The Color Question: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on July 5, 1875
THE COLOR QUESTION: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
IN WASHINGTON, DC, ON 5 JULY 1875
Washington National Republican, 8 July 1875. Other texts in Washington National Re-
publican, 7 July 1875; New York Times, 7 July 1875.
Black Washingtonians began to arrive at the grove in the Hillside section of
the District of Columbia hours before the 11:00 A.M. commencement of
Independence Day festivities on 5 July 1875. Douglass shared the platform
with a band, a children’s choir, and the occasion’s principal orator, John
Mercer Langston, who preceded Douglass. William E. Matthews concluded
the meeting with a motion of thanks to the day’s guests, after which the
celebrators enjoyed a holiday feast. Despite the audience’s apparent delight
with the program, the Philadelphia Christian Recorder, reacting to published
extracts of the day’s oratory, challenged Douglass’s ability to represent blacks
and lamented his and Langston’s nationalistic message, concluding that “no
severer blows to our best interest have ever been given.” On 8 July the
National Republican, noting that Douglass’s speech had “created consider-
able comment and is likely to cause more,” published a second version of the
text, corrected by the speaker himself, to clear up “inaccuracies due to a
hastily prepared newspaper report.” ChR, 22 April, 15, 22 July, 5, 12 August
1875.
FELLOW CITIZENS: I am not here to glorify the heroes of the American
revolution. I simply avail myself of the occasion to say a few plain words of
matters suggested by the facts of the present hour, and which immediately
concern the colored people of our whole country.
The Revolution, of 1776, which resulted in the separation of this
country from Great Britain, and its final independence, was a time that
tried men’s souls.1An allusion to Thomas Paine’s opening line in his first Crisis paper, 23 December 1776. Political Writings of Thomas Paine, 2 vols. (Boston, 1859), 1: 75. How grandly and gloriously that trial was borne we all
know. The great men and the great events of that period are familiar to
every schoolboy, white and black, in the land, and will ever so remain.
They have been declaimed a thousand times at every fireside, upon every
hilltop and in every valley, and will be so declaimed again to-day.
If, however, any man should ask me what colored people have to do
with the Fourth of July,2Douglass possibly refers to the title of his own famous address “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852. my answer is ready. Colored people have had
something to do with almost everything of vital importance in the life and
progress of this great country. We have never forsaken the white man in any
great emergency, and never expect to forsake him. We have been with him
in times of peace and in times of war, and at all times. We were with him in
the darkest hours of the Revolution of 1776. We were with him in the war
for free trade and sailors’ rights in 1812. We were with him in 1861. We
were with him at Bunker Hill and at Red Bank.3In the engagement at Fort Mercer, in Red Bank, New Jersey, on 22 October 1777, Colonel Christopher Greene, commanding a force of four hundred Rhode Islanders, successfully repulsed an onslaught of sixteen hundred Hessians. Douglass apparently accepts William C. Nell's account of the battle, which amplified a reference by Governor William Eustis to the valor of a “black regiment" at Red Bank. In fact, Rhode Island first legislated for the recruitment of a battalion of slaves in February 1778. The confusion may have arisen from the fact that Colonel Greene went on to command the socalled “Black Regiment," the First Rhode Island Regiment. That unit's superlative performance at the Battle of Rhode Island in August 1778, where it successfully repulsed a Hessian force with minimal casualties, closely paralleled the Red Bank experience. Wallace McGeorge, The Battle of Red Bank (n.p., c. 1905); Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1961), 12, 55-56, 80-82; William Cooper Nell, Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 (Boston, 1851), 10; Sidney S. Rider, “An Historical Inquiry Concerning the Attempt to Raise a Regiment of Slaves by Rhode Island during the War of the Revolution," Rhode Island Historical Tracts, ser. 1, no. 10, 1-24, 33-50 (Providence, 1880); Lorenzo J. Greene, “Some Observations on the Black Regiment of Rhode Island in the American Revolution," JNH, 37: 142-72 (April 1952). We were with him on the
land and with him on the water, and with him everywhere. A black man
was in front of the first resistance made in State street, Boston, to British
power, and fell with his face toward the foe.4Of African and Natick Indian descent, Crispus Attucks (?- 1770) was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he probably had been a slave before escaping and sailing on whaleships. On the evening of 5 March 1770 he was one of the crowd that jeered and threw snow at the British troops stationed outside the Custom House in Boston. According to later testimony, it was Attucks who first hit one of the soldiers, prompting the latter to fire into the mob. Attucks was one of the five civilians killed in what quickly became dubbed the “Boston Massacre." As a result of his unintentional martyrdom, Attucks became a hero among blacks. In Boston, where Crispus Attucks Day had been an annual celebration between 1858 and 1870, the city and state governments erected a statue of him on Boston Common in 1888. DNAB, 18-19; DAB, 1: 145. But I will not dwell upon this
topic. The late Wm. C. Nell,5William Cooper Nell, author of The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (Boston, 1855). of Boston, the best historian the colored
people have yet produced, has done ample justice to the black man in the
Revolution. His book should be in the hands of every colored boy in the
country.
