Sources of Danger to the Republic: An Address Delivered in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 7, 1867
SOURCES OF DANGER TO THE REPUBLIC: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, ON 7 FEBRUARY 1867
St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, 8 February 1867.
During the winter of 1866-67 Douglass, who had just published an article on
“Reconstruction” in the Atlantic Monthly, combined his criticisms of Presi-
dent Andrew Johnson and his views on the constitutional powers granted
presidents in a speech entitled “Sources of Danger to the Republic,” which
apparently was first delivered in Brooklyn, New York, on 17 December 1866.
Carrying his message from there to Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Ohio,
Douglass traveled as far west as Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota before return-
ing to Rochester in March. His audiences generally approved his remarks.
One auditor in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, declared that Douglass’s words “were
uttered with a power and chasteness of style and diction that shook down
prejudice from many who had heard, but until now did not believe.” A “Quiet
Listener” in Boston, however, criticized Douglass “in true friendship,”
pointing out that “when he instituted comparisons between English govern-
mental forms and practices with our own, he made mistakes that the [New
York] World newspaper will rejoice over as samples of negro incapacity to
grapple with profound themes.” On the evening of 7 February 1867 Douglass
delivered his “great speech” before an overflow crowd at Turner’s Hall in St.
Louis, Missouri. According to the Daily Missouri Democrat, the audience’s
frequent applause and cheering proved that the speaker had met “the highest
expectations of his numerous warm friends in St. Louis.” Despite those
“warm friends,” however, a question arose whether two local hotels had
denied a room to Douglass during his visit. The St. Louis Evening Dispatch
stated that they had, but the Daily Missouri Democrat claimed that Douglass
had never intended to stay at a hotel, lodging instead at the house of a “highly
respected colored barber,” William Roberson. Douglass continued to empha-
size themes included in “Sources of Danger to the Republic” in other
speeches he gave in late 1867 and early 1868. See Appendix A, text 3, for
precis of alternate texts. Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 31 March 1867, Gerrit
Smith Papers, NSyU; New York Herald, 18 December 1866; Boston Com-
monwealth, 22 December 1866, 12 January 1867; NASS, 12 January 1867; St.
Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, 11 February 1867; Keokuk (Iowa) Daily
Gate City, 2 March 1867; Winona (Minn.) Daily Republican, 15, 18 March
1867; Joseph A. Dugdale to Editor, 17 March 1867, in NASS, 30 March 1867;
Frederick Douglass, “Reconstruction,” Atlantic Monthly, 18: 761-65 (De-
cember 1866).
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I know of no greater misfortunes to individuals
than an over confidence in their own perfections, and I know of fewer
misfortunes that can happen to a nation greater than an over confidence in
the perfection of its government. It is common on great occasions to hear
men speak of our republican form of government as a model of surpassing
excellence—the best government on earth—a masterpiece of states-
manship—and destined at some period not very remote to supersede all
other forms of government among men; and when our patriotic orators
would appear in some degree recondite as well as patriotic, they treat us to
masterly disquisitions upon what they are pleased to term “the admirable
mechanism of our Constitution.” They discourse wisely of its checks and
balances, and the judicious distribution of the various powers.
I am certainly not here this evening rudely to call in question these very
pleasing assumptions of governmental superiority on our part; they are
perfectly natural; they are consistent with our natural self-love and our
national pride; and when they are not employed, as they too often are, in the
bad service of a blind, unreasoning, stubborn conservatism, to shelter old-
time abuses and discourage manly criticism, and to defeat needed measures
of amendment, they are comparatively harmless, though we may not al-
ways be able to assent to the good taste with which they are urged. It is well
enough, however, once in a while to remind Americans that they are not
alone in this species of self-laudation; that in fact there are many men,
reputed wise and good men, living in other parts of the planet, under other
forms of government, aristocratic, autocratic, oligarchic, and monar-
chical, who are just as confident of the good qualities of their government
as we are of our own. It is true, also, that many good men, at home and
abroad, and especially abroad, looking upon our republican experiment
from afar, in the cool, calm light of their philosophy, have already dis-
covered, or think that they have discovered, a decline or decay, and the
certain downfall of our republican institutions, and the speedy substitution
of some other form of government for our democratic institutions. Those
who entertain these opinions of our government are not entirely without
reason, plausible reason, in support of it. The fact that the ballot box, upon
which we have relied so long as the chief source of strength, is the safety
valve of our institutions through which the explosive passions of the popu-
lace could pass off harmlessly, has failed us—broken down under us, and
that a formidable rebellion has arisen, the minority of the people in one
section of the country united, animated and controlled by a powerful
sectional interest, have rebelled, and for four long years disputed the
authority of the constitutional majority of the people, is regarded as a
telling argument against the prevailing assumption of our national stability
and the impregnability of our institutions. Beside, they point us, and very
decidedly, to the fact that there seemed to be no adequate comprehension of
the character of this rebellion at the beginning of it, and seemed also to be
nothing like a proper spirit of enthusiasm manifested by the people in
support of the government. They point us to the tardiness and hesitation
and doubt, and the disposition to yield up the government to the arrogant
demands of conspirators; and they profess themselves now able to see the
same want of spirit, manliness and courage in the matter of reconstruction
since the rebellion has been suppressed. They point us also to the fact that
so far as the government is concerned, there must be either an indisposition
or an inability either to punish traitors or to reward and protect loyal men;
and they say, very wisely, as I think, that a nation that cannot hate treason
cannot love loyalty. (Loud applause.)
They point us also to the fact that there are growing antagonisms,
forces bitter and unrelenting between the different branches of our gov-
ernment—the executive against the legislative, and the judicial in some
instances against both. They point us also to the obvious want of gratitude
on the part of the nation, its disposition to sacrifice its best friends and to
make peace with its bitterest enemies; the fact that it has placed its only
true allies under the political heels of the very men who with broad blades
and bloody hands sought the destruction of the republic. They point us to
the fact that loyal men by the score, by the hundred, have been deliber-
ately and outrageously, and in open daylight, slaughtered by the known
enemies of the country, and thus far that the murderers are at large: un-
questioned by the law, unpunished by justice, unrebuked even by the
public opinion of the localities where the crimes were committed. Under
the whole heavens you cannot find any government besides our own
that[?] indifferent to the lives of its loyal subjects. (Applause.) They tell
us, moreover, that the lives of republics have been short, stormy, and
saddening to the hopes of the friends of freedom, and they tell us, too,
that ours will prove no exception to this general rule.
