FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO A. H. BALSLEY¹After a number of changes in ownership, the Fremont (Ohio) was owned by A. H. Balsley (1828–1904). Born in Pittsburgh, where he learned the printer’s trade, Balsley owned and edited numerous newspapers across Ohio. During the Civil War, he operated the Plymouth in Richland County, Ohio. The Fremont was considered a staunchly Republican party newspaper, regardless of its ownership in this era. (Cleveland, 1882), 231–32; A. A. Graham, (Mansfield, Ohio, 1880), 562.

Rochester, N.Y. 14 April 1869.²This letter was printed in the Fremont with the headline “william the silent.” Fremont (Ohio) , 23 April 1869.

SIR:

I thank you for sending the extract from your paper and for your letter,
written in the spirit of fair play, kindly offering me space in your columns
for a reply to a criticism made upon my lecture, entitled “William The Silent,”³Douglass delivered his lecture “William the Silent” at Burchard Hall in Fremont, Ohio, on 2 April 1869. The Fremont reported: “It was the lecturer’s first appearance before an audience in Fremont, and his reception was certainly very flattering, whether it originated through mere curiosity to see the man, or a desire to listen to his oratory.” Fremont (Ohio) , 9 April 1869. by Mr. S. Bower, Pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Fremont,
Ohio.⁴The Fremont published a hostile rebuttal, by a Roman Catholic priest named Seraphine Bauer (1835–1911), to the opinions Douglass expressed in his “William the Silent” lecture in that city on 2 April 1869. The pastor of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Fremont, Father Bauer accused Douglass of voicing prejudicial attacks on his denomination. Born in France to a French mother and German émigré father, Bauer migrated to the United States in 1854 and completed his ministerial studies in 1858. After tending to congregations around Toledo, Bauer spent the remainder of his career at St. Joseph’s parish. Fremont (Ohio) , 9 April 1869; , 503, 536–37. Though I have failed to perceive anything in that somewhat labored
criticism, imperatively demanding or strongly meriting either notice, denial or explanation from me, and though I dislike to depart from my usual
course of saying my say, and leaving the newspapers unquestioned for
anything they utter in the way of criticism upon my lectures, I will, in this
instance, partly because of my respect for Mr. Bower and partly to show
my appreciation of your generous offer of space for reply, venture to send
you a few lines, in answer to that part of Mr. Bower’s criticism in which
he not only attacks my manners but my honesty.

1st: As to good taste: Mr. Bower was displeased—his friends were offended—‘Mixed audience.’ ‘Catholics being listeners.’ ‘Came to pay and
honor him.’ But I cannot stay to repeat all the aggravating circumstances.
In answer, I make only one general statement.

