We Are Not Yet Quite Free: An Address Delivered at Medina, New York, on August 3, 1869
WE ARE NOT YET QUITE FREE: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
AT MEDINA, NEW YORK, ON 3 AUGUST 1869
Rochester , 4 August 1869. Other texts in Rochester ,
6 August 1869; New York , 7 August 1869; New York , 8 August 1869; New
York , 19 August 1869; , 21 August 1869; Foner,
, 4 : 218-20.
The occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of British West Indian Emancipation
drew a large, “attentive and appreciative audience” from several western
New York counties to Medina, New York, on 3 August 1869 to hear Frederick
Douglass commemorate both that event and President Lincoln’s Emancipa-
tion Proclamation. Press reports, however, chose to concentrate on Doug-
lass’s exposition of the plight of his son Lewis. The New York women’s rights
periodical the Revolution, for example, pointed to his paternal “Eloquent
Indignation” and “sublime utterances.” A hint of subversion emanating from
the orator’s circumscribed eulogy of Lincoln may have led Gerrit Smith to
write Douglass, “I thank God, that He gave you the power to make this noble
Speech, & I thank you for using the power.” Douglass’s critical edge did not
go without public scrutiny; the Rochester dismissed his
characterization of Lincoln as “next to treason. . . . Had a white man uttered
such a statement, he would have been mobbed.” Rochester , 4 August 1869; Alexandria (Va.) , 10 August 1869; Washington
, 10 August 1869; Gerrit Smith to Douglass, 10
August 1869, Gerrit Smith Papers, NHi.
MY FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:—The custom of celebrating the
anniversaries of great events, which have in any marked degree changed
and improved the conditions and relations of men, is a part of the history of
human society, and the sentiment which prompts, institutes and sustains
these annual festivals is one of the most beautiful and beneficent of our
nature. All civilized nations have their great days, rendered memorable by
important epochs in their progress. The observance of these days is tran-
sient or permanent, general or special, partly according to the character of
the events themselves, and partly to the sensibility and constancy of the
people affected by them. Sad, indeed, is the condition of that nation or
people which is no longer thrilled with grateful emotions by the annual
return of the day signalized by some great benefit or deliverance. I hail it as
a sign of vital moral feeling in the colored people of this country that they
are behind no class in the recognition of national benefits.
The two grand events which we are here to-day to celebrate, are too
recent, and too familiar to require elaborate description. As to the first of
these, all know that on the first of August, thirty-five years ago, eight
hundred thousand slaves were instantaneously emancipated in the British
West Indies. The history of this sublime spectacle, and the movement by
which it was produced, have been often narrated and set forth in language
far more thrilling and effective than I can command to-day. Great, how-
ever, as was that event, it is dwarfed in comparison with emancipation in
our own country. I propose, in my remarks to-day, to divide my time in
accordance with the relative importance of the great benefits noted for our
commemoration. The first remarkable feature of West India emancipation
is found in the fact that it came without war or bloodshed. When we
consider the interests involved, the passions excited, the bloody history of
human progress, the cost of reform, the fierceness, pride, and tenacity with
which tyrants have, in all ages, clung to unjust power, it is somewhat
strange that the sword was not called into exercise and that blood did not
flow in the British Islands before slavery could there be brought to an end.
The battle for emancipation in England was purely a moral and political
one, and the victory achieved was a victory of reason and moral conviction,
over selfishness, pride, and cruelty.
In this view, the event is not only sublime and glorious, but highly
significant. Above and beyond its immediate effects upon the condition
and destiny of the emancipated slaves and their former masters, the
achievement is especially important in its bearing upon reformatory move-
ments everywhere. It stands forth as one of the most valuable attestations of
the supreme power of truth. It is an argument that the friends of no cause—
however unpopular and however despised—need despair of ultimate suc-
cess, if they only have truth and justice on their side.
It should however be remarked that though the West India emancipa-
tion was essentially a moral and political triumph, it was not for this reason
altogether free from difficulties, dangers and hardships. Indeed, it seems to
be a law of the universe that nothing valuable shall be obtained without
labor and agony. The early advocates of the slave in England encountered
much the same odium and something [of] the same violence which anti-
slavery men met and contended against in our own land and in our own day.
No genuine tyrant surrenders his scepter without a struggle. The slave-
holders of the West Indies were no exception to this general rule. The history
of their conduct towards their slaves and towards the Abolitionists proves
them to have been as obdurate, selfish and cold-blooded a set of tyrants as
ever cursed the earth or wielded the lash. Those who represented the cause
of slavery were usually dextrous debaters, seldom venture [venturing] into
the field of fundamental principles for arguments. They talked of expedien-
cy, of cheap sugar, of vested rights, of contented and happy slaves, of the
mental and moral inferiority of the negro, of the settled order of society, of
the dangers of emancipation and the like. Many of the slave proprietors
resided in England; some of them never saw their plantations. They com-
mitted their negroes to the management and to the lash of brutal overseers,
while they remained at home to support the character of gentlemen and
Christians. Many of them were members of the established church. Their
high social and political position gave them power with the statesmen of the
country, and their religious associations gave them the sympathy of the
church. With such elements of strength they could make, and did make a
formidable and long continued resistance to the anti-slavery movement.
When, however, they found that resistance was [in] vain, that the
judgment and determination of England was against them, that the system
of slavery could not survive the blows it has received, that they, them-
selves, had become odious in the eyes of decent men, they resorted to
cunning and diplomacy and completely humbugged England. They said to
the British Parliament, “We will give up our negroes, but you must pay us
for them. It is true, they are stolen goods; and we have no right to them, and
are pretty sure that we cannot hold them; but you have consented to it so
long that you are bound to bear a part of the cost of their emancipation.”
The trick prevailed. England did pay for the slaves, and in doing so, she
marred the beauty and perfection of a glorious triumph of truth and justice.
Had she given the emancipated negroes the twenty million pounds sterling
that she gave the masters, she would have more nearly conformed to
manifest right, and have set a wiser and better example.1The Emancipation Act of 1833 authorized £20 million in compensation for slaveholders in the British West Indies. W. L. Burn, (London, 1937), 117; Frank J. Klingberg, (1926; New York, 1968), 299-300.
