The Claims of Our Race: An Interview With President Andrew Johnson in Washington, D.C., on February 7, 1866
THE CLAIMS OF OUR RACE: AN INTERVIEW WITH
PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON IN WASHINGTON, DC,
ON 7 FEBRUARY I866
Washington Evening Star, 7 February I866. Other texts in Washington Daily Morning
Chronicle, 8 February 1866; Washington National Intelligencer, 8 February 1866; New
York Times, 8 February 1866; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 12 February 1866; Spring-
field Illinois State Register, 13 February 1866; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 17 Febru-
ary 1866; Boston Commonwealth, 17 February 1866; Edward McPherson, The Political
History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction, 3d ed.
(Washington, D.C., 1880), 52-55; Foner, Life and Writings, 4: 182-91.
On the morning of 7 February 1866, President Andrew Johnson received a
delegation appointed by the National Convention of Colored Men, an organization
of black men from thirteen states that was then meeting in Washington.
Douglass, his son Lewis, and George T. Downing were among the thirteen
men (including one white man) escorted into the president’s office at the
Executive Mansion. Downing opened the interview, followed by Douglass,
who stated the purpose of the visit. Johnson then replied. Although the presi-
dent was courteous, the delegates disliked the fact that he “indicated . . . a
repressed anger.” Johnson ungracefully sidestepped the concerns of the
group, most of which centered on the Thirteenth Amendment and its enforce-
ment in the southern states. After the meeting was over, the delegates met
briefly with Radical Republicans opposed to Johnson’s policies. Later that
day, Douglass composed a written reply to the president, signed by all the
delegates, which appeared in the next day’s edition of the Washington Daily
Morning Chronicle. (See Appendix B.) James O. Clephane, a stenographic
reporter, recorded the interview for the Evening Star and made slight “correc-
tions” in the version published in the Daily Morning Chronicle. Clephane’s
text was widely reprinted throughout the nation. Douglass, Life and Times,
421-24; Quarles, FD, 226-28.
This afternoon, the delegation of colored representatives from different
States of the country, now in Washington to urge the interests of the colored
people before the Government, had an interview with the President. The
delegation was made up as follows:—Fred. Douglass, New York; George
T. Downing, representing the New England States; Lewis H. Douglass
(son of Fred. Douglass) and Wm. E. Matthews, of Maryland; John Jones,
of Illinois; John F. Cook, of the District of Columbia; A. J. Raynier, of
South Carolina; Joseph E. Oates, of Florida; A. W. Ross, of Mississippi;
Wm. Ripper, of Pennsylvania; John M. Brown and Alexander Dunlop of
Virginia; and Calvin Pepper (white), of Virginia.
The President shook hands kindly with each member of the delegation.
ADDRESS OF GEORGE T. DOWNING
Mr. George T. Downing then addressed the President as follows:
We present ourselves to your Excellency to make known with pleasure
the respect which we are glad to cherish for you—a respect which is your
due as Chief Magistrate. It is our desire for you to know we come feeling
that we are friends, meeting a friend. We should, however, have man-
ifested our friendship by not coming to further tax your already much
burdened and valuable time; but we have another object in calling. We are
in a passage to equality before the law. God hath made it by opening a Red
Sea. We could have your assistance through the same. We come to you in
the name of the United States, and are delegated to come by some who have
unjustly worn iron manacles on their bodies—by some whose minds have
been manacled by class legislation in States called free. The colored people
of the States of Illinois, Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, South
Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York,
New England States, and District of Columbia, have specially delegated us
to come.
