APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

ORATION BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE UNVEILING OF THE FREEDMEN'S MONUMENT, IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, IN LINCOLN PARK, WASHINGTON. D. C., APRIL 14, 1876.

ORATION BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE UNVEILING OF THE FREEDMEN'S MONUMENT, IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, IN LINCOLN PARK, WASHINGTON. D. C., APRIL 14, 1876.

Friends and fellow citizens:

I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have to-day. This occasion is in some respects remarkable. Wise and thoughtful men of our race, who shall come after us, and study the lesson of our history in the United States: who shall survey the long and dreary spaces over which we have traveled; who shall count the links in the great chain of events by which we have reached our present position, will make a note of this occasion; they will think of it and speak of it with a sense of manly pride and complacency.

I congratulate you, also, upon the very favorable circumstances in which we meet to-day. They are high, inspiring, and uncommon. They lend grace, glory, and significance to the object for which we have met. Nowhere else in this great country, with its uncounted towns and cities, unlimited wealth, and immeasurable territory extending from sea to sea, could conditions be found more favorable to the success of this occasion than here.

We stand to-day at the national center to perform something like a national act—an act which is to go into history; and we are here where every pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt, and reciprocated. A thousand wires, fed with thought and winged with lightning, put us in instantaneous communication with the loyal and true men all over this country.

Few facts could better illustrate the vast and wonderful change which has taken place in our condition as a people, than the fact of our assembling here for the purpose we have to-day. Harmless, beautiful, proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that no such demonstration would have been tolerated here twenty years ago. The spirit of slavery and barbarism, which still lingers to blight and destroy in some dark and distant parts of our country, would have made our assembling here the signal and excuse for opening upon us all the flood-gates of wrath and violence. That we are here in peace to-day is a compliment and a credit to American civilization, and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future. I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice; but

simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow-citizens and ourselves, and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then; the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races⁠—white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour.

Friends and fellow citizens, the story of our presence here is soon and easily told. We are here in the District of Columbia, here in the city of Washington, the most luminous point of American territory; a city recently transformed^†Under the direction of Alexander Robey ("Boss") Shepherd, the District of Columbia's Board of Public Works, an appointed body of the territorial government established in 1871, initiated a "comprehensive plan of improvements'' to relieve the city of its rural vestiges. Highly criticized and the subject of two congressional investigations for its extravagance, shortsightedness, and corruption, the program nevertheless generated improvements in sewage, roadway, sidewalk, and building construction. The resultant threat of financial bankruptcy, however, undermined Congress's faith in territorial governance for the District, and on 20 June 1874 it was replaced by a presidentially appointed temporary commission, harbinger of the permanent Board of Commissioners creatcd by Congress in 1878. The new arrangement stripped the District of self-government and denied its citizens of the franchise they had exercised since 1867. Green, , 1:313-82; Whyte, , 114-78, 203-61; Tindall, , 247-76; Bryan, , 2:586-90. and made beautiful in its body and in its spirit; we are here in the place where the ablest and best men of the country are sent to devise the policy, enact the laws, and shape the destiny of the Republic; we are here, with the stately pillars and majestic dome of the Capitol of the nation looking down upon us; we are here, with the broad earth freshly adorned with the foliage and flowers of spring for our church, and all races, colors, and conditions of men for our congregation⁠—in a word, we are here to express, as best we may, by appropriate forms and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high, and preëminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.

The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defence of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the Republic lives.

For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the Republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who

despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, we unite in this act of reverent homage.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: gratitude, let. Let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment in the country; in the presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of after-coming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.

Fellow citizens, in what we have said and done to-day, and in what we may say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything like arrogance and assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior devotion to the character, history, and memory of the illustrious man^†Editorial Emendation: name. whose monument we have here dedicated to-day. We fully comprehend the relation of Abraham Lincoln both to ourselves and to the white people of the United States. Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades,⁠—the silent continents of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.

He was preëminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone,

namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the States where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed constitutional guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave States. He was willing to pursue, recapture. and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow citizens, a preëminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by force of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at this altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect; let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.^†An allusion to the lettcr of 26 June 1786 from Thomas Jefferson to Jean Nicholas Demeunier. Thomas Jefferson, P, ed. Julian Boyd, 36 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1950), 10:63.

Fellow citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion⁠—merely a thing of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long on^†Editorial Emendation: in. the mountain;^†Douglass conflates words and themes from the books of Genesis and Exodus, providing a parallel to the pre-Emancipation situation in the trying of Jehovah's people through the seeming failures, desertion, and inscrutability of their leaders. Jacob, for example, could restore his brother Laban's trust only by withdrawing with him to offer proofs, on which occasion they "tarried all night in the mount." During the forty days and nights that Moses spent on Mount Sinai, receiving the laws of God, the people of Israel chided and murmured against Moses and reverted to distrust. Gen. 31:54; Exod. 19:19-20. when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war;^†In his "Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes" on 14 August 1862, Lincoln stated: "but for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other. Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institution of Slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence." Lincoln, , 5:372. when he still more strangely told us to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defence of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he

refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Frémont;^†John Charles Fremont. when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac,^†General George B. McClellan. in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surround him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that "divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will," we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States.

When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome,^†Douglass paraphrases , sc. 9, lines 1408-09. though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their

shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high foot-steps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Hayti, the special object of slaveholding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia;^†Lincoln signed the bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia on 16 April 1862. Hinks and McKivigan, , 2:737-39. under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave-trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer;^†The son of a respected seagoing family from Maine, Captain Nathaniel P. Gordon (?- 1862) was the first and only person to he executed under U.S. law for participation in the slave trade. In 1848 he commanded the Juliet, a ship suspected of carrying slaves, but inspectors could not find sufficient evidence for conviction. Little more is known of Gordon until 1860, when he and two mates, William Warren and David Hall, were brought to trial in New York on 18 June after the capture of his ship, the Erie, on a slave run. Gordon was prosecuted under the act of 10 May 1820, which declared the slave trade to be piracy and decreed death to anyone working or traveling on an American ship engaged in the transportation or trade of prospective slaves. Although Gordon maintained that he had sold the Erie to Spaniards on the Congo River and had been on board merely as a passenger, the testimony of four crewmen against him enabled the prosecution to dispose of this and other alibis, and on 30 November he was sentenced to death by hanging. Gordon appealed to Lincoln, with much public support, for commutation of the sentence to life in prison. Lincoln, however, granted only a stay of execution of two weeks so that Gordon could prepare himself for death. Gordon was hanged at the Tombs, a New York City prison, on 21 February 1862. The Erie's mates were convicted of misdemeanors, with jail sentences of eight to ten months and fines under $500. On 20 May, three months after Gordon's execution, the Lincoln administration and the British government negotiated a treaty for the suppression of the slave trade. Warren S. Howard, (Berkeley, 1963), 25, 88-90, 199-202; Lincoln, , 5:128-29; Carl Sifakis, , 2d ed., 2 vols. (New York, 2001), 1:289. under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slaveholders three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States.^†The Emancipation Proclamation. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.

Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January, 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read to-day.^†Douglass attended and spoke at meetings celebrating the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation that were held on 1-2 January 1863 in Boston's Tremont Temple and Twelfth Baptist Church, ., 2 January 1863; , 4:796-97 (February 1863); Holland, , 294-95; Quarles, , 199-201; idem, , 171-74. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress.

Fellow citizens, there is little necessity on this occasion to speak at length and critically of this great and good man, and of his high mission in the world. That ground has been fully occupied and completely covered both here and elsewhere. The whole field of fact and fancy has been gleaned and garnered. Any man can say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than are those of

any other man of his age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounced in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches. Even those who only knew him through his public utterances obtained a tolerably clear idea of his character and his personality. The image of the man went out with his words, and those who read them, knew him.

I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow countrymen against the negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.* The man who could say, "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether," gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing, while the South was loyal, that it

*"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not think so and feel." —Letter of Mr. Lincoln to Mr. Hodges, of Kentucky, April 4, 1864.

should have its pound of flesh,^†An allusion to , sc. 18, line 2105.+ because he thought it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go.

Fellow citizens, whatever else in the world may be partial, unjust, and uncertain, time, time! is impartial, just, and certain in its action. In the realm of mind, as well as in the realm of matter, it is a great worker, and often works wonders. The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time. Few great public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. He was often wounded in the house of his friends.^†Zech. 13:6. Reproaches came thick and fast upon him from within and from without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed by abolitionists; he was assailed by slaveholders; he was assailed by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed for not making the war an abolition war; and he was most bitterly assailed for making the war an abolition war.

But now behold the change: the judgment of the present hour is, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. His birth, his training, and his natural endowments, both mental and physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared among the lowly, a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple single-handed with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender youth to sturdy manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic qualities demanded by the great mission to which he was called by the votes of his countrymen. The hard condition of his early life, which would have depressed and broken down weaker men, only gave greater life, vigor, and buoyancy to the heroic spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He was ready for any kind and quality of work. What other young men dreaded in the shape of toil, he took hold of with the utmost cheerfulness.