It may not be uninstructive to remark here that British emancipation
was not wholly due to local causes or to any special virtue of the British
people. As no single particle of matter stands alone, so no great event
seems to stand alone. The anti-slavery movement in England was only one
manifestation of a widely prevailing sentiment. A glance at the period
shows that there existed the greatest activity in the cause of liberty all over
Europe. The downfall of the first Napoleon had been followed by a most
rapid and chilling reaction; abuses and tyrannies which had fallen and
disappeared under his iron rule, now came forth afresh and became vig-
orously active all over Europe. Waterloo was the signal for a revival of
obsolete pretentions[?].2The Belgian village of Waterloo was the site of the 18 June 1815 defeat of Napoleon I, emperor of France, by allied forces under the command of the duke of Wellington. Napoleon was subsequently banished to the island of Saint Helena. Napoleon's fall set the stage for the restoration of the Bourbons with the return of the comte de Provence as Louis XVIII. Frederick B. Artz, (New York, 1934), 126-29; John Keegan, (New York, 1976), 121—29; Henry Houssaye, , trans. Arthur Emile Mann (London, 1900), 288-94.
In France especially the reaction was most striking and painful. It
seemed as if the wheels of progress had all been suddenly reversed, and that
society had all at once assumed a permanent retrogressive march. The old
nobility which had been overthrown by the revolution of 1789, and which
Napoleon had in various ways humbled, weakened and held in check,
again lifted their haughty heads, reasserted their claims, and actually re-
gained many of their former privileges. As with the nobility, so too with the
priesthood. Under Napoleon they had been wisely restricted to their eccle-
siastical functions. Upon his fall they immediately arose from their former
prostration and began again to exercise that sinister, crafty and pernicious
influence peculiar to their class, upon the politics of the nation. The liberty
of speech and of the press were among the first to suffer from this new order
of things, and this was, of course, a blow at all liberty; for when speech is
not free, when the press may not speak out its honest convictions, tyranny
goes unrebuked, liberty is ruled[?] in doubt and darkness, there is an end to
progress, and such was the condition of Europe for a time after the fall of
the greatest Captain of his age.
This gloomy and cheerless state of facts culminated in the year 1830,
four years before the date of British emancipation. As usual, tyranny then
overleaped itself, and the people awoke. Through the violence and stu-
pidity of Charles the Tenth, the most stupid of all the Bourbons, the French
people were startled into a new life, which quickly communicated itself to
all Europe. Charles undertook to do for France what the slave power
attempted in our own country. He attempted the extinction of the liberty of
the press. His arrogance and folly cost him a crown, and imparted new
vigor to the people all over Europe. France became the theatre of compre-
hensive political discussions. Belgium led off in a struggle for the
independence of Holland. Poland, gasping on her lance, began that ever
memorable revolt against Russian bondage, which though unsuccessful,
has made her name precious to the lovers of liberty in every quarter of the
globe. All over Germany there were uprisings for liberty.3With the restoration of the Bourbon crown, emigres of the revolution and clergy were intent upon a return of the ancien régime in spite of Louis XVIII’s Charter of 1814. Prominent within this ultramontanist party was the king’s brother, the comte d‘Artois (1757-1836), who ascended to the throne in 1824 as Charles X. Charles’s controversial support of aristocratic and clerical interests ultimately precipitated the July Revolution of 1830 and his abdication when he issued ordinances that regulated the press and the electoral process. News of French revolutionary activity inspired the Belgians, who in later months revolted against Dutch rule and created an independent state. Disturbances also occurred in several German states, where liberal reforms were achieved though later repressed. France’s influence was also apparent in Poland’s November 1830 revolt against the rule of Czar Nicholas I that was brutally crushed. John M. S. Allison, (London, 1926), 103-23; Artz, , 1-22, 110-18, 126-34, 224-34. 263-85; Vincent W. Beach, (Boulder, Colo., 1971), 213-30, 241-401; Adam Lewak, “The Polish Rising of 1830," , 9: 350-60 (December 1930). The West Indies
produced their black heroes and the slaves of Virginia set forth their Nat
Turners. That State was on the point of becoming a free state. England felt
the almost universal impulse, granted an extension of suffrage by her
Reform Bill of 1832 and broke the chains of eight hundred thousand slaves
in her West India possessions in 1834.
But, as I have already intimated, there is neither time nor necessity for
dwelling now and here upon the subject of West India emancipation,
though the causes contributing to the result, immediate and remote, are
deeply interesting.
I have spoken of the transient and permanent observance of certain
great days among men, and it has long been a question with me whether the
continuance of the 1st of August as a day of celebration is desirable or
proper. Saying nothing now against some of the incidents of such occa-
sions, such as disorder and drunkenness, which have sometimes disgraced
them, I think we may put it aside upon the ground of fitness. While slavery
existed in our country and while it was necessary to agitate the public mind
upon the question of its abolition, the 1st of August was a most valuable
auxiliary. The celebration of the day gave us the full advantage of contrast-
ing the noble example of Britain with the mean example of America. We
could commend the one while we condemned and denounced the other.
But to-day neither the event, nor the example serves any such useful
purpose. The great English nation of to-day does not stand upon this
question where it stood thirty-five years ago, and the American people have
made vast and wonderful progress. Since the date of British emancipation a
change has come over both nations. The praises due to England thirty-five
years ago, are not due to England now, and the censures due to America
then are inappropriate now. Upon the question of slavery the two countries
have in some measure changed places. Formerly it was the proud boast of
the British nation that
“Slaves cannot breathe in England, if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country and their shackles fall."4William Cowper, , lines 40-42. Bailey, , 267.
