The Lessons of Emancipation to the New Generation: an Address Delivered in Elmira, New York, on August 3, 1880
THE LESSONS OF EMANCIPATION TO THE NEW
GENERATION: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
IN ELMIRA, NEW YORK, ON 3 AUGUST 1880
Elmira (N.Y.) Advertiser, 3 August 1880. Other texts in New York Times, 4 August 1880;
Speech File, reel 15, frames 389-428, 429-39, FD Papers, DLC; Douglass, Life and
Times, 659-73.
On the afternoon of 3 August 1880 in Elmira, New York, Douglass delivered
the principal address at a day-long combined celebration of West Indian
Emancipation and the Emancipation Proclamation. The New York Times
noted that “hundreds of colored people flocked to Elmira from 100 miles
around.” The day’s activities began at dawn with a gun salute followed by
prayer meetings at the African Union Methodist Protestant Church and the
A. M. E. Zion Church at 10:00 A.M., another gun salute at 11:00 A.M., and a
procession from Temperance Hall to Hoffman’s Grove, the site of Douglass’s
address. Fifteen delegations, including the Colored Veterans of the Civil War,
the Elmira Colored Y.M.C.A., and the Masons, marched with Douglass to
the grove. The Reverend M. E. Collins opened the program with a prayer.
John W. Jones, the presiding officer, called the assembly to order and intro-
duced William H. Lester, who delivered a dramatic reading of the Emancipa-
tion Proclamation. Jones then introduced Douglass, who spoke for two hours,
ending the afternoon’s exercises. The Elmira Advertiser observed that “his
oration was long, and delivered from manuscript; the speaker utters his sen-
tences deliberately, and his hearers never tire.” Douglass had earlier declined
an invitation to lecture in Elmira that evening, claiming that a two-hour
outdoor address was all he could manage in a single day because “my forty
years of speaking have left me less strong than younger men.” Having spent
the previous night in Elmira, Douglass left that city by train immediately
following his speech to deliver a campaign address in Rochester the next day.
Douglass later reprinted a heavily edited text of his Elmira oration in his Life
and Times as “a tribute to the noble transatlantic men and women through
whose unwearied exertions the system of Negro slavery was finally abolished
in the British Isles.” Elmira (N.Y.) Advertiser, 23, 30, 31 July, 3 August
1880; New York Times, 4 August 1880; Washington People’s Advocate, 7
August 1880; Douglass to Charles J. Langdon, 9 August 1880, CtHnf; Hol-
land, Colored Orator, 348.
MR. PRESIDENT AND FRIENDS:—I thank you for this cordial greeting. I
hear in it something like the thrilling notes of a welcome home after a long
absence. More years of my life and labors have been put into this State than
in any other State in the Union. Anywhere within a hundred miles of the
goodly city of Rochester, I feel at home. Within that circumference, for
enlightenment, liberality and civilization, the people have no superiors in
this country or other.
Allow me to thank you, also, for your generous words of sympathy and
approval. In respect to this important support to a public man, I have been
unusually fortunate. My forty years’ work in the cause of the oppressed and
enslaved has been well observed, well appreciated and well rewarded. All
classes and colors, at home and abroad, have in this way held up my hands.
Looking back to those long years of toil and conflicts, during which I have
had blows to take as well as blows to give, and have sometimes received
wounds and bruises, both in body and mind, my only regret is that I have
done so little to lift up and strengthen my long enslaved and still oppressed
people.
I make these remarks, personal to myself, because I am standing
mainly before a new generation. Most of the men with whom I labored five
and thirty years ago have passed away. There are but a few left to tell the
story of the early days of anti-slavery. Scarcely any of the colored men who
advocated the cause thirty years ago are now on the stage of active life, and
I begin to feel lonely. But while I have the sympathy and approval of men
and women like those before me, I pledge you my latest breath in behalf of
justice, liberty and equality of all men.
The day we celebrate is pre-eminently the colored man’s day. The great
event which has distinguished it for all time, from all other days of the year,
has justly claimed the thoughtful attention and study of statesmen, scholars
and social reformers throughout the world.
To the colored people of this country, however, so recently under the
yoke of bondage, this grand event speaks to feeling as well as to thought. It
stirs the heart and fills the soul with warm and grateful sentiments.
In the history of our struggle with American slavery, West India eman-
cipation played an important part. It was the first bright star in a very dark,
stormy and threatening sky; a smile from the inner folds of a frowning
Providence. It brought to us the first ray of hope of the possibility of
freedom to our race, in this and in all other countries.
Whoever else may forget or slight its claims, it will always be held
memorable and glorious by the colored people of the United States, as well
as by the colored people of the West Indies.
Though familiar to most who hear me, the story of it may be briefly
told for the edification of our young people, who may know but little about
it, and who ought to know all about it.
Six and forty years ago the first of this month, the day we now con-
structively celebrate, there went forth from old England a great message
over the Caribbean Sea. That message was hailed with startling shouts of
joy and thrilling songs of praise, for it brought freedom to a great multitude
of people who for centuries had sighed and groaned in vain for deliverance.
On that day they were liberated, set free, and brought within the pale of
law, light and human brotherhood.
Mr. Douglass then at great length proceeded to enlarge on historical
matters of emancipation import, and discussed the moral aspects and re-
sults of freedom upon the colored race, and justified in an ample manner
the American celebration of English emancipation, as in a measure the
opening wedge to the birth, so to speak, of American disenthralment. Mr.
