The Magnificent Standard: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on February 23, 1881
THE MAGNIFICENT STANDARD: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN
WASHINGTON, D.C., ON 23 FEBRUARY 1881
Washington National Republican, 24 February 1881. Other texts in Speech File, reel 15.
frames 510–13, 514–17, FD Papers, DLC.
An overflow audience gathered at Washington’s Masonic Temple on the
evening of 23 February 1881 to celebrate the presentation of an American flag
to a local Republican club by Frederick Douglass on behalf of US. Senator
Roscoe Conkling of New York. Edward W. Oyster, the president of that
organization, the Roscoe Conkling Club of Boys in Blue, presided at the
event, and Stewart L. Woodford received the flag on the group’s behalf.
Representatives of other Washington Republican clubs attended the meeting
and heard “literary and musical renditions” and a few other speeches in
addition to Douglass’s remarks.
GENERAL WOODFORD:1Born in New York City, Stewart Lyndon Woodford (1835–1913) attended Columbia and Yale, graduating from the former in 1854. Admitted to the bar in 1857, he practiced law in his native city and became federal district attorney for the southern district of New York in 1861. Woodford joined the Union army in 1862 and held the rank of brevet brigadier general at its close. A Republican, Woodford won the post of lieutenant governor of New York in 1866 but he ran unsuccessfully for the governorship in 1870. Elected to Congress in 1872 he resigned before the end of his term. A Stalwart and political ally of Roscoe Conkling, Woodford received appointments as United States attorney for the southern district of New York (1877–83) and minister plenipotentiary to Spain (1897–98). David M. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in the Senate (Ithaca, NY., 1971), 83–84, 141, 152, 381, 435; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1961 (Washington, D.C., 1961), 1846; Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York, 1888-89), 6: 601–02; National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1898), 9: 2–3; Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928–36), 20: 489–90. For the purposes of this brilliant occasion, in this
splendid Masonic Temple, and before this imposing presence of your
fellow-citizens, I recognize you, sir, as the happily chosen representative
of the Roscoe Conkling Club of the Boys in Blue, and have now the honor
and the pleasure, on behalf of the great Senator from New York whose
name these Boys in Blue have proudly adopted, to present to you, and
through you to them, this beautiful flag of our common country. I present it
to you, sir, as a graceful token from that great Senator, and as a fit ex-
pression of his grateful appreciation of the honor paid him in coupling his
distinguished name with this Republican Club of the Boys in Blue. I
commend it to you, sir, as the appropriate response of a noble heart to an act
of marked recognition and of generous approval by his fellow-citizens of
the District of Columbia. There is, perhaps, no public man in the United
States who does less than Roscoe Conkling to conciliate popular favor or to
win popular applause. He marks out his course, follows the line of his
convictions, unswayed by hope or fear. by favor or disfavor. But, when
approval comes, as it does come, and will come, from an honest course,
when, unsought, spontaneous, and free, no man can prize it more highly
than himself. For some reason or other this man has gotten a prefix to his
name. He is called the great American Senator, or the great Senator from
New York. I cannot tell you just when, where, or how he came to have this
great handle to his name. I suppose it came to him as “honest” came to
Lincoln, or as “great General” came to Grant2Ulysses S. Grant. and Sherman,3Born in Lancaster, Ohio, William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–91) was raised by the family of Whig politician Thomas Ewing after his father's death in 1829. Ewing secured a West Point appointment for Sherman, who graduated in 1840. After seeing little combat in the Mexican War, Sherman resigned his army commission in 1853 and became a banker. When that career failed, he briefly practiced law before serving as superintendent of a military academy in Louisiana. At the outset of the Civil War, Sherman quickly rose to the rank of brigadier general and participated in the Union defeat at the first Battle of Bull Run. He served under Grant in the battles of Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga and eventually succeeded him as Union commander in the western theater. In the summer of 1864 Sherman's forces crossed Georgia and captured Atlanta on 1 September. He then led his troops to the Atlantic coast and was advancing northward through North Carolina when hostilities ended. After the Civil War, Sherman remained in the military and became commanding general of the army in 1869, holding that rank until his retirement in 1884. James M. Merill, William Tecumseh Sherman (Chicago, 1971); ACAB, 5: 502–08; DAB, 17: 93–97. or as “great
statesman” came to Clay, Calhoun, and Webster;4Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster. but come from where it
may and how it may, it is a title that even malice will hardly deny him, for
whatever else may be said of Roscoe Conkling, no man who is a man can
ever call him a small man. He takes rank easily with the great men of a
former generation—with the grandest statesmen whose names have come
down to us from the past. I can congratulate this Roscoe Conkling Club,
then, upon its name, and upon what that name stands for before the Ameri-
can people. It means, if I understand it, genuine Republican government
for the whole country. It means that this beautiful flag, with its ample folds,
with all the stars in its broad, blue field, without a single erasure, shall be
respected in every section of our common country. It means that we, the
people of the United States of America are a nation to ourselves, and to all
the world beside, and that whatever any nation can do to preserve itself
from disruption, and to protect its citizens in the enjoyment of life, liberty,
and property, we, the American people, can do and will do.
