An Inside View of Slavery: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 8, 1855
AN INSIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, ON 8 FEBRUARY 1855
Frederick Douglass' Paper, 23 February 1855. Other texts in Boston Courier, 9 February 1855; Boston Journal, 9 February 1855.
In the spring of 1854 a committee of Boston abolitionists, led by Samuel Gridley Howe and James W. Stone, determined to further public discussion of slavery by sponsoring “Independent Lectures on Slavery” at which both proslavery and antislavery spokesmen would appear. Charles Sumner, Salmon P. Chase, and Sam Houston of Texas were among the fourteen speakers scheduled to appear at Tremont Temple on Thursday evenings from late November through early March. The three-dollar tickets to the series admitted “a lady and gentleman,” and advertisements informed the public “no single tickets will be sold.” In early February Harriet Beecher Stowe pronounced the series “wonderfully successful,” since each lecture attracted capacity audiences to Tremont Temple, which seated about three thousand people. Douglass, who was not listed on the original slate of speakers, offered what Boston papers dubbed “An Inside View of Slavery” on 8 February 1855, when Nathaniel P. Banks, Jr., was unable to appear. Although a correspondent of the Courier found Douglass’s delivery “diversified by an involuntary but very decided ‘niggerism’ such as ‘dis,’ ‘dat,’ ” the audience received the speech enthusiastically. The Evening Transcript took a similar view: “If the success of a public address is to be measured by the applause awarded it, that of this eloquent and living personation of the wrongs of slavery was the most successful of the anti-slavery course.” Certainly Howe was pleased. “We like him,” he told Charles Sumner. Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, 9 February 1855, in Laura A. Richards, ed., Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, 2 vols. (Boston, 1909), 2: 409; Samuel G. Howe to Boston Daily Advertiser, 2 February 1855, in Lib., 9 February 1855; Harriet Beecher Stowe to Washington (D.C.) National Era, 2 February 1855, in NASS, 24 February 1855; Lib., 27 October 1854.
He commenced by expressing his thanks for the kindness of his reception, and his great gratification that, in view of the inclemency of the weather, there was so large an audience assembled. He said, I assume in beginning that this audience is not expecting from me a very learned address on the subject which has convened us. When you want a learned address, something really genteel, you know where to get it without sending to Rochester for it. I am here simply to say a few words as to the nature and workings of American slavery. The Americans already know a great deal about the facts of slavery, but there is at the same time a great deal of ignorance,
judging from the many defences set up for slavery in the country—ignorance both as to the philosophy and the facts of slavery.
We understand very readily what must be the pursuit of arbitrary power when vested in the civil ruler, but we seem not to know that such consequences must inevitably flow from the possession of the same power by a slaveholder on a plantation. We can grow eloquent on the evils of arbitrary power in Europe, but we know very little about arbitrary power on a plantation in the United States. I own that in view of the character of slavery it is exceedingly difficult to suppose the existence of an honest difference of opinion with regard to the wrongfulness of slavery; it is exceedingly difficult to get up any charity to a man who professes to believe in slavery as a good thing. And yet it is proper for an anti-slavery man to assume that those who defend slavery are honest in their views of things. But it is difficult to see how any one can suppose that such an open, flagrant, enormous violation of right as is involved in the relation of master and slave, can exist without sin and wrong. And this is the more difficult when we look at the plainness of the principle opposed to slavery.
For what have abolitionists been laboring for the last seventy years? For what have we been issuing tracts, and making addresses, and sending them forth to the abolitionists of this country? It has been simply to convince the public mind that a man is himself. That is all; to show that every man belongs to himself and can belong to no one else than himself; that his arms are his arms, that his head is his head and nobody else’s head, that his legs are his legs, and that if he takes a notion to walk off he walks off on his own legs and nobody else’s legs. (Applause and laughter.)
That is all. And yet men have differed on the subject and have entertained us with logic divine and secular, logic pro and con, positive and negative. They tell us that though it is difficult to make out a case in favor of slavery on the principles of common sense or any human ground, it can be made out on a divine ground, that it can be sustained on divine authority. I cannot follow the reasonings of those who attempt to defend slavery in the name of divinity, nor in the name of the Bible. But one thing seems to me very clear, that if the thing cannot be defended in the name of humanity it is not likely to gain much for its defence in the name of God.
