FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO OLIVER OTIS HOWARD

Rochester[, N.Y.] 13 July 1870.

GENL. O. O. HOWARD:

DEAR SIR: you were among the first in my thoughts this morning, and very
gratefully so. I had read your noble letter to young Smith now so shamefully persecuted because of his color at W. Point.¹James Webster Smith (1850–76), a West Point cadet from South Carolina, penned a letter to General O. O. Howard on 29 June 1870, describing the difficult environment he was facing at the military academy because of the color of his skin. Howard replied to the cadet on 8 July 1870, and the exchange was printed in the New York Tribune. In the letter, Howard encouraged Smith to “endure the insults without any show of fear” and trust in God, who, he believed, “will bear you through every trial.” After a history of harassing incidents, Smith was dismissed from West Point in June 1874 on the pretext of academic deficiencies. New York Tribune, 12 July 1870; Little Rock Daily Arkansas Gazette, 27 July 1870; Albert E. Williams, Black Warriors: Unique Units and Individuals (Haverford, Pa., 2003), 18–23. Your cheering and fortifying words to this young man are like yourself. But I did not know till
I went to the Post Office this morning that you had a word for me as well
as for him and are equally well meant. Whether the church in any age is
more favorable to progress than the world—<whether> it is in advance of
the World in adopting and propagating new truth, or new applications of
old and admitted truths—Can easily be answered by an appeal to history.
So far as the question relates to the great truth of human Liberty—<in
our own country,> I think that history proved that the church taken as a
whole was [illegible] more ready to receive it and aid in its propagations
than was the world. The public Hall rather than the Sacred Sanctuary, the
public platform rather than the Holy pulpit—the secular press rather than
the religious papers—the political conventions rather than the religious
associations—the men standing outside, rather than the men standing inside—educated the public mind and heart up to the point of making a
stand against slavery—and held the public mind and heart there, until it
was was possible to elect Abraham Lincoln—and thus bring Liberty and
Slavery face to face on the battlefield—and all subsequent events in relation to slavery and Liberty. Of course, I do not deny—that good men in

the Church, assisted in this great work—my statement simply respects the
Church as such—as a grand organized power—and this grand organized
power—I claim was from the first—no more friendly to the cause of the
slave than the outside world. Who are those who are today persecuting
young Smith at W. Point? Are they not the educated respectable young
Christian gentlemen—who have grown up there from among Christian
families—Christian pews—and Christian Sabbath Schools? Your own
noble broad heart condemns this inhuman spirit of persecution. This malignant hate; but where do you find more of it than in the Christian church?
I remember the odium you brought upon your own glorious name—none
the less glorious in my eyes—for the effort recently made to cover it with
shame, because you were in favor of opening the gates of the Congregational Church in Washington2 without regard to color or race. To me
it matters not whether I am made a slave by a christian or an infidel—
Whether I <am> degraded by a church or a theatre—I regard them all on
a moral level—and I have <neither> reverence nor respect for either. You
remind me—not offensively, that you were reared under a religious <influence & training> a different religious from those of mine. In this you
are fortunate—you would say; blest. I think however, my religious schooling—has done me good—in that it has compelled me to test the value—of
ideas presented me in the name of religion. When I was once compelled
to select between a and —I chose the latter. I could not run
away and obey my master at the same time—but I did runaway—and
when I did this—I threw off a religion of authority.

You will naturally ask me; then Douglass—what have you now to
guide you? I will tell you: I have the general enlightenment of the age—
and my own moral convictions of right and wrong—to guide me. I have
the truth—as open to me as to the Infallible Pope Pious IXth3—or any of
his Protestant feeble imitators.

On the question as to whether slavery was abolished by Divine or
human intervention I need not dwell—for you virtually admit—that God
does what men do, and that he leaves undone what men leave undone.

Very truly yours

FREDK DOUG LASS

ALS: O. O. Howard Manuscripts, MeB.