More recently and especially during our late war with the armies of
slavery, England has become more distinguished for her sympathy and
hospitality towards slaveholders than for friendship towards slaves. Gib-
bon wrote the decline and fall of ancient Rome,5The six volumes of by English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-94) were published between 1776 and 1788. Samuel Austin Allibone, , 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1859-71), 1: 661-64. and some one might do a
service to social science by tracing the causes of the decline and fall of anti-
slavery sentiment in England. There are few instances in history where any
nation had reached a point of philanthropy so high and commanding as
England, and no nation ever fell faster or farther than she has done within
the last few years. She has almost shown as much regard for the murderers
of negroes in Jamaica as she was once proud to show to their emancipators
and benefactors. She has given more sympathy and support to an effort to
found a slave-holding empire, than she has given in support of a free
government, with which she professed to be on terms of friendship. She
has exalted the power of slavery on the ocean, and swept the commerce of
the free government from the sea. Her position all through the war for the
preservation of the American Union, was the hope of our slave-holding
rebels. No man who saw England twenty-five years ago, as I did, could
have predicted a transformation so complete and shameful.
You are aware of the profound sensation created in England by the
recent speech of our lifelong friend, (Senator Sumner) upon the rejection of
the Alabama treaty.6After the Civil War the United States sought compensation from the British government for damages to the American merchant fleet caused by commerce raiders, including the , , and , which British shipyards had built for the Confederates. In 1868 U.S. envoy Reverdy Johnson negotiated a draft treaty with the British foreign minister Lord Clarendon. The “Johnson-Clarendon Convention" offended many Americans, however, because it contained no British expression of regret and provided for neutral arbitration of the claims of individual citizens of both countries. On 13 April 1869, Charles Sumner, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, delivered a Senate address entitled “Claims on England—Individual and National," that opposed ratification of the proposed treaty. Sumner suggested that Great Britain owed this nation not only $15 million for the cost of ships sunk by the raiders but also $110 million for revenue lost from the decline of the American carrying-trade during the war and an additional $2 billion as compensation for helping to prolong the war by an estimated two years. Sumner’s philippic won him near unanimous praise in the United States and contributed to the defeat of the Johnson-Clarendon Convention in the Senate by a vote of 54 to 1. The British were greatly angered by Sumner’s claims as well as by the inference that in place of money Canada could be turned over to the United States as suitable compensation. The claims issue was not resolved until the Treaty of Washington of 1871, which gave the United States the sought-after apology and created an international arbitration commission to resolve several outstanding disputes between the two nations. , 317; , 13: 53-93; David Donald, (New York, 1970), 358-68, 374-403, 503-09. I remember no utterance of any American statesman,
which has aroused so much feeling and apprehension. What is the secret of
the extraordinary power of that speech? I will tell you. It was not its alleged
inadmissible pretentions, it was not the extraordinary character of its
claims; it was not the extent of the damages we sustained from the , or other piratical crafts; but it was the complete, and I might say,
terrible exposure of British hypocrisy; it was putting in marked contrast
English practice with English professions; in a word, it was the application
of truth to the naked conscience of a guilty nation. To this hour, I believe
that no journal in England has dared to publish that speech—though the
whole press of England has pretended to refute its reasoning. Why has that
speech not been published? I will tell you. It is not because of the insignifi-
cance of its author; for there is no statesman in the United States who has
more fully earned the right to represent the nation than Charles Sumner.
Beginning his career as an abolitionist—with the nation overwhelmingly
against him—he has steadily pursued his course, alike disregarding the
intimidations of power, and the seductions of flattery, till the nation, under
his guidance, has whirled itself into accord with his teachings and princi-
ples, and he stands to-day the foremost man of the American Senate.
Again, I ask, Why was not the utterance of this man published in
England? It was certainly not because of the imperfections of that speech,
for neither Gladstone7William Ewart Gladstone. nor Disraeli8Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), first earl of Beaconsfield, twice served as Tory prime minister of Great Britain (1868, 1874-80), , 5: 1006-22. could have surpassed it. The only
reason that I can conceive of for the unwillingness to publish it is to be
found in its unanswerable truth, and its fitness to produce conviction in the
minds of the British people themselves. The very temperance of the speech
was a bar to its publication. Had it been a violent, harsh and denunciatory
harangue, it would have been gladly seized upon and spread before En-
gland as a specimen of American petulance and extravagance. But it was
no such utterance. Its calmness, and its moderation were a part of its
effectiveness, and I repeat that it was not published in England because it
stripped her of her former anti—slavery reputation, and placed her before the
world in her true character. For, whatever may be said of a part of the
English people, and I joyfully and gratefully acknowledge that freedom
had and still has strong friends among them, the British government was
itself unmistakably and notoriously against that cause in the support that it
gave to the slaveholders’ rebellion.
As a colored man and as one who early learned to love and honor the
name of England, and not without reason, I speak more in sorrow than in
anger, when I confess her defection from our cause and hold her no longer
the reliable friend of the negro she once was. This day, for the purposes of
this celebration is the 1st of August, and it has been usual for me to make
this anniversary the occasion for dwelling upon the virtues and the noble
deeds of Old England, and it is her own fault that I do not follow this beaten
path to-day. Her Majesty’s Government must now be content with the
praises of slave-holders, the Masons,9James Murray Mason. the Slidells,10Educated at Columbia College, John Slidell (1793-1871) had already attempted a mercantile career in his native New York City when scandal prompted his removal to New Orleans. There he established a successful commercial law practice and represented the state in both houses of Congress. Diplomatic missions for Presidents James Polk and Franklin Pierce provided precedent for his appointment to represent the Confederacy in France. His arrest and confinement by Federal forces, along with that of James Murray Mason, while en route to Europe on the British mail packet Trent elicited a heated diplomatic and popular response in Great Britain and threatened to provoke war. Slidell remained in France after the war and moved to Great Britain in 1870. Louis Martin Sears, (New York, 1927), 313- 17; Henry W. Temple, “William H. Seward," in Samuel Flagg Bemis, ed., , 10 vols. (New York, 1927- 29), 7: 61-70; Beckles Willson, (New York, 1932), 3-26; Jon L. Wakelyn, (Westport, Conn., 1976), 388; , 1706; , 2: 93; , 17: 209-11. the Semmeses11Maryland-born Raphael Semmes (1809-77) attended the Naval School at Norfolk, Virginia, and studied law prior to receiving a commission in the U.S. Navy in 1837. In 1855, after moving to Alabama and serving in the Mexican War, he was promoted to commander. Semmes traveled through the North before the outbreak of the Civil War, purchasing munitions for the Confederate navy which subsequently gave him command of the commerce raiders and . After the sinking of the on 19 June 1864 Semmes, already controversial because of his raiding activities, gained more notoriety with his rescue by the British yacht , which transported him safely to Great Britain despite charges that his failure to surrender was a breach of international law and honor. After a tour of the Continent Semmes returned home, where he was promoted to rear admiral by the Confederate navy. He briefly taught at Louisiana State Seminary after the war and edited the Memphis (Tenn) before settling into a law practice in Mobile, Alabama. Boatner, , 730; Clement Eaton, (New York, 1954), 186-88; Colyer Meriwether, (Philadelphia, 1913), 288-348; Arthur Sinclair, (Boston, 1895), 254-65, 287-90; Wakelyn, , 380; , 4: 340-41; , 16: 579-82. and
other enemies of mankind. For it was no fault of that Government that these
traitors did not succeed. It was no fault of that Government that the slave-
holders of America lost their hold upon the throats of four million slaves,
and that those millions are now rejoicing in their freedom from chains.
