The Nation’s Problem: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 1889
THE NATION’S PROBLEM: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN
WASHINGTON, DC., ON 16 APRIL 1889
Washington , 27 April 1889. Other texts in , 1 :33-
46 (June 1889); Washington , 17 April 1889; , 6 : 221-39
(October 1889); (Washington, D.C., 1889),
3-27; Holland, , 374-79.
Washington’s black community was no more united in 1889 than it had been a
year earlier in celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia.
While one planning committee organized a parade and invited the Reverend
William B. Derrick of New York to speak, the Bethel Literary and
Historical Association invited Douglass to be the orator of the day. Fifteen
hundred people gathered at Metropolitan A.M.E. Church to participate in the
association’s proceedings. Songs by the church choir, prayer by James
Storum, president of the association, preceded Douglass’s two-hour oration.
The press noted that Douglass read most of his address from a manuscript but
occasionally “elaborated some idea with a burst of his old-time eloquence.” It
was a controversial speech. The Washington led a vicious attack on
Douglass because of his remarks. While praising Douglass‘s “beautiful oratorical
flights,” the criticized him for drawing “very heavily upon his
imagination" to paint a gloomy prospect for black Americans and for suggesting
that “the negro is eternally and fundamentally the inferior of the white
man.” The later published a column giving the views of such prominent
blacks as J. Willis Menard of Florida and Edward P. McCabe of Kansas which
accused Douglass of lacking race pride. The Washington ,
whose editorial staff included Frederick Douglass, Jr., defended the senior
Douglass and ranked his speech “with one of the many great speeches delivered
by America’s most eminent statesmen. It will prove to be Frederick
Douglass’ ‘greatest effort.’ " The controversy persisted and as late as mid-June,
the editor of the Indianapolis felt it necessary to defend
Douglass from black critics who “deride and condemn one of their own race
for freeing himself from the slavery of ‘one idea,’ and exercising his rights and
thoughts as a man.” Charles E. Hill to Douglass, 19, 27 April 1889, G. C.
Sawyer to Douglass, 20 April 1889, Robert H. Folger to Douglass, 22 April
1889. Charles W. Hunter to Douglass, 23 April 1889, General Correspondence
File, reel 5, frames 328, 339, 328-30, 331-33, 335-37, FD Papers,
DLC; Washington , 6 April, 4 May 1889; Washington , 17 April 1889; Washington , 20 April, 4 May 1889; Indianapolis
, 15 June 1889.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS: I congratulate you upon this the twenty-
seventh anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
and l gratefully acknowledge the compliment implied in calling upon me to
assist in expressing the thoughts and sentiments natural to this and other
similar occasions.
For reasons which will become apparent in the course of my address, I
respond to your call with more than my usual diffidence.
One cause, like many other good causes, has its ebbs and flows,
successes and failures, joyous hopes and saddening fears. I cannot forget
on this occasion that Lewis Hayden, a brave and wise counseler in the
cause of our people, a moral hero, has laid down his armor, filled up the
measure of his days, completed his work on earth, and left a mournful void
in our ranks.1Lewis Hayden died on 7 April 1889. I am reminded, too, that John Bright, the Quaker statesman
of England, the man of matchless eloquence, whose roof sheltered me
when a stranger and sojourner, and whose friendship for this republic, was
only equaled by his sympathy for the oppressed of all lands and nations,
has passed away.2John Bright died on 27 March 1889. The death of such a man is not a loss only to his own
country and people, but to the oppressed in every quarter of the globe. We
do not stand to-day where we stood one year ago, and my speech will be
colored by the altered condition of our surroundings.
It has been our custom to hail the anniversary of our emancipation as a
joyous event. We have observed it with every manifestation of gratitude.
During the years immediately succeeding the abolition of slavery, our
speeches and addresses on such occasions naturally overflowed with joy,
gratitude and praise. We remembered with veneration and love the great
men by whose moral testimonies, statesmanship, and philanthropy was
brought about the long delayed and long prayed for deliverance of our
people.
The great names of Garrison, Whittier, Sumner, Phillips, Stevens,
Lincoln,3William Lloyd Garrison, John G. Whittier, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Thaddeus Stevens, and Abraham Lincoln. and others were gratefully and lovingly repeated. We shouted the
praises of these great men as God inspired benefactors. At that time, too, it
was well enough and easy to blow aloud our brazen trumpets, call out the
crowd, throng the streets with gay processions, and to shout aloud and
make a joyful noise over the event, for since the great exodus of the
Hebrews from Egyptian bondage no people had had greater cause for such
joyful demonstrations. But the time for such demonstrations is over. It is
not the past, but the present and the future that most concern us to-day. Our
past was slavery. We cannot recur to it with any sense of complacency or
composure. The history of it is a record of stripes. a revelation of agony. It
is written in characters of blood. Its breath is a sigh, its voice a groan, and
we turn from it with a shudder. The duty of to-day is to meet the questions
that confront us with intelligence and courage.
Without the least desire to awaken undue alarm, I declare to you that,
in my judgment, at no period since the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia, have the moral, social, and political surroundings of the colored
people of this country been more solemn and forboding than they are this
day. If this statement is startling it is only because the facts are startling. I
speak only the things I have seen. Nature has given me a buoyant disposition.
I like to look upon the bright and hopeful side of affairs. No man can
see the silver lining of a black cloud more joyfully than I.4Douglass adapts John Milton's , sc. 1, lines 222-23. John Milton, (Cambridge, 1975), 129. But he is a more
hopeful man than I am who will tell you that the rights and liberties of the
colored people in this country have
PASSED BEYOND THE DANGER LINE.
Mark, if you please, the fact, for it is a fact, an ominous fact, that at no
time in the history of the conflict between slavery and freedom has the
character of the negro as a man been made the subject of a fiercer and more
serious discussion in all the avenues of debate than during the past and
present year. Against him have been marshalled the whole artillery of
science, philosophy, and history. We are not only confronted by open foes,
but we are assailed in the guise of sympathy and friendship and presented
as objects of pity.