"A spade, a rake, a hoe,
A pick-axe, or a bill;
A hook to reap, a scythe to mow.
A flail, or what you will."^†An adaptation of the opening and refrain from Thomas Hood's "The Lay of the Laborer." Thomas Hood, (Boston, 1857), 132-35.

All day long he could split heavy rails in the woods, and half the night long he could study his English Grammar by the uncertain flare and glare of

the light made by a pine-knot. He was at home on the land with his axe, with his maul, with gluts, and his wedges; and he was equally at home on water, with his oars, with his poles, with his planks, and with his boat-hooks. And whether in his flat-boat on the Mississippi river, or at^†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: river or on the fireside of his frontier cabin, he was a man of work. A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic. This very fact gave him tremendous power with the American people, and materially contributed not only to electing^†Editorial Emendation: selecting. him to the Presidency, but in sustaining his administration of the government.

Upon his inauguration as President of the United States, an office, even where assumed under the most favorable conditions, fitted to tax and strain the largest abilities. Abraham Lincoln was met by a tremendous crisis.^†Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on 4 March 1861; the first military confrontation of the Civil War occurred at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, on 12 April 1861. Boatner, , 15, 299-300. He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds. the fate of the Republic.

A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him; the Union was practically dissolved;^†Within a few weeks of Abraham Lincoln's electoral victory in 1860, South Carolina seceded, its legislature having passed the ordinance of secession on 20 December 1860 by a vote of 169 to 0. In the remaining months before Lincoln's inauguration on 4 March 1861, six other states left the Union: Mississippi (9 January), Florida (10 January), Georgia (19 January), Louisiana (26 January), and Texas (1 February). Ransom, Conflict and Compromise, 164-65; Stampp, , 5-7, 13, 136; Hinks and McKivigan, , 604-06. his country was torn and rent asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized against the republic, armed with the munitions of war which the republic had provided for its own defence. The tremendous question for him to decide was whether his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered and perish. His predecessor in office^†James Buchanan. had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self-defence and self-preservation—a right which belongs to the meanest insect.

Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, that we had seen the last President of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said "Let the Union slide."^†Nathaniel P. Banks of Maine, speaker of the House of Representatives of the 34th Congress, was purported to have expressed this sentiment in 1855. New York , 25 December 1855; Joshua R. Giddings, (New York, 1864). Some said that a Union maintained by the sword^†On 9 November 1860, an editorial in the New York stated: "We never hope to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets." Robert S. Harper, (New York, 1951), 101. was worthless. Others said a rebellion of 8,000,000 cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had

not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust which Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well-founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.

Fellow citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery—the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.

Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually—we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate—for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him—but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.

Fellow citizens, I end as I began,^†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: begun. with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race to-day. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.

WEST INDIAN EMANCIPATION

WEST INDIAN EMANCIPATION

Extract from a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass in Elmira, N. Y., August 1, 1880, at a great meeting of colored people,^†Although the anniversary of the emancipation from slavery in the British colonies is 1 August. Douglass's address in Elmira, New York, was actually delivered during the afternoon of 3 August 1880 as part of the city's day-long combined celebration of West Indian Emancipation and the Emancipation Proclamation. The day's activities began at dawn with a gun salute followed by prayer meetings at the African Union Methodist Protestant Church and the A.M.E. Zion Church at 10:00 a.m., another gun salute at 11:00 a.m., and a procession from Temperance Hall to Hoffman's Grove, the site of Douglass's address. Fifteen delegations, including the Colored Veterans of the Civil War, the Elmira Colored Y.M.C.A., and the Masons, marched with Douglass to the grove. The Reverend M. E. Collins opened the program with a prayer. John W. Jones, the presiding officer, called the assembly to order and introduced William H. Lester, who delivered a dramatic reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Jones then introduced Douglass, who spoke for two hours, ending the afternoon's exercises. The Elmira observed that "his oration was long, and delivered from manuscript; the speaker utters his sentences deliberately, and his hearers never tire." Douglass had earlier declined an invitation to lecture in Elmira that evening, claiming that a two-hour outdoor addresswas all he could manage in a single day because "my forty years of speaking have left me less strong than younger men." Having spent the previous night in Elmira, Douglass left that city by train immediately following his speech to deliver a campaign address in Rochester the next day. Douglass to Charles J. Langdon, 9 August 1880, CtHnf; Elmira (N.Y.) , 23, 30, 31 July, 3 August 1880; Washington (D.C.) e, 7 August 1880; Holland, , 348. met to celebrate West India emancipation, and where he was received with marked respect and approval by the president of the day^†John W. Jones (1817-1890), a former slave from Leesburg, Virginia, presided over the celebration as president of the day. Jones escaped from slavery in 1844 and came to Elmira on 5 July of the same year. In 1847 he was appointed sexton of the First Baptist Church, a post he held for forty-three years. Throughout the 1850s Jones also served as a leading agent for the Underground Railroad in Elmira, aiding over 800 fugitive slaves traveling between Philadelphia and St. Catharines, Canada. A prominent and much-loved figure in the city, Jones died at his farm on 26 December 1900. Elmira (N.Y.) , 3 August 1880; Clay W. Holmes, (New York, 1912), 140-50. and the immense crowd there assembled. It is placed in this book partly as a grateful tribute to the noble transatlantic men and women through whose unwearied exertions the system of negro slavery was finally abolished in all the British Isles.

Mr. President:—I thank you sincerely for this cordial greeting. I hear in your speech something like a welcome home after a long absence. More years of my life and labors have been spent in this than in any other State of the Union. Anywhere within a hundred miles of the goodly city of Rochester, I feel myself at home and among friends. Within that circumference, there resides a people which have no superiors in point of enlightenment, liberality. and civilization. Allow me to thank you also, for your generous words of sympathy and approval. In respect to this important support given to^†Editorial Emendation: support to. a public man, I have been unusually fortunate. My forty years of work in the cause of the oppressed and enslaved, has been well noted, well appreciated, and well rewarded. All classes and colors of men. at home and abroad, have in this way assisted in holding up my hands. Looking back through these long years of toil and conflict, during which I have had blows to take as well as blows to give, and have sometimes received wounds and bruises, both in body and in mind, my only regret is that I have been enabled to do so little to lift up and strengthen our long enslaved and still oppressed people. My apology for these remarks personal to myself, is in the fact that I am now standing mainly in the presence of a new generation. Most of the men with whom I lived and labored in the early years of the abolition movement, have passed beyond the borders of this life. Scarcely any of the colored men who advocated our cause, and who started when I did, are now numbered among the living, and I begin to feel somewhat lonely. But while I have the sympathy and approval of men and women like these before me. I shall give with joy my latest breath in support of your claim to justice, liberty, and equality among men. The day we celebrate is preëminently the colored man's day. The great event by which it is distinguished, and by which it will forever be distinguished from all other days of the year, has justly claimed thoughtful attention among statesmen and social reformers throughout the world. While to them it is a luminous point in human history, and worthy of thought in the

colored man, it addresses not merely the intelligence, but the feeling. The emancipation of our brothers in the West Indies comes home to us and stirs our hearts and fills our souls with those grateful sentiments which link mankind in a common brotherhood.

In the history of the American conflict with slavery, the day we celebrate has played an important part. Emancipation in the West Indies was the first bright star in a stormy sky; the first smile after a long providential frown; the first ray of hope; the first tangible fact demonstrating the possibility of a peaceable transition from slavery to freedom of the negro race. Whoever else may forget or slight the claims of this day, it can never be other to us than memorable and glorious. The story of it shall be brief and soon told. Six-and-forty years ago, on the day we now celebrate, there went forth over the blue waters of the Caribbean^†Editorial Emendation: Carribean. sea a great message from the British throne,^†William IV (1765-1837), formerly the Duke of Clarence, reigned as king of Great Britain from 26 June 1830 to his death on 20 June 1837, when he was succeeded by Princess Victoria. Although he had earlier led the West Indian planters' opposition to William Wilberforce's 1791 abolition bill, as king William IV was content to leave matters of slavery emancipation, reform, and other political affairs to his administrators. Kenneth Morgan, (New York, 2007), 164; DNB, 21:325-31. hailed with startling shouts of joy and thrilling songs of praise. That message liberated, set free, and brought within the pale of civilization eight hundred thousand people,^†According to the report from contemporary observers Reverend James Armstrong Thome and Joseph Horace Kimball, 793,680 slaves were fully emancipated by 1 August 1838. However, only the 34,145 slaves residing in Antigua and Bermuda, or 4.3 percent of the eventual total freed, were emancipated in 1834. James A. Thome and Joseph H. Kimball, , 2d ed. (New York, 1839), xiv. who, till then, had been esteemed as beasts of burden. How vast, sudden, and startling was this transformation! In one moment, a mere tick of a watch, the twinkle of an eye, the glance of the morning sun, saw a bondage which had resisted the humanity of ages, defied earth and heaven, instantly ended; saw the slave-whip burnt to ashes; saw the slave's chains melted; saw his fetters broken, and the irresponsible power of the slave-master over his victim forever destroyed.