Our coming is a marked circumstance, noting determined hope that we
are not satisfied with an amendment prohibiting slavery, but that we wished
it enforced with appropriate legislation. This is our desire. We ask for it
intelligently, with the knowledge and conviction that the Fathers of the
Revolution intended freedom for every American, that they should be
protected in their rights as citizens and equal before the law. We are Ameri-
cans, native born Americans. We are citizens, we are glad to have it known
to the world, as bearing no doubtful record on this point. On this fact, and
with confidence in the triumph of justice, we base our hope. We see no
recognition of color or race in the organic law of the land. It knows no
privileged class, and therefore we cherish the hope that we may be fully
enfranchised, not only here in this District but throughout the land. We
respectfully submit that rendering anything less than this will be rendering
to us less than our just due; that granting anything less than our full rights
will be a disregard of our just rights, of due respect of our feelings. If the
powers that be do so it will be used as a license, as it were, or an apology for
any community, or for individuals thus disposed, to outrage our rights and
feelings. It has been shown in the present war that the Government may
justly reach the strong arm into States and demand from them, from those
who owe it allegiance, their assistance and support. May it not reach out a
like arm to secure and protect its subjects upon whom it has a claim?
ADDRESS OF FRED. DOUGLASS
Following upon Mr. Downing, Mr. Fred. Douglass advanced and ad-
dressed the President, saying:
Mr. President:—We are not here to enlighten you, sir, as to your duties
as the Chief Magistrate of this Republic, but to show our respect, and to
present in brief the claims of our race to your favorable consideration. In
the order of Divine Providence you are placed in a position where you have
the power to save or destroy us; to bless or blast us. I mean our whole race.
Your noble and humane predecessor1Abraham Lincoln. placed in our hands the sword to
assist in saving the nation, and we do hope that you, his able successor, will
favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballot with which to save
ourselves.
We shall submit no argument on that point. The fact that we are the
subjects of Government, and subject to taxation, subject to volunteer in the
service of the country, subject to being drafted, subject to bear the burdens
of the State, makes it not improper that we should ask to share in the
privileges of this condition.
I have no speech to make on this occasion. I simply submit these
observations as a limited expression of the views and feelings of the delega-
tion with which I have come.
RESPONSE OF THE PRESIDENT
In reply to some of your inquiries, not to make a speech about this
thing, for it is always best to talk plainly and distinctly about such matters, I
will say, that if I have not given evidence in my course that I am a friend of
humanity, and to that portion of it which constitutes the colored population,
I can give no evidence here. Everything that l have had, both as regards life
and property, has been perilled in that cause, and I feel and think that I
understand (not to be egotistic) what should be the true direction of this
question, and what course of policy would result in the amelioration and
ultimate elevation, not only of the colored, but of the great mass of the
people of the United States. I say that if I have not given evidence that I am
a friend of humanity, and especially the friend of the colored man in my
past conduct, there is nothing that I can now do that would. I repeat, all that
I possessed, life, liberty, and property, have been put up in connection with
that question; when I had every inducement held out to take the other
course, by adopting which I would have accomplished perhaps all that the
most ambitious might have desired. If I know myself, and the feelings of
my own heart, they have been for the colored man. I have owned slaves and
bought slaves, but I never sold one. I might say, however, that practically,
so far as my connection with slaves has gone, I have been their slave instead
of their being mine. Some have even followed me here, while others are
occupying and enjoying my property with my consent. For the colored race
my means, my time, my all has been perilled; and now at this late day, after
giving evidence that is tangible, that is practical, I am free to say to you that
I do not like to be arraigned by some who can get up handsomely rounded
periods and deal in rhetoric, and talk about abstract ideas of liberty, Who
never perilled life, liberty, or property. This kind of theoretical, hollow,
unpractical friendship amounts to but very little. While I say that I am a
friend of the colored man, I do not want to adopt a policy that I believe will
end in a contest between the races, which, if persisted in, will result in the
extermination of one or the other. God forbid that I should be engaged in
such a work!
Now, it is always best to talk about things practically, and in a
common-sense way. Yes, I have said, and I repeat here, that if the colored
man in the United States could find no other Moses, or any Moses that
would be more able and efficient than myself, I would be his Moses to lead
him from bondage to freedom; that I would pass him from a land where he
had lived in slavery to a land (if it were in our reach) of freedom. Yes, I
would be willing to pass with him through the Red Sea to the Land of
Promise—to the land of liberty; but I am not willing, under either circum-
stance, to adopt a policy which I believe will only result in the sacrifice of
his life and the shedding of his blood. I think I know what I say. I feel what I
say; and I feel well assured that if the policy urged by some be persisted in,
it will result in great injury to the white as well as to the colored man. There
is a great deal of talk about the sword in one hand accomplishing an end,
and the ballot accomplishing another at the ballot-box.