Now, why have I referred to these unfavorable judgments of American
institutions? Not, certainly, to indorse them; neither to combat them; but as
offering a reason why the Americans should take a little less extravagant
view of the excellencies of our institutions. We should scrutinize them a
little more closely and weigh their value a little more impartially than we
are accustomed to do. We ought to examine our government, and I am here
to-night, and I rejoice that in St. Louis (cheers) that there is liberty enough,
civilization enough, (renewed cheers) to tolerate free inquiry at this point
as well as any other. I am here to-night in a little different capacity from
what I ordinarily am, or what I have been before the American people. In
other days—darker days than these—I appeared before the American
people simply as a member of a despised, outraged and down-trodden race;
simply to plead that the chains of the bondmen be broken; simply to plead
that the auction block shall no more be in use for the sale of human flesh. I
appear here no longer as a whipped, scarred slave—no longer as the
advocate merely of an enslaved race, but in the high and commanding
character of an American citizen—(cheers)—having the interest that every
true citizen should have in the welfare, the stability, the permanence and
the prosperity of our free institutions, and in this spirit I shall criticise our
government to-night.
In one respect we here have [a] decided advantage over the subjects of
the “divine right” governments of Europe.1Although in the Christian era the person of the monarchs of western Europe was never considered divine, many rulers claimed that the authority of their office had the direct sanction of God. Edward C. Smith and Arnold J. Zurcher, Dictionary of American Politics, 2d ed. (New York, 1968), 120. We can at least examine our
government. We can at least look into it—into every feature of it, and
estimate it at its true value. No divine pretension stands athwart the path-
way of free discussion here. The material out of which men would weave if
they could a superstitious reverence for the Constitution of the United
States, is an exceedingly slender and scarce commodity, and there is noth-
ing upon which such a superstition can well be based. There were neither
thunderings, nor lightnings, nor earthquakes, nor tempests, nor any other
disturbance of nature when this great law was given to the world. It is at
least an honest Constitution and asks to be accepted upon its own merits—
has no origin, has no history, and no reputation. It is purely a human
contrivance, designed with more or less wisdom, for human purposes; to
combine liberty with order; to make society possible; or, to use its own
admirable language, “to form a more perfect Union;” to establish justice;
to provide for the common defense; and to secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and all posterity, we the people, the people, the PEOPLE—we, the
people, do ordain and establish this Constitution. There we stand on the
main foundation.
Now, while I discard all Fourth of July extravagances about the Con-
stitution, and about its framers, even I can speak respectfully of that
instrument and respectfully of the men who framed it. To be sure my early
condition in life was not very favorable to the growth of what men call
patriotism and reverence for institutions—certainly not for the “peculiar
institution” from which I graduated—yet even I can speak respectfully of
the Constitution. For one thing I feel grateful—at least I think the fathers
deserve homage of mankind for this—that against the assumptions,
against the inducements to do otherwise, they have given us a Constitution
commensurate in its beneficent arrangements with the wants of common
humanity; that it embraces man as man. There is nothing in it of a narrow
description. They could establish a Constitution free from bigotry, free
from superstition, free from sectarian prejudices, caste or political dis-
tinction.
In the eye of that great instrument we are neither Jews, Greeks, Barbar-
ians or Cythians, but fellow-citizens of a common country, embracing all
men of all colors. The fathers of this republic did not learn to insert the
word white (applause and laughter), or to determine men’s rights by their
color. They did not base their legislation upon the differences among men
in the length of their noses or the twist of their hair, but upon the broad fact
of a common human nature.
I doubt if at any time during the last fifty years we could have received a
constitution so liberal from the sons as we have received from the fathers of
the Republic. (Cheers.) They were above going down, as certain men—
Caucasian and Teutonic ethnologists—have recently done, on their knees
and measuring the human heel to ascertain the amount of intelligence he
should have. They were above that. That is a modern improvement or
invention.
Some have undertaken to prove the identity of the negro, or the rela-
tionship of the negro with the monkey from the length of his heel, forget-
ting what is the fact, that the monkey has no heel at all, and that in fact the
longer a man’s heel is the further he is from the monkey. (Laughter and
applause.) Our fathers did not fall into this mistake. They made a constitu-
tion for men, not for color, not for features. In the eye of that great
instrument the moment the chains are struck from the limbs of the humblest
and most whip scarred slave he may rise to any position for which his
talents and character fit him. (Loud applause.) For this I say the fathers are
entitled to the profound gratitude of mankind—that against all temptations
to do otherwise, they have given us a liberal constitution.
But wise and good as that instrument is, at this point and at many
others, it is simply a human contrivance. It is the work of man and men
struggling with many of the prejudices and infirmities common to man,
and it is not strange that we should find in their constitution some evidences
of their infirmity and prejudices. Time and experience and the ever increasing
light of reason are constantly making manifest those defects and those
imperfections, and it is for us, living eighty years after them, and therefore
eighty years wiser than they, to remove those defects—to improve the
character of our constitution at this point where we find those defects.2The U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1787.
I was rather glad at one feature in the effect produced by the rebellion.
It for a time depressed the national exultation over the perfection of the
Constitution of the United States. The uprising of that rebellion was a
severe blow to our national extravagance at this point, but the manner in
which we have met the rebellion, and as soon as we have succeeded in
suppressing it, conquering the rebels and scattering their military forces,
our old time notions of our perfect system of government have revived, and
there is an indisposition on the part of some men to entertain propositions
for amending the Constitution. But I think that a right view of our trouble,
instead of increasing our confidence in the perfection of the fundamental
structure of the government, ought to do quite the reverse; it ought to
impress us with the sense of our national insecurity by disclosing, as it does
disclose, the slenderness of the thread on which the national life was
suspended, and showing us how small a circumstance might have whelmed
our government in the measureless abyss of ruin, prepared for it by the
rebels.
We succeeded in putting down the rebellion. And wherein is the secret
of that success? Not in, I think, the superior structure of our government,
by any means. We succeeded in that great contest because, during at least
the latter part of the war, the loyal armies fought on the side of human
nature; fought on the side of justice, civil order and liberty. This rebellion
was struck with death the instant Abraham Lincoln inscribed on our banner
the word “Emancipation.” (Cheers.) Our armies went up to battle there-
after for the best aspirations of the human soul in every quarter of the globe,
and we conquered. The rebel armies fought well, fought bravely, fought
desperately, but they fought in fetters. Invisible chains were about them.
Deep down in their own consciences there was an accusing voice remind-
ing them that they were fighting for chains and slavery, and not for free-
dom. (Cheers.) They were in chains—entangled with the chains of their
own slaves. They not only struggled with our gigantic armies, and with the
skill of our veteran generals, but they fought against the moral sense of the
nineteenth century—they fought against their own better selves—they
fought against the good in their own souls; they were weakened thereby;
their weakness was our strength, hence our success. And our success over
the rebels is due to another cause quite apart from the perfection of our
structure of government. It is largely owing to the fact that the nation
happened—for it only happened—we happened to have in the presidential
chair, an honest man. (Cheers.) It might have been otherwise. It was our
exceeding good fortune that Abraham Lincoln—not W[illia]m. H. Sew-
ard—received the nomination at Chicago in 1860.3Although William H. Seward led on the first two ballots, the Republican National Convention in Chicago in May 1860 selected Abraham Lincoln as its presidential nominee following the third ballot. National Party Conventions, 1831-1972 (Washington, D.C., 1976), 36-37, 130; David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York, 1976), 418-29. Had Wm. H.