The strong point made against the negro and his cause is the statement
widely circulated and greatly relied upon that no two people so different in
race and color can live together in the same country on a level of equal civil
and political rights and powers; that nature herself has ordained that the
relations of two such races must be that of domination and subjugation.
This old slave-holding Calhoun and McDuffy doctrine.5John C. Calhoun and George McDuffie. which we long
ago thought dead and buried, is revived in unexpected quarters, and confronts
us to-day as sternly as it did forty years ago. Then it was employed as
the sure defence of slavery. Now it is employed as a justification of the
fraud and violence by which colored men are divested of their citizenship,
and robbed of their constitutional rights in the solid south.
To those who are hopefully assuming that there is no cause of apprehension,
that we are secure in the possession of all that has been gained
by the war and by reconstruction, I ask, What means the universal and
palpable concern manifested through all the avenues of debate as to the
future of the negro in this country? For this question meets us now at every
turn. Letters fairly pour upon me burdened with this inquiry. Whence this
solicitude, or apparent solicitude? To me the question has a sinister meaning.
It is prompted not so much by concern for the welfare of the negro as
by consideration of how his relation to the American government may
effect the welfare and happiness of the American people. The negro is now
a member of the body politic. This talk about him implies that he is
regarded as a diseased member. It is wisely said by physicians that any
member of the human body is in a healthy condition when it gives no
occasion to think of it. The fact that the American people of the Caucasian
race are continually thinking of the negro, and never cease to call attention
to him. shows that his relation to them is felt to be abnormal and unhealthy.
I want the colored people of this country to understand the true character
of the great race which rules, and must rule and determine the destiny
of this republic. Justice and magnanimity are elements of American character.
They may do much for us. But we are in no condition to depend upon
these qualities exclusively. Depend upon it, whenever the American people
shall become convinced that they have gone too far in recognizing the
rights of the negro, they will find some way to abridge those rights. The
negro is great, but the welfare of the nation will be considered greater. They
will forget the negro’s service in the late war. They will forget his loyalty to
the republic. They will forget the enmity of the old slaveholding class to the
government. They will forget their solemn obligations of friendship to the
negro, and press to their bosoms the white enemies of the nation, while
they give the cold shoulder to the black friends of the nation. Be not
deceived. History repeats itself.6Douglass recites a proverb found in many languages but generally credited to Thucydides. Smith, , 374. The black man fought for American
Independence. The negro’s blood mingled with the white man’s blood at
Bunker Hill, and in State St., Boston.7An allusion to the role of Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre. But this sacrifice on his part won for
him only temporary applause. He was returned to his former condition. He
fought bravely with Gen. Jackson8Andrew Jackson. at New Orleans, but his reward was only
slavery and chains. These facts speak, trumpet-tongued,9Douglass adapts , act 1, sc. 7, line 19. of the kind of
people with whom we have to deal, and through them we contemplate the
sternest.
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE.
I have said that at no time has the character of the negro been so
generally and seriously discussed as now. I do not regard discussion as an
evil in itself. I regard it not as an enemy, but as a friend. It has served us well
at other times in our history, and I hope it may serve us well at this time.
Controversy, whether of words or blows, whether in the forum or on the
battle field, may help us, if we but make the right use of it. We are not to be
like dumb driven cattle in this discussion, in this war of words and conflicting
theories. Our business is to answer back wisely, modestly, and yet
grandly.
While I do not regard discussion as an enemy I cannot but deem it in
this instance as out of place and unfortunate. It comes to us as a surprise and
a bitter disappointment. It implies a deplorable unrest and unsoundness in
the public mind. It shows that the reconstruction of our national institutions
upon a basis of liberty, and equality is not yet accepted as a final and
irrevocable settlement of the negro’s relation to the government, and of his
membership in the body politic. There seems to be in it a lurking disposition,
a looking around for some plausible excuse for dispossessing the
negro of some part of his inheritance conceded to him in the generous spirit
of the new departure of our government.
Going back to the early days of the anti-slavery movement I cannot but
remark, and I call upon you to remark, the striking contrast between the
disposition which then existed to utterly ignore the negro and the present
disposition to make him a topic of universal interest and deepest concern.
When the negro was a slave and stood outside the government nobody but a
few so-called abolition fanatics thought him worthy of the smallest attention.
He was almost as completely outside of the nation’s thought as he was
outside the nation’s law and the nation’s religion. But now all is changed.
His freedom makes him discussed on every hand. The platform, the pulpit,
the press, and the legislative hall regard him and struggle with him as a
great and difficult problem, one that requires almost divine wisdom to
solve.
Now it is this gigantic representation to which I object. I deny that the
negro is correctly represented by it. The statement of it is a prejudice to the
negro’s cause. It denotes the presence of the death dealing shadow of an
ancient curse. We had fondly hoped, and had reason to hope, that when the
negro ceased to be a slave, when he ceased to be a thing and became a man,
when he ceased to be an alien and became a citizen, when the constitution
of the United States ceased to be the charter of slavery and became the
charter of liberty, the negro problem was solved and settled forever. The
whole contention now raised over him is an anachronism, a misnomer, a
false pretense, a delusion and a sham, a crafty substitution of a false issue
for the true one.
I deny and utterly scout the idea that there is now, properly speaking,
any such thing as a negro problem now before the American people. It is
not the negro, educated or illiterate, intelligent or ignorant, who is on trial
or whose qualities are giving trouble to the nation. The real problem lies in
the other direction. It is not so much what the negro is, what he has been, or
what he may be that constitutes the problem. Here, as elsewhere, the lesser
is included in the greater. The negro's significance is dwarfed by a factor
vastly larger than himself. The real question, the all-commanding question,
is whether American justice. American liberty, American civilization,
American law, and American Christianity can be made to include and
protect alike and forever all American citizens in the rights which, in a
generous moment in the nation’s life, have been guaranteed to them by the
organic and fundamental law of the land. It is whether this great nation
shall conquer its prejudices, rise to the dignity of its professions, and
proceed in the sublime course of truth and liberty marked out for itself since
the late war, or swing back to its ancient moorings of slavery and barbarism.
