The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series Four: Journalism and Other Writings, Volume 1 9780300266283

Citation preview

THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS Series Four: Journalism and Other Writings

Volume 1

Y7870-Douglass.indb i

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Frederick Douglass, c. 1859. Courtesy of the National Parks Service, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Washington, D.C. FRDO-3909.

Y7870-Douglass.indb ii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS Series Four: Journalism and Other Writings Volume 1

John R. McKivigan, Editor Jeffery A. Duvall, L. Diane Barnes, Associate Editors Rebecca A. Pattillo, Lauren Zachary, Mark G. Furnish, Angela White, Assistant Editors Mark W. Emerson, James A. Hanna, Robert S. Levine, Alex Smith, John W. Stauffer, Textual Editors Eammon P. Brandon, Kate Burzlaff, Claire Christoff, Peter Harrah, Austen Hurt, Heather L. Kaufman, Kathryn Staublin, Lynette Taylor, Research Assistants

Yale University Press

Y7870-Douglass.indb iii

New Haven and London

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Published with assistance from The National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Published with assistance from the Frank M. Turner Publication Fund. Copyright © 2021 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in 11.2/13 Times LT Std Roman type by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020950315 ISBN 978-0-300-24681-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9

Y7870-Douglass.indb iv

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

9/1/21 4:16 PM

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Mary F. Berry Richard J. M. Blackett David W. Blight Robert Hall Stanley Harrold Nancy A. Hewitt Howard R. Lamar Robert S. Levine John Stauffer

Y7870-Douglass.indb v

9/1/21 4:16 PM

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction to Series Four Introduction to Volume One Editorial Method Timeline of Douglass’s Life Illustrations

xi xiii xv xlix liii lix lxxv

WRITINGS I was born a slave (c. 1842) Niagara (1843) God Be Thanked! (1845) The Folly of Our Opponents (1845) Bibles for the Slaves (1848) North Star Circular (1849) A note of thanks (1852) The Heroic Slave (1853) Address of the Colored National Convention to the People of the United States (1853) The Haytian Emigration Movement (1861) The Slave’s Appeal to Great Britain (1862) A Pertinent Question (1865) Reconstruction (1866) An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage (1867) Salmon P. Chase (1868) The Work before Us (1868) Santo Domingo Travel Diary (1871) U.S. Grant and the Colored People (1872) To the Editor of the New York Herald (1874) Gen. O. O. Howard Again Acquitted (1874) To the Depositors of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company (1874) The Emancipated Man Wants Knowledge (1875)

1 2 3 5 11 15 17 19 62 83 90 102 104 113 127 134 144 163 188 191 196 201

vii

Y7870-Douglass.indb vii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

viii

The Colored Exodus (1879) Negroes, Mongols and Hebrews (1880) The Color Line (1881) My Escape from Slavery (1881) Abolish the Vice President (c. 1882) To the Colored Men of the United States (1883) Civil Rights and Judge Harlan (1883) The Condition of the Freedmen (1883) The Future of the Negro Race (1884) The Democratic Return to Power—Its Effect? (1885) Has America Need of a Westminster Abbey? (1885) American Authors on International Copyright (1886) The Future of the Colored Race (1886) Thoughts and Recollections of a Tour in Ireland (1886) Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (1886) European/African Travel Diary (1886–87) Frederick Douglass in Paris (1887) Dear Joe (1887) Henry Ward Beecher (1887) The Great Agitation (1889) The Cause of the Republican Defeat (1890) To Joe Douglass from Grandpa (1891) Haiti and the United States: Inside History of the Negotiations for the Môle St. Nicolas. Part I (1891) Haiti and the United States: Inside History of the Negotiations for the Môle St. Nicolas. Part II (1891) The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors: Opinion of Hon. Frederick Douglass (1891) The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors: Review (1891) Slavery (1891) Unsolicited Opinions of Anti-Caste: Opinions of Coloured Americans (1892) President Harrison and Our Colored Citizens (1892) Lynch Law in the South (1892) Protection Demanded (1892) The Negro in the Present Campaign (1892) Douglass on the Late Election (1892) No Royal Road to Progress for the Negro (1892) Inauguration of the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893)

Y7870-Douglass.indb viii

CONTENTS

203 208 211 230 254 256 264 270 281 287 293 296 298 303 321 332 407 426 430 433 458 467 468 479 489 491 493 532 533 541 553 559 575 581 584

9/1/21 4:16 PM

CONTENTS

How to Secure Equal Rights (1893) The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition: Introduction (1893) Douglass, Frederick (1895) Liberia (1895) What I Found at the Northampton Association (1895) The Story of the Hutchinsons: Introduction (1896) Toussaint L’Ouverture: An Estimate by a Fellow-African (1903) Undated Poems Textual Notes on The Heroic Slave Index

Y7870-Douglass.indb ix

ix

590 592 602 613 621 631 636 648 655 663

9/1/21 4:16 PM

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

Producing the first volume of the Journalism and Other Writings was a multiyear endeavor. Editorial work began at Yale University in the mid1970s under the direction of the project’s first editor, John W. Blassingame. In the decades that followed, many staff members as well as numerous individuals and institutions provided work that is incorporated into this volume. We apologize if we fail in these brief acknowledgments to thank any of them as fully as he or she deserves. Work on collecting the documents reproduced in this volume began at Yale and was continued at the Douglass Papers’ second institutional home, West Virginia University, and culminated at Indiana University– Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI), where the Douglass Papers relocated in the summer of 1998. The libraries at all three institutions assisted us significantly. Staff members at other repositories and archives generously located many of the documents included here. At IUPUI, the School of Liberal Arts and the Departments of History and English deserve thanks for their institutional support. A special debt is owed the following people at IUPUI for their assistance: Robert Barrows, Didier Gondola, Eric Hamilton, Megan Lizarme, Edith Millikan, David Pfeifer, Rob Rebein, Martha Rujuwa, Thomas Upton, and Marianne Wokeck. Gratitude is also due Timothy Connelly, Lucy Barber, and Darrell Meadows from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, along with the staff of the National Endowment for the Humanities, for supplying valuable advice to the Douglass Papers over the years. Professor Jonathan R. Eller, senior textual editor of the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI, helped significantly in finalizing our textualediting procedures. Special assistance was supplied by A. J. Aiseirithe in our document transcription and verification processes. Finally, we would like to thank Sarah Miller, our editor at Yale University Press, for her advice and encouragement.

xi

Y7870-Douglass.indb xi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

This page intentionally left blank

Abbreviations

Whenever possible, these abbreviations follow the standard Library of Congress symbols for libraries and other repositories. Additional abbreviations of other repositories and publications follow the forms established by earlier series of the Douglass Papers, provided they appear three or more times in this volume; all abbreviations for publications appear in earlier series. ACAB AHR ANB ASB BDUSC ChR DAB DANB DLC DM DNA DNB EAA EAAH

FD FDP JNH Lib. MdAA MdTCH MHiS MVHR NAR

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography American Historical Review American National Biography (online) Anti-Slavery Bugle Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present (online) Philadelphia Christian Recorder Dictionary of American Biography Dictionary of American Negro Biography Library of Congress Douglass’ Monthly National Archives The Dictionary of National Biography Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass’ Paper Journal of Negro History Liberator Hall of Records Commission, Annapolis, Md. Talbot County, Maryland, Courthouse Massachusetts Historical Society Mississippi Valley Historical Review / Journal of American History North American Review xiii

Y7870-Douglass.indb xiii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xiv

NASS NAW NCAB NEQ NHB NNE NRU NS OR

Y7870-Douglass.indb xiv

ABBREVIATIONS

National Anti-Slavery Standard Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary National Cyclopaedia of American Biography New England Quarterly Negro History Bulletin New National Era University of Rochester North Star The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Introduction to Series Four John R. McKivigan The Frederick Douglass Papers was founded in 1973, following consultation between officers of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and Professor John W. Blassingame of Yale University. Blassingame agreed to become the project’s first director and assembled a small staff to undertake the editing of the voluminous papers of the most influential African American of the nineteenth century. Early in the Douglass Papers’ history, Blassingame made the fateful decision to divide the project’s swelling collection of documents into four series for publication, rather than organizing and publishing all documents chronologically. Consequently, the project’s staff has located, edited, and published with Yale University Press a five-volume series of Douglass’s Speeches, Debates, and Interviews; a three-volume series of his Autobiographical Writings; and the first two of a contemplated five volumes in the Correspondence series. The projected contents, size, and even title of the fourth and final series of the Frederick Douglass Papers have changed many times since 1973. The series was originally envisioned as a two-volume selection of the editorials Douglass wrote for his four periodicals, and it was planned as the second series in the overall edition. In the mid-1980s, a site-visit team from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a financial supporter of the project in its early decades, expressed a desire that the editors next produce editions of Douglass’s three autobiographies in accordance with modern textual-editing standards. Accepting this advice, the Douglass Papers staff rearranged its publication plans following production of the fifth and final volume of the Speeches series in 1992. In the following two decades, as the project completed the Autobiographical Writings series and launched work on the Correspondence series, the Douglass Papers staff continued to accumulate written texts by Douglass that did not belong in the other series. While Douglass wrote all these documents, some had not been, and had never intended to be, published. Others had been published not in Douglass’s newspapers, but in periodicals edited by others. A few, such as Douglass’s 1853 novella The Heroic Slave and entries written for three encyclopedias, were in categories all their own. Staff members developed the practice of referring to this miscellaneous xv

Y7870-Douglass.indb xv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xvi

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

collection of documents, along with the editorials in Douglass’s newspapers, as the “Other” series. Since the time has finally arrived for the publication of this diverse body of Douglass’s works, the project has chosen the label Journalism and Other Writings for the series. It will be divided into two volumes. The first contains Douglass’s journalism published in periodicals other than his own, his novella, two unpublished travel diaries, a few poems unquestionably attributable to him, an assortment of printed circulars, jointly authored convention addresses, book introductions, a book review, and his encyclopedia entries. The second volume in the series will contain a highly selective sampling of the editorials that Douglass wrote for his own publications: the North Star (1847–51); Frederick Douglass’ Paper (1851–60); the Douglass Monthly (1859–63); and the New National Era (1870–72).1 Publication of this series will help reshape the modern appreciation of Frederick Douglass, who is best remembered in history as an autobiographer of the slave experience and as one of the leading orators on behalf of abolition, civil rights, women’s rights, and other reform causes. Douglass’s pioneering contributions to African American literature in both fiction and nonfiction, as demonstrated by the documents in this new series, are not as well known but are arguably an equivalent achievement. Keenly aware of the importance of these branches of his writing, Douglass devoted considerable effort to sharpening his writing skills as a social commentator and critic. The iconic story of Douglass’s acquisition of reading skills has been recounted innumerable times, including in each of his autobiographies. Douglass’s attainment and perfection of writing skills, however, do not receive a similar level of attention in his personal works, nor have they been widely studied by scholars.2 The examples of Douglass’s writing over five decades, reproduced in this two-volume series, will provide scholars and the general public with the tools to study and appreciate yet another of Douglass’s many unprecedented intellectual achievements. Douglass’s introduction to public writing began shortly after his engagement as a lecturer by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1841. The following year, he sent a letter to William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of that organization, who published it in his weekly Boston Liberator. Douglass described his lecturing tours throughout the state in the company of fellow black abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond to rally public support for the arrested fugitive slave George Latimer. Douglass con-

Y7870-Douglass.indb xvi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xvii

cludes his report with this apology to Garrison’s readers: “I can’t write to much advantage, having never had a day’s schooling in my life, nor have I ever ventured to give publicity to any of my scribbling before; nor would I now, but for my peculiar circumstance.”3 For the next several years, Douglass regularly dispatched reports of his lecturing to the Liberator and to other newspapers affiliated with the Garrisonian abolitionists. Two years later, he still professed discomfort at public writing when reporting to James Miller McKim, editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, on his recent lecturing in that state: “Though quite unaccustomed to write anything for the public eye, and in many instances quite unwilling to do so, in the present case, I cannot content myself to take leave of you . . . without dropping you a very hasty, and of course very imperfect, sketch of the Anti-Slavery meetings . . . it was my pleasure to attend.”4 Douglass’s hesitancy to write for the public dissipated quickly. The publication of his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in late May 1845, had dramatic consequences for his emerging journalism. Feeling it unsafe to remain in Massachusetts with his identity as a fugitive slave exposed, Douglass made arrangements for a speaking tour of the British Isles and departed that August. During that trip, which lasted almost two years, Douglass corresponded regularly with Garrison in a series of public letters intended for the Liberator’s readers. These letters were sent by prior arrangement, but as Douglass revealed, he still felt ill prepared to act as a foreign correspondent: “I promised, on leaving America, to keep you informed of my proceedings whilst I remained abroad. I sometimes fear I shall be compelled to break my promise, if by keeping it is meant writing letters to you fit for publication.”5 In the first of these, Douglass makes it clear that his letters are intended to advance abolitionism through journalism: “There are a number of things about which I should like to write, aside from those immediately connected with our cause; but of this I must deny myself,—at least under the present circumstances. Sentimental letter-writing must give way, when its claims are urged against facts necessary to the advancement of our cause, and the destruction of slavery.”6 The pace of Douglass’s lecturing activities on behalf of the antislavery campaign became so great that he had to reduce the frequency of these dispatches to the Liberator, indicating that most abolitionists, including Douglass himself, found more value in his abilities as a speaker than as a journalist.7 Two acts of assistance from British admirers had enormous impact on Douglass’s subsequent development as a writer. In late 1846, British

Y7870-Douglass.indb xvii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xviii

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

abolitionist friends raised $700 and successfully negotiated Douglass’s purchase from his Maryland slave owner.8 Now safe from the prospect of capture and reenslavement, Douglass made plans to return to the United States. Before his departure, the British abolitionist community raised another $2,175 as a testimonial to him. The signers of the published testimonial indicated that the funds had been subscribed “for the purpose of presenting MR. FREDERICK DOUGLASS with a Steam printing Press,” and pronounced him “particularly fitted to engage in the editorship of a paper.”9 Eager to use these funds, Douglass later recalled his feelings about starting an antislavery newspaper of his own: “In imagination I already saw myself wielding my pen as well as my voice in the great work of renovating the public mind, and building up a public sentiment, which should send slavery to the grave.”10 In his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass recalled telling his British supporters that he would use his newspaper to help dispel American racism: “In my judgment, a tolerably well conducted press, in the hands of persons of the despised race, by calling out the mental energies of the race itself; by making them acquainted with their own latent powers; by enkindling among them the hope that for them there is a future; by combining and reflecting their talents—would prove a most powerful means of removing prejudice, and of awakening an interest in them.”11 Douglass’s desire to launch his own newspaper, however, was not seconded by his white abolitionist friends when he returned home. Douglass listed the many practical objections to his proposal that he received from Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and others upon returning to the United States: “First, the paper was not needed; secondly, it would interfere with my usefulness as a lecturer; thirdly, I was better fitted to speak than to write; fourthly, the paper could not succeed.” The Garrisonians warned Douglass that other, better-educated blacks had tried and failed to sustain a weekly newspaper. Douglass worried that he “should but add another to the list of failures, and thus contribute another proof of the mental and moral deficiencies of my race. Very much was said to me in respect to my imperfect literary requirements, I felt to be most painfully true.”12 Disappointed at the Garrisonians’ lack of faith in his abilities, Douglass reluctantly agreed to undertake a speaking tour of the western states in the company of Garrison and Stephen S. Foster in the summer of 1847. Perhaps to assuage his feelings, the Garrisonian leadership persuaded Douglass to accept a regular correspondent’s position with the National Anti-Slavery Standard, edited by Sydney H. Gay. Douglass requested pay-

Y7870-Douglass.indb xviii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xix

ment of $2.50 per column, which the Garrisonians agreed to pay rather than risk him jumping to another newspaper.13 Douglass also explored forming a partnership with the black abolitionists Thomas Van Rensselaer and Willis A. Hodges in editing the latter’s Ram’s Horn, published in New York City. Although Douglass contributed a few letters to the struggling Ram’s Horn, he did not make any financial arrangement with that newspaper before its demise in 1848.14 A loyal Garrisonian, Douglass expanded his journalistic portfolio by preparing articles for the gift book of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the Liberty Bell. Launched in 1839 and edited by Garrison’s close associate Maria Weston Chapman, the Liberty Bell belonged to a genre of publications issued by religious and reform organizations to raise money and awareness for their causes. Proceeds from the Liberty Bell helped support publication of the official Garrisonian newspaper, the New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, and the issuance of abolitionist pamphlets. Contributors to Chapman’s publication included leading Garrisonian abolitionists as well as such sympathetic literary figures as John Greenleaf Whittier, Margaret Fuller, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Martineau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.15 Douglass produced an article for the 1845 Liberty Bell issue, rejoicing in the growing influence of the abolitionists. Chapman informs readers that she had received from Douglass a disclaimer of his ability to write anything worth publishing, which had, by then, become somewhat perfunctory: “It [the article] was intended for a place in the Liberty Bell, but my literary advantages have been so limited, that I am ill prepared to decide what is, and what is not, appropriate for such a collection. I looked exceedingly strange in my own eyes, as I sat writing. The thought of writing for a book!—and only six years since a fugitive from a Southern cornfield—caused a singular jingle in my mind.”16 In his second contribution to the Liberty Bell, three years later, there are no such expressions of self-doubt, since Douglass had already embarked on editing his own newspaper and was producing a steady stream of editorial materials weekly. While Douglass was traveling in Garrison’s company in the late summer of 1847, his desire to own and manage a newspaper gradually returned. In Pittsburgh, Douglass met Martin R. Delany, the son of a free black mother and slave father from western Virginia, who edited the Mystery, a sporadically issued periodical.17 Douglass also met Samuel Brooke, a major contributor to the financially struggling publication of western Garrisonians, the Anti-Slavery Bugle, based in Salem, Ohio. The three

Y7870-Douglass.indb xix

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xx

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

discussed having Douglass launch an abolitionist newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, that would absorb both the Mystery and the Anti-Slavery Bugle, but the Garrisonians apparently became suspicious of such a plan and reorganized the Anti-Slavery Bugle in order to assert firmer control.18 Soon after, Garrison fell seriously ill on the western states tour, forcing Douglass to leave him behind. While Garrison stayed with friends in Cleveland to recuperate, Douglass finished the September speaking engagements on his own in upstate New York.19 Douglass also attended the “National Convention of Colored People and Their Friends,” held in Troy on 6–9 October. This convention debated the formation of a national black press. Douglass opposed the idea, warning that it would provoke undesirable public infighting among black leaders hoping to dominate such a newspaper. When the convention ultimately voted to support such a plan, Douglass abstained.20 He would become a regular figure at similar national black conventions in later decades. For example, in 1853 at the “National convention of the free people” that met in Rochester, New York, he led the committee that wrote the official address to the American public.21 Douglass’s frequent lecturing in upstate New York had convinced him that the region would make a congenial home for his contemplated newspaper. In late October 1847 he wrote to Amy Post, a Quaker active in Garrisonian abolitionism, informing her that he had selected Rochester, where she lived, as the base for his new periodical and was purchasing the necessary type and other equipment. Douglass explained that he hoped to have the first issue out the following month, and since “any delay can only do the enterprise harm, I have therefore resolved to commence at once.”22 Douglass soon made his decision public and announced in the AntiSlavery Bugle that he would be publishing a weekly newspaper to “attack slavery in all of its forms and aspects—advocate Universal Emancipation—exalt the standard of public morality—promote the moral and intellectual improvement of Coloured people—and hasten the day of Freedom to the three millions of our enslaved countrymen.”23 As a clear allusion to the Underground Railroad, the new paper would carry the name the North Star, Douglass explained: “Of all the stars in this ‘brave, old, overhanging sky,’ The North Star is our choice. To thousands now free in the British dominions it has been the Star of Freedom. To millions, now in our boasted land of liberty, it is the Star of Hope.”24 Unable to dissuade Douglass from undertaking this venture, the Garrisonian press publicly applauded Douglass’s editorial venture. The Na-

Y7870-Douglass.indb xx

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxi

tional Anti-Slavery Standard and the Liberator both welcomed Douglass to the editorial field, the latter even graciously observing that the quality of the inaugural issue “is another proof of his genius and is worthy of especial praise.”25 Privately, however, Garrison viewed Douglass’s assertive act as a betrayal. While on their joint western tour, Douglass had not informed Garrison of his plans, causing the Boston editor to complain to his wife: “Such conduct grieves me to the heart. His conduct . . . has been impulsive, inconsiderate, and highly inconsistent . . . Strange want of forecast and judgment!”26 Many historians have traced the beginning of the estrangement between Douglass and his white Garrisonian allies to the ill will and suspicion caused by Douglass’s secretive manner in arranging the launch of the North Star. They also viewed it as an important expression of Douglass’s desire for greater independence from the oversight of his white mentors.27 Using the funds from his British supporters, Douglass purchased an expensive printing press for the North Star in late November 1847 and rented office space in the Talman Building at 25 Buffalo Street in Rochester. The first issue of the new paper was published on 3 December 1847. In that issue, Douglass stated the paper’s mission: “The object of the North Star will be to attack Slavery in all of its forms and aspects; advocate Universal Emancipation; exalt the standard of Public Morality; promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the Colored People; and hasten the day of FREEDOM to the Three Millions of our Enslaved Fellow Country.”28 On the North Star’s masthead, Douglass printed the motto: “Right is of no sex—Truth is of no color—God is the father of us all, and all we are brethren.”29 On a more practical note, John Dick, whom Douglass hired as his printer, soon concluded that the press was insufficient for printing newspapers in bulk; thus, Douglass arranged to have future issues printed by William Clough, whose office was just one floor above his own in the Talman Building.30 After that somewhat inauspicious beginning, Douglass settled into the routine of turning out a four-page weekly newspaper. This was not an easy task—besides writing regularly for the paper, Douglass was beset with significant financial problems. In 1848, the paper had only 700 subscribers to support production costs of fifty-five to sixty dollars a week.31 The money wasted on the original printing press had drained the nest egg provided by his British friends. Before long, Douglass found it essential that he travel and speak regularly to seek funds for the North Star. To keep

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxii

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

the newspaper afloat, Douglass even mortgaged the home he had recently purchased in Rochester, where he had resettled his growing family from Lynn, Massachusetts.32 Douglass also had to respond to criticism that the existence of black newspapers tacitly promoted the separation of the races. In an early editorial, he argued: So far from the truth is the notion that colored newspapers are serving to keep up that cruel distinction, the want of them is the main cause of its continuance. . . . The white man is only superior to the black man, when he outstrips him in the race of improvement; and the black man is only inferior, when he proves himself incapable of doing just what is done by his white brother. In order to remove this odious distinction, we must do just what white men do. It must be no longer white lawyer, and black woodsawyer,—white editor, and black street cleaner: it must be no longer white, intelligent, and black, ignorant; but we must take our stand side by side with our white fellow countrymen, in all the trades, arts, profession and callings of the day.33 In the North Star’s early months, Douglass had the assistance of Delany as an itinerant associate editor who regularly contributed reports of his travels among Northern free black communities.34 Although the two men developed bitter ideological differences over the emigration issue in the mid-1850s, in the early years of the North Star, Delany and Douglass shared a commitment to combatting racial discrimination and promoting black elevation. The best scholar of the Douglass-Delany editorial collaboration, Robert Levine, concluded that it was not ideological disputes but the “relatively undramatic practical and personal reasons” of Delany’s desire for greater financial security through a return to his medical studies that led him to depart the North Star. If there was an underlying cause, Levine suspects that rivalry for leadership in the Northern free black community was the most likely factor.35 William C. Nell, a Boston-born free black, soon joined the newspaper’s small staff as “publisher” and helped with both the typesetting and the editorial writing. Nell departed the North Star in mid-1848 but remained in Rochester, and on several subsequent occasions, he helped manage the office during Douglass’s absences. Nell departed for good in 1851 when Douglass broke with the Garrisonians.36 The North Star’s printer, the Englishman John Dick, occasionally contributed editorial writings to the newspaper, too. Douglass praised Dick for his “admirable taste and discriminating judgement

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxiii

in selecting material for [the North Star’s] columns.”37 With such help at hand, Douglass felt it possible to make extended speaking tours to solicit the subscribers and contributions required for his young newspaper’s survival. No one provided Douglass more steadfast assistance in both the financial and the editorial operation of the North Star than Julia Griffiths, a British abolitionist who had helped raise the original testimonial to support Douglass as a journalist. In 1848, Douglass had revealed the precarious state of his paper’s finances in a letter to Griffiths, but argued that “ ‘the North Star’ must [be] sustained. It has alredy accomplished something. It has taken a respectable stand among (at least) American newspapers—and in a measure demonstrated the slave’s capacity for higher achievements. It has also impressed the colored people themselves, that they are destined [for] higher attainments—even in this country than now enjoy. This is very little to have accomplished but is some[thing].”38 Griffiths swiftly responded to this plea for help. In the company of her sister, she arrived in the United States in May 1849 and set to work to assist Douglass in improving the financial state of the money-losing North Star. With her assistance, Douglass was able to retain editorial control of the North Star when local Garrisonian abolitionists attempted to assume its management in exchange for financial backing.39 Griffiths undertook a number of fund-raising ventures to aid the newspaper, including organizing local antislavery sewing circles and conducting an annual fair. She also solicited money from New York abolitionists, most of whom were not affiliated with the Garrisonians but rather worked for antislavery advances through religious or political institutions.40 The most important of these was wealthy real estate developer Gerrit Smith, who struggled to keep the young Liberty party in the field. Thanks to Griffiths’s dedicated labor in seeking support from these groups, the financial condition of the North Star stabilized. Although he had the assistance of a few able associates, the bulk of the editorial writing in the North Star fell to Douglass. Each week, he diligently prepared an average of four editorials, ranging from a few dozen words to a thousand or more, on a vast array of subjects. Some editorials were in the form of reports about his recent travels to lecture against slavery and recruit readers for the North Star.41 Douglass also published “open letters” as part of his disputes with proslavery politicians or ministers or to assail his former slave master, Thomas Auld.42 Although Douglass had relocated far from the East Coast strongholds of the Garrisonians, his

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxiii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxiv

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

editorials initially treated the competing political parties with his mentor’s vehement disdain.43 But in the summer of 1848, Douglass was impressed by the upsurge of Northern support for the newly formed Free Soil party, which opposed slavery’s westward expansion. Though the North Star announced that its editor would stand by Garrisonian nonvoting principles, Douglass advised those of his readers who chose to vote to support the Free Soil ticket.44 Douglass also used the columns of the North Star to support other reform causes. Even before he attended the pioneering women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, Douglass had editorialized in the North Star for the property rights of married women.45 Douglass also used his editorial columns to campaign on behalf of the fundamental civil rights of Northern free blacks. As early as 1849, he proposed formation of a “National League” for “the elevation and improvement of the free colored people of the United States.”46 As Waldo E. Martin observed about Douglass, the demands of producing weekly editorial commentary on a wide variety of contemporary topics were “an indispensable part of his intellectual development.”47 Douglass was forced to educate himself on a vast range of topics, to think out his own opinions, and to express them persuasively in writing. The power of his editorial platform brought Douglass to the forefront of antebellum free black leadership. James McCune Smith, a friend and black physician in New York City, observed this process in Douglass: “I have read his paper very carefully and find phase after phase develop itself as regularly as one newly born among us. The Church question, the school question, separate institutions, are questions that he enters upon and argues about as our weary but active young men thought about and argued about years ago, when we had Literary Societies.”48 Smith predicted that through Douglass’s labors of developing a distinct editorial voice, he was strengthening his identity as an African American and pulling away from his white Garrisonian mentors.49 Douglass used his position as editor of the largest-circulation African American newspaper to solidify his influence over that community.50 Douglass’s principal rival in the early 1850s was Delany, the former associate editor of the North Star and an early proponent of black nationalism and emigration to Africa. The focus of their disagreements in the early 1850s centered on advocacy for African American emigration to Africa or some other, less racist environment. The debate displayed very different attitudes regarding whether Northern whites would ever treat blacks as equals, with Douglass remaining more hopeful than Delany. Robert

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxiv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxv

Levine observed that Douglass shrewdly chose to combat the challenge from the emigrationist movement by minimizing publicity for its meetings and pamphlets in his newspaper.51 Despite the strenuous efforts of Douglass and his associates, the North Star was still not solvent in the early 1850s. It was this perplexing problem, perhaps, that forced Douglass to reexamine his antislavery alliances. Upstate New York was the center of strength for the small band of Liberty party supporters, led by Gerrit Smith, who had refused to merge with the Free Soil party in 1848. This faction distinguished itself from both the Free Soilers and the Garrisonians by asserting that the U.S. Constitution empowered the federal government to abolish slavery. Smith had courted Douglass since his arrival in Rochester52 and regularly sent him literature contending that the Constitution was inherently antislavery. North Star editorials document Douglass’s gradual movement toward Smith’s views and his abandonment of the Garrisonian position that the Constitution upheld slavery and that voting under its auspices therefore sanctioned slavery.53 In response to an inquiry from Smith about the financial health of the North Star, Douglass confessed that he had spent most of the money given him by British abolitionists “foolishly.” He also complained that the East Coast Garrisonians thought him “far more serviceable as a public speaker than I can be as an editor.” Because he “started the paper against their wishes—and against their advice, they feel therefore little or no interest in its support,” he wrote.54 Smith eventually made a proposal to assist Douglass with his editorial work. Smith had been subsidizing a failing political abolitionist newspaper, the Liberty Party Paper, and he proposed to finance its merger with Douglass’s journal. Because Smith wanted a high-quality periodical to revive support for the remnant of the Liberty party that he led, he offered to contribute one hundred dollars a month to the new paper for two years on the condition that Douglass take its editorial helm. Douglass quickly replied to Smith’s offer: “You want a good looking—as well as a good paper, established in western N.Y. & and have a plan to accomplish that object. I like the plan.”55 Douglass accepted Smith’s subsidy and quickly arranged the merger. He unsuccessfully attempted to persuade a fellow black abolitionist, Samuel Ringgold Ward, to bring his Syracuse-based Impartial Citizen into this union. To make his editorial control clear to all, Douglass gave the new newspaper, which debuted on 26 June 1851, his own name, Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Douglass had had few doubts about how the Garrisonians would regard his new newspaper. When the issue of a merger was first raised,

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxvi

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

Douglass wrote Smith: “The leaders of the American Antislavery Society are strong men—noble champions in the cause of human freedom—and yet they are not after all the most charitable in construing the motives of those who see matters in a Different light from themselves.”56 As Douglass predicted, the Garrisonian press, led by the Liberator, launched what Douglass dubbed a “war of destruction” against his new newspaper. It assaulted Douglass’s new editorial positions on the Liberty party, the Constitution, and voting. Most of the attacks had a personal, rather than an ideological, character. Garrison accused Douglass of “roguery” and of selling himself to the political abolitionists. Worse, the Garrisonian press published unsubstantiated rumors that Douglass was having an affair with his editorial associate, Julia Griffiths, who, it claimed, had turned him against his former colleagues.57 Frederick Douglass’ Paper began life by giving energetic editorial support to the struggling Liberty party movement. Douglass unequivocally endorsed the group’s views on the unconstitutionality of slavery and publicized the activities of Smith and its other leaders. He would not, however, editorially support efforts to broaden the party’s platform to include land reform, free trade, and other causes that he regarded as extraneous to abolition. 58 Frederick Douglass’ Paper enjoyed moderate success in its early years. Departing Garrisonian subscribers were replaced by new Liberty party readers. In addition, Griffiths’s fund-raising skills were at their peak in the early 1850s.59 During this period of shifting abolitionist alliances, Douglass developed the idea of writing a novel about the career of Madison Washington, who had led a rebellion on board the bark Creole en route from Richmond, Virginia, to New Orleans in October 1841. After seizing control of the ship, Madison forced a captured crewman to sail the rebels to Nassau in the Bahamas, where British authorities had freed all slaves. Douglass, who had frequently spoken about Washington, initially considered writing a nonfiction account of the rebellion. Confronted with many gaps in the historical record regarding the Creole uprising and aware of the enormous impact that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s recently published Uncle Tom’s Cabin was having on Northern sentiment regarding slavery, Douglass opted instead to write a novella with Washington as its central character.60 During the same period, Julia Griffiths conceived of assembling a collection of antislavery articles, stories, and poems and publishing them as a gift book to raise funds for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. This vol-

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxvi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxvii

ume ultimately was entitled Autographs for Freedom at the suggestion of Stowe, who contributed a poem and a short story. Griffiths and Douglass envisioned Autographs as a means to forge a closer working relationship between political abolitionists like Smith and moderate Free Soilers and other Northern antislavery politicians, who were well represented among the authors. Significantly absent as writers in Autographs were Garrisonians, whose Liberty Bell was an obvious model for the new project.61 Douglass and, presumably, Griffiths had another goal in publishing Autographs for Freedom: persuading Northern opponents of slavery that employing violent tactics might be the only effective way to achieve emancipation. The strategy of converting readers to an acceptance of violent antislavery tactics seems apparent in Griffiths’s layout of the book’s contents. While early entries seem to uphold the traditional abolitionist disinclination to use violent means, the volume builds to a crescendo of four works, including Douglass’s The Heroic Slave, that advocate a more radical, violently aggressive strategy. Douglass’s novella has two distinct narrative voices: Madison Washington and a white Northerner named Mr. Listwell. In Part I, Listwell overhears Washington’s soliloquy regarding his life as a slave and his determination to escape. Listwell was so moved by the speech that it was as if it had “rung through the chambers of his soul, and vibrated through his entire frame”; he vows to himself, “I shall . . . atone for my past indifference to this ill-starred race, by making such exertions as I shall be able to do, for the speedy emancipation of every slave in the land.” 62 Douglass brilliantly uses rhetoric throughout the novella and maintains the emphasis on the relationship between Washington and Listwell as a way to incite white Northern abolitionists to take action. Listwell gives white readers— many of them newly sensitized to the horrors of slavery by Uncle Tom’s Cabin— someone to identify with, and Douglass hoped that they, by witnessing Listwell’s transformation into an abolitionist, would embark on the same journey of conversion.63 Advance copies of Autographs for Freedom were available for sale in Rochester in December 1852. Douglass soon serialized The Heroic Slave in four parts in Frederick Douglass’ Paper.64 Sadly, few details are available about Douglass’s labor in composing The Heroic Slave. Griffiths and other Rochester abolitionists encouraged Douglass’s writing and were shown preliminary drafts in the summer of 1852. Douglass shared with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that his friends seemed “to think that my ‘fugitive Slave Ship’ will go a great ways towards obtaining the desired

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxvii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxviii

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

treasure. I have no such vanity—and yet I am acting as though I had.”65 After its initial publication and its reprinting in a few pirated editions, the novella gradually slid out of public memory and was largely forgotten until 1975, when Philip S. Foner reproduced it in his five-volume The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass.66 Significantly, Douglass did not prepare any new item, fictional or otherwise, for the second and final edition of Autographs for Freedom, but instead chose to reprint a portion of a speech he had delivered in May 1853 to a convention of non-Garrisonian abolitionists in New York City.67 Regrettably, aside from a few poems, The Heroic Slave was Douglass’s only known foray into creative writing. In the decade leading up to the Civil War, Douglass’s energies were consumed by extensive speaking tours and by the demands of his weekly newspaper. In 1855, when writing of his antebellum journalistic endeavors in his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass assessed the costs and rewards of running his own newspaper: It is not to be concealed, however, that the maintenance of such a journal, under the circumstances, has been a work of much difficulty; and could all the perplexity, anxiety, and trouble attending it, have been clearly foreseen, I might have shrunk from the undertaking. As it is, I rejoice in having engaged in the enterprise, and count it joy to have been able to suffer, in many ways, for its success, and for the success of the cause to which it has been faithfully devoted. I look upon the time, money, and labor bestowed upon it, as being amply rewarded, in the development of my own mental and moral energies, and in the corresponding development of my deeply injured and oppressed people.68 What Douglass could not have anticipated was that the struggle to produce a steady stream of editorial commentary on current events would become more difficult when his longtime collaborator Julia Griffiths returned home to Great Britain in the summer of 1855 and management of the newspaper fell largely into his hands.69 As agreed, Gerrit Smith had ceased his regular subsidies after two years, but occasionally made further contributions. Douglass again had to travel frequently on speaking tours to find new subscribers and financial contributors. His growing sons assisted in the office with the typesetting. William J. Watkins, a young free black from Boston who had joined the small staff, rose to become Douglass’s associate editor.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxviii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxix

During the early 1850s, Douglass editorialized frequently in support of greater cooperation among Northern African Americans. Using his position as editor of the nation’s largest-circulation and most influential African American periodical, he led an effort to create a national council to promote civil rights as well as economic and educational opportunities. Frederick Douglass’ Paper campaigned to create an “Industrial College” for the purpose of elevating Douglass’s race from the ranks of “menial” employments, such as “waiters, porters, and barbers,” since “no class or variety of people can furnish them exclusively without degradation.”70 The failure of Harriet Beecher Stowe to raise funds for the project from her vast readership, as Douglass had hoped she would, prevented it from launching. Nonetheless, Douglass used his extensive traveling and lecturing as opportunities to report to his readers on progress made by African Americans in communities across the North.71 New developments in the Northern political climate complicated the situation of Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Congressional passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 had given renewed life to the antiextension movement. A coalition of Free Soilers and more recent defectors from the major parties launched the new Republican party that same year. Although the party lacked the abolitionists’ strong principles in regard to emancipation and equal rights for African Americans, it represented a realistic opportunity to win national power in the election of 1856. Smith and his small cadre of followers, however, stood aloof from the Republican movement and instead formed their own new vehicle, the Radical Abolitionist party, which replaced the remnant Liberty party. Douglass’s newspaper praised the prominent roles that African Americans played in the Radical Abolitionist party and its condemnation of the proslavery character of the U.S. Constitution, but he wavered in giving it his unqualified editorial support. In May 1856, Douglass confided in Smith that his newspaper was $1,500 in debt, for several reasons: “My paper is not Republican—and therefore Republicans look coldly on it. It is not Garrisonian and therefore Garrisonians hate and spare no pains to destroy it. Meanwhile the colored people do very little to support.”72 With the survival of his journalistic project in serious jeopardy, Douglass abandoned his initial endorsement of Smith’s presidential candidacy as a Radical Abolitionist and shifted to backing the Republican nominee, John C. Frémont, in August 1856. He answered both Garrisonian and Radical Abolitionist charges of “inconsistency” with the claim that “the difference between our paper this week and last week is a difference of Policy, not of Principle.”73

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxix

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxx

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

Frémont’s defeat by the Democrat James Buchanan produced considerable despair in the antislavery community. Douglass found Republican support for African American civil rights disappointingly weak and soon returned his editorial support to Smith’s dwindling band of Radical Abolitionists. He also editorially sanctioned violence by free blacks and abolitionists in resisting any attempts to recapture runaways under terms of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law.74 Frederick Douglass’ Paper applauded the guerrilla-style warfare waged by John Brown and other members of the free-state militia in Kansas to resist efforts to force that territory to become a slave state against the will of a large majority of its residents.75 None of these positions produced a significant increase in the readership of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, and its editor continued to resort to long lecture tours to raise funds to keep it afloat. The Rochester Ladies’ AntiSlavery Society, despite the loss of its leader, Julia Griffiths, continued to solicit funds for Douglass’s newspaper at home and abroad in the form of donations to its annual bazaar. Despite these efforts, the weekly was abandoned as financially unsustainable in July 1860.76 Closure of Frederick Douglass’ Paper did not deprive Douglass of an editorial outlet. In January 1859, he launched a second, simultaneous periodical, Douglass’ Monthly. The Monthly probably was founded at the urging of Griffiths as a means for Douglass to reach British readers and financial supporters more effectively. Many issues from the latter years of Frederick Douglass’ Paper and from the Monthly in the first half of 1860 have not survived, so it is not possible to determine how much overlap in editorial content occurred. Few editorials in the Monthly seem specifically aimed at a British audience, making it likely that a high percentage were taken directly from the weekly. Douglass seems to have appreciated the historical value of his Monthly, telling potential subscribers that “its size is that most convenient for binding” and “its matter shall be such as will be permanently useful and interesting to its readers.”77 The new periodical was less than a year old when Douglass had to flee the United States in October 1859 to avoid arrest for his role in assisting John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.78 Production of both papers was sustained by Douglass’s sons and his older daughter, Rosetta, with the assistance of the veteran abolitionist editor Abram Pryne.79 After residing briefly in Canada, Douglass traveled to Great Britain, where he reunited with Griffiths and launched a new antislavery speaking tour, defending Brown and the need for his violent actions. The death of his youngest