Douglass also touched, in an eloquent manner, upon the condition and
prospects of his people in this country. In reference to the state of affairs in
the South, Mr. Douglass said:
To-day, in all the Gulf States, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments
of the Constitution are practically of no force or effect. The sacred rights
which they solemnly guaranteed, are held in contempt and are literally
stamped out in the face of the Government. By means of the shot gun and
midnight raid, the old master class has triumphed over the newly enfran-
chised citizen and put the constitution under their feet. In South Carolina,
Louisiana and Mississippi, the colored people who largely outnumber the
whites, and who are Republican in politics, have been banished from the
ballot box and robbed of representation in the councils of the nation, and
according to the best information from that quarter the social condition of
the colored people in that section is but little above what it was in the time
of slavery. In fact, the chain gang has re-appeared in those States and
persons of color, for the most petty offenses, are put in these gangs and
made to work the farms of their former masters under the lash. There is but
little trouble in convicting a negro in Southern courts, and in fact anywhere
else.
Greatness does not come to any people on flower beds of roses. We
must fight to win the prize. No people to whom liberty is given can hold it
as firmly or wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the
iron hand of the tyrant. The hardships and dangers involved in the struggle
give strength and toughness to the character and enables it to stand firm in
storm as well as sunshine.
One thought more before I leave this subject—and it is a thought I wish
you all to lay to heart. Practice it yourselves and teach it to your children. It
is this: Neither we, nor any other people will ever be respected till we
respect ourselves, and we will never respect ourselves till we have the
means to live respectably. An exceptionally poor and dependant people,
will be despised by their opulent surroundings and will despise themselves.
You cannot make an empty sack stand on end.1Variants of this aphorism, which has seventeenth-century Italian antecedents, appear in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1740, 1750, and 1758. Labaree, Papers of BenjaminFranklin , 2: 248, 3: 446, 7: 348. A race which cannot save
its earnings, which spends all it makes when it is well, and goes in debt
when it is sick, can never rise in the scale of civilization no matter under
what laws or civilization it may chance to be. Put us in Kansas or in Africa
and until we learn to save more than we spend we are sure to sink and
perish.
It is not in the nature of things that all should be equally rich in this
world’s goods. Some will be more successful than others, and poverty in
many cases is the result of misfortune rather than crime, but this race
can[not] afford to have all its members the victims of this misfortune
without being considered a worthless race. Pardon me, therefore, for urg-
ing upon you, my people, the importance of saving your earnings—of
denying yourselves in the present, that you may have something in the
future, considering less for yourselves that your children may have a start in
life when you are gone.
With money and property comes knowledge and power, what we call
money is only stored labor. A poverty stricken class will be an ignorant and
despised class—and no amount of sentiment can make it otherwise. This
part of our destiny is in our own hands. Every dollar you lay up represents
one day’s independence, one day of rest and security in the future. If the
time shall ever come when we shall possess among the colored people of
the United States, a class of men noted for enterprise, industry, economy
and success, we shall no longer have any trouble in the matter of civil and
political rights. The battle against popular prejudices will have been fought
and won, and in common with all other races and colors we shall have an
equal chance in the race of life.
MR. DOUGLASS ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION.
But I cannot dwell upon topics of this nature any longer.
While this is not a political gathering, it is not improper on this free
occasion, to call attention to the fact, that we are now fairly within the rapid
currents of a political canvass of vast and commanding importance to the
whole country and of special and pressing interest to us as a party of an
oppressed and proscribed people.
On the 2d of November next a President and a vice-President of the
United States are to be chosen. The candidates for the high offices are
already in the field. The National Republican Convention held in Chi-
cago,2The Republican party held its national nominating convention at Exposition Hall in Chicago, Illinois, on 2-9 June 1880. After several days of preliminary battles over delegate credentials and a prolonged stalemate between supporters of Ulysses S. Grant and those of James G. Blaine of Maine, the convention nominated dark-horse candidate James A. Garfield of Ohio on the thirty-sixth ballot. New York Tribune, 2-9 June 1880; AAC, 1880, 694-96. nominated and commended James A. Garfield3James Abram Garfield (1831-81) lost his father at an early age and worked at numerous odd jobs to finance an education that culminated with graduation from Williams College in 1856. Three years later, while principal of Hiram Institute in Ohio, he won election to the state senate as a Republican. During the Civil War Garfield received a series of rapid promotions but resigned from the Union army in December 1863 with the rank of major general in order to accept election to the first of eight terms in Congress. Initially aligned with Radical Republicans on Reconstruction issues, his views moderated after passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. At the 1880 Republican convention, Garfield was serving as John Sherman’s floor manager when the deadlocked gathering turned to him as their presidential nominee on the thirty-sixth ballot. Victorious over Winfield Scott Hancock in the election, Garfield's administration suffered from heated disputes over patronage with supporters of ex-president Grant led by US. Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, shot Garfield on 2 July 1881 and the president died after lingering eleven weeks. Margaret Leech and Harry J. Brown, The Garfield Orbit (New York, 1978); Allan Peskin, Garfield: A Biography (Kent, Ohio, 1978); ACAB, 2: 599-605; DAB, 7: 145-51. of Ohio, and
Chester A. Arthur, 4Born in East Fairfield, Vermont, Chester Alan Arthur (1830- 86), twenty-first president of the United States (1881-85), was active in New York state politics throughout the 1870s and at the time of this speech was the Republican vice-presidential candidate. BDAC, 490-91. of New York for these high offices. The first for
President and the second for Vice-President.