That England is very sensitive to the mildest reference to her course, is a
good symptom. I believe she is to-day ashamed of her conduct, though she
is too proud to say so. Great nations no more than great individuals like to
acknowledge their faults, and yet, a failure to make such acknowledgment
is evidence of meanness rather than of greatness. When England shall put
herself in harmony with the England of Wilberforce, Clarkson, Buxton,12William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and Thomas Fowell Buxton.
Granville Sharpe and Lushington,13Oxonian jurist and politician Stephen Lushington (1782-1873) extended his advocacy of civil and religious reforms to antislavery issues. He was among the founders of the African Civilization Society and an officer of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. In Parliament, his promotion of the abolition of slavery and the suppression of the slave trade encompassed a concem about slavery in British India and the influence of sugar duties. He retired from Parliament in 1841 but remained on the bench of the admiralty court until 1867. Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 4 vols. (London, 1888), 3: 833; Howard Temperley, British Antislaverv. 1833-1870 (Columbia, S.C. 1972). 55, 77-78, 103. 150-52; London Times, 21, 22 January 1873; DNB. l2: 291-93. and with the emancipation of 1834,
the colored people of this country may resume the celebration of the first of
August, and again dwell with satisfaction upon the philanthropy of Eng-
land. Until then, my friends, I commend to you not the first of August, but
the first of January, not 1834, but 1863, not West India emancipation, but
emancipation in the United States for commemoration.
Having already dwelt longer than I intended upon the British branch of
my subject, I shall say less of the anti-slavery movement in this country
than I should otherwise have said. The effort to abolish slavery in the
United States began in earnest during the agitation of British emancipation
and simultaneously with the revival of liberty all over Europe. It was a part
of one of those great oscillations of human thought which sometimes shake
down thrones and dominions, powers and principalities, as ships are swept
down by a tidal wave born of the earthquake. No great movement can take
place in any part of the world in favor of human liberty without sensibly
affecting surrounding nations. Somebody has said there is no calculating
the orbit of thought. Expansion is an essential quality of an idea. The
declaration of American Independence with its doctrine of human liberty
and equality is still the active and dreaded enemy of oppressors and privileged
classes, at home and abroad, and will ever so remain. The history of
the conflict with slavery is soon told. It was first a war of words, second a
conflict of arms, third, the downfall of slavery and the shout of victory.
No man ten years ago could have predicted the speedy overthrow of
slavery. The omens were all against us. At that time it was in the fullest
pride of its power. It held the reins of the national Government, and seemed
likely to continue to hold them. It was supreme in the judiciary, the execu-
tive and in the legislative departments of the nation. Statesmen volunteered
to do its bidding, and the Church gave it a ready homage. Black men had no
rights which white men were bound to respect.14Douglass paraphrases the language of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sanford, 19 Howard (1857), 407. Slavery was to go into the
Territories of its own vigor under the constitution. John Brown was hanged
and free speech was under the heel of the mob from Boston to Chicago.
Toombs15Douglass was not the only person to attribute such a statement to Georgia Democrat Robert Toombs. Senator Daniel Clark of New Hampshire repeated the story in a congressional debate on 27 February 1860. Toombs immediately interrupted his colleague to state he had published several denials of the claim that he had boasted that someday he would call the roll of his slaves before the Bunker Hill Monument. Toombs attributed the source of the apocryphal story to reports in the New York and other Republican papers in the 1860 election campaign, but it probably stemmed from hostile accounts of a proslavery lecture delivered by Toombs at Tremont Temple in Boston on 26 January 1860. , 2 May 1856, 24 February 1860; , 36th Cong, 1st sess., 838; Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, (1913; New York. 1968), 184. was talking of calling the roll of his slaves on Bunker Hill, and
slavery was to be made national. The slaveholders were bold, proud,
aggressive and determined to rule the nation or to destroy it. But I need not
darken or deepen the lines of this picture so familiar to all who hear me.
Many years ago I made up my mind that slavery could not be abolished in
my day. I had conceived for my mission only a lifelong testimony against
the system to be taken up by other generations, far down the vista of time.
But to-day we live in a new world. The struggle is over, the event has come;
slavery is abolished and we are permitted to see it, to celebrate it, and to
rejoice not only with the emancipated—but the enfranchised millions of
our long enslaved race.
When I was a slave, before I knew one letter from another, before I had
heard of a free State, or of an Abolitionist, before I knew anything of a
moral government of the universe, in my very childhood, while yet unable
to solve the mystery of my own shadow, and when I would walk backward
and forward to study it in all positions—even then I believed that this day
would come, that my race would yet be free, and this faith was shared by
slaves generally, old and young. They talked of it, looked for it, prayed for
it, and mingled the hope of it with all their joys and sorrows. Much of the
religion of the slaves consisted of this natural desire for freedom. The
hymns they sang, and the parts of the Bible they best remembered and most
often repeated, were such as expressed their longing for liberty. When they
sang or spoke of freedom from sin, they often meant from slavery. The
preacher who wanted to raise a real hearty shout at the black camp meeting,
had but to describe the departure of the Hebrews out of Egypt, and paint the
destruction of Pharaoh and his hosts.16Events described in Exod. 12-14. The songs that best pleased us were:
“Our bondage it shall end
By and by.”
