Vote the Regular Republican Ticket: An Address Delivered in Raleigh, North Carolina, on July 25, 1872
VOTE THE REGULAR REPUBLICAN TICKET: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA,
ON 25 JULY 1872
New York , 30 July 1872.
In anticipation of the important North Carolina election for state officials on 1
August 1872, Douglass briefly toured the state for the Republicans in late
July, stopping at both Raleigh and Wilmington. At Metropolitan Hall in
Raleigh on the evening of 25 July he appeared before an enthusiastic audience
of both blacks and whites. On the platform with him were John Pool, the
Republican senator from North Carolina, Joseph Carter Abbott, one of the
state’s leading journalists and politicians, and James H. Harris, a prominent
black Radical Republican. John Henry Smyth, a black orator from Wash-
ington, D.C., who had recently graduated from the law school at Howard
University, preceded Douglass to the podium and spoke for half an hour in
“praise of Grant’s triumphs both in war and peace.” Samuel M. Phillips, the
Republican assistant district attorney of Raleigh, then introduced Douglass,
whom the audience received with loud applause. The reporter noted
that the speech “created a profound impression, especially upon the white
portion of the large audience." Douglass’s demanding schedule was appar-
ently leaving its marks upon him: two reporters described his voice as low and
broken, one of them even placing Douglass’s age at “about 65 or 70 years,”
almost twenty years older than his actual age. Raleigh (N.C.) ,
23, 25, 27 July 1872; Raleigh (N.C.) , 27 July 1872; , 1
August 1872; Washington , 6 August 1872; Rochester
, 6, 10 August 1872; Douglass, , 459;
J[oseph] G[régoire] de Roulhac Hamilton, , 6 vols.
(Chicago, 1919), 3: 177.
FELLOW-CITIZENS: I appear before you this evening with a very great
desire to make a good speech, but I never felt, perhaps, less qualified to
make a speech than on the present occasion. I cannot say that I am unac-
customed to public speaking, for during the last thirty or more years I have
done but little else than speak in public. And yet I confess to a very great
degree of embarrassment in attempting to address this audience. The issues
involved in the present political contest have been ably discussed over and
over again, no doubt, in the presence of those who hear me, and I am in
danger, if I should attempt to enter upon that discussion, of repeating in no
improved form the thoughts and principles to which you have already
listened, and which have been well illustrated by former speakers. That is
one source of embarrassment. Another is, that I have no voice—my voice
is gone, and you will have to be very quiet or you will hardly be able to hear
what I may have to say.
Another embarrassment is, I have to speak this evening to two classes
of my fellow-citizens—to two classes. I have often appeared before the
public as a black man, although I am scarcely black (laughter), quite a
modification—indeed a very sensible modification of black. I have some-
times appeared before the American people in the character of a slave; at
other times I have appeared as a fugitive slave—a runaway slave—but to-
night, thanks to the genius of our free institutions and to the logic of events,
I am permitted to address you, and I do it from my heart as fellow-citizens.
(Great applause.) And this evening I wish to know no color, know no
obligation, to adopt the language of Stephen A. Douglas in other days,
“Know no North, no South, no East, no West,” but to address you as
citizens of a common country, equally interested with every other citizen in
the welfare, the prosperity and happiness of the whole country. (Great
applause.) I am not here as a black man against the white, nor as a mulatto
man against either black or white, but simply here as a man, as an Ameri-
can, as a citizen upon whom rests a common responsibility. a common duty
with you all. (Applause)
I may possibly, however, be allowed to say a little something about
myself. I have heard a great deal of you here in North Carolina, and some of
you, perhaps, have heard something of me. You have some notions con-
cerning my course of conduct, which I am at liberty, as this is the first time I
have had the opportunity of meeting you, to explain myself. 1 rise to
explain. (Laughter) You know that there are certain classes of men who
have rather a bad name in North Carolina; perhaps, too, in South Carolina.
You know, moreover, that about the worst name you can give a man here is
to call him a carpet-bagger. For my part I wish to defend myself from being
involved in the category of carpet-bagger, although, in truth, I am a carpet-
bagger (laughter) after a fashion. But instead of being a carpet-bagger from
the North I was a carpet-bagger from the South. (Great laughter and
applause.)
Then, again, I have been called a thief. Well, I confess that I did
something that bore that construction years ago, for in fact I stole myself.