I have been told by eye-witnesses of the scene. that. in the first moment of it, the emancipated hesitated to accept it for what it was. They did not know whether to receive it as a reality, a dream, or a vision of the fancy.

No wonder they were^†Editorial Emendation: was. thus amazed, and doubtful, after their terrible years of darkness and sorrow, which seemed to have no end. Like much other good news, it was thought too good to be true. But the silence and hesitation they observed were only momentary. When fully assured the good tidings which had come across the sea to them, were not only good but true; that they were indeed no longer slaves, but free; that the lash of the slave-driver was no longer in the air, but buried in the earth; that their limbs were no longer chained, but subject to their own will, the manifestations of their joy and gratitude knew no bounds, and sought expression in the loudest and wildest possible forms. They ran about, they danced, they sang, they gazed into the blue sky, bounded into the air, kneeled, prayed, shouted, rolled upon the ground, and embraced^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: ground, embraced. each other. They laughed and wept for joy. Those who witnessed the scene^†In order to maintain social control over the emancipated slaves in the British West Indies. colonial administrators ordered churches to open their doors to the black public on 1 August 1834. In Montego Bay and Falmouth approximately 3,000 and 1,600 former slaves, respectively, attended religious ceremonies. In their report Emancipation in West Indies, Reverend James Armstrong Thome and Joseph Horace Kimball provide numerous accounts of the response to the abolition of slavery in the island of Antigua. As one eyewitness describes it, on the stroke of midnight a black congregation "broke forth in prayer; they shouted, they sung, 'Glory,' 'alleluia,' they clapped their hands, leaped up, fell down, clasped each other in their free arms, cried, laughed, and went to and fro, tossing upward their unfettered hands." Thome and Kimball describe other, similar scenes of prayer and rejoicing from ex-slaves during this day of emancipation, although other forms of celebration, including drumming, dancing, drinking, and torchlight processions, were reported in Jamaica and Trinidad. Thome and Kimball, , 114-17; J. R. Kerr-Ritchie, (Baton Rouge, La., 2007), 17-25. say they never saw anything like it before.

We are sometimes asked why we American citizens annually celebrate

West India emancipation when we might celebrate American emancipation. Why go abroad, say they, when we might as well stay at home?

The answer is easily given. Human liberty excludes all idea of home and abroad. It is universal and spurns localization.

"When a deed is done for freedom,
Through the broad earth's aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic,
Trembling on from East to West."^†Douglass quotes the first lines of James Russell Lowell's poem 'The Present Crisis." Lowell, , 1:185.

It is bounded by no geographical lines and knows no national limitations. Like the glorious sun of the heavens, its light shines for all. But besides this general consideration, this boundless power and glory of liberty, West India Emancipation has claims upon us as an event in this nineteenth century in which we live, for rich as this century is in moral and material achievements, in progress and civilization, it can claim nothing for itself greater and grander than this act of West India Emancipation.

Whether we consider the matter or the manner of it, the tree or its fruit, it is noteworthy, memorable, and sublime. Especially is the manner of its accomplishment worthy of consideration. Its best lesson to the world, its most encouraging word to all who toil and trust in the cause of justice and liberty, to all who oppose oppression and slavery, is a word of sublime faith and courage—faith in the truth and courage in the expression.

Great and valuable concessions have in different ages been made to the liberties of mankind. They have, however, come not at the command of reason and persuasion, but by the sharp and terrible edge of the sword. To this rule West India Emancipation is a splendid exception. It came, not by the sword, but by the word; not by the brute force of numbers, but by the still small voice of truth; not by barricades, bayonets, and bloody revolution, but by peaceful agitation; not by divine interference, but by the exercise of simple, human reason and feeling. I repeat, that, in this peculiarity, we have what is most valuable to the human race generally.

It is a revelation of a power inherent in human society. It shows what can be done against wrong in the world, without the aid of armies on the earth or of angels in the sky. It shows that men have in their own hands the peaceful means of putting all their moral and political enemies under their feet, and of making this world a healthy and happy dwelling-place, if they will faithfully and courageously use them.

The world needed just such a revelation of the power of conscience and or human brotherhood, one that overleaped the accident of color and of race,

and set at naught the whisperings of prejudice. The friends of freedom in England saw in the negro a man, a moral and responsible being. Having settled this in their own minds, they, in the name of humanity, denounced the crime of his enslavement. It was the faithful, persistent, and enduring enthusiasm of Thomas ClarksonClarkson, Thomas

For Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), the struggle against slavery was a lifelong concern. Beginning with an antislavery dissertation at Cambridge in 1785, Clarkson wrote more than a dozen antislavery tracts. He toured England repeatedly, holding public meetings and collecting evidence on the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade. Clarkson worked unsuccessfully in Paris for the abolition of the French slave trade in 1789 and suffered a similar disappointment three decades later, when the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle refused to declare the slave trade piracy. In 1823 he became a vice president of the newly formed Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery, which spearheaded the drive for West Indian emancipation. After 1833 Clarkson turned his attention to American slavery, frequently meeting and corresponding with William Lloyd Garrison, Lewis Tappan, and other American abolitionists. Among the last of Clarkson's American guests was twenty-eight-year-old Frederick Douglass, who dined with him 9 August 1846. Garrison to Clarkson, 19, 26 August 1846, in Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 2:380-81, 385-86; Alexander Crummell and Charles L. Reason, The Man, the Hero, the Christian! A Eulogy on the Life and Character of Thomas Clarkson, Delivered in the City of New-York, Dec. 1846 (New York, 1847); Earl Leslie Griggs, Thomas Clarkson: The Friend of the Slaves (London, 1938); DNB, 4:454-57. , William WilberforceWilberforce, William

William Wilberforce (1759-1833), British reformer, author, and member of Parliament, joined the antislavery movement in 1787 at the urging of Thomas Clarkson and others. Over the next two decades, Wilberforce led the parliamentary campaign that culminated in the law of 1807 banning the Atlantic slave trade and establishing the African Institution. In 1823 Wilberforce joined other prominent abolitionists to organize the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. That same year he published An Appeal to the Religion, Justice, and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British Empire in behalf of the Slaves of the West Indies and inaugurated the emancipation struggle in Parliament by presenting a Quaker abolitionist petition. Wilberforce's sympathy for the plight of West Indian bondsmen seldom extended to the poor of his own country. On domestic issues he frequently aided government attempts to crush political dissent and control the labor force, supporting the Sedition Act of 1795, the Combination Law of 1799, and the suspension of habeas corpus in 1818. Reginald Coupland, Wilberforce: A Narrative (Oxford, Eng., 1923); Davis, Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 460-61; DNB, 21:208-17. , Granville SharpeSharp, Granville

Granville Sharp (1735-1813) is commonly regarded as the father of the British antislavery movement. In 1765, while a clerk in the Ordnance Department, he aided slave Jonathan Strong, who had been abandoned by his owner on the streets of London. Two years later, when Strong's owner, a Barbadian lawyer, attempted to ship Strong to Jamaica, Sharp began to search English constitutional and common law for precedents outlawing slavery. He published the results of his studies in a 1769 pamphlet, On the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery in England. Three years later Sharp aided lawyers representing James Somerset, a fugitive slave whose owner recaptured him and sought to send him to the West Indies. Abolitionists hailed Sharp's influence on the Somerset decision, which declared that slavery could exist in England only by "positive law" and limited the authority of masters over their slaves in England. Later active in the campaigns against the African slave trade and slavery in the colonies. Sharp frequently communicated with abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic. An energetic pamphleteer, Sharp fought for Irish home rule and parliamentary reform and denounced the impressment of seamen. He resigned his position in the Ordnance Department to protest British efforts to subdue the colonies during the American Revolution. Prince Hoare, The Memoirs of Granville Sharp, 2 vols. (London, 1828); Frank Joseph Klingberg, The Anti-Slavery Movement in England: A Study in English Humanitarianism (New Haven, Conn., 1926), 35-41; Reginald Coupland, The British Anti-Slavery Movement (1933; London, 1964), 45-65; Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1975), 244-46; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1975), 387- 98, 479-501; DNB, 17:1339-42. , William KnibbKnibb, William