Seward—judging him by his present position4His conservative views on Reconstruction politics and his unswerving loyalty to Andrew Johnson made Secretary of State William H. Seward highly unpopular in most Republican party circles by 1867. Although Seward had lobbied hard for the Thirteenth Amendment and favored civil rights for the freedmen, he was willing to defer to the feelings of southern whites on the crucial issue of suffrage. His advice to Johnson to be more conciliatory toward moderate Republican sentiments in the messages vetoing the Civil Rights Act and the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866 was not known publicly. Seward sacrificed the last of his political influence by working to create a new conservative party to support the administration in the summer and fall of 1866. Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York, 1967), 428-29, 438-44, 455, 460-64; Lawanda Cox and John H. Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865 -1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (London, 1963), 24-25, 36-40, 45-48, 180, 197-200, 221.—had Franklin Pierce, had
Millard Fillmore, had James Buchanan, or had that other embodiment of
political treachery, meanness, baseness, ingratitude, the vilest of the vile,
the basest of the base, the most execrable of the execrable of modern
times—he who shall be nameless5Andrew Johnson. (great laughter and applause), occupied
the Presidential chair your magnificent republic might have been numbered
with the things that were.
We talk about the power of the people over this government, of its
admirable checks and balances, its wisely arranged machinery; but re-
member those three months, the last three months of Buchanan’s admin-
istration. It is impossible to think wisely and deeply without learning a
lesson of the inherent weakness of our republican structure. For three long
months the nation saw their army and their navy scattered and the muni-
tions of war of the government placed in the hands of its enemies.6Douglass alludes to the ill-prepared condition of U.S. military forces during the secession crisis that began in December 1860. The regular army numbered around sixteen thousand officers and men, but perhaps a third of the officers were southerners who left the service when their home states seceded. In addition, the bulk of the army was scattered in small units across the trans-Mississippi frontier, and a majority of the U.S. navy's ninety-odd warships and steamers were either on foreign duty or out of commission. A large proportion of federal munitions and naval supplies was stored in arsenals and bases in southern states that fell into Confederate hands during Buchanan's last weeks in office. Although Republicans charged that this situation was the product of a plot by pro-secession cabinet members of the Pierce and Buchanan administrations, wartime congressional investigations failed to unearth conclusive evidence of treasonous intention. Klein, President James Buchanan, 355-58; Erwin Stanley Bradley, Simon Cameron, Lincoln’s Secretary of War: A Political Biography (Philadelphia, 1966), 175-77. The
people could do nothing but bite their lips in silent agony. They were on a
mighty stream afloat, with all their liberties at stake and a faithless pilot on
their boat. They could not help this. They were in a current which they
could neither resist nor control. In the rapids of a political Niagara, sweep-
ing the nation on, on, in silent agony toward the awful cataract in the
distance to receive it. Our power was unable to stay the treachery.
We appealed, to be sure—we pointed out through our principles the
right way—but we were powerless, and we saw no help till the man,
Lincoln, appeared on the theater of action and extended his honest hand to
save the Republic. (Cheers.) No; we owe nothing to our form of govern-
ment for our preservation as a nation—nothing whatever—nothing to its
checks, nor to its balances, nor to its wise division of powers and duties. It
was an honest President backed up by intelligent and loyal people—men,
high minded men that constitute the State (cheers), who regarded society as
superior to its forms, the spirit as above the letter—men as more than
country, and as superior to the Constitution. They resolved to save the
country with the Constitution if they could, but at any rate to save the
country. To this we owe our present safety as a nation.
Because a defective ship with a skillful captain, a hard-handed and
honest crew, may manage to weather a considerable storm, is no proof that
our old bark is sound in all her planks, bolts and timbers—because by
constant pumping and extraordinary exertions we have managed to keep
afloat and at last reach the shore.
I propose to speak to you of the sources of danger to our republic.
These may be described under two heads, those which are esoteric in their
character and those which are exoteric. I shall discourse of these in the
order now stated. Let it not, however, be supposed by my intelligent
audience that I concede anything to those who hold to the inherent weak-
ness of a republican form of government. Far from this. The point of
weakness in our government don’t touch its republican character. On the
contrary I hold that a republican form of government is the strongest
government on earth when it is thoroughly republican. Our republican
government is weak only as it touches or partakes of the character of
monarchy or an aristocracy or an oligarchy. In its republican features it is
strong. In its despotic features it is weak. Our government, in its ideas, is a
government of the people. But unhappily it was framed under conditions
unfavorable to purely republican results, it was projected and completed
under the influence of institutions quite unfavorable to a pure republican
form of government—slavery on the one hand, monarchy on the other.
Late in a man’s life his surroundings exert but a limited influence upon
him—they are usually shaken off; but only a hero may shake off the
influences of birth and early surroundings; the champion falls—the cause
remains. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that there can be no
such thing as immediate emancipation, either from slavery or from mon-
archy. An instant is sufficient to snap the chains; a century is not too much
to obliterate all traces of former bondage.
It was easy for the Fathers of the Republic, comparatively so at least, to
drive the red-coats from our continent, but it was not easy to drive the ideas
and associations that surrounded the British throne and emanated from the
monarch of this country. Born, as the Fathers of this Republic were, under
monarchical institutions, they very naturally, when they came to form a
government—although they assented to what Rufus Choate called “the
glittering generalities of the Declaration of Independence,”7In a public letter to the Maine Whig Central Committee in August 1856, diehard Massachusetts Whig Rufus Choate warned against the disastrous consequences of Republican party control of the federal government: “To the fifteen States of the South that government will appear an alien government. It will appear worse. It will appear a hostile government . . . its mission to inaugurate freedom and put down the oligarchy; its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence." Samuel Gilman Brown, ed., The Works of Rufus Choate; with a Memoir of His Life, 2 vols. (Boston, 1862), 1: 215. they were
disposed to blend something of the old error with the new truth, or of the
newly discovered truth of liberty asserted in the Declaration of Indepen-
dence. The eclectic principle may work pretty well in some governments,
but it does not work well in our government. Here there must be unity;
unity of idea; unity of object and accord of motive as well as of principles;
in order to [attain] a harmonious, happy and prosperous result.
