Doug-
lass, introducing him as the “distinguished representative of almost emanci-
pated Maryland.” The Boston Daily Advertiser reported that Douglass’s “re-
marks were frequently interrupted by applause.” Speeches by such local
notables as James Freeman Clarke, William L. Burt, Francis W. Bird, and
George S. Hale occupied the remainder of the evening. The Boston Tran-
script believed that “the occasion, throughout, was highly enjoyed by the
noteworthy persons surrounding the festive board.” Boston Transcript, 13
April 1864; Boston Commonwealth, 15 April 1864; NASS, 23 April 1864;
Peyton McCrary, Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction: The Louisiana Ex-
periment (Princeton, 1978), 225-56; Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the
Negro (New York, 1962), 227-28.
There is no mistake about this, I suppose. (Laughter.) This is a reality, it is
not a dream or anything of that sort. After all, I am taken somewhat by
surprise. I felt a little something way down in the lower parts of my mind,
so to speak, that I might possibly be called-upon to say something here as
speaking went round the board, and I was thinking what I could say on an
occasion so novel, so extraordinary as the one upon which we are now
assembled.
I look upon this as perhaps the most significant as well as the most
timely occasion I ever was called upon to witness—significant as indicat-
ing the progress of the cause of liberty in the United States, and timely as
seconding the effort which is being made in Louisiana and elsewhere to
enfranchise the colored people of the South.1Political activity by New Orleans free blacks began soon after federal military occupation. To further their demands for the franchise and other rights, they formed political organizations like ther Club Unioniste Républicain and founded a weekly newspaper, L'Union, in late 1862. Although some radical white leaders of the Louisiana free-state movement were cautiously sympathetic toward the principle of equal suffage, Louisiana free blacks placed greater faith in U.S. authorities. When petitions by New Orleans free black males to the U.S. military government in Louisiana went unheeded, they sent Jean-Baptiste Roudanez and Arnold Bertonneau to Washington in March 1864 to lobby the president and Congress. These efforts brought no tangible results, and blacks were not permitted to vote in elections held in early 1864 for governor and for delegates to a state constitutional convention. Radical candidates were badly defeated in both elections and the new state constitution forbade black suffrage. Louisiana black men did not gain the ballot until after the start of Congressional Reconstruction in 1867. Charles Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana during Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 1976), 16-23, 44-47; Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1877 (Baton Rouge, 1974), 27-29, 41, 47-48, 146-47; C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), 164-73; Donald E. Everett, “Demands of the New Orleans Free Colored Population for Political Equality,1862-1865," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 38: 43-46 (April 1955). I am not quite as sanguine as
some men are as to the death of slavery in this country by this war. Slavery
has received a great many death-blows in its time, and has managed in
some way or other to survive them, one after another, so that it seemed to
me to have about as many lives as a cat. It received its death-blow when our
fathers—I say our fathers—emphatically declared that all men were cre-
ated equal.2A reference to the Declaration of Independence. That was the death-blow of slavery. It received its death-blow
again when the foreign slave—trade was abolished. It was supposed by
many good men at that time that the abolition of the slave-trade would put
an end to the existence of slavery, but slavery managed to survive the slave
trade. It is now said to have received its death-blow by this rebellion. I say I
am not so sanguine on that point as some men are, and as I rejoice to see and
hear men express themselves. Slavery still confronts us as an ugly reality
and its dark shadow is seen at the capital of the United States, at least in the
legislative proceedings there. Until this nation is educated up by its afflic-
tions, its sorrows and desolations to give to its black soldiers the same pay,
the same rations (voices—“hear”), and lay down the same rules for pro-
motion in their case as to white soldiers, I am disposed to be doubtful. Until
this government shall have one set of scales, so to speak, to weigh justice to
all men in this land, I am doubtful. (Applause) The honorable gentleman