The negro is of inferior activity and power in the solution of this
problem. He is the clay, the nation is the potter. He is the subject, the nation
is the sovereign. It is not what he shall be or do, but what the nation shall be
and do, which is
TO SOLVE THIS GREAT NATIONAL PROBLEM.
Speaking for him, I can commend him upon every ground. He is loyal
and patriotic; service is the badge of all his tribe. He has proved it before,
and he will prove it again. The country has never called upon him in vain.
What he has been in the past in this respect that he will be in the future. All
he asks now, all he has ever asked, all he will ever ask, is that the nation
shall fulfill toward him its own recognized and self-imposed obligations.
When he asks for bread he will not accept a stone. When he asks for a fish
he will not accept a serpent.10Douglass loosely paraphrases Matt. 7: 9-10. His protest now is against being cheated by
cunningly devised judicial decisions, by frauds upon the ballot box, or by
brutal violence of red-shirted rebels. He only asks the American people to
adjust the practice to the justice and wisdom of their laws, and he holds that
this is first, midst, and last, and the only problem to be solved.
While, however, the negro may very properly protest against the popular
statement of the question, and while he may insist that the one just stated
is the proper one, and the only one; while he may hold that primarily and
fundamentally it is an American problem and not a negro problem, he may
materially assist in its solution. He can assume an attitude, develop a
character, improve his condition, and, in a measure, compel the respect
and esteem of his fellow men.
In order to do this we have, first of all, to learn and to understand
thoroughly the nature of the social, moral, and political forces that surround
us, and how to shape our ends and wisely determine our destiny. We
should endeavor to discover the true sources of our danger—whether they
be within ourselves or in circumstances external to ourselves. If I am here
for any useful purpose, it is in some measure to answer the question,
“What of the night?”11Douglass adapts Isa, 21: 11.
For the present I have seemed to forget that this is an occasion of joy. I
have thus far spoken mainly in sorrow rather than in gladness; of grief
rather than in gratitude. Like the resolution of Hamlet, my outlook has
been sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.12, act 3, sc. 1, line 85.
Now, what of the night? What of the night? Is it cheered by the beams
of celestial light and hope, or is it saddened by ominous clouds, darkness,
and distant thunder? You and I should be brave enough to look the facts
fairly and firmly in the face.
I profoundly wish I could make a cheerful response to this inquiry. But
the omens are against me. I am compelled to say that while we have no
longer to contend with the physical wrongs and abominations of slavery:
while we have no longer to chill the blood of our hearers by talking of
whips, chains, branding irons and bloodhounds; we have, as already intimated,
to contend with a foe, which though less palpable, is still a fierce
and formidable foe. It is the ghost of a by-gone, dead and buried institution.
It loads the very air with a malignant prejudice of race. It has poisoned the
fountains of justice, and defiled the altars of religion. It acts upon the body
politic as the leprous distillment acted upon the blood and body of the
murdered king of Denmark.13An allusion to the means of the murder of King Hamlet of Denmark by Claudius as appears in , act 1, sc. 5, lines 64-75. In antebellum times it was the standing
defense of slavery. In our own times it is employed in defense of oppression
and proscription. Until this foe is conquered and driven from the breasts of
the American people, our relations will be unhappy, our progress slow, our
lives embittered, our freedom a mockery, and
OUR CITIZENSHIP A DELUSION.
The work before us is to meet and combat this prejudice by lives and
acquirements which contradict and put to shame this narrow and malignant
feeling. We have errors of our own to abandon, habits to reform, manners
to improve, ignorance to dispel, and character to build up. This is something
which no power on earth can do for us, and which no power on earth
can prevent our doing for ourselves.
ln pointing out errors and mistakes common among ourselves, I shall
run the risk of incurring displeasure; for no people with whom I am acquainted
are less tolerant of criticism than ourselves, especially from one of
our own number. We have been so long in the habit of tracing our failures
and misfortunes to the views and acts of others that we seem, in some
measure, to have lost the talent and disposition of seeing our own faults, or
of “seeing ourselves as others see us.”14An adaptation of a line from the eighth stanza of the poem “To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet, Church," by Robert Burns, Smith, , 74. And yet no man can do a better
service to another man than to correct his mistakes, point out his hurtful
errors. show him the path of truth, duty, and safety.
One of the few errors to which we are clinging most persistently and, as
I think, mischievously, has come into great prominence of late. It is the
cultivation and stimulation amongst us of a sentiment which we are pleased
to call race pride. I find it in all our books, papers, and speeches. For my
part I see no superiority or inferiority in race or color. Neither the one nor
the other is a proper source of pride or complacency. Our race and color are
not of our own choosing. We have no volition in the case one way or
another. The only excuse for pride in individuals or races is the fact of their
own achievements. Our color is the gift of the Almighty. We should neither
be proud of it nor ashamed of it. But we may well enough be proud or
ashamed when we have ourselves achieved success or have failed of success.
If the sun has curled our hair and tanned our skin let the sun be proud
of its achievement, for we have done nothing for it one way or the other. I
see no benefit to be derived from this everlasting exhortation by speakers
and writers among us to the cultivation of race pride. On the contrary, I see
in it a positive evil. It is building on a false foundation. Besides, what is the
thing we are fighting against, and what are we fighting for in this country?
What is the mountain devil, the lion in the way of our progress? What is it,
but American race pride; an assumption of superiority upon the ground of
race and color? Do we not know that every argument we make, and every
pretension we set up in favor of race pride is giving the enemy a stick to
break our own heads?
But it may be said that we shall put down race pride in the white people
by cultivating race pride among ourselves. The answer to this is that devils
are not cast out by Bellzebub, the prince of devils.15Paraphrase of Matt. 12: 24 and Luke 11: 18. The poorest and
meanest white man when he has nothing else to commend him says: “I am
a white man, I am.” We can all see the low extremity reached by that sort of
race pride, and yet we encourage it when we pride ourselves upon the fact
of our color. Let us do away with this supercilious nonsense. If we are
proud let it be because we have had some agency in producing that of which
to be proud. Do not let us be proud of what we can neither help nor hinder.
