GERRIT SMITH TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Peterboro, [N.Y.] 27 June 1874.¹This letter was published by Smith as a printed circular under the title civil rights bill and west point academy.

Hon. Frederick Douglass, Washington, D.C.

My old and much esteemed friend,

So Congress has again adjourned without passing the Bill on which our
hearts had so long been set!²In May 1870, the Republican senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts began an unsuccessful four-year campaign to pass a civil rights bill that would outlaw racial discrimination by transportation carriers, places of public amusement and accommodation, and public schools as well as in juries, churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions incorporated by law. Sumner’s death in March 1874 motivated the Republican majority in the Senate to adopt an amended version of his bill on 23 May 1874. Nevertheless, House Republicans could not guide this bill to passage before the end of the legislative session, which Smith here bemoans. When a modified version of Sumner’s bill passed both houses of Congress the following February, it was titled the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 36–39, 53–54, 72, 78.

Much prejudice was wrought up against the Bill by persistently declaring it to be a Bill for rights. None of its friends regarded it in
this light. All they sought in it was the equality of civil rights. Social

rights they left to take care of themselves—wisely judging that these do
not fall within the scope of legislation.

This prejudice, however, was not the only nor the worst form of opposition to the Bill. As is usual in cases where the protection of fundamental
human rights is the object, this Bill had to encounter the constitution-scarecrow. On the surface of the constitution simple birth in this nation
makes a citizen of the nation. But, in the New Orleans Slaughter case,³The ruling in the Slaughterhouse Cases, issued on 14 April 1873, was the first interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Supreme Court, and it proved crucial in delineating early civil rights law. The Louisiana legislature had attempted to consolidate all animal-slaughtering establishments in New Orleans into one licensed corporation; however, the city’s butchers argued that this infringed on their right to make a living, based on the Due Process, Privileges and Immunities, and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, ruled that the Privileges and Immunities Clause applied to the rights of national citizenship, but not state citizenship; thus, the butchers’ Fourteenth Amendment rights had not been violated by Louisiana. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel F. Miller narrowly defined the U.S. citizenship rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to include access to ports and navigable waterways, the ability to run for federal office, the ability to travel to the seat of government, and protection on the high seas and abroad. As Smith noted, congressional Democrats immediately and repeatedly employed the Supreme Court’s narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in their arguments that Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill, the basis of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, was unconstitutional. Foner, Reconstruction, 529–30, 533; Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 51–52; Michael A. Ross, “Justice Miller’s Reconstruction: The Slaughter-House Cases, Health Codes, and Civil Rights in New Orleans, 1861–1873,” JSH, 64:649–76 (November 1998).
the Supreme Court dug down below the surface and taxed its ingenuity
to discover two kinds of citizens—a State kind as well as a national kind.
This mischievious discovery, though made by but five of the nine judges,
has, in the present instance, furnished the enemies of equal rights with
their most effective weapon. But this dual citizenship is fanciful—fanciful, if only because impracticable. I would argue its impracticableness
somewhat as I argued it in my Letter to Mr. Downing.⁴Although many old abolitionists such as Gerrit Smith considered Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill to be unquestionably constitutional, others equally supportive of legal protections for African American rights sincerely doubted or denied that it was. Henry C. Bowen, editor of the New York Independent and longtime champion of abolitionism and black rights in New York City, declared, in an editorial on 5 February 1874, that Sumner’s bill was an unconstitutional extension of federal power into the realm of states’ rights. Bowen insisted that he was fully in favor of all the bill’s provisions, but maintained that only state legislatures held the constitutional authority to enact them. George T. Downing, the African American abolitionist and manager of the restaurant in the U.S. House of Representatives (1865–77), responded with two letters to the Independent (26 February, 12 March 1874), arguing strenuously against the logic of dual national and state citizenship held by the Supreme Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases. Smith commended Downing and expanded on his arguments in a letter dated 6 March 1874, which was immediately printed for public distribution. This is the letter Smith refers to here. New York Independent, 5, 19, 26 February, 12, 26 March, 4 June 1874; Gerrit Smith, Equal Rights for Blacks and Whites (Peterboro, N.Y., 1874); James M. McPherson, “Abolitionists and the Civil Rights Act of 1875,” Journal of American History, 52: 504–05 (December 1965).