I am not here to utter any new truths on this subject. It will be quite time enough to utter new truth when the old truths long ago professed have been practically reduced to action by the American people. I ought to say, however, that there is no such thing as new truth or old truth. Error may be new or old. It has its beginnings and must have its endings. But truth, like
the great God from whose bosom it emanates, is from everlasting unto everlasting,1A paraphrase of the idea expressed in Ps. 90 : 2. and can never pass away. Such is the truth of man’s right to liberty. He was born with it. It entered into the very idea of man’s creation. It was his before he comprehended it. It is written upon all the powers and faculties of his soul. The title deed is in his own breast; the record of it is in the heart of God. No compacts, no agreements, no covenants, no constitutions which man may make can abrogate nor in any way impair or destroy this right. (Applause) It is a right rather to be asserted than to be argued. Your fathers held it to be a self-evident truth. The great difficulty with the American people, in considering the subject of slavery, is to apply the same rules and maxims to the condition of the slaves of this country that will apply to the cases of other men.
I use the term negro in precisely the same sense in which you use the term Anglo-Saxon. You like that term rather than the term American, perhaps because it is a term implying strength of character. In the same sense I speak of the Negro. You do not take him into the account in your principles as Americans. He is literally scourged beyond the range of your principles and institutions. In considering slavery, you do not consider it in the light of the Declaration of Independence, nor in the light of Christianity. American Christianity with outspread wings, apparently broad enough to shelter the whole world, has no room for the negro. When you tell of liberty as belonging to “all men,” you mean white men. When you talk of the Constitution of the United States being established to secure the blessings of liberty and establish justice, it is contended that the liberty there referred to is not a liberty for the Negro but for the white man. “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them,”2A close paraphrase of Matt. 7 : 12. except Negroes, is according to the popular Christianity.
Just here is the difficulty. Nobody would have any difficulty in regard to Slavery if the subjects of Slavery were white and not black. You would have no difficulty in seeing that your Constitution is an anti-slavery document from end to end if the subjects of Slavery were white, although the Constitution says nothing about white or black.
But I propose to talk of the character of Slavery, because there are those here in Boston who openly defend the system as a merciful system, a humane system, and say that those who labor against it are fanatics. I shall assume that I know something about Slavery, having been a Slave for more
than twenty years of my life. Before I became a part of this breathing world. the scourge was prepared for my back and fetters for my limbs; before 1 could have my name in the Lamb’s book of life,3Douglass alludes to Rev. 21 : 27. a place was provided on my master’s ledger for my name among horses, sheep and swine. I wear on my back the marks of Slavery which will go with me to my grave. And I can show marks of Slavery on that which is more tender than the body—the soul.
I may assume to speak of Slavery with some authority, having spent twenty years in Slavery, not as a visitor of some rich slaveholder, not seated by the luxurious board of some owner of a thousand human cattle, not sitting in the slaveholder’s pew at church, not dining at his table, not sleeping on his downy pillow, but as a slave, sharing all the conditions of the bitter lot of Slavery. What is the relation of master and slave? The slave is spoken of as property, and he can have nothing but what must belong to his master. If the slave is fed he is fed as property, and he is clothed as property. That is the idea O’Connell4Daniel O'Connell. once said, when he first heard of the idea of property in man, it sounded as badly as if he had heard some one stamping on the grave of his mother.
Property in one man vested in another! Is it not strange that any men, religious or irreligious, divines or not, can be found to argue in defence of a system that makes property in man, and annihilates his personality, breaks down his manhood, scourges him beyond the range of human society, and compels him to find companionship with the beasts of the field?