“The year of jubilee has come.”
“Babylon has fallen.”
“I am going up yonder.”
“My home is over Jordan.”
It was common to hear slaves talking about the great emancipation
which was to take place, in the very presence of their masters and over-
seers. For this purpose, they often employed the oddest terms. For in-
stance, when they inquired of each other concerning the prospect of eman-
cipation, as they often did, they would sometimes say, “Honey! does you
see any sign ob de pig foot coming?” The answer[s] to this and similar
questions were usually given in dreams, visions, voices in the air, all
obscurer pointing to some great event near at hand.
Well, my friends, these rude utterances, these dim prophecies, poured
out by the way side, the cornfield, woods, and in the negro huts of the
South, during the last two hundred years, have now been fulfilled. What
was dream to millions who now sleep in the valley of death, is to-day a
reality to us. Babylon has fallen, bondage has ended, and the year of
jubilee has come. Whence came the abolition of slavery? The theologian
says, God. The politician says, Lincoln. The abolitionist says, Garrison.
The statesman says, the war. To me the result is no miracle. I am not skilled
in tracing the action of supernatural agencies; hence I contemplate the
termination of slavery simply as a natural and logical event. The evil
contained the seeds of its own destruction. A natural and prolific breeder of
pride, selfishness, and love of power, it perished at the hand of its own
progeny. The world might have permitted slavery a good while longer, but
for the pride and ambition of its votaries. Mr. Garrison would not abolish it.
Mr. Lincoln did not wish to interfere with it. The Republican party did not
seek it. The armies of the Union with their generals, were opposed to its
abolition. All parties were quite willing to let it alone within its own limits.
But its own inborn arrogance and violence would not permit it to live any
longer
But the great and all-commanding question for us and for this country
remains to be solved. It is true that we are no longer slaves, but it is equally
true that we are not yet quite free. We have been turned out of the house of
bondage, but we have not yet been fully admitted to the glorious temple of
American liberty. We are still in a transition state and the future is shrouded
in doubt and danger. Some of our friends seem to think our emancipation
complete and our claims upon them at an end. A greater mistake could
hardly be made. The colored people of the United States are still the
victims of special and peculiar hardships, abuses and oppressions, and we
still need time, labor and favorable events to work out our perfect deliv-
erance.
[There is] No better illustration of our position in the country than is
presented to-day in the city of Washington. There the right to labor is on
trial, the question is: Whether this newly emancipated race shall be allowed
to work in any other than menial occupations.17Excluding blacks from crafts unions was a widespread practice in the United States. In Washington, D.C., for example, the Columbia Typographical Union, to which Douglass's son Lewis applied, had consistently refused to admit blacks to its ranks since its founding in 1815. In the early 1870s, the Washington , Douglass’s weekly newspaper, published extensive reports and frequent editorials on such exclusionary practices and efforts to abolish them. Constance McLaughlin Green, (Princeton, 1967), 27, 96; Philip S. Foner and Ronald L. Lewis, eds., (Philadelphia, 1978-), 1: 370-85. Fortunately, this question
is not to be settled by any secret conclave, conducting its proceedings in
darkness, but openly, and in the broad light of day. No Trades Union,
however respectable, is broad enough to settle such a question, and it is a
piece of good luck that the issue has been made at the capital of the nation,
with the government itself, and in sight of the whole people. I confess, at
the outset, that I do not know how to argue such a question, and yet I know
that argument is needed. I cannot think so meanly of my fellow-citizens as
to suppose that their opposition proceeds altogether from villainy. It is due
in part to honest stupidity, and to that narrow notion of political economy
which supposes every piece of bread that goes into the mouth of one man, is
so much bread taken out of the mouth of another. They have not yet learned
the simple truth that anybody who has two elbows and a good appetite has
an inestimable right with anybody else to work at any trade or calling which
can give him honest bread. They have not yet learned that the more hands
there are to work, and the more mouths there are to feed in a land like ours,
the more work there is to be done, and the more bread there is to be eaten. It
is worthy of notice that his question meets the negro upon the threshold of
his liberty. As against slavery, no such question was raised. The complaint
against him, and the objection to him, is, because he is a free man.
In the days of slavery, when l was a slave, a negro having a master
might work at any trade or calling in the Southern States, and at Wash-
ington, without any opposition. While his wages went into the pockets of
another, while the bread that he earned in the sweat of his face was to be
eaten by another;18A paraphrase of Gen. 3: 19. while he was to toil that another might live at ease, he
could do so without opposition; but when he has his own mouth to feed, his
own back to clothe, his own body to shelter, his own children to support
and educate, the case is different. White brick-layers. white carpenters,
and white printers combine to prevent any black man from working at these
respective trades, and attempt to bend the Government to this narrow and
selfish purpose. I think you will agree with me that the case is a hard one for
the negro. I have heard of putting men in a tight place, and have sometimes
been severely pinched myself, but I know of no tighter place than that to
which it is attempted to place the negro to-day. If he steals, we send him to
prison; if he begs, we spurn him from our doors as a good for nothing; if he
attempts to work, we combine to prevent him and even threaten his life.
