One Country, One Law, One Liberty for All Citizens: An Interview in Washington, D.C., in January 1889
ONE COUNTRY, ONE LAW, ONE LIBERTY FOR ALL CITIZENS:
AN INTERVIEW IN WASHINGTON, D.C., IN JANUARY 1889
Washington , 11 January 1889. Another text in Washington , 19
January 1889.
Early in January 1889 an unnamed reporter of the Washington visited
Douglass’s home, “Cedar Hill,” in the Anacostia neighborhood of southeast
Washington, D.C. , and obtained a wide-ranging interview with Douglass on
political affairs in the South. Douglass’s close friend, Henry O. Wagoner of
Colorado, read with great enthusiasm a reprinted account of the interview in
the Washington and wrote Douglass that “it will go down in
history as one of the most memorable interviews of your eventful life. . . . I
think it will be conceded that you touched upon, in a Statesmanlike manner,
forcible and convincing, every vital point in the prominent ‘Southern
question.' ” Wagoner predicted that the interview would have a “salutary
effect” upon the policies of the Benjamin Harrison administration toward
blacks. H[enry] O. Wagoner to Douglass, 27 January 1889, General Correspondence
File, reel 5, frames 257-58, FD Papers, DLC.
When the representative of the PRESS ascended "Cedar Hill,” in Anacostia,
and rested his weary limbs on the even boards of the wide veranda
that encompassed the home of the best known negro in the world, he heard
tones from a violin. When the door opened in answer to the reporter’s
knock, who approaches but Frederick Douglass, with violin in hand. He
said that he had been recreating from mental strain by playing the “Star
Spangled Banner,” which, he said, he much enjoyed. He asked the PRESS
representative to be seated, and asked what did the enterprising PRESS want
with him? The reporter said that he had instructions to visit him and obtain
from him expressions touching the southern question, the suppression of
the colored vote, and the recent expressions of Mr. Harrison relating to a
fair vote and a fair count. Mr. Douglass invited the reporter into his library,
and there the faces of the late Chief Justice Chase, W. Lloyd Garrison,
James S. Birney, De Strauss, L. Feurbach, Dante, Abraham Lincoln, John
Brown, and Charles Sumner looked down in smiles and respect upon the
great negro sage.
Mr. Douglass said: “Well, as I understand it, you wish me to talk to the
PRESS about the suppression of the colored vote of the south, or about what
is popularly called the southern problem, and what I think will be the policy
of President Harrison1Benjamin Harrison. in relation to that problem. In the first place, then,
let me say I deny that properly speaking and in a political sense, there is any
such thing now before the country entitled to be contemplated either as a
negro problem or a southern problem. I object to these terms, because they
make the less include the greater and are calculated to awaken in advance
race and sectional prejudices which tend to darken the path of duty, other-
wise direct and plain. The formula is objectionable because it narrows the
margin of a great question to a particular race and section of our country,
which in its essence, comprehends and affects the fundamental principles
that underlie the whole system of our republican government. I hold that
the suppression of the colored vote in the south by fraud and violence is a
reproach and a concern of the whole nation. The duty to deal with it is not
merely sectional, but national. If we are a nation, and not a mere league of
states, each an independent sovereignty, the suppression of the legal vote of
the south is as much a question for Maine and Massachusetts as it is for the
Carolinas and Georgia. Whatever may have been the true theory of the
organic law of the land before the late rebellion, the suppression of that
rebellion swept away, not only slavery, but the pretension of sovereignty of
the individual states, and established a nation within the limits of the
United States. I hold, therefore, that the problem in question is not one in
which the voice of the south should be especially regarded. It is a national
question, and one which should be viewed broadly by the national intelligence
and decided in favor of what is just, honorable, and for the best
interests of the whole American people.
“What right has the south to ask or suggest as to the policy of the
incoming administration? None whatever as a section. The demand that is
frequently made by southern men to know what will be President Harrison’s
southern policy is both inappropriate and insolent. They have no
right to claim exemption from a policy which is broad and common to the
whole country, and that is, that each citizen, without regard to race, color,
or section, shall have the right and the privilege to cast one vote in all
elections, and to have that vote honestly counted and given the weight
which belongs to the vote of an American citizen. Our southern friends
should esteem it a pleasure and a privilege to be embraced within national
constitutional limits, and a policy which best benefits the whole American
people.
“It is better to be a part of the great whole than to be the whole of a
small part. If the south is honestly within the Union it should honestly
accept the conditions upon which the existence of the Union depends. The
folly of putting new wine into old bottles, of patching old garments with
new cloth,2Douglass employs New Testament images from Matt. 9: 16-17, Mark 2 : 21-22, and Luke 5: 36-38. of crying ‘south,’ ‘south,’ when there is no south, is just now
the vice of southern politics. The war abolished sectionalism as well as
slavery and established the idea that national allegiance and national protection
belong to all sections alike. If a majority of white citizens were
systematically and persistently by force and fraud deprived of their constitutional
right to vote in any northern state of the Union, there would be
no doubt of the power and the duty of the national government to interfere
and correct the abuse; yet in the eye of the constitution of the United
States—which President Harrison will swear to support and defend and
execute—the mere matter of color and race make no difference whatever.
There is as much infraction of the law, as much contempt for the constitution
in the denial of the vote of a black citizen as in that of a white citizen.
The first duty of a government is to make its laws respected, and this can
only be done by their just and impartial administration. A law which is
applied in one way to one class and in another way to another class and is
not applied at all to a third class, must sooner or later lose its majesty and
fall into general contempt. The co-relation between allegiance and protection
is as perfect as that of debtor and creditor, and the obligation arising
therefrom binding upon every government that claims the right to govern.
