FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY¹A copy of Douglass’s letter in the Washington could not be located. The text reproduced here is from the Syracuse . It is not known whether the or the initiated the practice of excerpting portions of Douglass’s letter text to serve as subheadings in the newspaper article.

[n.p. 4 March 1875.]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE WASHINGTON CHRONICLE :—²D. C. (Daniel Carpenter) Forney (1827–91) was the publisher and editor of the Washington in 1875. Forney was the younger cousin and longtime associate of the ambitious Pennsylvania politico John W. Forney, who established the Chronicle in 1861 as a virtual organ for the Lincoln administration. Throughout the period of the Forney family’s editorial control (1861–81), the was staunchly Republican and generally supported legislation and governmental action aimed at expanding civil rights for blacks. Washington , 27 June 1891; Rowell, , 30; James Thompson Sheep, “John W. Forney: Stormy Petrel of American Journalism” (Ph. D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1959), 65; Ford Risley, “The President’s Editor: John W. Forney of the Press and Morning Chronicle,” , 26: 63–85 (2009).

SIR:—

You have already allowed me liberal space in your columns to speak in
the interest of my people, for which I thank you sincerely. You will now
increase my debt and my sense of obligation by allowing me space for
a few words more, especially with reference to the pending civil rights
bill.³Beginning in May 1870, Massachusetts Republican senator Charles Sumner repeatedly and unsuccessfully sponsored a civil rights bill that would outlaw racial discrimination in transportation carriers, places of public amusement and accommodation, public schools, and juries, as well as in churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions incorporated by law. Sumner’s death in March 1874 motivated Republican senators to pass his bill—amended to leave out churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions—on 23 May 1874, too late for passage by the House of Representatives before its summer recess. After congressional elections in the fall of 1874 returned a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1860, Radical Republicans in the House, led by Benjamin F. Butler, worked feverishly that winter to pass a civil rights law before relinquishing control that spring. Overcoming severe Democratic obstructionism, as well as resistance from moderates in their own party, House Republicans passed a bill on 5 February that was identical to the Senate’s, except it eliminated all mention of schools. Naturally, all those who believed that integrated public schools would significantly undermine popular racism favored the Senate’s version. Nevertheless, Senate Republicans, recognizing that the House version was the best that could be obtained, approved it on 27 February. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was signed by President Ulysses S. Grant on 1 March 1875. Calhoun, , 36–39, 52–54, 69–72, 78; “Black Americans in Congress, Legislative Interests,” history.house.gov. While I regard the Senate bill as incomparably better than the one

passed by the House, it does seem to me of the utmost importance that one
or the other of these bills shall be immediately passed. There are urgent
reasons for this, both in the hard lot of the colored people in the South,
and in the necessities of the Republican party itself. If that bill is passed
and becomes the law of the land the country will have its doubts removed
as to the vitality and soundness of the Republican party. It will show that
its leaders are still in earnest; that they still believe in the great principle
of freedom and equality asserted in the Declaration of Independence, and
reasserted in the amended constitution of the country, and that, sink or
swim, fall or flourish, they mean to stand by that principle, and by every
just inference from it.

AT THIS MOMENT OF GLOOM,

when the old disloyal element of the country seems steadily rising to
power, and all revolutionary elements are rampant, and

APOSTATES FROM OUR RANKS

are grinning in the faces, and squeezing the hands of men who once hated,
but now only despise them, the passing of this bill would be such a manifestation of our courage and fidelity as would greatly redound to the credit
of the Republican party, and help to check the lawless spirit of the South.
My people are killed there because they are supposed to have been, or are
about to be abandoned by the Republican party. We need the measure, not
so much for its literal execution as for its moral effect.