Born in Kettering, England, William Knibb (1803-43) was a printer's apprentice before he became affiliated with the London-based Baptist Missionary Society. Along with Thomas Burchell, Knibb was sent as a missionary to the black population of Jamaica in 1824, eventually heading the mission post at Falmouth. Harassed even before the Jamaican slave insurrection of 1831-32. Knibb and Burchell were persecuted during and shortly after it by Jamaican authorities and white colonists who held them responsible for this so-called Baptist War. Both men were arrested and tried for inciting slave insurrection but were acquitted because evidence against them had been fabricated. Nevertheless, proslavery mobs, composed partly of militia, destroyed the chapels, manses, and personal effects of both men. The missionaries fled the island in spring 1832. Knibb went to England, where he lectured extensively on behalf of West Indian emancipation for the Anti-Slavery Agency. By 1834 the two men were able to return to Jamaica, where they spent the rest of their lives expanding their missionary operations, working with the freed people, and speaking out against the abuses of the apprenticeship system and the imposition of the planter class. Knibb attended the 1840 World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London. [William Knibb], Facts and Documents Connected with the Late Insurrection in Jamaica (London, 1832); John H. Hinton, Memoir of William Knibb, Missionary in Jamaica (London, 1847); Philip Wright, Knibb "The Notorious": Slaves' Missionary, 1803-1845 (London, 1973). , Henry BroughamBrougham, Henry Peter, first Baron Brougham and Vaux

Henry Peter Brougham (1778-1868), first Baron Brougham and Vaux, rose from advocate in the Scottish southern circuit to become lord high chancellor in the ministry of Lord Charles Grey in the early 1830s and a prominent leader of the Whig party in Parliament. Founder of the Edinburgh Review, Brougham is chiefly remembered for his efforts on behalf of legal, educational, and electoral reform, and for the role he played in the parliamentary struggle to abolish slavery. Arthur Aspinall, Lord Brougham and the Whig Party (1927; Manchester, Eng., 1972); Chester W. New, The Life of Henry Brougham to 1830 (Oxford, Eng., 1961); DNB, 2:1356-66. , Thomas Fowell BuxtonBuxton, Thomas Fowell

Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845), politician, philanthropist, and successor to Wilberforce in the parliamentary struggle to end British slavery and the slave trade, was born in Essex County, England, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Buxton entered Parliament in 1818 and achieved prominence for his support of various reform measures, including education of the poor and equitable criminal laws. In the late 1820s he exposed the practice of slave trading in Mauritius, Trinidad, and Jamaica, and between 1831 and 1833 led the abolition campaign in Parliament. Buxton wrote The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1839) and supported several unsuccessful explorations of the Niger River. William Law Mathieson, British Slavery and Its Abolition, 1823-1838 (1926; New York, 1967), 115-27, 194-98, 222-24; Clare Taylor, British and American Abolitionists: An Episode in Transatlantic Understanding (Edinburgh, Scot., 1974), 33-34, 73-74; Klingberg, Anti-Slavery Movement in England, 187-212; DNB, 3:559-61. , Daniel O'ConnellO'Connell, Daniel

Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), Irish lawyer and member of Parliament, played a major role in both the British and American antislavery movements. Converted to abolitionism in 1824 after hearing English abolitionist James Cropper, O'Connell balanced conflicting commitments to black freedom and Irish independence throughout his career. A leader of the movement to repeal the Act of Union between England and Ireland, as well as a participant in the related campaign to remove the civil restrictions imposed upon Catholics, O'Connell saw the bill for Catholic Emancipation pass Parliament in 1829 with strong support from antislavery politicians. Four years later he marshaled crucial Irish votes needed for passage of the Emancipation Act of 1833, inaugurating gradual abolition in the British West Indies. On 1838 he narrowly averted a duel with U.S. Ambassador Andrew Stevenson, whom he accused of being a slave breeder. Identified with William Lloyd Garrison throughout the 1830s, O'Connell supported the seating of women delegates at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 and made numerous attempts to rally abolitionist sentiment among Irish Americans in the years immediately following. O'Connell often suffered high political costs as a result of such activities, particularly in light of diminished U.S. support for the Irish repeal movement. Although some Garrisonians criticized O'Connell for vacillation and political expediency, American reformers of all persuasions lavished praise on the "Irish Liberator" during the post- Civil War era. Oliver MacDonagh, The Emancipationist: Daniel O'Connell, 1830-47 (New York, 1989); Gilbert Osofsky, "Abolitionists, Irish Immigrants, and the Dilemmas of Romantic Nationalism," AHR, 80:889-912 (October 1975); Douglas C. Riach, "Daniel O'Connell and American Anti-Slavery," Irish Historical Studies, 20:3-25 (March 1976); Howard Temperley, "The O'Connell-Stevenson Contretemps: A Reflection of the Anglo-American Slavery Issue," JNH, 47:217-33 (October 1962); Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography, 3d ed. (Niwot, Colo., 1998), 306-08; DNB, 14:816-34. , George ThompsonThompson, George

George Thompson (1804-78), originally from Liverpool, was an early advocate of slave emancipation in the British colonies and was an influential British ally of William Lloyd Garrison. Thompson lectured for the Agency Committee, a group that helped force passage of the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. That same year, he was among the founders of the Edinburgh Society for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the World. As a member of Parliament from 1847 to 1852, Thompson was a member of the Parliamentary Reform Association and the Anti-Corn Law League, and promoted the production of East Indian cotton in order to undermine American slavery. Thompson also promoted the antislavery cause during trips to the United States during the 1830s, 1850s, and 1860s. Lib., 29 May 1846; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:434-522, 2:1-72; Howard Temperley, British Antislavery, 1833-1870 (Columbia, S.C., 1972), 23-29; C. Duncan Rice, "The Anti-Slavery Mission of George Thompson to the United States, 1834-1835," Journal of American Studies, 2:13-41 (April 1968); DNB, 19:691. , and their noble co-workers that finally thawed the British heart into sympathy for the slave, and moved the strong arm of that Government in mercy to put an end to his bondage.

Let no American, especially no colored American, withhold a generous recognition of this stupendous achievement. What though it was not American, but British; what though it was not Republican, but Monarchical; what though it was not from the American Congress, but from the British Parliament; what though it was not from the chair of a President, but from the throne of a Queen, it was none the less a triumph of right over wrong, of good over evil, and a victory for the whole human race.

Besides: We may properly celebrate this day because of its special relation to our American Emancipation. In doing this we do not sacrifice the general to the special, the universal to the local. The cause of human liberty is one the whole world over. The downfall of slavery under British power meant the downfall of slavery, ultimately, under American power, and the downfall of negro slavery everywhere. But the effect of this great and philanthropic measure, naturally enough, was greater here than elsewhere. Outside the British Empire no other nation was in a position to feel it so much as we. The stimulus it gave to the American anti-slavery movement was immediate, pronounced. and powerful. British example became a tremendous lever in the hands of American abolitionists. It did much to shame and discourage the spirit of caste and the advocacy of slavery in church and state. It could not well have been otherwise. No man liveth unto himself.

What is true in this respect of individual men, is equally true of nations. Both impart good or ill to their age and generation. But putting aside this consideration, so worthy of thought, we have special reasons for claiming the First of August as the birth-day of negro emancipation, not only in the West Indies, but in the United States. Spite of our national Independence, a common language, a common literature, a common history, and a common civilization makes us and keeps us still a part of the British nation, if not a part of the British Empire. England can take no step forward in the pathway of a higher civilization without drawing us in the same direction. She is still the mother country, and the mother, too, of our abolition movement. Though

her emancipation came in peace, and ours in war; though hers cost treasure, and ours blood; though hers was the result of a sacred preference, and ours resulted in part from necessity, the motive and mainspring of the respective measures were the same in both.

The abolitionists of this country have been charged with bringing on the war between the North and South, and in one sense this is true. Had there been no anti-slavery agitation at the North, there would have been no active anti-slavery anywhere to resist the demands of the slave-power at the South, and where there is no resistance there can be no war. Slavery would then have been nationalized, and the whole country would then have been subjected to its power. Resistance to slavery and the extension of slavery invited and provoked secession and war to perpetuate and extend the slave system. Thus in the same sense, England is responsible for our civil war. The abolition of slavery in the West Indies gave life and vigor to the abolition movement in America. Clarkson of England gave us GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. of America; Granville Sharpe of England gave us our Wendell Phillips; and Wilberforce of England gave us our peerless Charles Sumner.

These grand men and their brave co-workers here, took up the moral thunder-bolts which had struck down slavery in the West Indies, and hurled them with increased zeal and power against the gigantic system of slavery here, till, goaded to madness, the traffickers^†Editorial Emendation: trafficers. in the souls and bodies of men flew to arms, rent asunder the Union at the center, and filled the land with hostile armies and the ten thousand horrors of war. Out of this tempest, out of this whirlwind and earthquake of war, came the abolition of slavery, came the employment of colored troops, came colored citizens, came colored jury-men, came colored congressmen, came colored schools in the South, and came the great amendments of our national constitution.