Sir, much, very much has been written and spoken of the American
flag. Poets, statesmen, and scholars have exhausted the power of speech in
brilliant apostrophes to it, and yet no imagination, no genius, no skill has
been found to measure the vast and comprehensive significance of this
sacred emblem. It extends to all the past, it includes all the present, and
comprehends all the future. He who can add anything to the volume of
praise at this altar, or can lend any new lustre to its glory, has an imagina-
tion more fruitful and a tongue more eloquent than mine. I hand the subject
over to you, General Woodford. You, sir, and the brave Boys in Blue know
better than I how to speak of the power and glory of this national banner.
Your fathers made it. You were born under it. It covered your cradles in
your infancy, it guarded your manhood and inspired your patriotism, and
has adorned your council chambers from the beginning until now. “Lord,
Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.”5Ps. 90: 1. With a feeling
almost akin to this pious utterance you can address the flag of your country.
It has been your sun and shield during all the vicissitudes of your national
history. It has been the magnificent standard around which the loyal devo-
tion of the Nation has rallied in every hour of trial and danger. I commend it
to you, sir. You can speak of it better than I, for your experience under it has
been larger and more impressive than mine. I have seen it in time of peace;
you have seen it in time of war. I have seen it waving from the masts of our
commerce and from the majestic dome of the National Capitol; you have
seen it amid the fire, the smoke, the roar, the tempest, the whirlwind, and
the earthquake of battle, where “manhood on the field of death” periled its
all in a contest with slavery, treason, and rebellion, in order that the free
institutions which make our country the watch-tower, the hope, the proph-
ecy and assurance of free government throughout the world should not
perish from the earth.6A paraphrase of the concluding sentence of Abraham Lincoln‘s Gettysburg Address. Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953–55), 7: 23. Out of this howling storm of war there came many
utterances which found their way straight to the hearts of the American
people, but none more than this: “If any man attempts to haul down the
American flag shoot him on the spot.” The sentiment of the Nation was
echoed by Barbara Frietchie—
“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,” she said.7Douglass quotes John G. Whittier's poem “Barbara Frietchie." The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, 4 vols. (Boston, 1892), 3: 247.
Gentlemen, there was a time when this flag was less a symbol of
Universal liberty than now; when it waved over slaves as well as freemen.
It was then open to criticism, derision, and reproach. The subjects of the
divine-right governments of Europe were not slow in finding this weak
point in our institutions, nor delicate in calling attention to it. Campbell,
the war poet of England, thus alludes to it:
“United States! your banner bears
Two emblems—one of fame;
Alas! the other that it wears
Reminds us of your shame.
The white man’s liberty in types
Is blazoned by your stars;
But what’s the meaning of your stripes?
They mean your negroes’ scars!”8Douglass slightly misquotes To the United States of North America by Thomas Campbell, W. A. Hill, ed., The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, With Notes and a Biographical Sketch (London, 1851), 364.
Thanks to the “logic of events,” thanks to Abraham Lincoln, thanks to
our great generals, our patriotic statesmen; thanks to the brave Boys in
Blue, thanks to the eternal principles of right and all the moral forces of the
universe, this broad banner, waving over our whole Nation, looks down
upon a country where there is no master, no slave, and where liberty and
equality are the legal conditions of all men, “without regard to race, color,
or previous condition of servitude.”9Douglass quotes Section 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment to the US. Constitution. Take the flag, General; hand it to this
club of Boys in Blue, and
“Long may it wave,
O’er the land of the free
And the home of the brave.”10A close paraphrase of the final two lines of Francis Scott Key‘s “The Star Spangled Banner." Michigan State Library, The American Flag in Prose, Poetry and Song, 2d ed. (Lansing, Mich., 1916), 57.