Appendix C. THE MASK ENTIRELY REMOVED

, 16 December 1853.

‘Either he must
Confess himself wondrous malicious,
Or be accused of folly.’—CORIOLANUS.

In his paper of the 9th instant, FREDERICK DOUGLASS occupies twelve columns in reply to sundry brief articles in the Pennsylvania Freeman, Anti-Slavery Standard, Bugle, and Liberator, respecting his feelings and attitude towards his old friends and associates in the cause of emancipation. Such portions of it as relate to the other journals referred to, we leave them to dispose of as they may think proper. We quote all that is personal to us, in addition to a considerable portion of Mr. D’s exordium; and from this sample, our readers can easily infer what the remainder must be.

The history of the Anti-Slavery struggle has been marked by instances of defection, alienation, apostasy, on the part of some of its most efficient supporters for a given time; but by none more signal. venomous, or extraordinary, than the present. Mr. DOUGLASS now stands self—unmasked, his features flushed with passion, his air scornful and defiant, his language bitter as wormwood, his pen dipped in poison; as thoroughly changed in his spirit as was ever ‘arch-angel ruined,’ and as artful and unscrupulous a schismatic as has yet appeared in the abolition ranks.

Having long endeavored, by extreme forbearance, to avoid any collision with him; having omitted in many cases to make even a passing reference to what we deemed unworthy of his position; having criticised, with brevity and moderation, some very objectionable articles from his pen, only because we could not be true to our convictions of duty, if we suppressed the expression of our surprise and sorrow; and having no feelings of personal animosity to gratify; we have no intention to make a protracted rejoinder in the present case, but shall submit the whole matter, in a very few words, to the impartial judgment of all who take any interest in the controversy.

It is difficult to believe that the author of the article of ‘enormous’ length and character, now under consideration, is the FREDERICK DOUGLASS once so manly, generous, and faithful. The transformation—or, rather, the revelation—is the most astounding and severely painful event in our experience; and ‘the end is not yet.’ He now assumes an attitude which is eliciting the warmest encomiums from the most malignant enemies of the Anti-Slavery movement, and which is undisguisedly hostile to his old companion in arms. No marvel, therefore. that he can speak of the ‘Garrisonians’ with as much flippancy as any of our pro-slavery contemnors; or that he can aver, ‘-wise, these Garrisonians are my best friends—deed-wise, i have no more vigilant enemies’; or that he is able to say of

the ‘REFUGE OF OPPRESSION,’ that, ‘of late, it has become about the best part of Mr. Garrison’sGarrison, 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. paper, and about which nobody cares a single straw;’ or that he can utter the monstrous untruth, that ‘a fierce and bitter warfare’ is waged against him, ‘under the generalship ofWilliam Lloyd Garrison,’ with a view to destroy his anti-slavery usefulness!!

The untruthfulness of Mr. D. is matched only by his adroitness in striving to excite popular sympathy, as though he were a poor innocent lamb, about to be torn in pieces by a pack of famished wolves! Though he is the aggressor, he affects to have made no effort even in self-defence, and whiningly says—“I shall be silent no longer(!) The impunity allowed to my adversaries, by my silence, like all other submission to wrong, has failed to soften the heart of the wrong-doers (!) They have waxed more arrogant as I have waxed humble’( !) ‘Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. is an independent nation. Alas! I am but a rebel. While those against whom I have rebelled would treat with Mr. Smith, they would hang me.’ Again— ‘I had reason to know that prejudice against color—yes. prejudice against my race, would be invoked, as it has been invoked, on the side of my adversaries (!)—and in all the likelihoods of the case, the question between me and my old friends would be decided in this case as between white and black—in favor of the former, and against the latter—the white man to rise, as an injured benefactor, and the black man to fall as a miserable ingrate’ (!) Again— ‘The spectacle of a rich (!) and powerful (!) organization, largely provided with the appliances of moral warfare, is now seen marshalling its forces, its presses, and its speakers, for the moral extermination of one humble, solitary individual (!!!)—for the purpose of silencing, and putting to open shame, a fugitive slave, (!) simply because that fugitive slave has dared to differ from that Society, or from the leading individuals in it, as to the manner in which he shall exercise his powers for the promotion of the anti-slavery cause, and the elevation of the free people of color in the United States’ (!!) Again—'The hatchet of fratricidal war is uplifted; nay, it is now flung at the head of its appointed victim, with the combined force of three strong arms, and with the deadly aim of three good marksmen’ (!!!) And this is his estimate of the American Anti-Slavery Society, its presses, and its speakers! Now, as a specimen of low cunning and malignant defamation, we have never seen this surpassed. It is too palpable to need a single word in reply, and we should be lost to all self-respect to treat it as worthy of serious consideration.

Mr. Douglass sneers at the regret expressed by us, and others, at the necessity of noticing his hostile assaults, and scoffingly says— ‘They have had to overcome mountains of reluctance in getting at me; and it is amazing, considering the ruggedness of these mountains, that they ever succeeded in crossing their Alpine heights!’ If this does not indicate either that we have never, in his opinion, been his true friends, or that, ever selfish and untrue himself, he is incapable of experiencing the pang of misplaced confidence and disappointed friendship, we know not how to interpret language. In either case, it places him in a most unenviable position.