WE WANT IT BECAUSE IT IS RIGHT

and because, now that it has been debated for years, if it shall be defeated
our condition as a class will be rendered worse than it would have been
had no attempts been made to pass it. I counsel nothing, however, inconsistent with the success of the Republican party in urging this bill, but I
see success in the line of its principles, and nowhere else. It has nothing
to gain by any deviation or leaning toward reaction. That position has already been conspicuously and permanently taken by a party from which
it cannot be wrested. Our strength is in keeping on our own ground. Any
concession to the prejudices born of slavery is

FOLLY AND WEAKNESS OF THE WORST KIND.

It exposes the party, with some show of truth, to one of the most
destructive charges which can be brought against it, and that is insincerity,

cowardice and hypocrisy. The party can far better take the odium of
passing the bill than be lashed and despised for its lack of manliness—its
want of courage in carrying out its convictions. In my judgment the future
success of the Republican party depends upon no three things more than
these: the civil rights bill, giving President Grant all needful power to
keep the peace of the South, and seating P. B. S. Pinchback⁴Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was a colorful and controversial black politician whose ambitions for national office were destroyed by his ties to the imbroglio known as the Louisiana question. The freeborn son of a Georgia planter and his manumitted mulatto mistress, Pinchback was one of many Republicans, both white and black, to mix officeholding and business speculation in Louisiana’s notoriously corrupt post–Civil War political environment. Elected to the state senate in 1867, he was chosen by that body in 1871 and 1872 to fill out terms as lieutenant governor and governor when those offices were vacated because of death and impeachment. When Pinchback ran for Congress, he aligned himself with the William P. Kellogg faction in the violence-marred and disputed state and congressional elections of 1872, commonly known as the Louisiana question to the multiple congressional committees that attempted to sort them out. Before Pinchback’s election to Congress was resolved, he was elected by the state legislature to represent Louisiana in the U.S. Senate in January 1873. Eventually granted a seat in the House, he waived it, seeking approval of his senatorial election. The combined efforts of hostile Democrats and disgruntled Republicans delayed the Senate’s voting upon his seating until 1876, whereupon he was rejected. Although racism certainly played an outsized role, Pinchback’s shady reputation, his claims to both a House and a Senate seat, the sordid details of the Louisiana question, and the Republicans’ growing weariness with southern Reconstruction all contributed to his rebuff by the Senate. Eric Foner, , rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, La., 1996), 171–72; Nicholas Patler, “The Startling Career of P. B. S. Pinchback: A Whirlwind Crusade to Bring Equality to Reconstructed Louisiana,” in Lynch, , 1: 211–33; Agnes S. Grosz, “The Political Career of Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback,” , 27: 527–612 (1944); George Rable, “Republican Albatross: The Louisiana Question, National Politics, and the Failure of Reconstruction,” , 23: 109–30 (Spring 1982). in the Senate
upon his credentials.