The Bible puts us in the condition in this respect of the leopard, and says
that we can no more change our skin than the leopard his spots.16An allusion to Jer. 13: 23. If we are
unfortunate in being placed among a people with whom our color is a badge
of inferiority, there is no need of our making ourselves ridiculous by
forever, in words, affecting to be proud of a circumstance due to no virtue
in us, and over which we have no control.
You will, perhaps, think this criticism uncalled for. My answer is that
truth is never uncalled for. Right thinking is essential to right acting, and I
hope that we shall hereafter see the wisdom of basing our pride and complacency
upon substantial
RESULTS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE RACE.
The question here raised is not merely theoretical, but is of practical
significance. In some of our colored public journals, with a view to crippling
my influence with the colored race, I have seen myself charged with a
lack of race pride. I am not ashamed of that charge. I have no apology or
vindication to offer. If fifty years of uncompromising devotion to the cause
of the colored man in this country does not vindicate me, I am content to
live without vindication.
While I have no more reason to be proud of our race than another, I dare
say, and I fear no contradiction, that there is no other man in the United
States prouder than myself of any great achievement, mental or mechanical,
of which any colored man or woman is the author. This is not because I
am a colored man, but because I am a man, and because color is treated as a
crime by the American people. My sentiments at this point originate not in
my color, but in a sense of justice common to all right minded men. It is that
which gives the sympathy of the crowd to the under dog, no matter what
may be his color. When a colored man is charged with a want of race pride,
he may well ask, What race? for a large percentage of the colored race are
related in some degree to more than one race. But the whole assumption of
race pride is ridiculous. Let us have done with complexional superiorities
or inferiorities, complexional pride or shame. I want no better basis for my
activities and affinities than the broad foundation laid by the Bible itself,
that God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of
the earth.17Acts 17: 26. This comprehends the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man.18This phrase originated in Elihu Burritt's essay “Brotherhood.” Elihu Burritt, (Boston, 1856), 158.
I have another criticism to make of a position which, I think, often
invites unfavorable comparison and positive disparagement. It is our noisy
assertion of equality with the Caucasian race. There are two kinds of
equality, one potential and the other actual, one theoretical and the other
practical. We should not be satisfied by merely quoting the doctrine of
equality as laid down in the Declaration of Independence, but we should
give it practical illustration. We have to do as well as to be. If we had built
great ships, sailed around the world, taught the science of navigation,
discovered far-off islands, capes, and continents, enlarged the boundaries
of human knowledge, improved the conditions of man’s existence, brought
valuable contributions of art, science, and literature, revealed great truths,
organized great states, administered great governments, defined the laws
of the universe, formulated systems of mental and moral philosophy, in-
vented railroads, steam engines, mowing machines, sewing machines,
taught the sun to take pictures, the lightning to carry messages, we then
might claim, not only potential and theoretical equality, but actual and
practical equality. Nothing is gained to our cause by claiming for ourselves
more than of right we can establish belongs to us. Manly self-assertion, I
know, is a power, and I would have that power employed within the bounds
of truth and sobriety. We should never forget, in our relations with our
fellows, that
MODESTY IS ALSO A POWER.
When it is manifested without any touch of servility it is as sure to win
respect as unfounded pretension is to provoke and receive contempt. We
should give our critics no advantage at this point, either by word or conduct.
Our battle with popular prejudice requires on our part the utmost
circumspection in word and in deed. Our men should be gentlemen and our
women ladies, and we can be neither without a modest reserve in mind and
in manners.
Were I not speaking to the most cultivated class of our people, for the
Bethel Literary Society comprises that class, I might hesitate to employ
this course of remark. You, I am quite sure, will not misapprehend my
statements or my motives.
There is one other point worthy of animadversion—it is the error that
union among ourselves is an essential element of success in our relations to
the white race. This, in my judgment, is a very serious mistake. I can
hardly point out one more pregnant with peril. It is contended that we are
now eight millions, that we hold the balance of power between the two
great political parties of the country, and that, if we were only united in one
body, under wise and powerful leaders, we could shape the policy of both
political parties, make and unmake parties, control the destiny of the
republic. and secure for ourselves a desirable and happy future. They say
that in union there is strength; that united we stand and divided we fall,19Douglass paraphrases lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's , Part 1, and from Aesop's fable “The Lion and the Four Bulls," , 6: 17; (London, 1818), 7-8.
and much else of the same sort.
My position is the reverse of all this. I hold that our union is in
weakness. ln quoting these wise sayings colored men seem to forget that
there are exceptions to all general rules, and that our position in this country
is an exceptional position. The rule for us is the exception. There are times
and places when separation and division are better than union, when to
stand apart is wiser than standing together. There are buildings which will
hold a few, but which will break down under the weight of a crowd; the ice
of the river may be strong enough to bear a man, but would break through
under the weight of an elephant. The ice under us in this country is very
thin, and is made very weak by the warm fogs of prejudice. A few colored
people scattered among large white communities are easily accepted by
such communities, and a larger measure of liberty is accorded to the few
than would be to the many. The trouble is that when we assemble in great
numbers anywhere we are apt to form communities by ourselves, and our
occupation of any part of a town or city, apart from the people surrounding
us, brings us into separate schools, separate churches, separate benevolent
and literary societies, and the result is the adoption of a scale of manners,
morals, and customs peculiar to our condition and to our antecedents as an
oppressed people. When we thus isolate ourselves we say to those around
us, “We have nothing in common with you,” and, very naturally, the reply
of our neighbors is in the same tone and to the same effect; for when a
people care for nobody, nobody will care for them. When we isolate
ourselves we lose, in large measure, the common benefit of association
with those whose advantages have been superior to ours.
The foundation upon which we stand in this country is not strong
enough to make it safe to stand together. A nation within a nation is an
anomaly. There can be but one American nation under the American government,
and we are Americans. The constitution of the country makes us
such, and our lines of activity should accord with our citizenship. Circumstances
now compel us in certain directions to maintain separate neighborhoods
and separate institutions. But these circumstances should only be
yielded to the least practicable extent. A negro neighborhood depreciates
the market value of property. We should distribute ourselves among the
people, build our houses, where if they take fire other houses will be in
danger. Common dangers will create common safeguards.