On the other hand, the Democratic party meeting at Cincinnati, a few
weeks later,5The Democratic National Convention that nominated the ticket of Winfield S. Hancock and William H. English met in the Music Hall of the Exhibition Building in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 22-24 June 1880. New York Tribune, 23-25 June 1880; AAC, 1880, 697-99. nominated for the same offices, Gen. Hancock6Son of a Norristown, Pennsylvania, lawyer, Winfield Scott Hancock (1824-86) graduated from West Point in 1844 and fought in the Mexican War under General Winfield Scott, for whom he had been named. Hancock gained additional military experience before the Civil War through frontier service in Kansas, Florida, Utah, and California. Joining the Army of the Potomac in September 1861, he participated in all of that organization’s major battles and eventually commanded its Second Corps. After the war, Hancock held various commands, including that of the Department of Texas and Louisiana in 1867-68, where he attracted considerable criticism from Republicans for enforcing the Reconstruction policies of Andrew Johnson. After receiving significant support for president at the Democratic National Conventions of 1868 and 1876, Hancock won the party’s nomination in 1880 only to lose to Republican James A. Garfield in a close election. Glenn Tucker, Hancock the Superb (Indianapolis, 1960); Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge, 1964), 202-04; DAB, 8: 221-22. and Mr.
English.7William Hayden English was born in Lexington, Indiana, on 27 August 1822. Admitted to the bar in 1840, he began his career in Indiana politics the same year as a delegate to the Democratic state convention in Indianapolis. From 1840 through 1851, when he was secretary of a convention that framed the state constitution, English devoted himself both to participating in Indiana politics and to serving as a clerk for the Treasury Department and the US. Senate. In 1852 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He voted for the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854 and was one of the few northern Democrats returned to Congress after doing so. In April 1857 English introduced a bill to resolve the crisis in Kansas over the proslavery Lecompton Constitution. His measure gave the residents of Kansas a chance to vote on the question of whether their territory should become a state under that constitution or remain a tenitory until their numbers increased significantly. An overwhelming majority of Kansans rejected the constitution in a plebiscite, which brought an end to the years of violence in the territory. In 1861 English left Congress and returned to Indianapolis, where he organized the city's First National Bank, an endeavor that eventually made him a millionaire. He played a prominent role in the business life of Indianapolis and did not return to politics until 1880, when the Democrats nominated him as Hancock’s running mate. After their defeat, he again retired to private life during which, among other efforts, he wrote a history of the Old Northwest. Potter, Impending Crisis, 323-27; Schlesinger, American Political Parties, 2: 1503; Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1973), 610-13; BDAC, 863; ACAB, 2: 359; DAB, 6: 167-68.
As these two parties mainly divide the votes of the whole country, the
alternative now before us is James A. Garfield, the Republican, or Win-
field Scott Hancock, the Democrat.
Both parties are calling upon us in common with all other citizens, for
our voice, our work and our vote for their respective candidates.
What answer shall we make, what answer should we make, to these
two political parties? Shall we say James A. Garfield, of Ohio, or Winfield
Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania? Shall it be the National Republican party,
or the sectional Democratic party? Where shall we go?
Before answering this question, allow me a word in respect to the
nature of the canvass. To my mind it is not so much a canvass of the merits
of candidates as a canvass of the merits of parties. It is not so much who or
what is Garfield or Hancock, but what is the character, composition,
tendencies, principles, end and aims of the respective parties by which they
have been brought to the front and by which they are commanded and
supported. In other words which of the two great parties shall dictate the
policy and administer the National Government during the four years suc-
ceeding the 4th, of the next March?
Experience has demonstrated that this is not a Government of persons,
but of parties, that ours is not an aristocracy, but a Republic. There is in it
one man power, but it is a power qualified by a written constitution, by
political parties, and by the declared and settled judgment of the American
people.
If at any time a President of the United States, should take it into his
head, that he is the state, that he is wise enough and strong enough to carry
on this Government without the support and co-operation of a party, or that
he can make or unmake parties at his pleasure, he will find himself in deep
water and in a sinking condition.
All who have tried the experiment have miserably failed. John Tyler
tried it, and failed, Andrew Johnson tried it and failed, and no man will try
it hereafter and succeed.8Vice President John Tyler, who succeeded to the presidency upon the death of William Henry Harrison in May 1841, quickly alienated most Whigs by his refusal to support bills for internal improvements and the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. By September 1841, all of Harrison's cabinet except Secretary of State Daniel Webster had resigned, and in 1843, Webster left as well. Tyler then made Democratic Senator John C. Calhoun his secretary of state and followed policies in line with the latter’s theories on states' rights. Tyler, elected as a Whig but ideologically inclined to the Democrats, thus seemed unsettled in terms of his party. Andrew Johnson encountered even greater problems in his relations with the Republican party which had elected him Lincoln's vice president in 1864. Angered by the opposition of most congressional Republicans to his plans for Reconstruction, Johnson supported a call for a National Union Convention for June 1866 and indicated his intention to oppose all Republican candidates for election in the fall. Interpreting this move as a repudiation of the Republican party, the Democrats endorsed the convention. Although that convocation proved largely a failure, the chasm between Johnson and most mainstream Republicans was thereafter unbridgeable. Oliver Perry Chitwood, John Tyler: Champion of the Old South (New York, 1939), 237-89; Benedict, Compromise of Principle, 192-96; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 357, 468. Parties are not made but grow. They do not
originate with rulers, but with the people. And hence their power and
vitality.
In politics as well as elsewhere, the whole is more than a part, the many
more than the few. Elihu Burritt used to say, it was better to be a small piece
of something than a larger piece of nothing. As the nation is more than a
party, so a party is more than an individual. The creator is ever more than
the creature.9Douglass adapts Rom. 1: 25. The candidate is not the creator of the party, but the party is
the creator of the candidate. They have the power to lift up, and they have
the power to cast down, and they have generally shown a pretty strong
disposition to retain this power and to exercise it when required to do so. In
a word, the party, whether it be the Democratic party or the Republican
party, will be the power behind the Throne greater than the Throne itself.
