American Prejudice and Southern Religion: An Address Delivered in Hingham, Massachusetts, on November 4, 1841
AMERICAN PREJUDICE AND SOUTHERN RELIGION: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN HINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, ON 4 NOVEMBER 1841
Hingham Patriot, 20 November 1841. Other texts in Liberator, 10 December 1841; National Anti-Slavery Standard, 23 December 1841; Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (New York, 1950—), 1 : 103–05 (hereafter cited as Life and Writings).
On the evening of 4 November 1841, members of the Plymouth County Anti-Slavery Society, together with “New England freemen” and at least one “southern gentleman,” reassembled at the church in Hingham, Massachusetts, to consider resolutions postponed during their afternoon session. Urging the audience to support a resolution condemning racial prejudice, Edmund Quincy argued that this “unnatural prejudice,—not implanted by God . . . will not cease while slavery lasts; for men always hate those whom they injure.” He then invited Frederick Douglass to relate his knowledge of such prejudice. The assembly’s reactions to Douglass’s speech underscored the pervasiveness of the racial attitudes which the resolution deplored. Challenging the audience’s belief in the inherent inferiority of blacks, William Lloyd Garrison assured them that Douglass was “not a picked man . . . but a specimen of what thousands, now bound down by the yoke of oppression, might be, if they were only blessed with the precious boon of liberty.” Opposition to the resolution ceased, however, only when members were asked to record their votes by standing. In a letter written two days after the convention and published in the Liberator on 12 November 1841, secretary pro tem Increase Smith echoed Garrison’s challenge to theories of racial inferiority with his own awkward endorsement of Douglass: “What if our opponents do tell us that he is half white, and not a fair representation of the African race? We retort . . . that he is a fair representation of no small portion of American slaves.” Lib., 12 November 1841.
Mr. Douglass then rose, and gave an account of the effects of this prejudice,1The antiprejudice resolution read: “Resolved, That the prejudice which prevails so extensively in this country against the colored people is cruel and malignant, utterly at variance with Christianity, in direct violation of the word of God, and justly subjects this nation to the scoffs and reproaches of the civilized world.” Hingham Patriot, 13 November 1841. as he had experienced them in his own person. He alluded to his being dragged out of the cars lately, on the Eastern Railroad, after paying full fare, where the dogs of his fellow passengers were suffered
to remain.2Douglass had had at least two encounters with officials of the Eastern Railroad, a line that ran from Boston to Portland, Maine. Both occurred in September 1841, when several black abolitionists were defying the Jim Crow policies of railroad and steamboat companies in Massachusetts. Douglass had been on the periphery of this campaign. That summer he had presided at a black New Bedford meeting protesting a steamboat captain's assault on David Ruggles when Ruggles had tried to secure first-class passage. On 8 September, while en route to Dover, New Hampshire to attend a meeting of the Strafford County Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass refused to leave the Eastern ’s first-class compartment. The conductor had four or five subordinates forcibly remove him to the “negro car.” Douglass’s white travelling companion John A. Collins was also roughed up in the fray. Three weeks later Douglass boarded the Eastern cars at Lynn, Massachusetts, and again joined his white companions in the first-class seats. An official angrily collared Douglass and ordered him into the forward compartment. John A. Collins reported what followed: "‘There are but very few in this car,' said Douglass very modestly, 'and why, since no objection has been made, do you order me out? . . . If you will give me any good reason why I should leave this car, I'll go willingly; but without such reason, I do not feel at liberty to leave. . . ’ 'You have asked that question before,' quoth the trembling conductor. 'I mean to continue asking the question over and over again,' said my colored friend, 'as long as you continue to assault me in this manner.' "The conductor, as Collins remembered, was embarrassed by the question and took time to answer, "Because you are black." To Douglass this was no reason at all. This time the conductor called on eight or ten of his assistants. "Snake out the d—d nigger!" one cried. Douglass clung to his seat so tightly that it was ripped up and tossed out with him onto the platform at Lynn. Collins was again severely battered in the scuffle. Such incidents provoked protest meetings in Lynn, calls for boycotting the Eastern Railroad, lawsuits, and petitions to the legislature to repeal the railroad‘s charter. The superintendent of the company ordered the train not to stop in Lynn when Douglass was in town. Massachusetts railroads eliminated Jim Crow cars in the early 1840s. John A. Collins to Garrison, 4 October 1841, in Lib., 15 October 1841; Lib., 1, 8 October, 5 November 1841; Douglass, Bondage and Freedom, 398–400; idem, Life and Times, 250–51; Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks' Search for Freedom, 1830–1861 (New York, 1974), 164–65. He told of the obstacles which his complexion threw in the way of his obtaining employment at his trade, (a caulker.)33. See Douglass, Bondage and Freedom, 349; Douglass, Narrative, 152. At the South, he said, there was none of this prejudice; there he worked at his trade, and earned for his master $9.00 a week, money which that master had no more right to, said he “than any of you, my hearers, have to your neighbor’s earnings.” There he used to ride by the side of his mistress, at her own request—there white children are often nursed by colored women—and there they have no “Jim Crow pews” up aloft in their churches.