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxx

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxxi

child, Annie, in March 1860, convinced Douglass to brave a return to Rochester in April.80 As the nation entered another presidential election year, Douglass watched developments with the eye of a skilled analyst. In a pragmatic editorial assessment in June, he decided that a Republican victory would “humble the slave power and defeat all plans for giving slavery any further guarantees of permanence.”81 Douglass endorsed the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, while voicing the wish that the party had inscribed “Death to Slavery” instead of “No More Slave States” on its banners.82 In August, however, Douglass attended a hastily called convention of Radical Abolitionists, who nominated Gerrit Smith for president. In a surprising move, Douglass endorsed Smith and campaigned for him in speeches and editorials.83 Douglass seems to have worked hardest in that election for passage of a state referendum to grant black voters equal ballot access in New York. That referendum’s defeat, despite Lincoln’s triumph in the state, increased Douglass’s suspicions about the lack of commitment among many Republicans to the best interest of his race.84 The election of Lincoln to the presidency produced a panic in the slaveholding South that led to the secession of eleven states and sparked the bloody Civil War. Douglass used his editorial pen to persuade Northerners that though the conflict would be “long, revengeful, and isolating,” its outcome had to be nothing less than complete emancipation.85 His Douglass’ Monthly editorials during the first year and a half of the war excoriated the Lincoln administration for equivocating on emancipation as a war goal and for hesitating to employ blacks as Union Army soldiers. Adopting what the historian David W. Blight labels “apocalyptic language,” Douglass’s editorials warned of divine retribution on the nation if it failed to use the war as an opportunity to atone for tolerating the iniquity of slavery for so long.86 Douglass shared with his readers his pleased reaction to Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation: “We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree.”87 During the early war years, Douglass also began to broaden his journalistic reach by preparing pieces for publications other than his Monthly. He wrote two articles for the influential New York Independent at the request of its managing editor, Theodore Tilton, who became a close friend. In the first piece, Douglass clarified his shifting attitude toward a campaign by the Caribbean nation of Haiti to recruit free blacks from the United States to migrate there. While he had briefly wavered on the

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxxii

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

emigration issue at the start of the Civil War, he now took an unequivocal position and discouraged African Americans from considering such a move: “While I hold up both hands for Hayti, grateful for her humanity, rejoice in her prosperity, point to her example with pride and hope, and would smite down any hand that would fling a shadow upon the pathway of her glory, I wish to remind those who claim to be the best representatives of her views and feelings that those who made Hayti what she is did not leave her, but remained there and worked out their own salvation.”88 Of greater significance was “The Slave’s Appeal to Great Britain,” which appeared in December 1862 and in which Douglass attempted to persuade the British public to support the Union cause, especially in light of Lincoln’s recent conversion to emancipation as a war goal.89 This widely reprinted essay proved highly influential in the British Isles. Douglass appealed to that nation’s pride by referring to its earlier example of moral leadership in abolishing slavery in its colonial possessions: “For the honor of the British name, which has hitherto carried only light and hope to the slave, and rebuke and dismay to the slaveholder, do not in this great emergency be persuaded to abandon and contradict that policy of justice and mercy to the negro which has made your character revered, and your name illustrious, throughout the civilized world.” These two Civil War– era Independent pieces demonstrated that Douglass could effectively use publications other than his own to solicit support for his race. Soon after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, on 1 January 1863, Douglass frequently traveled across the North in search of African American recruits for the Union war effort. After being promised an officer’s commission to serve as an adjutant assistant to General Lorenzo Thomas, who was engaged in recruiting slaves for the Union Army in Mississippi, Douglass immediately ceased publishing Douglass’ Monthly. In a valedictory added to the final issue, Douglass described his readers as his “true and tried friends” and promised them, “I shall think, write and speak as I have opportunity, while the slave needs a pen to plead his cause or a voice to expose his wrongs before the people.”90 Douglass also boasted that his antebellum newspapers had accomplished important work in winning acceptance for African American journalists: I have lived to see the leading presses of the country, willing and ready to publish any argument or appeal in behalf of my race, I am able to make. So that while speaking and writing are still needful, the necessity of a special organ for my views and opinions on slavery no

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxxiii

longer exists. To this extent at least, my paper has accomplished the object of its existence. It has done something towards battering down that dark and frowning wall of partition between the working minds of two races, hitherto thought impregnable.91 The military commission was never authorized, for reasons that are unclear, and Douglass never revived his periodical.92 In his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), Douglass looked back with pride on his achievements in journalism: “If I have at any time said or written that which is worth remembering or repeating, I must have said such things between the years 1848 and 1860, and my paper was a chronicle of most of what I said during that time.”93 For the first time in fifteen years, though Douglass lacked his own journalistic outlet, he remained engaged in the nation’s political debates by speaking at conventions and campaign events on behalf of groups and politicians committed to advancing African American rights. Shortly after the war’s end, Douglass launched a lucrative career on the lyceum circuit; and while he spoke on a wide range of subjects, he seldom strayed far from the central issue of African American rights.94 During the early years of Reconstruction, Douglass returned to writing occasional articles for newspapers. He produced two pieces for the Atlantic Monthly and individual pieces for the New York Independent and the National AntiSlavery Standard. The Atlantic articles offered Douglass’s counsel on the growing controversy between congressional Republicans and President Andrew Johnson over Reconstruction policies. He called on Congress to overcome opposition from the executive branch and “establish in the South one law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike.”95 The National Anti-Slavery Standard gave Douglass the opportunity to denounce Salmon P. Chase, a former political abolitionist ally, as “a deserter from our ranks, in face of the enemy,” for pursuing the Democratic presidential nomination.96 Tilton, at the Independent, provided Douglass a forum in which to endorse the election of the Republican candidate, Ulysses S. Grant. Douglass’s old abolitionist colleague Lydia Maria Child persuaded him to contribute a very brief exhortation to the recently emancipated slaves in her 1865 primer The Freedmen’s Book. In February and March 1869, Douglass joined his son Lewis, George T. Downing, and several other black leaders in sending out a circular calling for contributions to fund a new weekly newspaper for African

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxiii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxxiv

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

Americans, to be published in Washington, D.C. Blacks in Washington soon supported this plan with pledges amounting to $2,500. They proposed Douglass as editor in chief, the Presbyterian minister and experienced journalist J. Sella Martin as associate editor, and Lewis Douglass as chief compositor and print shop manager. Douglass declined the offered position and warned that the enterprise would require much more capital. Investors pushed ahead anyway and offered the editorship to Martin, who accepted on the condition that Douglass serve as the newspaper’s contributing editor. The New Era issued its first copy on 13 January 1870, and Douglass’s first article appeared two weeks later.97 As Douglass had predicted, the new newspaper soon experienced serious financial problems. Many of its original shareholders withdrew, and Martin was forced to suspend its publication in the summer of 1870. To save the failing publication, Douglass relocated to the nation’s capital. With his sons Lewis and Frederick Jr., he purchased a half interest in the newspaper and became the editor of the renamed Washington New National Era. His editorial policy, he wrote, advocated, “Free men, free soil, free speech, a free press, everywhere in the land. The ballot for all, education for all, fair wages for all.”98 In his third autobiography, Douglass recalls: “My sixteen years’ experience as editor and publisher of my own paper, and the knowledge of the toil and anxiety which such a relation to a public journal must impose, caused me much reluctance and hesitation; nevertheless, I yielded to the wishes of my friends and counsellors, went to Washington, threw myself into the work, hoping to be able to lift up a standard at the national capital for my people which should cheer and strengthen them in the work of their own improvement and elevation.”99 Douglass assessed his journalist credentials in an early editorial: “While I come to the work willingly I do so with no high confidence in my ability to discharge its duties with credit. I am encouraged, however, by the consciousness that whatever may be my deficiencies as to ability, either as respects skill or judgment, I lack neither the will nor the purpose to serve the cause of our people. To those who know of my thirty years of active service, my steadfast zeal and perseverance will be granted.”100 On 12 December 1870, Douglass purchased the remaining half interest in the New National Era and its printing office for $8,000. Douglass placed much of the management of the newspaper into the hands of his sons, Lewis and Frederick Jr., both experienced printers.101 Douglass’s intimate friend Ottilie Assing became a correspondent on international

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxiv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxxv

affairs, but she could not offer the assistance in the business department that Julia Griffiths had lent to the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper.102 Douglass felt secure enough in the abilities of his small staff to depart the country for two months in early 1871 to serve as assistant secretary on a commission appointed by President Grant to interview Dominicans about a proposal to annex their nation to the United States. As was expected for a newspaper based in the nation’s capital, political issues before the federal government became the chief topic of Douglass’s editorials. He strongly endorsed Radical Republican positions in Reconstruction political battles, especially the protection of newly won African American rights. The New National Era unswervingly defended the policies of Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, including its controversial effort to annex the Dominican Republic. In the 1872 campaign, Douglass disparaged the effort by Liberal Republicans to displace Grant as the party’s presidential nominee and their subsequent merger with the inveterate opponents of black rights, the Democratic party.103 On the eve of the election, Douglass strongly endorsed Grant’s reelection: “In the canvass, from its inception, until now, this paper, to the extent of its ability, has performed its part in diffusing information, and conducting the public mind to wise and patriotic conclusions . . . At last, as at first, it is not ashamed of its position.”104 Douglass also editorially campaigned for such causes as woman suffrage, penal code reform, and greater educational opportunities for African Americans.105 While modest in regard to his own editorials, Douglass boasted that “some of the ablest colored men of the country made it the medium through which to convey their thoughts to the public.”106 Despite vigorous efforts by Douglass, the New National Era’s readership did not grow significantly beyond Washington’s small black elite. Shortly after the November 1872 election, Douglass left the newspaper’s editorial chair. J. Sella Martin briefly joined Lewis Douglass to guide the New National Era, with the senior Douglass contributing only a few subsequent columns.107 In the fall of 1873, Douglass’s sons unwisely merged their paper with a second struggling newspaper, the Colored Citizen, published by a number of clerks from the Freedman’s Bank. When the latter could not produce the resources they had promised, a lawsuit resulted, and an injunction against the Douglass brothers caused the New National Era to suspend publication in 1874. Although the brothers won the case and resumed publication, the New National Era went out of business permanently on 22 October 1874.108 The “misadventure” of the New National

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxxvi

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

Era cost Douglass nearly ten thousand dollars, but he was not bitter about it: “The journal was valuable while it lasted, and the experiment was full of instruction to me, which has to some extent been heeded, for I have kept well out of newspaper undertakings since.”109 In the waning phase of his last newspaper, Douglass accepted an offer to become president of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, also based in Washington, D.C. That institution was floundering well before Douglass’s arrival—a reality hidden from him by its trustees, who recruited him in a last-ditch effort to bolster its credibility. In his capacity as the bank’s official spokesperson, Douglass wrote a number of circulars and public letters, trying in vain to retain confidence in the bank. Acknowledging some prior mismanagement, he emphasized the important purpose for which the bank had been created: “The mission of the Freedman’s Bank is to show our people the road to a share of the wealth and well being of the world. It has already done much to lift the race into respectability, and, with their continued confidence and patient cooperation, it will continue to reflect credit upon the race and promote their welfare.”110 Finally admitting defeat, Douglass oversaw the institution’s closing on 2 July 1874.111 Douglass deeply regretted his association with the bank, which, he reported, “has brought upon my head an amount of abuse and detraction greater than any encountered in any other part of my life.”112 The closing of the New National Era marked the beginning of the final phase of Douglass’s career as a writer. The best known of his later works, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, was published in 1881 and then revised and expanded in an 1892 edition.113 He published an advance extract in the Century magazine, providing long-hidden details of his 1838 escape from slavery, to boost the sales prospects of his autobiography. Much less familiar to modern scholars than Life and Times, however, is the steady stream of journalism and other writings that Douglass produced in his final two decades. Through these published writings and his still-extensive schedule of public speaking, Douglass strove to remain an influential voice in shaping the nation’s racial relations. Since Douglass was probably the nation’s best-known African American and an influential Republican party advocate, his opinion was sought out frequently by the editors of some of the nation’s leading periodicals. As a result, he published commentary on current issues in prominent journals with largely white readership. Twice in the 1880s, Douglass agreed to prepare an article for a “symposium” in the North American Review

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxvi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxxvii

that would include a variety of viewpoints on the prospects of the emancipated African American race. In each case, Douglass found himself partnered with authors who disparaged his race and advocated emigration to Africa as the best solution to blacks’ problems.114 In the second North American Review symposium, he reminded readers that “we should not measure the negro from the heights which the white race has attained, but from the depths from which he has come.”115 Douglass had more agreeable companions, such as Moncure Conway and Julia Ward Howe, for an 1889 symposium in Cosmopolitan magazine, entitled “The Great Agitation,” which offered assessments of the accomplishments of the abolitionist movement.116 About the antislavery movement, Douglass observed: “The history of this great struggle is instructive in many ways. It not only illustrates the wisdom and potency of moral agitation as a means of removing great evils and promoting reform, but also the tremendous price that must be paid for every inch in the march of human progress, and it would seem that the more obvious the truth asserted, the more bitter is the opposition to its demands.”117 In 1875, Douglass joined three other authors to write in the American Missionary Magazine about his reaction to reports on the poor state of educational opportunities for Southern blacks.118 Douglass produced additional commentary on important political events in the 1880s and 1890s. The disappointing U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1883 Civil Rights cases caused Douglass to produce separate articles in Harper’s Weekly and the American Reformer, calling for justice for African Americans. In his American Reformer piece, Douglass declared, “Nothing has happened since the war for the Union, so calculated to encourage the war-exploded dogma of State rights, and humiliate the nation, as this decision of the Supreme Court.”119 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper persuaded Douglass to join other commentators in assessing the reasons for the Republican party’s poor showing in the 1890 congressional election.120 Two years later, Douglass turned to the New York Independent to make the case that President Benjamin Harrison deserved renomination because of his support for African American rights. Douglass pragmatically endorsed Harrison as the candidate “in favor of law and force for the protection of the colored man from [the current reign of] lawless violence. There are other good men not less fit for the place than Benjamin Harrison, but none more likely, if any so likely, to be elected should any one them be nominated.”121 The same year, he responded to a request from the editor of the North American Review to publish a blistering critique of the intensifying problem of lynching in Southern states.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxvii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xxxviii

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

That article’s uncompromising denunciation of the nation for failing to protect all of its citizens equally from unjustified violence would be incorporated into the rhetoric of Douglass’s last great public lecture, “The Lessons of the Hour.”122 On other occasions, Douglass used his journalistic skills to produce articles intended to defend himself and his behavior in the public record. For example, he wrote a defense of his criticism of the Southern black “Exoduster” migration in 1879 for a Washington D.C. political newspaper. That article, as well as a later presentation to the American Social Science Association, did little to spare Douglass from accusations by African American opponents of “indifference to the welfare of the colored people of the South.”123 In 1891, Douglass produced a two-part article for the North American Review to answer critics of his role in the unsuccessful diplomatic negotiations with Haiti for the lease of the Môle-SaintNicolas as a naval station. He later reprinted those pieces with virtually no changes at the conclusion of the second edition of his Life and Times.124 Occasionally, Douglass declined an editor’s proposal to write on a suggested topic. For example, he declined an 1881 request from Scribner’s Monthly Magazine for an article on “the education of the colored race,” protesting that “my many engagements and duties make me shrink from trying my hand on such a paper.” Douglass did ingratiate himself with that magazine’s managing editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, by asserting that “a place on the Editorial Staff of such a periodical as Scribner’s Monthly is more desirable than a seat in Congress, and I think quite as honorable.”125 Perhaps flattered, Johnson successfully persuaded Douglass later that year to publish the earlier-described excerpt from his forthcoming Life and Times in the Century magazine, the successor to Scribner’s.126 In the immediate post-Reconstruction decades, Douglass frequently contributed to an assortment of African American publications.127 He published four articles in African Methodist Episcopal Church periodicals in the 1880s, all edited by the Reverend Benjamin Tucker Tanner, who granted Douglass great latitude in his subject matter. Two of these essays discussed current political issues of concern to African Americans and were decidedly pro–Republican party in character.128 A short piece in 1880 spoke out against the growing intolerance displayed toward Chinese immigrants. An article in the A.M.E. Church Review, published shortly before Douglass left the country on a long tour of Europe and Africa, recalled his earlier travels in Ireland and called on the British government to grant Home Rule to that island.129 In 1892, Douglass responded

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxviii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xxxix

to a request from the Indianapolis Freeman for an assessment of African Americans’ prospects with a short essay that began with the autobiographical observation: “The whole field, as to the means to be adopted and the course to be pursued to better the condition of the Negro has been my thought during a long life, and I have nothing better to offer now than I had fifty years ago, and perhaps I may say without vanity, that there is, as I think, nothing better to be offered.”130 As a leading advocate for African American civil rights, Douglass coauthored a call for another National Convention of African Americans, which was ultimately held in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1883. A decade later, Douglass served as commissioner of the Haitian pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in 1893 in Chicago. Twice in that capacity, Douglass wrote public protests against the greatly constricted role allotted to African Americans to display their achievements since emancipation on the international stage provided by the exposition. The first of these was in the World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated, a semiofficial publication publicizing the event. The other served as the introduction to a historically significant pamphlet, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, coauthored by Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Irvine Garland Penn, and others. In the latter work, Douglass rebutted suggestions that he and the other contributors were embarrassing their country, which was using the Columbian Exposition to pose “before the world as a highly liberal and civilized nation.” Instead, he used his essay not only to indict the discrimination shown at that event, but also to condemn the growing reign of terror across the Southern states, arguing, “Let the truth be told, let the light be turned on ignorance and prejudice, let lawless violence and murder be exposed.” Douglass declared his abiding optimism that such journalistic coverage of the wrongs against his race would have a positive effect: “The Americans are a great and magnanimous people and this great exposition adds greatly to their honor and renown, but in the pride of their success they have cause for repentance as well as complaisance, and for shame as well as for glory, and hence we send forth this volume to be read of all men.”131 In his last decades, Douglass used his pen to produce introductions, short articles, and promotional statements to be published in a number of books. Douglass joined a group of thirty-three prominent contributors to a collection of reminiscences of Lincoln.132 He was part of a similar assemblage of authors who prepared tributes of the well-known minister and reformer Henry Ward Beecher to commemorate his seventieth birthday.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xxxix

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xl

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

Douglass prepared an introduction to his longtime friend John Wallace Hutchinson’s history of his family of well-regarded antislavery singers, recalling, “I never saw one of its members falter or flinch before any duty, whether social or patriotic; and it is a source of more satisfaction than I can express, to have lived, as I have now done, to bear this high testimony to the character of the Hutchinsons.”133 Douglass wrote an introduction for an American edition of the biography of Toussaint L’Ouverture by the French reformer Victor Schoelcher, whom he had befriended during his 1886–87 European tour.134 When asked to prepare a contribution to a forthcoming history of the Massachusetts utopian community of Florence, Douglass used the opportunity to recall his meetings there with David Ruggles, Sojourner Truth, and other reformers.135 Douglass’s short contribution to Irvine Garland Penn’s 1891 book, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors, offered a bleak assessment: “Colored papers, from their antecedents and surroundings, cost more, and give their readers less, than papers and publications by white men.”136 Douglass offered a more positive appraisal of African American journalistic achievements in a review he prepared for Penn’s book: “Though the history of the colored press conforms to the rule that many are called and few are chosen; that in the field of journalism few succeed and many fail; there is quite enough of success to vindicate the laudable ambition and ability of the colored race in the use of this powerful instrumentality.”137 The British reform journal Anti-Caste published a brief endorsement of the periodical by Douglass, solicited by the editor to boost its reputation. That Douglass was sought out again and again to prepare these kinds of short pieces was a testament to the high regard in which he was held in many American and European circles in his last decades. One of the most unusual of Douglass’s later writings was the entry “Slavery” for a pirated American version of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.138 Unlike his autobiographical recollections of experiences as a Maryland slave, this was a scholarly piece that traced the history of human bondage in North America from its colonial beginnings to emancipation. Douglass devoted a great deal of attention to colonial-era laws governing the treatment of slaves. Not surprisingly, half the entry was devoted to the growth and final triumph of the abolition campaign, detailing the contributions of the movement’s many factions. It is possible that Douglass received significant assistance in researching the article, even if not in writing it, from his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, who, after her husband’s death, spoke and wrote on a number of historical topics.139

Y7870-Douglass.indb xl

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xli

Before their marriage, Helen Pitts had been a clerk for Douglass in the Recorder of Deeds Office in the District of Columbia. Likely because of the meticulous record keeping of Helen Pitts Douglass, numerous newspaper reports and the manuscript drafts of dozens of documents by Douglass from the post–Civil War years have survived. As noted in an earlier volume in this project, such manuscripts played an important role in determining the authoritative text for Douglass’s Life and Times.140 Scholars can perform a similar exercise by consulting the source notes supplied by the Douglass Papers editors for many of the documents in this series, which indicate the location of manuscript drafts as well as the published sources. For several documents, such as Douglass’s two travel diaries, some short poems, inscriptions in guest books, and his review of Penn’s Afro-American Press, the manuscripts are the only surviving sources for such samples of Douglass’s writing. The travel diaries might be the most historically significant. The first he kept while serving as assistant secretary of a commission appointed by President Grant to travel to the Dominican Republic and explore sentiment there regarding a proposed annexation to the United States. The second was a record of Douglass’s observations during his tour of Europe and Egypt with his second wife in 1886–87. While neither was intended for publication, he used both manuscripts as sources for later addresses and writings, and they reveal his unfiltered opinions on a range of subjects. * * * * * * Despite this large and impressive body of work, Douglass’s achievements as a writer have failed to receive anywhere near the same level of recognition as his public speaking or autobiographical writing. The greatest praise that Douglass’s labors as a journalist attracted from contemporaries was limited to sustaining his series of newspapers in Rochester when all other black-edited antebellum periodicals proved short-lived. A fellow black abolitionist William Wells Brown articulated this sentiment most positively: “Of all of his labors . . . we regard Mr. Douglass’s efforts as a publisher and editor as most useful to his race. For sixteen years, against much opposition, single-handed and alone, he demonstrated the fact that the American colored man was equal to the white in conducting a useful and popular journal.”141 Irvine Garland Penn continued this theme of complimenting Douglass chiefly for conducting his newspapers in a virulently racist climate. Quoting Brown’s assessment at length in his Afro-American Press, Penn observed that “previous to this publication

Y7870-Douglass.indb xli

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xlii

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

[of the North Star], Mr. Douglass was not known as a writer; but he was afterward recognized as a great man in more than one sphere.”142 These early positive assessments of Douglass as a newspaper editor had little impact on twentieth-century studies of American journalism. Most ignored Douglass’s accomplishments altogether or provided the briefest of notices, such as Frank Luther Mott’s 1962 squib that “the ablest of all [‘Negro publications’] was Frederick Douglass’ North Star, founded in Rochester, New York, in 1847.”143 Only the small body of scholarship focused exclusively on the black press in the United States afforded Douglass real recognition as a journalist. Penelope L. Bullock’s comprehensive survey of the African American periodical press was the first to examine Douglass’ Monthly as a part of the striving by antebellum African Americans to develop a journalistic and literary voice.144 Frankie Hutton’s The Early Black Press in America (1993) placed Douglass’s journalism in line with that of other antebellum black editors, who were campaigning “in unison on the uplift of their people through the vehicles of education, temperance, prudence, continued morality, and a purposeful, genteel social life.”145 There are a small number of other noteworthy exceptions to the general dismissal by scholars of Douglass’s nonautobiographical writings. Philip Foner’s pioneering compilation of Douglass’s works includes a significant number of his editorials. A few modern scholars such as David  W. Blight, Waldo Martin, and Peter Myers146 have extensively used Foner’s edition, treating those editorials as important evidence of Douglass’s evolving political thought. While Douglass’s achievements as editor of four African American periodicals have gradually achieved overdue recognition in recent specialized scholarship, his other nonautobiographical writings remain largely ignored. Partial fault for this omission might lie with Douglass himself—his last autobiography, Life and Times, reproduces numerous speeches but none of his writings. The same preference can be seen in the two biographies of Douglass written with their subject’s cooperation, by James Gregory and Frederic May Holland. Two other early biographers, Booker T. Washington and Charles W. Chesnutt, also focus almost exclusively on Douglass’s speeches and autobiographies as sources for his thinking.147 For a variety of reasons, therefore, most modern scholarship continues to focus on Douglass as a speaker and an autobiographer—a trend reinforced by this scholarly edition’s own plan of work, which has placed

Y7870-Douglass.indb xlii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xliii

his journalistic writings last in order of production. Even those few scholars who have used Douglass’s enormous body of editorials have largely ignored his journalistic writing in other periodicals and books. It is our hope that the publication of this final series of the Frederick Douglass Papers will provide ready access to the full range of Douglass’s journalism and other writing and will allow this large body of work to be judged alongside his speeches, correspondence, and autobiographies as evidence of the talents of this remarkable man. 1. Douglass’s role in the ownership and editorial direction of the New National Era is complicated. He was originally a contributing editor before taking over ownership in the summer of 1870; he turned the newspaper over to his sons in November 1872 but wrote occasional articles for it until the summer of 1874. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 5 vols. (New York, 1950–75), 4:55–61, 89. 2. One important exception worth noting is Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Carla L. Peterson, “‘We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident’: The Rhetoric of Frederick Douglass’s Journalism,” in Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, ed. Eric J. Sundquist (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 189–204. 3. FD to William Lloyd Garrison, 8 November 1842, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:1–5. 4. FD to James Miller McKim, 5 September 1845, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:27–32. See also Fishkin and Peterson, “We Hold These Truths,” 189. 5. FD to William Lloyd Garrison, 29 September 1845, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:56–59. These, along with some other letters that Douglass arranged to send to the editors of antislavery newspapers, have been collected and published as part of the Douglass Papers’ Correspondence series. Also see Fishkin and Peterson, “We Hold These Truths,” 196–97. 6. FD to William Lloyd Garrison, 1 September 1845, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:47–52. 7. FD to William Lloyd Garrison, 2 January 1847, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:190–94. 8. Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, D.C., 1948), 51. 9. As quoted in Robert S. Levine, The Lives of Frederick Douglass (Cambridge, Mass., 2016), 113. 10. John W. Blassingame, John R. McKivigan, and Peter P. Hinks, eds., The Frederick Douglass Papers, ser. 2: Autobiographical Writings, 3 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1999–2011), 2:226, 3:202. 11. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:224. 12. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:226–27. 13. Edmund Quincy, on the Garrisonians’ behalf, insisted on a $100 cap on annual compensation to Douglass for these contributions, which he resented. FD to Sydney Howard Gay, 8 August 1847, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:223–27; William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (1991; New York, 1995), 147; Patsy Brewington Perry, “Before the North Star: Frederick Douglass’ Early Journalistic Career,” Phylon, 35:96–107 (1974). 14. FD to Thomas Van Rensselaer, 18 May 1847, FD to Sydney H. Gay, 13 August, 1847, Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:210–13, 227–33; Pennsylvania Freeman, 2 September 1847; Frankie Hutton, The Early Black Press in America, 1827–1860 (Westport, Conn., 1993), 11, 141. 15. Meaghan M. Fritz and Frank E. Fee, Jr., “To Give the Gift of Freedom: Gift Books and the War on Slavery,” American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography, 23:60– 82 (2013); Perry, “Before the North Star,” 96–107. 16. The Liberty Bell (Boston, 1845), 166. See also FD to Maria Weston Chapman, 27 October 1844, Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:43. 17. Hutton, Early Black Press in America, 15–17.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xliii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xliv

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

18. ASB, 17 September, 22 October, 26 November 1847, 14 April 1848; Douglas A. Gamble, “Moral Suasion in the West: Garrisonian Abolitionism, 1831–1861” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1973), 340, 350–54; Mary G. McMillan, “Mr. Editor If You Please: Frederick Douglass in Rochester, 1847–1852” (honors thesis, Mount Holyoke College, 1985), 12. 19. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:244–553. 20. Howard Holman Bell, A Survey of the Negro Convention Movement, 1830–1861 (New York, 1969), 86–91, 94–98; Hutton, Early Black Press in America, 13–14. 21. FDP, 15 July 1853; Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, Held in Rochester, July 6th, 7th, and 8th, 1853 (Rochester, N.Y., 1853), 7–18; Howard Holman Bell, ed., Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830–1864 (New York, 1969), n.p.; Foner, Life and Writings, 2:254–68. 22. FD to Amy Post, 28 October 1847, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:266. 23. Reprinted in Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 80–81. 24. NS, 3 December 1847. 25. NASS, 27 January 1848; Lib., 28 January 1848. 26. As quoted in Levine, Lives, 114. 27. Benjamin Quarles, “The Breach between Douglass and Garrison,” JNH, 23:144–54 (April 1938); William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, “Boston Garrisonians and the Problem of Frederick Douglass,” Canadian Journal of History, 2:29–48 (September 1967); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison, A Biography (Boston, 1963). 28. NS, 3 December 1847. 29. NS, 7 January 1848. 30. FD to Jonathan D. Carr, 1 November 1847, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:266–68. Also see Frank E. Fee, Jr., “ ‘Intelligent Union of Black with White’: Frederick Douglass and the Rochester Press 1847–1848,” Journalism History, 31:32–45 (2005). 31. FD to Martin R. Delany, 12 January 1848. General Correspondence File, reel 1, frame 647, FD Papers, DLC. 32. Julia Griffiths and her sister Eliza later purchased this mortgage and allowed Douglass to repay it on more manageable terms. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:305; Paul Finkelman et al., eds., Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass, 3 vols. (New York, 2006), 1:353–55. 33. NS, 7 January 1848. 34. Robert Levine notes that all early biographers of Douglass incorrectly dated Delany’s departure date as June 1848, citing the shortness of that tenure as evidence of Delany’s minimal contribution to the North Star. Levine, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997), 20–21. 35. Ibid., 22, 30, 48–49, 57. 36. McMillan, “Mr. Editor If You Please,” 20. 37. NS, 10 November 1848, 23, 30 November, 7 December 1849. 38. FD to Julia Griffiths, 28 April 1848, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:302–03. 39. FD to Amy Post, 11 September 1849, FD to Isaac Post, 16 September 1849, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:397–99; Erwin Palmer, “A Partnership in the Abolition Movement,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin, 26:1–19 (Autumn–Winter 1971–72). 40. Julia Griffith’s sister Eliza married the North Star’s printer, John Dick, and the couple left Rochester in 1850 to pursue antislavery work in Canada. Life and Times, 205; EAAH, 1:353–55; Nancy A. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822–1872 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 116–18, 140. 41. For examples, see NS, 30 June 1848, 27 April, 6 July, 30 November 1849, 18 July 1850. 42. NS, 3 December 1847, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849; Fishkin and Peterson, “We Hold These Truths,” 196–97.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xliv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xlv

43. NS, 17 March, 7 July 1848; David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge, La., 1989), 28–29. 44. NS, 17 November 1848. Also see John R. McKivigan, “The Frederick Douglass–Gerrit Smith Friendship and Political Abolitionism in the 1850s,” in Sundquist, Frederick Douglass, 212–13. 45. NS, 21 April, 28 July, 11 August 1848. See also Hutton, Early Black Press in America, 69–70. 46. NS, 10 August 1849. 47. Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 59. 48. James McCune Smith to Gerrit Smith, 28 July 1848, quoted in Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass, 58. See also Philip S. Foner, Frederick Douglass: A Biography (New York, 1964), 94; Benjamin Quarles, “Frederick Douglass: Abolition’s Different Drummer,” in The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists, ed. Martin Duberman (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 130. 49. Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass, 58–59. 50. Henry Bibb and Mary Ann Shadd edited the Canadian newspapers A Voice of the Fugitive and the Provincial Freeman, respectively. William Howard Day’s Cleveland Aliened American and Samuel Ringgold Ward’s Syracuse Impartial Citizen were also briefly competitors of Douglass’s newspaper. Hutton, Early Black Press in America, 50–51, 62–64, 81–82. 51. FDP, 26 August 1853, 13 January 1854; Levine, Representative Identity, 70, 82–84, 97–98. 52. As a welcoming gift to Douglass for settling in New York, Smith deeded him a farm lot in Essex County of sufficient value to allow the African American editor to meet the state’s $250 property requirement for voting. Gerrit Smith to Douglass, 8 December 1847, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:276–77. 53. FD to Gerrit Smith, 30 March 1849, 21 January 1851; NS, 16 March, 25 May 1849, 5 April 1850; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:375–78, 438–54; L. Diane Barnes, Frederick Douglass: Reformer and Statesman (New York, 2013), 74–75; John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge, Mass., 2002) 166–67. 54. FD to Gerrit Smith, 30 March 1849, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:375–77. 55. FD to Gerrit Smith, 1 May 1851, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:441–45; McKivigan, “Frederick Douglass–Gerrit Smith Friendship,” 214–15. 56. FD to Gerrit Smith, 21 May 1851, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:447–48. 57. As quoted in Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 106; also see Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass, 38–39; Quarles, “Breach between Douglass and Garrison,” 150–54; Pease and Pease, “Boston Garrisonians and Frederick Douglass,” 39–46. 58. FDP, 24 July, 2 October 1851, 8 April 1852. 59. FD to Gerrit Smith, 14 January 1853, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 2:1–2. Robert Fanuzzi provides a perspective on the Douglass-Garrison feud as “a publicity war between two rivals in the newspaper trade.” Robert Fanuzzi, Abolition’s Public Sphere (Minneapolis, Minn., 2003), 209–14. 60. Frederick Douglass, The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition, eds. Robert S. Levine, John Stauffer, and John R. McKivigan, (New Haven, Conn, 2015), xi–xxxvi. 61. John R. McKivigan and Rebecca A. Pattillo, “Autographs for Freedom and Reaching a New Abolitionist Audience,” Journal of African American History, 102:35–51 (Winter 2017). 62. Douglass, Heroic Slave, 8–9. 63. Richard Yarborough, “Race, Violence, and Manhood: The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass’s ‘The Heroic Slave,’ ” in Sundquist, Frederick Douglass, 176–88. 64. McKivigan and Pattillo, “Autographs for Freedom,” 35–51; Douglass, Heroic Slave, xxxiii. 65. FD to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 16 June 1852, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:542–43. 66. Foner, Life and Writings, 5:473–505; Douglass, Heroic Slave, xxxiii–xxxv. 67. Julia Griffiths, ed., Autographs for Freedom, 2d ed. (New York, 1854), 251–55; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2:423–40. 68. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:227–28.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xlv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xlvi

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

69. Frank E. Fee, Jr., “To No One More Indebted: Frederick Douglass and Julia Griffiths, 1849– 63,” Journalism History, 37:12–26 (Spring 2011). 70. FDP, 1 April 1853, 24 March 1854. Also see Peter C. Myers, Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism (Lawrence, Kans., 2008), 179–80; Hutton, Early Black Press in America, 140–41. 71. FDP, 20 November 1851, 29 October 1852, 12 August, 11 November 1853, 28 April 1854. 72. Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 23 May 1856, also 12 April 1856, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 2:185– 86, 179–80. 73. FDP, 15 August, 12 September 1856; Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 50. 74. FDP, 25 September 1851, 9 September 1853, 9 June 1854; Leslie Friedman Goldstein, “Violence as an Instrument for Social Change: The Views of Frederick Douglass (1817–1895),” JNH, 61:62–66 (January 1976). 75. FDP, 27 April 1855, 27 June 1856; Stauffer, Black Hearts of Men, 171–73, 197–200. 76. McKivigan, “Frederick Douglass–Gerrit Smith Friendship,” 222–23; Leigh Fought, Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (New York, 2017), 178. 77. DM, 3:305 (August 1860); Penelope L. Bullock, The Afro-American Periodical Press, 1838– 1909 (Baton Rouge, La., 1981), 220–21. 78. Barnes, Douglass, 83–84. 79. FD to Maria G. Porter, 11 January 1860, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 2:291–94. 80. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 201–07; Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 96–97. 81. DM, 3:278 (June 1860). Also see DM, 3:306 (August 1860); Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 53. 82. DM, 3:278 (June 1860). 83. DM, 3:339–40 (October 1860), 3:353 (November 1860). 84. John R. McKivigan, “Frederick Douglass and the Abolitionist Response to the Election of 1860,” in The Election of 1860 Reconsidered, ed. A. James Fuller (Kent, Ohio, 2013), 154–60; McKivigan, “Frederick Douglass–Gerrit Smith Friendship,” 223–24. 85. DM, 3:451 (May 1861), 4:166 (October 1861); Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 82–84, 86. 86. DM, 4:529–30 (October 1861); 4:547–48 (November 1861); 5:705–06 (September 1862), 5:817 (April 1863); Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 118. 87. John Stauffer, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (New York, 2008), 243–45; DM, 5:721 (October 1862). 88. New York Independent, 27 June 1861. Another text is in DM, 4:484 (July 1861). 89. Robert S. Levine, Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2008), 192–200; Hannah-Rose Murray, “A ‘Negro Hercules’: Frederick Douglass’ Celebrity in Britain,” Celebrity Studies, 7:264–79 (2015). 90. DM, 5:n.p. (August 1863). 91. Ibid. 92. C. W. Foster to FD, 13, 21 August 1863, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 834–35, 842–43L, FD Papers, DLC; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (New York, 1953), 208. 93. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:207. 94. John R. McKivigan, “ ‘A New Vocation before Me’: Frederick Douglass’s Post–Civil War Lyceum Career,” Howard Journal of Communications, 29:268–91 (July–September 2018). 95. Atlantic Monthly, 18:761–65 (December 1866). 96. NASS, 18 July 1868. 97. Patrick S. Washburn, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, Ill., 2006), 35; Foner, Frederick Douglass, 277–79; James H. Whyte, Uncivil War: Washington during the Reconstruction, 1865–1878 (New York, 1958), 252–53; Roland E. Wolseley, The Black Press, USA (Iowa City, Iowa, 1971), 34–35.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xlvi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

xlvii

98. Foner, Frederick Douglass, 279; Whyte, Uncivil War, 253; Wolseley, Black Press, 34–35; Washburn, African American Newspaper, 35. 99. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:312–13. 100. NNE, 8 September 1870. 101. Foner, Frederick Douglass, 281. 102. Fought, Women, 212–13, 216. 103. For example, see NNE, 6 June, 24 October, 7 November 1872. 104. NNE, 31 October 1872. 105. For example, see NNE, 20 October, 3 November 1870, 12 January, 25 July, 5 October 1871. 106. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:313. 107. NNE, 28 November 1872, 6 February, 1 May 1873, 19 March 1874. 108. Whyte, Uncivil War, 253–54; Wolseley, Black Press, 35; Washburn, African American Newspaper, 35. 109. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:313. 110. Circular reprinted in U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Report, 2 April 1880, U.S. Congress, 46th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report 440 (Serial 1895), Appendix, 44–45. 111. Walter Lynwood Fleming, The Freedmen’s Savings Bank: A Chapter in the Economic History of the Negro Race (1927; New York, 1970), 85–86; Carl R. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud: A History of the Freedman’s Savings Bank (Urbana, Ill., 1976), 183. 112. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:317. 113. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3. 114. NAR, 139:78–100 (July 1884), 142:437–41 (May 1886). In 1881, Douglass had written an article on racial prejudice for that magazine and would produce two more in 1891, as well as a final one in 1892, making the North American Review the periodical that published the largest amount of his postbellum journalism. NAR, 132:566–77 (June 1881), 153:337–45 (September 1891), 153:451–59 (November 1891); 155:17–24 (July 1892). 115. NAR, 142:437–40 (May 1886). 116. Cosmopolitan (August 1889). 117. Cosmopolitan, 7:365–82 (August 1889). 118. American Missionary Magazine, 19:171 (August 1875). 119. New York American Reformer, 2:388 (November 1883). 120. Ibid.; Harper’s Weekly, 27:782–83 (8 December 1883); New York Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper, 29 November 1890. 121. New York Independent, 21 April 1892. 122. NAR, 155:17–24 (July 1892); Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:575–607. Douglass similarly called for greater protection of African American rights in the Southern states in an 1892 article in the New York Herald. New York Herald, 21 August 1892. 123. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:336. 124. Washington National View, 24 May 1879; NAR, 153:337–45 (September 1891), 153:451–59 (November 1891). 125. FD to Robert Underwood Johnson, 5 January 1881, FD Manuscripts, Yale University. A duplicate copy is located in the Robert U. Johnson Manuscripts, Duke University Library. 126. See “My Escape from Slavery,” published herein. Robert Underwood Johnson to FD, 16 May 1881, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 459–60, FD Papers, DLC. 127. The only significant scholarly acknowledgment of this phase of Douglass’s journalism is found in Bullock, Afro-American Periodical Press, 66. 128. A.M.E. Church Review, 1:213–15 (October 1884), 9:114–26 (October 1892). 129. Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 23 December 1880; A.M.E Church Review, 3:136–43 (October 1886); Bullock, Afro-American Periodical Press, 96, 98.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xlvii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

xlviii

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES FOUR

130. Indianapolis Freeman, 24 November 1892. Douglass’s piece “Toussaint L’Ouverture” was posthumously published in the New York Colored American Magazine, but it had been written more than a decade earlier as a foreword for the never-published English-language edition of Victor Schoelcher’s biography of Toussaint. New York Colored American, 8:487–92 (6 July 1903). 131. FD’s introduction is reprinted herein. See Leonardo Buonomo, “Showing the World: Chicago’s Columbian Exposition in American Writing,” in Moving Bodies, Displaying Nations: National Cultures, Race and Gender in World Expositions, Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century, ed. Guido Abbattista (Trieste, Italy, 2014), 36–37; Elliott M. Rudwick and August Meier, “Black Man in the ‘White City’: Negroes and the Columbian Exposition, 1893,” Phylon, 26:354–61 (1965). 132. A fellow ally of the slain abolitionist John Brown, James Redpath, recruited Douglass to contribute to this collection, which was edited by Alan Thorndike Rice, editor of the North American Review. John R. McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and the Making of NineteenthCentury America (Ithaca, N.Y., 2008), 180–81. 133. John Wallace Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), ed. Charles E. Mann, 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 1:xv–xviii. 134. New York Independent, 23 April 1903. 135. Charles A. Sheffield, ed., The History of Florence, Massachusetts, Including a Complete Account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (Florence, Mass., 1895), 129–32. 136. I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors (1891; Salem, N.H., 1988), 448. 137. Miscellany File, reel 16, frames 445–47, FD Papers, DLC. 138. Ironically, Douglass had contributed a paragraph to a collection of endorsements compiled by James Russell Lowell and published by the Century magazine in support of an international copyright law. Douglass began his statement by admitting that he had “given very little thought to the subject.” James Russell Lowell, “Open Letters: International Copyright,” Century, 31:629 (February 1886). 139. Helen Pitts Douglass’s writings are mixed haphazardly with her husband’s in the Library of Congress collection, but the largest portion of them can be found in the Speech, Article, and Book File, reels 20–21, FD Papers, DLC. 140. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:485–90. 141. As quoted in John Ernest, Douglass: In His Own Time (Iowa City, Iowa, 2014), 131–32. 142. Penn, Afro-American Press, 68. 143. As quoted in David T. Z. Mindich, “Understanding Frederick Douglass: Toward a New Synthesis Approach to the Birth of Modern American Journalism,” Journalism History, 26:15 (Spring 2000). 144. Bullock, Afro-American Periodical Press, 49–55. More recently, Rachelle C. Prioleau has offered an insightful analysis of principal rhetorical themes found in Douglass’ Monthly. See Rachelle C. Prioleau, “Frederick Douglass: Abolitionist and Humanist,” Howard Journal of Communications, 14:177–90 (July 2003). 145. Hutton, Early Black Press in America, 32–33. For an even earlier survey, see Vishnu V. Oak, The Negro Newspaper (Westport, Conn., 1948). 146. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War; Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass; Myers, Frederick Douglass. 147. See Ernest, Douglass, 161–62.