Hence we should not exalt the importance of the candidate above the party,
and enter into a contest about more personal qualities or achievements, but
should weigh and measure the parties which are to mould, guide, command
and control them.
But let there be no misconstruction here. Let no man imagine that in
thus subordinating the candidates to the great parties to which they belong,
that I either under-estimate their importance or shrink from a comparison of
their respective merits. I see nothing in the situation to suggest or impose
this prudence. I hardly think that James A. Garfield has anything to fear
from the most rigid and searching comparison with W. S. Hancock. Equal-
ly certain am I that Chester A. Arthur cannot suffer by comparison with
William H. English.
It is said in praise of Gen. Hancock that when this country was in the
throes of rebellion, and many of those who had been educated at West Point
at the public expense were going over to the enemy, that he remained
faithful and loyal; but so did James A. Garfield. It is said that Hancock
fought bravely, skillfully and successfully to suppress the rebellion; so did
James A. Garfield. Thus in loyalty to the Union and in bravely fighting to
maintain it against the slaveholding oligarchy that sought to overthrow it,
Hancock gains nothing over Garfield in the comparison. Both men are
entitled to the respect and gratitude of the American people for the part they
took in that supreme crisis in our history. It is hard for men to be just. Hard
for an Englishman to be just to an Irishman, hard for an Irishman to be just
to an Englishman, for a Christian to be just to a Jew, a white man to a
Chinaman, or a Democrat to be just to a Republican,—but I propose to be
just to this loyal, fighting Democrat, at least.
If either has the better of the other in the comparison thus far, the palm
must be awarded to James A. Garfield. (Applause)
Hancock was under special obligations of honor and duty to go into
that war. He had been educated and trained at the public expense for that
very contingency. That he did not meanly, traitorously and cowardly skulk
away or scamper away to the enemy, as many of his Democratic brethren
did, is creditable alike to his head and heart. But neither the act nor the
motive places this man one hair’s breadth above Garfield. A West Point
graduate, a military man by profession, in search of reputation at the
cannon’s mouth,10A paraphrase of As You Like It, act 2, sc. 7, lines 152-53. must have felt it a small sacrifice and very strong
temptation to take a hand in the war to suppress rebellion.
On the other hand, there were special reasons why Garfield should
hesitate, and even decline the fiery ordeal. He was a man of peace by
profession, taste and inclination. He was devoted to art and science, but not
to the art and science of war. For him the tented field had no attraction, and
the blast of the bugle no music. Now, for such a man, uncoerced by any
special obligation, to drop all, at the first cry of danger and distress of his
country, and bare his breast to the storm of war, should give him a higher
place in our respect and esteem than would be due to the educated, trained
and necessarily ambitious warrior.
When Garfield went to the war it was not because he was, in legal
phrase, held and firmly bound to go. He went not as a bondman, but as a
freeman. The motive and main-spring of his action was instinctive, spon-
taneous loyalty and patriotism.
I think well of military schools and standing armies; important to
public order, as they may be, the best defense of free American institutions
is the hearts of the American people themselves, as happily illustrated in
the character and conduct of James A. Garfield and the patriotic millions at
the North during the late Rebellion, the men who could leave the plow, the
desk, the plane, the factory and the peaceful walks of life and march in
defense of their country to any field however remote, and assail any point
however dangerous.
I do not undervalue the trained soldiers. To my mind, no grander man
now walks this continent than the trained soldier and tried statesman, U. S.
Grant. Always true, always modest, always magnanimous, always wise,
he is to-day as is every stalwart Republican11“Stalwarts” was the nickname for the Republican party faction that supported Ulysses S. Grant for a third term in 1880. Most members of this group had opposed Rutherford B. Hayes on the issues of civil service reform and conciliation of white southemers. More than three hundred delegates remained loyal to Grant throughout all thirty-six ballots at the Republican National Convention in 1880, but their leader, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, moved to make the nomination unanimous after James A. Garfield's victory. The selection of Chester A. Arthur of New York, a Stalwart and Conkling associate, for the vice-presidential nomination helped solidify the support of the disappointed Grant men for the Republican ticket. Donald Barr Chidsey, The Gentleman from New York: A Life of Roscoe Conkling (New Haven, 1935), 209-93; Mathews, Dictionary of Americanisms, 2: 1634. in the land, a firm supporter
of Garfield and Arthur.12Although disappointed at the failure of his Stalwart Republican backers to secure him a nomination for a third term, Ulysses S. Grant told newspaper reporters that he gave James A. Garfield‘s candidacy his “hearty support." In September 1880, Grant campaigned for the Republican ticket in the doubtful states of Ohio and Indiana. New York Tribune, 20 July 1880; McFeely, Grant, 483-84. (Applause)
We have now seen how our candidates stand as soldiers and as loyal
men. It would have been easy to carry the comparison further and illustrate
by a patient statement of facts. These however can be found in documents,
and need not occupy our time here and now. Let us now get a little nearer to
these men, and see how they compare in some other important respects.
How do they stand as to ability and statesmanship? Here most manifestly
we have everything in favor of Garfield and simply nothing in favor of
Hancock.
No honest Democrat, however enthusiastic in his admiration of Gener-
al Hancock, will venture a comparison as to statesmanship between him
and General Garfield, or will undertake to claim him as the equal of
Garfield in general knowledge. Such a pretension would be simply ridicu-
lous.
General Hancock is a good soldier and a patriot. In the hour of trial he
did his duty, and that is all. Equally meritorious with him in this respect
General Garfield is immeasurably superior to him in all those qualities and
attainments which are supposed to fit a man to be the President of the
United States.