The idea of putting new wine into old bottles or mending old garments
with new cloth was not peculiar to the Jew;8Douglass paraphrases Matt. 6: 16-17. it came down to the fathers,
and it is showing itself now amongst us. We are disposed to assent to the
abolition of slavery, but we wish to retain something of slavery in the new
dispensation. We are willing that the chains of the slave shall be broken if a
few links can be left on his arm or on his leg. Your fathers were in some
respects after the same pattern. They gave us a Constitution made in the
shadow of slavery and of monarchy, and in its character it partakes in some
of its features of both those unfavorable influences. Now, as l have said, I
concede nothing to those who hold to the inherent weakness of our govem-
ment or a republican form of government. The point of weakness or the
features that weaken our government are exotic. They have been incorpo-
rated and interposited from other forms of government, and it is the busi-
ness of this day and this generation to purge them from the Constitution.
(Cheers.)
In fact, I am here to-night as a democrat, a genuine democrat dyed in
the wool. (Laughter.) I am here to advocate a genuine democratic republic;
to make this a republican form of government, purely a republic, a genuine
republic; free it from everything that looks toward monarchy; eliminate all
foreign elements, all alien elements from it; blot out from it everything
antagonistic of republicanism declared by the fathers—that idea was that
all governments derived their first powers from the consent of the gov-
erned; make it a government of the people, by the people and for the
people, and for all the people, each for all and all for each; blot out all
discriminations against any person, theoretically or practically, and make it
conform to the great truths laid down by the fathers; keep no man from the
ballot box or jury box or the cartridge box, because of his color—exclude
no woman from the ballot box because of her sex. (Applause.) Let the
government of the country rest securely down upon the shoulders of the
whole nation; let there be no shoulder that does not bear up its proportion of
the burdens of the government. Let there [be] no conscience, no intellect in
the land not directly responsible for the moral character of the govern-
ment—for the honor of the government. Let it be a genuine Republic, in
which every man subject to it is represented in it, and I see no reason why a
Republic may not stand while the world stands. (Applause.)
Now, the first source of weakness to a republican government is the one
man power. I rejoice that we are at last startled into a consciousness of the
existence of this one man power. If it was necessary for Jeff[erson] Davis
and his peculiar friends to resort to arms in order to show the danger of
tolerating the slave power in our government, we are under great obliga-
tions to Andrew Johnson for disclosing to us the unwisdom of tolerating the
one man power in their government. (Applause.) And if now we shall be
moved, as I hope we shall, to revise our Constitution so as to entirely free it
from the one man power, to curtail or abridge that power, and reduce [it] to
a manageable point, his accidental occupancy of the Presidential chair will
not be the unmitigated calamity we have been accustomed to regard it.
(Laughter and applause.) It will be a blessing in disguise—though pretty
heavily disguised.9This phrase can be traced back to a poem by James Hervey (1714-58) found in his book Reflections on a Flower-Garden in a Letter to a Lady (London, 1746), 76. (Laughter.) For disguise it as we will, this one man
power is in our constitution. It has its sheet anchor firmly in the soil of our
constitution.10A sheet anchor, the largest of a ship’s anchors, is generally reserved for use in emergencies. Mr. Johnson has sometimes overstepped this power, in
certain conditions of his mind, which are quite frequent, and mistaken
himself for the United States instead of the President of the United States.
The fault is not entirely due to his marvelous vanity, but to the constitution
under which he lives. It is there in that Constitution. The “fantastic tricks”
recently played “before high heaven” by that dignitary when sandwiched
between a hero of the land and of the sea, and swinging around the circle
from the Atlantic to the Mississippi11Ostensibly traveling to Chicago to participate in the dedication of a memorial to Stephen A. Douglas, Andrew Johnson undertook an extended speaking tour of the North from 28 August to 15 September 1866. Accompanied by several members of his cabinet and by such Civil War heroes as General Ulysses S. Grant and Admiral David G. Farragut, Johnson was politely received at his first stops in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Albany. Heckling during his speech at Cleveland on 3 September, however, provoked Johnson into several undignified exchanges. Similar incidents occurred during speeches in St. Louis and Pittsburgh on the return trip from Chicago, and the Republican press accused Johnson of public drunkenness. His political opponents also ridiculed the repetitiveness of Johnson's addresses, especially his intemperate declaration that having fought the traitors in the South he was “swinging around the circle" to fight the traitors, such as Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, who lived in the North. Riddleberger, 1866: The Critical Year, 217-23; Castel, Presidency of Andrew Johnson, 89-95; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 428-39.—we must break down the main-
spring of those tricks in the Constitution before we shall get rid of them
elsewhere.
It is true that our President is not our King for life; he is here only
temporarily. I say King. Mr. Seward, you know, took it upon himself to
introduce Andrew Johnson to the simple-hearted people of Michigan as
king. “Will you have him as your President or as your King,” said the
astute Secretary of State, evidently regarding the one title as appropriate to
Andy Johnson as the other.12Seward accompanied Johnson on the latter's “swing around the circle” tour and preceded the president on the platform in Battle Creek, Michigan, on 5 September 1866. At the conclusion of his remarks Seward addressed several questions to the audience: “Now, I will ask you, Do you want a tyrant to rule over you or your legally elected Governor? Do you want Andrew Johnson to be President or King? (shouts of ‘President!’ ‘President and no king!') That is, President of twenty-five states? (Cries of ‘Yes!' and ‘No!') Do you want him to be President of thirty-six states? (Cries of ‘No! no!' and ‘Yes!') The ayes have it." New York Herald, 6 September 1866; New York Tribune, 6 September 1866. There is a good deal of truth in it, for in fact he
is invested with kingly power, with an arbitrariness equal to any crownhead
in Europe. Spite of our boasts of the power of the people, your
President can rule you as with a rod of iron. It is true he is only elected for
four years—he is only a four-year old—and the brief time of the term
would seem to be a security against misbehavior; a security and a guarantee
of good conduct, for the most turbulent of men can manage to behave
themselves for short periods—always excepting the “Humble Indi-
vidual.”13During his tour Johnson made so many personal references to himself that the Republican press condemned his lack of humility. But the brief time—this brief time is no security—to my mind it
furnishes impunity rather than security. We bear, in one of these Presidents’
behavior, arrogance and arbitrariness that we would not bear with but for
the limited term of his service. We would not bear it an hour—the disgrace
and scandal that we now stagger under—did we not know that two short,
silent years will put an end to our misery in this respect.