Y7870-Douglass.indb xlviii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Introduction to Volume One

Douglass’s writing, beyond his autobiographies and his editorials for his four periodicals, has survived in many ways. The National Park Service, which became the curator of Douglass’s final home, Cedar Hill, in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., donated a substantial collection of Douglass materials to the Library of Congress in 1972. The thousands of items in this collection constitute the source used most often for the first three series of the Frederick Douglass Papers. In this volume, which launches the fourth series, the Library of Congress’s Frederick Douglass Collection has supplied us with manuscript or printed copies of sixteen of our sixty-seven items. Six other documents came from other historical archives. The remaining writings were originally published in periodicals and books from 1845 to 1903, eight years after his death. The periodicals that published Douglass most frequently were the North American Review and the New York Independent, with six and four articles respectively. Seven of Douglass’s essays, all written after the Civil War, were printed in black-edited periodicals or newspapers, four of them appearing in magazines published by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Most of the documents reproduced in this volume were written by Douglass for publication. Eleven appear not to have been written for publication: seven poems, two guest book transcriptions, and two travel diaries. One additional item, a book review, seems to have been written for publication, but no printed copy of it has been located by the Douglass Papers staff. These written documents appeared unevenly across Douglass’s long public life. Six were composed in the 1840s, three in the 1850s, seven in the 1860s, seven in the 1870s, eighteen in the 1880s, and twenty-one in the 1890s. Two documents, an undated newspaper clipping on the subject of the vice presidency and an essay on Toussaint L’Ouverture, cannot be dated precisely but were certainly composed in the 1880s or 1890s. As demonstrated by the documents reproduced in this volume, the subject matter of Douglass’s writing evolved in discernible patterns over his five decades of public life. His antebellum writing almost exclusively xlix

Y7870-Douglass.indb xlix

9/1/21 4:16 PM

l

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME ONE

advanced arguments for the abolition of slavery—even his 1853 novella, The Heroic Slave, seems primarily a piece of antislavery advocacy. His coauthored public address at the July 1853 Colored National Convention promoted the cause of African American civil rights as well as that of abolition. Only Douglass’s surviving short poetry and his inscriptions in two guest books, all manuscripts not intended for publication, depart from those related topics to deal with religious or personal issues. The Civil War and the Reconstruction era, which immediately followed, marked a significant turning point in Douglass’s writing. With emancipation achieved by passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, Douglass’s pen now focused on rallying public support for winning greater rights and opportunities for the freed people. Closely related to that goal were articles boosting the Republican party, which Douglass viewed as the best political friend of African Americans. In his role as president of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Douglass wrote public letters and circulars to maintain depositors’ confidence in that institution. The only manuscript document that Douglass wrote during this era—his diary while traveling through the Dominican Republic as assistant secretary to an American diplomatic commission—shows him conscientiously at work in gathering information about that nation. In the final two decades of his life, after the disappointing conclusion of Reconstruction and as the nation’s racial climate worsened, Douglass continued to generate a steady stream of writing on politics and civil rights. He seems to have responded readily to requests from editors of both leading national journals and smaller African American periodicals for his opinions on such matters. As he aged, more of Douglass’s journalistic pieces had an autobiographical character; some were designed to defend his reputation from criticism, and others to describe his past accomplishments. Douglass also produced articles on slavery, abolitionism, and historical topics with which he was familiar, as well as biographical sketches of earlier associates. The large body of journalism produced by Douglass in those decades is supplemented here by the travel diary of his tour of western Europe and Egypt with his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass. In editing these writings of such varied character and content, the project encountered a number of problems. Published articles or book chapters proved the easiest to handle. Even when a manuscript pre-text was located, the project selected the printed version as our final text. In a few cases, such as Douglass’s entry on American slavery for the Encyclo-

Y7870-Douglass.indb l

9/1/21 4:16 PM

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME ONE

li

paedia Britannica, considerable searching was required to determine the correct date of publication. When our efforts failed to locate information on a publication date, we supplied an estimated one based on our analysis of the document’s contents. The novella The Heroic Slave, published by Douglass on more than one occasion, presented some unique textual problems that required the inclusion of a special appendix with an apparatus to explain our choice of copy-text and the means by which we determined a definitive critical text. Our decision to include a number of unpublished writings by Douglass generated additional problems. Transcription procedures used by the project in our Correspondence series were adapted for these works. Dates of composition were frequently missing, and so estimates had to be supplied. We worked carefully with archivists at a number of repositories to verify, and in one case refute, the provenance of short inscriptions and poems attributed to Douglass. One of Douglass’s two travel diaries had serious preservation problems; thus, a site visit was necessary in order to inspect that document and verify its text. As in all of our project’s volumes, the documents reproduced here demanded comprehensive annotation of Douglass’s many references—some familiar, some obscure, and many requiring considerable explanation for modern readers. The historical notes, supported by primary sources as well as a host of secondary sources, afford unprecedented access to the context of the nineteenth-century America in which and about which Douglass wrote. It is our hope that the first volume of the Douglass Papers edition of its Journalism and Other Writings series might enable and motivate new generations of scholars to further study of this singular epoch, to which Frederick Douglass made such an unparalleled contribution.

Y7870-Douglass.indb li

9/1/21 4:16 PM

This page intentionally left blank

Editorial Method Jeffery A. Duvall This is the first volume in the Douglass Papers’ fourth and final series, Journalism and Other Writings, which is designed to introduce the reader to the broadest range of Douglass’s efforts as an author. Consisting of works that appeared in publications other than his own newspapers, as well as a number of unpublished items, Volume 1 brings together all such known material in a single volume for the first time. Volume 2 will provide an overview of the thousands of editorials, through a small sampling of the best of them, that Douglass published in his own newspapers (the North Star, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, Douglass’ Monthly, and the New National Era) between 1847 and 1872. The present volume begins with one of the earliest extant examples of Douglass’s literary efforts, the poem “I Was Born a Slave,” which was written c. 1842, and concludes with several pieces that were published after Douglass’s death in February 1895. The remaining sixty-plus items cover a range of topics written for a variety of audiences, including two unpublished travel diaries, his only substantive work of fiction (the novella The Heroic Slave), a scholarly essay on slavery in the United States, and a short think piece calling for the abolition of the office of vice president of the United States. Selection of Copy-Text Three types of documents served as copy-text for the items appearing in this series: printed material appearing in contemporary publications, including Douglass’s own newspapers; autographs, that is, documents written wholly in the handwriting of the person writing it; and documents that were written, either wholly or partially, through the use of typing machines. Of the copy-texts of the sixty-seven items published in this volume, seven (three poems, two guest book inscriptions, and the two travel diaries) were never intended for publication and exist solely in autograph form. The Douglass Papers’ staff was unable to locate a print copy of an eighth item, an apparently unpublished book review of I. Garland Penn’s The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors, for which a typescript, with handwritten corrections, served as copy-text. Printed material provided liii

Y7870-Douglass.indb liii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

liv

EDITORIAL METHOD

the copy-texts of the remaining items in this volume, as well as all the editorials that will appear in the second volume of this series. Autographs served as copy-text when available for unpublished documents. Where no holograph was available, a document appearing in the publication that first printed it served as copy-text. In some instances, however, a publication reprinted an item that first appeared in a different source, but no exemplars of the original printed item have survived. In such situations, the earliest surviving printing served as copy-text, and all known information about the initial publication appears in a note. Transcription of the Documents The essential principle guiding transcription was to record everything in word processing as it appears in the copy-text. The one significant exception is the copy-text for Douglass’s 1853 novella The Heroic Slave, for which the editors followed modern principles of critical editing in determining the copy-text. Our rationale for the emendations to this novella is found in “Textual Notes to The Heroic Slave” at the end of this volume. For copy-texts taken from newspapers, transcription included reproducing aspects of format such as font style (roman or italic) and font effect, such as superscript, small caps, and all caps. Any misspellings or other typographical errors were transcribed without correction, and any symbols were duplicated. Certain document copy-texts are excerpts from unlocated originals. For such cases, the transcript duplicates the symbols used in the copy-text to indicate the omitted portion. For example, if the omitted portion is marked by a series of asterisks in the original publication, then the present edition contains a series of asterisks at the same point in the document. Likewise, if the omitted portion is marked by an extended series of ellipsis points, a similar line of ellipsis points marks the omitted portion of the document in the transcript. Missing text in the body of a document resulting from damage to the original (or to a sole surviving copy of a first printing) is indicated in square brackets by the words [missing text]. For autographs and typewritten documents, the central principle was to record everything the author wrote in composing, correcting, or revising the text. Any authorial alterations, such as insertions and cancellations, were recorded. The symbols used to indicate authorial revisions were angle brackets () to indicate insertions, and struck-through type (canceled) to indicate cancellations. Spelling was preserved, and capitalization, punctuation, and abbreviation retained, exactly as found in the

Y7870-Douglass.indb liv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

EDITORIAL METHOD

lv

autographs. Superscription was duplicated for both letter characters and numerals. Following standard typographical conventions, words underlined once in the autographs have been italicized in the transcript, those underlined twice have been represented in small caps, and words underlined three times appear as all caps. Illegible words or passages were recorded with the bracketed term [illegible]. Emendation and Standardization of Autographs and Typewritten Documents A. Silent emendations. No emendations to the transcript, as reproduced from the copy-text, have been made without indicating such by square brackets [ ], with the following exceptions. 1. Superscripts. Superscripts, suffixes in abbreviated words (Fredk), and ordinal numbers (18th), have been brought down to the line. 2. Interlineations. Inserted or marginal text has been properly placed in the running text, the angle brackets have been removed, and the interlineated text has been brought down to the line. 3. Cancellations. Superseded words and phrases struck out by the writer are recorded in the transcription, but are generally omitted from the present edition without editorial comment. In some instances, however, the canceled word or phrase has been deemed important, and the deleted material has been restored to the text, indicated by struck-through type and explained in an annotation if necessary. B. Overt Emendations. The following methods were used in overtly emending the transcript as reproduced from the copy-text. All emendations to the letter texts are recorded, but purely physical characteristics, such as line spacing and paragraph indentation, have been silently regularized. 1. Spelling. Spelling has been preserved as it appears in the copy-text. Misspelled words have not been marked by an editorial [sic]. If the sense of a word has been obscured by misspelling, the word has been spelled correctly, with any changes indicated by square brackets. 2. Abbreviations. Abbreviations have been retained as they appear in the copy-text, but those that are confusing or not easily recognizable are expanded in square brackets. For example, the word “Dolls” has been expanded to “Doll[ar]s” to avoid any confusion.

Y7870-Douglass.indb lv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lvi

EDITORIAL METHOD

3. Punctuation. Punctuation in the copy-text is preserved, with the following exceptions. In cases where independent clauses in a paragraph are not separated by punctuation or joined by a coordinating conjunction, terminal punctuation is inserted in brackets after the first independent clause, and the first word of the following sentence is capitalized, if not already so, and marked by square brackets. Missing quotation marks, such as a single or double closing quote, have been supplied in the appropriate matching style and are indicated by square brackets. 4. Slips of the pen. Slips of the pen, such as recording the same word twice, are uncorrected and not marked by [sic]. 5. Capitalization. The transcript preserves the capitalization found in the correspondence, except that the first word of a sentence, when not capitalized, has been capitalized and indicated by square brackets. 6. Typesetting errors. Three general classes of errors committed by typesetters in printing a document have been corrected. First, words that are misspelled have been corrected, as indicated by square brackets, giving the author the presumption of having spelled the word correctly. Second, when a typographical error renders a passage confusing or misleading, the error has been corrected, as indicated by square brackets. For example, when a document states that a mob “intimated” a speaker, the word has been corrected to “intim[id]ated,” with the changes indicated by square brackets. Third, words not separated by a space have been separated, with the change being indicated by an empty square bracket pair between the words. For instance the phrase “wasalso” has been changed to “was[ ]also” in order to avoid confusion. Textual Verification After initial transcription and before editing, members of the Frederick Douglass Papers Project ensured that the transcribed documents and editorials matched as closely as possible the copy-text as reproduced by photocopy from microfilm or the original holograph. First, the transcribers proofread against the photocopy of the documents or editorials they transcribed, correcting their own typing errors. In the second step, a member of the editorial staff read the photocopy of the copy-text aloud to another member of the staff, who verified the accuracy of the transcription. Next

Y7870-Douglass.indb lvi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

EDITORIAL METHOD

lvii

a member of the staff made any necessary corrections to the transcription to ensure its accuracy, and another member of the staff verified the accuracy of those corrections. Arrangement of Documents and Editorials Documents and editorials are arranged chronologically in both volumes, based on their dates: date of publication if published, approximate date of composition if unpublished. Undated items have been given approximate dates based on context and internal references. When an item includes or has been assigned a month only, it appears at the end of the entries for that month within the given year. Editorial Headings, Head Notes, and Provenance Notes The provenance of each document is indicated in the editorial source note for each item, which precedes each introductory head note. The first sentence of each source note indicates the symbols used to describe the copytext of each item, followed by a colon and the location of copy-text for the document. The second sentence of the source note indicates reprints, if any, of the document in the same form as the copy-text. Each successive sentence in a source note indicates a different form of the document and where that document is located. Further publication information recorded in the source notes has been limited to documents appearing in scholarly compilations, latter-day copies located in collections of archival material, and documents republished (in part or in whole) in Douglass’s own writings. Following the source note, a head note, providing both historical context and a publication history of the item, introduces the documents in this volume. Annotations Numbered footnotes follow the body of each document and editorial. They clarify aspects of the item without attempting to be exhaustive. Generally limited to 250 words, notes most often contain biographical information, including full names as well as birth and death dates parenthetically following the name, whenever possible. Such notes generally include the person’s education and vocation, geographic attachment, and relationship

Y7870-Douglass.indb lvii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lviii

EDITORIAL METHOD

to Douglass. Place-names, including those of towns, geographic features, buildings, and monuments, appear frequently in the annotations. The notes contain explanations of events mentioned in the documents and editorials, as well as elucidations of quotations, literary or historical allusions, and other miscellaneous information such as concepts, publications, and foreign words or phrases. Annotations are not cross-referenced.

Y7870-Douglass.indb lviii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Timeline of Douglass’s Life

1818 February

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born sometime in February at Holme Hill Farm plantation at Tuckahoe, near the town of Easton, Talbot County, on the eastern shore of Maryland. He was rumored to be the son of Captain Aaron Anthony, the master of his mother, Harriet Bailey. 1824

August

Sent to live in the home of his master, Aaron Anthony, overseer of the Wye Plantation, seat of the powerful Lloyd family. 1826

March

Sent to the Fells Point district of Baltimore to work for Hugh Auld, a ship’s carpenter and the brother-in-law of Aaron Anthony’s daughter, Lucretia Auld. 1827

November

Became the property of Thomas Auld, son-in-law of Aaron Anthony, after Anthony’s death. Remains in the household of Hugh and Sophia Auld, where he was taught rudimentary reading skills by Sophia, who ceased the lessons at her husband’s insistence. 1829–30 Worked for Auld & Harrison, a shipbuilding partnership established by Hugh Auld; practices reading and writing in secret.

lix

Y7870-Douglass.indb lix

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lx

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

1831

December

Bought a used copy of Caleb Bingham’s compilation of speeches The Columbian Orator, which he memorized to hone his reading and speaking skills. Learned of the abolitionist movement after reading newspaper articles about John Quincy Adam’s antislavery petitions in the House of Representatives. 1833

March 6 December

Sent to St. Michaels to work for Thomas Auld. William Lloyd Garrison founded the American AntiSlavery Society in Philadelphia. 1834

January August

Began year as a rented field hand on a farm under the watch of Edward Covey, known as the “slave-breaker.” Repelled a physical attack by Covey and was never whipped or beaten again. 1836

2 April Mid-April

Led a failed escape attempt from the farm of William Freeland. Returned to work for Hugh Auld in Baltimore, who had him trained in the trade of ship caulking. 1837 Joined the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, a free black debating club, and there met Anna Murray, who encouraged him to save money and plan an escape. 1838

Spring 3–4 September

Y7870-Douglass.indb lx

Became engaged to Anna Murray. Escaped from Maryland into Massachusetts by borrowing papers from a free black sailor and taking a train from Baltimore to New York City.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

15 September 18 September

lxi

Married Anna Murray in New York City. Moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he changed his name to Douglass. 1839

April

December

Subscribed to the Liberator, an abolitionist weekly edited by William Lloyd Garrison. Heard Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and other abolitionist leaders speak in New Bedford. Obtained a license from the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to preach. Maria Weston Chapman and the Boston Female AntiSlavery Society published the first volume of The Liberty Bell, an annual gift book sold to raise funds for the abolitionist movement. 1841

10–12 August

Fall

Spoke on his experience as a slave at a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society convention in Nantucket, Massachusetts, after which he was invited to become a paid itinerant lecturer. Moved his family to Lynn, Massachusetts, where he bought a house. 1842

January

Hired as a permanent lecturer by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. 1843

30 May–1 June 15–19 August

Fall

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxi

Met the Hutchinson family singers at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention held in Boston. Successfully opposed a resolution by Henry Highland Garnet at the National Convention of Colored Citizens, in Buffalo, New York, urging slaves to rebel. Joined a group of Garrisonian abolitionists on a speaking tour of the Midwest dubbed the “One Hundred Conventions.”

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lxii

16 September

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

Beaten by a mob during an outdoor antislavery meeting in Pendleton, Indiana. 1844

April

May

Winter

Visited the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, in Florence, Massachusetts, for the first time, and met Sojourner Truth. Visited a second time the following April. Joined the majority at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in endorsing Garrison’s condemnation of the Constitution as proslavery. Began work on his autobiography. 1845

28 May

16 August

28 August

25 October

Published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, which had sold 4,500 copies by September. Sailed from Boston to avoid recapture, leaving his family behind, and began a twenty-one-month tour of Great Britain and Ireland. Arrived in Liverpool, England, and traveled from there to Ireland, where he began a three-month lecture tour. Sold by Thomas Auld to his brother Hugh for $100. 1846

12 December

25 December

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxii

Toured England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland with Garrison. British abolitionist admirers negotiated the purchase and manumission of Douglass from Hugh Auld for the sum of just over $700. Visited Newcastle-upon-Tyne with Anna and Ellen Richardson, who introduced him to Julia Griffiths, a British woman active in the antislavery cause.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

lxiii

1847 4 April 20 April Late September

November

3 December

Left Liverpool to return to the United States. Arrived in Boston and reunited with his family in Lynn. Used just over $2,000 raised by British and Irish friends to purchase a printing press. Began his friendship with Gerrit Smith, a wealthy land speculator living near Peterboro, New York, who had helped found the Liberty party in 1840. Arrived in Rochester, New York, with the intent of establishing a newspaper. Visited John Brown for the first time, at Brown’s home in Springfield, Massachusetts. Published the first issue of his weekly newspaper, the North Star, in partnership with Martin R. Delany. 1848

March Early April

14–15 June

19–20 July 29 August

The American Missionary Association launched a campaign to raise funds to purchase Bibles for slaves. Purchased 4 Alexander Street, his first home in Rochester, which he later mortgaged to keep the North Star financially viable. Attended his first official political gathering, the National Liberty party convention in Buffalo, New York, convened by Gerrit Smith. Attended the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention, where he signed the Declaration of Sentiments. Attended the convention in Buffalo, New York, that resulted in the formation of the Free Soil party. 1849

May

29 June

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxiii

The British reformer Julia Griffiths joined the staff of Douglass’s newspaper as its unofficial business manager. Became the sole editor of the North Star when Delany ended his involvement with the paper.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lxiv

Fall

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

Local Garrisonians questioned the North Star’s solvency under Douglass’s management. 1850

8 September 23–24 October

As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress passed a new Fugitive Slave Act. Attended the first national Women’s Rights Convention, held in Worcester, Massachusetts. 1851

April

9 May 26 June

Agreed to merge the North Star with Gerrit Smith’s struggling Liberty Party Paper, accepting Smith’s financial support and his antislavery interpretation of the Constitution. Broke with Garrison openly over the issue of political action to end slavery, which Garrison opposed. Published the first edition of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, a pro–Liberty party newspaper, with the motto “All Rights for All!” 1852

Summer

5 July

11 August

October

14 October

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxiv

Moved his family to a hilltop farm overlooking downtown Rochester, located two miles from the city’s center, on the St. Paul Road. Delivered the speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” at a meeting of the Rochester Ladies AntiSlavery Society. Elected secretary of the second Free Soil party convention, held at the Masonic Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Campaigned in central New York in support of Gerrit Smith’s successful independent candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives. Addressed the Free Democratic party convention, the successor to the Free Soil party, in Pittsburgh and endorsed John P. Hale, its presidential nominee, in Frederick Douglass’ Paper.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

lxv

1853 January

6–8 July

Winter

Published his novella, The Heroic Slave, in the gift book Autographs for Freedom, a collection of antislavery writings edited by Julia Griffiths and sold to raise funds for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Organized and hosted the Colored National Convention in Rochester, New York, where he was criticized by several black leaders for his industrial school proposal on the grounds that it would promote segregation. Garrison’s Liberator alluded to Julia Griffiths having caused “much unhappiness” in the Douglass household; Douglass responded heatedly. 1854

7 August

Political mentor and benefactor Gerrit Smith resigned his seat in the House of Representatives out of frustration with the legislative process. 1855

Mid-June 26–28 June August

Julia Griffiths departed Rochester to return to Great Britain. Helped found the Radical Abolitionist party at a Syracuse, New York, convention. Second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, published. 1856

28–29 May

July 15 August

7 December

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxv

At the urging of Gerrit Smith, attended the Radical Abolitionist party’s nominating convention in Syracuse, New York. Met the German immigrant journalist Ottilie Assing for the first time. Endorsed the Republican party’s presidential ticket as the most electable antislavery ticket, in an editorial in Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Visited by John Brown in Rochester.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lxvi

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

1857 14 May

Addressed anniversary meeting of the American Abolition Society in New York City, condemning the recent Dred Scott Supreme Court ruling. 1858

Late January June 7 October

John Brown resided at Douglass’s Rochester home for three weeks, planning his raid on Harpers Ferry. Launched new periodical, Douglass’ Monthly, aimed largely at British readers. Presided over an anti-capital-punishment rally in Rochester to protest the execution of Ira Stout, a convicted murderer. 1859

February

19–21 August

16–18 October 19–21 October

12 November

Delivered the lecture “Self-Made Man” for the first of over fifty times during his career while on a speaking tour of Illinois and Wisconsin. Met with John Brown at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, but chose not to join the plot to attack the Harpers Ferry Arsenal because he believed the plan would ultimately fail. John Brown attempted to start an armed slave revolt by seizing the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Warned that he might be placed under arrest, following the failure of the Harpers Ferry raid, Douglass fled from Philadelphia to Rochester and finally to Canada. Sailed from Quebec to Great Britain for greater safety because of his prior close connections with John Brown. 1860

13 March Mid-April

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxvi

Douglass’s youngest daughter, Annie, died at the age of eleven. Returned to the United States, arriving in Portland, Maine.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

August 19 September

c. 2 October

lxvii

Due to financial difficulties, forced to cease publication of his weekly, Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Having endorsed the Radical Abolitionist Gerrit Smith for president the preceding month, attended a convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, organized by Stephen S. Foster, in an unsuccessful bid to win their backing for Smith. Campaigned extensively in western New York in support of a state equal-suffrage referendum. 1861

February–March April

12–14 April

May–June

The Confederacy sent its first diplomatic mission to Europe. Denounced secession but called on the Lincoln administration to make the goal of war emancipation as well as reunion. Contemplated visiting Haiti to investigate conditions for prospective African American emigrants. The Civil War officially began with the attack on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, by Confederate forces. Lectured on the progress of the war on Sunday afternoons in Rochester’s Spring Street A.M.E. Church; critical of Lincoln for not taking stronger antislavery action. 1862

5 February

Summer

31 December

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxvii

Lectured in a series sponsored by the Emancipation League of Boston, calling on the federal government to enlist black soldiers as a means of facilitating a Union victory. U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams warned Washington, D.C., that the British government was seriously considering formally recognizing the Confederate States of America. Attended a celebration in Boston for the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lxviii

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

1863 February–July 1 August

10 August Mid-August

Traveled extensively in the North to recruit blacks for Union army regiments being raised by Massachusetts. Resigned as army recruiter after protesting the lack of equal pay and promotion opportunities given black Union soldiers. Had interviews with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. Returned to Rochester and issued the valedictory issue of Douglass’ Monthly in anticipation of receiving a military commission, which never arrived. 1864

22 May 19 August

4–6 October

Signed a public call for a convention to replace Lincoln as the Republican presidential candidate in 1864. Met with President Lincoln in the Executive Mansion (White House), Washington, D.C., to discuss means of recruiting more slaves to run away from masters and enlist in the Union army. Presided over the National Convention of Colored Men at Syracuse, New York, and gave a lukewarm endorsement to Lincoln’s reelection. 1865

4 March 9 April

14 April Fall

6 December

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxviii

Attended Lincoln’s second inauguration in Washington, D.C. General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War. President Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth. Intended to showcase the accomplishments of African American men and women, Lydia Maria Child’s The Freedman’s Book was published as a primer for freed slaves, of all ages, attending government-sponsored schools in the South. Thirteenth Amendment ratified.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

29 December

lxix

William Lloyd Garrison published the final issue of the Liberator. 1866

7 February

Part of a black delegation that had a contentious interview with President Andrew Johnson at the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C. 20–21 November Spoke at a meeting of the American Equal Rights Association in Albany, New York. 1867 7 March

Congress authorized creation of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company (the Freedman’s Savings Bank) to meet the financial needs of the emancipated slaves. 1868

9 July 18 July 27 August

Fourteenth Amendment ratified. U.S. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase died. Publicly endorsed the Republican ticket of Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax. 1869

3 August

Delivered speech critical of race relations in the United States, “We Are Not Yet Quite Free,” at a West Indian  Emancipation Day celebration in Medina, New York. 1870

3 February 31 May 1 July

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxix

Fifteenth Amendment ratified. The First Force Act enacted to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment. Moved to the District of Columbia and began editing the New National Era to advance black civil rights as well as other reforms.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lxx

September December

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

Purchased a half interest in the New National Era. Became sole owner and publisher of the New National Era. 1871

17 January

26 March 20 April

Appointed assistant secretary to the Santo Domingo Commission; left New York City for the Dominican Republic. Members of the Santo Domingo Commission, including Douglass, arrived back in Washington, D.C. The Third Force Act, known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, passed in Congress. It authorized President Grant to declare martial law and use military force to suppress the Klan. 1872

13 April

2 June 6 June

28 November

Addressed the National Convention of the Colored People of the United States, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, on the topic “The Republican Party Must Be Maintained in Power”; endorsed Grant’s reelection in the New National Era. Douglass’s home on South Avenue in Rochester, New York, burned down, most likely from arson. Nominated by Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president, to run as vice president on the Equal Rights party presidential ticket. Nomination was neither acknowledged nor accepted. Turned over editorship of the New National Era to his sons. 1873

13 April

Massacre of African Americans in Colfax, Louisiana. 1874

Mid-March

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxx

Major General Oliver Otis Howard faced courtmartial, having been charged with misappropriation

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

Late March 29 June

22 October

lxxi

of funds intended for black soldiers under his command during the Civil War. Appointed president of the Freedman’s Bank; campaigned to keep public trust in the institution. Voted, along with the bank’s board of trustees, to close the Freedman’s Savings Bank, believing it no longer solvent. Final edition of the New National Era published. 1877

Spring

17 June

Appointed U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia by President Rutherford B. Hayes, becoming the first African American to receive a federal appointment requiring Senate approval. Visited his former master, Thomas Auld, on his deathbed in St. Michaels, Maryland. 1878 Moved to a fifteen-acre estate, which he and Anna named Cedar Hill, in the Anacostia neighborhood of the District of Columbia. 1879

January–March

The “Exoduster” movement began as thousands of African Americans from the former Confederate states moved into Kansas and other midwestern states in an effort to get away from the violence and lack of opportunity they faced in the South. 1881

May

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxi

Appointed recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia by President James A. Garfield. Published his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lxxii

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

1882 Spring

4 August

Hired Helen M. Pitts, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and former teacher of freed blacks in Virginia and Indiana, as a clerk. Anna Murray Douglass died. 1883

5 May

15 October

Joined other African American leaders in Washington, D.C., in calling for a National Convention of Colored Men to meet there in September. The location of the meeting would be changed to Louisville, Kentucky. Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875. John Marshall Harlan was the only justice to dissent. 1884

24 January

4 November

Married Helen M. Pitts, a younger white woman. Their interracial relationship generated public controversy as well as disapproval from many members of both families. Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, elected president of the United States. 1886

15 September

Sailed from New York City with second wife, Helen M. Pitts, aboard the City of Rome to England, France, Italy, Egypt, and Greece on an extended tour. 1887

8 March 11 August

Henry Ward Beecher died. Returned to the United States. 1888

19 June

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxii

Attended the National Republican Party Convention, meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

6 November

lxxiii

Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, defeated Grover Cleveland in the presidential election. 1889

July 14 November

Victor Schoelcher’s biography of Toussaint L’Ouverture published in France. Accepted appointment from President Harrison as U.S. minister resident and consul general to Haiti. Presented his diplomatic credentials to the government of Haiti. 1890

4 November

Democrats swept the midterm election and regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War. The Republicans also lost seats in the Senate. 1891

22 April

3 July

Interviewed by Irvine Garland Penn for his book The Afro-American Press and Its Editors. Haitian government denies the United States permission to lease the port of Môle-Saint-Nicolas as a refueling station. Returned to the United States, by way of New York City, on leave from Haitian post. Resigned in August. 1892

April June

October

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxiii

Endorsed renomination of Benjamin Harrison for president. Attended the Republican Convention, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as a nondelegate and called for the inclusion of an antilynching plank in the Republican party platform. Campaigned for the Republican ticket. Accepted appointment from the government of Haiti to serve as commissioner of the Haitian pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition, in Chicago.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

lxxiv

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

1893 29 April

Joined Ida B. Wells and other activists in protesting the lack of African American representation at the World’s Columbian Exposition. 1 May–30 October World’s Columbian Exposition. 1895 20 February

Died at his Cedar Hill home in Washington, D.C., after attending a women’s rights convention. 1903

1 December

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxiv

Helen Pitts Douglass died in Washington, D.C.

9/1/21 4:16 PM

The Hutchinson Family, c. 1847. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-DIG-pga-04503]. Jane “Jennie” Marsh Parker, c. 1885. Photo courtesy of Ellen L. Parker, greatgranddaughter of Jane Marsh Parker.

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxv

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Douglass on the deck of the U.S.S. Tennessee, 1871. Courtesy of the Monroe County Public Library, Key West, Fla. President Ulysses S. Grant, c. 1870–1880. The Brady-Handy Collection. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-BH826–28899].

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxvi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Major General Oliver O. Howard, c. 1860–1865. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-B813–3719A]. John Marshall Harlan. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-USZ62–40292].

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxvii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Frederick and Helen Pitts Douglass at Niagara Falls, 1884. Courtesy of the National Park Service, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Washington, D.C. FRDO-11001.

World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-USZ62–120452].

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxviii

9/1/21 4:16 PM

Ida B. Wells, c. 1893. Photograph by Sallie E. Garrity. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.2009.36.

Frederick Douglass, c. 1895. Photograph by C. M. Battey. Courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. 2009.37.1.

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxix

9/1/21 4:16 PM

This page intentionally left blank

THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS Series Four: Journalism and Other Writings

Volume 1

Y7870-Douglass.indb lxxxi

9/1/21 4:16 PM

This page intentionally left blank

I WAS BORN A SLAVE (c. 1842) Post Family Collection, Charles L. Blockson Afro American Collection, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.

In the fall of 1842, Frederick Douglass made his first visit to western New York State, where he would reside from 1847 to 1870. He returned there the following summer as part of the famous “One Hundred Conventions” lecturing campaign of the Garrisonian American Anti-Slavery Society. At some point on one of these early speaking tours, Douglass was befriended by the Post family of Rochester. A short signed poem in Douglass’s handwriting was located among other Post family items by the Africana artifact collector Charles L. Blockson. Although not dated, the poem is presumed by the project to have been written for some form of autographed guestbook during one of Douglass’s first encounters with this Quaker abolitionist family, with whose members he would remain friendly for the rest of his life. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 116–17, 119–20, 140, 143, 184, 230–32. I was born a slave,1 And had to obey a masters command, And finding no arm to save, In all this christian land, So I resolved to run away, And thus get rid of slavery, FREDERICK DOUGLASS 1. Douglass was born a slave of the plantation overseer Aaron Anthony in early 1818 at Holme Hill Farm, Talbot County, Maryland. After Anthony’s death in 1826, Douglass became the property of Thomas Auld, Anthony’s son-in-law, and was later transferred to Auld’s brother Hugh, a Baltimore shipwright. Douglass successfully fled slavery on 3 September 1838 while under his charge. Dickson Preston, Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years (Baltimore, 1985), 22–34, 84–85, 143, 173–75.

1

Y7870-Douglass.indb 1

9/1/21 4:16 PM

2

NIAGARA

NIAGARA (1843) “Anti-Slavery Album of Contributions from Friends of Freedom,” Benjamin Jones Papers, DLC.

In the fall of 1843, Douglass joined a group of Garrisonian abolitionists on a speaking tour, dubbed the “One Hundred Conventions,” throughout New York and the Midwest. This was the same tour during which Douglass was assaulted and nearly killed by an antiabolition mob in Pendleton, Indiana, on 16 September 1843. Douglass spent several days recovering at a nearby Quaker home before continuing eastward into Ohio. It is likely that sometime late in the fall of 1843, he came into contact with Benjamin S. Jones, the recording secretary of the Ohio American AntiSlavery Society—the state affiliate of William Lloyd Garrison’s national abolition organization. Jones maintained a bound volume of signed poems and inscriptions from abolitionists traveling through Ohio, including items from such notables as Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles L. Remond, Angelina Grimké Weld, and John Greenleaf Whittier. It was probably while speaking in Jones’s hometown of New Lisbon that Douglass wrote the following short inscription. In it, he describes his impressions of Niagara Falls, which he had seen for the first time earlier on the One Hundred Conventions tour. Jones’s book, bearing the title “An Anti-Slavery Album of Contributions From Friends of Freedom,” was presented to the Library of Congress by his daughter in 1935. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 3:179–80; Sylvia Lyons Render, “Freedom,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 31:161–65 (July 1974). Niagara.1 I went to this wonderful place with the most lofty expec[ta]tions. I had heard—read—thought and felt much in regard to it. I had frequaintly gazed with extreme delight upon its miniture I longed to go behold the original, In my imagination, I had often—seen its broad—blue waters rushing on amidst the dim,—dark gloom of its own creation.—toward the awful cataract.—threatening total to any power interposing a barrier to its onward progress. Its—inspirations of buiaty—grandure—

Y7870-Douglass.indb 2

9/1/21 4:16 PM

GOD BE THANKED

3

wonder—and terror, (long before I saw it) danced sportively in my soul, I saw its majestic spray flying wildly into the air,—its buiatiful rainbow and heard its awful thunders. As I approached—it I felt somewhat as I did at the approaching hour, when for the first time I was to stand on free soil. and breath free air. When I came into its awful presence the power of discription failed me, an irrisistible power closed my lips Completely. Charmed I stood with eyes fixed, all, all absorbed.—scarcly concious of my own existence, I felt as I never felt before. The heavy trees all around me quivered the ground trembled,—the—mighty rocks shook!—as its awful roar gave them its terrible mandate. My Courage quailed. In unison with tree—rock, hill and dale, I trembled totally subdued I stood in solemn reverance. The awful God,—was there! FREDK DOUGLASS FEB 2D 1843 1. The falls lie along the Niagara River, which serves as a boundary between the United States and Canada, and are formed as water from Lake Erie drops approximately 165 feet into Lake Ontario. “Niagara Falls” is the name collectively given to three adjacent cataracts. Douglass referred to the power and beauty of Niagara Falls frequently in his speeches over the years. In August 1884, Douglass and his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, visited the falls on their honeymoon. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 322; Leon E. Seltzer, ed., The Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World (1952; New York, 1970), 1319.