No man at all connversant with the history of Catholic percecution,
under Spanish rule, three hundred years ago,⁵The Inquisition in Spain, which combined civil and religious authority, was an instrument for political and religious unification from 1473, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella obtained papal permission to establish such a court to rid Spain of residual heresy among its Christianized Jews and Moors. The Spanish Inquisition was unusually secretive and brutal, and Pope Pius V protested against its harshness to Philip II. Harold J. Grimm, (New York, 1954), 22, 423. and who possesses ordinary
knowledge of human nature, will deem it strange or surprising that any
sincere Catholic, like the pious and learned Pastor of St. Joseph’s should be
annoyed and highly displeased, by any effort of mine, however feeble, ‘eulogising William of Nassau,’ ‘making an apotheoses of him,’ &c. I should
as soon think of pleasing Henry A. Wise,⁶Henry Alexander Wise (1806–76), governor of Virginia from 1856 to 1860, graduated from Washington College in Pennsylvania, studied law under the famed jurist Henry St. George Tucker, and briefly practiced law in Nashville, Tennessee, before entering Virginia politics as a Jacksonian Democrat and opponent of nullification. Serving in Congress from 1833 to 1844, he attracted considerable notoriety for his impassioned defense of slavery and southern rights. Wise switched allegiance for a time to the Whig party, supporting the Harrison-Tyler presidential ticket of 1840, and serving as ambassador to Brazil under the Tyler administration. During the 1850s, Wise, again a Democrat, successfully opposed Know-Nothingism in Virginia, arguing in part that the new party harbored antislavery sentiments. As governor, Wise reacted zealously to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and desired particularly to implicate Douglass. He requested that President Buchanan hire two Virginia detectives as special federal agents to capture Douglass and deliver him to Virginia authorities. Even after Douglass left the United States, Wise employed a detective “to find out the whereabouts of the Negro Frederick Douglass and keep an eye on his movements and associates.” The northern press reported that a group of prominent southerners, including Wise, had offered $50,000 for Douglass’s capture. After his term as governor, Wise served as a delegate to the Washington Peace Convention of 1861 and as a general in the Confederate army. Douglass to the editor of the Rochester [], 31 October 1859, reprinted in the Montreal , 5 November 1859; , 2: 162–63 (November 1859); ., 23 December 1859; , 5 January 1860; Barton H. Wise, (New York, 1899); Quarles, , 115; Quarles, , 180–85; , 6: 579–80; , 20: 423–25. by praising John Brown; pleasing Lee,⁷Robert Edward Lee (1807–70) was the son of the Revolutionary War hero Henry “LightHorse Harry” Lee and scion of one of Virginia’s most distinguished families. He graduated from West Point in 1829, and throughout his military career, he attracted the praise of superiors, particularly for his service under Winfield Scott in the Mexican War. In 1859 he supervised the capture of John Brown following the failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When Virginia seceded, he followed his beloved state into the Confederacy. Despite lackluster performance early in the war, Lee was given command of the main Confederate force in the Virginia theater in June 1862. From then on, Lee campaigned brilliantly, defeating Union forces often twice the size of his own and staving off Confederate defeat in the East for nearly three years. After his surrender, he returned to Richmond as a paroled prisoner of war. In September 1865 he became president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. Lee scrupulously avoided involvement in the political controversies of Reconstruction. Emory M. Thomas, (New York, 1995); Douglas Southall Freeman, , 4 vols. (New York, 1934–35); Charles Bracelen Flood, (Boston, 1981); Burke Davis, (New York, 1959), 96–101, 379–87; E. B. Long and Barbara Long, (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), 663–64, 670–71; , 11: 120–29. by praising Grant;⁸Ulysses S. Grant. pleasing New Orleans, by praising Butler;⁹While military governor of New Orleans in 1862, the Union general Benjamin Franklin Butler alienated the conquered population and embarrassed Washington with his “Order No. 28,” which threatened that southern women demonstrating contempt for Union troops would be treated as prostitutes. Howard P. Nash, Jr., (Rutherford, N.J., 1969), 158–61; Richard S. West, (Boston, 1965), 147–48.

or Johnson,¹⁰Andrew Johnson. by praising Congress; as to think of pleasing Catholics by
portraying the virtues of William of Orange. With all respect, Mr. Bower
demands too much. He might as well ask me to go into the water, without getting wet, as to ask me to unfold the horrors of Catholic persecution, without giving pain to the sensibilities of devoted Catholics, in our
day. Time, and the onward march of liberal ideas, have wrought wonders,
and the end is not yet. Deeds of glory have been, by these potent agents,
converted into deeds of shame. The slavetrader was once a respectable
character; we now hang him at the yard arm as a pirate. To burn heretics
was once a religious duty, now it is an act of murder. Time, and the growing enlightenment of mankind, have wrought these changes. It is no fault
of mine that even Rome—the eternal city¹¹The sobriquet “Eternal City” has been attached to Rome since the first century B.C.E. William Morris and Mary Morris, Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (New York, 1977), 206.—must tremble, and that the
church known by its name, must bend or break down in accordance with
the irresistible forces of advancing ideas and the silent mutations of time.
After-coming generations will find, in many of the practices now deemed
honorable by christian men, the same cause for regret and shame, that the
Catholic now feels for the acts of his ancient brethern.

In my lecture, my aim was to bring before my hearers the lesson
which history teaches, against blind, arrogant, presumptious bigotry. I
think I did this with impartiality, if not with ability. I accorded to Catholics sincerity, and fully ascribed their extravagances to the darkness of the
age. I condemned intolerance and persecution as practiced by Protestants,
as when the same were practiced by Catholics. It is no fault of mine that
the record of the latter is blacker and bloodier than that of the former.