We celebrate this day, too, for the very good reason that we have no other to celebrate. English emancipation has one advantage over American emancipation. Hers has a definite anniversary. Ours has none. Like our slaves, the freedom of the negro has no birthday. No man can tell the day of the month, or the month of the year, upon which slavery was abolished in the United States. We cannot even tell when it began to be abolished. Like the movement of the sea, no man can tell where one wave begins and another ends. The chains of slavery with us were loosened by degrees. First, we had the struggle in Kansas with border ruffians; next, we had John Brown at Harper's Ferry; next, the tiring upon Fort Sumter; a little while after, we had Frémont's^†Editorial Emendation: Fremont's. order, freeing the slaves of the rebels in Missouri.^†On 30 August 1861, John Charles Fremont, commanding general of the Western Department, issued a proclamation from his headquarters in St. Louis that instituted martial law in Missouri, threatened to execute those found guilty of bearing arms against the federal government, and declared free the slaves of all persons in Missouri who were aiding the Confederacy. In a letter of 11 September 1861, President Lincoln ordered Fremont to amend the portion of his proclamation concerning slaves so that it would conform to the Confiscation Act of 6 August 1861. That act deprived the owners of slaves being used to aid the rebellion or their claim to the labor of such slaves but did not alter the legal status of the bondsmen themselves. Lincoln to [John C.] Fremont, 2, 11 September 1861, in Lincoln, , ed. Basler, 4:506-07, 517-18; ,ser. 1, 3:466-67; Gerteis, , 16. Then we had General Butler declaring and treating the slaves of rebels as contraband of war; next we had

the proposition to arm colored men and make them soldiers for the Union.^†In March 1863 Congress passed the Enrollment Act, enabling northern states to conscript "all able-bodied male citizens," including black men. This was followed on 22 May by the War Department's General Order 143: creation of the U.S. Colored Troops, which established the Bureau for Colored Troops, under the control of the adjutant general, to administer black military units. Michael T. Meier, "Lorenzo Thomas and the Recruitment of Blacks in the Mississippi Valley, 1863-1865," in , ed. Smith, 249-75; John David Smith, "Let Us All Be Grateful That We Have Colored Troops That Will Fight," in ibid., 1-77. In 1862 we had the conditional promise of a proclamation of emancipation from President Lincoln, and, finally, on the 1st of January, 1863, we had the proclamation itself—and still the end was not yet. Slavery was bleeding and dying, but it was not dead, and no man can tell just when its foul spirit departed from our land, if, indeed, it has yet departed, and hence we do not know what day we may properly celebrate as coupled with this great American event.

When England behaved so badly during our late civil war, I, for one, felt like giving up these 1st of August celebrations. But I remembered that during that war, there were two Englands, as there were two Americas, and that one was true to liberty while the other was true to slavery. It was not the England which gave us West India emancipation that took sides with the slaveholder's rebellion. It was not the England of John BrightBright, John

John Bright (1811- 89), a member of the House of Commons and known for great oratory, supported free trade and repeal of the Corn Laws. Although his radical stands on church disestablishment, parliamentary reform, and foreign nonintervention prevented him from rising to leadership of the Liberal party, he held his seat for many years. During the American Civil War, Bright favored the North and brought the opinion of the British middle and working classes to his side. Late in Bright's career, his opposition to Irish home rule and to most factory legislation led to a growing political isolation from younger Liberal reformers. George Macaulay Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (Boston, 1913); Ephraim D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1925), 1:58, 108-10, 221-22, 2:132-34; Keith Robbins, John Bright (London, 1979); Herman Ausubel, John Bright: Victorian Reformer (New York, 1966); DNB, 22:273-91. and William Edward ForsterForster, William Edward

William Edward Forster (1818-86), a woolen manufacturer and reformer from Bradford, England, was educated in Quaker schools. As an active lecturer in Bradford and Leeds after the early 1840s, he urged the adoption of free-trade principles, a compromise with British Chartists, the reform of Parliament, and the worldwide abolition of slavery. In 1859 he narrowly missed election to Parliament as a Liberal, but two years later secured a seat, which he held until his death. Over his long legislative career, Forster became increasingly conservative, as illustrated by his later stands on educational reform and on the suppression of the Land League in Ireland. DNB, 7:465-71. , that permitted "Alabamas'' to escape from British ports,^†In desperate need of modern warships, the Confederacy entered into secret agreements with a number of British and French shipbuilding firms. To avoid violations of neutrality laws, all contracts were made with private citizens rather than with the Confederate government, and armaments were not installed until after the sales had been completed and the vessels had left the shipyards. In 1862 the cruisers Florida and Alabama were permitted out of Britain under those conditions and soon afterward commenced careers as commerce raiders. The protests of the Lincoln administration, as well as fears that the precedent being established could someday be used against Britain itself, caused the Palmerston government to change its policy by 1863. D. P. Crook, (New York, 1974), 258-62, 292, 322-30; Lynn M. Case and Warren F. Spencer, (Philadelphia, 1970), 427-80; Adams, , 2:116-51., and prey upon our commerce, or that otherwise favored slaveholding in the South, but it was the England which had done what it could to prevent West India emancipation.

It was the tory party in England that fought the abolition party at home, and the same party it was, that favored our slaveholding rebellion.

Under a different name, we had the same, or a similar party, here; a party which despised the negro and consigned him to perpetual slavery; a party which was willing to allow the American Union to be shivered into fragments, rather than that one hair of the head of slavery should be injured.

But, fellow-citizens, I should but very imperfectly fulfil the duty of this hour if I confined myself to a merely historical or philosophical discussion of West India emancipation. The story of the 1st of August has been told a thousand times over, and may be told a thousand times more. The cause of freedom and humanity has a history and destiny nearer home.

How stands the case with the recently emancipated millions of colored people in our own country? What is their condition to-day? What is their relation to the people who formerly held them as slaves'? These are important questions, and they are such as trouble the minds of thoughtful men of all colors, at home and abroad. By law, by the constitution of the United States, slavery has no existence in our country. The legal form has been abolished. By the law and the constitution, the negro is a man and a citizen, and has all the rights and liberties guaranteed to any other variety of the human family, residing in the United States.

He has a country, a flag, and a government, and may legally claim full and complete protection under the laws. It was the ruling wish, intention, and purpose of the loyal people after rebellion was suppressed, to have an end to

the entire cause of that calamity by forever putting away the system of slavery and all its incidents. In pursuance of this idea, the negro was made free, made a citizen, made eligible to hold office, to be a juryman, a legislator, and magistrate. To this end, several amendments to the constitution were proposed, recommended, and adopted. They are now a part of the supreme law of the land, binding alike upon every State and Territory of the United States, North and South. Briefly, this is our legal and theoretical condition. This is our condition on paper and parchment. If only from the national statute book we were left to learn the true condition of the colored race, the result would be altogether creditable to the American people. It would give them a clear title to a place among the most enlightened and liberal nations of the world. We could say of our country, as Curran once said of England, "The spirit of British law makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from the British soil."^†An often-repeated remark by John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), which he made while defending a fellow Irishman from libel. Curran was a well-known Irish orator, politician, and lawyer. In his legal work he frequently argued on behalf of "lost causes." He was recognized for his ready wit and sharp tongue. Curran attended Trinity College, Dublin, before entering Middle Temple, London, to study law. Entering the Irish bar in 1775, he mostly practiced chancery law and later served as a king's counsel and in the Irish House of Commons. Curran also fought in five duels, as both the challenged and the challenger. , 5:332-40. Now I say that this eloquent tribute to England, if only we looked into our constitution, might apply to us. In that instrument we have laid down the law, now and forever, that there shall be no slavery or involuntary servitude in this republic, except for crime.

We have gone still further. We have laid the heavy hand of the constitution upon the matchless meanness of caste, as well as the hell-black crime of slavery. We have declared before all the world that there shall be no denial of rights on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The advantage gained in this respect is immense.

It is a great thing^†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: t ng. to have the supreme law of the land on the side of justice and liberty. It is the line up to which the nation is destined to march—the law to which the nation's life must ultimately conform. It is a great principle, up to which we may educate the people, and to this extent its value exceeds all speech.

But to-day, in most of the Southern States, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments are virtually nullified.^†Redeemers in the southern states opposed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments' enfranchisement of African Americans by limiting black voting power and indirectly keeping Republicans from holding governmental positions. In Georgia a poll tax was established, which restricted much of the state's underclass black population from voting, while in Mississippi, Alabama, and other southern states gerrymandering techniques were executed to weaken the remaining black vote. Additionally, Mississippi rid itself of Republican officials by establishing strict bond requirements, while North Carolina and Alabama even managed to restore the localized form of government they maintained during the antebellum era by transferring power to select county officials. By the mid-1870s such actions effectively discouraged many northerners from continuing federal protection of southern blacks. Foner, , 422, 586-87, 590-91.

The rights which they were intended to guarantee are denied and held in contempt. The citizenship granted in the fourteenth amendment is practically a mockery, and the right to vote, provided for in the fifteenth amendment, is literally stamped out in face of government. The old master class is to-day triumphant, and the newly enfranchised class in a condition but little above that in which they were found before the rebellion.