(Laughter and applause.) I was a piece of property. I was owned. I was
what they call a chattel to all intents and purposes by a fair construction of
the law, and yet in the face of that fact I took possession of myself, put a
bundle on my shoulder, and left after the fashion of the pictures in the old-
fashioned newspapers—you won’t find them now—and made my way to
the North. After all, in the eyes of liberty and justice, I hardly think I can be
held as criminal, even at the bar of Southern public opinion. God in His
wisdom when He sent man into the world fitted him out with two arms, two
hands and two legs. Philosophy teaches that one man’s liberty begins
where another’s ends. I ran away, it is true, but I ran away on my own legs.
(Laughter and applause.) And I left everybody else in possession of their
legs. (Laughter) But did you never steal while you were a slave? Well, yes;
I did. Yes; according to your notions of stealing, but I had conscientious
scruples about it. Force of education was very powerful. I had heard the
minister tell I must obey my master, and “Thou shalt not steal,”1Exod. 20: 15. but I was
hungry once, very hungry indeed, and I had a little conference with a
brother slave on the subject of helping myself to a turkey that I saw
fluttering in one of the out-houses. I told Sandy (for it was Sandy Jenkins)
that I was hungry, wanted something to eat, but that I had religious scruples
against helping myself to that turkey. I knew that he was a praying man, a
God fearing man, and I wanted his advice on the subject. He told me that it
was rather a ticklish question in ethics. There was some risk about it, but so
far as the act itself was concerned it was perfectly legitimate. He said you
are your master’s property. Yes, I said. That turkey is your master’s proper-
ty? Yes. If you put that turkey into you (laughter) that turkey does not cease
to be the property of your master, but only adds to the value of his property
in another form. (Laughter) So it was simply a question of removal. I said
that it stood to reason, the whole thing was clear to reason, and I helped
myself. (Great laughter.)
Well, the world has made some progress since that: it is making prog-
ress all the time, but it so happens that every step in the world’s progress
costs terribly; every inch of man’s disputed way upwards is bought at the
cost of agony and often of blood. Even take the right of every man to
worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. There was a
time when this right was not conceded in Europe nor here even. The right of
a man to have his own opinions respecting the unknown, the invisible, the
unfathomable future—that right which you and I and all of us enjoy at this
hour—came to the world through seas of blood and tears.
For eighty long years all Europe was rocked from centre to circum-
ference by the simple assertion of the right of each individual man to have
his own religious opinions and to worship God according to his own
conscience.2Douglass alludes to the Spanish-Dutch struggle between 1566 and 1648. The rack, the gibbet, men had their tongues cut out, their
flesh torn from them with steel-pincers, thrown into the fire; others had
their hearts torn out of their breasts and flung into their faces for daring to
assert their right to worship God according to the dictates of their own
consciences. But after all this right was successfully asserted. The struggle
had to come. William the Silent, leading the way in the Netherlands against
the Spanish Inquisition, against Charles and Philip, succeeded at last in
establishing the Dutch Republic, and out of the Dutch Republic sprang the
Republic of the United States (great applause), and we of this grand Re-
public of ours spent eleven years in Holland before coming to Plymouth
Rock to establish free institutions in this country. Only one step gained—
only one step—that the right to worship God, and it cost hundreds of
thousands of lives to establish that right.
Well, now, here the world is progressing; we have made some prog-
ress, but how little. We had a proposition before us a little while ago, a very
simple proposition—one that commended itself very readily to some of us,
but to others it did not; that proposition was a very simple one; it was
simply this—yet simple as it was it had to be fought over for years—the
simple proposition that every man is himself, that is all we fought about;
over that proposition that every man is himself—that is all. That is what we
are fighting about. That is why this great nation of ours was rent asunder at
the centre, and hostile armies confronted each other for four years on the
battle-field, because of the simple proposition that every man belongs to
himself and can belong to no one else.
I have no new truth to bring before you, not one; no new truth to apply
to human affairs. It will be time enough to go in search of new truth when
the old shall have been fully declared and reduced to practice by the
American people, and that truth is the right of every man to himself. In the
old times this right did not exist in practice. We had men who decided for
other men when they should work, how much they should work for, who
they should work for, when they should be punished and for what; what
they should eat, what they should drink, what they should wear, what they
should learn and what they should abstain from learning—all in the power
of another man.