These things all do very well, and sometimes have forcible application.
We talk about justice; we talk about right; we say that the white man has
been in the wrong in keeping the black man in slavery as long as he has.
That is all true. Again, we talk about the Declaration of Independence and
equality before the law. You understand all that, and know how to appreci-
ate it. But, now, let us look each other in the face; let us go to the great mass
of colored men throughout the slave States; let us see the condition in which
they are at the present time—and it is bad enough we all know—and
suppose by some magic touch you could say to every one, “You shall vote
to-morrow,” how much would that ameliorate their condition at this time?
Now, let us get closer to this subject, and talk about it. What relation
have the colored man and the white man heretofore occupied in the South? I
opposed slavery upon two grounds. First, it was a great monopoly, en-
abling those who controlled and owned it to constitute an aristocracy, en-
abling the few to derive great profits and rule the many with an iron rod, as
it were. And that is one great objection to it in a Government, its being a
monopoly. I was Opposed to it secondly upon the abstract principle of
slavery. Hence, in getting clear of a monopoly, we were getting clear of
slavery at the same time. So you see there were two right ends accom-
plished in the accomplishment of one.
Mr. Douglass.—Mr. President, do you wish—
The President.—I am not quite through yet.
Slavery has been abolished, a great national guaranty has been given,
one that cannot be revoked. I was getting at the relation that subsisted
between the white man and the colored man. A very small proportion of
white persons compared with the whole number of such, owned the col-
ored people of the South. I might instance the State of Tennessee in illustra-
tion. There were there 27 non-slaveholders to one slaveholder, and yet the
slave power controlled that State. Let us talk about this matter as it is.
Although the colored man was in slavery there, and owned as property in
the sense and in the language of that locality and of that community, yet, in
comprising [comparing] his condition, and his position there with the non-
slaveholder, he usually estimated his importance just in proportion to the
number of slaves that his master owned, with the non-slaveholder.
Have you ever lived upon a plantation?
Mr. Douglass.—I have, your Excellency.
The President.—When you would look over and see a man who had a
large family, struggling hard upon a poor piece of land, you thought a great
deal less of him than you did of your own master?
Mr. Douglass.—Not I!
The President.—Well, I know such was the case with a large majority
of you in those sections. Where such is the case we know there is an enmity,
we know there is a hate. The poor white man, on the other hand, was
opposed to the slave and his master; for the colored man and his master
combined kept him in slavery, by depriving him of a fair participation in the
labor and production of the rich land of the country.
Don’t you know that a colored man in going to hunt a master (as they
call it) for the next year, preferred hiring to a man who owned slaves rather
than to one who did not? I know the fact, at all events. They did not
consider it quite as respectable to hire to a man who did not own negroes as
to one who did.
Mr. Douglass.—Because he wouldn’t be treated as well.
The President.—Then that is another argument in favor of what I am
going to say. It shows that the colored man appreciated the slave owner
more highly than he did the man who didn’t own slaves. Hence the enmity
between the colored man and the non-slaveholders. The white man was
permitted to vote before Government was derived from him. He is a part
and parcel of the political machinery.
Now by the rebellion or revolution—and when you come back to the
objects of this war, you find that the abolition of slavery was not one of the
objects, Congress and the President himself declared that it was waged on
our part in order to suppress the rebellion. The abolition of slavery has
come as an incident to the suppression of a great rebellion—as an incident,
and as an incident we should give it proper direction.
The colored man went into this rebellion a slave; by the operation of the
rebellion he came out a freedman—equal to a freedman in any other
portion of the country. Then there is a great deal done for him on this point.
The non-slaveholder who was forced into the rebellion, and was as loyal as
those who lived beyond the limits of the State, was carried into it, and his
property, and in a number of instances, the lives of such, were sacrificed,
and he who has survived has come out of it with nothing gained but a great
deal lost.