Theodore Parker classifies greatness into three grades: First, greatness
in administration; second, greatness in the ability to organize; thirdly,
greatness in the discovery of truth, and this last was the greatest of all
greatness.13Theodore Parker offered this classification in the opening portion of his sermon on the death of John Quincy Adams in 1848. Parker, Historic Americans, 204-12. It does not appear that General Hancock has shown himself
great in either of these grades of greatness—certainly not in the highest
grade. The only statesmanlike sentiment with which he is credited, even by
his political friends, is that the military power should be subordinate to the
civil power.14Among the political precepts endorsed by the Democratic National Convention of 1880 in its platform was “The subordination of the military to the civil power.” AAC, 1880, 699. That is a very good sentiment, but it is neither original nor
profound. It has floated on the surface of American politics from the
beginning of our government. The only significance it had when uttered by
General Hancock was due to the circumstances that surrounded him. It was
uttered in the South, when the embers of rebellion were still smoking;
when Andrew Johnson, the Moses(?) of the colored race,15Andrew Johnson had used this description for himself in an interview with a black delegation on 7 February 1866. Washington Evening Star, 7 February 1866. had betrayed
that race into the blood-stained hands of the old master class; when he had
betrayed the Republican party, by which he had been elected; when he was
plotting the organization of a new party upon its ruins; when he was seeking
the destruction of the Freedmen’s Bureau;16After a year of wrangling over the idea, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen. and Abandoned Lands, commonly called the Freedmen’s Bureau, on 3 March 1865. Granted a tenure of only one year, the Bureau had the task of aiding the freedmen in their transition from slavery to freedom. The Bureau disbursed food rations, fuel, and clothing to the destitute, helped missionary societies provide teachers and schools, and settled freedmen on plots of land confiscated from planters during the war. Because much contention surrounded the legality of land confiscation and President Andrew Johnson’s policy of restoring plantations to repentant rebels had exhausted nearly all the available land by late 1865, the Bureau agents located only a tiny minority of freedmen on these plots and by early 1866 the restorations had dispossessed most of those. On 6 February 1866, the Senate and House passed a new Freedmen's Bureau bill which extended the life of the agency and granted it new judicial powers. Johnson vetoed the bill on 19 February, claiming that since slavery had ended, the freedmen required no further protection. Though not yet extending the life of the Bureau, Congress. led by Thaddeus Stevens, appropriated suflicient money for it to aid the freedmen during the difficult spring of 1866. On 26 June 1866, Congress again passed a bill granting the Bureau a further year’s tenure. Johnson vetoed this bill as well, but Congress easily overrode it on 16 July, extending the Bureau to 30 June 1867. Subsequently renewed until 1 January 1869, the Bureau focused principally on providing educational facilities for blacks, protecting the freedmen’s civil rights through judicial and military action, and supervising relations between the freedmen and the planters. George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen's Bureau (1944; New York,. 1974), 115-20, 133-35; William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, 1968), 236-46; Benedict, ComPromise of Principle, 147-61; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 277-90; Foner, Reconstruction, 247-50. when outrage, riot and murder
held sway in the South; when the only protection to the colored people of
the South was the arm of the Federal soldier. And it was uttered with a view
to deprive our people even of this imperfect protection, and to make their
subjection to the old master class full and complete.
Now to this utterance, more than to all his services to the Union cause,
General Hancock is indebted for his nomination to the Presidency of the
United States by the Democratic party. His services to the Union cause is to
blind the North, and the order in which this sentiment appears, is to win the
South—but the main element which has brought him to the front, is that he
has since the war on the all important questions of protection to the Freed-
men, sympathized with the old master class. This is the statesmanship by
which he is commended. One idea, one alone, and that is the subordination
of loyal military power, to rebel and slave-holding civil power.
Now, how stands the case of General Garfield? He has been in office
and in the public eye ever since the suppression of the rebellion. He has
during the last few years since James G. Blaine left the House of Represen-
tatives,17On 10 July 1876 James G. Blaine resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives, where he had served since 1863 and been Speaker from 1869 to 1875, in order to accept appointment to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat from Maine. Muzzey, James G. Blaine, 37, 62, 115. been the leader of that body and the most conspicuous and
commanding figure seen there. His name is a household word. His voice
and vote have been given on every important question which has engaged
the attention of the House of Representatives during the last sixteen years. I
need not refer in detail to his record as a clear-headed and thoughtful
statesman, nor to his frequent and powerful vindications of the principles
of justice and liberty in that body. The time would fail me if I attempted any
such work here.
Now it is but just to General Hancock to state here, that since preparing
this part of my speech I have read his letter accepting his nomination by the
Democratic party, and that I am favorably impressed by that letter.
It is not only able, eloquent and manly, but it is sound at the very points
where his party is rotten. He says: “The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth
amendments to the Constitution of the United States, embodying the re-
sults of the war for the Union are inviolable. If called to the Presidency I
shall deem it my duty, to resist with my power, any attempt to impair or
invade the full force of the Constitution, which in every article, section and
amendment, is the supreme law of the land.”18Douglass slightly misquotes a sentence in Winfield S. Hancock's letter to the Democratic party’s national committee, dated 29 July 1880, accepting their convention's nomination for the presidency. AAC, 1880, 701-02.
Now, what business has any man who honestly holds this doctrine, and
declares a purpose to carry it out, in the Democratic party? He has no more
business there than Horace Greeley had eight years ago.
I thank General Hancock for his noble utterance. It is creditable alike to
his head and heart. His resolution at this point is a righteous one, and if
elected to the Presidency, I shall watch to see how far he fulfils his pledge.