who has left this room (Mr. Palfrey),3John Gorham Palfrey (1796- 1881), Unitarian minister, Whig politician, and noted historian, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated at Phillips Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and at Harvard College. From 1818 to 1831 he served as pastor of Boston's Brattle Street Unitarian Church, after which he was professor of sacred literature at Harvard until 1839. A long-time contributor to the North American Review, he was at various times its editor and owner. During the 1840s Palfrey devoted himself to Whig politics, being elected state legislator (1842-43), secretary of the commonwealth (1844-47), and US. representative (1847-49). After joining the Free Soil party in 1848, he was defeated for reelection and never again held elective office, although President Lincoln appointed him postmaster of Boston (1861-67). Palfrey's abolitionist activities included attendance at an antislavery convention in Paris in 1857; earlier, he emancipated the few slaves he had inherited from his father, who had established a plantation in Louisiana in 1804. Palfrey's lasting fame derives from his writings, particularly History of New England, 5 vols. (Boston, 1858-90). Frank Otto Gatell, John Gorham Palfrey and the New England Conscience (Cambridge, Mass, 1963); Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1961 (Washington, DC, 1961), 1421; NCAB, 7: 199; DAB, 14: 169-70. to whom I am indebted for the first
mention of my name on the floor of Congress,4John G. Palfrey's mention of Douglass in the House of Representatives occurred on 14 April 1848 during a discussion of free blacks in civic life. Replying to questions from Thomas Henry Bayly of Virginia, Palfrey quoted a portion of a letter that he had received from a resident of New Bedford, Massachusetts: “There are in this city about twelve to thirteen hundred colored people, and of that number between three hundred and four hundred are slaves, or rather were slaves, but have emancipated themselves, as Frederick Douglass would say, by ‘praying with their heels.' " Congressional Globe, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 609-10. stated a very significant
fact in connection with the early history of New Orleans. He announced to
you that in 1815 and 1816, the praise of the gallantry and heroism and
patriotism of the colored people of New Orleans, was in all mouths.5In his address delivered earlier in the evening, Palfrey recalled that “when I was first in New Orleans, it was the year after the great campaign of 1814-15. All hearts were full, all tongues were eloquent with the gallantry of the proscribed race of that State. (Applause) Sir, there was no insensibility then, whatever injustice there might have been, and whatever injustice might presently have been renewed, it was on the tongues of everybody how the free colored people of New Orleans had done their great part in the battles of December 22d, and 25th, 1815, and Jan. 1st and 8th, 1816." Boston Commonwealth, 29 April 1864. Their
noble daring was acknowledged; they were applauded by Gen. Jackson;
men commended them for their valor and their patriotism, and addressed
them as fellow-citizens.6On 18 December 1814 Andrew Jackson addressed the two battalions of Louisiana free blacks as “Fellow-citizens" in a proclamation thanking them for their service in the battle of New Orleans. Joseph T. Wilson, The Black Phalanx; A History of the Negro Soldiers of the United States in the Wars of 1775-1812, 1861-'65 (Hartford, Conn, 1890), 84-85. New Orleans outlived that enthusiasm and the
colored people of New Orleans fell back under the shadow of the overspreading
wing of slavery, and the men are gone who treasured up the
memory of the noble deeds of those colored men. I am suspicious. We are
in a malleable state now, we are melted. Retribution long protracted, wide
sweeping, terrible and overwhelming, has melted us, and the negro we
begin to see dimly as a man; but let the arm of this rebellion be broken, let
their weapons be flung away, and I fear that again we shall mistake pros-
perity for righteousness, and forget those brave negroes who are standing
up in defense of the government.
You will pardon me, gentlemen: I do not know what is appropriate
upon such occasions as this; but if the truth is appropriate I am sure you will
allow me to proceed. (Voices— “Go on!”) I say I have had my fears, and I
shall continue to have my fears while I see looming up in the legislation at
Washington in almost every bill where rights are to be guaranteed and
privileges secured, that the word white is carefully inserted. I dread that
word. It is unlike nature, it is unlike God. His sunlight drops down as
beneficently on the black-man’s brow as on the white-man’s. The earth
yields as richly and as bounteously to the touch of black industry as to the
white. Heaven’s blessing is upon us all. (A voice— “The Senate struck it
out the other day”) The Senate struck it out? I rejoice at that.7Between 15 March and 12 April 1864 the Senate took no action to strike the word white from any bill. It did, however, pass a bill to charter a District of Columbia car line that included an amendment by Charles Sumner prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race. Congressional Globe, 38th Cong., 1st sess., 1156-61. The Senate
did other honorable deeds. If I had time I would refer to them. Mas-
sachusetts knows them.