It is no longer so, my fellow-citizens. (Cries of “No!”) I believe that
the time will come, if it has not already come, when the master class down
here in North Carolina will rejoice as heartily as the slave class that we have
got rid of this thing. (Cries of “It has come”) I believe that the time will
come, if it has not come, when they will rejoice that they are no longer
entangled in so terrible a contradiction as slavery was to the free institutions
of the United States. It was always an ugly baby in the national family—
always had to be put out of sight when company came—always put under
the bed; we never felt at ease about it. When we went abroad, and seeing
men point to our flag, heard them say that it emblazed in its stripes and stars
the white man’s freedom and the negro’s scars, you felt the taunt, and we
all felt it. Born on the American soil as I was, speaking the English
language as I do, having connections on both sides, white and black, as I
have, proud of the freedom I had achieved, I felt a certain degree of pride in
this country. I felt the reproaches that came upon us for our inconsistency
and I rejoice today, not only as a black man, but as a man and a citizen, that
every star has been taken down from that flag and every star in the blue
ground there means freedom for all. (Great applause.)
Well, although we have made progress, there is a little more yet to be
made. We have made progress, we colored folks. Why, in Jamaica, two
hundred years ago, it was found necessary for a good missionary to write a
book of two hundred pages to prove what, pray? To prove that it was not a
sin to baptize negroes.3Morgan Godwyn argued for this position in . (Laughter) We were so low down two hundred
years ago that the ministers thought it was a sin to put water on us. It seems
to us that there was no difficulty in the way; but in fact there was, as I shall
show you. In order that a person should be a suitable subject for baptism it
was necessary for him to have some will of his own, and also to have some
intelligence, that he should be able to distinguish between good and evil,
and it was very difficult then to decide that these people were suitable
subjects for baptism. Well, we have got along there in Jamaica so that we
can baptize people in that land; not only that, but go to school and hold
office as well as vote. So we have made some progress, and here we have
made tremendous progress in the last few years, but it has come through
blood and suffering.
My friends, let me tell you—I am now speaking to the fifty white
gentlemen the newspapers will tell you were here, although I have counted
two-hundred of them—I am not, as I said before, an enemy of any class of
American citizens. God Forbid. The truth in regard to the matter is just this:
I always hated slavery, but never the slave-holder. Read over thirty years of
my utterances and you will find nothing like malice toward the slave-
holder. I know the disadvantages under which the old system placed them.
It made them the slaves of slaves. They went to bed often with pistols under
their heads. I was down in Maryland when Nathaniel Turner made that start
in Virginia. I know the panic, the alarm which they feel who stand upon the
necks of an injured class. Glad am I, therefore, that you are rid of this thing
in North Carolina, as well as everywhere in the Republic, and yet the
relations existing between the white and black people in this country are
still the grand and all-commanding problem which this nation is called
upon to solve. Every thoughtful man is bound by his love of country to do
what he can to help to solve that problem. The relations subsisting between
the whites and blacks is the great issue, after all, in the present contest
between the political parties. It may not be in their platforms, it may not be
in the speeches made on the platforms. but it is in the sentiment of the
people pro and con—it is there. If we are having the Democratic Party
under the name of Republican, it is the same old snake in a new skin.
(Laughter) The old questions that divided us, in feeling at least, still
remain.
Now let me, in my meekness, point out to you, the more intelligent
class—for you ought to be—what 1 think is the true way to solve this
problem. You are over thirty millions, we are only four or five millions.4According to the census of 1870, the total white population was 33,589,377 and the total black population was 4,880,009. When the figures were adjusted to compensate for the underenumeration in the South, the figure for whites was 34,337,292 and for blacks, 5,392,172. American Indians and Asians numbered 88,985. U.S. Bureau of the Census, , Pt. I, ser. A91-104.
You have wealth, education, the newspaper and the telegraph. According
to the newspaper and the telegraph. North Carolina is going to vote Liberal
Republican, but according to this black phalanx and the liberal white
citizens of this State, I think that U.S. Grant and Henry Wilson will be the
choice of the State. (Great applause.)