THE RACE ON TRIAL.
The fathers of this Republic, as I have said, had their trial ninety-nine
years ago. The colored citizens of this Republic are about to have their trial
now. How we shall stand that trial, how we shall pass through it, how we
shall come out of it, is to me a matter of great solemnity. The men of the
Revolution went through the furnace, and came out pure gold. Shall we,
the colored people, present a similar example?
Let us look at the situation, and thoroughly understand all of its fea-
tures, relations and bearings. As a people we have gained much during the
last ten years. Fortune favored us with a liberal hand. It gave us a fair wind,
if not a smooth sea, and by it we were driven on at a rate of speed that we
had not known before, and carried to a height of which we had never
dreamed as possible to us. But the fact is—and it is one of which we should
never lose sight—our progress and present position are due to causes
almost wholly outside of our own will and our own exertions. We did not
make or control the issues of our destiny. We are the creatures of a conflict
of social elements which we did but little to create. The white people of this
country quarreled and came to blows, and it was our lot to be on the side of
the victorious party.
THE CHANGE IN OUR CONDITION
is mainly due to this fact. Had the Union gone down in that mighty strug-
gle, we should have gone down with it, and our condition to-day would
have been even worse than before the quarrel began.
Now the thing to be considered to-day is this: Men cannot, ought not
and will not quarrel and fight forever, even though outside parties may be
benefited by such quarreling and fighting. This is true even of contentions
among men of different races, and much more true where men are of the
same race. The American people are essentially of the same race. They
are of the same color. United by blood, by a common origin, by a com-
mon language, by a common literature, by a common glory, and by the
same grand historic associations and achievements. So sure as the stars
shine in the heavens, and the rivers run to the sea, so sure will the white
people North and South abandon their quarrel and become friends. The
whole American horizon is already fringed with the portents of this com-
ing union. Boston, Lexington and Bunker Hill have already sent forth
their silvery notes of peace and unity to the whole nation, and next year
Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence, will lift
to the sky its million voices in one grand Centennial hosannah of peace
and good will to all the white race of this country—from gulf to lakes and
from sea to sea.
THE COMING PEACE.
Now when this mighty quarrel has ceased, when all the asperities and
resentments have gone as they are sure to go, when all the clouds that a few
years ago lowered about our national house, shall be in the deep bosom of
the ocean buried, when this great white race has renewed its vows of
patriotism and flowed back into its accustomed channels, the question for
us is: in what position will this stupendous reconciliation leave the colored
people? What tendencies will spring out of it, and how will they affect us?
If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will
peace among the whites bring? Has justice so deep a hold upon the nation,
has reconstruction of the basis of liberty and equality become so strong that
the rushing together of these mighty waves will not disturb its foundations?
These questions, my friends, make me thoughtful. The signs of the times
are not all in our favor. There are, even in the Republican party, indications
of a disposition to get rid of us.6By early 1875, the Republicans had become increasingly sensitive to the popular opposition to Reconstruction policies. After the election of 1874, in which the Republicans lost seven southern states to Democrats, even such a once committed Radical Republican as Benjamin Wade commented that the anticipated passage of the Civil Rights Act had negatively provoked the electorate in the South, the Midwest and the border states. By 1875, northerners viewed the continuing federal protection of southern blacks with growing disfavor. A consensus seemed to demand an end to Reconstruction and a return to stability, even if the nation purchased that stability with the violent suppression and disenfranchisement of the freedmen. In 1875 the Republican-controlled Senate defeated an election enforcement bill that would have guaranteed military protection to blacks during elections in the South, indicating that many moderates were prepared to pay such a price. Recognizing that the removal of the troops in the South and the full restoration of those states to the Union meant they would almost certainly return to the Democratic party, the Republicans also acknowledged that the North increasingly demanded such a restoration. They thus retreated more and more from those Reconstruction policies that sought to protect the rights and lives of blacks, fearing that any other course would guarantee defeat in the election of 1876. Gilette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 253-54, 256-58, 288-95; Schlesinger, American Presidential Elections, 2: 1382, 1384. Men are seeking new allies, and smiling in
faces upon which they never smiled before since the war. A disposition is
seen to shake off the negro and accept the old master’s class. Out of the
eight hundred thousand black voters of the country we have only had about
twenty black clerks here in Washington, and these in the last few days have
been thinned out and reduced. We have had a few representatives abroad
and a few in Congress; the indications are that we shall have fewer by and
bye. Ambitious candidates for the Presidency are already casting about to
see if they cannot be elected in some way without the aid of the black vote.
