The Fall of Richmond: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 4, 1865
THE FALL OF RICHMOND: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, ON 4 APRIL 1865
Liberator, 7 April 1865.
“The doors of Faneuil Hall . . . never opened on a more glorious occasion
than this afternoon,” exulted the Boston Transcript in its report of the public
meeting held on 4 April 1865 “to rejoice over” the entry, one day earlier, of
Federal troops into the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Arranged
by the city administration, the meeting attracted “immense” numbers of
celebrants who used the occasion, in the words of the Liberator, to “give
expression to the emotions of joy and gratitude that thrill every patriotic heart,
at the auspicious omens for peace and freedom.” When Mayor Frederick W.
Lincoln, Jr., opened the ceremonies at 3:00 P.M., he assured the assembled
that “this meeting was not intended for a formal, but a popular gathering, and
not especially for hearing long speeches.” At intervals, the Germania Band
and a local glee club performed appropriately stirring music, and one “notice-
able feature” of the program was the singing of a spiritual by “two colored
men,” John S. Brown and the Reverend George A. Rue. Colonel Patrick R.
Guiney of the Ninth Massachusetts Regiment delivered the first address,
followed by Senator Henry Wilson, Senator Robert C. Winthrop, whom
Douglass had once served as a waiter in New Bedford, Judge Thomas Russell,
and Captain W. H. McCartney. Douglass, who had been traveling in Mas-
sachusetts when the “great news” arrived, was the next to speak. His “felici-
tous” remarks created much excitement and “merriment.” The Reverend
Edward N. Kirk was the last to address the assembly. After the reading of a
letter from Governor John A. Andrew, Mayor Lincoln joined the speakers and
the audience in singing “Old Hundred.” The meeting, which was then de-
clared “dissolved,” remained to Douglass in “every way a remarkable ex-
pression of popular feeling, created by a great and important event.” Boston
Transcript, 5 April 1865; Frederic May Holland, Frederick Douglass: The
Colored Orator, rev. ed. (1891; New York, 1969), 310-11; Douglass, Life
and Times, 404-07.
Mr. Mayor1Frederick Walker Lincoln, Jr. and Fellow-Citizens: I gratefully recognize your kindness,
and the compliment implied, not merely to myself, but to my humble race,
in the calls made repeatedly for my appearance on this platform. I am here,
however, to-day, not as a speaker, but as a listener; and it was farthest from
my intention to occupy any of your time on this grand occasion, with
anything that I might be able to say. Nought but the pressing calls made
upon me by friends upon the platform, and the thought that there was, after
all, a certain degree of fitness in one, at least, of the race to which I belong
being present and somewhat prominent on the occasion, has induced me to
step forward to say a few words.
I have noticed that every gentleman who has undertaken to speak here
this afternoon has found some difficulty in expressing the thought, the
feeling in keeping and outspringing from this great occasion. If they, the
eloquent and the learned, have difficulty in giving expression to their
sentiments and feelings on such an occasion as this, how incomparably
more difficult must it be for one in my circumstances to express the pro-
found gratitude which I feel, and which my race must feel, over the glad
tidings that are flashed to us of the fall of Richmond!2Besieged since June 1864 by Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant, the Confederate army commanded by General Robert E. Lee evacuated its fortifications around Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, during the night of 2-3 April 1865. Union troops occupied Richmond, the Confederate capital, on the morning of 3 April as Lee's army and Confederate officials retreated toward Danville, Virginia. Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital (Austin, Tex., 1971), 176-98; Long, Civil War Day by Day, 663-67. In those tidings, you
have announced to you the safety of the country. I, for the first time in my
life, have the assurance, not only of a country redeemed, of a country
regenerated, but of my race free and having a future in this land. Here-
tofore, the black man in this land has had no future; he has scarcely had the
hope of a future. But in the fall of Richmond, which is but another name for
the fall of the rebellion—a rebellion which appealed from right to wrong,
from justice to injustice, from the ever-increasing light of a glorious civi-
lization to the dark and hell-black counsels of the system of bondage, I say
we have in the fall of Richmond the fall of this terrible rebellion and the
upbuilding of liberty through the Southern States. (Applause)
I have been making a new catechism. (Laughter, and cries of “Let’s
have it!”) Hitherto, the race to which I belong has been sneered at as
never having accomplished anything—never invented anything. But
when an American asks me any questions concerning my race, what they
ever did to prove their manhood, what they ever did to prove themselves
entitled to liberty and protection in this Republic, my answer will be, that
the first feet which timed their proud steps to the music of the “Star-