What slavery is by law, it is in reality and socially. Few people have been found better than their laws, and many have been worse. This is true with respect to slavery. Bitter, bloody as the laws are they are more merciful than the practice of slavery. Men do not hold their slaves by any tender tie. There are men here at the North who say that though the law is harsh and cruel, the practice is gentle and humane. They bring facts to show it. Individual slaveholders clothe and feed their slaves well and do not whip them often. According to the standard in the southern States, they are humane men, and some of them Christian men, devoted to the cause of God and humanity. We cannot doubt that there are slaveholders who, to outward seeming, are kind, never over working their slaves. They feed, clothe and lodge them well, and take care of them when sick and in old age. So far is this from relieving slavery of its character of guilt, it deepens the
evil of the system. Slavery is a cruel system, because the slave is held by no power but physical force. The slave does not go voluntarily and take the condition of a slave. He is a man and has the feelings of a man. As a man he is not only conscious of the right to liberty, but deep in his own soul is planted a love of liberty which is ever awake in his bosom; and loving liberty he can never be kept in the condition of a slave without force. But without force the system cannot be maintained. Skin for skin, all that a man hath will a man give for his life, said Job,5Douglass closely paraphrases Job 2 : 4. most men will give their liberty for their lives. To all who represent the slave as being the recipient of favor at the hand of his master, unknown to the poor man in the old world and at the north, the slave replies:
“Oh, tell me not I’m blessed,
Nor bid me glory in my lot.
That plebian freemen are opprest
With wants and woes that I am not.
Out on such kindness! I would be
The wreck of fortune, to be free!”6These lines appear in an unsigned poem entitled “Give Me Freedom: A Fragment," in NS, 21 August 1848.
What is the explanation of the fact that some slaves are not whipped, nor starved by their masters in order to compel them to labor? It is because there is a class of slaves more easily managed than the rest; they can be managed by threats without actual corporeal cruelty. Every slaveholder claims the right to sell his slaves, who, having local attachments, families, wives and little ones—the law knows nothing of these, but still they exist as really to the slaves—can be kept in submission by the threat of a sale and separation from all these. This kind of slaveholder liberally uses a scourge made up of local and domestic affections to lash him on to toil. And this kind of slaveholder often succeeds much better than others. Every slave has a dread of being sold to go to some other place, especially to a place further South.
Those who contend for the kind treatment of the slaves would make out a much better case if they should attempt to show that slaves are held for some other reason than that for which they are held. If they could prove that they were held for their fine appearance and for the adornment of the houses of the slaveholders, we might possibly be induced to remain and serve in that capacity. (Applause and laughter.) But I believe, handsome as
we are as a people, we are not wanted for that. (Laughter.) But we are wanted for another purpose. They desire us not to look at, but to work. We are an industrious people, (laughter), perhaps the most so of any on the globe: but industrious as we are, we are not disposed to work for nothing. They want us to work. The slaveholders have a prejudice against work; they rather think ill of work; they will do almost any thing about a gentleman’s house rather than work. They think that can be done by negroes and poor whites—at the north. While they are opposed to work they have another prejudice; they dislike paying a man for work. This idea of paying a man when he has plowed and sowed his fields or gathered his harvests, is a thing which “our southern brethren” peculiarly dislike. It is a Yankee notion for which they have no taste. But while they do not like to work themselves, nor to pay a man for work, they have a keen relish for the good things of this life. They know there is gold enough in the earth which must be dug out. But they are equally opposed to digging and begging. They like to have a fine appearance; and when they bring their wives and daughters to the North, they like to catch the eyes of the Yankees at Saratoga, Newport,7Newport, Rhode Island. and Niagara Falls. Somebody must work for this, and how can work be obtained if it is not paid for, without the lash? I ask you, I ask the Rev. Dr. Adams,8The Reverend Nehemiah Adams, D.D. (1806-78). was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College and Andover Theological Seminary. Five years after his ordination in 1829 he became pastor of Boston‘s Essex Street or Union Congregational Church, where he remained for the balance of his career. Identified with conservative theological orthodoxy, Adams opposed abolitionism as both socially and politically disruptive. As early as 