Of all the instances in which the Court asserts the paramount right of
national citizenship there is not one where this right could not be defeated
in a State which is guilty of discriminating between its people. One of
these instances is the coming to the seat of Government to transact business with it. But how could cultured and self-respecting colored gentlemen and refined colored ladies cross such a State as Georgia on their way
to transact business in Washington? Denied its vehicles, save on terms too
degrading for them to submit to, instead of riding they must walk: and denied its hotels, save on similarly degrading terms, they must depend upon
the bread and cheese in their pockets, and find what sleep they can by the
roadside. Is it said that they must be supplied with proofs that they are, at
such times, in the capacity of citizens? But the expense of giving effect to such proofs they might not be able to bear. Moreover, however conclusive the proofs and however humiliating to exhibit them, there
would, probably, be but few persons to give an open eye or a listening ear
to them. In spite of these proofs they would find themselves helpless in
an enemy’s country. Alas, how many a colored brother and colored sister
have felt their hearts die within them, whilst travelling, or attempting to
travel, through this still caste-cursed and still satan-swayed land!

My soul is sick of this running to constitutions for authority to outrage man. That one is a man proves that he is entitled to all the rights of
a man, whatever constitutions or aught else may say to the contrary. Our
courts and congress have not yet risen up out of the world’s atheism. They
still war against God by still refusing to accept and protect man as He
presents him. Their highest crime was in tolerating the turning of God’s

man into Man’s slave: and, now, they follow up this crime by still tolerating his partial enslavement. We are to welcome every man because every
man comes from God, and, whatever his race or complexion, is the child
of his and our Father. Human laws are needed to regulate many of the
external relations and interests of men;—but the men themselves we are
to accept as they are given to us, and to hold their high being with all its
essential rights to be sacred and unassailable. Come quickly the day when
throughout our country and throughout the word the citing of a law to justify the invasion of fundamental human rights shall be instantly arrested
and sternly rebuked as treason against man and contempt of the law of his
being and the law of his God!

There are two concessions to our insulted colored countrymen which
admit of no delay. One of these is the passage of the Civil Rights Bill,
and the other is the breaking up of the Academy at West Point.⁵Between 1870 and 1887, at least twenty-seven young men who self-identified as having African American ancestry were nominated to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Of those nominated, twelve were admitted to the academy, but only six lasted more than one semester, and only three graduated: Henry Ossian Flipper, class of 1877; John Hanks Alexander, class of 1887; and Charles Young, class of 1889. Academic deficiency was the primary reason for the low acceptance and high dismissal rates of African Americans at West Point in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, widespread racial discrimination by white cadets, faculty, and administrators certainly played a significant role. Black cadets faced near-total social ostracism, meaning white cadets would not talk to them except to conduct official business or verbally abuse them. Open hostility was the norm, and physical violence was not uncommon. As racial attitudes hardened and Jim Crow laws became widespread in the 1890s, almost no African Americans were nominated or accepted at West Point. Two black cadets lasted only one semester each in 1918 and 1929 before Benjamin O. Davis graduated in 1938. Only after 1945 were African Americans regularly appointed by congressmen and accepted without social ostracism by the West Point community. Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U.S.A., First Graduate of Color from the U.S. Military Academy (New York, 1878); John Marszalek, “A Black Cadet at West Point,” American Heritage Magazine 22: 5 (August 1971); Thomas M. Carhart, “African-American West Pointers during the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1998), vii–ix, 80, 56–93, 265–66, 268–70. The
great Father in Heaven—the equal Father of his white and colored children—cannot be at peace with our guilty nation, until the abominations
against which this Bill is aimed and the kindred abominations, which
exist at that Academy, are blotted out. To this end the school itself must
be blotted out. It cannot be reformed. The pro-slavery spirit, which, in
subservience to the wishes and interests of the slave-power, has, for more
than fifty years, been fostered and rampant there, will die only with the
death of the school. Government is, always, more or less, complained of
for its money matters. But these, in their worst aspect, sink out of sight
in comparison with its wrongs against man. Money in comparison with
man is of no account. Nothing meaner nor more wicked has Government
ever been guilty of than suffering the numerous white cadets to league
themselves for insulting, at every turn and corner and in every possible
way, the handful of colored cadets. It is because the Government stands
back of this league, and suffers it, if indeed it does not positively encourage it, that not one member has had the manliness to break out from it
and deal justly with his colored brothers. Surely, a school, pervaded so
thoroughly by this mean and cruel spirit, is not the place for training up
patriots and christians. This school, which the whole American people
are compelled to support, wars frightfully upon all true sense of justice and fair-dealing. It is an insult to the nation—an insult to the grand
old hills, which surround it and frown upon it. These sublime highlands,
which rank so highly amongst the glories of nature, can have no affinity for a thing so violative of nature and so steeped in meanness as the
Academy at West Point.