It is true that we choose our President, and that would seem to show
that the people after all rule. Well, we do choose him; we elect him, and we
are free while we are electing him. When I was a slave; when I was first the
privilege given hereafter of choosing my own master at the end of the year I
was very much delighted. It struck me as a large concession to my man-
hood, the idea that I had the right to choose a master at the end of the year,
and if I was kicked, and cuffed, bruised and beaten, during the year it was
some satisfaction to know that after all, old fellow, I will shake you off at
the end of the year. (Laughter.) I thought it a great thing to be able to choose
my own master. I was quite intoxicated with this little bit of liberty—and I
would dance from Christmas to New Year on the strength of it. But, as I
grew older and a trifle wiser, I began to be dissatisfied with this liberty, the
liberty of choosing another master. I found that what I wanted, that what I
needed, what was essential to my manhood was not another master, not a
new master, not an old master, but the right to the power under the law to be
my own master. (Cheers.) From this little bit of experience—slave experi-
ence—I have elaborated quite a lengthy chapter of political philosophy,
applicable to the American people. You are free to choose, but after you
have chosen your freedom is gone, just as mine was—gone, and our power
is gone to a large extent under the framework of our government when you
have chosen. You are free to choose, free while you are voting, free while
you are dropping a piece of paper into the box with some names on it—I
won’t tell how those names got on it; that would evince, perhaps, a culpa-
ble familiarity with politics to do that. (Laughter.) But you are free while
you are dropping in your vote—going, going, gone. (Laughter.) When
your President is elected, once familiarly seated in the national saddle, his
feet in the stirrups, his hand on the reins, he can drive the national animal
almost where he will. (Laughter.) He can administer this government with
a contempt for public opinion, for the opinions and wishes of the people,
such as no crowned head in Europe imitates towards his subjects.
Take, for instance, the government of England. It is sufficiently des-
potic and autocratic, but after all that government is administered with a
deference for popular opinion far superior—far greater than our own.
When the prime minister of England finds himself out-voted on the floor of
the House of Commons by the people’s representatives, what does he do?
He lays the seals of his office at the foot of the throne; calls upon the
national sovereignty to organize another government, more in harmony
with the wishes and opinions of the people than he is able to be. He
construes a vote against any great measure of his as a vote of want of
confidence, and he is not willing to hold power when he is convinced that
the people of the country are against him. He resigns.
But whoever heard of anybody in America resigning? (Laughter.)
Why, Congress might vote down Johnson every month and Seward every
morning and they would stick to their offices just the same. They would
hold on. Their theory is that when the people agree with them they are
right, but when the people differ from them they are simply mistaken. They
go on in their accustomed ways. Whoever heard of anybody’s resigning
because he didn’t represent the wishes of those who elected him? I have
heard of a great many being invited, but I never heard of one accepting the
invitation (laughter).
Mr. Doolittle14One of Andrew Johnson’s most loyal supporters in the U.S. Senate, James Rood Doolittle (1815-97), was born in Hampton, New York, and graduated from Geneva (Hobart) College in 1834. After practicing law in western New York for thirteen years, he moved to Racine, Wisconsin, in 1851. Originally a Democrat with free-soil principles, Doolittle joined the Republican party in 1856 and was elected to the U.S. Senate the following year. Although a supporter of a vigorous military effort in the Civil War, he had favored gradual emancipation and colonization before the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. When he refused to follow the Wisconsin legislature‘s instructions to support the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, that body called on him to resign. Doolittle presided over the pro-Johnson National Union Convention in Philadelphia in August 1866 and voted for acquittal in Johnson's impeachment trial. Aligning with the Democrats after 1868, he lost his Senate seat and subsequent races for governor and the U.S. House of Representatives. Cox and Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 215-16, 224, 227; Beale, Critical Year, 123-31; ACAB, 2: 201-02; DAB, 5: 274-75. has recently been invited to resign; he prefers to remain
where he is. Mr. Cowan15Born in Greensburg. Pennsylvania, Edgar Cowan (1815-85) attended Franklin College in New Athens, Ohio, before returning to his native state to practice law. He left the Whig for the Republican party in 1856 and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1861. A strict constructionist, Cowan opposed such Radical Republican measures as the Confiscation Act of 1862 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. His support for Andrew Johnson and for the National Union Convention completed his alienation from Pennsylvania Republicans, and he was not reelected to a second Senate term. After the Senate refused to confirm his appointment by Johnson as ambassador to Austria, Cowan returned to his private legal career. Cox and Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 216-17, 224; BDAC, 790; DAB, 4: 470-71. has been invited to resign; he prefers to remain
and serve his term out. Patriotic man! The wishes and the will of the
people! Why, the people of this country expressed a desire that Andy
Johnson might retire from his present position. Is there any likelihood of
his doing so in deference to your opinion? No. And you have no power to
make him do so under your government. He is there for four years, and
your only comfort, your only consolation, for whatever usurpation and
misbehavior he is guilty of, is, that by and by you will have the right to elect
another. What I needed for my manhood was, that I should be my own
master. What the American people need for their manhood and their na-
tional security is, that the people shall, in time of war, and in time of peace
be the masters of their own government.
Now what are the elements that enter into this one man power and swell
it to the formidable measure at which we find it at this time? The first thing
is the immense patronage of the President of the United States—the pat-
ronage of money, of honor, of place and power. He is able to divide among
his friends and among his satellites—attaching men to his person and to his
political fortunes—a hundred million of dollars per annum in time of
peace, and uncounted thousands of millions of dollars in time of war are
virtually at his disposal. This is an influence which can neither be weighed,
measured nor otherwise estimated. The very thought of it is overwhelming.
This amount of money lodged outside of the government in unfriendly
hands could be made a formidable lever for the destruction of the govern-
ment. It is a direct assault upon the national virtue. While the President of
the United States can exalt whom he will, cast down whom he will; he can
place A into office for agreeing with him in opinion, and cause B to be put
out of office because of an honest difference of opinion with him. Who
does not see that the tendency to agreement will be a million times stronger
than the tendency to differ, even though truth should be in favor of dif-
ference. From this power—this patronage—has arisen the popular politi-
cal maxim that “to the victors belong the spoils,”16During the Senate debate on 21 January 1832 over confirmation of President Van Buren’s nomination for ambassador to Great Britain, New York senator William L. Marcy declared that the politicians of the United States “see nothing wrong in the rule, that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy." Gales and Seaton’s Register of Debates in Congress, 22d Cong., 1st sess., 1325. and that other vulgar
expression of the same idea by Postmaster General Randall,17Born in Ames, New York, Alexander Williams Randall (1819-72) moved with his family to Wisconsin. There he practiced law in Prairieville and subsequently served as an associate justice of the Milwaukee circuit court (1855-57). Free soil views led Randall from the Democratic party into the new Republican party, which elected him governor (1857-61). Lincoln appointed Randall U.S. minister to Rome (1862-63) and later first assistant postmaster general (1863-66). Promoted to postmaster general by Andrew Johnson, Randall supported the unsuccessful effort to form a conservative political coalition behind the president. At the end of Johnson's term, Randall moved to Elmira, New York, and resumed the practice of law. Cox and Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 219; Sobel, Biographical Directory of U.S. Executive Branch, 281-82; DAB, 15: 344-45. that no man
shall eat the President’s “bread and butter” who does not indorse the
President’s “policy.” The first thing that an American is taught at the cradle
side is never to fight against his bread and butter.