1837 he composed a pastoral letter on behalf of the General Association of Massachusetts that sought to ban discussion of the slavery issue in all orthodox Congregational pulpits. The author of sixteen book-length works and over fifty other publications. Adams is best remembered for his controversial travel account, A South-Side View of Slavery, which was based upon a three-month visit to Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia in 1854. Writing to Virginia politician Henry A. Wise shortly before the book‘s publication, Adams expressed his desire to “divert the Northern antagonism to slavery into a mutual effort with the South to plan for the good of the African race. . . . I am, therefore, preparing a kind, conciliatory statement of my impressions and recollections at the South for publication." Attacked vigorously by abolitionists and even some members of his own congregation, Adams responded to critics with another book on slavery, The Sable Cloud: A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (Boston, 1861). Throughout the 1850s Adams remained an outspoken unionist and advocate of sectional harmony. Once the Civil War began, however, Adams supported the Northern cause. His last major pronouncement on racial and sectional matters was At Eventide, a volume of sermons published in 1877 at the request of numerous Charleston, South Carolina, clergymen anxious to improve relations between the North and the South. NASS, 23 September 1854; Nehemiah Adams, A South-Side View of Slavery; or, Three Months at the South, in 1854 (Boston, 1854); “Smectymnuus,” Slaverv and the Church: Two Letters Addressed to Rev. N. L. Rice, D.D. . . . Also a Letter to Rev. Nehemiah Adams. D.D. in Answer to the "South Side View of Slavery" (Boston, 1856); [Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison], William Lloyd Garrison, 1805—1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (1885; New York, 1969), 2: 133-34 (hereafter cited as Garrison Life); Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969), 336:; Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 1: 93-94. by what power can the will of the slaveholder be enforced for a moment but by the lash? Some slaveholders are honest and will answer
this question directly and truly. Not your canting, praying, hypocritical slaveholders; but some will say, “Yes, I hold to licking my niggers whenever they deserve it.” They don’t need any Dr. Adams or anybody else to quote Scripture in proof of the goodness of Slavery. They all hold to the declaration that the best slaveholder is he who uses the lash, and he who does not use it is deemed a coward, and a thief after his kind, governing his slaves not by his own cowskin but by the fear of the distant cowskin of his neighbor. l have more respect for the slaveholder who scourges a slave till the blood runs to his heels than for him who scourges the sensitive soul, ever reminding the slave that he may be sold at any time and separated from his family. Whipping is not what constitutes the cruelty of Slavery. To me the thought that I am a slave is more terrible than any lash, than any chain. A slave to-day, to-morrow, next year, all the years of my life,—my manhood denied, ignored, despised,—this being eternally shut up to a single condition, no outgoing, no progress, no future, this is more horrible, more distressing than the whip. Like poor Lear, in the play, the slave may say,
Thou thinks ‘tis much, that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin; so it is to thee,
But where the greater malady is fixed,
The lesser is scarce felt.
* * * * * *
The tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling, else
Save what beats there.9Douglass closely paraphrases King Lear, act 3, sc. 4, lines 6—9, 12—14.
The mental agony of the slave is never appeased. To feed the body with bread does not satisfy the gnawing hunger for Liberty. Kindness is no substitute for justice. Care for the slave as property is no compensation for a denial of his personality. You may surround the slave with luxuries, place him in a genial climate, and under a smiling and cloudless sky, and these shall only enhance his torment, and deepen his anguish.
This is the great evil of Slavery. No man can have absolute power over the body and soul of his brother man without cruelty to his brother man and
detriment to his own moral nature. The evil is almost as great to the slavehoIder as to the slave.
I have the marks of the slave-driver’s lash upon me; but before God, I would rather have upon myself the condition of the most whipped and scourged slave at the South than to take upon me the dread responsibility of making a slave of a brother man. (Applause)
Cowper was right when he said:
“I would not have a slave to fill my ground,
To carry me, to fan me when I sleep,
And tremble when I wake,
For all the wealth that sinews
Bought and sold, have ever earned.
No, dear as freedom is,
And in my heart’s just estimation
Prized above all price,
I had rather be myself the slave
And wear the bonds,
Than fasten them on him.”10Douglass slightly misquotes lines 29—36 of The Time Piece by William Cowper. J. C. Bailey, ed., The Poems of William Cowper (London, 1905), 267.