OUR POLICY SHOULD BE
to unite with the great mass of the American people in all their activities
and resolve to fall or flourish with our common country. We cannot afford
to draw the color line in politics, trade, education, manners, religion, or
civilization. Especially, we cannot afford to draw the color line in politics.
A party acting upon that basis would be not merely a misfortune, but a dire
calamity to the American peoples. The rule of the majority is the fundamental
principle of the American government, and it may be safely affirmed
that the American people will never permit, tolerate, or submit to
the success of any political device or strategy calculated to circumvent and
defeat the just application and operation of this fundamental principle of
our government.
It is also fair to state that no part of the American people—Irish,
Scotch, Italian, or German—could attempt any such political jugglery
with less success than ourselves.
Another popular error flaunted in our faces at every turn, and for the
most part by very weak and impossible editors, is the alleged duty of
colored men to patronize colored newspapers, and this simply because they
happen to be edited and published by colored men, and not because of their
intrinsic value. Anybody who can find means to issue a paper with a patent
back and hang out a colored flag at the head of its columns, demands
support on the ground that it is a colored newspaper. For one I am not
disposed to yield to this demand. A colored newspaper maker has no higher
claim upon us for patronage than a colored carpenter, a colored shoemaker,
or a colored bricklayer. Whether he should be supported should depend
upon the character of the man and the quality of his work. Our people
should not be required to buy an inferior article offered by a colored man,
when for the same money, they can purchase a superior article from a white
man. We need, and ought to have, the best supply of mental food that the
American market affords.
In saying this I do not forget that an able, sound, and decent public
journal, conducted in a spirit of justice and not made a vehicle of malice or
personal favoritism, edited and published by colored men is a powerful
lever for the elevation and advancement of the race. Such a paper has
special claims upon all who desire to raise colored people in the estimation
of themselves and their surroundings. But while this is true, it is also true
that in the same proportion that an able and influential public journal tends
to remove popular prejudice and elevate us in the judgment of those whose
good opinion is worth having, a feeble, ungrammatical and wretchedly
conducted public journal tends to lower us in the opinion of good men,
besides having a debasing influence upon the minds of the readers. Character
and quality should rule here as well as elsewhere.
But I leave this aspect of our relations and duties to make a few remarks
upon the changed condition of our country.
Four years ago we assembled to celebrate the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia.
UNDER A DARK AND PORTENTOUS CLOUD,
The honorable Grover Cleveland, the approved leader and representative
of the Democratic party, had, only a few weeks before, been duly inaugurated
President of the United States. The fact of his election had carried
alarm and consternation into every black man’s cabin in the southern states.
For the moment it must have seemed to them that the sun of freedom had
gone down, and the night of slavery had succeeded. The terror was dismal
and heartbreaking enough, and although it turned out to be groundless, it
was not altogether unnatural. The Democratic party had, in its day, done
much well calculated to create a dread of its return to power.
In the old time it was the ever faithful ally of the slaveholders, and the
inflexible defenders of slavery. In the new time, it has been distinguished as
the party of the shotgun, the cart whip, and the solid south.
While Mr. Cleveland’s election brought dreadful forebodings to the
cabins of the south it brought pleasing anticipations to the mansions of the
south. The joy of the oppressor was the sorrow of the oppressed. It required
every positive assurance from President Cleveland and his friends to allay
the apprehensions of the freedmen. The impression made by the election of
General Harrison20Although trailing in the popular vote, Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland in the 1888 presidential election by an electoral college vote of 233 to 168. Burnham, , 141, 247. was in striking contrast. It had precisely the opposite
effect to that of Mr. Cleveland. The alarm was transferred from the cabin to
the mansion—from the former slave to the master. In the freedmen’s
breasts confidence took the place of doubt, hope the place of fear, and a
sense of relief the place of anxiety. Without the utterance of a single word,
without the performance of a single act, the simple fact of the election of a
Republican President carried with it the assurance of protection from the
power of the oppressor. No higher eulogium could be bestowed upon
the Republican party than this faith in the justice and beneficence by the
simple, uneducated, and oppressed laborers of the south. Great, too, will
be the sorrow and disappointment if some measure shall not be devised
under this Republican administration to arrest the arm of lawless violence
and prove to these simple people that there is a difference between the
Republican party and the Democratic party.
Some of you may remember that in my celebration address four years
ago I took occasion to express my satisfaction with the inaugural utterances
of Hon. Grover Cleveland, and, although I have been much criticised for
what I then said, I have no word of that commendation to retract or qualify.
I thought well of Mr. Cleveland’s words then and think well of them now.
What I said was this, “No better words have dropped from the east portico
of the Capitol since the days of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.” I
did not say, as some of my critics found it necessary to allege, that Mr.
Cleveland had uttered better words than either Lincoln or Grant. You will
also remember that, while I commended the language of Mr. Cleveland, I
strongly doubted his ability to live up to the sentiments he then and there
expressed, and that doubt has been fully and sadly justified. During all the
four years of his administration, after having solemnly sworn to support
and enforce the constitution of the United States, he said no word and did
not act, expressed no desire to arrest the hand of violence, to stay the
effusion of innocent blood, or vindicate in any manner the negro’s constitutional
right to vote. He could almost hazard a war with England to protect
our fishermen; he could send two ships of war to Hayti to protect an
American fillibuster,21In fall 1888, a civil war broke out between the followers of François-Denis Légitime who controlled the capital and the south of the country and those of Louis Mondestin Florvil Hyppolite gathered along the northern coast. Légitime declared a blockade of port cities loyal to Hyppolite but foreign powers denied its legality on account of the small size of his fleet. On 21 October 1888, one of Légitime's gunboats captured an American-owned ship, the , that had been transporting rebel troops and arms along the northern coast. The Cleveland administration protested this seizure and demanded restoration of the vessel and compensation for the owners. Two American warships, the and , under the command of Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, were dispatched to Port-au-Prince to pressure the Haitians further. The Légitime government capitulated to this show of force and turned over the to U.S. authorities on 21 December 1888. , 414-15; Rayford B. Logan, (Chapel Hill, 1941), 399-400; Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., and Nancy Gordon Heinl, (Boston, 1978), 302-05. but not one word or blow to protect colored citizens
against
SOUTHERN ASSASSINS AND MURDERERS.