Let that matter pass, and let me tell you what I think is the true rule for
the white citizens of North Carolina to adopt in respect to the colored
people. First of all find out what was necessary to the peace of the South
when slavery existed. While that existed it was essential to the quiet of the
South that free speech should be denied. Slavery was a subject that could
not be brought into discussion. That was perfectly proper, assuming that
slavery itself was something desirable to maintain, or could be rightfully
maintained. But now you have not slavery, and whatever was essential to
the maintenance of order then is unnecessary now, and the very opposite
rule to that which was dictated by slavery is the rule that the American
people under the new order of things should adopt. In the time of slavery,
the doctrine of States Rights was necessary to the South. You had some-
thing peculiar among you; something that the local Government could
better protect than the Federal; but now no such local interest exists. North
Carolina has no interest today which New-York has not. There is nothing
peculiar here, and the attempt to force you into the assertion or the mainte-
nance of the Calhoun5John C. Calhoun. doctrine of States Rights is placing you in a false
position. You have nothing to protect by local government which every
other State has not. Why should you be required to take such a course when
the day has gone by when you need any such assertion of doctrine in your
behalf? It seems to me that you have nothing peculiar. The right to life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness is the same in all the States of this Union.
Then to call upon you to assert that doctrine in behalf of midnight mur-
derers and marauders, accused of committing all sorts of outrages upon
their fellows, is placing you in an unenviable position before the world.
In the time of slavery education was unsafe. It was a dangerous thing to
give the negro learning, to teach him geography, for instance, to teach him
where the Northern States were, where Canada was; to teach him the
geography of the heavens, to let him learn where that North Star was which
might guide him on his lonely way to liberty. All that about geography was
unsafe; all education was unsafe. The negro should be what my master
used to tell me when I told him I thought, “Why did you do that?—who
gave you the right to think?” Well, I got off by saying, as all negroes said,
“I don’t know, massa.” But now education is wise—is the conservator of
Southern peace and prosperity. You cannot keep this great mass of people
in ignorance without hazarding your safety, your peace. You cannot allow
your next door neighbor to plant all manner of poisonous weeds in his
garden; it won’t do. The birds of the air will bring their seeds home to you.
Nor can you afford to have them ignorant, especially if that ignorance
blasts the happiness of the whites as well as the blacks. So in a state of
freedom we want education, and let every man strive for it with all his
might.
Heretofore the negro has not been educated. In Africa, where he used
to live, nature did everything, and education nothing. There, when he
wanted shelter, he got under a palm-tree; when he wanted food, he picked
up a banana, which the law of gravitation had thrown to the ground, though
he knew nothing about the law of gravitation. He had large perceptive
faculties; he heard it fall and saw it on the ground, but his reflective
faculties were not developed, and hence the flatness here (placing his hand
on his forehead). Now that he is called upon to think for himself, you will
find that some of these negroes will get big heads on them. The white men
have great three-story heads,6Douglass paraphrases a line from Oliver Wendell Holmes's . , 3: 43. and if you put one of their hats upon the
negro it falls down upon the negro’s back. And why? Because of his
neglect of his reflective faculties, his head is small. Just as the arm of the
blacksmith becomes larger and stronger by use, so man’s head becomes
larger and greater by the use of his reflective faculties. There was a time
when this great three-story white race, to which you colored men be-
longed, were just where you were five years ago, and it was a common
thing to see a white man with a brass collar on his neck stamped with the
name of his owner working on the roads of England. Then the haughty
Norman looked down upon him, the poor, despised Saxon. but today the
Saxon gives laws to all lands, occupies continents and leads the civilization
of mankind, being first in art, science, learning, everywhere. They were
down centuries ago; they are up now. We are down now, but we are coming
up. Help us! The men who really love this country, who will be found to be
most patriotic, will be the men who have helped this people up. Talk about
negro supremacy! If l were a white man I should be ashamed to mention it.
You, with three-story heads, talking about negro supremacy! You forty
millions talking about five millions supreme over you! Nonsense! (Great
laughter.) It cannot be. You know this, and your talk is only pretense.