“At the South," he continued, “I was a member of the Methodist church. When I came North, I thought one Sunday I would attend communion, at one of the churches of my denomination, in the town where I was staying. The white people gathered round the altar, the blacks clustered by the door. After the good minister had served out the bread and wine to one portion of those near him, he said “Those may withdraw
draw, and others come forward;” thus he proceeded till all the white members had been served. Then he drew a long breath, and looking out toward the door, exclaimed “Come up, colored friends, come up! for you know God is no respecter of persons! "—I haven’t been there to see the sacrament taken since. 4 Douglass refers to the Elm Street Methodist Church in New Bedford. The Reverend Isaac Bonney (1808–55) was the pastor when the communion incident occurred. Douglass, Bondage and Freedom, 350–54; William B. Sprague, ed., Annals of the American Pulpit; or, Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of Various Denominations, 9 vols. (New York, 1859–73),7 : 452—53.
At New Bedford, where I live, there was a great revival of religion not long ago—many were converted, and ‘received,’ as they said, ‘into the kingdom of Heaven.’ But it seems, the kingdom of Heaven is like a net; at least so it was according to the practice of these pious Christians; and when the net was drawn ashore, they had to sit down and cull out the fish; well, it happened now that some of the fish had rather black scales; so these were sorted out and packed by themselves. But among those who experienced religion at this time was a colored girl; she was baptised in the same water with the rest; so she thought she might sit at the Lord’s table, and partake of the same sacramental elements with the others; the deacon handed round the cup, and when he came to the black girl, he could not pass her, for there was the minister looking right at him, and as he was a kind of an abolitionist, the deacon was rather afraid of giving him offence; so he handed the girl the cup, and she tasted; now it so happened that next to her sat a young lady who had been converted at the same time, baptised in the same water, and put her hope in the same blessed Saviour; yet when the cup, containing the precious blood which had been shed for all, came to her, she rose in disdain, and walked out of the church. Such was the religion she had experienced!
Another young lady fell into a trance–when she awoke, she declared she had been to Heaven; her friends were all anxious to know what and whom she had seen there; so she told the whole story. But there was one good old lady whose curiosity went beyond that of all the others—and she inquired of the girl that had the vision, if she saw any black folks in Heaven? After some hesitation, the reply was “Oh! I didn’t go into the kitchen!”
Thus you see, my hearers, this prejudice goes even into the church of God. And there are those who carry it so far that it is disagreeable to
them even to think of going to Heaven, if colored people are going there too! And whence comes it? The grand cause is slavery; but there are others less prominent; one of which is the way in which children in this part of the country are instructed to regard the blacks—“Yes!” exclaimed an old gentleman, interrupting him—“When they behave wrong, they are told ‘Black man come catch you!’ ”
“Yet people in general,” continued Douglass, “will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place. Who is to decide what is their proper place? They assign us that place; they don’t let us do it for ourselves, nor will they allow us a voice in the decision. They will not allow that we have a head to think, and a heart to feel, and a soul to aspire. They treat us not as men, but as dogs—they cry 'Slu-boy!' and expect us to run and do their bidding. That’s the way we are liked. You degrade us, and then ask why we are degraded—you shut our mouths, and then ask why we don’t speak—you close your colleges and seminaries against us, and then ask us why we don’t know more!
But all this prejudice sinks into insignificance in my mind, when compared with the enormous iniquity of the system which is its cause—the system that sold my four sisters and my brother* in bondage—and which calls on its priests to defend it even from their Bibles! The slaveholding ministers preach up the divine right of slaveholders to property in their fellow men. The Southern preachers say to the poor slave “Oh! if you wish to be happy in time, happy in eternity, you must be obedient to your masters; their interest is yours; God made one portion of men to do the working, and another to do the thinking; how good God is! Now you have no trouble or anxiety; but ah! you can’t imagine how perplexing it is to your masters and mistresses to have so much thinking to do in your behalf! You cannot appreciate your blessings; you know not how happy a thing it is for you that you were born of that portion of the human family which has the working instead of the thinking to do! Oh! how grateful and obedient you ought to be to your masters! How beautiful are the arrangements of Providence! Look at your hard, homy hands—see how nicely they are adapted to the labor you have to perform! Look at our delicate fingers, so exactly fitted for our station, and see how manifest it is that God designed us to be the thinkers, and you to be the workers—Oh! the wisdom of God!”—I used to attend a
*Not four brothers and a sister, as erroneously printed last week.
Methodist church, in which my master 5Thomas Auld. was a class leader; he would talk most sanctimoniously about the dear Redeemer, who was sent “to preach deliverance to the captives, and set at liberty them that are bruised”—he could pray at morning, pray at noon, and pray at night; yet he could lash up my poor cousin by his two thumbs, and inflict stripes and blows upon his bare back, till the blood streamed to the ground! 6The reporter misunderstood Douglass. The cousin in question was a female named Henny (1816–?), valued in 1826 at only $50, less than half of the value placed on her younger cousin Frederick. Inventory of Negroes Owned by Aaron Anthony, 19 December 1826, folder 71, Aaron Anthony, Ledger B, 1812–1826, folder 95, 159, both in the Dodge Collection, MdAHR; Douglass, Narrative, 86; idem, Bondage and Freedom, 201. all the time quoting scripture for his authority, and appealing to that passage of the Holy Bible which says “He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes!”7Douglass paraphrases Luke 12 : 47. Such was the amount of this good Methodist’s piety!”