Now, upon a principle of justice, should they be placed in a condition
different from what they were before? On the one hand, one has gained a
great deal; on the other hand, one has lost a great deal; and, in a political
point of view, scarcely stands where he did before.
Now, we are talking about where we are going to begin. We have got at
the hate that existed between the two races. The query comes up, whether
these two races, situated as they were before, without preparation, without
time for passion and excitement to be appeased, and without time for the
slightest improvement, whether the one should be turned loose upon the
other and be thrown together at the ballot-box, with this enmity and hate
existing between them. The query comes up if right there we don’t com-
mence a war of races. I think I understand this thing—and especially is this
the case when you force it upon a people without their consent.
You have spoken about Government. Where is power derived from?
We say it is derived from the people. Let us take it so and refer to the
District of Columbia, by way of illustration. Suppose, for instance, here,
in this political community, which to a certain extent must have Govern-
ment, must have law, and putting it upon the broadest basis you can put it—
take into consideration the relation which the white has heretofore borne to
the colored race, is it proper to force upon this community, without their
consent, the elective franchise without regard to color, making it uni-
versal?
Now, where do you begin? Government must have a controlling
power; must have a lodgment. For instance, suppose Congress should pass
a law authorizing an election to be held at which all over 21 years of age,
without regard to color, should be allowed to vote, and a majority should
decide at such election that the elective franchise should not be universal,
what would you do about it? Who would settle it? Do you deny that first
great principle of the right of the people to govern themselves? Will you
resort to an arbitrary power, and say a majority of this people shall receive a
state of things they are opposed to?
Mr. Douglass.—That was said before the war.
The President.—I am now talking about a principle, not what some-
body else said.
Mr. Downing.—Apply what you have said, Mr. President, to South
Carolina, for instance.
The President.—Suppose you go to South Carolina; suppose you go to
Ohio. That doesn’t change the principle at all. The query to which I have
referred still comes up when Government is undergoing a fundamental
change. Government commenced upon this principle; it has existed upon
it; and you propose now to incorporate into it an element that didn’t exist
before. 1 say the query comes up in undertaking this thing, whether we have
a right to make a change in regard to the elective franchise in Ohio, for
instance. Whether we shall not let the people in that State decide the matter
for themselves.
Each community is better prepared to determine the depository of its
political power than anybody else, and it is for the legislature, for the
people of Ohio to say who shall vote, and not for the Congress of the United
States. I might go down here to the ballot-box to-morrow and vote directly
for universal suffrage, but if a great majority of the people said no, I should
consider it would be tyrannical in me to attempt to force such upon them
without their will. It is a fundamental tenet in my creed that the people must
be obeyed. Is there anything wrong or unfair in that?
Mr. Douglass (smiling.)—A great deal wrong, Mr. President, with all
respect.
The President.— It is the people of the States that must for themselves
determine this thing. I do not want to be engaged in a work that will
commence a war of races. I want to begin the work of preparation, and the
States, or the people in each community, if a man demeans himself well,
and shows evidence that this new state of affairs will operate, he will be
protected in all his rights, and given every possible advantage by that
community when they become reconciled socially and politically to certain
things. Then will this new order of things work harmoniously; but forced
upon the people before they are prepared for it, it will be resisted, and work
inharmoniously. I feel a conviction that driving this matter upon the peo-
ple, upon the community, will result in the injury of both races, and the ruin
of one or the other. God knows I have no desire but the good of the whole
human race. I would it were so that all you advocate could be done in the
twinkling of an eye, but it is not in the nature of things, and I do not assume
or pretend to be wiser than Providence, or stronger than the laws of nature.
Let us now seek to discover the laws governing this thing. There is a
great law controlling it; let us endeavor to find out what that law is, and
conform our notion to it. All the details will then properly adjust them-
selves, and work out well in the end.
God knows that anything I can do I will do. In the mighty process by
which the great end is to be reached, anything I can do to elevate the races,
to soften and ameliorate their condition I will do, and to be able to do so is
the sincere desire of my heart.
I am glad to have met you, and thank you for the compliment you have
paid me.