Pledges before the elections have not meant quite as much as pledges
afterward, and I have no faith in his success in executing this one. He has
stolen our thunder, but will find it too heavy for him. He is a strong man,
but in a morass; a good swimmer, but in the rapids. He is great, but his
party is greater. It is far safer to have our principles and our interests in the
same vessel. When a man’s soul is in one place, and his body in another, he
is not long among the living.
Horace Greeley tried it and died. Hon. Carl Schurz and the late Charles
Sumner tried it, but both made haste to retrace their steps.19Senators Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Carl Schurz of Missouri both joined the Liberal Republican party, which gained the support of the Democrats during the campaign of 1872. While neither man ever joined the Democrats, they opposed the reelection of Republican Ulysses S. Grant that year. Sumner died before mending fences with either Grant or most Massachusetts Republican party leaders, but Schurz returned to his old partisan loyalties and supported the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Donald, Sumner and the Rights of Man, 552, 562; DAB, 16: 466-70. The current
was too strong for him, and it will be too strong for Hancock. Mr. Sumner
came ashore at once. Mr. Schurz lingered a while, but he too soon got
safely back into the Republican party. His tastes and tendencies are all
here.
In James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, we have candidates in full
accord with the history of the party they represent. These candidates oc-
cupy solid ground, and are supported, and will be supported by the power
of the whole Republican party of the nation. Now, I come back to the
question, the all important question started a few moments ago; and that is:
what answer ought we to make, and what answer' shall we make to these
appeals for our voices and our votes? We sustain no relation to our fellow
men more important than our political relation, and none in which we
require more sound sense. A thoughtless and foolish exercise of our political
power, was [will?] become a fountain of trouble to our fellow men and
ourselves. On the other hand a wise exercise of this great right will exalt the
nation and lift up our down trodden race. Certainly to vote intelligently we
must know something of the character, composition and tendencies of the
parties that ask our votes. When we take passage on a ship we should know
to what port she is bound and whether she is seaworthy. We have no
business to fool away our time or to fling away our lives.
We are told to get wisdom, get knowledge get understanding. How
shall we get all these in respect to our political parties? I answer; just as we
get all other knowledge, not by shutting our eyes and stopping our ears, or
stopping our intellect; not in a blind trust in the professions of interested
partizans. It is surprising what lies will be told by men in politics, by men
who would scorn to lie and cheat in other walks of life. Our duty here is
plain. We must search the very heart and history of the two great political
parties, and then choose between them. We must not expect to find absolute
perfection in either, for they are composed of men, but when we find one
that is nearly right, one that is better than any other, we should fasten to it,
and go for it with all our might.
Let me first call the attention to the characters, compositions, princi-
ples and aims as revealed in the Democratic party. In dealing with this
party, I find no place for soft speech, or delicate compliments of patroniz-
ing disclosures. It is a rough and tough old party, hoary with years and gory
with crime. To deal with it honestly we should put away the elegant
circumlocutions of the drawing-room and parlor; and talk as men talk under
the shed of a stone cutter or in a blacksmith shop while hammering red hot
steel.
It is shocking to hear men talk of honest Democrats. Talk about there
being as good men in one party as in the other, talk as if they would gladly
keep an open door between one party and another, so that they may easily
glide from one to the other, as interest or inclination should dictate—men
like our old friend Forney20John Wein Forney (1817-81) was best known as a newspaper editor who, during his long career, had supported both the Democrats and the Republicans. He worked for various newspapers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as a young man and owned his own before the age of thirty. Forney's editorial labors on behalf of successful Democratic presidential candidate James K. Polk won him appointment to the surveyorship of the port of Philadelphia in 1845. In that city, he also edited the Pennsylvanian on behalf of the Democratic party which rewarded him with the clerkship of the U.S. House of Representatives (1851-55). Forney strongly supported James Buchanan’s presidential candidacy but was disappointed with the patronage subsequently offered him. In the intraparty fight over the Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, Forney shifted his allegiance from Buchanan to Stephen Douglas of Illinois. He founded the Philadelphia Press to attack proslavery Democrats and supported Douglas in the 1860 presidential election. During the Civil War, Forney moved to Washington, DC, to take the position of secretary of the U.S. Senate and edited a newspaper supporting Lincoln and the Union effort. He developed close ties to Radical Republican politicians, and Ulysses S. Grant appointed him collector of the port of Philadelphia in 1871 . Forney edited the Philadelphia Press on behalf of the Republicans until 1880 when he returned to Democratic ranks to support Winfield S. Hancock for president. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 597, 599, 682, 684, 698, 700, 702; ACAB, 2: 503; NCAB, 3: 267-68; DAB, 6: 526-27.—who goes for Hancock therefore without a
why or a wherefore.
It is sometimes said that this tough old Democratic party has re-
formed—that it is no longer what it once was, and what by its history I
mean to show it to be.
Well, in the abstract, I will not deny the possibility of the reformation
of a political party. It is as I have said, composed of men, and men may, I
trust, be a little wiser and better in one generation than in another.
But in respect even to this, we must take a rational view of things. We
should remember that what is possible is not always probable. We should
remember that all is not gold that glitters,21This axiom dates back to The Canterbury Tales of William Chaucer. Walter W. Skeat, ed., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2d ed., 6 vols. (1899-1900; Oxford, 1934), 4: 539. and especially should we
remember that the sins of the fathers descend to the children even unto the
third and fourth generation.22Douglass paraphrases Exod. 20: 5, 34: 7; Num. 14: 18; Deut. 5: 9. From its very nature, the course and char-
acter of a party, is not easily or suddenly changed. It is more likely to
go from bad to worse than from good to better. A stream flowing through
a given channel wears it deeper and deeper the longer it runs, and the
more a party transgresses against absolute right, and in face of increased
and increasing light, the more difficult it becomes for it to repent and
change. The voice of my race has been sounding for fifty years in the ear
of the Democratic party. “Democracy! Democracy! why persecutest thou
me?”23An adaptation of Ps. 22: 1, Matt. 27: 46, Mark, 15: 34. And though this has been accompanied with a light that filled the
whole heavens, it does not appear that any repentance has taken place, or
is likely to take place.