GOD BE THANKED! (1845) “Susan Wright Clark Notebook, 1845–1847,” Jonas Gilman Clark Papers, Box A-10–9, Clark University Archives.

Jonas Gilman Clark and his wife, Susan Wright Clark, were active Massachusetts abolitionists in the 1840s. Jonas was financially successful in a number of enterprises, including carriage making, tinware manufacturing, and hardware retailing. He married Susan Wright in 1836, and both became active supporters of Garrisonian abolitionism in the Worcester area. Susan kept a ledger from 1845 to 1847 in which she collected poems or short inscriptions by abolitionists and other reformers she encountered. Among them were Adin Ballou, founder of the Hopedale utopian community, and the black abolitionists William Wells Brown and Frederick Douglass. Douglass visited the Clarks’ hometown of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 3

9/1/21 4:16 PM

GOD BE THANKED

3

wonder—and terror, (long before I saw it) danced sportively in my soul, I saw its majestic spray flying wildly into the air,—its buiatiful rainbow and heard its awful thunders. As I approached—it I felt somewhat as I did at the approaching hour, when for the first time I was to stand on free soil. and breath free air. When I came into its awful presence the power of discription failed me, an irrisistible power closed my lips Completely. Charmed I stood with eyes fixed, all, all absorbed.—scarcly concious of my own existence, I felt as I never felt before. The heavy trees all around me quivered the ground trembled,—the—mighty rocks shook!—as its awful roar gave them its terrible mandate. My Courage quailed. In unison with tree—rock, hill and dale, I trembled totally subdued I stood in solemn reverance. The awful God,—was there! FREDK DOUGLASS FEB 2D 1843 1. The falls lie along the Niagara River, which serves as a boundary between the United States and Canada, and are formed as water from Lake Erie drops approximately 165 feet into Lake Ontario. “Niagara Falls” is the name collectively given to three adjacent cataracts. Douglass referred to the power and beauty of Niagara Falls frequently in his speeches over the years. In August 1884, Douglass and his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, visited the falls on their honeymoon. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 322; Leon E. Seltzer, ed., The Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World (1952; New York, 1970), 1319.

GOD BE THANKED! (1845) “Susan Wright Clark Notebook, 1845–1847,” Jonas Gilman Clark Papers, Box A-10–9, Clark University Archives.

Jonas Gilman Clark and his wife, Susan Wright Clark, were active Massachusetts abolitionists in the 1840s. Jonas was financially successful in a number of enterprises, including carriage making, tinware manufacturing, and hardware retailing. He married Susan Wright in 1836, and both became active supporters of Garrisonian abolitionism in the Worcester area. Susan kept a ledger from 1845 to 1847 in which she collected poems or short inscriptions by abolitionists and other reformers she encountered. Among them were Adin Ballou, founder of the Hopedale utopian community, and the black abolitionists William Wells Brown and Frederick Douglass. Douglass visited the Clarks’ hometown of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 3

9/1/21 4:16 PM

4

GOD BE THANKED

Hubbardston, Massachusetts, on 6 July 1845, shortly after the publication of his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Douglass’s signed, page-long inscription in Susan Wright Clark’s book recited many familiar points from the Garrisonians’ critique of the proslavery attitudes of most the nation’s religious institutions. Shortly after their encounter, Douglass left the United States for a tour of the British Isles. The Clarks departed Massachusetts a few years later to pursue economic opportunities in California. They returned to Worcester after the Civil War and funded the establishment of Clark University in that city with a generous donation. Susan Wright Clark’s notebook with Douglass’s inscription eventually was donated to that university’s archives. [Susan Wright Clark, comp.], In Memoriam: Jonas Gilman Clark (New York, [1900]), n.p.; William A. Koelsch, “Grass-Roots Garrisonians in Central Massachusetts: The Case of Hubbardston’s Jonas and Susan Clark,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts, 31:73–89 (Winter 2003).

God be thanked! The sublime, and world saving principles of the ever blessed Jesus do not depend upon an organized self constituted church:— for ether there existance or propagation, [illegible] is independant self existant and eternal. It has the power and the right to summon its ministers from the haunts of wickedness, and the darkness of ignorance, and through them confound the wisdom of the crafty, and bring to naught the counsels of the ungodly. It is not confined to time nor place, It is with us only so far as we are with it, The church cannot hold it, It breaks over and through its massive walls as a horse though a spiders web, It rushes from the alter at the first call of suffering humanity, and flies to its relief, Thus we see it on its high mission of mercy, raising the drunkard from the ditch—washing the mud from his swollen eyes and bloated face, clothing him in his right mind—sending him home, a blessing to his distressed family and friends. And thus we see it snatching the prostitute as from the terrible jaws of death, The condemned prisoner from the malicious gallows, The perishing & and whip-scarred slave from his galling fetters, supplanting pollolution with purity—Falsehood with truth, & devastating war,—with the heavenly peace with omnipotent love. FREDERICK DOUGLASS JULY 1845

Y7870-Douglass.indb 4

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE FOLLY OF OUR OPPONENTS (1845) The Liberty Bell (Boston, 1845), 166–72.

From 1839 to 1857, Maria Weston Chapman and the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society published a gift book titled The Liberty Bell, which they sold at their annual fair. The book contained letters, essays, poems, and stories by such prominent figures as John Quincy Adams, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Martineau, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, along with contributions by antislavery activists. The main purpose of The Liberty Bell and similar gift books was to raise funds for the abolitionist movement, but its publishers hoped that the literary appeal of the volume would attract converts to their cause. Douglass was invited by Chapman to contribute to the 1845 volume, and his inclusion did not go unnoticed by the literary critic and journalist Margaret Fuller, who wrote that one of the most interesting features of the 1845 edition was the inclusion of writings by African Americans: “These not only compare favorably with those penned by white hands, but—when we see such rapid progress as in the case of Douglass, who was ‘only six years since a fugitive from a Southern cornfield’—are the most unanswerable arguments in favor of the capacities of the African race. Their claims need no argument.” New York Daily Tribune, 7 January 1845; Lee Chambers-Schiller, “ ‘A Good Work among the People’: The Political Culture of the Boston Antislavery Fair,” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), 258–59, 265–66; Ralph Thompson, “The Liberty Bell and Other Anti-Slavery Gift-Books,” New England Quarterly, 7:154–67 (March 1934); Benjamin Quarles, “Sources of Abolitionist Income,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 32:72–74 (June 1945).

In a note enclosing this article, Mr. Douglass says:—“It was intended for a place in the Liberty Bell, but my literary advantages have been so limited, that I am ill prepared to decide what is, and what is not, appropriate for such a collection. I looked exceedingly strange in my own eyes,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 5

9/1/21 4:16 PM

6

THE FOLLY OF OUR OPPONENTS

as I sat writing. The thought of writing for a book!—and only six years since a fugitive from a Southern cornfield1—caused a singular jingle in my mind.” DR. DEWEY,2 in his somewhat notorious defence of American Morals, published soon after his return to this country from Europe, where he had witnessed those morals subjected to a most rigid examination, treats of the conduct of the American people with regard to prejudice and Slavery; and, in extenuation of their conduct, speaks of the existence of an “impassable barrier” between the white and colored people of this country, and proceeds to draw a most odious picture of the character of his colored fellow-countrymen.3 Mean and wicked as is this position, the Doctor assumes it; and in so doing, becomes the favorite representative of a large class of his divine order, as well as of his white fellow-citizens, who, like himself, being stung to very shame by the exposures abroad of their naked inhumanity at home, strive, with fig-leaf sophistry, to cover their guilt from the penetrating eye and scorching rebukes of the Christian world. Fortunately for the cause of truth and human brotherhood, it has reached a period, when such mean-spirited efforts tend more to advance than retard its progress. Ingenious as are the arguments of its foes, they but defeat the object they are intended to promote. Their authors, in seeking thus to cover their sins, succeed only in lighting the lamp of investigation by which their guilt is more completely exposed. It is the decree of the Supreme Ruler of the universe, that he will confound the wisdom of the crafty, and bring to naught the counsels of the ungodly; and how faithfully is his decree executed upon those who bring their worldly wisdom to cover up the guilt of the American people! Their iniquity has grown too large for its robe. When one part is covered, another, equally odious and revolting, is made to appear. The efforts of priests and politicians to stretch the garment, to suit the dimensions of this giant sin, has resulted in tearing it asunder, and leaving the monster revealed as perhaps it never was before. When they tell the world that the negro is ignorant, and naturally and intellectually incapacitated to appreciate and enjoy freedom, they also publish their own condemnation, by bringing to light those infamous Laws by which the Slave is compelled to live in the grossest ignorance.4 When they tell the world that the Slave is immoral, vicious and degraded, they but invite attention to their own depravity: for the world sees the Slave stripped, by his accusers, of every safeguard to virtue, even of that purest and most sacred institution of marriage. When they represent the Slave

Y7870-Douglass.indb 6

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE FOLLY OF OUR OPPONENTS

7

as being destitute of religious principle—as in the preceding cases—they profit nothing BY the plea. In addition to their moral condemnation they brand themselves with bold and daring impiety, in making it an offence punishable with fine and imprisonment, and even death, to teach a Slave to read the will of God. When they pretend that they hold the Slave out of actual regard to the Slave’s welfare, and not because of any profit which accrues to themselves, as owners, they are covered with confusion by the single fact that Virginia alone has realized, in one short year, eighteen millions of dollars from the sale of human flesh.5 When they attempt to shield themselves by the grossly absurd and wicked pretence that the Slave is contented and happy, and, therefore, “better off” in Slavery than he could be possessed of freedom, their shield is broken by that long and bloody list of advertisements for runaway Slaves who have left their happy homes, and sought for freedom, even at the hazard of losing their lives in the attempt to gain it.6 When it is most foolishly asserted by Henry Clay,7 and those he represents, that the freedom of the colored is incompatible with the liberty of the white people of this country, the wicked intent of its author, and the barefaced absurdity of the proposition, are equally manifest. And when John C. Calhoun8 and Senator Walker9 attempt to prove that freedom is fraught with deafness, insanity and blindness to the people of color, their whole refuge of lies is swept away by the palpable inaccuracy of the last United States Census. And when, to cap the climax, Dr. Dewey tells the people of England that the white and colored people in this country are separated by an ‘impassible barrier,’ the hundreds of thousands of mulattoes, quadroons, &c. in this country, silently but unequivocally brand him with the guilt of having uttered a most egregious falsehood. Bad, however, as are the apologies which the American people make in defence of themselves and their ‘peculiar institution,’10 I am always glad to see them. I prize them very highly, as indications of a living sense of shame, which renders them susceptible of outward influences, and which shall one day bring them to repentance. Men seldom sink so deep in sin as to rid themselves of all disposition to apologise for their iniquity;— when they do, it is quite idle to labor for their reformation. Fortunately for our brethren under the accursed yoke, the American people have not yet reached that depth; and whilst there is a sense of shame left, there is strong ground for hope. The year eighteen hundred and forty-four has produced an abundant harvest of Anti-Slavery discussion. Slavery and prejudice cannot endure discussion, even though such discussion be had

Y7870-Douglass.indb 7

9/1/21 4:16 PM

8

THE FOLLY OF OUR OPPONENTS

in its favor. The light necessary to reason by, is at once too painful to the eyes of these twin-monsters of darkness to be endured. Their motto is, “Put out the light!” Thanks to Heaven, “the morning light is breaking;”11 our cause is onward; the efforts of our enemies, not less that the efforts of our friends, are contributing to increase the strength of that sentiment at home, as well as abroad, which is very soon to dash down the bloody altar of Slavery, and “proclaim liberty through all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.”12 LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S. 1. On Monday, 3 September 1838, Douglass boarded a train in Baltimore carrying the identification papers of a black sailor. After passing through Delaware and Philadelphia, he arrived in New York City on Tuesday, 4 September 1838. The publication dates of the Liberty Bell were dated with the year for which they were intended rather than the year of publication. Thus, Douglass correctly claims that he escaped slavery six years earlier, since he wrote this to Chapman on 27 October 1844. Frederick Douglass, “My Escape from Slavery,” Century Magazine, 21:125–31 (November 1881); McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 69–71; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:43; Thompson, “The Liberty Bell,” 154–67. 2. Orville Dewey (1794–1882) was a Unitarian minister born in Sheffield, Massachusetts. After graduating from Williams College and then Andover Theological Seminary, Dewey accepted an appointment to preach at various churches for the American Education Society. Greatly influenced by William Ellery Channing, he served as Channing’s assistant from 1821 to 1823 and then moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he remained a minister until 1833. After suffering from a nervous disorder, he moved his family to New York, where he continued to preach. Poor health forced Dewey to retire from the ministry in 1849. Although he was firmly opposed to slavery, he was too cautious to support the antislavery cause actively, viewing abolitionism as a threat to the preservation of the Union. He supported the Compromise of 1850, believing that the Fugitive Slave Law was a necessary step to satisfy Southerners, which prompted criticism from other Unitarian abolitionists. Douglas C. Stange, British Unitarians against American Slavery, 1833–65 (London, 1984), 171–72; James D. Bratt, ed., Antirevivalism in Antebellum America: A Collection of Religious Voices (New Brunswick, N.J., 2006), 81–82; American National Biography (online). 3. In 1844, Orville Dewey wrote an article entitled “On American Morals and Manners.” It was published in the Christian Examiner and then as a pamphlet. In the essay, Dewey claimed that many Northerners were against the abolition movement because they believed it to be “dangerous to the peace of the country, to the union of the States.” He further claimed that blacks in America would forever be a “small and depressed minority” because they were separated from whites by “impassable physical, if not mental barriers.” Dewey believed that only through their entire removal from the country could blacks achieve “any fair chance as men.” Orville Dewey, On American Morals and Manners (Boston, 1844), 18–21; Stange, British Unitarians, 171–72. 4. As early as the 1740s, some Southern states enacted variations of laws that prohibited the teaching of slaves or free blacks to read and write. While not every state enacted such antiliteracy laws, this type of legislation escalated during the 1830s. In the wake of the Nat Turner slave rebellion and the Jamaican slave revolt, which resulted in the emancipation of the British West Indies, slaveholders in the United States grew increasingly paranoid about the possibility of slave insurrections. To help protect the basic foundation of slavery, Southern states adopted these antiliteracy laws, believing that the education of blacks directly led to rebellion. Most of these laws provided fines or imprisonment for anyone caught teaching slaves or free blacks to read or write. Some states,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 8

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE FOLLY OF OUR OPPONENTS

9

like Maryland, prohibited public assemblies of blacks for religious or educational purposes, but did not punish people for teaching individual blacks to read. Only Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia maintained these strict antiliteracy laws for the entire period, from the 1830s to 1865. George M. Stroud, A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America (1827; Philadelphia, 1856), 58–63; Janet Duitsman Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear”: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South (Columbia, S.C., 1991), 32–34; William H. Jeynes, American Educational History: School, Society, and the Common Good (London, 2007), 94–95. 5. The American Anti-Slavery Society produced two publications that discussed the evils of slavery as well as what the institution meant economically to the South. Theodore Weld’s American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839) and Thomas Ward’s Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States of North America (1841) were circulated in the United States and in England. Both sources include figures from the slave trade in Virginia and contain a quotation from the editor of the Virginia (Wheeling) Times, who claimed that many men estimated that the number of slaves exported from Virginia between 1835 and 1836 was 120,000. About one-third of these slaves were sold at an average of $600 each, meaning that Virginia made a profit of $24 million that year from the sale of slaves. In his book, Ward claimed that the actual values from the internal slave trade could only be estimated, since the evidence for each state could not be found on any statistical records. The fact that the numbers are merely approximations might account for the difference between the figures published in these antislavery books and Douglass’s figure of $18 million. Theodore Weld, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1839), 182–84; Thomas Ward, Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States of North America; Being Replies to Questions Transmitted by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-slavery Society, For the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade Throughout the World, Presented to the General Anti-Slavery Convention, Held in London, June, 1840, By the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society (London, 1841), 12, 18; Winfield H. Collins, The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States (1904; Port Washington, N.Y., 1969), 52–53. 6. In 1839 the American Anti-Slavery Society published American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, compiled by the abolitionist Theodore Weld, as a way to educate Northerners about the evils of slavery. Several abolitionists contributed to the book by giving testimony about their direct encounters with slavery in the South. More importantly, the publication included facts about slavery given by slaveholders as printed in Southern newspapers, letters, periodicals, and books. Throughout the book are multiple examples of the advertisements written by slaveholders for runaway slaves. Douglass most likely used this publication to demonstrate that although slaveholders claimed blacks were better off in slavery, the long list of advertisements for runaways proved otherwise. Weld, American Slavery As It Is, 85–91, 152–54, 159–66; Owen W. Muelder, Theodore Dwight Weld and the American Anti-Slavery Society (Jefferson, N.C., 2011), 100. 7. Henry Clay (1777–1852), a native Virginian, entered politics during the 1790s in his adopted state of Kentucky and quickly rose to national prominence. As a congressman, senator, secretary of state, founder of the Whig party, and perennial presidential candidate (1824, 1832, 1844), Clay espoused broadly nationalistic programs designed to avoid sectional antagonism caused by the issue of slavery. He figured prominently in the debates that led to the passage of the Missouri Compromise, and he was a leading architect of the Compromise of 1850. His support of the American Colonization Society aroused the lasting hostility of Garrisonian abolitionists. In Congress, Clay vigorously opposed abolitionist petitions against slavery in the District of Columbia. On 7 February 1839 in a speech in the Senate on the subject of these petitions, he claimed that while he was no friend of slavery, he preferred the liberty of his own race to any other. He continued by saying, “The liberty of the descendants of Africa in the United States is incompatible with the safety and liberty of the European descendants. Their slavery forms an exception—an exception resulting from a stern and inexorable necessity—to the general liberty in the United States.” Douglass and other abolitionists found him

Y7870-Douglass.indb 9

9/1/21 4:16 PM

10

THE FOLLY OF OUR OPPONENTS

a particularly odious presidential candidate because Northern Whigs attempted to cast the slaveryowning Clay as “anti-slavery in his feelings,” which potentially undermined the Liberty party’s political base. Lib., 15 February 1839; Henry Clay, Speech of Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, on the Subject of Abolition Petitions, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, February 7, 1839 (Washington, D.C., 1839), 16; Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York, 1987); Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York, 1991); Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (New York, 1976), 109; Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 11 vols. (New York, 1931), 4:73–79. 8. John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850), a prominent politician from South Carolina, is best known for his advocacy of states’ rights. In 1812 he appeared on the national political scene as one of the “war hawks.” Calhoun quickly rose to prominence and was appointed secretary of war by James Monroe. In 1824 and 1828, he was elected vice president under Andrew Jackson, but he resigned and returned to South Carolina to defend the rights of his home state during the Nullification Controversy of 1831–32. Election to the U.S. Senate from South Carolina ensured that Calhoun would remain on the national political scene, and he returned to a cabinet post as secretary of state under John Tyler. In January 1845 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution directing the secretary of state to address and correct any mistakes that were made in the 1840 U.S. Census. On 8 February, Calhoun wrote a letter to Congress regarding this issue, alleging that no major mistakes had been made. He also commented on the criticism made by some concerning the statistics that compared diseases among free blacks and slaves. He wrote that the controversy resulted from the claim that there was a far greater prevalence of insanity, blindness, deafness, and dumbness among free blacks than slaves. Calhoun supported these figures and determined that they had been correctly gathered. He went on to conclude that based on these statistics, freedom for blacks was “a curse instead of a blessing.” Those who supported slavery, like Calhoun, used the census figures to claim that blacks would suffer if emancipated. John C. Calhoun, The Works of John C. Calhoun, ed., Richard K. Crallé, 6 vols. (New York, 1855) 5:458–61; Irving H. Bartlett, John C. Calhoun: A Biography (New York, 1993); Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge, 1999), 220; DAB, 2:411–19. 9. Robert John Walker (1801–69), U.S. senator, cabinet officer, and governor of the Kansas Territory, was born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Sometimes known as Robert James Walker, he graduated at the top of his class from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819, and was admitted to the bar in 1821. He joined the Democratic party and supported Andrew Jackson for president in 1824. Walker moved to Natchez, Mississippi, in 1826, and became a speculator in cotton, land, and slaves. He was elected to the U.S. Senate (1835–45) and then served as secretary of the treasury under James K. Polk. James Buchanan appointed Walker governor of the Kansas Territory in 1857. He learned that most Kansans wanted the territory to be admitted to the Union as a free state and sought to support their aspirations in a manner that also made the new state pro-Democrat. After Buchanan endorsed the proslavery Lecompton Constitution adopted in Kansas, Walker resigned as governor. During the Civil War, he supported the Union and traveled to Europe as a financial agent. While serving as senator in 1844, he wrote a letter endorsing the annexation of Texas and in it discussed the controversial 1840 Census. He supported the census figures that “proved” free blacks were more likely than slaves to suffer from serious maladies and end up in poorhouses, jails, hospitals, and asylums. Walker also argued that based on the census, tax increases would be necessary to support the millions of blacks who would ultimately be committed to asylums and hospitals following emancipation. Robert J. Walker, Letter of Mr. Walker, of Mississippi, Relative to the Annexation of Texas: In Reply to the Call of the People of Carroll County, Kentucky, to Communicate His Views on That Subject (Washington, D.C., 1844), 11–15; William Edward Dodd, Robert J. Walker: Imperialist (Chicago, 1914); Stephen Hartnett, “Senator Robert Walker’s 1844 Letter on Texas Annexation: The Rhetorical ‘Logic’ of Imperialism,” American Studies, 38:41 (Spring 1997); ANB (online).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 10

9/1/21 4:16 PM

BIBLES FOR THE SLAVES

11

10. Southern states’-rights advocate John C. Calhoun is most likely responsible for the antebellum familiarity with the term “peculiar institution” in reference to slavery. In a public letter dated 11 September 1830 to his friend and fellow politician Virgil Maxcy, Calhoun discussed the Tariff of 1828 and the harm it would cause the South, and mentioned slavery as a basis for the unfair treatment by the government: “The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick ‘institution’ of the Southern States, and the consequent direction, which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriates in opposition relation to the majority of the Union.” Calhoun also used the phrase frequently in congressional debates in the 1830s. From about this period forward, the term “peculiar institution” served as a euphemism for slavery. John C. Calhoun, The Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. Clyde N. Wilson, 28 vols. (Columbia, S.C., 1978), 11:229. 11. This phrase is the title and first line of a missionary hymn written by Samuel Francis Smith (1808–95) in 1832. The tune of the hymn is “Millennial Dawn,” composed by George James Webb (1803–87) around 1830. Smith, a Baptist clergyman and author, is most famous for writing the hymn “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” more commonly known as “America.” W. Howard Doane and E.  H. Johnson, eds., The Baptist Hymnal, For Use in the Church and Home (Philadelphia, 1883), 307; James H. Ross, “Old and New Missionary Hymns,” Homiletic Review, 39:413 (January–June 1900); ANB (online). 12. This phrase, popular among abolitionists, comes from the book of Leviticus in the Bible, and is inscribed on the Liberty Bell. William Lloyd Garrison used the verse on the masthead of his abolitionist newspaper the Liberator from 13 December 1861 to 6 October 1865. While Douglass quotes it as “through all the land,” it is in fact “throughout all the land.” Lib., 13 December 1861, 6 October 1865; Lev. 25:10; Edwin S. Gaustad, Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: A History of Church and State in America (1999; New York, 2003), ix.

BIBLES FOR THE SLAVES (1848) The Liberty Bell (Boston, 1848), 121–27.

Douglass’s second contribution to The Liberty Bell was in direct response to a revived campaign to supply slaves with Bibles. In the 1830s, American abolitionists unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the American Bible Society to distribute the scriptures to slaves. Non-Garrisonian abolitionists, led by Joshua Leavitt and Henry Bibb, revived this campaign in the mid-1840s and won endorsements from several New England church groups. These abolitionists called for $40,000 in contributions designated exclusively for a “Slaves’ Bible Fund.” Less than $2,000 was collected for this project, however, and the American Bible Society continued to defer to its Southern auxiliaries’ disinclination to undertake such a project. The American Missionary Association organized a similar campaign, led by the abolitionist John G. Fee, in the spring of 1848, which focused its efforts in Kentucky for well over

Y7870-Douglass.indb 11

9/1/21 4:16 PM

BIBLES FOR THE SLAVES

11

10. Southern states’-rights advocate John C. Calhoun is most likely responsible for the antebellum familiarity with the term “peculiar institution” in reference to slavery. In a public letter dated 11 September 1830 to his friend and fellow politician Virgil Maxcy, Calhoun discussed the Tariff of 1828 and the harm it would cause the South, and mentioned slavery as a basis for the unfair treatment by the government: “The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick ‘institution’ of the Southern States, and the consequent direction, which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriates in opposition relation to the majority of the Union.” Calhoun also used the phrase frequently in congressional debates in the 1830s. From about this period forward, the term “peculiar institution” served as a euphemism for slavery. John C. Calhoun, The Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. Clyde N. Wilson, 28 vols. (Columbia, S.C., 1978), 11:229. 11. This phrase is the title and first line of a missionary hymn written by Samuel Francis Smith (1808–95) in 1832. The tune of the hymn is “Millennial Dawn,” composed by George James Webb (1803–87) around 1830. Smith, a Baptist clergyman and author, is most famous for writing the hymn “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” more commonly known as “America.” W. Howard Doane and E.  H. Johnson, eds., The Baptist Hymnal, For Use in the Church and Home (Philadelphia, 1883), 307; James H. Ross, “Old and New Missionary Hymns,” Homiletic Review, 39:413 (January–June 1900); ANB (online). 12. This phrase, popular among abolitionists, comes from the book of Leviticus in the Bible, and is inscribed on the Liberty Bell. William Lloyd Garrison used the verse on the masthead of his abolitionist newspaper the Liberator from 13 December 1861 to 6 October 1865. While Douglass quotes it as “through all the land,” it is in fact “throughout all the land.” Lib., 13 December 1861, 6 October 1865; Lev. 25:10; Edwin S. Gaustad, Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: A History of Church and State in America (1999; New York, 2003), ix.

BIBLES FOR THE SLAVES (1848) The Liberty Bell (Boston, 1848), 121–27.

Douglass’s second contribution to The Liberty Bell was in direct response to a revived campaign to supply slaves with Bibles. In the 1830s, American abolitionists unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the American Bible Society to distribute the scriptures to slaves. Non-Garrisonian abolitionists, led by Joshua Leavitt and Henry Bibb, revived this campaign in the mid-1840s and won endorsements from several New England church groups. These abolitionists called for $40,000 in contributions designated exclusively for a “Slaves’ Bible Fund.” Less than $2,000 was collected for this project, however, and the American Bible Society continued to defer to its Southern auxiliaries’ disinclination to undertake such a project. The American Missionary Association organized a similar campaign, led by the abolitionist John G. Fee, in the spring of 1848, which focused its efforts in Kentucky for well over

Y7870-Douglass.indb 11

9/1/21 4:16 PM

12

BIBLES FOR THE SLAVES

a decade. Douglass and Garrisonians denounced this campaign, believing it to be a form of gradualism that would delay emancipation, since slaves were expected to learn how to read before being set free. Douglass’s opposition extended beyond the pages of The Liberty Bell. Following its publication, he engaged in several debates within the pages of the North Star and the Impartial Citizen, notably with the African American minister Henry H. Garnet. Boston Emancipator, 2 June 1846; Lib., 25 January, 21 May 1847; American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, 2:25–26, 72 (January, October 1845); NS, 15 June, 17 August 1849; Impartial Citizen, 27 June 1849; Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Sixteenth Annual Report (Boston, 1848), 66–67; American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Shall We Give Bibles to Three Millions of American Slaves? ([New York], [1847]); Stanley Harrold, The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slave (Lexington, Ky., 2004), 100–102; John R. McKivigan, The War against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830–1865 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 123–24.

THE above is the watch-word of a recent but quite numerous class of persons, whose ostensible object seems to be to give Bibles to the American Slaves. They propose to induce the public to give, of their abundance, a large sum of money, to be placed in the hands of the American Bible Society,1 to be employed in purchasing Bibles and distributing them among the Slaves. In this apparently benevolent and Christian movement, they desire to unite all persons friendly to the long imbruted and long neglected Slave. The religious press has already spoken out in its favor. So full of promise and popularity is this movement that many of the leaders in Church and State are pressing into it. Churches, which have all along slumbered unmoved over the cruel wrongs and bitter woes of the Slave,—which have been as deaf as Death to every appeal of the fettered bondman for liberty,—are at last startled from their heartless stupor by this new cry of Bibles for the Slaves. Ministers of Religion, and learned Doctors of Divinity, who would not lift a finger to give the Slave to himself, are now engaged in the professed work of giving to the Slave the Bible. Into this enterprize have been drawn some who have been known as advocates for emancipation. One Anti-Slavery Editor has abandoned his position at the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 12

9/1/21 4:16 PM

BIBLES FOR THE SLAVES

13

head of a widely circulating journal, and has gone forth to lecture and solicit donations in its behalf.2 Even the American Bible Society, which a few years ago peremptorily refused to entertain the offensive subject, and refused the offer of ten thousand dollars, has at last relented, if not repented, and now condescends to receive money for this object. To be sure we have had no public assurance of this from that society. It is, however, generously inferred by the friends of the movement, that they will consent to receive money for this purpose. Now what does all this mean? Are the men engaged in this movement sane? and if so, can they be honest? Do  they seriously believe that the American Slave can receive the Bible? Do they believe that the American Bible Society cares one straw about giving Bibles to the Slaves? Do they suppose that Slaveholders, in open violation of their wicked laws, will allow their Slaves to have the Bible? How do they mean to get the Bible among the Slaves? It cannot go itself,—it must be carried. And who among them all has either the faith or the folly to undertake the distribution of Bibles among the Slaves? Then, again, of what value is the Bible to one who may not read its contents? Do they intend to send teachers into the Slave States, with the Bibles, to teach the Slaves to read them? Do they believe that on giving the Bible, the unlettered Slave will all at once—by some miraculous transformation—become a man of letters, and be able to read the sacred Scriptures? Will they first obtain the Slaveholder’s consent, or will they proceed without it? And if the former, by what means will they seek it? And if the latter, what success do they expect? Upon these points, and many others, the public ought to be enlightened before they are called upon to give money and influence to such an enterprize. As a mere indication of the growing influence of Anti-Slavery sentiment this movement may be regarded by Abolitionists with some complacency; but as a means of abolishing the Slave system of America, it seems to me a sham, a delusion, and a snare, and cannot be too soon exposed before all the people. It is but another illustration of the folly of putting new cloth into an old garment, and new wine into old bottles.3 The Bible is peculiarly the companion of liberty. It belongs to a new order of things—Slavery is of the old—and will only be made worse by any attempt to mend it with the Bible. The Bible is only useful to those who can read and practise its contents. It was given to Freemen, and any attempt to give it to the Slave must result only in hollow mockery. Give Bibles to the poor Slaves! It sounds well. It looks well. It wears a religious aspect. It is a Protestant rebuke to the Pope, and seems in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 13

9/1/21 4:16 PM

14

BIBLES FOR THE SLAVES

harmony with the purely evangelical character of the great American people. It may also forestall some movement in England to give Bibles to our Slaves,4 —and this is very desirable! Now admitting (however difficult it may be to do so) the entire honesty of all engaged in this movement,—the immediate and only effect of their efforts must be to turn off attention from the main and only momentous question connected with the Slave, and absorb energies and money in giving to him the Bible that ought to be used in giving him to himself. The Slave is property. He cannot hold property. He cannot own a Bible. To give him a Bible is but to give his master a Bible. The Slave is a thing,—and it is the all commanding duty of the American people to make him a man. To demand this in the name of humanity, and of God, is the solemn duty of every living soul. To demand less than this, or anything else than this, is to deceive the fettered bondman, and to soothe the conscience of the Slaveholder on the very point where he should be most stung with remorse and shame. Away with all tampering with such a question! Away with all trifling with the man in fetters! Give a hungry man a stone, and tell what beautiful houses are made of it,—give ice to a freezing man, and tell him of its good properties in hot weather,—throw a drowning man a dollar, as a mark of your good will,—but do not mock the bondman in his misery, by giving him a Bible when he cannot read it. ROCHESTER, NEW YORK. 1. Founded in 1816, the American Bible Society (ABS) had as its mission to supply every family in the United States with a copy of the Bible. Many abolitionists, including members of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), complained that the ABS was not supplying enough Southern planters with Bibles, and in 1834, the AASS offered the ABS $20,000 to send Bibles to Southerners. The ABS declined the offer, and outraged abolitionists such as Joshua Leavitt and Henry Bibb started their own “Bible for Slaves” campaign to supply donations to the ABS for distribution to Southern blacks. The ABS accepted the donations and put them in a fund labeled “for the slaves,” though little of the donations were spent for that purpose. McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 124. 2. Joshua Leavitt was the editor of the antislavery newspaper the Emancipator from 1840 until 1847, when he left to join Henry Bibb in focusing abolitionist efforts on the Bible for Slaves campaign. Leslie M. Alexander and Walter C. Rucker, eds., Encyclopedia of African American History, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2010), 3:398. 3. Matt. 9:16–17, Mark 2:21–22. 4. Douglass is most likely referring to the involvement of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society with the American Missionary Association to raise funds for the Bible for Slaves campaign in the spring of 1848. Harrold, Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism, 100.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 14

9/1/21 4:16 PM

NORTH STAR CIRCULAR (1849) Frederick Douglass Collection, Lavery Library, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, N.Y.

Founded by Douglass in Rochester, New York, in December 1847, the weekly North Star was Douglass’s first foray into newspaper publishing. Funds to launch the newspaper had come largely from a testimonial gathered by abolitionist admirers in Britain before Douglass returned to the United States from a nearly two-year speaking tour in Ireland, England, and Scotland. The North Star received only lukewarm support from Douglass’s original abolitionist mentors, particularly William Lloyd Garrison, who believed the black abolitionist could better serve their cause on the lecture circuit. The paper struggled to win enough subscribers and fell into debt. In the summer of 1849, local Garrisonians began an investigation into the newspaper’s solvency under Douglass’s management. The timely arrival from Great Britain of two of Douglass’s abolitionist admirers, Julia Griffiths and her sister Eliza, alleviated the crisis. Julia reorganized the North Star’s office operations and launched local fund-raising efforts to support the newspaper. The following circular, issued to mark the commencement of the North Star’s third year of operation, sought the assistance of the antislavery community in expanding the newspaper’s subscription rolls to ensure its survival. The North Star continued for another year and a half, during which Douglass’s relations with the Garrisonians became increasingly strained. In June 1851, the North Star was converted into a political abolitionist journal and renamed Frederick Douglass’ Paper. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 146–49, 164–65, 182; Tyrone Tillery, “The Inevitability of the Douglass-Garrison Conflict,” Phylon, 37:137– 45, 149 (January 1976).

NORTH STAR OFFICE,} Rochester,}

My Dear Friend: Your deep interest in the cause of the perishing Slave, and in the Improvement and Elevation of the Nominally Free Colored People of our land, is

Y7870-Douglass.indb 15

9/1/21 4:16 PM

16

NORTH STAR CIRCULAR

my apology for invoking your aid and assistance in the work of extending the circulation of the North Star. The permanent existence of this paper is of vital importance to the cause with which it is identified; and its claims to support are peculiarly strong. Belonging, as I do, to the race almost universally despised at the North, and having endured the horrors of Slavery at the South, I feel especially bound to devote my energies to the Freedom and Elevation of my people. For the accomplishment of this object, I know of no instrumentality more effective than the Press. This always commands respect, and can never be despised. It is the friend of Truth, Liberty and Intelligence; and the enemy of Error, Slavery and Ignorance. The presence of a tolerably conducted Journal in this country, edited by one of the oppressed, is essential to the proper vindication of the colored race from the charge of inferiority, and to the assertion of their equal claims to fellowship in the common bond of Human Brotherhood. The North Star has reached its third volume,1 which is sufficient evidence that I am in earnest, and do not mean to be discouraged by difficulties or hardships. I commenced with a determination to persevere; and the strength of my resolution has experienced no abatement. I am convinced that the downfall of the paper would be hailed with a thrill of delight by all those who make merchandize of God’s image, and who “gain their fortunes by the blood of souls.” There is nothing more galling to the pride of the oppressor, than to be confronted by the object of his injustice and cruelty. Such an one is, is a living and palpable contradiction to all his sophistical theories against equal justice and equal manhood. While The North Star lives, it will cheer with hope the hearts of the enslaved, and alarm the fears of the guilty slaveholder. The fact that such a paper exists, has already been of immense value in the discussions which have been going on in high places during the last two years. Its columns have often been cited as evidence of negro capacity and ability. I say this gratefully—not egotistically. Having briefly stated my views with respect to the importance of sustaining The North Star, I am ready to answer the question as to how this can be done. Here is my plan: I propose to send this circular to such active and earnest friends as I think will take an interest in the object which it sets forth; and I suggest that each exert him or herself to obtain at least one additional subscriber

Y7870-Douglass.indb 16

9/1/21 4:16 PM

A NOTE OF THANKS

17

to our list. Should such friends respond to this call, and comply with this plan, I have no question but that the paper will be permanently and usefully established. That you may be moved to co-operate with me in this labor of good will, is the sincere desire of Your friend and co-worker in the cause of Human Freedom, FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. Douglass labeled the North Star of 28 December 1849 as the first issue of the publication’s third volume.

A NOTE OF THANKS (1852) William W. Layton Collection, Millwood, Va. Other text in William W. Layton Collection, DNA.

Known by her family as Jenny, Permelia Jane Marsh Parker (1836–1913) was the third and youngest child of the Reverend Joseph Marsh and his wife, Sarah Adams. Between 1839 and 1843, Joseph Marsh served both as pastor of a Christian Connection church in Union Mills, New York, and as the editor of the denomination’s bimonthly paper, the Christian Palladium. In 1843, however, both he and his wife became followers of the apocalyptic preacher William Miller. After delivering a series of sermons supporting Miller’s views on the Second Coming and the imminent end of the world, Marsh was summarily dismissed by his congregation and fired from the newspaper. The family relocated to Rochester, New York, where Marsh rented space in the Talman Building, known locally as the Talman Block, and began publishing a Millerite newspaper, the Voice of Truth and Glad Tidings of the Kingdom at Hand. Subsequently, Marsh purchased a home on Alexander Street. It was during this period, according to Jane Marsh Parker, that her parents joined the abolitionist movement and became involved with the Underground Railroad. By the time Douglass arrived in Rochester (where he too set up a newspaper office in the Talman Building) in 1847, William Miller’s followers had experienced the failure of the apocalypse to occur in 1844 as he had predicted it would (this false alarm, the third such, was

Y7870-Douglass.indb 17

9/1/21 4:16 PM

A NOTE OF THANKS

17

to our list. Should such friends respond to this call, and comply with this plan, I have no question but that the paper will be permanently and usefully established. That you may be moved to co-operate with me in this labor of good will, is the sincere desire of Your friend and co-worker in the cause of Human Freedom, FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. Douglass labeled the North Star of 28 December 1849 as the first issue of the publication’s third volume.

A NOTE OF THANKS (1852) William W. Layton Collection, Millwood, Va. Other text in William W. Layton Collection, DNA.