2d. But the Pope did not bless the assassins of William of Nassau.
Here are Mr. Bower’s words: ‘There is no authentication of such conduct of the Pope.’ ‘No honorable historian writes anything of the kind.’
‘William fell by the hand of Balthazer Gerard. who was baited on by lucre.’¹²In 1580, Philip II, ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, and Spanish possessions in the New World and Italy, offered a reward of 25,000 ecus, a patent of nobility, and free pardon for past offenses to anyone who would assassinate William of Nassau, ruler of the small principality of Orange in France and a major landholder in the Netherlands. A Calvinist, William opposed Philip’s plans to use military force to impose Roman Catholicism and a centralized administration over the Netherlands. A would-be assassin in 1582 tried to murder William but only wounded him. Pretending to be the son of a French Protestant martyr, Balthasar Gérard, a cabinetmaker’s apprentice and fervent Catholic, established an acquaintance with William in the spring of 1584. On the pretext of needing money for shoes, which would enable him to return to France to serve the Protestant cause, Gérard obtained from William the means to purchase a pair of pistols. On 10 July 1584, he easily gained access to William’s home and shot him at close range. John Lothrop Motley, , 3 vols. (New York, 1898), 2: 725–37; C[icely] V[eronica] Wedgwood, (1944; London, 1956), 213–14, 233, 248–51. ‘So fell the good Lincoln by the hand of Booth.’¹³Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 A.M. on 15 April 1865. The previous evening, he had attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. At approximately ten o’clock, the Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth had entered the president’s unguarded box and shot Lincoln in the head from behind with a derringer. Fatally wounded, Lincoln was carried out of the theater and across the street to the house of William Peterson, where he was placed on a bed in a rear room. The president never regained consciousness and died surrounded by surgeons, cabinet members, congressmen, and other federal officials. Louis J. Weichmann, (New York, 1975), 147–58; Benjamin P. Thomas, (New York, 1952), 520–21; Francis Wilson, (Boston, 1929), 112–17; Mark E. Neely, Jr., (New York, 1982), 11–13. ‘Will not say that
Mr. Douglass lied. No; he only babbled after another.’

Well, I will show myself as generous and as gentlemanly as Mr. Bower
has shown himself. I will neither say that he ‘lied, nor that he babbled
after another,’ for such things are easily said and might imply only the
bad temper of those who utter them; but this I will say, that my respected
critic has resorted to a very obvious artifice, by which dexterous debaters take advantage of an error of phrase to prove an error of fact and
substance, where no error exists. Now, I don’t know that I employed the
phrases, ‘Benediction.’ ‘Blessed.’ I do not find them in my written lecture;

but admitting that I did use those words, and admitting that they are technically erronious, it is easy to show them in substance correct. For this
purpose I will criticize the critic. He tells us that ‘William fell by the hand
of Balthaser Gerard,’ ‘as Lincoln fell by the hand of Booth,’ ‘that there
are political fantics as well as religious ones,’—all of which is the truth,
but not the whole truth. The difference between Gerard and Booth is, that
one was an hired assassin, and the other was not. Gerard acted under a
public law and in accordance with the command of a soverign, publicly
proclaimed. Booth simply played the part of a revengeful murderer, who
kills to get the object of his hate out of his way. Mr. Bower tells us that
Gerard was ‘baited on by lucre,’ but he does not tell you, as he might have
told you, that the man who baited that murderous hook, was a dignitary in
the church of Rome, but little lower than the Pope himself. He could have
told you, for he is evidently familiar with the ‘filth of historical by-ways,’
that this foul egg of assassination, was hatched under the sacred hat of
Cardinal Granville.¹⁴Scion of an influential Burgundian family, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–86) entered the Roman Catholic ministry but made his real mark in the diplomatic service of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In 1575 he began serving Charles’s son Philip II, who had inherited the Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and New World portions of his father’s extensive holdings. Philip appointed Granvelle head of the Council of State that administered the province of the Netherlands, where his attempt to impose Roman Catholic orthodoxy and centralized administration provoked loud protests from the Dutch. Philip recalled Granvelle, but historians such as John Lothrop Motley contended that he guided the king in the successful plot to assassinate William of Nassau. Motley, , 1: 216, 238, 320, 323, 491. A cardinal who, with all other cardinals, lived under
the constant benedictions of the Pope, and not less after than before he
procured the murder of William Prince of Orange.

FRED. DOUGLASS.

PLSr: Fremont (Ohio) Journal, 23 April 1869.