The character of a great political party is not worn like a loose robe, put
on or off at a moment’s warning. It is not even a porous plaster, that can be
easily removed by a warm iron or a little tepid water. It is a part of the body
and soul, the bone, muscle, fat and fibre, and takes more years than we
have yet seen to change and reform it.
It is quite true that the Democratic party can easily change its form and
front. It can assume a virtue if it has it not. This facility is a part of its
character and history, and one of its tricks to gain success. It is a sly old
dog, and can play the part of a lamb or lion, saint or sinner, and has more
than once illustrated—
When the devil was sick,
The devil a saint would be,
But when the devil got well
The devil a saint was he.24Douglass substitutes “saint” for "monk" in quoting a proverb by Franςois Rabelais. The Works of Franςois Rabelais, tran. Thomas Urquhart, 2 vols. (London, 1854), 2: 273.
In its lean, hungry condition, eager and restless, more reduced in
weight and size than Tanner after his fasting experiment,25Douglass refers to the highly publicized fasting experiment of Dr. Henry S. Tanner then in progress in New York City. Born in the small village of Tunbridge Wells in southern England, Tanner (1831-?) emigrated to the United States with his family in 1848 and settled in Painesville, Ohio. Tanner studied at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati and practiced as a physician in several Ohio and Minnesota communities before successfully establishing himself in Minneapolis in 1873. In New York City in early 1880, public curiosity had been drawn to the spectacle of fasting by the efforts of Dr. William Hammond to discredit the claim by Mollie Fancher of Brooklyn to have survived fourteen years without food. Having already engaged in long fasts in Minnesota, Tanner volunteered to demonstrate scientifically the ability of a human being to go without nourishment for at least forty days. The experiment was conducted from 28 June to 7 August 1880 before public audiences at Clarendon Hall in New York City with two physicians constantly in attendance to monitor Tanner’s vital signs and to certify his complete abstinence from food. Although Hammond and other medical authorities had predicted that Tanner could not survive more than twelve to fifteen days, he successfully completed the forty-day fast and his health recovered quickly despite the loss of thirty-six pounds. Thanks to the notoriety created by the national and international press coverage of the fast, Tanner subsequently had a lucrative career as a lecturer on food and diet. New York Times, 4, 24 July, 9, 10 August 1880; New York Tribune, 11, 14 July, 8, 9 August 1880; ACAB, 6: 32; NCAB, 1: 382. the Democratic
party has several times since the war surprised and startled the country by a
sudden and violent charge of fraud. I have seen a dancer on the stage who
was to outward seeming a man at one moment and a woman
the next, yet it was the same person, and the deception only deceived for a
second. The Democratic party is like Barnum’s dancer.26Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-91), son of a farmer and storekeeper in Bethel, Connecticut, was the premier show business impresario of his generation. Among the attractions he exhibited in “museums,” traveling shows, and finally his own circus were Joice Heth, a black woman claiming she was 161 years old and had been George Washington's nurse; the midget Charles S. Stratton, better known as “General Tom Thumb"; Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins; Jenny Lind, the Swedish singing sensation; and Jumbo, an exceptionally large African elephant. Barnum was also well known for his lectures and books and served as a Connecticut state legislator and a mayor of Bridgeport. Irving Wallace, The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P. T. Barnum (New York , 1959); DAB, 1: 636-37. It turns about and
whirls about,
And does just so.
To know the character and the true inwardness of the Democratic party
we must not limit ourselves to its present appearance and professions.
Political parties, like individual men, are governed and will be governed by
their antecedents. We must go back to such times and such events as reveal
its animus.
I know that its leaders will howl and gnash their teeth27Douglass slightly misquotes Lam. 2: 16. if we go into
their closet and drag out the ghastly skeletons; but we must do it neverthe-
less. What a party has done when it had the power that party is likely to do
when it again gets power.
I admit that the American people have a tolerably good memory, but
they are more likely to forget too soon than remember too long the actions
of parties during the late war.
Twenty years ago the Democratic party of the South, then, as now, the
controlling power in the party, told us if it failed in the pending election to
keep the control it then had, of the Federal Government, the South would
secede. Anticipating resistance to their meditated treason and rebellion,
the Democratic party of that section, long before the election, organized
and armed itself for the bloody contest.
The Democratic party being then in power, holding in its hands both
the purse and the sword of the nation, not only did nothing to check this
frightful and devilish purpose, but did all it could to cripple the nation and
strengthen its enemies. Jeff Davis was busy in the Senate and Floyd28John B. Floyd. in the
war office, the one by speech and the other by acts—worked in a common
cause of treason, while the Democratic President sat trembling in the
Presidential chair, telling us that there was no power in the Constitution to
coerce a State.29During the crisis caused by the secession of one slave state after another during the winter of 1860-61, lame-duck president James Buchanan denied that the South had the constitutional right to leave the Union but also asserted that the federal government lacked authority to use force against a state in any circumstance. Klein, President James Buchanan, 390-93; Potter, Impending Crisis, 521, 544.