While I commended the words of Mr. Cleveland, I knew the party and
not Mr. Cleveland would determine the character of his administration.
Well, now the American people have returned the Republican party to
power, and the question is, what it will do? It has a great prestige, a
glorious record. It is the party that carried on the war against treason and
rebellion. It is the party that saved the Union, abolished slavery, amended
the constitution, made the colored man a soldier, a citizen, and a legal
voter. In view of this splendid record there ought to be no doubt or fear as to
the course of this present administration. But past experience make us
thoughtful. For a dozen years or more the Republican party has seemed in a
measure paralyzed in the presence of high-handed fraud and brutal violence
toward its newly-made citizens. The question now is, Will it regain
its former health, activity and power? Will it be as true to its friends in the
south as the Democratic party has been to its friends in that section, or will
it sacrifice its friends to conciliate its enemies? I have seen this last alternative
suggested as the possible outcome of this administration, but I stamp
with unmitigated scorn and contempt all such intimations. I know General
Harrison, and believe in General Harrison. I know his Cabinet and believe
in its members,22The original cabinet of President Benjamin Harrison taking office in March 1889 included: James G. Blaine, secretary of state; William Windom. secretary of the treasury; Redfield Proctor, secretary of war; John Wanamaker, postmaster general; William H. H. Miller, attorney general; Benjamin F. Tracy, secretary of the navy; John W. Noble, secretary of the interior; and Jeremiah M. Rusk, secretary of agriculture. and no power can make me believe that this administration
will not step to the verge of its constitutional power to protect the rights
guaranteed by the Constitution. Not only the Negro, but all honest men,
north and south, must hold the Republican party in contempt, if it fails to
do its whole duty at this point. The Republican party has made the colored
man free, and the Republican party must make him secure in his freedom,
or abandon its pretensions.
It was once said by Abraham Lincoln that this republic, could not long
endure half slave and half free,23Douglass alludes to Abraham Lincoln's “A House Divided" speech, delivered on 16 June 1858, at Springfield, Illinois. Basler, , 2: 461. and the same may be said with even more
truth of the black citizens of this country. They cannot remain half slave and
half free. They must be one thing or the other.
And this brings me to consider the alternative now presented between
slavery and freedom in this country. From my outlook I am free to affirm
that I see nothing for the negro of the south but a condition of absolute
freedom or of absolute slavery. I see no half way place for him. One or the
other of these conditions is to solve the so-called negro problem. There are
forces at work in each of these directions, and for the present, that which
aims at the re-enslavement of the negro seems to have the advantage. Let it
be remembered that the labor of the negro is his only capital. Take this from
him and he dies from starvation. The present mode of obtaining his labor in
the south gives his old master class a complete mastery over him. I showed
this in my last annual celebration address, and I need not go into it here.
The payment of the negro by orders on stores, where the Storekeeper
controls price, quality, and quantity, and is subject to no competition, so that
the negro must buy there and nowhere else—an arrangement by which the
negro never has a dollar to lay by, and can be kept in debt to his employer
year in and year out, puts him completely at the mercy of the master class.
He who would say to the negro, when a slave, you shall work for me or be
whipped to death, can now say to him with equal emphasis, you shall work
for me or I will starve you to death. This is the plain, matter-of-fact, and
unexaggerated condition of the plantation negro in the southern states
today.
WHY THE NEGRO DOES NOT EMIGRATE?
I will tell you. He has not a cent of money to emigrate with, and if he had,
and desired to exercise that right, he would be arrested for debt, for non-fulfillment
of contract, or be shot down like a dog in his tracks. When
southern senators tell you that they want to be rid of the negro, and would
be glad to have them all clear out, you know, and I know, and they know
that they are speaking falsely, and simply with a view to mislead the north.
Only a few days ago armed resistance was made in North Carolina to
colored emigration from that state,24A large-scale emigration movement of blacks from North Carolina began in reaction to the passage in 1889 of a new voter registration law which effectively disenfranchised many thousands of them. A convention in Raleigh led to formation of the North Carolina Emigration Association on 25 April 1889. This group cooperated with professional emigration agents who paid moving expenses of North Carolina blacks to destinations in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Indiana. Estimates by the state government that as many as fifty thousand blacks, chiefly from eastern counties, had departed in 1889 and 1890 prompted the state legislature to pass a law requiring emigration agents to purchase a one-thousand dollar license which drove most out of business. , 612; , 595-97; Frenise A. Logan, (Chapel Hill, 1964), 58-63, 124-29. and the first exodus to Kansas was
arrested by the old master class with shotguns and Winchester rifles. The
desire to get rid of the negro is a hollow sham. His labor is wanted to-day in
the south just as it was wanted in the old times when he was hunted by two-legged
and four-legged bloodhounds.
Now, when a man is in one place, and held there by the force of many
or few, and cannot get out of it, he is not far from a condition of slavery. But
these old slave-holders have their allies, and one is strong drink. Whisky
makes the negro drunk, and drunkenness makes him a criminal as well as a
pauper, and when he is made both a pauper and criminal the law steps in for
satisfaction. It does not send him to prison to work for the state, but, as in
the old times, puts him on the auction block and sells him to the highest
bidder to work for a planter, where all the manhood he ever had is worked
or whipped out of him. What is all this but slavery in another form?
I know that it will be said, that I am here exaggerating the danger that
impends over the negro. It will be said that slavery can never exist by law in
the south, and that without legislation slavery cannot be revived at the
south.
