FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO P. B. S. PINCHBACK

Washington[,] D.C. 25 April 1875[.]

SENATOR PINCHBACK.

MY DEAR SIR.

I am much obliged to you for your letter¹Pinckney Benton Stewart (P. B. S.) Pinchback wrote to Douglass on 20 April 1875. See the preceding document in this volume. giving me your views of the
present and future effects of the late so called compromise adopted to
preserve the peace of your state. To me it is not so much a measure of
peace as a measure of mischief and bloodshed. It was born of lawless
murder on the one hand and of loyal cowardice on the other. It is the harvest reaped by the red sword of the rebel Penn.²Davidson Bradfute Penn (c. 1836–1902) was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, but moved with his family to New Orleans as a teen before entering the Virginia Military Institute in 1852. After graduating, he went back to New Orleans and engaged in the cotton business until the Civil War. Soon after the start of that conflict, Penn was commissioned an officer in the Confederate army and was present at the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg before being captured in November 1863. After the war, he returned to Louisiana and became a leader of the Democrats and their paramilitary arm, the White League. Penn became the candidate for lieutenant governor on the unsuccessful Fusion ticket, backed by Democrats and Liberal Republicans, in 1872. The Fusionists claimed victory, but the election results were disputed by supporters of the Republican candidate, William Pitt Kellogg, who ultimately won in federal courts. In September 1874, Penn was one of the leaders of the armed efforts by the White League to force Kellogg out of office, which were thwarted by the arrival of federal troops from Mississippi that were ordered to New Orleans by President Grant to protect the Republican government. In 1876, after failing to get the backing of the new Conservative party to be its candidate for mayor of New Orleans, he left politics to work in the sugar industry. New Orleans Times-Democrat, 16 November 1902; Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863–1877 (Baton Rouge, La., 1974), 229, 234–36, 241–46, 292–96, 482–83; Clement Anselm Evans, ed., Confederate Military History: A Library of Confederate States History Written by Distinguished Men of the South, 12 vols. (Atlanta, 1899), 10: 255, 266, 542–45. He may well hail it as a
victory for all the reactionary and rebellious elements of the country. You
need not be ashamed of any resistence that yourself and friends made to
that compromise. The sad thing about it was your inability to defeat it.
The compromise combination in New Orleans and the Republican defeat
in Connecticut³During the congressional elections of 1874 and 1875, Republicans suffered large defeats in several northern states. In Connecticut, Democrats gained three out of the four U.S. House seats, two of which had previously been held by Republicans. Additionally, William W. Eaton, a Democrat, was elected to the Senate seat held by the Republican William Alfred Buckingham following Buckingham’s death. Michael J. Dubin, United States Congressional Elections, 1788–1997: The Official Results of the Election of the 1st Through the 105th Congresses (Jefferson, N.C., 1998). are both due to the same cause. They are due to the old
spirit of concession. Courageous vice is more than a match for virtuous
cowardice. In deference to the mean spirit born of slavery—no colored
man was invited to show his face in the Connecticut Canvass—and in
deference to the same mean spirit the colored majority in your state have
been placed under the legislative heels of the disloyal whites—who have
all the treason of the late rebellion in their hearts—and would have it
in their arms, if they had the power. The compromise—is a part of that
policy which was tried and failed fifteen years ago—which sought <to>
conciliate wrong instead of . It belongs to that wisdom
which refused to reinforce Sumpter, for fear of exasperating our southern
brethren⁴Following Lincoln’s election to the presidency in November 1860, Governor William Henry Gist of South Carolina wrote to President Buchanan, demanding that the federal government surrender three forts in Charleston Harbor: Castle Pinckney, Fort Sumter, and Fort Moultrie. Buchanan refused to surrender the forts, but promised not to send any reinforcements as long as South Carolina agreed not to attack. Following South Carolina’s formal secession in December 1860, South Carolina began setting up barriers near the forts, yet Buchanan still refused to surrender. The conflict over the military battlements continued into Lincoln’s presidency. His dispatch of reinforcements to Fort Sumter, in an attempt to maintain control, forced the crisis that led to the first battle of the Civil War. Roy Franklin Nichols, Disruption of American Democracy (New York, 1948), 448–49; Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (Lawrence, Kans., 1975), 169–80.—when those same brethren had muskets in their hands and bullits in their pockets. This cowardly policy did not avail then and it will
not avail now. It is the secess influence that keeps your seat vacant in the
Senate. I do not despair however of the future.

Do nothing rush <rash>: stand your ground—bide your time, you are
postponed but not defeated. December will soon be here—and a presidential Election is only a little farther off.

You have shown the people of your state with what patience, steadyiness, and fidelity you can serve them—that you have courage, fortitude
and ability,—that you are not turned aside from your course by discouragements of any kind—You had better fall in that attitude, than succeed
by in anywise compromising that enviable position.

Your friends in Louisiana cannot desert. Though depressed, and to
some extent, intimmidated—they have votes and those votes will some
day be needed. You have earned the Confidence of those voters—Hold
it—and neither you nor they can be much longer ignored.

My kindest regards to Mrs Pinchback⁵P. B. S. Pinchback married Nina Emily Hawthorne (1844–1928) in 1860. They had four children who lived to adulthood: Pinckney Napoleon (c. 1862–1900), Nina Eliza (1866–1909), Bismarck Robert (1868–1924), and Walter Alexis (1871–1938). Two other children died in infancy. “New Orleans, Louisiana, Birth Records Index, 1790–1915,” Ancestry.com. and the children. I should like
to see you all and, and I cling to the faith that I shall see you snugly in
your seat in the Senate.

Yours Truly

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, Illinois State Historical Library.