Mr. Douglass.—I have to return you our thanks, Mr. President, for so
kindly granting us this interview. We did not come here expecting to argue
this question with your Excellency, but simply to state what were our views
and wishes in the premises. If we were disposed to argue the question, and
you would grant us permission, of course we would endeavor to controvert
some of the positions you have assumed.
Mr. Downing.—Mr. Douglass, I take it that the President, by his kind
expressions, and his very full treatment of the subject, must have contem-
plated some reply to the views which he has advanced, and in which we
certainly do not concur, and I say this with due respect.
The President.—I thought you expected me to indicate to some extent
what my views were on the subjects touched upon in your statement.
Mr. Downing.—We are very happy, indeed, to have heard them.
Mr. Douglass.—If the President will allow me, I would like to say one
or two words in reply.
The President.—All I have done is simply to indicate what my views
are as I supposed you expected me to, from your address.
Mr. Douglass.—My own impression is, that the very thing that your
Excellency would avoid in the Southern States can only be avoided by the
very measure that we propose, and I would state to my brother delegates
that because I perceive the President has taken strong ground in favor of a
given policy, and distrusting my own ability to remove any of those impres-
sions which he has expressed, I thought we had better end the interview
with the expression of thanks. (Addressing the President.) But if your
Excellency will be pleased to hear, I would like to say a word or two in
regard to that one matter of the enfranchisement of the blacks as a means of
preventing the very thing which your Excellency appears to apprehend—
that is a conflict of races.
The President.—I repeat, I merely wanted to indicate my views in
reply to your address, and not to enter into any general controversy, as I
could not well do so under the circumstances.
Your statement was a very frank one, and I thought it was due to you to
meet it in the same spirit.
Mr. Douglass.—Thank you, sir.
The President.—I think you will find, so far as the South is concerned,
that if you will all inculcate there the idea in connection with the one you
urge, that the colored people can live and advance in civilization to better
advantage elsewhere than crowded right down there in the South, it would
be better for them.
Mr. Douglass.—But the masters have the making of the laws, and we
cannot get away from the plantations.2In 1865 and 1866 the legislatures of the former Confederate states enacted laws, popularly known as Black Codes, to curtail the freedom of the recently emancipated slaves. The codes provided that blacks who were unemployed and without permanent residence were to be declared vagrants, subject to arrest and fines. Those unable to pay the fine would be bound out for a term of labor. Children of black vagrants or paupers could be apprenticed to a white employer chosen by the court. Other provisions of the Black Codes forbade freedmen to testify in court, to bear firearms, or to intermarry with whites. Mississippi‘s Black Code prohibited blacks from owning or renting land, and South Carolina prohibited blacks from most occupations except agricultural labor. Theodore Brantner Wilson, The Black Codes of the South (University, Ala., 1965), 61-80; W[illiam] E[dward] Blurghardt] Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 (1935; New York, 1969), 167.
Mr. President.—What prevents you?
Mr. Douglass.—We have not the simple right of locomotion through
the Southern States now.
The President.—Why not, the Government furnishes you with every
facility.
Mr. Douglass.—There are six days in the year that the negro is free in
the South now, and his master then decides for him where he shall go,
where he shall work, how much he shall work—in fact, he is divested of all
political power. He is absolutely in the hands of those men.
The President.—If the master now controls him in his action, would he
not control him in his vote?
Mr. Douglass.—Let the negro once understand that he has an organic
right to vote, and he will raise up a party in the Southern States among the
poor, who will rally with him. There is this conflict that you speak of
between the wealthy slaveholder and the poor man.
The President.—You touch right upon the point there. There is this
conflict, and hence I suggest emigration. If he cannot get employment in
the South, he has it in his power to go where he can get it.
In parting, the President said that they were both desirous of accom-
plishing the same ends, but proposed to do so by following different roads.
Mr. Douglass, on turning to leave, remarked to his fellow delegates:
“The President sends us to the people, and we will have to go and get the
people right.”
The President.—Yes, sir; I have great faith in the people. I believe they
will do what is right.