Do you ask me how, after all that has been done, this state of things has been made possible? I will tell you. Our reconstruction measures were radically defective. They left the former slave completely in the power of the old master, the loyal citizen in the hands of the disloyal rebel against the government.

Wise, grand, and comprehensive in scope and design, as were the reconstruction measures, high and honorable as were the intentions of the statesmen by whom they were framed and adopted, time and experience, which try all things, have demonstrated that they did not successfully meet the case.

In the hurry and confusion of the hour, and the eager desire to have the Union restored, there was more care for the sublime^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: for sublime. superstructure of the republic than for the solid foundation upon which it could alone be upheld. They gave freedmen the machinery of liberty, but denied them the steam to put it in motion. They gave them the uniform of soldiers, but no arms; they called them citizens, and left them subjects; they called them free, and almost left them slaves. They did not deprive the old master class of the power of life and death which was the soul of the relation of master and slave. They could not of course sell their former slaves,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: sell them. but they retained the power to starve them to death, and wherever this power is held, there is the power of slavery. He who can say to his fellow-man, "You shall serve me or starve," is a master, and his subject is a slave. This was seen and felt by Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and leading stalwart Republicans, and had their counsels prevailed the terrible evils from which we now suffer would have been averted. The negro to-day would not be on his knees, as he is, abjectly supplicating the old master class to give him leave to toil. Nor would he now be leaving the South as from a doomed city and seeking a home in the uncongenial North, but tilling his native soil in comparative independence. Though no longer a slave, he is in a thraldom grievous and intolerable, compelled to work for whatever his employer is pleased to pay him, swindled out of his hard earnings by money orders redeemed in stores, compelled to pay the price of an acre of ground for its use during a single year, to pay four times more than a fair price for a pound of bacon, and be kept upon the narrowest margin between life and starvation.^†Following the Civil War, ex-slaves in the South were often abused by white landowners, who contractually mortgaged their crops at inflated fees of from $5 to $10 per acre. Black farmers of cotton crops were particularly mistreated, since the ginning process required for the cotton was controlled by white landlords who monopolized the market and forced tenants to accept their high production fees. Additionally, white southern storekeepers tended to price products at over twice their market value and charged high interest rates on outstanding balances. As a result of such white-imposed credit systems, most rural blacks in the South remained in debt-ridden poverty throughout the 1860s and 1870s. Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, (New York, 1977), 159-70; Painter, , 54-68. Much complaint has been made that the freedmen have shown so little ability to take care of themselves since their emancipation. Men have marvelled that they have made so little progress. I question the justice of this complaint. It is neither reasonable, nor in any sense just. To me, the wonder is, not that the freedmen have made so little progress, but, rather, that they have made so much; not that they have been standing still, but that they have been able to stand at all.

We have only to reflect for a moment upon the situation in which these people found themselves when liberated; consider their ignorance, their poverty, their destitution, and their absolute dependence upon the very class by

which they had been held in bondage for centuries, a class whose every sentiment was averse to their freedom, and we shall be prepared to marvel that
they have under the circumstances done so well.

History does not furnish an example of emancipation under conditions less friendly to the emancipated class, than this American example. Liberty came to the freedmen of the United States, not in mercy but in wrath; not by moral choice but by military necessity; not by the generous action of the people among whom they were to live, and whose good will was essential to the success of the measure, but by strangers, foreigners, invaders, trespassers, aliens, and enemies. The very manner of their emancipation invited to the heads of the freedmen the bitterest hostility of race and class. They were hated because they had been slaves, hated because they were now free, and hated because of those who had freed them. Nothing was to have been expected other than what has happened, and he is a poor student of the human heart who does not see that the old master class would naturally employ every power and means in their reach to make the great measure of emancipation unsuccessful and utterly odious. It was born in the tempest and whirlwind of war, and has lived in a storm of violence and blood. When the Hebrews were emancipated, they were told to take spoil from the Egyptians.^†The Bible states that, upon their emancipation, the Hebrews were "spoiled" by their erstwhile masters, and received from the Egyptians everything they required. The emancipation of the Hebrews from Egypt forms the core of what is known as the Exodus event found in the Old Testament book of the same name. It was during this time that Moses became the leader of the Hebrew people, ultimately leading them to Canaan, "the promised land." Although the Exodus event was once believed to have been a historical event, modern historians doubt in varying degrees the story's accuracy. Most agree that, at the very least, the general historicity of the Exodus event explains most reasonably the other known facts of that era and region. Conclusive dating of the Exodus event based on extrabiblical sources is impossible, though a plausible period from 1260 to 1220 BCE has been established. Exod. 3:1-19; , 2:700-08. When the serfs of Russia were emancipated, they were given three acres of ground upon which they could live and make a living.^†Alexander II 's Emancipation Manifesto of 5 March 1861 freed most classes of Russian serfs. those laboring onprivate estates and in domestic households. All emancipated serfs were granted the full rights of citizens, including the ability to marry, own property, and own and operate businesses. Serfs owned by wealthy landlords were given allotments of land, while household serfs were not. State-owned serfs remained in bondage until 1866. Bruce F. Adams, "The Emancipation of the Russian Serfs, 1861," in , ed. Frank W. Thackeray and John E. Findling (Westport, Conn., 1996), 93-111; N. M. Druzhinin, "The Emancipation Legislation," in , ed. Terence Emmons (New York, 1963), 19-25. But not so when our slaves were emancipated. They were sent away empty-handed, without money, without friends, and without a foot of land to stand upon. Old and young, sick and well, were turned loose to the open sky, naked to their enemies. The old slave quarter that had before sheltered them, and the fields that had yielded them corn, were now denied them. The old master class in its wrath said, "Clear out! The Yankees have freed you, now let them feed and shelter you!"

Inhuman as was this treatment, it was the natural result of the bitter resentment felt by the old master class, and in view of it, the wonder is, not that the colored people of the South have done so little in the way of acquiring a comfortable living, but that they live at all.

Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the colored people have no reason to despair. We still live. and while there is life there is hope. The fact that we have endured wrongs and hardships, which would have destroyed any other race, and have increased in numbers and public consideration, ought to strengthen our faith in ourselves and our future. Let us then, wherever we are, whether at the North or at the South, resolutely struggle on in the belief that there is a better day coming, and that we by patience, industry,

prightness, and economy may hasten that better day. I will not listen, myself, and I would not have you listen to the nonsense, that no people can succeed in life among a people by whom they have been despised and oppressed.

The statement is erroneous and contradicted by the whole history of human progress. A few centuries ago, all Europe was cursed with serfdom, or slavery. Traces of this bondage still remain but are not easily visible.

The Jews, only a century ago were despised, hated, and oppressed, but they have defied, met, and vanquished the hard conditions imposed upon them, and are now opulent and powerful, and compel respect in all countries.^†Full Jewish emancipation was achieved during the mid-nineteenth century in most countries except tsarist Russia. In uneven developments throughout Western and Central Europe between 1830 and 1880, Jews were no longer restricted in rights of residence, real estate acquisition, and choice of profession. Hilary L. Rubinstein et al., (London, 2002), 14-44.

Take courage from the example of all religious denominations that have sprung up since Martin Luther. Each in its turn, has been oppressed and persecuted.

Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers, have all been compelled to feel the lash and sting of popular disfavor—yet all in turn have conquered the prejudice and hate of their surroundings.

Greatness does not come to any people on flowery beds of ease. We must fight to win the prize. No people to whom liberty is given, can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant. The hardships and dangers involved in the struggle give strength and toughness to the character, and enable it to stand firm in storm as well as in sunshine.

One thought more before I leave this subject, and it is a thought I wish you all to lay to heart. Practice it yourselves and teach it to your children. It is this, neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves, and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectably. An exceptionally poor and dependent people will be despised by the opulent and despise themselves.

You cannot make an empty sack stand on end.^†Variants of this aphorism, which has seventeenth-century Italian antecedents. appeared in Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac in 1740, 1750, and 1758. Leonard W. Labaree, ed., , 39 vols. (1959--), 2:248, 3:446, 7:348. A race which cannot saw its earnings, which spends all it makes and goes in debt when it is sick, can never rise in the scale of civilization, no matter under what laws it may chance to be. Put us in Kansas or in Africa, and until we learn to save more than we spend, we are sure to sink and perish. It is not in the nature of things that we should be equally rich in this world's goods. Some will be more successful than others, and poverty, in many cases, is the result of misfortune rather than of crime; but no race can afford to have all its members the victims of this misfortune, without being considered a worthless race. Pardon me, therefore, for urging upon you, my people, the importance of saving

your earnings; of denying yourselves in the present, that you may have something in the future, of consuming less for yourselves that your children may have a start in life when you are gone.