Spangled banner” in Charleston were the feet of black men.3Confederate forces evacuated Charleston, South Carolina, during the evening of 17-18 February 1865. The next day, city authorities surrendered Charleston to Union troops commanded by Brigadier General Alexander Shimmelfennig. Probably the first Federal unit to enter the city was the Twenty-first U.S. Colored Troops. Other black units that paraded through the city in the next few days were the Third and Fourth South Carolina Infantry Regiments and the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry Regiments. E. Milby Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 1861-1865 (Columbia, SC, 1970), 317-25; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 325-28; Long, Civil War Day by Day, 639-40. (Applause,
and cries of “Good.”) And when it is further asked, “What have you
done?” my answer will be, that the first soldiers who entered the long-
beleaguered and long-desired city of Richmond, on the heels of the re-
treating rebels, were black soldiers.4Among the very first Union army troops to enter Richmond on the morning of 3 April 1865 were members of the black Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment. A black infantry regiment from Connecticut and the Ninth U.S. Colored Troops also entered the city on the first morning of its occupation. Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 330-32; Long, Civil War Day by Day, 665. (Renewed applause.)
I rejoice, fellow-citizens—for now we are citizens. (Laughter and
applause.) It so happens that we have been citizens before in the history of
this republic. It so happens that we have always been citizens when our
country has been in trouble. We were citizens, I believe, some few of us in
1776, when a few, only a sprinkling—enough to say “we,” ascended with
you yonder hill, and confronted the British for your independence. We
were citizens again, in 1812, when Gen. Jackson had a little job for us to do
at New Orleans. (Laughter) He then addressed us, you know, as “fellow-
citizens.” “Fellow-citizens," he said, “by a mistaken policy of the govern-
ment, you have not hitherto been called upon to bear arms in the service of
your country. I am not in favor of that policy. I summon you to rally round
the standard of the Republic, and aid in beating back the invading forces of
old England.”5Douglass's quotation actually combines passages from the two separate proclamations issued by Andrew Jackson during the New Orleans campaign in the War of 1812. Jackson's tribute of 18 December 1814, which complimented the two battalions of free blacks who fought bravely under his command, addressed them as “Fellow-citizens." Earlier, in a proclamation of 21 September 1814 encouraging free blacks to enlist, Jackson had declared: “Through a mistaken policy, you have heretofore been deprived of a participation in the glorious struggle for national rights in which our country is engaged. This no longer shall exist. As sons of freedom, you are now called upon to defend our most inestimable blessing. As Americans, your country looks with confidence to her adopted children for a valorous support, as a faithful return for the advantages enjoyed under her mild and equitable government. As fathers, husbands, and brothers, you are summoned to rally around the standard of the Eagle, to defend all which is dear in existence." Wilson, Black Phalanx, 81-82, 84-85. We did come to the rescue at that time, and we were citizens
during the war of 1812, and for some time after peace was declared. But
through the machinations of the dark character you see represented on that
canvass (the painting of Webster in the Senate Chamber),6The gargantuan painting Webster Replying to Hayne by George Peter Alexander Healy (1813-94) was installed above and behind the speaker‘s platform of Boston's Faneuil Hall in the fall of 1851. Samuel Adams Drake, Old Landmarks and Historical Personages of Boston, 2d ed. (Boston, 1900), 140; Marie de Mare, G. P. A. Healy, American Artist: An Intimate Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1954), 169-71. we were gradu-
ally read out of our citizenship, gradually crowded beyond the reach of
your beneficent principle of liberty; but two years ago, and more, some of
your fellow-citizens thought the country was again in need of the black
man’s service. Massachusetts—God bless her now and always (ap-
plause)—led the way; and in the twinkling of an eye, almost, two black
regiments sprang from this old Commonwealth.7The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. We are citizens again
(laughter)—citizens in this time of trouble; and by the force of old Mas-
sachusetts’ example, almost every Northern State has been induced to call
upon her black citizens to aid, in this day of trial, in upholding the flag. We
have come; and you are here welcoming me to-day, as you did not twenty-
four years ago (laughter and applause), and want me to make a little speech
to you. As I know more about the useful than the ornamental, know a little
more of the language of complaint than of the language of exultation and
joy—for the experience I have had in the United States has taught me more
the language of complaint than that of joy and exultation—and as you want
a speech from me, let me tell you what I want. What I want, now that the
black men are citizens in war, is, that they shall be made fully and entirely,
all over this land, citizens in peace. (Applause, and cries “They shall be.”)