My complaint of the state of things at West Point may, to some minds,
appear inconsistent with what I have hitherto and repeatedly said against
legislating for social rights. But the insults and abuses at West Point are
much more, much worse, than the mere denial of social rights. Moreover,
there are no rights, either civil or social, that Government should be allowed to trample under foot. A Government school must be open to all—
for it represents all, and is supported by all. If Irishmen or Germans are,
as such, systematically insulted and outraged in it, then it cannot be said to
be open to them. Nor can it be said to be open to persons of African blood
unless they can be in it on self-respecting terms.

This refusal to pass the Civil Rights Bill and this reigning of the diabolical caste-spirit at West Point are but a poor atonement for our ages
of crime against the poor black man, and but a poor recompense for his
magnanimous services to our country in the late war.

The Republican Party has disappointed us. It has failed to redeem
some of its solemnly-made pledges. What can we do?—we who are black
men and we white men, who are their friends? I wish we could quit this
Party for a time, and thus punish and improve it. But we cannot quit it for
even a single year, with safety to the country. For the Democratic Party is
still eager to be restored to power, and is as lynx-eyed in watching for opportunities as it was in 1872, when it swallowed up the Greeley party,⁶Horace Greeley was first nominated for president by the Liberal Republican party before being selected as the candidate of the Democratic party in 1872. and
made formidable advances toward swallowing up the Republican Party.
There are excellent men in the Democratic Party—but the Party remains
bad, very bad, hopelessly bad. Had it come into power any time within the
last fourteen years our country would have been lost. It would now be lost
were that negro-hating and rum-recruiting Party to come now into power.
The old Federal Party went down to death under the suspicion of having
sympathized with the enemy in the War of 1812–15.⁷The demise of the Federalist party, like that of most failed political parties, was gradual, multicausal, and due to the party’s inability to maintain public support for its policies and personalities. The primary deathblow to the Federalists was the party’s opposition to the War of 1812, especially the convening of the Hartford Convention of New England states in December 1814. Called together to express grievances against the national government and the Republican party’s policies, delegates discussed secession and a separate peace with Britain, though these courses were firmly rejected. Instead, the convention proposed a series of amendments to the Constitution in the hope that these would restore sectional balance to national politics. The convention’s report and proposals arrived in Washington at virtually the same time as news of the smashing American victory at New Orleans on 8 January 1815, followed by word that a peace treaty with Britain had been signed on Christmas Eve. Because of this, the reports were utterly discredited, and the Federalist party was branded as traitorous by the Republican opposition. The Federalists quickly disintegrated as a national party. Future generations of American politicians learned from this incident that opposing war was dangerous, since it could quickly lead to political oblivion. Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York, 2009), 276, 312–13, 692–96; David Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York, 2007), 94–95, 743; Joseph F. Stoltz, “ ‘It Taught our Enemies a Lesson’: The Battle of New Orleans and the Republican Destruction of the Federalist Party,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 71: 112–27 (2012). And should we ever
forget that the Democratic Party sympathized with the rebels in our late
War, and sympathized with them too because it was one with them in the
malignant purpose of perpetuating slavery?

Let us be patient with the Republican Party, a year longer. It came so
near passing the Civil Rights bill a few days ago, and, this too, in the face
of the solid Democratic vote, that I can hardly doubt it will pass it early in
the next session of Congress.

With great regard, cordially yours,

GERRIT SMITH.

PLSr: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.