With money and property comes the means of knowledge and power. A poverty-stricken class will be an ignorant and despised class, and no amount of sentiment can make it otherwise. This part of our destiny is in our own hands. Every dollar you lay up, represents one day's independence, one day of rest and security in the future. If the time shall ever come when we shall possess in the colored people of the United States, a class of men noted for enterprise, industry, economy, and success, we shall no longer have any trouble in the matter of civil and political rights. The battle against popular prejudice will have been fought and won, and in common with all other races and colors, we shall have an equal chance in the race of life.

Do I hear you ask in a tone of despair if this time will ever come to our people in America? The question is not new to me. I have tried to answer it many times and in many places, when the outlook was less encouraging than now. There was a time when we were compelled to walk by faith in this matter, but now, I think, we may walk by sight. Notwithstanding the great and all-abounding darkness of our past, the clouds that still overhang us in the moral and social sky, the defects inherited from a bygone condition of servitude, it is the faith of my soul that this brighter and better day will yet come. But whether it shall come late or come soon will depend mainly upon ourselves.

The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal. We shall reap as we sow.^†Douglass paraphrases Gal. 6:7. There is no escape. The conditions of success are universal and unchangeable. The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether. No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.

One ground of hope for my people is founded upon the returns of the last census. One of the most disheartening ethnological speculations concerning us has been that we shall die out; that, like the Indian, we shall perish in the blaze of Caucasian civilization. The census sets that heresy concerning us to rest. We are more than holding our own in all the southern states. We are no longer four millions of slaves, but six millions of freemen.

Another ground of hope for our race is in the progress of education. Everywhere in the south the colored man is learning to read. None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be

communicated to the human understanding by letters. Our colored schools in the city of Washington compare favorably with the white schools,^†The city's first black public school was established in 1864, and by 1868 all Washington districts except the fifth contained respectably furnished schools for African American children. Teacher performance at these schools had heen deemed more than satisfactory. Blacks participated energetically in the development and growth of the school system, which was in most respects structurally equivalent to the public school system serving whites. Henry Barnard, (Washington, D.C., 1871), 274-76; Emmett D. Preston, Jr., "The Development of Negro Education in the District of Columbia," , 9:601-03 (October 1940). and what is true of Washington is equally true of other cities and towns of the south. Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions. They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.

Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer's whip^†A bull-dose, or bull-doze, was a severe flogging or forceful coercion. Later the word was used for a heavy pistol or for one who used such a weapon. During Reconstruction the term "Bulldozers" was one of a number of the nicknames applied to terrorist groups aiming at the violent overthrow of Republican state governments in the South. Roller and Twyman, , 159; Mathews, , 1:461-62. can keep them from voting their convictions. Then another ground of hope is that as a general rule we are an industrious people. I have traveled extensively over the south, and almost the only people I saw at work there were the colored people. In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil. Only arbitrary conditions can prevent this. To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.^†The figure for Georgia can be verified: state records in 1879 listed the aggregate taxed property of blacks as $5,182,398. , 153-57. Not less encouraging than this is the political situation at the south.

The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the action of political parties.

While the Constitution of the United States shall guarantee the colored man's right to vote, somebody in the south will want that vote and will offer the terms upon which that vote can be obtained.

Thus the forces against us are passion and prejudice, which are transient, and those for us are principles, self-acting, self-sustaining, and permanent. My hope for the future of my race is further supported by the rapid decline of an emotional, shouting, and thoughtless religion. Scarcely in any direction can there be found a less favorable field for mind or morals than where such a religion prevails. It abounds in the wildest hopes and fears, and in blind, unreasoning faith. Instead of adding to faith virtue, its tendency is to substitute faith for virtue, and is a deadly enemy to our progress. There is still another ground for hope. It arises out of a comparison of our past condition with our present one,—the immeasurable depths from which we have come and the point of progress already attained. We shall look over the world, and survey the history of any other oppressed and enslaved people in vain, to find one which has made more progress within the same length of time, than have the colored people of the United States. These, and many other considerations which I might name, give brightness and fervor to my hopes that that better day for which the more thoughtful amongst us have long labored, and millions of our people have sighed for centuries, is near at hand.

MEETING OF COLORED CITIZENS IN WASHINGTON TO EXPRESS THEIR SYMPATHY AT THE GREAT NATIONAL BEREAVEMENT, THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

MEETING OF COLORED CITIZENS IN WASHINGTON TO EXPRESS THEIR SYMPATHY AT THE GREAT NATIONAL BEREAVEMENT, THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

On the day of the interment of the late James A. Garfield,^†President James A. Garfield was interred at Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery on 26 September 1881. He had been shot on the morning of 2 July 1881 as he and several cabinet members waited to board a train at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad terminal in Washington, D.C. The assassin, a disgruntled office seeker named Charles Guiteau, entered the station and fired two shots at the president. One passed through his coat sleeve, but the second entered Garfield's abdomen, mortally wounding him. The president was taken to the White House, where he was attended by several doctors. In early September he was moved to the New Jersey shore to escape the capital's late summer heat. On 19 September he died from complications of the wound. Funeral services were held at the Capitol on 23 September, before the body was moved to Ohio for burial. New York Times, 3 July, 23 September 1881; Doenecke, , 53-54. at Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio,^†Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery was Ohio's first rural cemetery. It was founded in 1869 by Jeptha H. Wade and others who believed that Cleveland should have a garden cemetery outside the city limits, which would focus on natural beauty and have an atmosphere suggesting a park. Lake View was established east of Cleveland and had a view of Lake Erie. Since Cleveland already had specifically designated Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish cemeteries, Lake View was designated as nonsectarian. Some of the dignitaries interred at Lake View include John D. Rockefeller and President James A. Garfield. Marian J. Morton, (Charleston, S .C., 2004), 7-8. a day of gloom long to be remembered as the closing scene in one of the most tragic and startling dramas ever witnessed in this, or in any other country, the colored people of the District of Columbia assembled in the Fifteenth street Presbyterian church,^†The Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., was originally located in a schoolhouse owned by John F. Cook on H Street near 14th Northwest. It was established in 1842 and was known as the First Colored Presbyterian Church of Washington. Forty people originally worshiped there, but in 1853 they were joined by members from surrounding churches such as the First, Second, and Fourth Presbyterian Churches. This increase enabled the members to build a small frame church on Fifteenth Street, between I and K Streets. The first pastor was John F. Cook, who was officially installed as minister in 1855. Following his pastorate, there were several temporary ministers who served two or three years at most. From 1878 to 1885, Reverend Francis J. Grimke preached there, and the church had a spiritual awakening. The Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church became well known before and after the Civil War as a place of public assembly and referendum. The building was sold in 1918, and the church was relocated to a larger structure on R and Fifteenth Streets. H. W. Crew, (Dayton, Ohio, 1892), 565; John W. Cromwell, "The First Negro Churches in the District of Columbia," , 7:80-81 (January 1922). and expressed by appropriate addresses and resolutions, their respect for the character and memory of the illustrious deceased. On that occasion I was called on to preside, and by way of introducing the subsequent proceedings, (leaving to others the grateful office of delivering eulogies) made the following brief reference to the solemn and touching event.^†Douglass delivered this eulogy for the assassinated President James A. Garfield at a memorial service on 26 September 1881 in Washington, D.C. Washington (D.C.) , 27 September 1881; , ser. 1, 5:35-37.

"Friends and fellow citizens:

"To-day our common mother Earth has closed over the mortal remains of James A. Garfield, at Cleveland, Ohio. The light of no day in our national history has brought to the American people a more intense bereavement, a deeper sorrow, or a more profound sense of humiliation. It seems only as yesterday, that in my quality as United States Marshal of the District of Culumbia, it was made my duty and privilege to walk at the head of the column in advance of this our President-elect, from the crowded Senate Chamber of the National Capitol, through the long corridors, and the grand rotunda, beneath the majestic dome, to the platfonn on the portico, where amid a sea of transcendent pomp and glory, he who is now dead, was hailed with tumultuous applause from uncounted thousands of his fellow citizens, and was inaugurated Chief Magistrate of the United States. The scene was one never to be forgotten by those who beheld it. It was a great day for the nation, glad and proud to do honor to their chosen ruler. It was a glad day for James A. Garfield. It was a glad day for me, that I—one of the proscribed race, was permitted to bear so prominent a part in its august ceremonies. Mr. Garfield was then in the midst of his years, in the fullness and vigor of his manhood, covered with honors beyond the reach of princes, entering upon a career more abundant in promise than ever invited president or potentate before.

"Alas, what a contrast, as he lay in state under the same broad dome, viewed by sorrowful thousands day after day! What is the life of man? What are all his plans, purposes, and hopes? What are the shouts of the multitude, the pride and pomp of this world? How vain and unsubstantial, in the light

of this sad and shocking experience, do they all appear! Who can tell what a day or an hour will bring forth? Such reflections inevitably present themselves, as most natural and fitting on an occasion like this.