My answer to this argument is, that slavery can as really exist without
law as with it, and in some instances more securely, because less likely to
be interfered with in the absence of law than with it. No man can point to
any law in the United States by which slavery was originally established.
The fact of slavery always precedes enactments making it legal. Men first
make slaves and then make laws affirming the right of slavery.
What they have done in the past they may also do in the future. We must
not forget that there is nothing in southern morals, manners, or religion
against the re-establishment of slavery. A genuine southern man looks at a
negro simply as an article of property, capable of being exchanged for rice,
cotton, sugar, and tobacco.
Now, with such a conscience, armed with whisky, armed with ignorance,
and the payment of labor with orders on stores, the old master class
has the landless colored laborer literally by the throat, and is naturally
dragging him back to the house of bondage.
Another and still more important step already taken in the direction of
slavery is the precaution to deprive the negro of all means of defense and
protection. In the exercise of their power, acquired by long mastery over
the negro, they have forced him to surrender all arms and ammunition
found in his log cabin. No lamb was ever more completely within the
power of the wolf than the plantation negro of to-day is in the hands of the
old master class. The old masters know it, and the negroes know it, and
the fact makes the one haughty, domineering, and defiant, and the other
spiritless, servile, and submissive. One is armed and the other defenceless.
It is nothing against the courage of the negro that he does not fight his way
to the ballot box, instead of waiting for the government to protect him, as it
is its duty to do, for even a brave man, unarmed, will stand and deliver at
the mouth of a Winchester rifle or
THE BLADE OF A BOWIE KNIFE.
To the mass of mankind life is more than liberty, for with it there ever
remains the hope of liberty.
Now, when you remember that the negro is taught to believe that the
government may be against him; when it is remembered that he is denied
the power to keep and bear arms; that he has not recovered from his
enforced ignorance of two hundred years; that no adequate means of education
has yet been provided for him; that his vote avails him nothing; that
emigration is impossible; that there is neither religion nor conscience in the
south to take his part, that he, of all men, is easiest convicted of crime; that
he does not see or receive a dollar in payment of wages; that, labor as he
will, he is brought in debt to the landed proprietor at the end of the year; that
he can lay up nothing for a rainy day; that by the opinion of the Supreme
Court of the United States the fourteenth amendment affords him no protection
against individuals of a state25Douglass refers to the U.S. Supreme Court decision on 15 October 1888 that struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875.— I say, when you remember all this,
you may realize something of the perilous condition of the negro citizens of
the south.
Then, again, the fate of John M. Clayton26The younger brother of Arkansas Republican governor and U.S. senator Powell Clayton, John Middleton Clayton (1840-89) was born in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and educated in local academies. He accompanied his brother to Arkansas after the Civil War, began a law practice, and entered politics as a Republican. Clayton won election to the state assembly (1870-72) and the state senate (1872-74) before serving five terms as sheriff of Jefferson County beginning in 1876. In a hotly contested race for Congress in 1888, he received 4,369 votes to 5,201 for Democrat Clifton R. Breckinridge. Clayton blamed his defeat on fraud and intimidation but he was murdered in Conway County on 29 January 1889 while gathering evidence to contest the election results. His brother and many other Republicans claimed that the investigation of the killing by Democratic governor James Eagle intentionally failed to locate the murderer for partisan reasons. Powell Clayton, (New York, 1915), 184-93; Dallas T. Herndon, ed., , 4 vols. (Hopkinsville, Ky., 1947), 1: 218; , 7:60. and of Mr. Phillips, of
Arkansas, one of them shot down while peaceably seeking proofs of his
election to Congress, brutally assassinated, and the other kicked and shot
to death in open daylight, and neither the murderers in the one case nor the
assassinators in the other have been made to answer for their crimes,
admonish us that neither the negro nor the friends of the negro have yet any
standing before the law or in the public opinion of the old slave states.
Now I point to these facts tending toward the reestablishment
of negro
slavery in the south, not because I believe slavery will finally be established
there, but because they are features of the situation and should be exposed
in order that the end at which they aim may not be realized—forewarned,
—forearmed.27Douglass quotes a maxim from Miguel de Cervantes's , Part II, Book III, Chap. 10, Miguel de Cervantes, , trans. Peter Motteux (1605; New York, 1930), 502. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.28Douglass recites an adage by John Philpot Curran. Curran, , 188-89. I bring
this aspect before you upon the principle that an illustrious lawyer adopted,
namely, always to try a cause first against his client.
It is easy to indulge in the illusions of hope, and to rejoice over what we
have gained, and it is always more or less painful to contemplate the
possibility of misfortune and disaster. But a brave man will not shrink from
looking truth squarely in the face, no matter what may be the consequences,
and you and I, and all of us know that if slavery is not re-established
in the southern states, it will not be because there is any power
inside those states, at present, to prevent this practice and return to barbarism.
From every view I have been able to take of the present situation in
relation to the colored people of the United States I am forced to the
conclusion that the irrepressible conflict,29An allusion to the title of a speech delivered by William H. Seward in Rochester, New York, on 25 October 1858. Seward, . of which we heard so much
before the war of the rebellion and during the war, is still in progress. It is
still the battle between two opposite civilizations—the one created and
sustained by slavery, and the other framed and fashioned in the spirit of
liberty and humanity, and this conflict will not be ended until one or the
other shall be completely adopted in every section of our common country.
THE SOUTH IS STILL THE SOUTH,
and under the doctrine of local self-government it shelters the vicious idea
that it can defy the constitution and the laws of the United States, especially
those laws which respect the enfranchisement of colored citizens. The idea
of local self-government destroyed the Freedman’s bureau, drove United
States soldiers out of the south, expelled northern immigrants, excluded
negro citizens from state legislatures, and gave all power to the southern
slave masters. Such is the situation to-day, and it remains to be seen
whether it is to be permanent or transient. In my opinion this state of things
cannot be permanent.