Well, they have the right to do all this, but the thing looks bad, and we at
least are called upon to look the matter full in the face.
OUR SHELTER
in the storms of the past has been Ulysses S. Grant. The question is as to
who will shield us in the future. Well indeed it will be for us if one as true,
just and able shall come after him.
One of the most unpleasant features of this situation for us is in our-
selves. We are a divided people, and have no men among us, I fear, whose
counsel will be headed in the right direction. It has been our misfortune to
be educated by two hundred years of slavery to respect white men and
despise ourselves.
Now, just this is the thing we are to outgrow. We have got to find out
that a people to be respected and powerful must have men among them-
selves and of themselves whom they must trust and respect. White men
have their great men, and are respected in the scale of being because they
have them. Ireland loves O’Connell,7Daniel O'Connell. America loves Washington, Ken-
tucky loves Clay, and Massachusetts loves Webster and Sumner,8George Washington, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Charles Sumner. and our
whole country believes in U. S. Grant. Now I believe that we, the colored
people, have men of our own color in whom we may well believe; and woe
to us, woe to any people, who has no great men among its own people and
of its own people.
AN ORGAN NEEDED.
Another bad feature of our situation is the fact that we have no grand
organ which is peculiarly and distinctively our own. We are disparaged,
vilified, slandered as a people, but as a people we are dumb, and have no
press to answer and expose the injustice. The press of this city is mar-
velously magnanimous toward us, but we ought to have a press of our own,
for we have a cause of our own. My soul creeps within me for a great spirit
to rise up among us like that which animated William Lloyd Garrison forty
years ago, which would consent to live upon a crust of bread and cup of
water in a garret in Boston that he might send our wrongs on the wings of
the press to the world. Never until we have and sustain such a press will the
reproach of our people be wiped out. Oh, for a man, I say again, who will
boldly climb high enough to hang our banner on the outer wall,9Macbeth, act 5, sc. 5, line 1. so that it
may be seen and read of all men, than the colored race is capable of living
more than a life of absolute dependence, and can think and speak for itself.
There is another evil to be looked at and removed, and that is the swarm
of white beggars that sweep the country in the name of the colored race.10Douglass is responding to two trends among whites involved in benevolence work: conciliation with southerners and a growing disenchantment with what they perceived to be the freedmen's depressed moral and social condition. The American Missionary Association, though not specifically mentioned by Douglass, was popularly thought to be the real object of his critique. The Association was quick to respond, calling Douglass’s remarks "unwise" and speculating that the implicit ingratitude would imperil their fund-raising efforts. This indeed turned out to be the case, although a year later the Association published a letter from Douglass in which he stated that he “had no idea of discouraging any from the duty of doing what they could for us in the absence of fair play." American Missionary, 19: 197-98 (September 1875), 20: 208 (September 1876); Douglass to the Reverend M. E. Strieby, 8 July 1876, in American Missionary, 20: 208 (September 1876).
We must hereafter do our own begging, if any begging is done at all, on our
own name. This day is a good day to send forth a declaration of independ-
ence on this point, repudiating all such beggars now and forever. I have
prepared one such for the occasion, and in part it reads very much like
THE GREAT DECLARATION
which makes this day memorable. Here it is:
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people
to dissolve the bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among their fellow men the independent and equal position to
which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect
for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain [un]alienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to
secure these rights various organizations are instituted among men, deriv-
ing their power from the consent of those in whose interests they have been
professedly created; that whenever any such organization becomes de-
structive of these ends it is the right and the duty of such people to alter or
abolish it, and to institute new organizations, laying their foundations in
such principles as to them shall seem most likely to promote their safety
and welfare.
While we were the victims of slavery, and had no voice or vote in
shaping our destiny, we had good reason to appeal to
THE BENEVOLENCE OF MANKIND.