Oh, Fellow Citizens! Those were terrible times and we do well to
remember them, and to remember what followed. I need not tell you that
the bloody threat of the Democratic party was literally carried out. The
contingency arose, the good and great Abraham Lincoln was elected, the
Loyal nation refused to confide the Government to the Democratic party,
and‘the Democratic party did precisely as it said it would. It sundered the
Union at the centre, confronted the sections with hostile armies, murdered
a half a million of men, filled the land with widows and orphans, and piled
up a debt against the nation heavier than a mountain of gold.
No wonder that the Democratic party now covers its bleared eyes with
its hands; no wonder that it shrinks from its blood-stained path; no wonder
that the nation remembers and shudders, for where under the whole heav-
ens was there ever such a crime committed and its perpetrators treated with
such amazing leniency?
The blood of patriots, the tears of woe-smitten widows and orphans,
cry from the ground, but not for vengeance; they only implore us to swear,
and to faithfully perform our oath, that with the help of God no representa-
tive of the Democratic party, under what guise soever he may come, shall
ever sit again in the Presidential chair and dictate the policy and shape the
destiny of this great nation.
But, fellow citizens, I will, if you please, continue the story of the
Democratic party. While it was vigorously carrying on the war at the
South, it was not idle at the North. While our recruiting sergeants were
marching through our streets, with drum and fife, banner and badge, from
morning till night, foot-sore and weary, calling for men to fill up the gaps
made by rebel bullets in the loyal army, this party was fomenting riot and
bloodshed against the draft here at the North—creating a reign of terror in
New York and doing all it could to embarrass the government and disheart-
en its friends. Had the doors of all the prisons in the land been opened, and
all the thieves, thugs and murderers turned loose to prey upon the country,
the evil would have been far less than that inflicted by the Democratic
party.
And now where is the evidence that this party has repented? Where is
the proof that its character has changed for the better? Is it to be found in the
fact, that when the war was over, it opposed with might and main all the
measures of the government to secure, not indemnity for the past but
security for the future? Is it to be found in the fact that it opposed the
abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of the freedmen, and the mainte-
nance of the public credit by resumption and the payment of the national
debt? Is it to be found in its refusal to pay Deputy Marshals for doing their
duty in the enforcement of the laws plainly written in the statute book of the
nation?30From 1879 to 1881, the Democrats, who controlled both houses of Congress for the first time since Lincoln’s election, attempted to block federal efforts to ensure fair elections by cutting appropriations for those programs from finance bills. President Rutherford B. Hayes responded by vetoing thirteen such bills in the second half of his term. The specific incidents to which Douglass alludes concerned the payment of $7,600 to special deputy marshals in California. These marshals, appointed to monitor congressional elections, had been unpaid since July 1879. Between February and May 1880, the Forty-sixth Congress debated whether to pay these individuals and the Democrats encumbered the House appropriations bill with numerous amendments and riders stating opposition to the employment of special deputy marshals in future election campaigns. When the two houses of Congress settled their differences in a conference committee, the final appropriations bill passed without the clause prohibiting special deputy marshals. It became a separate bill and was later vetoed by Hayes. AAC, 1880, 152 67; New York Times, 19, 20 March, 5 May 1880; Davison, Rurherford B. Hayes, 162-63; Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 354-55. Is it to be found in the fact that they find in the Solid South, made
solid by lawless violence and murder, hope for the election of Hancock? Is
it to be found in the fact that as soon as they got possession of the Senate and
House of Representatives, it promptly turned out all the minor officers of
those bodies and put rebels in their places? These and a hundred other facts
show that we have to-day the same old party to fight that confronted us
during the war, and nothing else.
Of the Republican party I need not speak. It is the same as during and
before the war, the same enlightened, loyal, liberal, and progressive party
that it was. It is the party of Lincoln, Grant, Wade,31Born near Springfield, Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin Wade (1800-78) moved to Ohio in 1821. Admitted to the bar in 1827, he formed a law partnership with Joshua R. Giddings in Jefferson, Ohio. Wade served as a Whig member of the state senate (1837-39, 1841-43) and as presiding judge of the state's third judicial circuit (1847-51) before his election to the first of three terms in the U.S. Senate (1851-69). A strong opponent of slavery, Wade became a leader of the Radical wing of the Republican party. During the Civil War he chaired the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and pressed for emancipation of the slaves and punishment of the Confederates. As president pro tempore of the Senate, Wade would have become president if the impeachment of Andrew Johnson had succeeded in 1867. He retired from the Senate soon after his failure to obtain the Republican nomination as Ulysses S. Grant's running mate in 1868. Wade’s final public service was as a member of the Santo Domingo Commission for which Douglass acted as assistant secretary. H[ans] L. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade: Radical Republican from Ohio (New York, 1963); ACAB, 6: 310-11 ; DAB, 19: 303-05. Seward and Sumner,
the party to which we are to-day indebted for the salvation of the country,
and to-day it is well represented in its character and composition by James
A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur.
Now fellow citizens, I have done, I leave you to decide as to which of
these parties you will have to shape the policy and control the destiny of this
country during the next four years. The people of no State in the Union have
the power so largely to decide this question as the people of the State of
New York, and with you will be the largest responsibility.
I have no charge to give to the colored voters of this state. You are
fifteen thousand in number,32The New York state census of 1875 counted 16,228 black males of twenty-one years of age or older. Secretary of State of New York, Census of the State of New York for 1875 (Albany, 1877), xviii. and your vote may turn the scale one way or
the other, and say whether this country shall be ruled by a party of liberal
ideas, by justice and fair play, or by a party especially distinguished by its
devotion to slavery, rebellion and bitter prejudice against the race to which
you belong. Each colored voter of this State should say in scripture phrase,
“may my hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth33Douglass paraphrases Ps. 137: 5-6. if ever I raise my voice or give my vote, for the nominees of the
Democratic party.”