While revolutions may for a time seem to roll backwards; while reactionary
tendencies and forces may arrest the wheels of progress, and while
the colored man of the South may still have to suffer the lash and sting of a
by-gone condition, there are forces and influences silently and yet powerfully
working out his deliverance. The individual southern states are great,
but the nation is greater. Justice, honor, liberty, and fidelity to the constitution
and laws may seem to sleep, but they are not dead. They are alive and
had more to do with bringing our Republican President into the presidential
chair than is sometimes supposed. The red-shirted rifle companies of Carolina
and Mississippi may rule for a time, but only for a time. They may rob
the negro of his vote to-day, but the negro will have his vote to-morrow. The
spirit of the age is with him. Slavery is vanishing from even the darkest
corners of the earth. The schoolmaster is abroad—even in the South. The
negro of the plantation may be ignorant, but the negro of the town and the
city will be intelligent. The light of education which has illuminated the
one will in time, illuminate the other.
But there is another force to be relied upon. It is the fact that the
representatives of the best civilization of our times are compelled, in self-
defense, to extirpate the illegal, unconstitutional barbarism of the late
slave-holding states.
There is yet good reason to believe in the virtue of the loyal American
people. They hate fraud, loathe rapine, and despise meanness. It was no
reckless freak or madness that made them pour out their blood and their
treasure in the late war, and there was a deep moral and patriotic purpose at
the bottom of that sacrifice; a purpose that is not yet extinct. and will not be
easily abandoned. If the Republican party shall fail to carry out this purpose.
God will raise up another party which will be faithful. They resented
secession, and fought to make a free, strong, and united nation. It was the
aim of good men then, and it is the aim of good men now, and the effort to
gain it will continue till that end shall be obtained. They may be patient and
long-suffering. They have been patient and long-suffering. But patience
itself will cease to be a virtue.
Do you ask me what can be done? I answer, we can at least purify the
ballot box by requiring that no man shall hold a seat, in Congress, who
reaches it by fraud, violence, and intimidation; by requiring that every man
from the South, and from the North, and from everywhere else, shall come
into that body by means uncorrupted by fraud, and unstained by blood.
They will yet see to it that murder and assassination shall not be the
passport to a seat in the councils of the nation. There is to-day a man in that
body who holds his place because assassination has stepped between him
and an honest contestant. White men may make light of
THE MURDER OF A SCORE OF NEGROES.
They may shut their eyes and ridicule all denunciation of murder, when
committed against defenceless negroes, but they will not be deaf to the
white man’s blood, when it cries from the ground for vengeance. The
advantage of the black man’s cause is that the white man cannot help
himself without helping him. Law and order for the one will ultimately be
law and order for the other.
There is still another ground of hope for the freemen of the southern
states. It is that the good citizens of these states cannot afford, and will not
consent, to lag far behind the old free states in all the elements of civilization.
They want population, capital, invention, and enterprise. They have
rich resources to be developed, and they want both men and money to
develop them and enhance their prosperity. The wise and loyal people in
these states know very well that they can never be prosperous; that they can
never have their share of immigration from at home or abroad, while they
are known and distinguished for intolerance, fraud, violence, and lynch
law. They know that while this character attaches to them, capital will hold
aloof from them, and population shun them as it would shun a land blasted
by pestilence and death. They know that their rich mines and fertile soil
will fail to attract immigrants from any country unblasted by slavery. They
know that industrious and enterprising men, searching for homes will turn
their backs upon the South and make their way to the west and north, where
they can hold and express their opinions without fear of the bowie knife and
shotgun of the assassin.
Thus the self-interest of the people of these states will yet teach them
justice, humanity, and civilization. For the present, the better element at
the South is terror stricken and silent, but encouraged by the trend of the
nation to higher and better conditions of existence, it will not always
remain dumb and inactive, but will assert itself as Missouri is already
doing, and as Arkansas will yet do. I was in this latter state only a few days
after the assassination of John M. Clayton.30In the winter of 1889, Douglass conducted a lecturing tour of Arkansas and Kansas. He arrived in Little Rock on 4 February 1889 and delivered his lecture on “Self-Made Men" the following evening at that city's Capitol Theatre. Douglass then lectured in Pine Bluff and Hot Springs, Arkansas, and several Kansas communities before returning to Washington by way of St. Louis, St. Louis , 16 February 1889; Willard B. Gatewood, Jr. “Frederick Douglass in Arkansas," , 41: 303-15 (Winter 1982). I saw the wholesome horror
manifested by the intelligent and worthy citizens of that state at this
dastardly political murder. They were anxious for the good name of Arkansas,
and asked me how the people of the north would regard them. I had to
tell them in sadness that the outside world would look at them through the
warm red blood of John M. Clayton and that the state of Arkansas would be
held rigidly responsible till the arrest, trial, conviction, and punishment of
THE ASSASSIN AND HIS INSTIGATORS.
In conclusion, while I have plainly portrayed the sources of danger to
our people, while I have described the reactionary forces with which we
have to contend, l have no fears as to the character of the final result. The
American people are governed, not only by laws and selfish interests, but
by large ideas of moral and material civilization.
The spirit of justice, liberty, and fair play is abroad in the land. It is in
the air. It animates men of all stations, of all professions and callings, and
can neither be silenced nor extirpated. It has an agent in every bar of
railroad iron, a servant in every electric wire, a missionary in every trav-
eler. It not only tunnels the mountains, fills up the valleys, and sheds upon
us the light of science, but it will ultimately destroy the unnumbered
wrongs inherited by both races from the system of slavery and barbarism.
In this direction is the trend of the nation. States may lag, parties may
hesitate, leaders may halt, but to this complexion it must come at last.
States, parties, and leaders must, and will in the end, adjust themselves to
this overwhelming and irresistible tendency. It will make parties, and
unmake parties, will make rulers, and unmake rulers, until it shall become
the fixed, universal and irreversible law of the land. For fifty years it has
made progress against all contradictions. It stemmed the current of opposition
in church and state. It has removed many proscriptions. It has opened
the gates of knowledge. It has abolished slavery. It has saved the Union. It
has reconstructed the government upon a basis of justice and liberty, and it
will see to it that the last vestige of fraud and violence on the ballot box
shall disappear, and there shall be one country, one law, one liberty, for all
the people of the United States.