For a government to grant the right of suffrage and deny itself the power to
protect that right is to confess itself a sham and a fraud, and so would the
political doctrinaires make the federal government in its relation to the
colored voters of the south.
“At the north we sometimes hear that the negro should assert himself,
and fight his way to the ballot box. How inexpressibly mean is this suggestion
in view of the utter helplessness of the negro citizen as against a
power that held the armies of this nation in bloody and deadly conflict for
four long years, and how subversive of all government if this doctrine were
carried out. It is cowardly for one great government to remand its citizens
to violence and anarchy in order to exercise a right guaranteed by the
constitution of the United States, and this I believe will be the view taken of
it by Mr. Harrison when he shall come into power.”
“Was the southern question a prominent factor in the last campaign?”
“I know it is said that the suppression of the colored vote in the
southern states was not made a prominent factor in the election by which
Mr. Harrison was made President, but this, if it were so, which I deny, will
furnish no reason against an unflinching and inflexible determination upon
his part to do all he can to put an end to the reproach and scandal which is
now resting upon us. It is not true, however, that the evil complained of was
not an important factor in producing the result of the late election. A fair
vote and an honest count were primary and fundamental principles in the
platform adopted by the great national convention of the Republican party
at Chicago.3The Republican party held its national convention in Chicago on 19-25 June 1888. Among the pledges in its platform was the statement: “We affirm our unswerving devotion to the National Constitution and the indissoluble Union of the States; to the autonomy reserved to the states under the Constitution; to the personal rights and liberties of citizens in all the states and territories of the Union, and especially to the supreme and sovereign right of every lawful citizen, rich and poor, native or foreign born, white or black, to cast one free ballot and the just and equal representation of all the people to be the foundation of our Republican government and demand effective legislation to secure the integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority. We charge that the present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot by a criminal nullification of the Constitution of the United States.” Johnson, , 1: 80. and upon that platform Hon. Benjamin Harrison has taken his
stand. In the mind of that convention its words were things.4Douglass adapts a line from Lord Byron's , Canto III, Stanza 88. Ernest Hanley Coleridge, ed., , 13 vols. (London, 1899-1904), 6: 172. They meant
all they said, and were as real as bullets or bayonets. In the hope of
translating these words into life and practice of the nation many voters
supported the candidates of the Republican party in the late election, who,
but for this, would have voted with the Democratic or with the Prohibition
parties.5The Prohibitionist party held its national convention at Indianapolis, Indiana, on 30-31 May 1888 and nominated Clinton B. Fisk of New Jersey for president and John A. Brooks of Missouri for vice president. The Prohibition party ticket garnered nearly 250,000 votes in the presidential election. , 777-78, 782. I know this was so in the state of Indiana. The American people
are always in advance of their government, and I believe they will support
Gen. Harrison in whatever measures or recommendations he may bring
forward to enforce constitutional requirement and to secure an establish-
ment and maintenance of a genuine republican government in the south.”
“What do you think in relation to the cry of negro domination?”
“I am not troubled by the cowardly outcry that comes to us that
suffrage to the negro means domination over the whites. It means no such
thing. Nor should suffrage to the whites mean domination over the negro. It
was not the negro, but the white people of the south whose want of patriotism
led them to rebel against the best government upon earth, and the
country today has vastly more to fear from this same class, which is now
hanging only upon the verge of government and talking of its section as a
country separate from the north, than it has to fear from the loyal negroes of
the south. But it is not the negro merely whose rule these southern aristocrats
profess to fear, but it is the ignorant negroes. They put the emphasis
on ignorance. To me this is the veriest affectation. When did we ever hear in
any of these southern states of any alarm of this kind because of danger
from the ignorant white voters of the south. There is nothing in it. But the
thief thinks each bush an officer6Douglass adapts , act 5, sc. 6, line 12. and here is always a lion in the way of him
who has no heart to do his duty. If it is the negroes’ ignorance that is feared,
the remedy is education. If it is said that you cannot educate them, that they
are hopelessly ignorant, than there need be no fear of their domination.
‘Where MacGregor sits there is the head of the table.7Douglass misquotes a line from Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 lecture, “The American Scholar." , 1: 105. Intelligence needs
no arbitrary or extraneous appliance to give it victory over ignorance. It is
manifest that the white citizens of the south, by their wealth, intelligence,
and by the dependence of the colored people upon them, have the means in
their own hands of attaching to themselves the colored voters of the south
and of securing their support to such wise measures as are necessary to the
welfare of the whole country.
“From my point of view I see no reason to doubt that, under our
Republican rule, we shall yet see the colored man voting and acting as
freely in Mississippi as he now does in Massachusetts. We have given the
dignity of the nation in support of equal political rights; the trend of our
civilization is in that direction; the growth of popular sentiment, the spread
of education, the improvements in the means of locomotion, the diffusion
of intelligence, the tendency of solidity of the nation as against distraction
and isolation, make the triumph of political equality and equality before the
law inevitable. The election of Gen. Benjamin Harrison is an advertisement
to the American people that we are to have one country, one law, one
liberty, and a common destiny for all the citizens of the United States.”
Mr. Douglass rose and, taking the violin, played once more to the
delight of the Rams representative “The Star Spangled Banner,” and the
goodbye was exchanged, and thus closed the longest interview ever obtained
with the “Sage of Cedar Hill.”