I have one idea which I meant to impress here to-night, and that idea is
what these gentlemen, these respected friends from Louisiana,8Jean-Baptiste Roudanez (1815-?) was born into one of New Orleans's leading mulatto gens de couleur families. His profession as an engineer and building contractor on Louisiana sugar plantations enabled him to acquire property valued at twenty-five hundred dollars before the Civil War. Following Federal occupation of New Orleans, Roudanez became active in the political leadership of the city's French-speaking mulatto elite. Together with his Dartmouth-educated brother Louis, Roudanez founded the New Orleans Tribune in 1864. Although he briefly considered emigration to Mexico, Roudanez remained in New Orleans after the Civil War. He campaigned for the radical wing of the state Republican party and participated in projects such as the New Orleans Freedmen's Aid Association to advance the political and economic status of black Louisianians. Arnold Bertonneau (1832-?) was a free mulatto wine merchant in antebellum New Orleans who in 1861 was the secretary of a group of free blacks volunteering for Confederate military duty. Following Federal occupation of the city. Bertonneau became a captain in the first black Union army regiment raised in Louisiana. A leading political figure among New Orleans blacks after the war, he served as a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1867-68. Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro, 227-29; Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen, 175; McCrary, Lincoln and Reconstruction, 229-30, 255-56, 300, 331; John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973), 32, 57, 212; Roger A. Fischer, The Segregation Struggle in Louisiana, 1862-1877 (Urbana, Ill., 1974), 29, 68; Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana, 16, 22, 34, 38, 41, 64; David C. Rankin, “The Origins of Black Leadership in New Orleans during Reconstruction,” JSH, 40: 417-40 (August 1974); William P. Connor, “Reconstruction Rebels: The New Orleans Tribune in Post-War Louisiana," Louisiana History,21: 159-81 (Spring 1980). have come
here and went to Washington to enforce, and that was their perfect enfran-
chisement, their incorporation into the American body politic,9By early 1864 the free black population of Louisiana had begun to despair that the state constitutional convention scheduled to meet in April would grant them the ballot. A mass meeting of free blacks held at Economy Hall in New Orleans on 19 January 1864 dispatched Jean-Baptiste Roudanez and Arnold Bertonneau to Washington, D.C., to appeal for US. government assistance in obtaining equal legal and political rights. The two men met with Lincoln on 12 March 1864 and presented him with a petition for suffrage signed by one thousand New Orleans blacks. Although the president told Roudanez and Bertonneau that he was powerless to help them, he privately wrote white Louisiana Unionists recommending that some blacks be granted the right to vote, “for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.” The Louisiana delegation later met with sympathetic Republican congressmen, including Charles Sumner and William D. Kelley, who presented their petition to the Senate and House of Representatives. Lib., 1 April 1864; NASS, 19 April 1864; Boston Commonwealth, 29 April 1864; Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln , 7: 243; McCrary, Lincoln and Reconstruction, 229-30, 255-56; Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro, 226-28; Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana, 22-23. so as
Kossuth10Louis Kossuth. says, they may be considered “a part of the solidarity of the
American people.” I look upon these gentlemen as representing in more
respects than one the future South—the future Louisiana. We may well
enough begin to get used to just such gentlemen as these. (Laughter) These
gentlemen have asked you—not me because I am comparatively unin-
fluential,—and I join with them in asking you, gentlemen of Massachu-
setts and of Boston, to exert your influence, not so much for the abolition of
slavery (the greater includes the lesser) but for the complete, absolute,
unqualified enfranchisement of the colored people of the South (applause),
so that they shall not only be permitted to vote, but to be voted for, eligible
to any office. (Applause) Gentlemen, I think it is about time that we
Anglo-Saxons (laughter)—that we hoary headed Anglo-Saxons who as-
sert our dignity before the world, should no longer allow ourselves to be
misconstrued, as having a sort of suspicion after all, that we twenty-five
millions11The U.S. census of 1860 enumerated slightly over 26.9 million whites. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics, Part 1, ser. A34-50. are not capable of “hoeing our row,” of maintaining our liberties
and our privileges unless we have some arbitrary law to prevent some other
people from enjoying their liberties. We are liable now to be supposed to
fear we cannot on a fair field with no favors, maintain ourselves, unless we
have some kind of law restricting those rights. I believe, in a word, that we
don’t need the degradation of the blacks in order that we whites should
enjoy our liberties. (Applause and laughter.) We are able to take care of
ourselves. I see that there is some smiling at my placing myself so conspic-
uously among the Anglo-Saxon race, but I do it on the best copperhead
authority. I was down in Maine not long ago, and made a speech there
which some of the Republican papers thought very good to prove that the
negro had some ideas as well as other men, whereupon the copperhead
journal came out—“Douglass! Why that proves nothing for the negro
race—his speech proves nothing; Douglass is a white man.”12Douglass probably alludes to an exchange between two Portland, Maine, newspapers, the Daily Eastern Argus and the Transcript, concerning his delivery of the lecture “The Mission of the War" in that city on 21 January 1864. The pro-Democratic Daily Eastern Argus, which had announced the lecture by noting that Douglass was “a peculiar, as well as colored, man," reported after the event that “CITY HALL was literally packed . . . to listen to the eloquent quadroon, (one-quarter black and three-quarters white) Fred. Douglass." The Transcript, Portland's Republican newspaper, responded by describing Douglass as a “commanding ‘presence,'—tall, straight as an arrow, dignified and graceful. His voice is rich and powerful. He is more than half black, (the Argus to the contrary notwithstanding) his father being an octoroon and his mother full black." Portland (Me.) Daily Eastern Argus, 21, 22 January 1864; Portland (Me.) Transcript, 30 January 1864.