I have intimated that the question has risen in the right place, and I may
say since it must come, I am, upon the whole, not sorry that I have a
personal interest in its decision. For the moment Lewis H. Douglass repre-
sents our whole people, rising from degradation to respectability and from
proscription to equal rights.19Lewis Henry Douglass (1840-1908), the second child and eldest son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Educated in the schools of Rochester, New York, he learned the printer's trade as a boy working in the office. In 1863 he enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, serving as the regiment's sergeant major and seeing action at the Battle of Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July I863. Disabled, he was discharged in 1864. He was a member, along with his father, of the black delegation that interviewed President Andrew Johnson on 7 February 1866. Later that year, after failing to obtain employment as a printer in Rochester because of racial discrimination, he moved to Colorado. There he briefly worked for the Denver until refused membership in the local printers' union because he was “a colored man." In 1869 he took employment as a compositor at the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. When he attempted to join the Columbia Typographical Union, No. 100, a controlling minority of the membership blocked his election at their May 1869 meeting. For the record, the opposition was based not on his color but on reports that Douglass had “ratted” (worked as a nonunion printer for below-scale wages) in Denver. Dougla,s. who remained at the Printing Office throughout his widely publicized effort to break the union's color barrier, denied the allegation but to no avail. The factionalized union continued to table his application along with those of other black printers (including Frederick Douglass, Jr.) as late as 1871. By then Lewis and Frederick, Jr., had become publishers of the Washington , of which their father was the editor. In 1872-73 Lewis Douglass served on the Legislative Council of the District of Columbia. By the 1890s he was a successful realtor in his adopted city. On 7 October 1869 he married Helen Amelia Loguen, daughter of Reverend Jermain W. Loguen. Lewis H. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 29 October 1866, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 220-22, FD Papers, DLC; Lewis H. Douglass to D. W. Flynn, 24 May 1869, in San Francisco , 11 June 1869; , 22 May 1869; Rochester , 6 August 1869; William H. Boyd, comp., (Washington, D.C. 1873), 525; , 371; James M. Gregory, (1893; New York, 1971), 102-03; Foner and Lewis, , 1: 370, 374-83. The principle involved is one for which
every man ought to contest. It involves the right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness, and it is the business of every American citizen, white
and black, to stand for this principle, each for all, and all for each,20A paraphrase of “All for One and One for All" from Alexandre Dumas, , trans. Isabel Ely Lord (Garden City. N.Y., 1952), 72. as the
sheet anchor of a common safety.
I believe there never was a crime committed for which apologies of
some sort could not be made, and the attempt to degrade and starve a
colored printer at Washington is no exception to the general rule. It is
alleged that he is an improper person to be allowed to work; that he has at
some time of his life worked at a lower rate of wages than that fixed upon as
the proper one by the Printers’ Union; that he has worked in a town or city
where such Unions existed. and did not become a member; that he has
served no regular apprenticeship; that the card permitting him to work in
the Government Printing Office was improperly issued. and much else of
the same sort. My friends, I have neither time nor patience to expose and
refute in detail these paltry allegations. From beginning to end they are
miserable shams, designed to give a color of decency to one of the meanest
acts of cruelty and injustice, ever perpetrated against a fellow-man. Ana-
lyze these excuses, and they—each and all—but aggravate the very crime
they are intended to defend. They virtually say for the criminal that having
cut off the ears of his victim, he has also the right to pluck out his eyes.
Douglass is made a transgressor for working at a low rate of wages by the
very men who prevented his getting a higher rate. He is denounced for not
being a member of a Printers’ Union by the very men who would not permit
him to join such [a] Union. He is not condemned because he is not a good
printer, but because he did not become such in the regular way, that regular
way being closed against him by the men now opposing him. Suppose it
were true that this young man had worked for lower wages than white
printers receive, can any printer be fool enough to believe that he did so
from choice? What mechanic will ever work for low wages when he can
possibly obtain higher? The truth is in this particular case, the young man
found himself away off in Denver, thousands of miles from home, without
money and without a friend, and was compelled to work or starve. There
was no choice for him. Had he been a white young man, with his education
and ability, he could easily have obtained employment, and could have
found it on the terms demanded by the Printers' Union. There is no disguis-
ing the fact—his crime was his color. It was his color in Denver, it was his
color in Rochester, and it is his color in Washington to-day.
In connection with this subject, I have now a word to say of the goodly
city in which I have lived for the last twenty years, and where I still reside, a
city than which not one in the country is more civilized, refined and
cultivated. It abounds in both educational and religious institutions, and its
people are generally as liberal and friendly to the colored race as any other
in this State, and far more so than most cities outside of the State. Here the
common schools have been open to all classes alike for a dozen years, and
colored and white children have sat on the same benches and played in the
same school yards, and at the same sports and games, and they have done
so in peace. I can say many good things of Rochester. The fugitive slave
bill21The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. never took a slave out of its limits, though several attempts were
made to do so. When colored people were mobbed and hunted like wild
beasts in other cities, and public fury was fanned against them by a malig-
nant pro-slavery press, the colored man was always safe and well-protected
in Rochester, and yet I have somewhat [something?] against it. One of the
saddest spectacles that ever assailed my eyes or pained my heart was
presented in that city, and you will pardon me for making mention of it,
though it is clearly personal. The same young man who is now at work at
the Government printing office in Washington, and against whose em-
ployment so much feeling has been shown, was the subject. He had just
returned from the war; had stood on the walls of Fort Wagner with Colonel
Shaw; 22Businessman and soldier Robert Gould Shaw (1837—63) was born in Boston and educated at Harvard College. Living in New York City when the Civil War began, he enlisted in the Seventh New York Regiment; in 1862 he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Second Massachusetts Regiment, later rising to the rank of captain. When Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts sought white officers for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, the nation's first black regiment, he offered the command to Shaw, who after first declining became its colonel in May 1863. After acquitting itself well at James Island, South Carolina, a few days earlier, the regiment led an assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. during the night of 18-19 July 1863. Among the 247 casualties ofthat battle was Shaw himself, who died while rallying his men at the fort's parapet. He was buried in a common grave with others from the regiment. Stephen T. Riley, “A Monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw," , 75: 27-38 (1963); , 5: 31; , 8: 142-43. had borne himself like a man on the perilous edge of battle, and
now that the war was nearly over, he had returned to Rochester, somewhat
broken in health, but still able and willing to work at his trade. But, alas! he
begged in vain of his fellow-worms to give him leave to toil. Day after day,
week after week, and month after month he sought work, found none and
came home sad and dejected. I had felt the iron of negro hate before, but the
case of this young man gave it a deeper entrance into my soul than ever
before.