To ask for help in that condition involved no disgrace. But all is
changed now. We are no longer slaves, but freemen; no longer subjects, but
citizens, and have a voice and vote with all other citizens. A new condition
has brought new duties. A character which might pass without censure as a
slave cannot so pass as a freeman. We must not beg men to do for us what
we ought to do for ourselves. The prostrate form, the uncovered head, the
cringing attitude, the bated breath, the suppliant, outstretched hand of
beggary does not become an American freeman, and does not become us as
a class, and we will not consent to be any longer represented in that
position. No people can make desirable progress or have permanent wel-
fare outside of their own independent and earnest efforts.
The burden of our demand upon the American people shall simply be
justice and fair play. We utterly repudiate all invidious distinctions,
whether in our favor or against us, and ask only for a fair field and no favor.
In our judgment we have been injured more than benefited by the
efforts of so-called benevolent societies. While they may have helped a
few, they have injured the many. They originate with and are organized by
some good men, but they invariably fall into the hands of a peculiar class of
men—men who combine shrewdness with religious zeal, and who,
whether they sing, pray or preach, always “mean business.” They are ever
on the look-out for just such associations as special colonization societies.
African civilization societies, African educational societies,11In an 1872 editorial Douglass charged that adherents of the American Colonization Society were “begging for money to carry out their diabolical scheme" and using “the sophistry of the pretended philanthropist whose prejudice and hate would drive us to instant death if in their power to do so." The African Civilization Society, founded in 1858, redirected its attention during the Civil War from African missionary work to freedmen’s aid. Although this all-black organization promoted the idea of the education of blacks by blacks, financial constraints forced it in 1866 to begin accepting solicitations from sympathetic whites. Richard B. Drake, “Freedmen's Aid Societies and Sectional Compromise," JSH, 29: 175-86 (May 1963); Judith Eleanor Leas Everson, “The Rhetoric of the Abolitionist Remnant, 1870-1877" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1973), 174-75; NNE, 19 December 1872. Lincoln and
Howard universities,12Lincoln University at Oxford, Pennsylvania, was originally the Ashmun Collegiate Institute for Colored Youth, founded in 1854 and named for early colonizationist Jehudi Ashmun. The first college-level educational facility for blacks, the school, which was renamed Lincoln University in 1866, sent students south for summer teaching and missionary work with the encouragement of the Presbyterian General Assembly’s Commission on Freedmen. At the time of Douglass's speech, the university was engaged in a debate over suggestions, primarily coming from alumni, that the all-white faculty be integrated. Congress incorporated Howard University, named for Freedmen’s Bureau commissioner Oliver O. Howard, in 1867 to help meet the educational needs of blacks immigrating to the District of Columbia. Although its faculty was racially mixed, whites filled the top administrative posts well into the twentieth century. In 1875 the university carried a devastating $100,000 deficit, and its board of trustees was initiating a program of retrenchment that involved significant cuts in expenses, personnel, and salaries. Horace Mann Bond, Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania (Princeton, 1976), 208-82, 331-64; Dwight O. W. Holmes, “Fifty Years of Howard University," JNH, 3: 128-38, 368-80 (April, October 1918). and freedmen’s banks. They follow these with a
scent as keen as the shark’s, which in old times followed the slave ship to
eat the flesh of
DEAD AND DYING NEGROES.
They are heels over head in love with the negro, and want to do him ever so
much good. These sharply-pious men usually manage to slip into the
money-boxes of these associations.
There is no keeping them out of the offices of honor and profit. A negro
among them stands no chance. Money must be solicited in his name, but it
will not do for him to know exactly what becomes of it. These holy men
have studied the science of begging all their lives and they have attained the
highest perfection. They manufacture circulars by the bushel and load
down the mails with their appeals. They have got the names and addresses
of all the giving men of the country. This begging class is mainly composed
of broken-down preachers without pulpits, lawyers without clients, pro-
fessors without chairs, editors without journals and the like men, who fail
in everything but managing money given for the benefit of the negro. In
order to obtain revenue to carry on what they call their work (including, of
course, the salaries which they piously vote themselves by the thousand)
they draw the most distressing pictures of the black man’s character and
condition. They keep the public mind constantly upon the poor, wretched
negro, and thus damn the whole race to a large measure of contempts with a
small degree of pity which is akin to contempt. Hence we now and here
denounce and repudiate all such shams, and call upon the American people
to do the same.