The fundamental, perpetual and vital objection to the passing of the
civil rights bill is its supposed tendency to promote social equality between the white and colored people of this country. This, if I understand
it, is what gives such serious trouble to Senators Saulsbury,⁵A member of a politically prominent Delaware family, Willard Saulsbury, Sr. (1820–92) practiced law before being elected state attorney general (1850–55) and then U.S. senator (1859–71) as a Democrat. He returned to the practice of the law before holding the post of state chancellor from 1873 until his death. During the Civil War, Saulsbury was a vocal critic of the Lincoln administration, especially the president’s suspension of habeas corpus. (online). Bayard,⁶Thomas Francis Bayard, Sr. (1828–98) served three terms as a U.S. senator from Delaware (1869–85). His father, James A. Bayard, Jr. (1799–1880), had served in the Senate (1851–64), and as a Peace Democrat he contested nearly every action of the Lincoln administration and the Republican Congress during the Civil War. Likewise a Peace Democrat, the younger Bayard subsequently challenged every Republican executive or legislative effort to reconstruct the South, and especially denounced the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1875. So forceful and consistent was Bayard’s defense of the South that one admiring correspondent labeled him an “ex-Confederate.” Bayard later served as secretary of state under Grover Cleveland (1885–89) and as ambassador to the United Kingdom (1893–97). His son, Thomas F. Bayard, Jr. (1868–1942), served as U.S. senator from Delaware from 1922 to 1929. Charles Callan Tansill, (Washington, D.C., 1946), 1–101; Albert V. House, Jr., “Northern Congressional Democrats as Defenders of the South During Reconstruction,” , 6: 46–71 (February 1940); (online). Gordon,⁷John Brown Gordon (1832–1904) served as a U.S. senator from Georgia from 1873 to 1880, and again from 1891 to 1897. The son of a Georgia planter, Gordon had a stellar military career in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, rising from captain to major general in the course of three years. After the war, Gordon was heavily rumored to have headed the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. He strenuously denied this charge, or even of having any knowledge of the Klan, before a congressional investigating committee in 1871, although he acknowledged temporary membership in a secret “peace police” organization. Most historians, even fawning biographers, believe that he played a greater role in the Klan than he publicly allowed. In the Senate, he was more moderate in speech and tone than most southern Democrats, yet he always insisted that northern carpetbaggers and Radical Republican Reconstruction policies were the primary source of social unrest in the South. After northern public opinion had generally repudiated Reconstruction by the 1890s, Gordon became a popular national figure as an ambassador of sectional reconciliation and national unity. These themes are central in his best-selling book (1903), which influenced Americans’ views of the Civil War and Reconstruction far into the twentieth century. U.S. Congress, , 1: 308–10, 320–26 (Washington, D.C., 1872); Allan P. Tankersley, (Atlanta, 1955), 249–62; Ralph Lowell Eckert, (Baton Rouge, La., 1989), 145–49; Foner, , 433. Merrimon⁸Augustus Summerfield Merrimon (1830–92) was a significant lawyer, jurist, and Democratic politician in North Carolina during the Reconstruction era. A native of Asheville, Merrimon held state legislative and judicial positions in western North Carolina before and during the Civil War. In the late 1860s, his reputation acquired a permanent stain when he amassed wealth and influence by providing legal services to a group of buccaneering railroad promoters led by Milton S. Littlefield and George W. Swepson. Although he lost a close gubernatorial election in the fall of 1872, he was immediately elected U.S. senator and began his term in March 1873. In the Senate, he consistently banded together with other southern Democrats to oppose all Reconstruction policies. After losing to Zebulon Vance in the battle to control the state’s Democratic party, Merrimon returned to law and the bench, serving as an associate justice (1883–89) and then chief justice (1889–92) of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Foner, , 386–87; Charles L. Price, “The Railroad Schemes of George W. Swepson,” , 1: 32–50 (1964); (online). and others from the late slave States.

IN REPLYING TO THESE GENTLEMEN

I have no cowardly disclaimers against social equality to make, for I know
what social equality is. I have rather a favorable opinion of it. Having
associated pretty freely with white persons, both at home and abroad, I
have acquired a taste for it, and would be the last to shrink from any of
its consequences. But what do these gentlemen mean by social equality?
That is the question. When we know this we can tell whether their fears
are well or ill founded, and whether this bill favors what they so earnestly
deprecate or not.

Under the old slave system, with which these gentleman are well acquainted, and under which I was born, and, as we used to say, “fotched
up,”⁹“Fotched up” or “fetched (fotched) up” meant “raised” or “brought up.” The phrase possibly was of Native American origin. “A Dialect Dictionary of Lumbee English,” learnnc.org. we had a great deal of “society” with white people, but not the least
bit of “equality.” It was one-sided “society.” Voluntary on one side and
involuntary on the other. There was nothing mutual about it. If my old
master at any time wanted my company, whether to ride, to walk, or to sit
down with him, he had not to address me a respectful and polite invitation to do so. He had but to command—my part was to obey. Good as his
society was

I OFTEN FOUND IT A GREAT BORE

and would have gladly separated myself from it, but the old man would
insist upon my staying with him. I saw all around me much pleasanter
society than his, but even that society shrunk from me when then saw me
in company with the “old man.” A deeper shade is given to this inequal
society when we look a little further into the relations of its members. A
state of facts existed in this regard which should tinge with shame these

fighters against social equality. Two hundred years ago the people of this
country were, on the one side, white, and on the other side black. There
was no intermediate race or color in the country. But how stands the case
to-day? You are confronted by more than a million of people who are
neither white nor black.¹⁰It is not clear where Douglass got his information, but the Ninth U.S. Census reported 4,295,960 blacks and 584,049 mulattos, for a total of 4,880,009 non-white residents on June 1, 1870. It should be noted that the categories “black” and “mulatto” were very fluid in all censuses of this period, since their individual determination was left up to local census marshals. (Washington, D.C., 1872), 5, 608.