Known by her family as Jenny, Permelia Jane Marsh Parker (1836–1913) was the third and youngest child of the Reverend Joseph Marsh and his wife, Sarah Adams. Between 1839 and 1843, Joseph Marsh served both as pastor of a Christian Connection church in Union Mills, New York, and as the editor of the denomination’s bimonthly paper, the Christian Palladium. In 1843, however, both he and his wife became followers of the apocalyptic preacher William Miller. After delivering a series of sermons supporting Miller’s views on the Second Coming and the imminent end of the world, Marsh was summarily dismissed by his congregation and fired from the newspaper. The family relocated to Rochester, New York, where Marsh rented space in the Talman Building, known locally as the Talman Block, and began publishing a Millerite newspaper, the Voice of Truth and Glad Tidings of the Kingdom at Hand. Subsequently, Marsh purchased a home on Alexander Street. It was during this period, according to Jane Marsh Parker, that her parents joined the abolitionist movement and became involved with the Underground Railroad. By the time Douglass arrived in Rochester (where he too set up a newspaper office in the Talman Building) in 1847, William Miller’s followers had experienced the failure of the apocalypse to occur in 1844 as he had predicted it would (this false alarm, the third such, was

Y7870-Douglass.indb 17

9/1/21 4:16 PM

18

A NOTE OF THANKS

known as the “Great Disappointment”) and split into a number of rival sects. Joseph Marsh became a leader within the Adventist movement and continued to publish his newspaper under a new title, the Advent Harbinger (later changed to the Advent Harbinger and Bible Advocate). Although it is unclear when Douglass first became acquainted with Joseph Marsh and his family, it is known that in April 1848, Marsh played a role in facilitating Douglass’s purchase of his first house in Rochester, which was located next to his own home on Alexander Street. Lacking any known surviving correspondence between Douglass and Joseph Marsh, it is impossible to know for certain how close their relationship may have been. What is certain, however, is that Marsh’s daughter Jenny, who as a girl had befriended the younger Rosetta Douglass, maintained a lifelong friendship with her. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 319A; Jane Marsh Parker, Rochester: A Story Historical (Rochester, 1884), 251–54, 256; Daniel L. Rowe, “Millerites: A Shadow Portrait,” in Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler (Knoxville, Tenn., 1993); McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 149–54; Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminisces of Frederick Douglass,” in The Cradle of Freedom: A History of the Negro in Rochester, Western New York, and Canada, ed. Howard W. Coles (1941; Rochester, 1943), 156–63; Tom Calarco, People of the Underground Railroad: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport, Conn., 2008), 105. A note of thanks for your lines miss Jenny1 For I really think them very pretty; you need not despair of high success In writing yourself a poetess. F.D. FREDERICK DOUGLASS— 1. Douglass’s faith in Permelia Jane Marsh Parker’s literary talents proved justified by her later career. In 1854, Parker’s writing appeared in periodicals such as the Knickerbocker and the Waverley. That year, she published more than twenty-five stories, poems, and articles. On 26 August 1856, she married George Tann Parker, a lawyer from Rochester, and together they raised two children. A devout Episcopalian, she wrote almost exclusively for juvenile and religious readers in the years

Y7870-Douglass.indb 18

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

19

following her marriage. In 1874 her husband decided to leave his law practice and move the family to New Albany, Indiana, in the hopes of making money in the hickory mills of the Ohio River. Jane Parker compared the move to exile and published several articles in the Rochester Express indicating her displeasure with the “Southwest.” To her delight, the family returned to their home in Rochester in July 1877, and she was able to once again focus on her writing. Later in her life, she became known as a leading local historian of western New York State, and in December 1887, Parker became one of the founders of the Rochester Historical Society. In 1889 she traveled to Haiti with Douglass and wrote many articles based on her travels. On 6 April 1895, the Outlook magazine published a short article Parker wrote, entitled “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass.” In the article, she gave a brief synopsis of her encounters with Douglass as well as the main aspects of his public and family life. Her husband died in 1895, and she spent her remaining years in California. Some of her best-known works include Barley Wood (1860), Taking Sides (1860), Rochester: A Story Historical (1884), and The Midnight Cry (1886). Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” Outlook, 51:552–53 (April 1895); John Howard Brown, ed., Lamb’s Biographical Dictionary of the United States (Boston, 1903), 6:135; Marcelle LeMénager Lane, “The Life and Work of Jane Marsh Parker,” The Rochester Historical Society: Publication Fund Series, 25 vols. (Rochester, 1946), 23:1–106; ANB (online).

THE HEROIC SLAVE (1853) Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave,” in Autographs for Freedom, ed. Julia Griffiths (Boston, 1853), 174–239. Other texts in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 4, 11, 18, 25 March 1853.

In October 1841, as the brig Creole sailed through waters near the northern Bahamas, Madison Washington led his fellow slaves in a rebellion that won control of the vessel. The slave rebels sailed to New Providence at Nassau, where they all were eventually freed by British authorities, over vehement protests from the U.S. government. The courage of Washington and his compatriots was widely celebrated by American abolitionists, including Douglass, who had only recently joined their ranks as a lecturer. Douglass long nurtured the desire to prepare an historical account of Washington and his exploits, but discovered that specific details about his subject were hard to obtain. Instead, in 1852, he wrote The Heroic Slave, a short historical novella about the Creole uprising. The novella was published in the 1853 Autographs for Freedom, a fund-raising gift book edited by Douglass’s British friend Julia Griffiths, who had settled in Rochester to assist in the publication of his newspaper. In addition to celebrating Madison Washington, The Heroic Slave marked an important step in Douglass’s ideological break from the nonresistance ideology of his original

Y7870-Douglass.indb 19

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

19

following her marriage. In 1874 her husband decided to leave his law practice and move the family to New Albany, Indiana, in the hopes of making money in the hickory mills of the Ohio River. Jane Parker compared the move to exile and published several articles in the Rochester Express indicating her displeasure with the “Southwest.” To her delight, the family returned to their home in Rochester in July 1877, and she was able to once again focus on her writing. Later in her life, she became known as a leading local historian of western New York State, and in December 1887, Parker became one of the founders of the Rochester Historical Society. In 1889 she traveled to Haiti with Douglass and wrote many articles based on her travels. On 6 April 1895, the Outlook magazine published a short article Parker wrote, entitled “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass.” In the article, she gave a brief synopsis of her encounters with Douglass as well as the main aspects of his public and family life. Her husband died in 1895, and she spent her remaining years in California. Some of her best-known works include Barley Wood (1860), Taking Sides (1860), Rochester: A Story Historical (1884), and The Midnight Cry (1886). Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” Outlook, 51:552–53 (April 1895); John Howard Brown, ed., Lamb’s Biographical Dictionary of the United States (Boston, 1903), 6:135; Marcelle LeMénager Lane, “The Life and Work of Jane Marsh Parker,” The Rochester Historical Society: Publication Fund Series, 25 vols. (Rochester, 1946), 23:1–106; ANB (online).

THE HEROIC SLAVE (1853) Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave,” in Autographs for Freedom, ed. Julia Griffiths (Boston, 1853), 174–239. Other texts in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 4, 11, 18, 25 March 1853.

In October 1841, as the brig Creole sailed through waters near the northern Bahamas, Madison Washington led his fellow slaves in a rebellion that won control of the vessel. The slave rebels sailed to New Providence at Nassau, where they all were eventually freed by British authorities, over vehement protests from the U.S. government. The courage of Washington and his compatriots was widely celebrated by American abolitionists, including Douglass, who had only recently joined their ranks as a lecturer. Douglass long nurtured the desire to prepare an historical account of Washington and his exploits, but discovered that specific details about his subject were hard to obtain. Instead, in 1852, he wrote The Heroic Slave, a short historical novella about the Creole uprising. The novella was published in the 1853 Autographs for Freedom, a fund-raising gift book edited by Douglass’s British friend Julia Griffiths, who had settled in Rochester to assist in the publication of his newspaper. In addition to celebrating Madison Washington, The Heroic Slave marked an important step in Douglass’s ideological break from the nonresistance ideology of his original

Y7870-Douglass.indb 19

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

20

Garrisonian abolitionist mentors. The Heroic Slave was also serialized in four issues of Frederick Douglass’ Paper in March 1853 with only accidental changes to the text. A detailed discussion of editorial policies employed in determining an authoritative text for the novella appears in “Textual Notes on The Heroic Slave” at the end of this volume. Douglass, The Heroic Slave, xi–xii, xviii– xxvi, 53–55; McKivigan and Pattillo, “Autographs for Freedom,” 35–51.

PART I. Oh! child of grief, why weepest thou? Why droops thy sad and mournful brow? Why is thy look so like despair? What deep, sad sorrow lingers there?1 THE State of Virginia is famous in American annals for the multitudinous array of her statesmen and heroes. She has been dignified by some the mother of statesmen. History has not been sparing in recording their names, or in blazoning their deeds. Her high position in this respect, has given her an enviable distinction among her sister States. With Virginia for his birth-place, even a man of ordinary parts, on account of the general partiality for her sons, easily rises to eminent stations. Men, not great enough to attract special attention in their native States, have, like a certain distinguished citizen in the State of New York, sighed and repined that they were not born in Virginia.2 Yet not all the great ones of the Old Dominion have, by the fact of their birth-place, escaped undeserved obscurity.3 By some strange neglect, one of the truest, manliest, and bravest of her children,—one who, in after years, will, I think, command the pen of genius to set his merits forth, holds now no higher place in the records of that grand old Commonwealth than is held by a horse or an ox. Let those account for it who can, but there stands the fact, that a man who loved liberty as well as did Patrick Henry,4 —who deserved it as much as Thomas Jefferson,5—and who fought for it with a valor as high, an arm as strong, and against odds as great, as he who led all the armies of the American colonies through the great war for freedom and independence, lives now only in the chattel records of his native State.6 Glimpses of this great character are all that can now be presented. He is brought to view only by a few transient incidents, and these afford

Y7870-Douglass.indb 20

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

21

but partial satisfaction. Like a guiding star on a stormy night, he is seen through the parted clouds and the howling tempests; or, like the gray peak of a menacing rock on a perilous coast, he is seen by the quivering flash of angry lightning, and he again disappears covered with mystery. Curiously, earnestly, anxiously we peer into the dark, and wish even for the blinding flash, or the light of northern skies to reveal him. But alas! he is still enveloped in darkness, and we return from the pursuit like a wearied and disheartened mother, (after a tedious and unsuccessful search for a lost child,) who returns weighed down with disappointment and sorrow. Speaking of marks, traces, possibles, and probabilities, we come before our readers. * * * * * * In the spring of 1835, on a Sabbath morning, within hearing of the solemn peals of the church bells at a distant village, a Northern traveller through the State of Virginia drew up his horse to drink at a sparkling brook, near the edge of a dark pine forest. While his weary and thirsty steed drew in the grateful water, the rider caught the sound of a human voice, apparently engaged in earnest conversation. Following the direction of the sound, he descried, among the tall pines, the man whose voice had arrested his attention. “To whom can he be speaking?” thought the traveller. “He seems to be alone.” The circumstance interested him much, and he became intensely curious to know what thoughts and feelings, or, it might be, high aspirations, guided those rich and mellow accents. Tieing his horse at a short distance from the brook, he stealthily drew near the solitary speaker; and, concealing himself by the side of a huge fallen tree, he distinctly heard the following soliloquy:— “What, then, is life to me? it is aimless and worthless, and worse than worthless. Those birds, perched on yon swinging boughs, in friendly conclave, sounding forth their merry notes in seeming worship of the rising sun, though liable to the sportsman’s fowling-piece, are still my superiors. They live free, though they may die slaves. They fly where they list by day, and retire in freedom at night. But what is freedom to me, or I to it? I am a slave,—born a slave, an abject slave,—even before I made part of this breathing world, the scourge was platted for my back; the fetters were forged for my limbs. How mean a thing am I. That accursed and crawling snake, that miserable reptile, that has just glided into its slimy home, is freer and better off than I. He escaped my blow, and is safe. But here

Y7870-Douglass.indb 21

9/1/21 4:16 PM

22

THE HEROIC SLAVE

am I, a man,—yes, a man!—with thoughts and wishes, with powers and faculties as far as angel’s flight above that hated reptile,—yet he is my superior, and scorns to own me as his master, or to stop to take my blows. When he saw my uplifted arm, he darted beyond my reach, and turned to give me battle. I dare not do as much as that. I neither run nor fight, but do meanly stand, answering each heavy blow of a cruel master with doleful wails and piteous cries. I am galled with irons; but even these are more tolerable than the consciousness, the galling consciousness of cowardice and indecision. Can it be that I dare not run away? Perish the thought, I dare do any thing which may be done by another. When that young man struggled with the waves for life, and others stood back appalled in helpless horror, did I not plunge in, forgetful of life, to save his? The raging bull from whom all others fled, pale with fright, did I not keep at bay with a single pitchfork? Could a coward do that? No,—no,—I wrong myself,— I am no coward. Liberty I will have, or die in the attempt to gain it. This working that others may live in idleness! This cringing submission to insolence and curses! This living under the constant dread and apprehension of being sold and transferred, like a mere brute, is too much for me. I will stand it no longer. What others have done, I will do. These trusty legs, or these sinewy arms shall place me among the free. Tom escaped; so can I. The North Star will not be less kind to me than to him.7 I will follow it. I will at least make the trial. I have nothing to lose. If I am caught, I shall only be a slave. If I am shot, I shall only lose a life which is a burden and a curse. If I get clear, (as something tells me I shall,) liberty, the inalienable birth-right of every man, precious and priceless, will be mine. My resolution is fixed. I shall be free.” At these words the traveller raised his head cautiously and noiselessly, and caught, from his hiding-place, a full view of the unsuspecting speaker. Madison8 (for that was the name of our hero) was standing erect, a smile of satisfaction rippled upon his expressive countenance, like that which plays upon the face of one who has but just solved a difficult problem, or vanquished a malignant foe; for at that moment he was free, at least in spirit. The future gleamed brightly before him, and his fetters lay broken at his feet. His air was triumphant. Madison was of manly form. Tall, symmetrical, round, and strong. In his movements he seemed to combine, with the strength of the lion, the lion’s elasticity. His torn sleeves disclosed arms like polished iron. His face was “black, but comely.”9 His eye, lit with emotion, kept guard under a brow as dark and as glossy as the raven’s wing. His whole appearance

Y7870-Douglass.indb 22

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

23

betokened Herculean strength; yet there was nothing savage or forbidding in his aspect.10 A child might play in his arms, or dance on his shoulders. A giant’s strength, but not a giant’s heart was in him. His broad mouth and nose spoke only of good nature and kindness. But his voice, that unfailing index of the soul, though full and melodious, had that in it which could terrify as well as charm. He was just the man you would choose when hardships were to be endured, or danger to be encountered,—intelligent and brave. He had the head to conceive, and the hand to execute. In a word, he was one to be sought as a friend, but to be dreaded as an enemy. As our traveller gazed upon him, he almost trembled at the thought of his dangerous intrusion. Still he could not quit the place. He had long desired to sound the mysterious depths of the thoughts and feelings of a slave. He was not, therefore, disposed to allow so providential an opportunity to pass unimproved. He resolved to hear more; so he listened again for those mellow and mournful accents which, he says, made such an impression upon him as can never be erased. He did not have to wait long. There came another gush from the same full fountain; now bitter, and now sweet. Scathing denunciations of the cruelty and injustice of slavery; heart-touching narrations of his own personal suffering, intermingled with prayers to the God of the oppressed for help and deliverance, were followed by presentations of the dangers and difficulties of escape, and formed the burden of his eloquent utterances; but his high resolution clung to him,—for he ended each speech by an emphatic declaration of his purpose to be free. It seemed that the very repetition of this, imparted a glow to his countenance. The hope of freedom seemed to sweeten, for a season, the bitter cup of slavery, and to make it, for a time, tolerable; for when in the very whirlwind of anguish,—when his heart’s cord seemed screwed up to snapping tension, hope sprung up and soothed his troubled spirit. Fitfully he would exclaim, “How can I leave her? Poor thing! What can she do when I am gone? Oh! oh! ’tis impossible that I can leave poor Susan!”11 A brief pause intervened. Our traveller raised his head, and saw again the sorrow-smitten slave. His eye was fixed upon the ground. The strong man staggered under a heavy load. Recovering himself, he argued thus aloud: “All is uncertain here. To-morrow’s sun may not rise before I am sold, and separated from her I love. What, then, could I do for her? I should be in more hopeless slavery, and she no nearer to liberty,— whereas if I were free,—my arms my own,—I might devise the means to rescue her.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 23

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

24

This said, Madison cast around a searching glance, as if the thought of being overheard had flashed across his mind. He said no more, but, with measured steps, walked away, and was lost to the eye of our traveller amidst the wildering woods. Long after Madison had left the ground, Mr. Listwell (our traveller) remained in motionless silence, meditating on the extraordinary revelations to which he had listened. He seemed fastened to the spot, and stood half hoping, half fearing the return of the sable preacher to his solitary temple. The speech of Madison rung through the chambers of his soul, and vibrated through his entire frame. “Here is indeed a man,” thought he, “of rare endowments,—a child of God,—guilty of no crime but the color of his skin,—hiding away from the face of humanity, and pouring out his thoughts and feelings, his hopes and resolutions to the lonely woods; to him those distant church bells have no grateful music. He shuns the church, the altar, and the great congregation of christian worshippers, and wanders away to the gloomy forest, to utter in the vacant air complaints and griefs, which the religion of his times and his country can neither console nor relieve. Goaded almost to madness by the sense of the injustice done him, he resorts hither to give vent to his pent up feelings, and to debate with himself the feasibility of plans, plans of his own invention, for his own deliverance. From this hour I am an abolitionist. I have seen enough and heard enough, and I shall go to my home in Ohio resolved to atone for my past indifference to this ill-starred race, by making such exertions as I shall be able to do, for the speedy emancipation of every slave in the land.” PART II. “The gaudy, blabbling and remorseful day Is crept into the bosom of the sea; And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades That drag the tragic melancholy night; Who with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings Clip dead men’s graves, and from their misty jaws Breathe foul contagions, darkness in the air.” Shakspeare.12 Five years after the foregoing singular occurrence, in the winter of 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Listwell sat together by the fireside of their own happy

Y7870-Douglass.indb 24

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

25

home, in the State of Ohio. The children were all gone to bed. A single lamp burnt brightly on the centre-table. All was still and comfortable within; but the night was cold and dark; a heavy wind sighed and moaned sorrowfully around the house and barn, occasionally bringing against the clattering windows a stray leaf from the large oak trees that embowered their dwelling. It was a night for strange noises and for strange fancies. A whole wilderness of thought might pass through one’s mind during such an evening. The smouldering embers, partaking of the spirit of the restless night, became fruitful of varied and fantastic pictures, and revived many bygone scenes and old impressions. The happy pair seemed to sit in silent fascination, gazing on the fire. Suddenly this reverie was interrupted by a heavy growl. Ordinarily such an occurrence would have scarcely provoked a single word, or excited the least apprehension. But there are certain seasons when the slightest sound sends a jar through all the subtle chambers of the mind; and such a season was this. The happy pair started up, as if some sudden danger had come upon them. The growl was from their trusty watch-dog. “What can it mean? certainly no one can be out on such a night as this,” said Mrs. Listwell. “The wind has deceived the dog, my dear; he has mistaken the noise of falling branches, brought down by the wind, for that of the footsteps of persons coming to the house. I have several times to-night thought that I heard the sound of footsteps. I am sure, however, that it was but the wind. Friends would not be likely to come out at such an hour, or such a night; and thieves are too lazy and self-indulgent to expose themselves to this biting frost; but should there be any one about, our brave old Monte, who is on the lookout, will not be slow in sounding the alarm.” Saying this they quietly left the window, whither they had gone to learn the cause of the menacing growl, and re-seated themselves by the fire, as if reluctant to leave the slowly expiring embers, although the hour was late. A few minutes only intervened after resuming their seats, when again their sober meditations were disturbed. Their faithful dog now growled and barked furiously, as if assailed by an advancing foe. Simultaneously the good couple arose, and stood in mute expectation. The contest without seemed fierce and violent. It was, however, soon over,—the barking ceased, for, with true canine instinct, Monte quickly discovered that a friend, not an enemy of the family, was coming to the house, and instead of rushing to repel the supposed intruder, he was now at the door, whimpering and dancing for the admission of himself and his newly made friend.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 25

9/1/21 4:16 PM

26

THE HEROIC SLAVE

Mr. Listwell knew by this movement that all was well; he advanced and opened the door, and saw by the light that streamed out into the darkness, a tall man advancing slowly towards the house, with a stick in one hand, and a small bundle in the other. “It is a traveller,” thought he, “who has missed his way, and is coming to inquire the road. I am glad we did not go to bed earlier,—I have felt all the evening as if somebody would be here to-night.” The man had now halted a short distance from the door, and looked prepared alike for flight or battle. “Come in, sir, don’t be alarmed, you have probably lost your way.” Slightly hesitating, the traveller walked in; not, however, without regarding his host with a scrutinizing glance. “No, sir,” said he, “I have come to ask you a greater favor.” Instantly Mr. Listwell exclaimed, (as the recollection of the Virginia forest scene flashed upon him,) “Oh, sir, I know not your name, but I have seen your face, and heard your voice before. I am glad to see you. I know all. You are flying for your liberty,—be seated,—be seated,—banish all fear. You are safe under my roof.” This recognition, so unexpected, rather disconcerted and disquieted the noble fugitive. The timidity and suspicion of persons escaping from slavery are easily awakened, and often what is intended to dispel the one, and to allay the other, has precisely the opposite effect. It was so in this case. Quickly observing the unhappy impression made by his words and action, Mr. Listwell assumed a more quiet and inquiring aspect, and finally succeeded in removing the apprehensions which his very natural and generous salutation had aroused. Thus assured, the stranger said, “Sir, you have rightly guessed, I am, indeed, a fugitive from slavery. My name is Madison,—Madison Washington my mother13 used to call me. I am on my way to Canada, where I learn that persons of my color are protected in all the rights of men;14 and my object in calling upon you was, to beg the privilege of resting my weary limbs for the night in your barn. It was my purpose to have continued my journey till morning; but the piercing cold, and the frowning darkness compelled me to seek shelter; and, seeing a light through the lattice of your window, I was encouraged to come here to beg the privilege named. You will do me a great favor by affording me shelter for the night.” “A resting-place, indeed, sir, you shall have; not, however, in my barn, but in the best room of my house. Consider yourself, if you please, un-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 26

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

27

der the roof of a friend; for such I am to you, and to all your deeply injured race.” While this introductory conversation was going on, the kind lady had revived the fire, and was diligently preparing supper; for she, not less than her husband, felt for the sorrows of the oppressed and hunted ones of the earth, and was always glad of an opportunity to do them a service. A bountiful repast was quickly prepared, and the hungry and toil-worn bondman was cordially invited to partake thereof. Gratefully he acknowledged the favor of his benevolent benefactress; but appeared scarcely to understand what such hospitality could mean. It was the first time in his life that he had met so humane and friendly a greeting at the hands of persons whose color was unlike his own; yet it was impossible for him to doubt the charitableness of his new friends, or the genuineness of the welcome so freely given; and he therefore, with many thanks, took his seat at the table with Mr. and Mrs. Listwell, who, desirous to make him feel at home, took a cup of tea themselves, while urging upon Madison the best that the house could afford. Supper over, all doubts and apprehensions banished, the three drew around the blazing fire, and a conversation commenced which lasted till long after midnight. “Now,” said Madison to Mr. Listwell, “I was a little surprised and alarmed when I came in, by what you said; do tell me, sir, why you thought you had seen my face before, and by what you knew me to be a fugitive from slavery; for I am sure that I never was before in this neighborhood, and I certainly sought to conceal what I supposed to be the manner of a fugitive slave.” Mr. Listwell at once frankly disclosed the secret; describing the place where he first saw him; rehearsing the language which he (Madison) had used; referring to the effect which his manner and speech had made upon him; declaring the resolution he there formed to be an abolitionist; telling how often he had spoken of the circumstance, and the deep concern he had ever since felt to know what had become of him; and whether he had carried out the purpose to make his escape, as in the woods he declared he would do. “Ever since that morning,” said Mr. Listwell, “you have seldom been absent from my mind, and though now I did not dare to hope that I should ever see you again, I have often wished that such might be my fortune; for, from that hour, your face seemed to be daguerreotyped on my memory.”15

Y7870-Douglass.indb 27

9/1/21 4:16 PM

28

THE HEROIC SLAVE

Madison looked quite astonished, and felt amazed at the narration to which he had listened. After recovering himself he said, “I well remember that morning, and the bitter anguish that wrung my heart; I will state the occasion of it. I had, on the previous Saturday, suffered a cruel lashing; had been tied up to the limb of a tree, with my feet chained together, and a heavy iron bar placed between my ankles. Thus suspended, I received on my naked back forty stripes, and was kept in this distressing position three or four hours, and was then let down, only to have my torture increased; for my bleeding back, gashed by the cow-skin, was washed by the overseer with old brine, partly to augment my suffering, and partly, as he said, to prevent inflammation. My crime was that I had stayed longer at the mill, the day previous, than it was thought I ought to have done, which, I assured my master and the overseer, was no fault of mine; but no excuses were allowed. ‘Hold your tongue, you impudent rascal,’ met my every explanation. Slave-holders are so imperious when their passions are excited, as to construe every word of the slave into insolence. I could do nothing but submit to the agonizing infliction. Smarting still from the wounds, as well as from the consciousness of being whipt for no cause, I took advantage of the absence of my master, who had gone to church, to spend the time in the woods, and brood over my wretched lot. Oh, sir, I remember it well,—and can never forget it.” “But this was five years ago; where have you been since?” “I will try to tell you,” said Madison. “Just four weeks after that Sabbath morning, I gathered up the few rags of clothing I had, and started, as I supposed, for the North and for freedom. I must not stop to describe my feelings on taking this step. It seemed like taking a leap into the dark. The thought of leaving my poor wife and two little children caused me indescribable anguish; but consoling myself with the reflection that once free, I could, possibly, devise ways and means to gain their freedom also, I nerved myself up to make the attempt.16 I started, but ill-luck attended me; for after being out a whole week, strange to say, I still found myself on my master’s grounds; the third night after being out, a season of clouds and rain set in, wholly preventing me from seeing the North Star, which I had trusted as my guide, not dreaming that clouds might intervene between us. “This circumstance was fatal to my project, for in losing my star, I lost my way; so when I supposed I was far towards the North, and had almost gained my freedom, I discovered myself at the very point from which I had started. It was a severe trial, for I arrived at home in great destitution;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 28

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

29

my feet were sore, and in travelling in the dark, I had dashed my foot against a stump, and started a nail, and lamed myself. I was wet and cold; one week had exhausted all my stores; and when I landed on my master’s plantation, with all my work to do over again,—hungry, tired, lame, and bewildered,—I almost cursed the day that I was born. In this extremity I approached the quarters. I did so stealthily, although in my desperation I hardly cared whether I was discovered or not. Peeping through the rents of the quarters, I saw my fellow-slaves seated by a warm fire, merrily passing away the time, as though their hearts knew no sorrow. Although I envied their seeming contentment, all wretched as I was, I despised the cowardly acquiescence in their own degradation which it implied, and felt a kind of pride and glory in my own desperate lot. I dared not enter the quarters,—for where there is seeming contentment with slavery, there is certain treachery to freedom. I proceeded towards the great house, in the hope of catching a glimpse of my poor wife, whom I knew might be trusted with my secrets even on the scaffold. Just as I reached the fence which divided the field from the garden, I saw a woman in the yard, who in the darkness I took to be my wife; but a nearer approach told me it was not she. I was about to speak; had I done so, I would not have been here this night; for an alarm would have been sounded, and the hunters been put on my track. Here were hunger, cold, thirst, disappointment, and chagrin, confronted only by the dim hope of liberty. I tremble to think of that dreadful hour. To face the deadly cannon’s mouth in warm blood unterrified, is, I think, a small achievement, compared with a conflict like this with gaunt starvation. The gnawings of hunger conquers by degrees, till all that a man has he would give in exchange for a single crust of bread. Thank God, I was not quite reduced to this extremity. “Happily for me, before the fatal moment of utter despair, my good wife made her appearance in the yard. It was she; I knew her step. All was well now. I was, however, afraid to speak lest I should frighten her. Yet speak I did; and, to my great joy, my voice was known. Our meeting can be more easily imagined than described. For a time hunger, thirst, weariness, and lameness were forgotten. But it was soon necessary for her to return to the house. She being a house-servant, her absence from the kitchen, if discovered, might have excited suspicion. Our parting was like tearing the flesh from my bones; yet it was the part of wisdom for her to go. She left me with the purpose of meeting me at midnight in the very forest where you last saw me. She knew the place well, as one of my melancholy resorts, and could easily find it, though the night was dark.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 29

9/1/21 4:16 PM

30

THE HEROIC SLAVE

“I hastened away, therefore, and concealed myself, to await the arrival of my good angel. As I lay there among the leaves, I was strongly tempted to return again to the house of my master and give myself up; but remembering my solemn pledge on that memorable Sunday morning, I was able to linger out the two long hours between ten and midnight. I may well call them long hours. I have endured much hardship; I have encountered many perils; but the anxiety of those two hours, was the bitterest I ever experienced. True to her word, my wife came laden with provisions, and we sat down on the side of a log, at that dark and lonesome hour of the night. I cannot say we talked; our feelings were too great for that; yet we came to an understanding that I should make the woods my home, for if I gave myself up, I should be whipped and sold away; and if I started for the North, I should leave a wife doubly dear to me. We mutually determined, therefore, that I should remain in the vicinity. In the dismal swamps I lived, sir, five long years,—a cave for my home during the day.17 I wandered about at night with the wolf and the bear,—sustained by the promise that my good Susan would meet me in the pine woods at least once a week. This promise was redeemed, I assure you, to the letter, greatly to my relief. I had partly become contented with my mode of life, and had made up my mind to spend my days there; but the wilderness that sheltered me thus long took fire, and refused longer to be my hiding-place. “I will not harrow up your feelings by portraying the terrific scene of this awful conflagration. There is nothing to which I can liken it. It was horribly and indescribably grand. The whole world seemed on fire, and it appeared to me that the day of judgment had come; that the burning bowels of the earth had burst forth, and that the end of all things was at hand. Bears and wolves, scorched from their mysterious hiding-places in the earth, and all the wild inhabitants of the untrodden forest, filled with a common dismay, ran forth, yelling, howling, bewildered amidst the smoke and flame. The very heavens seemed to rain down fire through the towering trees; it was by the merest chance that I escaped the devouring element. Running before it, and stopping occasionally to take breath, I looked back to behold its frightful ravages, and to drink in its savage magnificence. It was awful, thrilling, solemn, beyond compare. When aided by the fitful wind, the merciless tempest of fire swept on, sparkling, creaking, cracking, curling, roaring, out-doing in its dreadful splendor a thousand thunderstorms at once. From tree to tree it leaped, swallowing them up in its lurid, baleful glare; and leaving them leafless, limbless, charred, and lifeless behind. The scene was overwhelming, stunning,—

Y7870-Douglass.indb 30

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

31

nothing was spared,—cattle, tame and wild, herds of swine and of deer, wild beasts of every name and kind,—huge night-birds, bats, and owls, that had retired to their homes in lofty tree-tops to rest, perished in that fiery storm. The long-winged buzzard and croaking raven mingled their dismal cries with those of the countless myriads of small birds that rose up to the skies, and were lost to the sight in clouds of smoke and flame. Oh, I shudder when I think of it! Many a poor wandering fugitive, who, like myself, had sought among wild beasts the mercy denied by our fellow men, saw, in helpless consternation, his dwelling-place and city of refuge reduced to ashes forever.18 It was this grand conflagration that drove me hither; I ran alike from fire and from slavery.” After a slight pause, (for both speaker and hearers were deeply moved by the above recital,) Mr. Listwell, addressing Madison, said, “If it does not weary you too much, do tell us something of your journeyings since this disastrous burning,—we are deeply interested in everything which can throw light on the hardships of persons escaping from slavery; we could hear you talk all night; are there no incidents that you could relate of your travels hither? or are they such that you do not like to mention them?” “For the most part, sir, my course has been uninterrupted; and, considering the circumstances, at times even pleasant. I have suffered little for want of food; but I need not tell you how I got it. Your moral code may differ from mine, as your customs and usages are different. The fact is, sir, during my flight, I felt myself robbed by society of all my just rights; that I was in an enemy’s land, who sought both my life and my liberty. They had transformed me into a brute; made merchandise of my body, and, for all the purposes of my flight, turned day into night,—and guided by my own necessities, and in contempt of their conventionalities, I did not scruple to take bread where I could get it.” “And just there you were right,” said Mr. Listwell; “I once had doubts on this point myself, but a conversation with Gerrit Smith,19 (a man, by the way, that I wish you could see, for he is a devoted friend of your race, and I know he would receive you gladly,) put an end to all my doubts on this point. But do not let me interrupt you.” “I had but one narrow escape during my whole journey,” said Madison. “Do let us hear of it,” said Mr. Listwell. “Two weeks ago,” continued Madison, “after travelling all night, I was overtaken by daybreak, in what seemed to me an almost interminable wood. I deemed it unsafe to go farther, and, as usual, I looked around for a suitable tree in which to spend the day. I liked one with a bushy top, and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 31

9/1/21 4:16 PM

32

THE HEROIC SLAVE

found one just to my mind. Up I climbed, and hiding myself as well as I could, I, with this strap, (pulling one out of his old coat-pocket,) lashed myself to a bough, and flattered myself that I should get a good night’s sleep that day; but in this I was soon disappointed. I had scarcely got fastened to my natural hammock, when I heard the voices of a number of persons, apparently approaching the part of the woods where I was. Upon my word, sir, I dreaded more these human voices than I should have done those of wild beasts. I was at a loss to know what to do. If I descended, I should probably be discovered by the men; and if they had dogs I should, doubtless, be ‘treed.’ It was an anxious moment, but hardships and dangers have been the accompaniments of my life; and have, perhaps, imparted to me a certain hardness of character, which, to some extent, adapts me to them. In my present predicament, I decided to hold my place in the tree-top, and abide the consequences. But here I must disappoint you; for the men, who were all colored, halted at least a hundred yards from me, and began with their axes, in right good earnest, to attack the trees. The sound of their laughing axes was like the report of as many well-charged pistols. By and by there came down at least a dozen trees with a terrible crash. They leaped upon the fallen trees with an air of victory. I could see no dog with them, and felt myself comparatively safe, though I could not forget the possibility that some freak or fancy might bring the axe a little nearer my dwelling than comported with my safety. “There was no sleep for me that day, and I wished for night. You may imagine that the thought of having the tree attacked under me was far from agreeable, and that it very easily kept me on the look-out. The day was not without diversion. The men at work seemed to be a gay set; and they would often make the woods resound with that uncontrolled laughter for which we, as a race, are remarkable. I held my place in the tree till sunset,—saw the men put on their jackets to be off. I observed that all left the ground except one, whom I saw sitting on the side of a stump, with his head bowed, and his eyes apparently fixed on the ground. I became interested in him. After sitting in the position to which I have alluded ten or fifteen minutes, he left the stump, walked directly towards the tree in which I was secreted, and halted almost under the same. He stood for a moment and looked around, deliberately and reverently took off his hat, by which I saw that he was a man in the evening of life, slightly bald and quite gray. After laying down his hat carefully, he knelt and prayed aloud, and such a prayer, the most fervent, earnest, and solemn, to which I think I ever listened. After reverently addressing the Almighty, as the all-wise, all-good, and the common Father of all mankind, he besought God for

Y7870-Douglass.indb 32

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

33

grace, for strength, to bear up under, and to endure, as a good soldier, all the hardships and trials which beset the journey of life, and to enable him to live in a manner which accorded with the gospel of Christ. His soul now broke out in humble supplication for deliverance from bondage. ‘O thou,’ said he, ‘that hearest the raven’s cry,20 take pity on poor me! O deliver me! O deliver me! in mercy, O God, deliver me from the chains and manifold hardships of slavery! With thee, O Father, all things are possible.21 Thou canst stand and measure the earth. Thou hast beheld and drove asunder the nations,—all power is in thy hand,—thou didst say of old, “I have seen the affliction of my people, and am come to deliver them,”22—‘Oh look down upon our afflictions, and have mercy upon us.’ But I cannot repeat his prayer, nor can I give you an idea of its deep pathos. I had given but little attention to religion, and had but little faith in it; yet, as the old man prayed, I felt almost like coming down and kneel by his side, and mingle my broken complaint with his. “He had already gained my confidence; as how could it be otherwise? I knew enough of religion to know that the man who prays in secret is far more likely to be sincere than he who loves to pray standing in the street, or in the great congregation. When he arose from his knees, like another Zacheus,23 I came down from the tree. He seemed a little alarmed at first, but I told him my story, and the good man embraced me in his arms, and assured me of his sympathy. “I was now about out of provisions, and thought I might safely ask him to help me replenish my store. He said he had no money; but if he had, he would freely give it me. I told him I had one dollar; it was all the money I had in the world. I gave it to him, and asked him to purchase some crackers and cheese, and to kindly bring me the balance; that I would remain in or near that place, and would come to him on his return, if he would whistle. He was gone only about an hour. Meanwhile, from some cause or other, I know not what, (but as you shall see very wisely,) I changed my place. On his return I started to meet him; but it seemed as if the shadow of approaching danger fell upon my spirit, and checked my progress. In a very few minutes, closely on the heels of the old man, I distinctly saw fourteen men, with something like guns in their hands.” “Oh! the old wretch!” exclaimed Mrs. Listwell, “he had betrayed you, had he?” “I think not,” said Madison, “I cannot believe that the old man was to blame. He probably went into a store, asked for the articles for which I sent, and presented the bill I gave him; and it is so unusual for slaves in the country to have money, that fact, doubtless, excited suspicion, and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 33

9/1/21 4:16 PM

34

THE HEROIC SLAVE

gave rise to inquiry. I can easily believe that the truthfulness of the old man’s character compelled him to disclose the facts; and thus were these blood-thirsty men put on my track. Of course I did not present myself; but hugged my hiding-place securely. If discovered and attacked, I resolved to sell my life as dearly as possible.24 “After searching about the woods silently for a time, the whole company gathered around the old man; one charged him with lying, and called him an old villain; said he was a thief; charged him with stealing money; said if he did not instantly tell where he got it, they would take the shirt from his old back, and give him thirty-nine lashes. “ ‘I did not steal the money,’ said the old man, ‘it was given me, as I told you at the store; and if the man who gave it me is not here, it is not my fault.’ “ ‘Hush! you lying old rascal; we’ll make you smart for it. You shall not leave this spot until you have told where you got that money.’ “They now took hold of him, and began to strip him; while others went to get sticks with which to beat him. I felt, at the moment, like rushing out in the midst of them; but considering that the old man would be whipped the more for having aided a fugitive slave, and that, perhaps, in the melée25 he might be killed outright, I disobeyed this impulse. They tied him to a tree, and began to whip him. My own flesh crept at every blow, and I seem to hear the old man’s piteous cries even now. They laid thirty-nine lashes on his bare back, and were going to repeat that number, when one of the company besought his comrades to desist. ‘You’ll kill the d——d old scoundrel! You’ve already whipt a dollar’s worth out of him, even if he stole it!’ ‘O yes,’ said another, ‘let him down. He’ll never tell us another lie, I’ll warrant ye!’ With this, one of the company untied the old man, and bid him go about his business. “The old man left, but the company remained as much as an hour, scouring the woods. Round and round they went, turning up the underbrush, and peering about like so many bloodhounds. Two or three times they came within six feet of where I lay. I tell you I held my stick with a firmer grasp than I did in coming up to your house to-night. I expected to level one of them at least. Fortunately, however, I eluded their pursuit, and they left me alone in the woods. “My last dollar was now gone, and you may well suppose I felt the loss of it; but the thought of being once again free to pursue my journey, prevented that depression which a sense of destitution causes; so swinging my little bundle on my back, I caught a glimpse of the Great Bear (which ever points the way to my beloved star,) and I started again on my jour-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 34

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

35

ney.26 What I lost in money I made up at a hen-roost that same night, upon which I fortunately came.” “But you did’nt eat your food raw? How did you cook it?” said Mrs. Listwell. “O no, Madam,” said Madison, turning to his little bundle;—”I had the means of cooking.” Here he took out of his bundle an old-fashioned tinder-box, and taking up a piece of a file, which he brought with him, he struck it with a heavy flint, and brought out at least a dozen sparks at once. “I have had this old box,” said he, “more than five years. It is the only property saved from the fire in the dismal swamp. It has done me good service. It has given me the means of broiling many a chicken!” It seemed quite a relief to Mrs. Listwell to know that Madison had, at least, lived upon cooked food. Women have a perfect horror of eating uncooked food. By this time thoughts of what was best to be done about getting Madison to Canada, began to trouble Mr. Listwell; for the laws of Ohio were very stringent against any one who should aid, or who were found aiding a slave to escape through that State.27 A citizen, for the simple act of taking a fugitive slave in his carriage, had just been stripped of all his property, and thrown penniless upon the world. Notwithstanding this, Mr. Listwell was determined to see Madison safely on his way to Canada. “Give yourself no uneasiness,” said he to Madison, “for if it cost my farm, I shall see you safely out of the States, and on your way to a land of liberty. Thank God that there is such a land so near us! You will spend to-morrow with us, and to-morrow night I will take you in my carriage to the Lake.28 Once upon that, and you are safe.” “Thank you! thank you,” said the fugitive; “I will commit myself to your care.” For the first time during five years, Madison enjoyed the luxury of resting his limbs on a comfortable bed, and inside a human habitation. Looking at the white sheets, he said to Mr. Listwell, “What, sir! you don’t mean that I shall sleep in that bed?” “Oh yes, oh yes.” After Mr. Listwell left the room, Madison said he really hesitated whether or not he should lie on the floor; for that was far more comfortable and inviting than any bed to which he had been used. * * * * * * We pass over the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and fears, the plans and purposes, that revolved in the mind of Madison during the day that

Y7870-Douglass.indb 35

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

36

he was secreted at the house of Mr. Listwell. The reader will be content to know that nothing occurred to endanger his liberty, or to excite alarm. Many were the little attentions bestowed upon him in his quiet retreat and hiding-place. In the evening, Mr. Listwell, after treating Madison to a new suit of winter clothes, and replenishing his exhausted purse with five dollars, all in silver, brought out his two-horse wagon, well provided with buffaloes, and silently started off with him to Cleveland.29 They arrived there without interruption, a few minutes before sunrise the next morning. Fortunately the steamer Admiral lay at the wharf, and was to start for Canada at nine o’clock.30 Here the last anticipated danger was surmounted. It was feared that just at this point the hunters of men might be on the look-out, and, possibly, pounce upon their victim. Mr. Listwell saw the captain of the boat; cautiously sounded him on the matter of carrying liberty-loving passengers, before he introduced his precious charge. This done, Madison was conducted on board. With usual generosity this true subject of the emancipating queen31 welcomed Madison, and assured him that he should be safely landed in Canada, free of charge. Madison now felt himself no more a piece of merchandise, but a passenger, and, like any other passenger, going about his business, carrying with him what belonged to him, and nothing which rightfully belonged to anybody else. Wrapped in his new winter suit, snug and comfortable, a pocket full of silver, safe from his pursuers, embarked for a free country, Madison gave every sign of sincere gratitude, and bade his kind benefactor farewell, with such a grip of the hand as bespoke a heart full of honest manliness, and a soul that knew how to appreciate kindness. It need scarcely be said that Mr. Listwell was deeply moved by the gratitude and friendship he had excited in a nature so noble as that of the fugitive. He went to his home that day with a joy and gratification which knew no bounds. He had done something “to deliver the spoiled out of the hands of the spoiler,”32 he had given bread to the hungry, and clothes to the naked;33 he had befriended a man to whom the laws of his country forbade all friendship,—and in proportion to the odds against his righteous deed, was the delightful satisfaction that gladdened his heart. On reaching home, he exclaimed, “He is safe,—he is safe,—he is safe,”—and the cup of his joy was shared by his excellent lady. The following letter was received from Madison a few days after: “WINDSOR, CANADA WEST, DEC. 16, 1840.