"Fellow citizens, we are here to take suitable notice of the sad and appalling event of the hour. We are here, not merely as American citizens, but as colored American citizens. Although our hearts have gone along with those of the nation at large, with every expression, with every token and demonstration of honor to the dead, sympathy with the living, and abhorrence for the horrible deed which has at last done its final work; though we have watched with beating hearts, the long and heroic struggle for life, and endured all the agony of suspense and fear; we have felt that something more, something more specific and distinctive, was due from us. Our relation to the American people makes us in some sense a peculiar class, and unless we speak separately, our voice is not heard. We therefore propose to put on record to-night our sense of the worth of President Garfield, and of the calamity involved in his death. Called to preside on this occasion, my part in the speaking shall be brief. I cannot claim to have been on intimate terms with the late President. There are other gentlemen here, who are better qualified to speak of his character than myself. I may say, however, that soon after he came to Washington, I had a conversation with him of much interest to the colored people, since it indicated his just and generous intentions towards them, and goes far to present him in the light of a wise and patriotic statesman, and a friend of our race.

"I called at the Executive Mansion, and was received very kindly by Mr. Garfield, who, in the course of the conversation said, that he felt the time had come when a step should be taken in advance, in recognition of the claims of colored citizens, and expressed his intention of sending some colored representatives abroad to other than colored nations. He enquired of me how I thought such representations would be received? I assured him that I thought they would be well received; that in my own experience abroad, I had observed that the higher we go in the gradations of human society, the farther we get from prejudice of race or color. I was greatly pleased with the assurance of his liberal policy towards us. I remarked to him, that no part of the American people would be treated with respect, if systematically ignored by the government, and denied all participation in its honors and emoluments. To this he assented, and went so far as to propose my going in a representative capacity to an important post abroad—a compliment which I gratefully acknowledged, but respectfully declined. To say the truth, I wished to remainat home, and retain the office of United States Marshal of the District of Columbia.

"It is a great thing for Hon. John Mercer LangstonLangston, John Mercer

John Mercer Langston (1829-97), educator, lawyer, diplomat, and U.S. congressman, was born in Louisa County, Virginia, to a white planter and his mistress, an emancipated slave of black and American Indian ancestry. Orphaned at an early age but possessed of a substantial inheritance, Langston grew up in Ohio, graduated from Oberlin College (1849), and, in 1854, gained admission to the Ohio bar under a precedent allowing certain rights to "a colored man who is nearer white than mulatto or half-breed." A year later he won the office of town clerk in Brownhelm and with it the distinction of being one of the first blacks to hold public office in the United States. He later held elective posts in Oberlin. During the late 1840s and the 1850s he and his older brother Charles were active in the black convention movement in Ohio. At first a colonizationist, Langston shifted his emphasis to campaigning for black education and suffrage. He also spoke at temperance and antislavery functions and helped to found and finance the black Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was president from 1858 to 1861. Long sympathetic to the strategy of direct resistance advocated by David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet, Langston supported rescues of captured fugitive slaves and recruited volunteers for John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry. During the Civil War he recruited black troops, opposed discrimination in the army, headed the National Equal Rights League, and successfully defended Edmonia Lewis, later a noted black sculptor, in a celebrated poisoning case at Oberlin College. Langston was inspector general of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1868 and a leading proponent of loyalty to the Republican party at conventions of the Colored National Labor Union in 1869 and 1871. From 1869 until 1876 he was a professor of law and dean at Howard University. Appointed minister to Haiti in 1877, Langston held diplomatic posts until 1885, when he returned to Virginia as president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute in Petersburg. In 1888 he won a disputed congressional election in Virginia's Fourth District, defeating a white Democrat and a white Republican in a race that was ultimately decided by the House of Representatives. Douglass opposed Langston's candidacy as tending to split the Republican ranks. John Mercer Langston. From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capital (Hartford, Conn., 1894); Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 176; Geoffrey Blodgett, "John Mercer Langston and the Case of Edmonia Lewis: Oberlin, 1862," JNH, 53:201-18 (July 1968); William Cheek, "A Negro Runs for Congress: John Mercer Langston and the Virginia Campaign of 1888," JNH, 52:14-34 (January 1967); ibid., "John Mercer Langston: Black Protest Leader and Abolitionist," CWH, 16:101-20 (June 1970); DANB, 382-84; DAB, 10:597-98. to represent this republic at Port au Prince,^†The capital of Haiti and its chief seaport, Port-au-Prince is located in the southwestern part of the country, at the end of the Gulf of Gonaives. It was founded in 1749 by French sugar planters in the area originally called Saint Dominique, renamed Haiti in 1804. Cohen, , 2:2489-90. and for Henry Highland Garnet to represent us in Liberia,^†Assisted by the American Colonization Society, free black American settlers arrived in 1822 in what would be called the Republic of Liberia. Over the next twenty-five years, new settlements were established along the coast; the most prominent was Moesurado, founded in 1822, which became Monrovia, the new nation's capital. The settlers, who became known as "Americo-Liberians," declared the national independence of Liberia in 1847. Indigenous people in the territory were Macon (Ga.) , 18 June 1871, 26 January 1875; Chicago ,27 September 1881; Atchison (Kans.) ,14 July 1882; , ser. 1, 4:581, 5:xvii; Warren Almand, ed., Series: (Tallahassee, 1959), 65-73.but it would be indeed a step in advance, to have some colored men sent to represent us in white nationalities, and we have reason for profound regret that Mr. Garfield could not have lived to carry out his just and wise intentions towards us. I might say more of this conversation, but I will not detain you except to say, that America has had many great men, but no man among them all has had better things said of him, than he who has been reverently committed to the dust in Cleveland to-day."

I then^†Editorial Emendation: Mr. Douglass then. called upon Professor GreenerGreener, Richard Theodore

Philadelphia-born Richard T. Greener (1844-1922) was the first African American to graduate from Harvard College, graduating in 1870. Greener then read law and was admitted to the bar in South Carolina in 1876. He taught at Howard University's Law Department and then became dean (1879-80). He came into conflict with Frederick Douglass, who then served as a Howard University trustee, over the issue of western migration for African Americans. As secretary of the Exodus Committee, Greener advocated migration to Kansas, but Douglass strongly opposed the Exoduster Movement. Following the disbanding of Howard University's law school in 1880, Greener worked as a lawyer and campaigned for the Republican party in 1884. In 1885 he secured appointment as chief examiner for the New York City Civil Service Board, maintaining that post until 1889. In 1898 he was appointed the first U.S. consul to Vladivostok, Russia, remaining there until 1905. Greener later settled in Chicago, where he worked for an insurance company, and became active in the Niagara Movement. Allison Blakely, "Richard T. Greener and the 'Talented Tenth's' Dilemma," JNH, 59:305-21 (October 1974); ANB, 9:535-37; DAB, 7:578-79. , who read a series of resolutions eloquently expressive of their sense of the great loss that had been sustained, and their sympathy with the family of the late President. Prof. Greener then spoke briefly and was followed by Prof. John M. Langston and Rev. W. W. HicksHicks, William Watkin

Born in Wales, William Watkin Hicks (c. 1836-?) immigrated to central Pennsylvania with his parents in 1848. He began a career in the Methodist Episcopal church in 1861 as a missionary to India. After returning to America in 1863 because of illness. Hicks was called to minister at churches in Frederick, Maryland, and then in Brooklyn.In 1868 he moved south and held ministerial positions in Charleston, Macon, and Savannnah before moving to Jacksonville, Florida, around 1875, where he won a seat in the state Legislature as a Liberal Republican. While there Hicks also served as the superintendent of public instruction from 1875 to 1876. Hicks joined Douglass during speaking engagements at least twice. The first occasion was in New York City for a Republican campaign stop on 25 October 1880. Then on 26 September 1881 Hicks spoke with Senator John M. Langston and Douglass at a memorial meeting for President Garfield. Following Garfield's assassination, Hicks, now a Presbyterian minister in Washington. D.C., became the spiritual adviser to the assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, for his trial and execution. Macon (Ga.) Weekly Telegraph and Georgia Journal & Messenger, 18 June 1871, 26 January 1875; Chicago Daily Inter Ocean,27 September 1881; Atchison (Kans.) Globe,14 July 1882; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:581, 5:xvii; Warren Almand, ed., Florida State University Studies, Series: Florida Educators (Tallahassee, 1959), 65-73. . All the speakers expressed their confidence in President ArthurArthur, Chester Alan

Chester Alan Arthur (1830-86) was born in East Fairfield, Vermont. In 1848 he graduated from Union College, Schenectady, New York, whereupon he became the principal of an academy in Vermont. Arthur then studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1854. During the Civil War Arthur served as the quartermaster general with the rank of brigadier general for the state of New York. After the war President Grant appointed him collector of the port of New York from 1871 to 1878. He was chosen as the running mate of Republican James A. Garfield in 1880 and became vice president on 4 March 1881. Arthur was sworn in as the twenty-first president of the United States on 20 September 1881, following the death of President Garfield. ACAB, 1:99-106; DAB, 1:373-76; ANB, 1:646--48; BDUSC (online). and in his ability to give the country a wise and beneficial administration.