If Faneuil Hall says so, it will be done. (Applause) If Massachusetts
speaks the word, it will be done. I will not doubt it for a moment. I believe
Massachusetts does speak the word. I believe it is not your intention, in
your extreme charity, now that Jefferson Davis has shown you his coat tails,
and the rebels are marching out to find the last ditch, to take to your bosoms
those men, who with broad blades and bloody hands have been seeking the
life of this nation, and invest them with the right to vote, (voices—“nev-
er!”) and divest the negro of the right to uphold that flag by his vote. You
will not go down to the South and say, “We will enfranchise our enemies
and disfranchise our friends—(cries of “never!” and applause); we will
protect our enemies and forget our friends.” I hold that the American
people, in calling upon the black men to take part with them in this great
struggle, have bound themselves by every consideration of honor to protect
them from the consequences of their espousal of their cause. (“Hear,”
“hear,” “That’s so,” and applause.) They are bound to do it. And re-
member that hereafter, at the South, the negro will be looked upon with a
fiercer and intenser hate than ever before. Every one of those who have
been interested in the rebellion will look upon the negro as one of the
causes of the failure of that rebellion.
I tell you, the negro is coming up—he is rising—rising. (Laughter and
applause.) Why, only a little while ago we were the Lazaruses of the South;
the Dives of the South was the slaveholder;8Douglass alludes to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, traditionally but mistakenly identified as Dives, in Luke 16: 1-31. and how singular it is that we
have here another illustration of that Scripture! Once there was a certain
rich man who fared sumptuously every day, and was arrayed in purple and
fine linen. He came North, clothed in silk and in satin, and shining with
gold, and his breast sparkling with diamonds—his table loaded with the
good things of this world. And a certain Lazarus sat at his gate, desiring the
crumbs that fell from his table. Such was the record. But now a change has
taken place. That rich man is lifting up his eyes in torments down there
(tremendous applause), and seeing Lazarus afar off in Abraham’s bosom
(tumultuous laughter and applause), is all the time calling on Father Abra-
ham9Abraham Lincoln. to send Lazarus back. But Father Abraham says, “If they hear not
Grant10Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-85), eighteenth president of the United States (1869-77) and general in chief of all Union armies in the final year of the Civil War, personally directed the Union forces in Virginia in 1864-65. William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York, 1981); ACAB, 2: 709-25; DAB, 7: 492-501.) nor Sherman,11Born in Lancaster, Ohio, William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-91) was raised by the family of Whig politician Thomas Ewing after his father's death in 1829. Ewing secured a West Point appointment for Sherman, who graduated in 1840. After seeing little military combat in the Mexican War, Sherman resigned his army commission in 1853 and became a banker. When that career failed, he briefly practiced law before serving as superintendent of a military college in Louisiana. At the outset of the Civil War, Sherman quickly rose to the rank of brigadier general and participated in the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. He served under Ulysses S. Grant in the battles of Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga and eventually succeeded him as overall Union commander in the Western theater. In the summer of 1864 Sherman's forces moved into Georgia and captured Atlanta on 1 September. He then led his troops to the Atlantic coast and was advancing northward through North Carolina when the hostilities ended. After the Civil War Sherman remained in the military, serving as commanding general of the army from 1869 until his retirement in 1884. James M. Merrill, William Tecumseh Sherman (Chicago, 1971); ACAB, 5: 502-08; DAB, 17: 93-97. neither will they be persuaded though I send
Lazarus unto them.” (Prolonged and vociferous applause.) I say we are
way up yonder now, no mistake. (This was said with an expressive gesture,
that called forth another outburst of applause.)
My friends, I will not inflict a speech upon you. (Loud cries of “Go
on.”) O, no; I am afraid I shall spoil it. (Great merriment.)