UNDER WHAT SOCIAL RELATIONS

was this result brought about? I charge it as the direct result of the social inequality which for two centuries prevailed in the South. The black
woman of the South was subject to the will of her master, and also subject
to all those who belonged to the master class—for the slave was not only
slave to her master, but the slave of all the white members of society.
Against this sort of society the voice of no Southern Senator has been
raised. Their learning, their wit, and their eloquence have all been expended against what they call social equality. In their opposition to the
Civil Rights bill they have either failed to comprehend it or have grossly
perverted its meaning and effect.

I should like to ask those men who oppose this bill on the ground that
it tends to social equality,

WHAT THEY MEAN BY SOCIAL EQUALITY?

What is it composed of? How is it defined? What conditions are essential
to its existence? Where does it begin? Where does it end? What are the
laws by which it is regulated?

As the matter stands now they make social equality something quite
mysterious, not to say terrible and awful. Perhaps the best way to find out
what social equality is, will be to inquire and ascertain, if possible, what
it is not. Let us now go to the outer circle and travel toward the center, and
we may thereby be able to solve this mystery of social equality. Is it living
in the same world, breathing the same air, and feeling the genial rays of
the same sun? Then the Bushman and Hottentot of Africa¹¹“Bushman” and “Hottentot” were terms applied to the indigenous San and Khoekhoen (also Khoikhoi) peoples of the South African Cape by the Dutch settlers who colonized the region in the seventeenth century. The two groups were closely related in many ways, yet because of their separate historical development, the San remained hunter-gatherers and the Khoekhoen were herders. Europeans considered the appearance and lifestyles of these groups to be so strange and primitive that by the nineteenth century the terms “Bushmen” and “Hottentot” were well-established shorthand references for ignorance, barbarity, and cultural inferiority. That is precisely the way in which Douglass is using the terms here. Note that Douglass is writing before the ascendency of the theory of cultural relevancy, that is, the concept of considering the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture. In the twenty-first century, both “Bushman” and “Hottentot” are considered offensive terms. Alan Mountain, (Claremont, South Africa, 2003), 23–24; Linda E. Merians, (Newark, Del., 2001), 13–31. is socially the
equal of the best society in London and Paris. Well, if it is not living in
the same world

THEN WHAT IS IT?

Is it living on the same continent, in the same country, in the same state,
the same city? It is evident that neither of these conditions embrace the
idea of social equality; for a man may live in the same town and yet have
no social fellowship with thousands of his equal fellow townsmen. But
let us come a little nearer. Does living on the same street, walking on

the same sidewalk, riding on the same horse car, standing upon the same
deck, or sleeping under the same roof, comprehend what is involved in the
idea of social equality? I suppose nobody with any brains will contend
that they do.