For sixteen years I had printed a public journal in Rochester; I had
employed white men and white apprentices during all this time; had paid
out in various ways to white men in that city little less than a hundred
thousand dollars, and yet here was my son, who had learned his trade in my
office, a young man of good character, and yet unable to find work at his
trade because of his color and race. Walking among my fellow-citizens in
the street, I have never failed to receive due courtesy and kindness. Some
men there have even shown an interest in saving my soul, but of what avail
are such manifestations where one sees himself ostracised, degraded and
denied the means of obtaining his daily bread. There is no mistaking the
purpose and destiny to which a portion of our white fellow-citizens would
devote the colored people of this country. In the vigorous efforts now
making to import Coolies from China—a kind of Asiatic slave-trade—
with a view to supplant the black laborer in the South,23Soon after the Civil War many southern white politicians, newspaper editors, and planters' associations endorsed the importation into their region of immigrant agricultural laborers, including Chinese—who had been at work in California since gold rush days. Between 1866 and 1870 approximately one thousand Chinese found employment on plantations, principally in Texas and the lower Mississippi River valley. Initially indifferent to the arrival of this competing labor force, black protests against “coolie,” or contract, workers became common in the late 1860s. The Chinese immigrants, who were unfamiliar with southern agricultural practices, ultimately proved to be less productive than black workers, and the interest of southern whites in their labor declined in the 1870s. Those Chinese already in the region left the fields to start small businesses, such as laundries and groceries, in urban areas. Leon F. Litwack, ( New York, 1979). 352, 444, 547; Amold Shankman, (Westport, Conn, 1982), 9-12; David J. Hellwig, “Black Reactions to Chinese Immigration and the Anti-Chinese Movement: 1850-1910," , 6: 25-44 (1979). in the unwilling-
ness to allow the negro to own land, in the determination to exclude him
from all profitable trades and callings, there is clearly seen the purpose to
crush our spirits, to cripple our enterprise and doom us to a condition of
destitution and degradation below all other people in America.
The question is: will that wicked purpose succeed? The answer is: that
depends partly upon ourselves and partly upon the present administration at
Washington. If General Grant24Ulysses S. Grant. is heartily and actively for the principle of
equal-rights—as I certainly believe he is, if he stands by his policy of
making character, not color, the criterion by which he appoints men to
office, if he takes no steps backward, and shows the same indomitable
spirit which he displayed at Vicksburg, in the Wilderness,25The Union Army of the Potomac under the direction of Ulysses S. Grant crossed the Rapidan River in Virginia on 4 May 1864 and engaged the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee on the following two days. Although Federal casualties amounted to more than 17,500 killed, wounded, or captured compared to only about 7,500 suffered by Lee's army, Grant disengaged his forces and resumed his drive in the direction of the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Long, , 494-95. and during all
the war, that principle, so vital to the solidarity of the nation, is safe. At the
head of the federal government, with powers augmented and conceded,
with a great party, embodying the intelligence of a country, behind him,
with a military record dazzling all over with splendor, with a character
which defies impeachment, he possesses the needed power and influence
against all the opposition, to settle this question forever.
I say then, if General Grant goes forward, determines to fight it out on
this line, we have nothing to fear. The country will go with him, and the
principle of equal rights will become everywhere practical and permanent.
The Printers’ Union is great. but the American Union is greater. The ship is
larger and stronger than her planks, and the latter must bend to the former.
But you will ask me: what are the omens about us? I admit that the political
sky is not entirely free from clouds. Virginia wears an equivocal and
suspicious aspect. The old slaveholding and rebel element in that State is a
little too jubilant over the election of Walker26Born in Binghamton, New York. Gilbert Charleton Walker (1832-88) graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and practiced law in Chicago before his 1864 move to Virginia. There, his charm, good looks. and business interests combined to overcome southern distrust and bring him the gubernatorial nomination from the “new movement" alignment of Conservatives and Republicans. During Walker's successful campaign both coercion and picnics were used to appeal to black voters, who nevertheless voted for the Radical candidate, Henry J. Wells. Walker remained in ofiice until 1874. He subsequently represented Virginia in the U.S. Congress as both a Conservative and a Democrat before returning to his lucrative New York law practice in 1881. R[obert] A[lonzo] Brock, (Richmond, 1888), 241-42; Du Bois, , 545; Maddex, , 46-85; Richard L. Morton, (n.p. , n.d.), 70-80; Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., , 5 vols. (New York, 1915), 3: 4; , 1764. to suit my taste. Somebody
has been cheated by that election. Either the freedmen or their former
masters have been deceived, and it looks very much as if the colored voters
of that State had been duped. As much might have been expected. They are
raw recruits in the political field, while their adversaries are veterans.