Now I hold that this patronage should be abolished, that is to say that
the President’s control over it should be abolished. The Constitution evi-
dently contemplated that the large arm of our government should control
the matter of appointments. It declares that the President may appoint by
and with the consent and with the advice of the Senate;18Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution. he must get the
Senate’s advice and consent, but custom and a certain laxity of administra-
tion has almost obliterated this feature of the Constitution, and now the
President appoints, he not only appoints by and with the consent, but he has
the power of removal, and with this power he virtually makes the agency of
the Senate of the United States of no effect in the matter of appointments. I
am very glad to see that a movement is on foot in Congress to make the
appointments by the President or removal by the President alone illegal.19On 3 December 1866, a bill to curtail Andrew Johnson's power to dismiss federal officeholders was introduced in both houses of Congress. The bill required Senate approval for the removal of any official whose appointment had required that body's consent; during a congressional recess the president could suspend an officeholder, but if the Senate did not concur with that action within twenty days of the beginning of the next session the official would resume his duties. During Senate debates in January and February 1867, moderate Republicans, including John Sherman and William Pitt Fessenden, opposed limitations on the president’s power to fire cabinet officers. To clarify the issue, a proviso was added to the final bill stating that cabinet members should hold office during, and for one month after, the term of the president who appointed them, unless removed with the Senate's consent. Andrew Johnson vetoed the Tenure of Office Act as unconstitutional on 2 March 1867, but Congress overrode his veto on the same day. Charles A. Jellison, Fessenden of Maine: Civil War Senator (Syracuse, N.Y., 1962), 214-15, 233-34; Fawn M. Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South (New York, 1959), 237; Horace White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull (Boston, 1913), 301- 03; Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863-1869 (New York, 1974), 24.
The security which you and I will have against the President is that the same
power that is required to appoint shall be required to remove; that if the
President can only appoint with the advice and consent of the Senate, he
shall remove with the advice and consent of the Senate. If the President’s
power at this point were abridged to this extent the case would be helped
materially.
Another source of evil in the one man power is the veto power. I am in
favor of abolishing the veto power completely. It has no business in our
Constitution.20Article I, Section 7, of the U.S. Constitution empowers the president to veto legislation passed by Congress. It is alien to every idea of republican government—bor-
rowed from the old world, from king craft and priest craft, and all other
adverse craft to republican government. It is anti-republican, anti-
democratic, anti—common sense. (Applause.) It is based upon the idea, the
absurdity, that one man is more than many men—that one man separate
from the people by his exalted station—one man sitting apart from the
people in his room, surrounded by his friends, his cliques, his satellites,
will be likely to bring to the consideration of public measures, a higher
wisdom, a larger knowledge, a purer patriotism, than will the representa-
tives of the republic in the face and in the presence of the multitude with the
flaming sword of the press waving over them, directly responsible to their
constituents, immediately in communication with the great heart of the
people—that one man will be likely to govern more wisely than will a
majority of the people. It is borrowed from the old world; it is alien to our
institutions; it is opposed to the very genius of free institutions, and I want
to see it struck out of our Constitution. (Loud applause.) I believe that two
heads are better than one,21This commonplace can be traced back in the English language to John Heywood’s 1562 compendium. John Heywood, The Proverbs and Epigrams of John Heywood (1562; New York, 1967), Part I, chap. 9. and I shall not stultify myself by saying that
one head, even though it be the head of Andrew Johnson, is more than
almost two-thirds of the representatives of the American people. Is that
Republicanism? Is that Democracy? Is that consistent with the idea that the
people shall rule? I think not.
But it is said that we must have a check some where. We are great on
checks. We must have some checks against these fanatical majorities, and
we have recently been told that majorities can be as destructive and more
arbitrary than individual despots, especially when the individuals are hum-
ble “Uriah Heeps.”22Douglass probably paraphrases the arguments in Andrew Johnson's message of 7 January 1867 vetoing the District of Columbia suffrage bill. Johnson quoted James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, James Kent, and Joseph Story to support his claim that majorities in the legislative branch of government could potentially be more despotic than the executive branch. Douglass compares Johnson to Uriah Heep, a fictional character in Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield (1850), whose hypocritical humility was similar to the Radical Republicans' portrayal of Johnson. McPherson, History of Reconstruction, 154-59; Michael Hardwick and Mollie Hardwick, The Charles Dickens Encyclopedia (London, 1973), 87-88. (Laughter.) If this be so; if this is the truth, I think
that we ought to part with Republican government at once. If it be true that
one man is more likely to be wiser, or is likely to be wiser than the
majority—that one man is likely to wield the government more entirely
[in] the interest of the people than will a majority, if one man is a safer guide
for the people than nearly two-thirds of the best representatives—if that be
true, let us have a one man government at once, let us have done with
republicanism—let us try the experiment of the one man government. And
I would advise you to begin with a legitimate scion of some of the great
families of Europe. Let us take a genuine sprig of the article. We can easily
get one—they are becoming very abundant in Europe I am told. There is
one now, I think, one that is out of place, and you need not send across the
Atlantic for him. He is driving about down here in Mexico. You might send
for Maximilian, and have a one man government alone.23Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph (1832-67) was a son of Hapsburg archduke Francis Charles and the brother of Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria. Resigning as governor-general of Venetia-Lombardy when his liberal policies incurred his brother’s disapproval and facing a dearth of official duties in his homeland, the romantic and ambitious archduke accepted an offer from Napoleon III to become ruler of a prospective empire in Mexico. A French army that had already driven the republican government of President Benito Juarez from Mexico City would protect Maximilian until his regime could be firmly established. Arriving in Mexico in 1864, Maximilian attempted to rally popular support for his throne, but his liberalism alienated the clergy and large landowners who had initially welcomed him. When diplomatic pressure from the United States forced the French to withdraw their troops in early 1867, Maximilian's position quickly crumbled. Refusing to abdicate, he was captured by republican forces in May 1867 and executed the following month. Joan Haslip, Imperial Adventurer: Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (London, 1971); Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill, 1971), 96-98, 129, 133-35, 142-43, 263-73, 290-300; ACAB, 4: 268-70. And we should
have the veto legitimate.