Since then I have sat on the other side of the house. (Great Laughter.)
There is one feature of this matter, about the elective franchise, that I
think cannot be presented too often to the consideration of our fellow
citizens here. Our government more than any other government on earth,
requires for its successful operation, friends—that the men who are gov-
erned shall be its friends. We are not merely citizens, we are not merely
subjects, but we are friends, each to all and all to each. The day that shall
witness the downfall of this rebellion and the re-establishment of our
government at the South, when all the leading traitors shall have been
destroyed or driven away, will also witness a rank undergrowth in the
South, of treason and hatred to this government. I have a statesman’s
reason therefore in urging the request our friends have opened. It is this:
that we shall want in that region of malignity and enmity to this govern-
ment, a counterpoise to that hate. (Applause and “good.”) A natural
counterpoise to this hatred is to be found in colored men like those we have
represented here to-night from the South. They are your friends “every-
where,” says Mr. Seward,13Secretary of State William Henry Seward. (let us give every man his due)— “everywhere
the American general has received his most reliable information from the
colored men of the South, everywhere.” We want their friendly affection.
Again, here is another thought and I shall give way. We, the American
government, have called upon those men of the South to drop their hoes, to
leave their masters, and to rally under the Star Spangled Banner. We knew
their masters hated them before, we all know that this act of theirs will
increase the hatred on the part of all that is rebellious in the South, against
those colored men. Will it be gratitude, will it be generous in us, after we
have upheld our flag by means of these colored men of the South and
thereby induced and intensified the hatred of their former oppressors, to
strip off at the end of this war all elective franchise, and give that franchise
into the hands of the enemy of the government? (“No No”) If we do this
we shall not act the part of generous men, nor of just men. But this is what
we are now doing practically at the South. We are taking the elective
franchise from our friends and placing it in the hands of our enemies. Let us
give the elective franchise to the colored men of the South wherever we
reorganize and reconstruct the State. I tell you those men will not only take
care of their own liberties, but they will defend themselves and defend this
government against all the rank undergrowth of treason that may grow up
there when the rebellion is over.
These thoughts I throw out crudely. They bear upon the subject, and I
am happy and most thankful that our worthy President14Governor John Albion Andrew (1818-67), who presided at this meeting, was born in Windham, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin College. After his graduation in 1837 he settled in Boston and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. Although he was one of the founders of the Free Soil party, Andrew did not hold public office until 1858, when he was elected to the Massachusetts General Court as a Republican. In 1860 he not only headed his state's delegation to the Republican National Convention but was also elected governor, a position he held until January 1866. Throughout the Civil War he was an outspoken advocate of emancipation and assumed a leading role in persuading the Lincoln administration to enlist blacks in the Union army. After the Confederate surrender Andrew recommended a reconciliatory Reconstruction policy toward southern whites. Henry Greenleaf Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew. Governor of Massachusetts, 1861-1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1904); ACAB, 1: 72-73; NCAB, 1: 118; DAB, 2: 279-81. has been kind
enough to call me out, in order that I might say so much. I am not altogether
hopeless, however, not at all, although I have my doubts based upon a
philosophic principle. I know that when a man has been put under the
intense blaze of any truth, and has been almost converted, almost brought
to a knowledge of that truth, if then he resists that truth, I know that it will
require an intenser light, an intenser blaze to bring him to the truth again.
And now if, after we have grappled with this rebellion and have been
passing through the educating process by the loss of sons, by the loss of
brothers, by the loss of those dear unto us, we shall fall back from the great
truth, from the great principle revealed by the truth of the hour, it will be
much more difficult to bring us to the truth hereafter than it has been now.
Strike while the iron’s hot. Let us have no country but a free country,
liberty for all and chains for none. Let us have one law, one gospel, equal
rights for all, and I am sure God’s blessing will be upon us and we shall be a
prosperous and glorious nation. (Loud applause.)