A MANY MAY SIT AT MY SIDE

in a theater or at the dinner table of a hotel, and yet be as far above or
below me socially as heaven is above the earth. Well, what then is social
equality? for it is evident that we have not yet found it by this negative
method. But once more:—Is it voting at the same ballot-box, drinking water from the same stream, seated in the same Senate chamber, of having
one’s name on the same roll? No, this cannot be, for it entirely excludes
the idea of kindred character and disposition, and involves the absurdity
that Senator Norwood,¹²Thomas Manson Norwood (1830–1913) was a lawyer and politician whose long professional career was based in Savannah, Georgia. He was a Democrat who served in the Georgia House of Representatives (1851–62), the U.S. Senate (1871–77), and the U.S. House of Representatives (1885– 89). In the Senate, Norwood’s voice was perhaps the loudest attacking Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill—the genesis of the Civil Rights Act of 1875—on the grounds that it attempted to legislate “social equality” and would thereby legalize miscegenation. In fact, some Republicans charged that the term “social equality” was nothing more than a lightly veiled reference to miscegenation, deliberately chosen to arouse public sentiment against the bill. Those supporting the law countered by arguing for a distinction between civil and social equality, as Douglass does here. In contrast to his Georgia colleague John B. Gordon, Norwood was notorious for his sarcasm, vituperation, and race-baiting, as is noted by Douglass. In his later years, which corresponded with the triumph of Jim Crow throughout the South, Norwood displayed his undeniable wit and erudition in a wide range of articles and books encompassing an impressive array of genres. Their defining characteristic, according to William H. Bragg, was “a racism extreme even for his time and place.” William Harris Bragg, “The Junius of Georgia Redemption: Thomas M. Norwood and the ‘Nemesis’ Letters,” , 77: 86–122 (Spring 1993); Steven A. Bank, “Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the Dilemma of Symmetry: The Understanding of Equality in the Civil Rights Act of 1875,” , 2: 303–44 (1995); (online). with his stale jokes and coarse witticisms at the
expense of a race which has no representative on the floor of the Senate to
reply to him, is socially the equal of such gentlemen as Senators Frelinghuysen,¹³Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen. Boutwell,¹⁴George Sewall Boutwell. = Edwards,¹⁵Probably George Franklin Edmunds (1828–1919), a long-serving Republican U.S. senator from Vermont whose legacy is underappreciated. After serving almost a decade in the Vermont House and Senate, Edmunds was sent repeatedly by those bodies to the U.S. Senate from 1866 until his resignation in 1891. He is largely remembered as the architect and manager of the electoral commission that decided the outcome of the presidential election of 1876, and thus is credited by some with saving the nation from widespread bloodshed. Otherwise he is considered a rather colorless member of the moderate Half-Breed faction of the Republican party, which equally emphasized social harmony and economic growth. Largely forgotten is his loyal backing of the Radical Republican agenda during his first ten years in the Senate, as well as his consistent support, during his entire Senate career, for the use of federal power to protect the civil rights of African Americans. Since Edmunds’s time in the Senate perfectly overlapped with the rise and fall of southern Reconstruction—from the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to the defeat of the Lodge Federal Elections Bill in 1891—he might be considered the steadiest congressional defender of black civil rights throughout this crucial quarter century. George F. Edmunds, (Washington, D.C., 1875); Calhoun, , 28–29, 31, 37, 64, 66, 78, 161, 197, 258–59; Richard E. Welch, Jr., “George Edmunds of Vermont: Republican Half-Breed,” , 36: 64–73 (Spring 1968); Norbert Kuntz, “Edmunds’ Contrivance: Senator George Edmunds of Vermont and the Electoral Compromise of 1877,” 38: 305–15 (Autumn 1970); (online). Sherman,¹⁶A younger brother of the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, John Sherman (1823–1900) worked as a surveyor before commencing the practice of law at the age of twenty-one. A founder of Ohio’s Republican party, he served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from the Cleveland district (1855–61). In 1861 the Ohio legislature elected Sherman to the U.S. Senate, where he stayed until 1897, except for four years as Rutherford B. Hayes’s secretary of the treasury. The war turned Sherman from a proponent of gradual emancipation into a strong abolitionist and critic of Lincoln’s even slower evolution. In 1864 he was a public supporter of the efforts to replace Lincoln as the Republican presidential nominee with Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. A highly pragmatic politician, he usually sought the middle ground on controversial Reconstruction and economic issues. Sherman’s efforts to obtain the Republican presidential nomination in 1880, 1884, and 1888 proved futile. He served as William B. McKinley’s secretary of state but resigned in 1900 because of his antiexpansionist sentiments. John Sherman, , 2 vols. (Chicago, 1895); Sobel, , 328; , 3: 198–201. Conkling,¹⁷Roscoe Conkling (1829–88), Republican politician, was born in Albany, New York. He trained for the law in Utica, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and served as district attorney for Oneida County from 1850 until he was elected mayor of Utica in 1858. The following year he entered the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until an 1862 defeat, but returning in 1865 for one term. Serving in the Senate from 1867 until 1881, Conkling ardently advocated Ulysses Grant’s Reconstruction policies. A champion of the political spoils system, Conkling opposed the civil service reforms advocated by Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield. During Garfield’s administration Conkling and a colleague, Thomas C. Platt, resigned from the Senate to protest Garfield’s appointment of a former Liberal Republican to a key patronage job in the New York City customhouse. Platt and Conkling were chagrined when they lost their anticipated reelections. Conkling resumed his law practice in New York City. David M. Jordan, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971); Donald B. Chidsey, (New Haven, Conn., 1935); , 1: 706–07. Thurman¹⁸Allen Granberry Thurman (1813–95) was a conservative Democratic lawyer, politician, and jurist from Ohio who was widely respected for his ability to balance partisanship with the courteous treatment of his opponents. He was introduced to the practice of law and Jacksonian politics by his uncle, William Allen, a long-term influence on Thurman and Ohio’s Democratic party. Thurman served as a U.S. representative (1845–47) and as both an associate and chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court (1852–56). During the Civil War he positioned himself as a War Democrat highly critical of the Lincoln administration. In 1867 he lost the Ohio governor’s race to Rutherford B. Hayes by a slim margin. His conduct during this campaign largely eliminated the influence of the Copperhead Clement L. Vallandigham from the state party, and a grateful Democratic-controlled legislature elected him to two terms in the U.S. Senate (1869–81). Throughout his tenure in the Senate, Thurman mercilessly attacked Republican Reconstruction policies but usually in a manner that highlighted legal reasoning and downplayed emotion. As a result, he established close friendships with Republicans with whom he disagreed vehemently upon policy, most notably George F. Edmunds. It seems clear that Thurman’s reputation for civility is the reason that Douglass placed him on a list otherwise full of Republicans. Allen G. Thurman, (Washington, D.C., 1875); House, “Northern Congressional Democrats,” 50, 53, 55; Albert V. House, “Internal Conflict in Key States in the Democratic Convention of 1880,” , 27: 188–216 (April 1960); (online). and
others. I have traveled in an English stagecoach for days together without
ever exchanging a word with the passenger next to me. When a slave I sat