It was said by Lamartine that Wilberforce11Alphonse Marie de Lamartine and William Wilberforce. Lamartine (1790—1869), French poet and revolutionary politician, headed the provisional government of the Second Republic from February to April 1848. In the presidential election of that year he finished a distant fourth behind Louis Napoleon. Thereafter, he devoted his life to literature. H. Remsen Whitehouse, The Life of Lamartine, 2 vols. (Boston, 1918); William L. Langer, Political and Social Upheaval, 1832—1852 (New York, 1969), 89-90, 308, 326, 423—27, 561—62. went up to heaven with millions of broken fetters as evidence of a life well spent. But if men carry with them through the dark valley of the shadow of death12Douglass adapts Ps. 23 : 4. a recollection ofthe past, how horrible must be the recollection of that man who goes to the retribution of God with the clanking of fetters in his ears. We at the North are said to be the disturbers of the peace of the South. “There is no peace to the wicked,” saith my God.13 Isa. 57: 21. (Applause)
The peace measures proposed in Congress,14Douglass probably refers to resolutions introduced in December 1854 in both houses of Congress seeking to offer United States mediation in the Crimean War. Sponsored by Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thomas L. Clingman in the House, the resolutions were discussed in late January 1855 but were never adopted. Merle Eugene Curti, The American Peace Crusade, 1815—1860 (Durham, N.C. 1929), 208—09. the Fugitive Slave Bill,
and the Constitution of the United States, which he deemed an Anti-Slavery document, were spoken of at some length, and the remarks of the lecturer on these topics were received with much favor.
In conclusion, he referred to the great changes which had taken place in favor of freedom recently, to the election of Messrs. Seward,15Despite strong nativist opposition, William H. Seward was elected to a second term in the U.S. Senate by the New York legislature early in 1855. Wilson16Henry Wilson (1812-75) began life as Jeremiah Jones Colbath, the son of an impoverished Farmington, New Hampshire, mill worker. Became of his family's extreme poverty, Jeremiah was bound out to a neighboring farmer from age ten until his twenty-first birthday. Upon completing his indenture, Colbath legally changed his name to Henry Wilson. apparently wishing to dissociate himself from past indentured servitude. Wilson also moved to Natick, Massachusetts, where by 1840 he had achieved moderate success in the shoemaking business. He entered local politics as a Whig in 1840 and served in the state legislature during most of the next twelve years. Abandoning the Whigs in 1848, he helped organize a temporarily successful alliance of Massachusetts Democrats and Free Soilers. The demise of this coalition led Wilson into a brief association with the Know-Nothing movement, but he deserted the organization in 1855 when the party's national council refused to adopt a clear antislavery stance. Elected to the U.S. Senate by the Massachusetts legislature in January 1855, Wilson identified himself with radical antislavery forces from the outset and played an active role in the first national convention of the Republican party. After campaigning vigorously for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Wilson opposed compromise with the South and helped raise troops during the early phases of the Civil War. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. he advocated emancipation, the use of black troops, and the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau. Following the 1866 elections Wilson became an avid supporter of military Reconstruction. Selected as Ulysses S. Grant's running mate in 1872, Wilson, then in poor health, divided his last three years between vice-presidential duties and work on his highly partisan History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston, 1872—77). Richard Henry Abbott, “Cobbler in Congress: Life of Henry Wilson, 1812—75” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1965); Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774—1961 (Washington, D.C., 1961), 1830; DAB, 20: 322-25. and Durkee,17 Charles Durkee (1805—70), politician and pacifist, was born in Royalton, Vermont, and educated in the town schools and at the Burlington Academy. A merchant, he emigrated in 1836 to Wisconsin, where he was one of the founders of Southport, later Kenosha. Durkee served in the territorial legislature before being elected as a Free Soiler to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1849—53). At the World's Peace Conference in Paris in 1849 he was one of twenty-three American delegates. He later became president of the short-lived Wisconsin Peace Society. After joining the Republican party, Durkee served one term in the U.S. Senate (1855—61) and was appointed governor of Utah Territory in 1865. Curti, American Peace Crusade, 172, 217; BDAC, 839. and finally urged all to be of good cheer, for “there is a good time coming,”18Douglass quotes the first line of “The Good Time Coming“ by Charles Mackay. Stephen Foster composed a melody for the poem in 1846 and published it under the title “There’s a Good Time Coming." Charles Mackay, Voices from the Mountains and from the Crowd (Boston, 1853), 202—04; John Tasker Howard, Stephen Foster, America’s Troubadour (1934; New York, 1953), 128—29, 139, 158. closing amid hearty cheers.