The men who help to reconcile the relations between these two races,
the party helping them upward and onward, will be the patriotic, noble and
manly party. I have indicated the rule by which the interests of this country
can be best served. Let me say a word about the candidates to be elected,
the party to be placed in power. I am not here to abuse Mr. Greeley; I want
you to understand that distinctly. l have known him long, and l was indebt-
ed to him for an introduction to some of the best men in the South, and I
talked in his office with Senator Rusk,7Thomas Jefferson Rusk (1803-57) was born in Pendleton, South Carolina, the son of an Irish immigrant stonemason. With the advice and encouragement of John C. Calhoun, he studied law and in 1825 moved to Clarksville, Georgia, where he established a successful law practice. His involvement in a gold-mining swindle led to his subsequent resettlement in Nacogdoches, Texas. A delegate to the 1836 convention that declared Texan independence, he was then elected the new republic's secretary of war. Shortly thereafter he assumed command for the wounded General Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto and retained command of the army until October 1836, when he again assumed the position of secretary of war. A member of the second congress of the Republic, he was also elected major general of the militia and executed an aggressive Indian removal campaign in east Texas. In 1838 he was elected chief justice of the supreme court. Rusk was president of the 1845 convention that confirmed the annexation of Texas to the United States and was subsequently elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. He was president pro tempore of that body in 1857, the year of his death by suicide. Mary Whatley Clarke, (Austin, 1971); Cleburne Huston, (Waco, Texas, 1971); Lois Foster Blount, “A Brief Study of Thomas J. Rusk Based on His Letters to His Brother, David, 1835-1856," 34: 181-202 (January 1931); , 1641-42; , 5: 351; , 3: 113; , 16: 236-37. of Texas, twenty-five years ago.
Mr. Greeley was always a friend of mine, ever ready to help me along if I
needed help. I liked the man for many of his good qualities. I am not
disposed to join in the ribald utterances against that man. He is right in his
own way, and so much for Mr. Greeley. It is not necessary to abuse him in
order to give reasons for not voting for him; I utterly scorn that method of
dealing with public men.
My objection to Mr. Greeley is this, and it is an objection which his
white supporters ought to think of equally as much as colored citizens: He
is an uncertain man; an inconsistent man; one whom you do not know today
and can give no guess what he will do to-morrow. what he will say to-
morrow, what principles he will advocate, what measures he will propose.
He is uncertain. I should like to vote for Mr. Greeley—want to vote for
him, if I only knew which Greeley my vote might help elect, but I cannot
know anything about it, whether Greeley the Abolitionist, which would not
be objectionable to any good man, or Horace Greeley the leader of all that
class of men who have opposed, and opposed bitterly, every measure
leading to present glorious freedom under the Stars and Stripes. Ask me to
insult my mother, to spit in the face of my sister, to stamp on the grave of
my father, but ask me not to cast a vote which will in any way cast the
faintest possible shadow of a doubt upon this freedom which has been
achieved at such terrible cost. It is terrible! terrible! terrible!
Now, after ten years of passion, of fire, wrath and fury, ten years of
fierce sanguinary rebellion, what we want is peace—peace, security,
quiet. How shall we have it? How can we have it, unless we have the firm,
steady, quiet, unimpassioned, clear-headed, clear-sighted man at the helm
of State. Such a man we have in Ulysses S. Grant (tremendous applause); a
man who can say, with our martyred President, that he has “malice toward
none and charity toward all.”8Douglass paraphrases Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address of 4 March 1865: “With malice toward none; with charity for all." Basler, , 8: 332-33.
I know Ulysses S. Grant. It may seem to you a boast on my part that I, a
negro—that I, with flat nose, distended nostrils—should be an acquain-
tance of the President of the United States. Yet I am. And let me tell you
another thing: I never was received by any gentleman in the United States
with more kindness, more cordiality, I may say with more confidence—
never felt more at home in the presence of any gentleman—than I have in
the presence of Ulysses S. Grant. He is a good man, a true man, a steady
man. You know what he is to-day, what he was yesterday, and what he will
be to-morrow, for he does not turn with every wind of doctrine, and for that
reason we want him. For that reason I am going for him, and for that every
colored man and every white man in this glorious old North State should go
for him, by going for the regular Republican ticket, without bolts, without
splits, without erasures: by going for it unitedly and strong, and on the 1st
of August you will assure the country and assure yourselves of the continu-
ance of steady improvement in our national affairs at points where they
have been most troubled. But it is said you won’t go back on your old friend
Greeley. You won’t desert, can’t desert Horace Greeley. Our answer is, that
Horace Greeley has deserted us; has deserted the party which has made the
country what it is, and is making it what it ought to be. No, I am no
deserter. When a man leaves you, it is your duty to stick to principle,
instead of to the man.
The speaker closed with an emphatic declaration that the negroes
desire not social, but only civil equality, and forcibly illustrated the wide
difference between the two.