Vote for Chipman: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on April 12, 1871
VOTE FOR CHIPMAN: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
IN WASHINGTON, D.C., ON 12 APRIL 1871
Washington , 13 April 1871. Other texts in Washington , 13 April 1871; Washington , 13 April 1871.
An “immense mass of people,” representing every group “from the Governor
to the laborer,” gathered in front of City Hall in Washington, D.C., on the
evening of 12 April 1871 to ratify the Republican party’s nominee for ter-
ritorial delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. General Norton Parker
Chipman, the party’s candidate, had won the nomination in competition with
Douglass only a few days before. Nevertheless, Douglass appeared on the
speaker’s platform to show his support for the Republican party and to give a
rousing speech on behalf of the candidate.
MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: It is natural from my antecedents,
not less than from my present position, that I should feel a deep interest in
the struggle in which we are presently engaged. With you there are local
considerations that will make this one of the most interesting occasions
known to our experience. The interests of this great city, the improvement
of the capital of the nation, all are matters of consideration. But with me,
recollecting the party which has ever sympathized with the conditions of
our oppressed race, it has a deeper, and, I may say, a solemn, significance.
We are now, I may say, standing at a pivotal period in the history of the
United States.
It is literally with you and I and all of us of this color “to be or not to
be.”1, act 3, sc. 1, line 56. It is whether we shall be permitted to enjoy the liberties which have
been won for us by the loyal blood of the white man as well as the black;
whether we shall enjoy our own rights, or whether we shall be deprived of
those liberties, proscribed and reduced to our former wretched state.
Do you want to know what I think of General N. P. Chipman? (Cries of
“Yes, yes.”) I will tell you. I think him to be an honest man; I think him to
be a loyal man, whose public history is identified with the preservation of
the American Union and the triumph of the great Republican experiment of
liberty to the nation.
You have heard of Mr. Merrick;2Mexican War veteran Richard T. Merrick (1828-85) served in the Maryland state legislature and practiced law in Chicago before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1864. Merrick served with Joseph H. Bradley, Sr., and Joseph H. Bradley, Jr., as counsel to John H. Surratt at the latter’s 1867 trial for conspiring to murder President Lincoln. After his unsuccessful 1871 challenge to Norton P. Chipman for the District of Columbia’s nonvoting seat in Congress, Merrick went on to advise various congressional committees, including the electoral commission of 1876. An ardent stump speaker, he was also a lecturer in constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law School. Whyte, , 107-09, 246; Washington , 27 June 1885; New York , 24 June 1885; Weichmann, , 335; , 4: 305; , 7: 23. so have I. I have heard since coming.
into this District that Mr. Merrick is a gentleman. I don’t deny it—that he is
a firm friend; I don’t deny it—that he is a good husband, but I have never
heard that when this great nation was about to rent asunder, when hostile
armies were endeavoring to break up the Union and our brave boys rallied
to preserve it, I never heard that Richard T. Merrick was on the side of the
Union.
Another thing; When you and I and all were slaves, weighed down
under the heavy yoke, kneeling by our firesides, in the woods, in the grave-
yards, praying to the Lord, “How long, O how long!” I never heard that
Richard T. Merrick gave us one word of sympathy, one word of encourage-
ment leading us to believe that his heart had one pulsation of sympathy for
us. I never have heard that Mr. Merrick ever gave a dollar or a dime to the
widow of a loyal soldier killed while standing up in defense of the Government.
I have heard that cunning
CONNIVING CONSPIRATORS
in this city, conspiring to assassinate that noblest of men, Abraham Lincoln,
that when their bullets had pierced his brain, these conspirators,
looking about to find a man whose legal learning and moral sentiment
properly fitted him to defend them, found Mr. Merrick. Is that so? (“Yes,
yes”)
Then again, I have heard that at Andersonville
THE REBELS STARVED
and horribly treated our brave boys, and that one Wirz,3Heinrich Hartman (Henry) Wirz (1823-65) was born in Zurich, Switzerland, where he received commercial training and experience before emigrating to the United States in 1849. Taking up an earlier interest, Wirz practiced medicine in Kentucky and Louisiana, even though he had no formal degree or certification. A sergeant in the Louisiana Fourth Infantry, Wirz was wounded at the Battle of the Seven Pines (31 May-1 June 1862), but, promoted to captain, he later commanded Confederate prisons in Richmond and Tuscaloosa. After a year’s service as President Jefferson Davis’s special plenipotentiary in Paris and Berlin, Wirz received the command of the interior of the prison at Andersonville, Georgia, in April 1864. For crimes he personally committed against individual inmates and conspiracy to “impair and injure the health and to destroy the lives" of Federal prisoners, a military court tried and sentenced Wirz to death in November 1865, the only Confederate official to meet such a fate. Ella Lonn, (Chapel Hill, 1940), 84, 273-75; Futch, , 16-17; Ambrose Spencer, (New York, 1866), 55-57; , 14: 448-53 (October 1908). the most infamous
man on the globe, was responsible for these atrocities; that when
the trial of Wirz took place, Mr. Merrick was asked and did defend him.
These things tell.
I’ll tell you what the issue of this election is. If Richard Merrick is
elected it will be the
TRIUMPH OF SLAVERY,
of proscription, of disloyalty, of emnity to the country. It will be the
reopening of agitation—the disturbance of our national repose.
On the other hand the election of General Chipman will be the
TRIUMPH OF REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES,
of loyalty, of liberty, and of law and order.
We have all made up our minds, and it doesn’t need any argument to
convince us who we must vote for. My Democratic Friends have lately
taken a deep interest in me; they appear to be greatly distressed because I
was not invited to
THE WHITE HOUSE.
I am sorry they take on so bitterly. Why don’t some good Democrat invite
me to his house? This election does not turn upon that. Weightier are [and?]
more important considerations will govern. Mr. Merrick, I am, told, is
asking
THE BLACK MEN TO VOTE
for him. I should blush to my bones if I thought that a single black man
would vote for him.
The opponents of the Republican party are saying a great deal about the
“White Man’s Party” and the “White Man’s Government.” Gentlemen
Democrats, that is very unkind. For 250 years the black man has been
welcome here by the Democrats. They went way across the Atlantic,
exposing themselves to yellow fever, and I don’t know what other diseases,
to rescue us as
BRANDS FROM THE BURNING,
and bring us to this country. They liked us so well that they would not let us
run away, but passed a “fugitive slave bill,” that if we should attempt to run
away we might be returned to our masters. There was nowhere in all this
Republic where black men could run where the Democrats couldn’t find
them. Now, after having “fetched” us here and borne with us in slavery, I
tell my Democratic friends that they should bear with us in liberty. Republicans
tell us it is but naked magnanimity to allow us to enjoy the
blessings of liberty. With the hearty wish that we may have triumphant
success on the 20th of April, I now take my seat.