My dear Friend,—for such you truly are:—

Y7870-Douglass.indb 36

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

37

Madison is out of the woods at last; I nestle in the mane of the British lion, protected by his mighty paw from the talons and the beak of the American eagle.34 I AM FREE, and breathe an atmosphere too pure for slaves, slave-hunters, or slave-holders. My heart is full. As many thanks to you, sir, and to your kind lady, as there are pebbles on the shores of Lake Erie; and may the blessing of God rest upon you both. You will never be forgotten by your profoundly grateful friend, MADISON WASHINGTON.”

PART III. —His head was with his heart, And that was far away! Childe Harold.35 Just upon the edge of the great road from Petersburg, Virginia, to Richmond,36 and only about fifteen miles from the latter place, there stands a somewhat ancient and famous public tavern, quite notorious in its better days, as being the grand resort for most of the leading gamblers, horse-racers, cock-fighters, and slave-traders from all the country round about. This old rookery, the nucleus of all sorts of birds, mostly those of ill omen, has, like everything else peculiar to Virginia, lost much of its ancient consequence and splendor; yet it keeps up some appearance of gaiety and high life, and is still frequented, even by respectable travellers, who are unacquainted with its past history and present condition.37 Its fine old portico looks well at a distance, and gives the building an air of grandeur. A nearer view, however, does little to sustain this pretension. The house is large, and its style imposing, but time and dissipation, unfailing in their results, have made ineffaceable marks upon it, and it must, in the common course of events, soon be numbered with the things that were. The gloomy mantle of ruin is, already, out[/]spread to envelop it, and its remains, even but now remind one of a human skull, after the flesh has mingled with the earth. Old hats and rags fill the places in the upper windows once occupied by large panes of glass, and the moulding boards along the roofing have dropped off from their places, leaving holes and crevices in the rented wall for bats and swallows to build their nests in. The platform of the portico, which fronts the highway is a rickety affair, its planks are loose, and in some places entirely gone, leaving effective man[-]traps in their stead for nocturnal ramblers. The wooden pillars,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 37

9/1/21 4:16 PM

38

THE HEROIC SLAVE

which once supported it, but which now hang as encumbrances, are all rotten, and tremble with the touch. A part of the stable, a fine old structure in its day, which has given comfortable shelter to hundreds of the noblest steeds of “the Old Dominion”38 at once, was blown down many years ago, and never has been, and probably never will be, rebuilt. The doors of the barn are in wretched condition; they will shut with a little human strength to help their worn out hinges, but not otherwise. The side of the great building seen from the road is much discolored in sundry places by slops poured from the upper windows, rendering it unsightly and offensive in other respects. Three or four great dogs, looking as dull and gloomy as the mansion itself, lie stretched out along the door-sills under the portico; and double the number of loafers, some of them completely rum-ripe, and others ripening, dispose themselves like so many sentinels about the front of the house. These latter understand the science of scraping acquaintance to perfection. They know every-body, and almost every-body knows them. Of course, as their title implies, they have no regular employment. They are (to use an expressive phrase) hangers on,39 or still better, they are what sailors would denominate holders-on to the slack,40 in every-body’s mess, and in no-body’s watch. They are, however, as good as the newspaper for the events of the day, and they sell their knowledge almost as cheap. Money they seldom have; yet they always have capital the most reliable. They make their way with a succeeding traveller by intelligence gained from a preceding one. All the great names of Virginia they know by heart, and have seen their owners often. The history of the house is folded in their lips, and they rattle off stories in connection with it, equal to the guides at Dryburgh Abbey.41 He must be a shrewd man, and well skilled in the art of evasion, who gets out of the hands of these fellows without being at the expense of a treat. It was at this old tavern, while on a second visit to the State of Virginia in 1841, that Mr. Listwell, unacquainted with the fame of the place, turned aside, about sunset, to pass the night. Riding up to the house, he had scarcely dismounted, when one of the half dozen bar-room fraternity met and addressed him in a manner exceedingly bland and accommodating. “Fine evening, sir.” “Very fine,” said Mr. Listwell. “This is a tavern, I believe?” “O yes, sir, yes; although you may think it looks a little the worse for wear, it was once as good a house as any in Virginy. I make no doubt if ye spend the night here, you’ll think it a good house yet; for there aint a more accommodating man in the country than you’ll find the landlord.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 38

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

39

Listwell. “The most I want is a good bed for myself, and a full manger for my horse. If I get these, I shall be quite satisfied.” Loafer. “Well, I alloys like to hear a gentleman talk for his horse; and just becase the horse can’t talk for itself. A man that don’t care about his beast, and don’t look arter it when he’s travelling, aint much in my eye anyhow. Now, sir, I likes a horse, and I’ll guarantee your horse will be taken good care on here. That old stable, for all you see it looks so shabby now, once sheltered the great Eclipse, when he run here agin Batchelor and Jumping Jemmy.42 Them was fast horses, but he beat ’em both.” Listwell. “Indeed.” Loafer. “Well, I rather reckon you’ve travelled a right smart distance to-day, from the look of your horse?” Listwell. “Forty miles only.” Loafer. “Well! I’ll be darned if that aint a pretty good only. Mister, that beast of yours is a singed cat, I warrant you. I never see’d a creature like that that was’nt good on the road. You’ve come about forty miles, then?” Listwell. “Yes, yes, and a pretty good pace at that.” Loafer. “You’re somewhat in a hurry, then, I make no doubt? I reckon I could guess if I would, what you’re going to Richmond for? It would’nt be much of a guess either; for it’s rumored hereabouts, that there’s to be the greatest sale of niggers at Richmond to-morrow that has taken place there in a long time; and I’ll be bound you’re a going there to have a hand in it.” Listwell. “Why, you must think, then, that there’s money to be made at that business?” Loafer. “Well, ’pon my honor, sir, I never made any that way myself; but it stands to reason that it’s a money making business; for almost all other business in Virginia is dropped to engage in this. One thing is sartain, I never see’d a nigger-buyer yet that had’nt a plenty of money, and he was’nt as free with it as water. I has known one on ’em to treat as high as twenty times in a night; and, ginerally speaking, they’s men of edication, and knows all about the government. The fact is, sir, I alloys like to hear ’em talk, bekase I alloys can learn something from them.” Listwell. “What may I call your name, sir?” Loafer. “Well, now, they calls me Wilkes. I’m known all around by the gentlemen that comes here. They all knows old Wilkes.” Listwell. “Well, Wilkes, you seem to be acquainted here, and I see you have a strong liking for a horse. Be so good as to speak a kind word for mine to the hostler to-night, and you’ll not lose anything by it.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 39

9/1/21 4:16 PM

40

THE HEROIC SLAVE

Loafer. “Well, sir, I see you don’t say much, but you’ve got an insight into things. It’s alloys wise to get the good will of them that’s acquainted about a tavern; for a man don’t know when he goes into a house what may happen, or how much he may need a friend.” Here the loafer gave Mr. Listwell a significant grin, which expressed a sort of triumphant pleasure at having, as he supposed, by his tact succeeded in placing so fine appearing a gentleman under obligations to him. The pleasure, however, was mutual; for there was something so insinuating in the glance of this loquacious customer, that Mr. Listwell was very glad to get quit of him, and to do so more successfully, he ordered his supper to be brought to him in his private room, private to the eye, but not to the ear. This room was directly over the bar, and the plastering being off, nothing but pine boards and naked laths separated him from the disagreeable company below,—he could easily hear what was said in the bar-room, and was rather glad of the advantage it afforded, for, as you shall see, it furnished him important hints as to the manner and deportment he should assume during his stay at that tavern. Mr. Listwell says he had got into his room but a few moments, when he heard the officious Wilkes below, in a tone of disappointment, exclaim, “Whar’s that gentleman?” Wilkes was evidently expecting to meet with his friend at the bar-room, on his return, and had no doubt of his doing the handsome thing. “He has gone to his room,” answered the landlord, “and has ordered his supper to be brought to him.” Here some one shouted out, “Who is he, Wilkes? Where’s he going?” “Well, now, I’ll be hanged if I know; but I’m willing to make any man a bet of this old hat agin a five dollar bill, that that gent is as full of money as a dog is of fleas. He’s going down to Richmond to buy niggers, I make no doubt. He’s no fool, I warrant ye.” “Well, he acts d——d strange,” said another, “anyhow. I likes to see a man, when he comes up to a tavern, to come straight into the bar-room, and show that he’s a man among men.43 Nobody was going to bite him.” “Now, I don’t blame him a bit for not coming in here. That man knows his business, and means to take care on his money,” answered Wilkes. “Wilkes, you’re a fool. You only say that, becase you hope to get a few coppers out on him.” “You only measure my corn by your half-bushel, I won’t say that you’re only mad becase I got the chance of speaking to him first.” “O Wilkes! you’re known here. You’ll praise up any body that will give you a copper; besides, ’tis my opinion that that fellow who took his

Y7870-Douglass.indb 40

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

41

long slab-sides up stairs, for all the world just like a half-scared woman, afraid to look honest men in the face, is a Northerner, and as mean as dish-water.” “Now what will you bet of that,” said Wilkes. The speaker said, “I make no bets with you, ’kase you can get that fellow up stairs there to say anything.” “Well,” said Wilkes, “I am willing to bet any man in the company that that gentleman is a nigger-buyer. He did’nt tell me so right down, but I reckon I knows enough about men to give a pretty clean guess as to what they are arter.” The dispute as to who Mr. Listwell was, what his business, where he was going, etc., was kept up with much animation for some time, and more than once threatened a serious disturbance of the peace. Wilkes had his friends as well as his opponents. After this sharp debate, the company amused themselves by drinking whiskey, and telling stories. The latter consisting of quarrels, fights, rencontres,44 and duels, in which distinguished persons of that neighborhood, and frequenters of that house, had been actors. Some of these stories were frightful enough, and were told, too, with a relish which bespoke the pleasure of the parties with the horrid scenes they portrayed. It would not be proper here to give the reader any idea of the vulgarity and dark profanity which rolled, as “a sweet morsel,”45 under these corrupt tongues. A more brutal set of creatures, perhaps, never congregated. Disgusted, and a little alarmed withal, Mr. Listwell, who was not accustomed to such entertainment, at length retired, but not to sleep. He was too much wrought upon by what he had heard to rest quietly, and what snatches of sleep he got, were interrupted by dreams which were anything than pleasant. At eleven o’clock, there seemed to be several hundreds of persons crowding into the house. A loud and confused clamour, cursing and cracking of whips, and the noise of chains startled him from his bed; for a moment he would have given the half of his farm in Ohio to have been at home. This uproar was kept up with undulating course, till near morning. There was loud laughing,—loud singing,—loud cursing,—and yet there seemed to be weeping and mourning in the midst of all. Mr. Listwell said he had heard enough during the forepart of the night to convince him that a buyer of men and women stood the best chance of being respected. And he, therefore, thought it best to say nothing which might undo the favorable opinion that had been formed of him in the bar-room by at least one of the fraternity that swarmed about it. While he

Y7870-Douglass.indb 41

9/1/21 4:16 PM

42

THE HEROIC SLAVE

would not avow himself a purchaser of slaves, he deemed it not prudent to disavow it. He felt that he might, properly, refuse to cast such a pearl before parties which, to him, were worse than swine.46 To reveal himself, and to impart a knowledge of his real character and sentiments would, to say the least, be imparting intelligence with the certainty of seeing it and himself both abused. Mr. Listwell confesses, that this reasoning did not altogether satisfy his conscience, for, hating slavery as he did, and regarding it to be the immediate duty of every man to cry out against it, “without compromise and without concealment,”47 it was hard for him to admit to himself the possibility of circumstances wherein a man might, properly, hold his tongue on the subject. Having as little of the spirit of a martyr as Erasmus,48 he concluded, like the latter, that it was wiser to trust the mercy of God for his soul, than the humanity of slave-traders for his body. Bodily fear, not conscientious scruples, prevailed. In this spirit he rose early in the morning, manifesting no surprise at what he had heard during the night. His quondam49 friend was soon at his elbow, boring him with all sorts of questions. All, however, directed to find out his character, business, residence, purposes, and destination. With the most perfect appearance of good nature and carelessness, Mr. Listwell evaded these meddlesome inquiries, and turned conversation to general topics, leaving himself and all that specially pertained to him, out of discussion. Disengaging himself from their troublesome companionship, he made his way towards an old bowling-alley, which was connected with the house, and which, like all the rest, was in very bad repair. On reaching the alley Mr. Listwell saw, for the first time in his life, a slave-gang on their way to market. A sad sight truly. Here were one hundred and thirty human beings,—children of a common Creator—guilty of no crime—men and women, with hearts, minds, and deathless spirits, chained and fettered, and bound for the market, in a christian country,— in a country boasting of its liberty, independence, and high civilization! Humanity converted into merchandise, and linked in iron bands, with no regard to decency or humanity! All sizes, ages, and sexes, mothers, fathers, daughters, brothers, sisters,—all huddled together, on their way to market to be sold and separated from home, and from each other forever. And all to fill the pockets of men too lazy to work for an honest living, and who gain their fortune by plundering the helpless, and trafficking in the souls and sinews of men. As he gazed upon this revolting and heartrending scene, our informant said he almost doubted the existence of a God of justice! And he stood wondering that the earth did not open and swallow up such wickedness.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 42

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

43

In the midst of these reflections, and while running his eye up and down the fettered ranks, he met the glance of one whose face he thought he had seen before. To be resolved, he moved towards the spot. It was MADISON WASHINGTON! Here was a scene for the pencil! Had Mr. Listwell been confronted by one risen from the dead, he could not have been more appalled. He was completely stunned. A thunderbolt could not have struck him more dumb. He stood, for a few moments, as motionless as one petrified; collecting himself, he at length exclaimed, “Madison! is that you?” The noble fugitive, but little less astonished than himself, answered cheerily, “O yes, sir, they’ve got me again.” Thoughtless of consequences for the moment, Mr. Listwell ran up to his old friend, placing his hands upon his shoulders, and looked him in the face! Speechless they stood gazing at each other as if to be doubly resolved that there was no mistake about the matter, till Madison motioned his friend away, intimating a fear lest the keepers should find him there, and suspect him of tampering with the slaves. “They will soon be out to look after us. You can come when they go to breakfast, and I will tell you all.” Pleased with this arrangement, Mr. Listwell passed out of the alley; but only just in time to save himself, for, while near the door, he observed three men making their way to the alley. The thought occurred to him to await their arrival, as the best means of diverting the ever ready suspicions of the guilty. While the scene between Mr. Listwell and his friend Madison was going on, the other slaves stood as mute spectators,—at a loss to know what all this could mean. As he left, he heard the man chained to Madison ask, “Who is that gentleman?” “He is a friend of mine. I cannot tell you now. Suffice it to say he is a friend. You shall hear more of him before long, but mark me! whatever shall pass between that gentleman and me, in your hearing, I pray you will say nothing about it. We are all chained here together,—ours is a common lot; and that gentleman is not less your friend than mine.” At these words, all mysterious as they were, the unhappy company gave signs of satisfaction and hope. It seems that Madison, by that mesmeric power which is the invariable accompaniment of genius, had already won the confidence of the gang, and was a sort of general-in-chief among them. By this time the keepers arrived. A horrid trio, well fitted for their demoniacal work. Their uncombed hair came down over foreheads “villainously low,”50 and with eyes, mouths, and noses to match. “Hallo! hallo!” they growled out as they entered. “Are you all there?”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 43

9/1/21 4:16 PM

44

THE HEROIC SLAVE

“All here,” said Madison. “Well, well, that’s right! your journey will soon be over. You’ll be in Richmond by eleven to-day, and then you’ll have an easy time on it.” “I say, gal, what in the devil are you crying about?” said one of them. “I’ll give you something to cry about, if you don’t mind.” This was said to a girl, apparently not more than twelve years old, who had been weeping bitterly. She had, probably, left behind her a loving mother, affectionate sisters, brothers, and friends, and her tears were but the natural expression of her sorrow, and the only solace. But the dealers in human flesh have no respect for such sorrow. They look upon it as a protest against their cruel injustice, and they are prompt to punish it. This is a puzzle not easily solved. How came he here? what can I do for him? may I not even now be in some way compromised in this affair? were thoughts that troubled Mr. Listwell, and made him eager for the promised opportunity of speaking to Madison. The bell now sounded for breakfast, and keepers and drivers, with pistols and bowie-knives gleaming from their belts, hurried in, as if to get the best places. Taking the chance now afforded, Mr. Listwell hastened back to the bowling-alley. Reaching Madison, he said, “Now do tell me all about the matter. Do you know me?” “Oh, yes,” said Madison, “I know you well, and shall never forget you nor that cold and dreary night you gave me shelter. I must be short,” he continued, “for they’ll soon be out again. This, then, is the story in brief. On reaching Canada, and getting over the excitement of making my escape, sir, my thoughts turned to my poor wife, who had well deserved my love by her virtuous fidelity and undying affection for me. I could not bear the thought of leaving her in the cruel jaws of slavery, without making an effort to rescue her. First, I tried to get money to buy her; but oh! the process was too slow. I despaired of accomplishing it. She was in all my thoughts by day, and my dreams by night. At times I could almost hear her voice, saying, ‘O Madison! Madison! will you then leave me here? can you leave me here to die? No! no! you will come! you will come!’ I was wretched. I lost my appetite. I could neither work, eat, nor sleep, till I resolved to hazard my own liberty, to gain that of my wife! But I must be short. Six weeks ago I reached my old master’s place. I laid about the neighborhood nearly a week, watching my chance, and, finally, I ventured upon the desperate attempt to reach my poor wife’s room by means of a ladder. I reached the window, but the noise in raising it frightened my wife, and she screamed and fainted. I took her in my arms, and was de-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 44

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

45

scending the ladder, when the dogs began to bark furiously, and before I could get to the woods the white folks were roused. The cool night air soon restored my wife, and she readily recognized me. We made the best of our way to the woods, but it was now too late,—the dogs were after us as though they would have torn us to pieces. It was all over with me now! My old master and his two sons ran out with loaded rifles, and before we were out of gunshot, our ears were assailed with ‘Stop! stop! or be shot down.’ Nevertheless we ran on. Seeing that we gave no heed to their calls, they fired, and my poor wife fell by my side dead, while I received but a slight flesh wound. I now became desperate, and stood my ground, and awaited their attack over her dead body. They rushed upon me, with their rifles in hand. I parried their blows, and fought them ’till I was knocked down and overpowered.” “Oh! it was madness to have returned,” said Mr. Listwell. “Sir, I could not be free with the galling thought that my poor wife was still a slave. With her in slavery, my body, not my spirit, was free. I was taken to the house,—chained to a ring-bolt,—my wounds dressed. I was kept there three days. All the slaves, for miles around, were brought to see me. Many slave-holders came with their slaves, using me as proof of the completeness of their power, and of the impossibility of slaves getting away. I was taunted, jeered at, and berated by them, in a manner that pierced me to the soul. Thank God, I was able to smother my rage, and to bear it all with seeming composure. After my wounds were nearly healed, I was taken to a tree and stripped, and I received sixty lashes on my naked back. A few days after, I was sold to a slave-trader, and placed in this gang for the New Orleans market.”51 “Do you think your master would sell you to me?” “O no, sir! I was sold on condition of my being taken South. Their motive is revenge.” “Then, then,” said Mr. Listwell, “I fear I can do nothing for you. Put your trust in God, and bear your sad lot with the manly fortitude which becomes a man. I shall see you at Richmond, but don’t recognize me.” Saying this, Mr. Listwell handed Madison ten dollars; said a few words to the other slaves; received their hearty “God bless you,” and made his way to the house. Fearful of exciting suspicion by too long delay, our friend went to the breakfast table, with the air of one who half reproved the greediness of those who rushed in at the sound of the bell. A cup of coffee was all that he could manage. His feelings were too bitter and excited, and his heart

Y7870-Douglass.indb 45

9/1/21 4:16 PM

46

THE HEROIC SLAVE

was too full with the fate of poor Madison (whom he loved as well as admired) to relish his breakfast; and although he sat long after the company had left the table, he really did little more than change the position of his knife and fork. The strangeness of meeting again one whom he had met on two several occasions before, under extraordinary circumstances, was well calculated to suggest the idea that a supernatural power, a wakeful providence, or an inexorable fate, had linked their destiny together; and that no efforts of his could disentangle him from the mysterious web of circumstances which enfolded him. On leaving the table, Mr. Listwell nerved himself up and walked firmly into the bar-room. He was at once greeted again by that talkative chatter-box, Mr. Wilkes. “Them’s a likely set of niggers in the alley there,” said Wilkes. “Yes, they’re fine looking fellows, one of them I should like to purchase, and for him I would be willing to give a handsome sum.” Turning to one of his comrades, and with a grin of victory, Wilkes said, “Aha, Bill, did you hear that? I told you I know’d that gentleman wanted to buy niggers, and would bid as high as any purchaser in the market.” “Come, come,” said Listwell, “don’t be too loud in your praise, you are old enough to know that prices rise when purchasers are plenty.” “That’s a fact,” said Wilkes, “I see you knows the ropes—and there’s not a man in old Virginy whom I’d rather help to make a good bargain than you, sir.” Mr. Listwell here threw a dollar at Wilkes, (which the latter caught with a dexterous hand,) saying, “Take that for your kind good will.” Wilkes held up the dollar to his right eye, with a grin of victory, and turned to the morose grumbler in the corner who had questioned the liberality of a man of whom he knew nothing. Mr. Listwell now stood as well with the company as any other occupant of the bar-room. We pass over the hurry and bustle, the brutal vociferations of the slave-drivers in getting their unhappy gang in motion for Richmond; and we need not narrate every application of the lash to those who faltered in the journey. Mr. Listwell followed the train at a long distance, with a sad heart; and on reaching Richmond, left his horse at a hotel, and made his way to the wharf in the direction of which he saw the slave-coffle driven. He was just in time to see the whole company embark for New Orleans. The thought struck him that, while mixing with the multitude, he might do his friend Madison one last service, and he stept into a hardware store

Y7870-Douglass.indb 46

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

47

and purchased three strong files. These he took with him, and standing near the small boat, which lay in waiting to bear the company by parcels to the side of the brig that lay in the stream, he managed, as Madison passed him, to slip the files into his pocket, and at once darted back among the crowd. All the company now on board, the imperious voice of the captain sounded, and instantly a dozen hardy seamen were in the rigging, hurrying aloft to unfurl the broad canvas of our Baltimore built American Slaver.52 The sailors hung about the ropes, like so many black cats, now in the round[-]tops, now in the cross-trees, now on the yard-arms; all was bluster and activity. Soon the broad fore topsail, the royal and top gallant sail were spread to the breeze. Round went the heavy windlass, clank, clank went the fall-bit,—the anchors weighed,—jibs, mainsails, and topsails hauled to the wind, and the long, low, black slaver, with her cargo of human flesh, careened and moved forward to the sea.53 Mr. Listwell stood on the shore, and watched the slaver till the last speck of her upper sails faded from sight, and announced the limit of human vision. “Farewell! farewell! brave and true man! God grant that brighter skies may smile upon your future than have yet looked down upon your thorny pathway.” Saying this to himself, our friend lost no time in completing his business, and in making his way homewards, gladly shaking off from his feet the dust of Old Virginia. PART IV. Oh, where’s the slave so lowly Condemn’d to chains unholy, Who could he burst His bonds at first Would pine beneath them slowly? Moore.54 ——Know ye not Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. Childe Harold.55 What a world of inconsistency, as well as of wickedness, is suggested by the smooth and gliding phrase, AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE; and how strange and perverse is that moral sentiment which loathes, execrates, and brands as piracy and as deserving of death the carrying away into

Y7870-Douglass.indb 47

9/1/21 4:16 PM

48

THE HEROIC SLAVE

captivity men, women, and children from the African coast; but which is neither shocked nor disturbed by a similar traffic, carried on with the same motives and purposes, and characterized by even more odious peculiarities on the coast of our MODEL REPUBLIC. We execrate and hang the wretch guilty of this crime on the coast of Guinea,56 while we respect and applaud the guilty participators in this murderous business on the enlightened shores of the Chesapeake. The inconsistency is so flagrant and glaring, that it would seem to cast a doubt on the doctrine of the innate moral sense of mankind. Just two months after the sailing of the Virginia slave brig, which the reader has seen move off to sea so proudly with her human cargo for the New Orleans market, there chanced to meet, in the Marine Coffee-house at Richmond, a company of ocean birds,57 when the following conversation, which throws some light on the subsequent history, not only of Madison Washington, but of the hundred and thirty human beings with whom we last saw him chained. “I say, shipmate, you had rather rough weather on your late passage to Orleans?” said Jack Williams, a regular old salt, tauntingly, to a trim, compact, manly looking person, who proved to be the first mate of the slave brig in question.58 “Foul play, as well as foul weather,” replied the firmly knit personage, evidently but little inclined to enter upon a subject which terminated so ingloriously to the captain and officers of the American slaver. “Well, betwixt you and me,” said Williams, “that whole affair on board of the Creole59 was miserably and disgracefully managed. Those black rascals got the upper hand of ye altogether; and, in my opinion, the whole disaster was the result of ignorance of the real character of darkies60 in general. With half a dozen resolute white men, (I say it not boastingly,) I could have had the rascals in irons in ten minutes, not because I’m so strong, but I know how to manage ’em. With my back against the caboose,61 I could, myself, have flogged a dozen of them; and had I been on board, by every monster of the deep, every black devil of ’em all would have had his neck stretched from the yard-arm. Ye made a mistake in yer manner of fighting ’em. All that is needed in dealing with a set of rebellious darkies, is to show that yer not afraid of ’em. For my own part, I would not honor a dozen niggers by pointing a gun at one on ’em,—a good stout whip, or a stiff rope’s end, is better than all the guns at Old Point62 to quell a nigger insurrection. Why, sir, to take a gun to a nigger is the best way you can select to tell him you are afraid of him, and the best way of inviting his attack.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 48

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

49

This speech made quite a sensation among the company, and a part of them indicated solicitude for the answer which might be made to it. Our first mate replied, “Mr. Williams, all that you’ve now said sounds very well here on shore, where, perhaps, you have studied negro character. I do not profess to understand the subject as well as yourself; but it strikes me, you apply the same rule in dissimilar cases. It is quite easy to talk of flogging niggers here on land, where you have the sympathy of the community, and the whole physical force of the government, State and national, at your command; and where, if a negro shall lift his hand against a white man, the whole community, with one accord, are ready to unite in shooting him down. I say, in such circumstances, it’s easy to talk of flogging negroes and of negro cowardice; but, sir, I deny that the negro is, naturally, a coward, or that your theory of managing slaves will stand the test of salt water. It may do very well for an overseer, a contemptible hireling, to take advantage of fears already in existence, and which his presence has no power to inspire; to swagger about whip in hand, and discourse on the timidity and cowardice of negroes; for they have a smooth sea and a fair wind. It is one thing to manage a company of slaves on a Virginia plantation, and quite another thing to quell an insurrection on the lonely billows of the Atlantic, where every breeze speaks of courage and liberty. For the negro to act cowardly on shore, may be to act wisely; and I’ve some doubts whether you, Mr. Williams, would find it very convenient were you a slave in Algiers, to raise your hand against the bayonets of a whole government.” “By George, shipmate,” said Williams, “you’re coming rather too near. Either I’ve fallen very low in your estimation, or your notions of negro courage have got up a button-hole too high. Now I more than ever wish I’d been on board of that luckless craft. I’d have given ye practical evidence of the truth of my theory. I don’t doubt there’s some difference in being at sea. But a nigger’s a nigger, on sea or land; and is a coward, find him where you will; a drop of blood from one on ’em will skeer a hundred. A knock on the nose, or a kick on the shin, will tame the wildest ‘darkey’ you can fetch me. I say again, and will stand by it, I could, with half a dozen good men, put the whole nineteen on ’em in irons, and have carried them safe to New Orleans too.63 Mind, I don’t blame you, but I do say, and every gentleman here will bear me out in it, that the fault was somewhere, or them niggers would never have got off as they have done. For my part I feel ashamed to have the idea go abroad, that a ship load of slaves can’t be safely taken from Richmond to New Orleans. I should like, merely to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 49

9/1/21 4:16 PM

50

THE HEROIC SLAVE

redeem the character of Virginia sailors, to take charge of a ship load on ’em to-morrow.” Williams went on in this strain, occasionally casting an imploring glance at the company for applause for his wit, and sympathy for his contempt of negro courage. He had, evidently, however, waked up the wrong passenger; for besides being in the right, his opponent carried that in his eye which marked him a man not to be trifled with. “Well, sir,” said the sturdy mate, “you can select your own method for distinguishing yourself;—the path of ambition in this direction is quite open to you in Virginia, and I’ve no doubt that you will be highly appreciated and compensated for all your valiant achievements in that line; but for myself, while I do not profess to be a giant, I have resolved never to set my foot on the deck of a slave ship, either as officer, or common sailor again; I have got enough of it.” “Indeed! indeed!” exclaimed Williams, derisively. “Yes, indeed,” echoed the mate; “but don’t misunderstand me. It is not the high value that I set upon my life that makes me say what I have said; yet I’m resolved never to endanger my life again in a cause which my conscience does not approve. I dare say here what many men feel, but dare not speak, that this whole slave-trading business is a disgrace and scandal to Old Virginia.” “Hold! hold on! shipmate,” said Williams, “I hardly thought you’d have shown your colors so soon,—I’ll be hanged if you’re not as good an abolitionist as Garrison himself.”64 The mate now rose from his chair, manifesting some excitement. “What do you mean, sir,” said he, in a commanding tone. “That man does not live who shall offer me an insult with impunity.” The effect of these words was marked; and the company clustered around. Williams, in an apologetic tone, said, “Shipmate! keep your temper. I mean’t no insult. We all know that Tom Grant65 is no coward, and what I said about your being an abolitionist was simply this: you might have put down them black mutineers and murderers, but your conscience held you back.” “In that, too,” said Grant, “you were mistaken. I did all that any man with equal strength and presence of mind could have done. The fact is, Mr. Williams, you underrate the courage as well as the skill of these negroes, and further, you do not seem to have been correctly informed about the case in hand at all.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 50

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

51

“All I know about it is,” said Williams, “that on the ninth day after you left Richmond, a dozen or two of the niggers ye had on board, came on deck and took the ship from you;—had her steered into a British port, where, by the by, every wooly head of them went ashore and was free. Now I take this to be a discreditable piece of business, and one demanding explanation.” “There are a great many discreditable things in the world,” said Grant. “For a ship to go down under a calm sky is, upon the first flush of it, disgraceful either to sailors or caulkers.66 But when we learn, that by some mysterious disturbance in nature, the waters parted beneath, and swallowed the ship up, we lose our indignation and disgust in lamentation of the disaster, and in awe of the Power which controls the elements.” “Very true, very true,” said Williams, “I should be very glad to have an explanation which would relieve the affair of its present discreditable features. I have desired to see you ever since you got home, and to learn from you a full statement of the facts in the case. To me the whole thing seems unaccountable. I cannot see how a dozen or two of ignorant negroes, not one of whom had ever been to sea before, and all of them were closely ironed between decks, should be able to get their fetters off, rush out of the hatchway in open daylight, kill two white men, the one the captain and the other their master, and then carry the ship into a British port, where every ‘darkey’ of them was set free. There must have been great carelessness, or cowardice somewhere!” The company which had listened in silence during most of this discussion, now became much excited. One said, I agree with Williams; and several said the thing looks black enough. After the temporary tumultuous exclamations had subsided,— “I see,” said Grant, “how you regard this case, and how difficult it will be for me to render our ship’s company blameless in your eyes. Nevertheless, I will state the facts precisely as they came under my own observation. Mr. Williams speaks of ‘ignorant negroes,’ and, as a general rule, they are ignorant; but had he been on board the Creole as I was, he would have seen cause to admit that there are exceptions to this general rule. The leader of the mutiny in question was just as shrewd a fellow as ever I met in my life, and was as well fitted to lead in a dangerous enterprise as any one white man in ten thousand. The name of this man, strange to say, (ominous of greatness,) was MADISON WASHINGTON. In the short time he had been on board, he had secured the confidence of every officer.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 51

9/1/21 4:16 PM

52

THE HEROIC SLAVE

The negroes fairly worshipped him. His manner and bearing were such, that no one could suspect him of a murderous purpose. The only feeling with which we regarded him was, that he was a powerful, good-disposed negro. He seldom spake to any one, and when he did speak, it was with the utmost propriety. His words were well chosen, and his pronunciation equal to that of any schoolmaster. It was a mystery to us where he got his knowledge of language; but as little was said to him, none of us knew the extent of his intelligence and ability till it was too late. It seems he brought three files with him on board, and must have gone to work upon his fetters the first night out; and he must have worked well at that; for on the day of the rising, he got the irons off eighteen besides himself. “The attack began just about twilight in the evening. Apprehending a squall, I had commanded the second mate67 to order all hands on deck, to take in sail. A few minutes before this I had seen Madison’s head above the hatchway, looking out upon the white-capped waves at the leeward. I think I never saw him look more good-natured. I stood just about midship, on the larboard side. The captain was pacing the quarter-deck on the starboard side, in company with Mr. Jameson, the owner of most of the slaves on board.68 Both were armed. I had just told the men to lay aloft, and was looking to see my orders obeyed, when I heard the discharge of a pistol on the starboard side; and turning suddenly around, the very deck seemed covered with fiends from the pit. The nineteen negroes were all on deck, with their broken fetters in their hands, rushing in all directions. I put my hand quickly in my pocket to draw out my jack-knife; but before I could draw it, I was knocked senseless to the deck. When I came to myself, (which I did in a few minutes, I suppose, for it was yet quite light,) there was not a white man on deck. The sailors were all aloft in the rigging, and dared not come down. Captain Clarke69 and Mr. Jameson lay stretched on the quarter-deck,—both dying,—while Madison himself stood at the helm unhurt. “I was completely weakened by the loss of blood, and had not recovered from the stunning blow which felled me to the deck; but it was a little too much for me, even in my prostrate condition, to see our good brig commanded by a black murderer. So I called out to the men to come down and take the ship, or die in the attempt. Suiting the action to the word, I started aft. You murderous villain, said I, to the imp at the helm, and rushed upon him to deal him a blow, when he pushed me back with his strong, black arm, as though I had been a boy of twelve. I looked around for the men. They were still in the rigging. Not one had come down. I started towards

Y7870-Douglass.indb 52

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

53

Madison again. The rascal now told me to stand back. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘your life is in my hands. I could have killed you a dozen times over during this last half hour, and could kill you now. You call me a black murderer. I am not a murderer. God is my witness that LIBERTY, not malice, is the motive for this night’s work. I have done no more to those dead men yonder, than they would have done to me in like circumstances. We have struck for our freedom, and if a true man’s heart be in you, you will honor us for the deed. We have done that which you applaud your fathers for doing, and if we are murderers, so were they.’70 “I felt little disposition to reply to this impudent speech. By heaven, it disarmed me. The fellow loomed up before me. I forgot his blackness in the dignity of his manner, and the eloquence of his speech. It seemed as if the souls of both the great dead (whose names he bore) had entered him. To the sailors in the rigging he said: ‘Men! the battle is over,—your captain is dead. I have complete command of this vessel. All resistance to my authority will be in vain. My men have won their liberty, with no other weapons but their own BROKEN FETTERS. We are nineteen in number.  We do not thirst for your blood, we demand only our rightful freedom. Do not flatter yourselves that I am ignorant of chart or compass.71 I know both. We are now only about sixty miles from Nassau.72 Come down, and do your duty. Land us in Nassau, and not a hair of your heads shall be hurt.’ “I shouted, Stay where you are, men,—when a sturdy black fellow ran at me with a handspike, and would have split my head open, but for the interference of Madison, who darted between me and the blow. ‘I know what you are up to,’ said the latter to me. ‘You want to navigate this brig into a slave port, where you would have us all hanged; but you’ll miss it; before this brig shall touch a slave-cursed shore while I am on board, I will myself put a match to the magazine, and blow her, and be blown with her, into a thousand fragments. Now I have saved your life twice within these last twenty minutes,—for, when you lay helpless on deck, my men were about to kill you. I held them in check. And if you now (seeing I am your friend and not your enemy) persist in your resistance to my authority, I give you fair warning YOU SHALL DIE.’ “Saying this to me, he cast a glance into the rigging where the terror-stricken sailors were clinging, like so many frightened monkeys, and commanded them to come down, in a tone from which there was no appeal; for four men stood by with muskets in hand, ready at the word of command to shoot them down.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 53