I believe majorities can be despotic and have been arbitrary, but arbi-
trary to whom? Arbitrary when arbitrary at all, always to unrepresented
classes. What is the remedy? A consistent republic in which there shall be
no unrepresented classes. For when all classes are represented the rights of
all classes will be respected. (Cheers.) It is a remarkable fact, and we
Americans may well ponder it, that although the veto is entirely consistent
with monarchical government and entirely inconsistent with republican
government, the government of England, which is a monarchy, has not
exercised the veto power once in 150 years.24Queen Anne exercised the last royal veto in 1707 on a Scottish militia bill. Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760 (1939; London, 1962), 30. There where it is consistent it
is never used. Here where it is inconsistent, and at war with the genius of
our institutions we can have a little veto every morning. Where the people
rule they are the vetoed. When any measure passes the House of Commons
or House of Lords, it is sure of the royal assent. Popular as Queen Victoria
is, honored as she is queen, loved as she is a mother,25The queen of Great Britain since 1837, Victoria (1819-1901) married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1840 and was the mother of nine children: Victoria (1840-1901); Albert Edward (1841-1910), her successor; Alice (1843-78); Alfred (1844-1900); Helena (1846-1923); Louisa (1848-1939); Arthur (1850- 1942); Leopold (1853-84); and Beatrice (1857-1944). Chris Cook and Brendan Keith, British Historical Facts, 1830-1900 (London, 1975), 105-07. as a good citizen of
the realm, it would cost her her crown to veto a measure passed by the
people’s representatives in the House of Commons and by the House of
Lords. But here the people have got used to it, like the eels that got used to
being skinned—so used to it that they feel no indignation at the arrogance
and presumption that one man exhibits in opposing his judgment to the
judgment of the people’s representatives. You have got used to it. I see no
indignation at all at this impertinence. We have become so listless and
indifferent about the dignity of the people, that we can see it insulted with a
veto every month.
Now, I have looked down on the House of Commons and the House of
Lords, and I have listened to the eloquence of their noblest orators, Sir
Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Richard Cobden and John Bright—a man
whose name should never be mentioned in an American audience without
moving it. I have listened to Lord Brougham26Lord Henry Peter Brougham. and to Lord Palmerston,27Henry John Temple, third Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865), a Tory turned conservative Liberal politician, served as Britain's foreign minister (1830-34, 1835-41, 1846-52) and prime minister (1855-58, 1859-65). DNB, 19: 496-513.
and I have also looked down on the Senate of the United States, and heard
the debates there, and I am free to say, without wishing to disparage the
English House of Parliament, in all the elements going to exalt and dignify
a high deliberative assembly, our Senate compares favorably with the
House of Lords. I think it the superior of the House of Lords and our House
of Representatives fully the equal of the House of Commons in England.
And if in a monarchy the representatives of the people can be trusted to
govern themselves without the veto, Republican Americans can’t you?
Have done with that veto. It is a fruitful source of mischief, and bad bold
men. A man of vigorous intellect, imperious will, fiery temper and bound-
less ambition finds in that veto a convenient instrument for the gratification
of all his desires and his base ambition. Do away with it; blot it out from
your government, and you will have done with the antagonism between the
legislative arm and the executive arm of the government. Make your Presi-
dent what you ought to be, not more than he ought to be, and you should see
to it that such changes should be made in the Constitution of the United
States that your President is simply your executive, that he is there not to
make laws, but to enforce them; not to defy your will, but to enforce your
high behests.
Another thing I would do. I would abolish, if I had it in my power, the
two-term principle. Away with that. While that principle remains in the
Constitution—while the President can be his own successor, and is eligible
to succeed himself,28George Washington established the precedent for a two-term presidency, but it was not a part of the U.S. Constitution as Douglass implies. he will not be warm in his seat in the presidential
chair (such is poor human nature), before he will begin to scheme for a
second election. It is a standing temptation to him to use the powers of his
office in such a manner as to promote his own political fortune. The
presidency is too valuable to allow a man who occupies the position the
means of perpetuating himself in that office. Another objection to this
provision of the Constitution is, that we have a divided man in the presiden-
tial chair. The duties of the presidency are such as to require a whole man,
the whole will, and the whole work; but the temptation of a President is to
make himself a President of a Presidential party as well as of the country,
and the result is that we are only half served. What we want is the entire
service of a man reduced to one term, and then he can bring to the service of
his country an undivided man, an undivided sense of duty and devote his
energies to the discharge of his office without selfish ends or aims. Blot out
this two-term system.
Another thing I would abolish—the pardoning power. I should take
that right out of the hands of this one man. The argument against it is in
some respects similar to that used against the veto power. Those against the
veto power are equally persistent against the pardoning power, and there is
a good reason why we should do away with the pardoning power in the
hands of the President, that is that our government may at some time be in
the hands of a bad man. When in the hands of a good man it is all well
enough, and we ought to have our government so shaped that even when in
the hands of a bad man we shall be safe. And we know that the people are
usually well intentioned. A certain per centage are thieves, a certain per
centage are robbers, murderers, assassins, blind, insane and idiots. But the
great mass of men are well intentioned, and we should watch the indi-
vidual. Trust the masses always. That is good Democracy, is it not? Not
modern, but old-fashioned. But my argument is this: A bad President, for
instance, has the power to do what? What can he not do? If he wanted to
revolutionize this government, he could easily do it with this ponderous
power; it would be an auxiliary power. He could cry “havoc, and let slip the
dogs of war,”29Douglass quotes Julius Caesar, act 3, sc. 1, line 278. and say to the conspirators: “I am with you. If you
succeed, all is well. If you fail, I will interpose the shield of my pardon, and
you are safe. If your property is taken away from you by Congress, I will
pardon and restore your property. Go on and revolutionize the government;
I will stand by you.” The bad man will say or might say this. I am not sure
but we have got a man now who comes very near saying it. Let us have done
with this pardoning power. We have had enough of this. Pardoning! How
inexpressibly base have been the uses made by this power—this beneficent
power. It has been that with which a treacherous President has trafficked.
He has made it the means of securing adherents to himself instead of
securing allegiance to the government. Let us have done with closet par-
dons—pardons obtained by bad men—pardons obtained by questionable
women—pardons obtained in the most disgraceful and scandalous man-
ner. Drive this pardoning power out of the government and put it in the
legislative arm of the government in some way. Let a committee of the
House of Representatives and Senate of the United States determine who
shall be the recipients of the clemency at the hands of the nation. Let it not
come from an individual, but let it come from the people. An outraged
people know to whom to extend this clemency.
Another thing I am in favor of. I am in favor of abolishing the office of
the Vice President. Let us have no more Vice Presidents. (Cheers.) We
have had bad luck with them. (Laughter.) We don’t need them. There is no
more need of electing a Vice President at the same time we elect a President
than there is need of electing a second wife when we have got one already.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”30Matt. 6: 34. The argument against the
vice presidency is to me very conclusive. It may be briefly stated thus: The
presidency of the United States, like the crown of a monarchy, is a tempting
bauble. It is a very desirable thing. Men are men. Ambition is ambition the
world over. History is constantly repeating itself. There is not a single
crown in Europe that has not [at] some time been stained with innocent
blood—not one. For the crown, men have murdered their friends who have
dined at the table with them; for the crown, men have sent the assassin to
the cells of their own brothers and their own sisters, and plunged the dagger
into their own warm, red blood. For the crown all manner of crimes have
been committed. The Presidency is equally a tempting bauble in this coun-
try. I am not for placing that temptation so near any man as it is placed when
we elect a Vice President. I am not for electing a man to the presidential
chair, and then putting a man behind him with his ambition all leading that
way—with his desires, his thoughts, all directed upon that chair, with a
knowledge, at the same time, that only the President’s life stands between
him and the object of his ambition. I am not for placing a man behind the
President, within striking distance of him, whose interest, whose ambi-
tion, whose every inclination is to be subserved by his getting that chair.
