HENRY HIGHLAND GARNET TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Geneva, [N.Y.] 16 June [1849].

FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

I am not at all surprised at your attempt in this week’s paper, to exculpate yourself from the shame and disgrace with which you covered yourself at the late meeting in New-York.¹At a 10 June meeting at New York City's Zion Church, Douglass openly opposed Samuel Ringgold Ward's plan to distribute Bibles to enslaved men and women. In an article in his newspaper the Impartial Citizen, Ward accused Douglass of refusing to yield the floor to Henry Highland Garnet. Douglass responded in the 15 June 1849 issue of the North Star, claiming that Garnet had shouted him down. I hail this vain attempt on your part as an omen of good and an evidence of repentance. I trust that you will act according to your convictions, and that you will do no violence to your conscience.

I shall not, my dear sir, make a long reply to your marvelous article, for the good reason none is needed. More than two thousand witnesses²Douglass agreed that 2,000 people attended the meeting at the Zion Church, although no other records of that event survive to verify that number. NS, 22 June 1849. do testify that Mr. Ward’s statements are in every particular true, and that he might have said much more to your detriment. I hope that for your own credit, you will recall some statements which you ma[d]e, or you will lose your reputation for candor and veracity and at the same time acquire a world-wide fame for having a very treacherous memory and a most extraordinary imagination in the department of reports.

I am glad to read the following sentence in your last paper. “I never have been guilty, I never expect to be guilty of Opposing the giving the Bible to any portion of the human family.”³With minor changes, Garnet quotes from Douglass's editorial the week before he wrote this letter. NS, 15 June 1849. I rejoice to see you plead “not guilty.” But nevertheless when I remember, that you said more than once, “that the attempt to give the Bible to the slaves, was a humbug and foolishness, and that it would make them more wretched, if they had it while in such a condition; give them themselves first, and talk about the Bible afterwards”;—when I remember these words, I conclude, that you have either repented, or have the misfortune of having a very bad memory.

You challenge me, in conjunction with Messrs. Ward and Bibb, to meet

you in a newspaper discussion.⁴Douglass challenged Henry Bibb, Samuel Ringgold Ward, and Henry Highland Garnet to debate the logic of distributing Bibles to slaves, writing, “Upon this issue I am prepared to meet any or all of these gentlemen in the columns of the ‘North Star,” or their own papers.” NS, 15 June 1849. This I should love to do, if I had time. My parish is large, and all my time is occupied in doing the work of a preacher of the gospel.⁵In 1848 and 1849 Henry Highland Garnet was pastor of the Geneva Tabernacle in Geneva, New York, where he also operated a school for free black children. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 99–100. But if Goliath defieth, David must come to the combat in his own way.⁶1 Sam. 17:23–58 tells the story of the battle between David and Goliath. According to the laws of honor, (and you are an honorable man,) I have the privilege of choosing weapons. I will therefore meet you in an oral discussion, either in Rochester, Geneva, or Canandaigua,⁷Located in the Finger Lakes region of western central New York, Canandaigua is a town at the northern end of a lake by the same name in Ontario County, situated between Rochester and Geneva. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:521. at any time upon which we can agree, and I hope that the time will soon come.⁸Douglass and Garnet did not meet in open debate, but waged a heated argument in the pages of the North Star and the Impartial Citizen. Garnet accused Douglass of lacking religious conviction, of denying the inspiration of the Bible, and of instability, claiming that Douglass had asked the “colored people to bow down to ‘the unreasonable and unnatural dogmas of non-resistance.’ ” Douglass responded by charging Garnet with having “no more regard for the Bible, than had Abner Kneeland or any other infidel; and he merely follows that part of it which he deems most in accordance with his bloodthirsty disposition, and as a means of putting money in his purse.” NS, 17 August 1849.

In conclusion, I must remark, that it is a pity that you, and a large class of men of the same school, cannot accord honesty of purpose and wisdom to any person who differs from you in opinion. But it is my humble opinion, that thought, wisdom and knowledge, have a wider field than even your capacious mind; and that, long after we shall have been buried and forgotten, there will still be some philanthropy and patriotism left upon the earth.

You accuse me of “desiring to build up my own fame by meanly traducing and defaming others.”⁹In his conclusion on the dispute, Douglass remarked upon all three of the men—Bibb, Ward, and Garnet—writing, “In searchng for a motive for such singular conduct, I am unable to find any better one than a contemptible desire to build up their own fame by meanly traducing and defaming others.” NS, 15 June 1849. Permit me, my dear sir, to say, that if I were even as ambitious of fame as yourself, I could pursue my course without [ad]verting to you or without having the honor of your acquaintance, either personally or by reputation.

I am your obedient servant,

HENRY H. GARNETGarnet, Henry Highland

Born a slave in Kent County, Maryland, Henry Highland Garnet (1815-82) fled north with his parents in 1824. He attended the African Free School in New York City, the Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, and the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York. Garnet was one of the founders of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and a stump speaker for the Liberty party. Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Troy in 1842, Garnet went to Jamaica in 1852 as a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. An early proponent of black emigration to Africa and founder of the African Civilization Society, Garnet, in his appeal sanctioning slave uprisings before a National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, in August 1843, praised the slave rebel Madison Washington. After the Civil War, Garnet was president of Avery College in Pittsburgh and the U.S. minister to Liberia (1881-82). Joel Schor, Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice of Black Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1977); Dorothy Sterling, ed., Speak Out in Thunder Tones: Letters and Other Writings by Black Northerners, 1787-1865 (Garden City, N.Y., 1973), 376; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 68, 185, 216-17, 226-27; ANB, 8:735-36. .

PLSr: NS, 22 June 1849.