9/1/21 4:16 PM

54

THE HEROIC SLAVE

“I now became satisfied that resistance was out of the question; that my best policy was to put the brig into Nassau, and secure the assistance of the American consul at that port. I felt sure that the authorities would enable us to secure the murderers, and bring them to trial. “By this time the apprehended squall had burst upon us. The wind howled furiously,—the ocean was white with foam, which, on account of the darkness, we could see only by the quick flashes of lightning that darted occasionally from the angry sky. All was alarm and confusion. Hideous cries came up from the slave women. Above the roaring billows a succession of heavy thunder rolled along, swelling the terrific din. Owing to the great darkness, and a sudden shift of the wind, we found ourselves in the trough of the sea. When shipping a heavy sea over the starboard bow, the bodies of the captain and Mr. Jameson were washed overboard. For awhile we had dearer interests to look after than slave property. A more savage thunder-gust never swept the ocean. Our brig rolled and creaked as if every bolt would be started, and every thread of oakum73 would be pressed out of the seams. To the pumps! to the pumps! I cried, but not a sailor would quit his grasp. Fortunately this squall soon passed over, or we must have been food for sharks. “During all the storm, Madison stood firmly at the helm,—his keen eye fixed upon the binnacle.74 He was not indifferent to the dreadful hurricane; yet he met it with the equanimity of an old sailor. He was silent but not agitated. The first words he uttered after the storm had slightly subsided, were characteristic of the man. ‘Mr. Mate, you cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The ocean, if not the land, is free.’ I confess, gentlemen, I felt myself in the presence of a superior man; one who, had he been a white man, I would have followed willingly and gladly in any honorable enterprise. Our difference of color was the only ground for difference of action. It was not that his principles were wrong in the abstract; for they are the principles of 1776.75 But I could not bring myself to recognize their application to one whom I deemed my inferior. “But to my story. What happened now is soon told. Two hours after the frightful tempest had spent itself, we were plump at the wharf in Nassau. I sent two of our men immediately to our consul with a statement of facts, requesting his interference in our behalf. What he did, or whither he did anything, I don’t know; but, by order of the authorities, a company of black soldiers came on board, for the purpose, as they said, of protecting the property.76 These impudent rascals, when I called on them to assist me

Y7870-Douglass.indb 54

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

55

in keeping the slaves on board, sheltered themselves adroitly under their instructions only to protect property,—and said they did not recognize persons as property. I told them that by the laws of Virginia and the laws of the United States, the slaves on board were as much property as the barrels of flour in the hold. At this the stupid blockheads showed their ivory, rolled up their white eyes in horror, as if the idea of putting men on a footing with merchandise were revolting to their humanity. When these instructions were understood among the negroes, it was impossible for us to keep them on board. They deliberately gathered up their baggage before our eyes, and, against our remonstrances, poured through the gangway,—formed themselves into a procession on the wharf,—bid farewell to all on board, and, uttering the wildest shouts of exultation, they marched, amidst the deafening cheers of a multitude of sympathizing spectators, under the triumphant leadership of their heroic chief and deliverer, MADISON WASHINGTON.” [FACSIMILE SIGNATURE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS]77 1. From the hymn “God Is Love,” in George N. Allen, Oberlin Social and Sabbath School Hymn Book (Oberlin, Ohio, 1846), 23. 2. Probably a reference to New Yorker Martin Van Buren (1782–1862), eighth president of the United States (1837–41). Douglass was angered by Van Buren’s support of the Compromise of 1850, which included the notorious Fugitive Slave Law requiring Northerners to assist in the capture of runaway slaves. Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 284, 419. 3. Virginia had won this popular nickname in the nineteenth century on account of the large number of Revolutionary War and early Federal-period political leaders it had contributed to the United States. George Earlie Shankle, State Names, Flags, Seals, Songs, Birds, Flowers, and Other Symbols (1838; New York, 1941), 152. 4. Patrick Henry (1736–99), a Virginia patriot, lawyer, and Revolutionary statesman, attended the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia and was governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779. DAB, 7:554–59. 5. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), a planter and statesman from Virginia, was the third president of the United States (1801–09) and author of the Declaration of Independence. Noble Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1987); DAB, 10:17–35. 6. The Virginia planter George Washington (1732–99) commanded the principal American field army in the Revolution and became the first president of the United States (1789–97). Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York, 2011); Douglas Southall Freeman, Washington: A Biography, 7 vols. (New York, 1948); DAB, 19:509–13. 7. In the years before and during the Civil War, escaped slaves fled northward, hiding by day and moving furtively at night. Often their only guide was Polaris, the North Star, which they found by tracing the handle of the Big Dipper (or Drinking Gourd) constellation. J. Blaine Hudson, Encyclopedia of the Underground Railroad (Jefferson, N.C., 2006), 157; Mary Ellen Snodgrass, The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations (Armonk, N.Y., 2008), 2:385. 8. The few details of Madison Washington’s life that can be confirmed come from the people he met while a fugitive slave and from the testimony gathered from white witnesses after the Creole

Y7870-Douglass.indb 55

9/1/21 4:16 PM

56

THE HEROIC SLAVE

uprising. A runaway slave from Virginia, Washington managed to reach the free black settlement of Dawn in Ontario, Canada, which was led by the white abolitionist Hiram Wilson, in late 1839 or early 1840. Wilson’s family members later described Washington as “a very large and strong slave.” Sometime in 1841, Washington left Dawn to return to Virginia to free his still-enslaved wife. He went to Rochester, New York, where the Quaker abolitionist Lindley Murray Moore raised ten dollars to assist Washington. He traveled to Utica, where he conferred with the black abolitionist minister Henry Highland Garnet, who attempted to persuade Washington to abandon his quest. Moving southward, Washington encountered the wealthy free black Robert Purvis of Philadelphia and the British abolitionist Joseph Gurney, visiting the United States, who also advised him not to risk his freedom by returning to Virginia. It is not known how, but Washington was recaptured by his master and promptly sold to a Richmond slave trader named Thomas McCargo. Washington was incarcerated temporarily in that city and then shipped out aboard the brig Creole on a voyage to New Orleans, where he would be resold. Perhaps because he was literate, Washington was assigned as a cook for the slaves aboard the ship. White witnesses reported Washington to be the leader of the slave mutiny on the Creole, but they also reported that he acted to prevent unnecessary bloodshed after gaining control of the ship. After reaching Nassau, Washington and the other mutineers were briefly held in British custody. After his release, Washington disappeared from the historical record. George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick, The Creole Mutiny: A Tale of Revolt aboard a Slave Ship (Chicago, 2008), 13–14, 27–32, 38–40, 43, 56–57, 77–81, 89–90, 95, 109–111. 9. Sol. 1:15. 10. The Greek mythological hero Heracles, known to the Romans as Hercules, was a mortal son of the chief god Zeus and famed for his strength, which was often employed in his famous twelve labors. Pierre Grimal, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, trans. A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop (Oxford, 1985), 193–209. 11. The name of Madison Washington’s wife is not recorded in surviving historical records. Douglass knew several of the people whom Washington met in Canada and in the United States after initially escaping from slavery, so Douglass either learned her first name from these people or invented a fictional one. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 14, 131. 12. Henry VI, Part II, sc. 1, lines 1–7. Douglass uses a common nineteenth-century spelling of Shakespeare. 13. No historical source exists to identify this person. 14. Fugitive slaves from the United States began to settle in Upper Canada (later known as Canada West) in the early 1820s. There they formed their own communities, including Amherstburg, Ontario, and Wilberforce. Although not legally restricted, the fugitives were not welcomed by most white Canadians. In the 1840s, conditions in Canadian black communities worsened. Many fugitives fled to Canada West, greatly increasing the black population and intensifying the negative reaction of whites. Jason H. Silverman, Unwelcome Guests: Canada West’s Response to American Fugitive Slaves, 1800–1865 (Millwood, N.Y., 1985), 21–22, 53–64. 15. The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate. The French inventor Louis J. M. Daguerre perfected the process after a decade of experimentation. M. Susan Barger and William B. White, The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science (Washington, D.C., 1991), 1, 20–24, 28, 44–46. 16. As with Washington’s wife’s name, Douglass either learned about the existence of the slave rebel’s children from abolitionist friends or invented them for literary purposes. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 14. 17. Possibly a reference to the Great Dismal Swamp, located along the coastal plain of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. The region had been a site of runaway slave maroon colonies since colonial times. In 1805, completion of a canal through the region opened the locality to timbering. Raymond L. Harper, A History of Chesapeake, Virginia (Charleston, S.C., 2008), 124–28.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 56

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

57

18. In the Old Testament, the cities of refuge were towns in the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah in which the perpetrators of manslaughter could claim the right of asylum. The six cities were Golan, Ramoth, and Bosor on the east side of the Jordan River, and Kedesh, Shechum, and Hebron on the west side. Num. 35:11–34; Deut. 19:3–13. 19. Gerrit Smith (1797–1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work in such reforms 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 immediate abolition. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus enabling them to qualify 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 the Liberty party until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and he frequently assisted in financing 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 Test Case 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); DAB, 17:270–71. 20. The phrase, adapted from Ps. 147:9, is found in a number of hymns from the nineteenth century. Douglass’s source may have been Charles Wesley’s “Son of Thy Sire’s Eternal Love.” Charles Wesley, “Son of Thy Sire’s Eternal Love,” A Collection of Hymns, for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Principally from the Collection of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M. (New York, 1839), 412. 21. Paraphrase of Matt. 19:26. 22. Paraphrase of Ex. 3:7, Acts 7:34. 23. A corrupt tax collector, Zacchaeus climbed a tree to view Jesus and then publicly repented for his sins after receiving Jesus’s love. Luke 19:1–10. 24. Lord Byron attributed the phrase to the Spartans in his 24 August 1821 letter to Thomas Moore. Thomas Moore, The Works of Lord Byron: With His Letters and Journals, and His Life, 17 vols. (London, 1832–33), 5:349. 25. Fight (French). 26. The constellation Ursa Major (Latin for “Great Bear”) is visible throughout the year in most of the Northern Hemisphere. This constellation is better known in the United States as the Big Dipper. An imaginary line running from the cup of the Big Dipper points to the North Star, which many fugitive slaves used to guide themselves to freedom in the North. Snodgrass, Underground Railroad, 2:385. 27. It has been estimated that 40,000 runaway slaves escaped to freedom in Canada through Ohio. A secret and successful network of over 700 safe houses and “depots” waited for those fugitives fortunate enough to make it across the Ohio River. Although a “free state,” a designation indicating only that its residents could not own slaves, Ohio was a distinctly dangerous host to the escapees. Bounty hunters crisscrossed the state, and proslavery factions existed in many villages and cities. The Ohio Black Laws rewarded those who turned in or reported runaways. Law officers were aggressive in slave-rendition efforts, particularly following passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio (Athens, Ohio, 2005), 157–240. 28. An allusion to Lake Erie. Passage northward across Lake Erie would carry a fugitive slave to safety in Canada.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 57

9/1/21 4:16 PM

58

THE HEROIC SLAVE

29. Incorporated in 1814, Cleveland, Ohio, lies on the southern shore of Lake Erie, which allowed the city to experience rapid economic growth as a Great Lakes port and later as a railroad transportation center. Carol Poh Miller and Robert A. Wheeler, Cleveland: A Concise History, 1796–1996, 2d ed. (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), 7–48; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 419. 30. Donald Bethune, a Canadian shipowner, operated the steamer Admiral on Lake Erie on the cross-lake route from Rochester to Toronto, which stopped in Cobourg and Port Hope in Ontario until it broke down in 1851. Gerald T. Girvin, “The Maple Leaf Story prior to the Civil War,” in The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil War Shipwreck, ed. Keith V. Holland, Lee B. Manley, and James W. Towart (Jacksonville, Fla., 1993), 72–73. 31. An allusion to Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and the antislavery actions taken by the British government in the early nineteenth century in its empire, including the Canadian provinces. E1izabeth Longford, Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed (New York, 1964); Silverman, Unwelcome Guests, 11–15, 37–42. 32. Variants of this phrase appear in Jer. 2:14, 2:16, 1 Sam. 14:28. 33. Paraphrase of Ezek. 18:7, 18:16, Isa. 58:7, Matt. 25:35. 34. The lion had become a visual symbol of Great Britain by the eighteenth century. Similarly, the eagle has been used by Americans as a comparable symbol for their collective identity since the era of the Revolution. Adrian Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England (Reading, Eng., 1982), 52–63; Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, “Symbol of a Nation: The Bald Eagle in American Culture,” Journal of American Culture, 13:63–69 (Spring 1990). 35. From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1818), canto 4, stanza 140, by the English poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), though with a key change. Bryon wrote: “his eyes / Were with his heart—and that was far away.” 36. Chartered in 1816 to connect the cities of Richmond and Petersburg, the ManchesterPetersburg Turnpike was part of a road-building boom in that portion of the state to improve dirt roads that became largely impassible in winter months. By the 1840s, the road was popularly known as the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, becoming a part of U.S. Route 1 in the twentieth century. Writers’ Program of the Works Progress Administration in the State of Virginia, Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion, 6th ed. (Richmond, 1956), 92. 37. Possibly the Half Way House, one of the earliest taverns in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The original Half Way House was built in 1760 along the river to serve passengers using the ferry. After the Manchester-Petersburg Turnpike was built, the original Half Way House slowly went to ruin. The second Half Way House along the turnpike route was built by William Hatcher in 1789. The tavern derived its name from its location halfway between Richmond and Petersburg. During the Civil War, the building served as a military hospital and was used as the headquarters for the Union general Benjamin F. Butler during the Second Battle of Drewry’s Bluff in May 1864. John B. Watkins, Chesterfield County, Virginia: Its History and Present Condition (Richmond, 1906), 20, 24; John S. Salmon, A Guidebook to Virginia’s Historical Markers, rev. ed. (Charlottesville, Va., 1994), 147. 38. After the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century, the Virginia Colony was nicknamed the “Old Dominion” by King Charles II for its perceived loyalty to the English monarchy during the era of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth. After independence from Great Britain in 1776, the Virginia Colony became the Commonwealth of Virginia, one of the original thirteen states of the United States. Old Dominion is one of its best-known nicknames. Shankle, State Names, Flags, Seals, 151–52. 39. Sycophantic followers or dependents, especially those hoping for personal gain. 40. Slack is the part of a rope or sail that hangs loose. Joseph P. O’Flynn, Nautical Dictionary: Over 3800 Terms (Boyne City, Mich., 1992), 86. 41. Dryburgh Abbey, located on the banks of the River Tweed in the Scottish Borders, was founded in 1150 and served as the scene of considerable religious and political history because of its location between two contesting monarchies. It survived for four centuries as an active monastery, and after the abbey became the burial site of Sir Walter Scott in 1832, travelers frequently visited. Douglass, who took his surname from a character in one of Scott’s romances, visited the region near

Y7870-Douglass.indb 58

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

59

the abbey while on an abolitionist speaking tour in April 1846. Stewart Cruden, Scottish Abbeys: An Introduction to the Medieval Abbeys and Priories of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1960), 82–84; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:xcvii. 42. These details of significant events in American horse-racing history are badly scrambled. There was a racehorse named American Eclipse (1814–47) to distinguish it from a more famous British racehorse of the 1770s and 1780s. Bred on Long Island, American Eclipse raced exclusively in the North before defeating Virginia’s Sir Charles in the nation’s capital in 1822. Southerners, who regarded their region as producing the best racehorses in the United States, arranged a series of competitions to select a suitable challenger to race American Eclipse. Several of these tryouts were held in the Petersburg region, though none of the horses named by Douglass were entered. The ultimate winner, Henry, raced American Eclipse in New York City in May 1823, but lost the $20,000 purse to the Northern horse. American Eclipse never raced again. Less famous horses by the names of Bachelor and Jumping Jimmy were noted for racing mile heats in Washington, D.C., in the 1810s. J. S. Skinner, ed., American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 4:36 (September 1833); John Eisenberg, The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America’s First Sports Spectacle (New York, 2006) viii–xii, 1–16, 64–65, 234; William H. P. Robertson, The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964), 50–60. 43. This phrase connotes praise for men who exhibit exceptional masculinity in the traditional sense. It denotes bravery, chivalry and uncommon character. The phrase may have its origins in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, sc. 5, line 82. 44. French idiom for unusual encounters. 45. From Job 20:12. 46. In Matt. 7:6, Jesus advises his disciples: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet.” 47. This was the motto of the Garrisonian abolitionist newspaper, the National Anti-Slavery Standard, published in New York City. The Standard, rather than Garrison’s own Boston Liberator, was the official weekly newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Merton L. Dillon, The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority (DeKalb, Ill., 1974), 213. 48. Most likely an allusion to the Dutch priest and biblical scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466– 1536), who cautiously tried to avoid antagonizing either Catholic or Protestant authorities in the heated theological controversies of the early years of the Reformation. Christine Christ-von Wedel, Erasmus of Rotterdam: Advocate of a New Christianity (Toronto, 2013). 49. Former (Latin). 50. The Shakespearean character Caliban uses the phrase “foreheads villainously low” in The Tempest, sc. 8, line 1703. 51. As a principal port, New Orleans played a major role during the antebellum era in the Atlantic slave trade. The river in front of the city was filled with steamboats, flatboats, and sailing ships. Despite its dealings in the slave trade, New Orleans had the largest and most prosperous community of free persons of color in the nation, who were often educated and middle-class property owners. Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 100–105; Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery (Westport, Conn., 1997), 686–88. 52. In Baltimore, a shipbuilding city since early colonial times, shipyards had constructed craft for the intercoastal and international slave trade since the mid-seventeenth century. After Congress made the importation of slaves from Africa illegal in 1808, a number of Baltimore shipbuilders were chosen to construct vessels that could provide the speed and versatility necessary for an illegal trade in slaves with the Caribbean and Africa. Vessels would be built and partially outfitted in local shipyards and then completed in a secondary location. So common was the perception that Baltimore was the city of origin of the majority of slavers that one reporter, unable to determine the port from which a seized trader had originated, indicated, “It was probably Baltimore Built.” A major report, published in the spring of 1840, revealed a list of twenty-one American vessels engaged in the slave trade during the spring and summer of 1839. Of the vessels discussed, eleven, or more than 52 percent, were identified as having been built in Baltimore. Extremely high profits continued to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 59

9/1/21 4:16 PM

60

THE HEROIC SLAVE

promote the furtherance of the illegal trade for many years. In 1849, reports surfaced indicating that a Baltimore clipper had cleared $400,000 from eleven slave-trading voyages over a four-year period. J. Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County: From the Earliest Period to the Present Day (Philadelphia, 1881), 293; Howard I. Chapelle, The Search for Speed under Sail, 1700–1855 (New York, 1967), 297–312. 53. Having worked in or around the shipyards and wharves of both Baltimore and New Bedford, Douglass accurately employs numerous nautical terms in describing a large square-rigged sailing vessel: a fore topsail is the most forward of a pair of sails immediately above the lowermost sail on the ship’s foremast; a topgallant sail refers to the sails above the top sail; and a royal sail, or royal topgallant sail, is the smaller sail above the topgallant sail. A jib is a triangular staysail that sits ahead of the foremast of a sailing vessel. On a square-rigged vessel, the mainsail is the lowest and largest sail on the principal, or main, mast or masts. The topsail is a square sail rigged above the lowest sail mounted on a mast and below the topgallant sail where carried. O’Flynn, Nautical Dictionary, 41, 53, 60, 76, 98; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 59–69, 79–83. 54. From the poem, also adapted into song “Oh! Where’s the Slave” by Thomas Moore (1780–1852). 55. From Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, canto 2, stanza 76. 56. A popular reference in the nineteenth century to the entire west coast of Africa, where most slaves in the United States could trace their origin. 57. Sailors. 58. The first mate of the Creole was actually named Zephaniah Chadwick Gifford (1814–86), who was wounded during the revolt of the ship’s slaves but survived. After the ship reached Nassau, Gifford, with the aid of the American consul, John F. Bacon, led an unsuccessful raid to recapture the Creole and its slaves and sail them to Florida. After the British authorities freed the slaves, Gifford took command of the Creole and sailed it to New Orleans in December 1841. He later testified on behalf of the owners in their insurance claims. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 11–12, 83, 100–101. 59. The Creole, carrying 135 slaves, 9 crewmen, 6 white passengers, and a shipment of tobacco, set sail from Richmond, Virginia, to New Orleans on 25 October 1843. Nineteen of the slaves on board, led by Madison Washington, revolted on the evening of 7 November 1841. The mutineers killed one white slave agent, John R. Hewell, wounded the captain and both mates, and overpowered the rest of the crew. Washington had wanted to sail the Creole to Liberia, but one of the captured passengers convinced him they would be safer if the ship sailed to British-controlled Nassau in the Bahamas. The governor of the Bahamas, Francis Cockburn, quickly freed all of the Creole’s slaves except for the 19 implicated in the bloody mutiny. The mutineers, including Washington, were eventually freed by the British, too, despite American diplomatic protests. Notwithstanding their earlier commitment to pacifist tactics, most abolitionists applauded Washington’s violent means to gain freedom. In later decades, Washington’s actions, along with those of other slave rebels, would be cited repeatedly by abolitionists as a warning to the South of the mortal danger that region faced unless it accepted emancipation. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 77–96; Stanley L. Harrold, “Romanticizing Slave Revolt: Madison Washington, the Creole Mutiny, and Abolitionist Celebration of Violent Means,” in John R. McKivigan and Stanley L. Harrold, Antislavery Violence: Sectional, Racial, and Cultural Conflict in Antebellum America (Knoxville, Tenn., 1999), 89–107; Howard Jones, “The Peculiar Institution and National Honor: The Case of the Creole Slave Revolt,” Civil War History, 21:28–50 (March 1975); Edward D. Jervey and C. Harold Huber, “The Creole Affair,” JNH, 65:196–209 (Summer 1980). 60. A derogatory designation of a person with dark skin who comes from Africa or whose ancestors came from Africa. It was first used in the eighteenth century in the South to connote the alleged ability of slaves to go undetected in the night. Philip H. Herbst, The Color of Words: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Ethnic Bias in the United States (Boston, 1997), 68.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 60

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HEROIC SLAVE

61

61. Nautical term for a ship’s galley. 62. Probably an allusion to Fortress Monroe, located at Old Point Comfort on the Virginia shore of Chesapeake Bay. It was built in 1819 on top of seventeenth-century fortifications. During the Civil War, the military post was held by the Union. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1375. 63. Here Douglass follows the historical record, which indicated that nineteen slaves were involved in the uprising. 64. William Lloyd Garrison (1805–79) was so closely identified with the abolitionist movement in the United States that his name became almost synonymous with the cause. 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. After Benjamin Lundy introduced him to the antislavery cause, Garrison and Lundy edited the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1829 to 1830, when a libel suit against them 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 tolerated the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties, and even the United States itself, and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the United States. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public’s awareness that slavery was morally wrong, thereby forcing 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 slaveholders and those only moderately opposed to slavery. 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 also helped form 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. Ever the radical, Garrison expanded his interests to include women’s rights after female delegates were excluded from the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. 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. Those who opposed women acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics to work toward abolition formed the “New Organization.” Garrison’s ideas were so closely associated with the “Old Organization” that his followers became known more frequently 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, 1885–89); 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); DAB, 7:168–72. 65. Presumably a fictional character, not mentioned in records of the Creole mutiny. 66. Skilled craftsmen who made wooden ships watertight by packing seams with a waterproof material such as oakum or pitch. Douglass had been trained in this trade while a teenage slave in Baltimore. McFeely, Douglass, 59–69; O’Flynn, Nautical Dictionary, 22. 67. The Creole’s actual second mate was Lucius Stevens. He hid in a stateroom when the revolt began, but was later discovered and stabbed by one of the slaves. He took refuge in the sails, surrendered the next day to the slaves, and survived. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 87, 91–94. 68. The real owner of most of the slaves aboard the Creole was the Richmond slave trader Thomas McCargo. McCargo had a hired agent named John R. Hewell on board the Creole. Apparently very abusive to the slaves, Hewell was the only white killed by the Creole rebels. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 43–45, 54–56.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 61

9/1/21 4:16 PM

62

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

69. The actual captain of the Creole was named Robert Ensor, and he was badly wounded by the slave rebels. Ensor’s wife, daughter, and niece, who had accompanied him on the Creole, were not harmed by the rebelling slaves. Ensor attempted to rally his crew to resist the mutiny and was stabbed by the slaves in the ensuing melee. He saved himself by climbing a mast and hiding in the sails. He surrendered the next day, and the slaves permitted his wife to nurse him. Ensor survived and gave testimony in the subsequent investigation of the mutiny. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 77–78, 80–81, 91, 94, 112. 70. Named for two heroes of the American War of Independence, Washington alludes to the violent means employed by the revolutionaries who established the United States. 71. Washington may be alluding to the lack of maritime skills shown by the earlier Amistad slave rebels, which led to their capture. Hudson, Underground Railroad, 28–29. 72. Capital of the Bahamas Islands, which were under British control until 1973. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1287–88. 73. Oakum is a preparation of tarred fiber used in shipbuilding for caulking or packing the joints of timbers in wooden vessels and the deck planking of iron and steel ships, as well as cast-iron-pipe plumbing applications. O’Flynn, Nautical Dictionary, 65. 74. A case or stand on a ship’s deck to house a compass and possibly other nautical instruments. O’Flynn, Nautical Dictionary, 20. 75. Radical political abolitionists such as Douglass and Gerrit Smith believed that the U.S. Constitution had to be interpreted in light of the egalitarian and implicitly antislavery principles of the Declaration of Independence. William M. Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), 251–75. 76. Governor Francis Cockburn of the Bahamas sent a detachment of twenty black soldiers under a white officer to take control of the Creole soon after it arrived in Nassau harbor on 9 November 1841. The British authorities spent the next several days gathering depositions from all on board the ship. An aborted effort, supported by the American consul in Nassau, to seize control of the ship on 12 November caused the British to free all but the nineteen slaves active in the mutiny. Those freed, except for five electing to stay and be returned to servitude in the United States, immediately went ashore aboard a “mosquito fleet” of sympathetic Bahamian black boatmen. The other nineteen were held by the British until a special session of the admiralty court held on 16 April 1842 freed the seventeen still alive. The Creole incident impaired American-British relations for a time. In 1853, a joint Anglo-American claims commission ordered the British to compensate the owners of the Creole slaves $110,330, but the slaves themselves remained free. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 98–120; Jones, “Peculiar Institution and National Honor,” 28–50. 77. There is a reproduction of Douglass’s signature at this point in the text of “The Heroic Slave” as published in Autographs for Freedom. All of the pieces in Autographs were signed by the authors. Julia Griffiths, ed., Autographs for Freedom (Boston, 1853), 239.

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES (1853) Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 15 July 1853. Other texts in Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, 7–18; Bell, Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, n.p.; Foner, Life and Writings, 2:254–68.

Douglass was one of 42 signatories to a call for a “National convention of the free people of color of the United States” to be held

Y7870-Douglass.indb 62

9/1/21 4:16 PM

62

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

69. The actual captain of the Creole was named Robert Ensor, and he was badly wounded by the slave rebels. Ensor’s wife, daughter, and niece, who had accompanied him on the Creole, were not harmed by the rebelling slaves. Ensor attempted to rally his crew to resist the mutiny and was stabbed by the slaves in the ensuing melee. He saved himself by climbing a mast and hiding in the sails. He surrendered the next day, and the slaves permitted his wife to nurse him. Ensor survived and gave testimony in the subsequent investigation of the mutiny. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 77–78, 80–81, 91, 94, 112. 70. Named for two heroes of the American War of Independence, Washington alludes to the violent means employed by the revolutionaries who established the United States. 71. Washington may be alluding to the lack of maritime skills shown by the earlier Amistad slave rebels, which led to their capture. Hudson, Underground Railroad, 28–29. 72. Capital of the Bahamas Islands, which were under British control until 1973. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1287–88. 73. Oakum is a preparation of tarred fiber used in shipbuilding for caulking or packing the joints of timbers in wooden vessels and the deck planking of iron and steel ships, as well as cast-iron-pipe plumbing applications. O’Flynn, Nautical Dictionary, 65. 74. A case or stand on a ship’s deck to house a compass and possibly other nautical instruments. O’Flynn, Nautical Dictionary, 20. 75. Radical political abolitionists such as Douglass and Gerrit Smith believed that the U.S. Constitution had to be interpreted in light of the egalitarian and implicitly antislavery principles of the Declaration of Independence. William M. Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), 251–75. 76. Governor Francis Cockburn of the Bahamas sent a detachment of twenty black soldiers under a white officer to take control of the Creole soon after it arrived in Nassau harbor on 9 November 1841. The British authorities spent the next several days gathering depositions from all on board the ship. An aborted effort, supported by the American consul in Nassau, to seize control of the ship on 12 November caused the British to free all but the nineteen slaves active in the mutiny. Those freed, except for five electing to stay and be returned to servitude in the United States, immediately went ashore aboard a “mosquito fleet” of sympathetic Bahamian black boatmen. The other nineteen were held by the British until a special session of the admiralty court held on 16 April 1842 freed the seventeen still alive. The Creole incident impaired American-British relations for a time. In 1853, a joint Anglo-American claims commission ordered the British to compensate the owners of the Creole slaves $110,330, but the slaves themselves remained free. Hendrick and Hendrick, Creole Mutiny, 98–120; Jones, “Peculiar Institution and National Honor,” 28–50. 77. There is a reproduction of Douglass’s signature at this point in the text of “The Heroic Slave” as published in Autographs for Freedom. All of the pieces in Autographs were signed by the authors. Julia Griffiths, ed., Autographs for Freedom (Boston, 1853), 239.

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES (1853) Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 15 July 1853. Other texts in Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, 7–18; Bell, Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, n.p.; Foner, Life and Writings, 2:254–68.

Douglass was one of 42 signatories to a call for a “National convention of the free people of color of the United States” to be held

Y7870-Douglass.indb 62

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

63

in his hometown of Rochester, New York, on 6 July 1853. Delegates to this convention would “confer and deliberate upon their present condition and upon principles and measures important to their welfare, progress and general improvement.” In response, more than 140 free black representatives from nine states assembled in Rochester. The Reverend J. W. C. Pennington served as president, with Douglass, William C. Nell, and John B. Vashon sharing the position of vice president. Because of Douglass’s experience as chair of the Committee on the Declaration of Sentiments, he was charged with drafting the “Address of the Colored Convention to the People of the United States,” which outlined the group’s demands for basic civil and political rights. He read his report to the convention on its first afternoon session, 6 July 1853. In a letter written after the convention to his close associate Gerrit Smith, Douglass confessed that he “had been deeply concerned for the result of the Convention for weeks before it was held. I now feel abundantly relieved. My best hopes have been Surpassed.” Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 15 July 1853, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 2:32–34; FDP, 17, 24 June 1853; Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, 3–5.

Fellow-Citizens: Met in convention as delegates, representing the Free Colored people of the United States;1 charged with the responsibility of inquiring into the general condition of our people, and of devising measures which may, with the blessing of God, tend to our mutual improvement and elevation; conscious of entertaining no motives, ideas, or aspirations, but such as are in accordance with truth and justice, and are compatible with the highest good of our country and the world, with a cause as vital and worthy as that for which (nearly eighty years ago) your fathers and our fathers bravely contended,2 and in which they gloriously triumphed—we deem it proper, on this occasion, as one method of promoting the honorable ends for which we have met, and of discharging our duty to those in whose name we speak, to present the claims of our common cause to your candid, earnest, and favorable consideration. As an apology for addressing you, fellow-citizens! we cannot announce the discovery of any new principle adapted to ameliorate the condition of mankind. The great truths of moral and political science, upon which we rely, and which we press upon your consideration, have been evolved and enunciated by you. We point to your principles, your wisdom,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 63

9/1/21 4:16 PM

64

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

and to your great example as the full justification of our course this day. That “all men are created equal;” that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”3 are the right of all; that “Taxation and representation”4 should go together; that governments are to protect, not to destroy, the rights of mankind; that the constitution of the United States was formed to establish justice, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to all the people of this country;5 that resistence to tyrants is obedience to God6 —are American principles and maxims, and together they form and constitute the constructive elements of the American government. From this elevated platform, provided by the Republic for us, and for all the children of man, we address you. In doing so, we would have our spirit properly discerned. On this point we would gladly free ourselves and our cause from all misconception. We shall affect no especial timidity, nor can we pretend to any great boldness. We know our poverty and weakness, and your wealth and greatness.—Yet we will not attempt to repress the spirit of liberty within us, or to conceal, in any wise, our sense of the justice and the dignity of our cause. We are Americans, and as Americans, we would speak to Americans. We address you not as aliens nor as exiles, humbly asking to be permitted to dwell among you in peace; but we address you as American citizens asserting their rights on their own native soil. Neither do we address you as enemies, (although the recipients of innumerable wrongs;) but in the spirit of patriotic good will. In assembling together as we have done, our object is not to excite pity for ourselves, but to command respect for our cause, and to obtain justice for our people. We are not malifactors imploring mercy; but we trust we are honest men, honestly appealing for righteous judgment, and ready to stand or fall by that judgment. We do not solicit unusual favor, but will be content with rough-handed “fair play.” We are neither lame nor blind, that we should seek to throw off the responsibility of our own existence, or to cast ourselves upon public charity for support. We would not lay our burdens upon other men’s shoulders; but we do ask, in the name of all that is just and magnanimous among men, to be freed from all the unnatural burdens and impediments with which American customs and American legislation have hindered our progress and improvement. We ask to be disencumbered of the load of popular reproach heaped upon us—for no better cause than that we wear the complexion given to us by our God and our Creator.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 64

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

65

We ask that in our native land, we shall not be treated as strangers, and worse than strangers. We ask that, being friends of America, we should not be treated as enemies of America. We ask that, speaking the same language and being of the same religion, worshipping the same God, owing our redemption to the same Savior, and learning our duties from the same Bible, we shall not be treated as barbarians. We ask that, having the same physical, moral, mental, and spiritual wants, common to other members of the human family, we shall also have the same means which are granted and secured to others, to supply those wants. We ask that the doors of the school-house, the work-shop, the church, the college, shall be thrown open as freely to our children as to the children of other members of the community. We ask that the American government shall be so administered as that beneath the broad shield of the Constitution, the colored American seaman shall be secure in his life, liberty and property, in every State in the Union. We ask that as justice knows no rich, no poor, no black, no white, but, like the government of God, renders alike to every man reward or punishment, according as his works shall be—the white and black man may stand upon an equal footing before the laws of the land. We ask that (since the right of trial by jury is a safe guard to liberty, against the encroachments of power, only as it is a trial by impartial men, drawn indiscriminately from the country) colored men shall not, in every instance, be tried by white persons; and that colored men shall not be either by custom or enactment excluded from the jury-box. We ask that (inasmuch as we are, in common with other American citizens, supporters of the State, subjects to its laws, interested in its welfare, liable to be called upon to defend it in time of war, contributors to its wealth in time of peace) the complete and unrestricted right of suffrage, which is essential to the dignity even of the white man, be extended to the Free Colored man also. Whereas, the colored people of the United States have too long been retarded and impeded in the development and improvement of their natural faculties and powers, ever to become dangerous rivals to white men, in the honorable pursuits of life, liberty and happiness; and whereas,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 65

9/1/21 4:16 PM

66

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

the proud Anglo-Saxon can need no arbitrary protection from open and equal competition with any variety of the human family; and whereas, laws have been enacted limiting the aspirations of colored men, as against white men—we respectfully submit that such laws are flagrantly unjust to the man of color, and plainly discreditable to white men; and for these and other reasons, such laws ought to be repealed.7 We especially urge that all laws and usages which preclude the enrollment of colored men in the militia, and prohibit their bearing arms in the navy, disallow their rising, agreeable to their merits and attainments—are unconstitutional8—the constitution knowing no color—are anti-Democratic, since Democracy respects men as equals—are unmagnanimous since such laws are made by the many, against the few, and by the strong against the weak. We ask that all those cruel and oppressive laws, whether enacted at the South or the North, which aim at the expatriation of the free people of color, shall be stamped with national reprobation, denounced as contrary to the humanity of the American people, and as an outrage upon the Christianity and civilization of the nineteenth century. We ask that the right of pre-emption, enjoyed by all white settlers upon the public lands, shall also be enjoyed by colored settlers; and that the word “white” be struck from the pre-emption act.9 We ask that no appropriations whatever, state or national, shall be granted to the colonization scheme; and we would have our right to leave or to remain in the United States placed above legislative interference.10 We ask, that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850,11 that legislative monster of modern times, by whose atrocious provisions the writ of “habeas corpus,”12 the “right of trial by jury,” have been virtually abolished, shall be repealed. We ask, that the law of 1793 be so construed as to apply only to apprentices, and others really owing service or labor; and not to slaves, who can owe nothing.13 Finally, we ask that slavery in the United States shall be immediately, unconditionally, and forever abolished. To accomplish these just and reasonable ends, we solemnly pledge ourselves to God, to each other, to our country, and to the world, to use all and every means consistent with the just rights of our fellow men, and with the precepts of Christianity. We shall speak, write and publish, organize and combine to accomplish them. We shall invoke the aid of the pulpit and the press to gain them.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 66

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

67

We shall appeal to the church and to the government to gain them. We shall vote; and expend our money to gain them. We shall send eloquent men of our own condition to plead our cause before the people. We shall invite the co-operation of good men in this country and throughout the world—and, above all, we shall look to God, the Father and Creator of all men, for wisdom to direct us and strength to support us in the holy cause to which we this day solemnly pledge ourselves. Such, fellow-citizens, are our aims, ends, aspirations and determinations. We place them before you, with the earnest hope that upon further investigation, they will meet your cordial and active approval. And yet, again, we would free ourselves from the charge of unreasonableness and self-sufficiency. In numbers we are few and feeble; but in the goodness of our cause, in the rectitude of our motives, and in the abundance of argument on our side, we are many and strong. We count our friends, in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, among good men and holy angels. The subtle and mysterious cords of human sympathy have connected us with philanthropic hearts throughout the civilized world. The number in our land who already recognize the justice of our cause, and are laboring to promote it, are great and encreasing. It is also a source of encouragement, that the genuine American, brave and independent himself, will respect bravery and independence in others. He spurns servility and meanness, whether they be manifested by nations or by individuals. We submit, therefore, that there is neither necessity for, nor disposition on our part to assume a tone of excessive humility. While we would be respectful, we must address you as men, as citizens, as brothers, as dwellers in a common country, equally interested with you for its welfare, its honor, and for its prosperity. To be still more explicit: we would, first of all, be understood to range ourselves no lower among our fellow-countrymen than is implied in the high appellation of “citizen.” Notwithstanding the impositions and deprivations which have fettered us—notwithstanding the disabilities and liabilities, pending and impending—notwithstanding the cunning, cruel, and scandalous efforts to blot out that right, we declare that we are, and of right we ought to be American citizens. We claim this right, and we claim all the rights and privileges, and duties which, properly, attach to it.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 67

9/1/21 4:16 PM

68

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

It may, and it will, probably, be disputed that we are citizens. We may, and, probably, shall be denounced for this declaration, as making an inconsiderate, impertinent and absurd claim to citizenship; but a very little reflection will vindicate the position we have assumed, from so unfavorable a judgment. Justice is never inconsiderate; truth is never impertinent; right is never absurd. If the claim we set up be just, true and right, it will not be deemed improper or ridiculous in us so to declare it. Nor is it disrespectful to our fellow-citizens, who repudiate the aristocratic notions of the old world, that we range ourselves with them in respect to all the rights and prerogatives belonging to American citizens. Indeed, we believe, when you have duly considered this subject, you will commend us for the mildness and the modesty with which we have taken our ground. By birth, we are American citizens; by the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are American citizens; within the meaning of the United States Constitution, we are American citizens; by the facts of history, and the admissions of American statesmen, we are American citizens; by the hardships and trials endured—by the courage and fidelity displayed by our ancestors in defending the liberties and in achieving the independence of our land, we are American citizens. In proof of the justice of this primary claim, we might cite numerous authorities, facts and testimonies—a few only must suffice. In the Convention of New York, held for amending the constitution of that State, in the year 1821, an interesting discussion took place, upon a proposition to prefix the word “white” to male citizens. Nathan Sandford,14 then late Chancellor of the State, said, “Here there is but one estate—the people—and to me the only qualification seems to be their virtue and morality. If they may be safely trusted to vote for one class of rulers, why not for all? The principle of the scheme is, that those who bear the burdens of the State shall choose those that rule it.”15 Dr. Robert Clark,16 in the same debate, said, “I am unwilling to retain the word ‘white,’ because it is repugnant to all the principles and notions of liberty, to which we have, heretofore, professed to adhere, and to our ‘Declaration of Independence,’ which is a concise and just expose of those principles.” He said “it had been appropriately observed by the Hon. Gentleman from West Chester, (Mr. Jay,)17 that by retaining this word, you violate the constitution of the United States.”18 Chancellor Kent19 supported the motion of Mr. Jay to strike out the word “white.” “He did not come to this Convention,” said he, “to disfranchise any portion of the community.”20 Peter A. Jay, on the same occasion, said, “It is insisted that this Convention, clothed with all