Jaundiced in vision, and inflamed with passion, he affects to regard us as the ‘disparager’ (!) of the colored race, and artfully endeavors to excite their jealousy and opposition by utterly perverting the meaning of our language. We said, that ‘the Anti-Slavery cause, both religiously and politically, has transcended the ability of the sufferers from American slavery and prejudice, as a class, to keep pace with it, or to perceive what are its demands, or to understand the philosophy of its operations’—meaning by this, that the cause requires religious and political sacrifices, which, ‘as a class,’ they do not yet see, or, seeing, are not yet prepared to make, even though they are the victims to be delivered—and also meaning that what was at first supposed to be local, is now seen to have a world-wide bearing, and must be advocated upon world-wide principles, irrespective of complexional differences. There is nothing really or intentionally invidious in a statement like this: and yet, how does Mr. Douglass treat it? “The colored man,’ he says, ‘ought to feel profoundly grateful for this magnificent compliment to their high moral worth and breadth of comprehension, so generously bestowed by William Lloyd Garrison! Who will doubt, hereafter, the natural inferiority of the negro, when the great champion of the negroes’ rights thus broadly concedes all that is claimed respecting the negro’s inferiority by the bitterest despisers of the negro race’!!! Now, if this were blundering stupidity, it might readily be pardoned; but it is unmitigated baseness, and therefore inexcusable.

Again we said—‘It does not follow, that, because a man is or has been a slave, or because he is identified with a class meted out and trodden under foot, therefore he will be the truest to the cause of human freedom’—a truism which nothing can make plainer. Yet Mr. Douglass presumes upon the color of his skin to vindicate his superior fidelity to that cause, and to screen himself from criticism and rebuke! This trick cannot succeed. Of the colored people he says— ‘What is theory to others, is practice to them. Every day and hour is crowded with lessons to them on the subject, to which the whites, as a class, are strangers.’ Very true—but what then? Does it indicate the same regard for universal justice, for those who are oppressed to desire to gain their freedom, as it does for others, not of their complexion, and not involved in their suffering, to encounter deadly perils and make liberal sacrifices in seeking their liberation? The former may be animated by motives limited to a narrow selfishness; the latter must be actuated by feelings of disinterested benevolence and world-wide philanthropy. Once, Mr. Douglass would have promptly recognized this distinction; now, beneath the blackness of his skin he is attempting to hide the blackness of his treachery.

How low he has fallen is further indicated by his despicable insinuation—‘Even Charles L. Remond, who was scarcely recognized as one of the “tried” and “true,” when poor, has, since making himself well off by marriage, rapidly risen in Boston favor’! Is not this at once the acme of absurdity, the extreme of falsehood, and the lowest depth of moral debasement? When Frederick Douglass was ‘poor,’ and in utter obscurity, and not as now every where visible, was he a stranger to 'Boston favor,' and was nothing done to raise him up to respectability

and influence? But this is to hint that he is destitute of grateful emotions—and gratitude is something about which he does not like to be reminded.

So, too, when he speaks of the faithful, intelligent and worthy WILLIAM C. NELL as ‘a hanger-on’ and 'a pitiful tool’—and of OLIVER JOHNSON as ‘not caring two straws about Christ’s precepts' in regard to peace, whom he (Douglass) would be the first to assassinate, if he believed it right to kill his enemies, as he has not 'a more malignant enemy than Mr. Johnson is giving proof of being’—he reveals a state of mind as frightful as it is deplorable.

Referring to the Rev. Dr. Campbell, of the British Banner, he says, ‘There is not a man in England, whose friendship I more highly prize, or of whose commendation I ought to be more proud’; and his he places at the head of all other journals for its ‘moral courage. true manliness, high independence, steadfast adherence to the right, and to the cause of progress’—the last attributes to be attributed to that venomous, Ishmaelitish and really pro-slavery sheet. There is not a more unfair disputant or a more unscrupulous defamer at the head of the press, than this same dogmatical, quarrelsome, and double-dealing Dr. Campbell. The American Anti-Slavery Society and The Liberator have not a more malignant and outrageous assailant abroad than himself; and if he were in this country, we have no more doubt that he would be found on the side of pro-slavery conservatism, and a holder of slaves if a resident of the South, than we have of the position of Franklin Pierce. The fact that Mr. Douglass deems it an honor to be complimented by such a man, is another melancholy proof of the loss of his integrity to the Anti-Slavery cause.

A word in regard to our allusion to a bad adviser in Mr. D’s printing-office, whom we accused of exerting a pernicious influence upon his mind and judgment, and ‘causing much unhappiness in his own household.' That last allusion was not meant unkindly, nor intended to imply any thing immoral; but, though it is strictly true, and we could bring a score of unimpeachable witnesses in Rochester to prove it, we regret it was made, as it had no relevancy. Our only object in referring to that nameless ‘adviser’ was, to indicate to such inquirers as our Chicago correspondent, that there had been secret causes at work to alienate Mr. Douglass from his old associates, and we felt bound to throw out the intimation as a clue to much that would be otherwise inexplicable to those not familiar with the facts in the case. Mr. D. says—‘I am profoundly grateful for the eminent services of that “adviser,” in opening my eyes (!) to many things connected with my anti-slavery relations, to which I had before been partially blind.’ That tells the whole story, and is all we care to extort. In what condition his vision now is—and whether in slumbering in the lap of a prejudiced, sectarian Delilah, he has not at last enabled the pro-slavery Philistines to ascertain the secret of his strength, cut off his locks, and rejoice over his downfall—we leave our readers and the uncompromising friends of the Anti-Slavery cause to judge.