SIDE BY SIDE BY MY MISTRESS,

and master in their carriage, and yet social equality did not exist. Every
day I am spoken to here in this capital by gentlemen who do not recognize
me as socially their equal. A great many things are essential to social
equality. The hod-carrier and the millionaire are equal as to rights in the
street, and equal as to proprietorship when in their homes, but neither
has the right to enter the doors of the other without that other’s invitation
or consent. Social equality involves a sacred right of choice. The right
of choice is not less precious to the humble and poor than the high and
rich. As a colored man I ask only such protection by the law as is freely
granted to the people of all other colors. I ask that my color shall no longer
be treated as a crime, and that the manhood of my race may no longer be
insulted by the denial of rights which are freely accorded to every other
race and nationality. I ask that loyal men who assisted in saving the country shall not be denied civil rights in deference to the malign sentiments
of defeated rebels and traitors

WHO SOUGHT TO DESTROY THE COUNTRY.

To those who pretend to think me indifferent or inactive in regard to
the civil rights bill I have only to say that I have written and spoken as

much in its favor as themselves. A hundred towns and cities in this country can bear witness to the truth of this statement. I have no disposition to
question the efficiency of those who have merely hung about the capitol
and committee rooms of Congress. They have doubtless done well within
their sphere, and I thank them for all they have done, but when they turn
upon me and charge me as failing in my duty they display neither modesty, charity nor justice.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

PLSr: , 4 Marc 1875.