FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Washington[,] D.C. 3 July 1874.

HON GERRIT SMITH.

MY DEAR AND VENERATED FRIEND,

I thank you very sincerely for your kind note of June 29th and for your
printed letter to me,¹Douglass printed Smith’s letter to him, dated 27—not 29—June 1874, in a New National Era article entitled “Civil Rights Bill and West Point Academy.” In that letter, Smith labeled the “two citizenships” doctrine of the Supreme Court’s recent Slaughterhouse decision a “mischievous discovery, though made by but five of the nine judges, [which] has, in the present instance, furnished the enemies of equal rights with their most effective weapon.” NNE, 9 July 1874. adminstering a timely and deserved rebuke of the
malignant spirit of caste and the timidity and perfidy of the Republican
party for failing to pass the Civil Rights Bill. It was gratifying to see again
your well known hand and to find proofs in it, as well as in the warmth
and vigor of your arguments that you bear up bravely under your nearly
four score years. You hit the nail on the head when you strike the imprac-

doctrine of two citizenships as laid down in the slaughter house case.
Two citizenships mean no citizenship. The one destroys the other. It is
the Folly as Franklin²One of the early nation’s most iconic figures, Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) migrated from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania at age seventeen and eventually became one of Philadelphia’s cultural, business, and political leaders. His writings won him an international reputation. Franklin spent many years in London as a lobbyist for Pennsylvania (and sometimes additional colonies) at the Court of St. James. Initially, Franklin worked for accommodation between the British and the colonists, but he wholeheartedly supported the revolutionary cause. He represented the rebels at the court of the French king and won crucial military support. After the revolution, Franklin was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and held the equivalent of the Pennsylvania governorship for over two years. Franklin lent his name to several antislavery organizations in his last years, but modern scholars caution that his record was far more compromised and compromising than generally recognized. H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2000); David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York, 2004). would have it, of harness a horse at each end of the
wagon.³When discussing the merits and risks of the forms of government that might manage the emerging nation in 1776, Thomas Paine recorded that Benjamin Franklin advocated for a “carefully calculated system of checks and balances” and a bicameral system of government: “It Appears to me like putting one horse before the cart and the other behind it, and whipping them both. If the horses are of equal strength, the wheels of the cart, like the wheels of government, will stand still; and if the horses are strong enough the cart will be torn in pieces.” Thomas Paine, The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Monecure Daniel Conway, 4 vols. (New York, 1894), 4: 465. The one defeats the efforts of the other. The nation affirms, the
state denies, and there is no progress. The true doctrine is one nation, one
country, one citizenship—and one law for all the people.

I am disappointed but not discouraged by the action of Congress.
Massachusetts was one hundred years free before she lifted her former
slaves into complete civil rights.⁴While Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, African Americans did not enjoy the benefits of freedom immediately. For example, miscegenation laws were not overturned until 1843. The following year, abolitionists successfully ended segregation on railcars in the state. In 1855, Boston’s public schools were integrated, thus specifically prohibiting racial discrimination in education for the first time in Massachusetts. Immediately following the Civil War, in May 1865, discrimination based on color or race in any inn or public place of amusement became illegal. While these statutes in Massachusetts helped frame the 1873 federal Civil Rights Act, it still took nearly a century for African Americans in Massachusetts to earn certain rights following the abolition of slavery in the state. John Daniels, In Freedom’s Birthplace: A Study of the Boston Negroes (Boston, 1914), 84, 91, 94; James Brewer Stewart, “Boston, Abolition, and the Atlantic World, 1820–1861,” in Courage and Conscience: Black and White Abolitionists in Boston, ed. Donald M. Jacobs (Bloomington, Ind., 1993), 114; Kazuteru Omori, “Race-Neutral Individualism and Resurgence of the Color Line: Massachusetts Civil Rights Legislation, 1855–1895,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 22: 34–37 (Fall 2002). We have suffered long, but can suffer
longer. Our progress during the last dozen years has been vast, rapid and
wonderful. We cannot stop. Time and effort will prevail. Down with West
Point would be a powerful war cry in the lips of a million voters—and I
am glad you have given us this cry.

Despite my efforts to uphold the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company it has fallen. It has been the black man’s cow, but the [whit] White
mans milk. Bad loans and bad management have been the death of it. I
was ignorant of its real condition till elected as its president.

Please mention me kindly to Dear Mrs Smith.⁵Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith. Mrs Douglass⁶Anna Murray Douglass. and
my boys are all well and would join me in love to you if they knew of my
writing—

Yours very truly

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.