The wall of assassination is too thin to be placed between a man and the
Presidency of the United States. (Cheers.) Let your Vice President be
unknown to himself and unknown to the people. Let him be in the mass till
there is need for him. Don’t plump him right upon the President. Your
President is unsafe while the shadow of the Vice President falls upon the
Presidential chair. How easy it would be to procure the death of any man
where there are such temptations as that offered. A clique, a clan, a ring,
usually forms about the Vice President.
How would you administer the government if you were President?
Who would you send to the Court of St. James? Who would you send to the
Court of France? Who would you appoint Postmaster General? Who would
you appoint Collector of the port of New Orleans, or New York or of St.
Louis? What would you do if you were President? “I would do so and so.”
“It suits us to a dot.” (Laughter and applause.) The President dies, and in
steps the Vice President. He is reminded at once of his old pledges, and he
begins to try to redeem them by turning against the party who elected him.
It is a remarkable fact that in no instance has any vice-president followed
out the policy of the president that he was elected with. Elected on the same
ticket, on the same platform, at the same time, at the instant the president is
taken off the vice president has reversed the machinery of the policy on
which he was elected in every instance.
General Harrison31William Henry Harrison. was the first man suspected of entertaining opin-
ions unfavorable to slavery. He died in a month. He was succeeded by
whom? By John Tyler—one of the most violent propagandists of slavery
that ever trod this continent. Where was the Whig party that elected him?
Nowhere. Where was the policy on which he was elected? Nowhere.
General Taylor,32Zachary Taylor. though a slaveholding man and an honest man to-
wards his constituents and the people of the country, the moment it was
ascertained he was in favor of admitting California as a free State if she saw
fit to come with a constitution of that character and was opposed to paying
ten millions of dollars to Texas on account of the claim on New Mexico,33As part of his 1850 omnibus bill to resolve the sectional controversy caused by the Mexican Cession, Henry Clay proposed that the federal government compensate Texas with $10 million to abandon its territorial claims against New Mexico. President Zachary Taylor opposed Clay’s plan and instead encouraged New Mexicans to apply for admission to statehood. The border dispute between the two states would then have become a legal matter for the Supreme Court to resolve instead of a sectionally divisive political issue. Potter, Impending Crisis, 99-100; Holman Hamilton, Zachary Taylor: Soldier in the White House (Indianapolis, Ind., 1951), 330-31, 374-79.
there were means at hand to kill him. He died and was followed by
whom?34Millard Fillmore was Zachary Taylor's vice president and succeeded to the presidency at the latter's death on 9 July 1850. By a vile sycophant who spit on the policy of his predecessor, and
put himself in the service of the very men whom that President had of-
fended. Well, they tried to murder even James Buchanan (laughter) in order
that he should be followed by a younger, stronger traitor than himself. They
put Mr Breckinridge35John Cabell Breckinridge. behind him, and when he went down to Washington
they carried him to the National Hotel and helped him to a large dose of
poison. (Laughter.) But in that instance the poison met its match. (Great
laughter.) Who doubts that James Buchanan was poisoned? It was notori-
ous at the time, and no doubt poisoned for a purpose.
To-day, to-day we mourn, the nation has to mourn, that the nation has a
President, made President by the bullet of an assassin. I do not say that he
knew that his noble predecessor was to be murdered. I do not say that he
had any hand in it; but this I do say, without fear of contradiction, that the
men who murdered Abraham Lincoln knew Andrew Johnson as we know
him now. (Great applause.) Let us have done with these vice presidents.
The nation can easily call a man to fill the presidential chair in case of
death; besides, he is not half so likely to die. (Laughter.) It is a little
remarkable, too, that whilst presidents die, vice presidents never die.
(Laughter.) There is nobody behind them.
Well I had marked a number of points I intended to dwell upon. I am
taking up perhaps too much of your time, to go further with internal sources
of danger to the republic. I had purposed to have spoken specially of secret
diplomacy, but I pass it over as one of the sources of weakness to our
republican form of government. I may be told that in pointing out these
sources of weakness that it is easy to find fault but not so easy to find
remedies. I admit it, I agree with Robert Hale36Douglass probably refers to the British Baptist minister and essayist Robert Hall (1764-1831). that it requires more talent
to build a decent pig stye than to tear down a considerable palace, and yet
when the ship is to be repaired, it is of some consequence to find out where
the unsound timbers are, when the opening seam is where the corroded bolt
is, that we put in sounder, and I have been indicating where these points of
unsoundness are. And I think I can leave this matter of reconstruction to the
high constructive talent of this Anglo-Saxon race. The negro has done his
part if he succeeds in pointing out the source of danger to the republic. You
will have done your part when you have corrected or removed these sources
of danger. We have already grappled with very dangerous elements in our
government, and we have performed a manly part, we have removed
errors, but there are some errors to be removed, not so dangerous, not so
shocking, perhaps, as those with which we have grappled; but nevertheless
dangers requiring removal. Happy will it be for us, happy will it be for the
land, happy for coming generations, if we shall discover these sources of
danger, and grapple with them in time without the aid of a second re-
bellion—without the people being lashed and stung into another military
necessity.
It is sad to think that half the glory, half the honor due to the great act of
emancipation was lost in the tardiness of its performance. It has now gone
irrevocably into history—not as an act of sacred choice by a great nation,
of the right as against the wrong, of truth as against falsehood, of liberty as
against slavery—but as a military necessity. We are called upon to be
faithful to the American government, for our emancipation as black men;
We do feel thankful, and we have the same reason to be thankful that the
Israelites had to be thankful to Pharaoh for their emancipation, for their
liberties.37The circumstances of the escape of the Israelites from captivity in Egypt are described in the Book of Exodus. It was not until judgments terrible, wide-sweeping, far-
reaching and overwhelming, had smitten down this nation, that we were
ready to part with our reverence for slavery, and ceased to quote Scripture
in its defence. It was not until we felt the land trembling beneath our feet
that we heard an accusing voice in the heart; the sky above was darkened,
the wail came up from millions of hearth stones in our land. Our sons and
brothers slain in battle, it was not until we saw our sons and brothers
returning home mere stumps of men, armless, legless, it was not until we
felt all crumbling beneath us and we saw the Star Spangled Banner clinging
to the masthead heavy with blood.
It was not until agony was manifested from a million of hearthstones in
our land, and the Southern sky was darkened, that we managed to part with
our reverence for slavery, and to place a musket on the shoulders of the
black man. We may now do from choice and from sacred choice what we
did by military necessity. (Loud applause.)