History has no example of a class so small in proportion to the whole
people, invested with no patent of nobility, secured in no chartered privi-
leges, banded together only by an odious practice, who have been so
successful in acquiring, exercising and retaining political power, as have
the slave-holding class of the South. Nowhere has their power been more
complete than in the old Dominion. She has been called the mother of
statesmen, and with the best reason.27King Charles II of England originated the nickname “Old Dominion" for Virginia as a consequence of that colony’s loyalty to the Royalists during the Cromwellian revolution. The sobriquet “mother of statesmen" reflects the large proportion of presidents, generals, diplomats, and jurists who were bom in the state. Joseph Nathan Kane and Gerald L. Alexander, , 2d ed. (Metuchen, N.J.. 1970), 435. Her sons have had the lion’s share in
the management of the government from the rebellion for liberty in 1776,
to the rebellion for slavery in 1860. The colored voters of Virginia had to
deal with the most astute class of our ancient rulers, and it will not be
strange if they have been outwitted there, as they have been outwitted in
Georgia and elsewhere.28Serious internal divisions within the Georgia Republican party produced a crisis in the Reconstruction of that state in 1868. At the convention that rewrote the state constitution to conform to the requirements of the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, the white majority voted down provisions to disenfranchise former Confederates and to safeguard the right of freedmen to hold public office. In the first legislature elected under the new constitution enough conservative white Republican members joined with the Democratic minority to expel all black legislators in September 1868. Governor Rufus Bullock, a Radical Republican, lobbied the federal government and eventually convinced Congress to over-turn this action. On 22 December 1869, the Reorganization Act returned Georgia to military rule until the state assembly restored its black members and purged all whites ineligible to hold office under provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment barring unpardoned ex-Confederate officials. After the reorganization of the legislature was completed under the supervision of General Alfred H. Terry and that body had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress voted to readmit Georgia to the Union on 15 July 1870. , 300-02, 309-10; Edmund L. Drago, (Baton Rouge, 1982), 35, 39, 40, 43-45, 48-49, 53, 55-56; Elizabeth Studley Nathans, (Baton Rouge, 1968), 64-69, 120-25, 163-74, 192-93. On the principle of letting bygones be bygones
and inaugurating a reign of good feeling in the South, the negro members
voted to admit their ancient enemies into the Georgia Legislature, but these
gentlemen had hardly got seated when they went to work and expelled the
negroes who had voted them in. It is no part of my mission to counsel
animosity. The highest interests of the former slave, and the former slave-
holder will be found in the cultivation and maintenance of friendly rela-
tions. I abhor and detest any counsels which would endeavor to instill and
keep alive a spirit of hate and suspicion between these classes. I would by
every means in my power strengthen the bonds of confidence and friend-
ship, and yet, were I a citizen of old Virginia, or of any other recent slave
State, I would tell the colored people, “Nail your flag to the masthead,”29A paraphrase of a line in Oliver Wendell Holmes's poem “Old Ironsides." Oliver Wendell Holmes, , 13 vols. (Boston, 1892), 12: 2.
and surrender no jot of your manhood or your liberty to conciliate anybody.
I would have friendship by all means, but it should not be a onesided
friendship. It should not be the friendship that may exist between a dog and
his owner or a slave and his master. We have had quite enough of that kind
of friendship in the old times. We want a friendship in keeping with our new
relations and duties, founded upon the great principle of justice and upon
common interests, for only such friendship can be of advantage to either
party, or can long endure. The old slaveholders will make a mistake if they
now demand a respect that they no longer have the power to enforce, and
the emancipated people will make an equal mistake if they play the pan of
serviles now that they are invested with freedom and citizenship. If I were
in the South, I would not let the enemies of my people choose either my
party, my principles or my candidates. I would commend the maxim of
Napoleon, “Never occupy ground selected for me by my political en-
emies.”30Possibly a paraphrase of Napoleon I's advice: “A well-tested maxim of war, is not to do what the enemy wishes simply because he does wish it." Lucian E. Henry, (London, [1899]), 22.
There are plainly three distinct and very well defined classes now in the
South:
First—There is the intensely loyal class. It is largely composed of
emancipated slaves, under the joint leadership of white men, who were at
heart loyal during the war, and white men who are stigmatized as “carpet-
baggers,”31The term carpetbagger was generally applied to northemers who traveled south after the Civil War to profit from the social, economic. and political disorder then prevailing there. The label derived from the style of suitcase in which these northemers placed their meager belongings and also suggested their mobility and lack of rootedness. Although some of these northemers were unscrupulous adventurers seeking political or economic profit, many more came to initiate legitimate business enterprises or to serve as administrators, teachers. clergymen. and doctors for either the Freedmen's Bureau or the various benevolent societies organized to aid the blacks. Most carpetbaggers went south before 1867 when political careers were not even open to them. Carpetbaggers usually received their opprobrious title because of their frequent willingness to aid the freedmen with material sustenance and to organize them politically. Mitford M. Mathews, ed., , 2 vols. (Chicago, 1956), 1: 273; Kenneth M. Stampp, (New York, 1965), 156-59. men who have gone South in the exercise of a clear constitutional
right, which declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the
rights and immunities of citizens of the several States.
The second class is composed of the more enlightened slaveholders
and their friends. They have undergone no change in their moral feeling.
They believe that slavery is the normal condition of the negro, that freedom
is a great mistake, that equal suffrage is a misfortune, that secession was
right, but failed. They acknowledge that negro freedom, negro suffrage
and negro citizenship are unavoidable results of the war, and they have
determined to endure what they cannot cure. They are not pleased with the
sport of butting their heads against a stone wall, when only their heads and
not the wall is injured by the operation. They have a theory of politics
founded on the idea that more flies are caught with molasses than with
vinegar,32This proverb appears in many different cultures, but with “honey” mentioned more frequently than molasses. G. L. Apperson, (London, 1929), 220. and may be called what Mr. Garnet33Henry Highland Garnet. used to term “the sweet
cake party.”
The third class are of the Ku-Klux stripe. They are brooding over the
lost cause, shedding tears by the grave of slavery, looking for something to
turn up. They hate the negroes, hate the North, hate carpet-baggers, and
hate the thought of submitting to the new order of things.
This third estate of Southern society is about as active and effective as
any other class. They manage the midnight murders while members of the
second class manage the electric wires, and issue all manner of lying
excuses for their crimes. The standing excuse is, that some huge, ugly
negro has insulted or outraged a white lady.
Such, then, I take to be the condition and disposition of parties at the
South. The situation is critical, but not desperate. So much has been
accomplished, that it would be ungrateful scepticism to doubt the future.
Violence and blood now darken the South, but this cannot last. Time is a
silent but powerful element. Satiety follows even the appetite for blood.
Human wrath, however carefully nursed, must cool. The Southern people
are men, and being men, they cannot always neglect the glorious oppor-
tunities of the present and the future, to weep over their losses in the past.
The sober second thought will ever accept the practical rather than seek the
impossible. The negro can nevermore be a slave, all hope of this must
vanish. Though now assailed by violence and oppression, he steadily gains
and will continue to gain upon opposing forces. The fifteenth article of the
Constitution is a necessity, not only to the Republican party, and the present
Administration, but to the future peace and safety of the Republic. With the
adoption of that great principle into the organic law of the land, the negro
may well enough take his chance with all other classes of citizens. At any
rate, all I have ever asked and now ask for my people, North and South, is
simple, fair play, and if they get this, they will and must do what remains to
make themselves useful, prosperous, and happy citizens.