Y7870-Douglass.indb 68

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

69

the powers of the sovereign people of the State, have a right to construct the government in the manner they think most conductive to the general good. If, Sir, right and power be equivalent terms, then I am far from disputing the rights of this assembly. We have power, Sir, I acknowledge, not only to disfranchise every black family, but as many white families also, as we may think expedient.—We may place the whole government in the hands of a few, and thus construct an aristocracy. ****** But, Sir, right and power are not convertible terms. No man, no body of men, however powerful, have a right to do wrong.”21—In the same Convention Martin Van Buren said, “there were two words which has come into common use with our revolutionary strugle—words which contained an abridgment of our political rights—words which, at that day, had a talismanic effect—which led our fathers from the bosom of their families to the tented field—which for seven long years of toil and suffering had keft them to their arms, and which, finally, conducted them to a glorious triumph. They were ‘Taxation and Representation.’ Nor did they lose their influence with the close of that struggle. They were never heard in our halls of legislation without bringing to our recollection the consecrated feelings of those who won our liberties, or, reminding us of everything that was sacred in principle.”22 Ogden Edwards23 without said “he considered it no better than robbery to demand the contributions of colored people towards defraying the public expenses, and at the same time to disfranchise them.”24 But we must close our quotations from these debates.—Much more could be cited to show that colored men are not only citizens, but that they have a right to the exercise of the elective franchise in the State of New York. If the right to citizenship is established in the State of New York, it is in consequence of the same facts which exist in at least every free State of the Union. We turn from the debates in the State of New York to the nation; and here we find testimony abundant and incontestable, that Free Colored people are esteemed as citizens by the highest authorities in the United States. The Constitution of the United States declares “that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the United States.”25 There is, in this clause of the Constitution, nothing whatever, of that watchful malignity which has manifested itself lately in the insertion of the word “white,” before the term “citizen.” The word “white” was unknown to the framers of the Constitution of the United States in such connections—unknown to the signers of the Declaration of Independence—

Y7870-Douglass.indb 69

9/1/21 4:16 PM

70

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

unknown to the brave men at Bunker Hill,26 Ticonderoga,27 and at Red Bank.28 It is a modern word, brought into use by modern legislators, despised in revolutionary times. The question of our citizenship came up as a national question, and was settled during the pendency of the Missouri question, in 1820.29 It will be remembered that that State presented herself for admission into the Union, with a clause in her Constitution prohibiting the settlement of colored citizens with her borders. Resistance was made to her admission into the Union, upon that very ground; and it was not until that State receded from her unconstitutional position, that President Monroe declared the admission of Missouri into the Union to be complete.30 According to Nile’s Register, August 18th, vol. 20, page 338 and 339, the refusal to admit Missouri into the Union was not withdrawn until the General Assembly of that State, in conformity to a fundamental condition imposed by Congress, had, by an act passed for that purpose, solemnly enacted and declared, “That this State (Missouri) has assented, and does assent, that the fourth clause of the 26th section of the third article of their Constitution should never be construed to authorize the passage of any law, and that no law shall be passed in conformity thereto, by which any citizen of either of the United States shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizens are entitled, under the Constitution of the United States.”31 Upon this action by the State of Missouri, President Monroe proclaimed the admission of Missouri into the Union. Here, fellow-citizens, we have a recognition of our citizenship by the highest authority of the United States; and here we might rest our claim to citizenship. But there have been services performed, hardships endured, courage displayed by our fathers, which modern American historians forget to record—a knowledge of which is essential to an intelligent judgment of the merits of our people. Thirty years ago, slavery was less powerful than now; American statesmen were more independent then, than now; and, as a consequence, the black man’s patriotism and bravery were more readily recognized. —The age of slave-hunting had not then come on. In the memorable debate on the Missouri question, the meritorious deeds of our fathers obtained respectful mention. The Hon. Wm. Eustis,32 who had himself been a soldier of the revolution, and Governor of the State of Massachusetts, made a speech in the Congress of the United States, 12th December, and said: “The question to be determined is, Whether the article

Y7870-Douglass.indb 70

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

71

in the Constitution of Missouri, requiring the legislation to provide by law, ‘that free negroes and mulattoes shall not be admitted into that State,’ is, or is not repugnant to that clause of the constitution of the United States which declares ‘that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States[’]? This is the question. Those who contend that the article is not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, take the position that free blacks and mulattoes are not citizens. Now, I invite the gentlemen who maintained this, to go with me and examine this question to its root. At the early part of the revolutionary war, there were found, in the middle and northern States, many blacks, and other people of color, capable of bearing arms, a part of them free, and a greater part of them slaves. The freemen entered our ranks with the whites. The time of those who were slaves were purchased by the State, and they were induced to enter the service in consequence of a law, by which, on condition of their serving in the ranks during the war, they were made freemen. In Rhode Island, where their numbers were more considerable, they were formed under the same considerations into a regiment, commanded by white officers; and it is required, in justice to them, to add, that they discharged their duty with zeal and fidelity. The gallant defense of Red Bank, in which the black regiment bore a part, is among the proofs of their valor.” “Not only the rights, but the character of these men do not appear to have been understood; nor is it to me, at all extraordinary that gentlemen from other States, in which the condition, character, the moral facilities, and the rights of men of color differ so widely, should entertain opinions so variant from ours. In Massachusetts, Sir, there are among them who possess all the virtues which are deemed estimable in civil and social life. They have their public teachers of religion and morality—their schools and other institutions. On anniversaries, which they consider interesting to them, they have their public processions, in all of which they conduct themselves with order and decorum. Now we ask only, that in a disposition to accommodate others, their avowed rights and privileges be not taken from them. If their number be small, and they are feebly represented, we, to whom they are known, are proportionately bound to protect them. But their defence is not founded on their numbers; it rests on the immutable principles of justice. If there be only one family, or a solitary individual who has rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution, whatever may be his color or complexion, it is not in the power, nor can it be the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 71

9/1/21 4:16 PM

72

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

inclination of Congress to deprive him of them. And I trust, Sir, that the decision on this occasion will show that we will extend good faith even to the blacks.”—Nat. Intelligencer, Jan. 2, 1821.33 The following is an extract from a speech of the Hon. Mr. Morrill, of New Hampshire,34 delivered, in the United States Senate in the same month, and reported in the National Intelligencer, Jan. 11th, 1821. “Sir, you excluded, not only the citizens from their constitutional privileges and immunities, but also your soldiers of color, to whom you have given patents of land. You had a company of this description. They have fought your battles. They have defended your country. They have preserved your privileges; but have lost their own.—What did you say to them on their enlistment? ‘We will give you a monthly compensation, and, at the end of the war, 160 acres of good land, on which you may settle, and by cultivating the soil, spend your declining years in peace and in the enjoyment of those immunities for which you have fought and bled.’ Now, Sir, you restrict them, and will not allow them to enjoy the fruit of their labor. Where is the public faith in this case? Did they suppose, with a patent in their hand declaring their title to land in Missouri with the seal of the nation and the President’s signature affixed thereto, it would be said unto them by any authority you shall not possess the premises? This could never have been anticipated; and yet this must follow if colored men are not citizens.”35 Mr. Strong, of New York,36 said, in the same great debate, “The federal constitution knows but two descriptions of freemen: these are citizens and aliens. Now Congress can naturalize only aliens—i.e., persons who owe allegiance to a foreign government. But a slave has no country, and owes no allegiance except to his master. How, then, is he an alien. If restored to his liberty, and made a freeman, what is his national character? It must be determined by the federal constitution, and without reference to policy; for it respects liberty. Is it that of a citizen, or alien? But it has been shown that he is not an alien. May we not, therefore, conclude—nay, are we not bound to conclude that he is a citizens of the United States?”37 Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina,38 speaking of the colored people, in Congress, and with reference to the same question, bore this testimony: “They then were (during the Revolution) as they still are, as valuable a part of our population to the Union, as any other equal number of inhabitants.—They were, in numerous instances, the pioneers; and in all the labors of your armies, to their hands were owing the erection of the greatest part of the fortifications raised for the protection of our country.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 72

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

73

Fort Moultrie gave, at an early period the experience and untired valor of our citizens immortality to American arms; and in the Northern States, numerous bodies of them was enrolled, and fought, side by side, with the whites, the battles of the Revolution.”39 General Jackson, in his celebrated proclamations to the Free Colored inhabitants of Louisiana, uses these expressions: “Your white fellowcitizens;” and again: “Our brave citizens are united, and all contention has ceased among them.”

FIRST PROCLAMATION. extracts. Head Quarters, 7th Military Dis’t., Mobile, Sept. 21st, 1814. To the Free Colored inhabitants of Louisiana: Through a mistaken policy you have heretofore been deprived of a participation in the glorious struggle for national rights, in which your country is engaged. This no longer shall exist. As sons of freedom you are now called on to defend our most inestimable blessings.—As Americans, your country looks with confidence to her adopted children for a valorous support. As fathers, husbands, and brothers, you are summoned to rally round the standard of the Eagle, to defend all which is dear to existence. Your country, although calling for your exertions, does not wish you to engage in her cause without remunerating you for the services rendered. In the sincerity of a soldier, and in the language of truth I address you. To every noble-hearted free man of color, volunteering to serve during the present contest with Great Britain, and no longer, there will be paid the same bounty in money and land now received by the white soldiers of the United States, viz: $124 in money, and 160 acres of land. The non-commissioned officers and privates will also be entitled to the same monthly pay and daily rations, and clothes, furnished to any American soldier. The Major General commanding will select officers for your government from your white fellow-citizens. Your non-commissioned officers will be selected from yourselves. Due regard will be paid to the feelings of freemen and soldiers. As a distinct, independent battalion or

Y7870-Douglass.indb 73

9/1/21 4:16 PM

74

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

regiment, pursuing the path of glory, you will, undivided, receive the applause and gratitude of your countrymen. ANDREW JACKSON, Major Gen. Commanding. —Nile’s Register, Dec. 3, 1814, Vol. 7. p. 205.

SECOND PROCLAMATION. To the Free People of Color: Soldiers! when on the banks of the Mobile I called you to take up arms, inviting you to partake the perils and glory of your white fellowcitizens, I expected much from you; for I was not ignorant that you possessed qualities most formidable to an invading enemy. I knew with what fortitude you could endure hunger and thirst, and all the fatigues of a campaign. I knew well how you loved your native country, and that you, as well as ourselves, had to defend what man holds most dear—his parents, wife, children, and property. You have done more than I expected. In addition to the previous qualities I before knew you to possess, I found among you a noble enthusiasm which leads to the performance of great things. Soldiers! the President of the United States shall hear how praiseworthy was your conduct in the hour of danger, and the representatives of the American people will give you the praise your exploits entitle you to. Your General anticipates them in applauding your noble ardor. The enemy approaches—his vessels cover our lakes—our brave citizens are united, and all contention has ceased among them.—Their only dispute is, who shall win the prize of valor, or who the most glory, its noblest reward. By order, THOMAS BUTLER, Aid-de Camp.40 Such, fellow-citizens, is but a sample of a mass of testimony upon which we found our claim to be American citizens. There is, we think, no flaw in the evidence. The case is made out. We and you stand upon the same broad national basis. Whether at home or abroad, we and you owe equal allegiance to the same government—have a right to look for protection on the same ground. We have been born and reared on the same soil; we have been animated by, and have displayed the same patriotic impulses; we have acknowledged and performed the same duty; we have fought and bled in the battles; we have gained and gloried in the same victories; and we are equally entitled to the blessings resulting therefrom.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 74

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

75

In view of this array of evidence of services bravely rendered, how base and monstrous would be the ingratitude, should the republic disown us and drive us into exile!—how faithless and selfish, should the nation persist in degrading us! But we will not remind you of obligations—we will not appeal to your generous feelings—a naked statement of the case is our best appeal. Having, now, upon the testimony of your own great and venerated names, completely vindicated our rights to be regarded and treated as American citizens, we hope you will now permit us to address you in the plainness of speech, becoming the dignity of American citizens. Fellow-citizens, we have had, and still have, great wrongs of which to complain. A heavy and cruel hand has been laid upon us. As a people, we feel ourselves to be not only deeply injured, but grossly misunderstood. Our white fellow-countrymen do not know us. They are strangers to our character, ignorant of our capacity, oblivious of our history and progress, and are misinformed as to the principles and ideas that control and guide us as a people. The great mass of American citizens estimate us as being a characterless and purposeless people; and hence we hold up our heads, if at all, against the withering influence of a nation’s scorn and contempt. It will not be surprising that we are so misunderstood and misused when the motives for misrepresenting us and for degrading us are duly considered. Indeed, it will seem strange, (in view of the ten thousand channels through which malign feelings find utterance and influence,) that we have not even fallen lower in public estimation than we have done. For, with the single exception of the Jews, under the whole heavens, there is not to be found a people pursued with a more relentless prejudice and persecution, than are the Free Colored people of the U. S. Without pretending to have exerted ourselves as we ought, in view of an intelligent understanding of our interest to avert from us the unfavorable opinions and unfriendly action of the American people, we feel that the imputations cast upon us, for our want of intelligence, morality and exalted character, may be mainly accounted for by the injustice we have received at your hands.—What stone had been left unturned41 to degrade us? What hand has refused to fan the flame of popular prejudice against us? What American artist has not caricatured us?—What wit has not laughed at us in our wretchedness? What songster has not made merry over our depressed spirits? What press has not ridiculed and contemned us? What pulpit has withheld from our devoted heads its angry lightning,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 75

9/1/21 4:16 PM

76

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

or its sanctimonious hate. Few, few, very few; and that we have borne up with it all—that we have tried to be wise, though denounced by all to be fools—that we have tried to be upright, when all around us have esteemed us as knaves—that we have striven to be gentlemen, although all around us have been teaching us its impossibility—that we have remained here, when all our neighbors have advised us to leave, proves that we possess qualities of head and heart, such as cannot but be commended by impartial men. It is believed, that no other nation on the globe could have made more progress in the midst of such an universal and stringent disparagement. It would humble the proudest, crush the energies of the strongest, and retard the progress of the swiftest. In view of our circumstances, we can, without boasting, thank God, and take courage, having placed ourselves where we may fairly challenge comparison with more highly favored men. Among the colored people, we can point, with pride and hope, to men of education and refinement, who have become such, despite of the most unfavorable influences; we can point to mechanics, farmers, merchants, teachers, ministers, doctors, lawyers, editors, and authors, against whose progress the concentrated energies of American prejudice has proved quite unavailing. Now, what is the motive for ignoring and discouraging our improvement in this country? The answer is ready. The intelligent and upright free man of color is an unanswerable argument in favor of liberty, and a killing condemnation of American slavery. It is easily seen that, in proportion to the progress of the free man of color, in knowledge, temperance, industry, and righteousness, in just that proportion will he endanger the stability of slavery; hence, all the powers of slavery are exerted to prevent the elevation of the free people of color. The force of fifteen hundred million dollars is arrayed against us;42 hence, the press, the pulpit, and the platform, against all the natural promptings of uncontaminated manhood, point their deadly missiles of ridicule, scorn and contempt at us; and bid us, on pain of being pierced through and through, to remain in our degradation. Let the same amount of money be employed against the interest of any other class of persons, however favored by nature they may be, the result could scarcely be different from that seen in our own case. Such a people would be regarded with aversion; the money-ruled multitude would heap contumely upon them, and money-ruled institutions would proscribe them. Besides the money consideration, fellow-citizens, an explanation of the erroneous opinion, prevalent concerning us is furnished

Y7870-Douglass.indb 76

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

77

in the fact, less creditable to human nature, that men are apt to hate most those whom they have injured most.—Having despised us, it is not strange that Americans should seek to render us despicable; having enslaved us, it is natural that they should strive to prove us unfit for freedom; having denounced us as indolent, it is not strange that they should cripple our enterprise; having assumed our inferiority, it would be extraordinary if they sought to surround us with circumstances which would serve to make us direct contradictions to their assumption. In conclusion, fellow-citizens, while conscious of the immense disadvantages, which beset our pathway, and fully appreciating our own weakness, we are encouraged to persevere, in efforts adapted to our improvement, by a firm reliance upon God, and a settled conviction, as immovable as the everlasting hills, that all the truths in the whole universe of God, are allied to our cause. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, J. M. WHITFIELD, H. O. WAGONER, REV. A. N. FREEMAN, GEORGE B. VASHON. 1. In addition to calling for equal rights for African Americans, the Rochester convention debated the controversial proposition of founding and sponsoring a labor college. The delegates also established the National Council of the Colored People to support educational programs, economic cooperatives, employment opportunities, and the creation of a black press. Despite meeting only three times before its disbandment, this council made the first major attempt to organize black action for advancement. Philip S. Foner, History of Black Americans: From the Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom to the Eve of the Compromise of 1850 (Westport, Conn., 1983), 316–18; C. Peter Ripley, ed., The Black Abolitionist Papers, 5 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985–92), 4:170–73. 2. An allusion to the American Revolution (1775–83). 3. The preface of the Declaration of Independence. 4. Douglass is alluding to the famous Revolutionary War–era slogans “no taxation without representation” and “taxation without representation is tyranny.” Although both statements’ origins are obscure, the former is usually attributed to a sermon first preached in 1750 by the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew, a Boston-based Congregational minister. The latter is linked with a Massachusetts lawyer and politician, James Otis, from a trial that took place in 1760. Martin J. Manning and Clarence R. Vyatt, eds., Encyclopedia of Media and Propaganda in Wartime America, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2011), 1:108–09. 5. The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution. 6. A slight misquotation of a motto on the seal of Thomas Jefferson’s tomb. The seal reads: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature, 17th ed. (1855; Boston, 2002), 846. 7. Although slavery had been abolished in the Northern states by the 1820s, most of those states, over the following decades, enacted laws barring free blacks from voting, holding public office, and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 77

9/1/21 4:16 PM

78

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

serving on juries. Indeed, some scholars argue that the Jim Crow statutes, which were implemented across the South in the years following the Civil War, were largely modeled upon the Northern states’ discriminatory antebellum legislation. Mary Block, “African American Responses to Early Jim Crow,” in African Americans in the Nineteenth Century: People and Perspectives, ed. Dixie Ray Haggard (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2010), 111–12; EAAH, 2:272–76. 8. The 1792 National Militia Act called for “every free able-bodied white male citizen of the representative states” to serve in the federal militia, effectively barring free blacks. The ban remained in place until the passage of the 1862 Militia Act, which cleared the path for the Lincoln administration to enlist African Americans in the military. Although the 1792 Militia Act did not explicitly prohibit any state from enlisting African Americans in its state militia, every state had done so by 1835. As a result, free blacks were denied citizenship in some states, since service in the state militia was a duty required of all free able-bodied male residents. In 1798, both the navy and the marines barred African Americans from serving in their ranks. The marines maintained this ban until 1942, but the navy began ignoring the restriction almost immediately. Congress legitimated the navy’s failure to restrict recruitment of black sailors by lifting the ban in 1813. In 1839, however, the navy imposed a monthly 5 percent quota on African American recruits. The quota was lifted in 1861 by Lincoln’s secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles. John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York, 1999), 584–86; EAAH, 2:272–76. 9. In 1826, Congress barred free African Americans from any pre-exemption or preemption rights to all public lands. Preemption was the right of settlers to purchase public lands at a minimum price determined by the federal government. Lawrence H. Fuchs, The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity, and the Civic Culture (Hanover, N.H., 1990), 92; Meizhu Lui et al., eds., The Color of Wealth: The Story behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide (New York, 2008), 241. 10. After languishing for several decades, colonization schemes once again gained support in the early 1850s. In 1851, U.S. senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts proposed federal funds for colonization. Later that year, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Virginia revived colonization programs of their own and appropriated state funds for the cause. The following year, Indiana started a colonization fund, petitioning Congress to use federal funds to colonize African Americans away from the United States. Indiana’s fund remained on the books until 1865. David W. Bulla, Lincoln’s Censor: Milo Hascall and Freedom of the Press in Civil War Indiana (West Lafayette, Ind., 2009), 39–40; Nikki M. Taylor, America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark (Lexington, Ky., 2013), 48–50. 11. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, part of that year’s infamous sectional compromise, replaced a similar 1793 federal law and created a federal position of “commissioner.” The commissioner’s purpose was to issue arrest warrants for fugitives and to certify the removal of captives to the South. This law sparked a rise in antislavery sentiment in the North, where opposition centered on the inherent bias of the commissioners—while they were paid ten dollars each time they ordered the removal of a fugitive, they received only five dollars if they judged that the captive was not a fugitive slave. Many people also objected to the creation of a bureau of federal officials, since it would enforce the property rights of slave owners in the South. Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860 (1968; Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), 23–25; Miller and Smith, Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, 275–76. 12. Latin for “have the body,” habeas corpus originated in English common law as a way of protecting individuals from illegal detention. Habeas corpus, which appears in the U.S. Constitution as part of the Suspension Clause (article 1, section 9, clause 2), is the means by which federal courts determine the validity of the state’s detention of a prisoner. Charles E. Chadman, A Concise Legal Dictionary (Chicago, 1909), 190; Archibald Brown, A New Law Dictionary and Institute of the Whole Laws (1916; Clark, N.J., 2005), 254. 13. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 stated that in the case of the escape of any person held to the service of labor under the law (slaves), the person who owned such laborers might seize the fugitives

Y7870-Douglass.indb 78

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

79

and bring them before any U.S. judge or magistrate. The judge or magistrate, upon determining the validity of the slave’s fugitive status, could issue a warrant for the removal of the slave from the state to which they fled. Any person harboring or obstructing the removal of a fugitive slave was liable to pay a penalty of $500. C. W. A. David, “The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793,” JNH, 9:18–25 (January 1924); Paul Finkelman, “The Kidnapping of John Davis and the Adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793,” Journal of Southern History, 56:397–422 (August 1990); Miller and Smith, Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, 275–76. 14. Nathan Sanford (1777–1838) was born in Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York. He was educated at the Clinton Academy and later at Yale University, though he did not graduate from the latter. In 1799, Sanford was admitted to the bar and opened a law office in New York City. Closely affiliated with the Tammany Hall organization, he was appointed U.S. commissioner in bankruptcy in 1802 and U.S. Attorney for the District of New York from 1803 to 1816. Sanford served in the state assembly from 1808 to 1809, and again in 1811. For a brief period of time in 1811, he also served as Speaker, and from 1812 to 1815, he was a member of the state senate. In 1815, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, but he lost his bid for reelection to Martin Van Buren in 1821. That year, Sanford also served as a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention. In 1823 he succeeded James Kent as chancellor of New York, serving in that office until 1826. In the complicated election of 1824, Sanford received Electoral College votes for vice president from both the Henry Clay and William Crawford camps, but he finished far behind the winner, John C. Calhoun. In 1825 he was reelected to the U.S. Senate, where he remained until his retirement from politics in 1831. DAB, 16:349–50; BDUSC (online). 15. The source of this statement, as is the case with much of the material that Douglass quotes in this document, appears to have been William Yates’s Rights of Colored Men to Suffrage, Citizenship and Trial by Jury, published in Philadelphia in 1838. Yates’s work provides lengthy excerpts from several earlier publications, most notably the official transcript of the 1821 New York State Constitutional Convention. Comparisons between the original publications and the versions published by Yates, however, indicate that he occasionally made small changes to the original texts. Those alterations appear in the passages Douglass quotes throughout this address. William Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, Citizenship and Trial by Jury: Being a Book of Facts, Arguments and Authorities, Historical Notices and Sketches of Debates with Notes (Philadelphia, 1838), 2; Nathaniel R. Carter and William L. Stone, Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821, Assembled for the Purpose of Amending of the Constitution of the State of New York (Albany, N.Y., 1821). 16. Robert Clark (1777–1837) was born in Washington County, New York, six months after his family emigrated from Scotland. He was privately educated and studied medicine in his brother’s office. Clark settled in Delaware County, New York, and opened a medical practice in 1799. From 1812 to 1815, Clark represented Delaware County in the New York General Assembly, and in 1819 he was elected as a Democratic-Republican to a single term in the U.S. Congress. In 1821, Clark became a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention. In 1823, he moved to a farm in Monroe County, Michigan, where he once again set up a private medical practice and pursued an interest in the scientific cultivation of fruits and grasses. Between 1823 and 1831, Clark served as the register of the Land Office of the Second Land District of the Michigan Territory. Talcott E. Wing, ed., History of Monroe County, Michigan (New York, 1890), 144–48; BDUSC (online). 17. Born on his maternal grandparents’ estate, known as Liberty Hall, in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, Peter Augustus Jay (1776–1843) was the eldest child of John Jay, first chief justice of the United States, and his wife, Sarah Van Brugh Livingston. In 1794, he graduated from Columbia College. Later that year, the chief justice was sent to London by President Washington to negotiate a trade agreement with the British, and the younger Jay served as his secretary. Upon returning to the United States, Jay studied law with a cousin and was admitted to the bar in 1797. While in Paris during the signing of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in 1802, he was entrusted with delivering the document

Y7870-Douglass.indb 79

9/1/21 4:16 PM

80

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

to Washington, D.C. After failing to be elected to Congress in both 1812 and 1814, he succeeded in being elected to the New York General Assembly in 1816. While serving, Jay promoted legislation to build the Erie Canal and to abolish slavery in New York. From 1819 to 1821, he was the recorder of New York City, and in 1821 he served as a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention. He served as president of the New York Hospital from 1827 to 1833, and in 1833 he was a member of the commission that set the boundary between New York and New Jersey. From 1840 until his death in 1843, Jay was president of the New-York Historical Society. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York, 1888–89), 3:411; DAB, 10:11. 18. Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 13. 19. James Kent (1763–1847) was chancellor of New York Court of Chancery from 1814 until 1823. A Yale graduate, Kent practiced law in Poughkeepsie, served three terms in the New York Assembly, held a law professorship at Columbia, and sat on the New York Supreme Court for sixteen years before his appointment as chancellor. After retiring from the chancery, Kent briefly resumed teaching at Columbia and completed his Commentaries on American Law, a classic American legal treatise. Kent’s conservatism in politics and law was influenced by the Federalists, and Alexander Hamilton in particular. Concerning the slave trade, Kent declared in his Commentaries: “The constitution of the United States laid the foundation of a series of provisions, to put a final stop to the progress of this moral pestilence, by admitting a power in Congress to prohibit the importation of slaves, after the expiration of the year 1807. The Constitution evidently looked forward to the year 1808 as the commencement of an epoch in the history of human improvement.” In 1821, Kent was a member of the New York State Constitutional Convention, where he, along with John Jay, Jr., unsuccessfully fought against the retention of the property qualification for African American voters. James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, 4 vols. (New York, 1826–30), 1:191–200, 2:247–58; John Theodore Horton, James Kent: A Study in Conservatism, 1763–1847 (New York, 1939); Charles B. Elliott, An American Chancellor (Indianapolis, Ind., 1903); ACAB, 3:521–22; National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1898), 3:55–56; DAB, 10:344–47. 20. Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 17. 21. Ibid., 21. 22. Ibid., 29. 23. Ogden Edwards (1781–1862) was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Pierpont Edwards, was a member of the Continental Congress, a delegate to the Connecticut State Constitutional Convention, and the U.S. district judge for the District of Connecticut. Edwards’s grandfather was the Reverend Jonathan Edwards, a famous theologian and president of Princeton University. Educated at Princeton and the Litchfield Law School, Edwards was admitted to the New York bar in 1802 and went into private practice in New York City before being elected a judge on New York’s Surrogate Court in 1807. From 1814 to 1817, Edwards was a member of the New York General Assembly. In 1816, he was appointed counsel for the corporation of the City of New York, serving in that capacity until 1822. In 1821, he was a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention, and between 1822 and 1841, he was a judge on the First Circuit Court of the State of New York. While serving on the Circuit Court, he presided over the notorious Helen Jewett murder trial in 1836. After an unsuccessful run for governor of New York (as the Whig candidate) in 1846, Edwards returned to private practice and became one of New York City’s most prominent attorneys. H. Clay Williams, Biographical Encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1881), 133; Dwight Canfield Kilbourn, The Bench and Bar of Litchfield County, Connecticut, 1709–1909 (Litchfield, Conn., 1909), 241; Patricia Clive Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett (New York, 1999), 330–32; BDUSC (online). 24. Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 42 25. Article 4, section 2, clause 1, of the U.S. Constitution, also known as the Comity Clause. 26. The Battle of Bunker Hill (also referred to as the Battle of Breed’s Hill) was the first major engagement of the Revolutionary War and the bloodiest battle of the revolution, with both sides

Y7870-Douglass.indb 80

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

81

suffering casualties of approximately 40 percent. The battle, which took place on 17 June 1775, ultimately failed to prevent the British from transporting troops across the Charles River from Boston to Charlestown Heights. Despite this, Bunker Hill helped unify colonial resistance and ended any hope of reconciliation between Great Britain and the American colonies. Terry M. Mays, Historical Dictionary of the American Revolution (Lanham, Md., 2010), 42–44, 197. 27. Douglass’s reference to Ticonderoga is unclear. Known as both “the key to the continent” and “the Gibraltar of the North,” Fort Ticonderoga (originally called Carillon by the French) was located ninety-five miles north of Albany, New York, and commanded the high ground between Lake Champlain and Lake George. Between 1758 and 1777, the fort changed hands four times and was the site of three battles. Only the first, which took place during the French and Indian War, was of any real significance. On 8 July 1758, a combined British and Colonial force of 12,000–16,000 men, under the command of General James Abercrombie, was defeated, with heavy casualties, by a force of no more than 3,000–4,000 French troops under the command of the marquis de Montcalm. Following their victory, however, the French drastically reduced the size of their garrison, and in 1759 they abandoned the fort to the British. The second Battle of Ticonderoga took place on 10 May 1775. A small force of fewer than 100 American soldiers, under the shaky joint command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, seized the fort from an even smaller force of British soldiers, with only a single, nonfatal casualty on either side. In fact, the second battle was primarily remembered for the power struggle between Allen and Arnold, as well as for the seizure of seventy-nine pieces of heavy British artillery. The third Battle of Ticonderoga simply reversed the outcome of the previous conflict. It began the following year on 30 June 1777 when a force of over 7,000 men, under the command of British general John Burgoyne, launched what would be the final siege of the fort. The battle ended, rather ignominiously, on the night of 5 July, when the American commander, General Arthur St. Clair, ordered his forces to abandon Fort Ticonderoga and retreat south. David Eggenberger, An Encyclopedia of Battles: Accounts of Over 1,560 battles from 1479 B.C. to the Present (New York, 1985), 151–52; Theodore P. Savas and J. David Dameron, A Guide to the Battles of the American Revolution (New York, 2010), 9–12, 96–100. 28. The Battle of Red Bank took place on 22 October 1777 in New Jersey outside Fort Mercer, which was one of two American forts charged with protecting the Delaware River approach to Philadelphia. During the battle, an inferior force of American soldiers was able to decisively defeat a significantly larger force of Hessian soldiers, preventing them from capturing Fort Mercer. The American victory at the Battle of Red Bank, which cheered the Patriot side, was mistakenly attributed to the efforts of Rhode Island’s all-black regiment. Although Colonel Christopher Greene, commander of Fort Mercer, eventually commanded that unit, it was not organized until 1778. Michael Lee Lanning, African Americans in the Revolutionary War (New York, 2000), 75–76; Mays, Historical Dictionary of the American Revolution, 197. 29. In 1820, the proposed Missouri Constitution included a clause prohibiting the movement of free blacks into the state. Often quite rancorous, debate in Congress over this controversial proposal contributed to a delay in Missouri’s admission into the Union. A compromise (known as the Second Missouri Compromise) was hammered out, in large part because of the efforts of Kentucky senator Henry Clay. Clay left the meaning of the rewritten clause vague enough to ensure Missouri’s admission as a state in 1821. Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1819–1821 (Lexington, Ky., 1953), 134–36, 154–58; Levine, Dislocating Race and Nation, 67–118; Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 38–39; EAAH, 2:380–82. 30. President James Monroe, like many Jeffersonian Republicans, regarded the attempt to block Missouri’s admission as a slave state as an effort motivated by the hopes of reviving Northern support for the Federalist party, rather than by a genuine opposition to slavery. Aware that the slavery question was contentious, Monroe did not discuss the issue with his cabinet. The president did tell Senator James Barbour of Virginia that he supported the compromise measure drafted by Henry Clay. Monroe signed the legislation on 6 March 1820, just one day after its passage in Congress, and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 81

9/1/21 4:16 PM

82

ADDRESS OF THE COLORED NATIONAL CONVENTION

used the influence of his office to reconcile Southern militants to the compromise. Sean Wilentz, “Jeffersonian Democracy and the Origins of Political Antislavery in the United States: The Missouri Crisis Revisited,” Journal of the Historical Society, 4:375–401 (Fall 2004). 31. Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 38–39. 32. William Eustis (1753–1825) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and attended Harvard College. Upon his graduation, he studied medicine and served as an army surgeon during the Revolutionary War. After the war, Eustis went into private practice in Boston and represented the city in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1788 to 1794. Eustis also served two terms in Congress, from 1801 to 1805. In 1807, he was appointed secretary of war by President Jefferson, and he remained in that position under President Madison. Following harsh criticism of his handling of military affairs in the early months of the War of 1812, Eustis was forced to resign in December 1812. In 1814 he was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the Netherlands, where he remained until 1818. He was reelected to Congress for a single term in 1820. While serving, he was the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. Choosing not to run for a second term, Eustis was instead elected governor of Massachusetts in 1823, dying while in office in 1825. DAB, 6:193–94; ANB (online); BDUSC (online). 33. William Eustis delivered the speech Douglass described on 12 December 1820. Washington National Intelligencer, 13 December 1820; Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 39–41. 34. David Lawrence Morril (1772–1849) was born in Epping, New Hampshire. The son and grandson of Harvard-educated Congregational ministers, Morril was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy. Trained as a physician, he went into private practice in 1793 in Epsom, New Hampshire, where he remained until 1800. Following a religious awakening, he closed his practice, studied theology, was ordained, and became pastor of the Presbyterian-Congregationalist Church of Goffstown, New Hampshire, in 1802. He remained there until 1811, when his request for dismissal was granted. Before leaving the ministry, Morril had reopened his medical practice in 1808 and been elected moderator of the Goffstown town meeting. He was also elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, where he served until 1817. During his final year as a state representative, he served as Speaker. Elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democratic-Republican in 1816, Morril served a single term in Washington, D.C., 1817–23. Choosing not to run for reelection, he was instead elected to the state senate, where he remained until 1824. That year, he was elected to the first of three consecutive terms as governor of New Hampshire. Morril retired from politics in 1827, and in 1831 he moved from Goffstown to Concord. There he edited the New Hampshire Observer (1831–33) and served as vice president of the American Bible Society, the Sunday-School Union, and the Home Missionary Society, in addition to serving as president of the New Hampshire Missionary Society and the New Hampshire Colonization Society. DAB, 13:195–96; ANB (online); BDUSC (online). 35. Douglass follows Yates in his misspelling of Mr. Morrill’s name, which was in fact “Morril.” He also repeats Yates’s mistake regarding the date of publication of the transcript of Morril’s speech in the National Intelligencer, which was 10 January 1821, not 11 January. Washington National Intelligencer, 10 January 1821; Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 38–39. 36. James Strong (1783–1847) was born in Windham, Connecticut, and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1806. After settling in Hudson, New York, he was elected to a single term in Congress in 1819. Following a two-year absence from politics, Strong was reelected to Congress in 1823 for the first of four consecutive terms. During his last two terms in the House of Representatives, Strong was the chairman of the Committee on Territories. Retiring from politics in 1831, Strong died a bachelor in Chester, Morris County, New Jersey, in 1847. Benjamin W. Dwight, The History of the Descendants of Elder John Strong of Northampton, Massachusetts, 2 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 1871), 2:842; BDUSC (online). 37. Strong’s comments were published in the National Intelligencer on 9 December 1820. Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 45–46. 38. A native of Charleston, Charles Pinckney (1757–1824) was born into one of the wealthiest and most politically prominent families in South Carolina. Educated privately in Charleston,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 82

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT

83

Pinckney read law privately with his father and was admitted to the bar in 1779. That year, he was also elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. Pinckney fought in the Revolutionary War and was taken prisoner by the British in 1780. In 1784, the South Carolina legislature elected Pinckney a delegate to the Continental Congress. He served in this capacity until 1787, when he was selected as a state delegate to the Constitutional Convention. At the convention, Pinckney, like James Madison, submitted a detailed plan for strengthening the federal government. While some historians maintain that Pinckney’s plan was almost as influential as the Virginia Plan in shaping the Constitution, no copy of it has survived, and the true extent of his contribution to the final document remains uncertain. In 1788, Pinckney married Mary Eleanor Laurens (with whom he had three children), the daughter of Henry Laurens, a wealthy South Carolina merchant, planter, and former president of the Continental Congress. From 1789 to 1790, Pinckney was governor of South Carolina. In 1798, he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democratic-Republican, resigning his seat in 1801 to serve as minister to Spain. While in Spain, Pinckney was instrumental in gaining Spanish acquiescence to the French government’s sale of Louisiana to the United States in 1803. In 1805 he returned to South Carolina and was again elected to the General Assembly (1805–06 and 1810–14) and governor (1808–10). He served one last term in Congress from 1819 to 1821. During his final years, Pinckney resumed the practice of law and pursued agricultural endeavors. DAB, 14:611–14; ANB (online); BDUSC (online). 39. Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 48–49 40. Ibid., 50–53. 41. The phrase was first known as the Delphic oracle’s response to a question from the Greek general Polycrates. Polycrates wanted to know the best means of locating the buried treasure of a defeated Persian general, Mardonius, following the Battle of Plataea in 477 B.C.E. The earliestrecorded source of this phrase in Greek is in Euripedes’s Heracleidae (ca. 419 B.C.E.). The earliestknown Latin source of the phrase is found in Pliny the Younger’s letters, which date to the first century C.E. Desiderius Erasmus, The Adages of Erasmus, ed. William Barker (Toronto, 2001), 72–73; Martin H. Manser, Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs: Meanings and Origins of More Than 1,700 Popular Sayings (New York, 2007), 164. 42. In 1850, the total value of all the slaves in the United States was estimated at $1,280,145,000. This amount, which was calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau, was based on average value of $400 per slave. U.S. Census Bureau, A Century of Population Growth from the First Census of the United States, to the Twelfth Census, 1790–1900 (Washington, D.C., 1909), 146.

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT (1861) New York Independent, 27 June 1861. Another text in Douglass’ Monthly, 4:484 (July 1861).

Shortly after the start of the Civil War, one of the nation’s leading religious journals, the New York Independent, underwent a major reorganization in management. Its new nominal editor was the prominent Congregational minister and reformer Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, but day-to-day operations were controlled by the assistant editor, Theodore Tilton. Douglass had editorialized frequently in his own newspapers on African American emigration, usually as an opponent. In the aftermath of the Harpers

Y7870-Douglass.indb 83

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT

83

Pinckney read law privately with his father and was admitted to the bar in 1779. That year, he was also elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. Pinckney fought in the Revolutionary War and was taken prisoner by the British in 1780. In 1784, the South Carolina legislature elected Pinckney a delegate to the Continental Congress. He served in this capacity until 1787, when he was selected as a state delegate to the Constitutional Convention. At the convention, Pinckney, like James Madison, submitted a detailed plan for strengthening the federal government. While some historians maintain that Pinckney’s plan was almost as influential as the Virginia Plan in shaping the Constitution, no copy of it has survived, and the true extent of his contribution to the final document remains uncertain. In 1788, Pinckney married Mary Eleanor Laurens (with whom he had three children), the daughter of Henry Laurens, a wealthy South Carolina merchant, planter, and former president of the Continental Congress. From 1789 to 1790, Pinckney was governor of South Carolina. In 1798, he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democratic-Republican, resigning his seat in 1801 to serve as minister to Spain. While in Spain, Pinckney was instrumental in gaining Spanish acquiescence to the French government’s sale of Louisiana to the United States in 1803. In 1805 he returned to South Carolina and was again elected to the General Assembly (1805–06 and 1810–14) and governor (1808–10). He served one last term in Congress from 1819 to 1821. During his final years, Pinckney resumed the practice of law and pursued agricultural endeavors. DAB, 14:611–14; ANB (online); BDUSC (online). 39. Yates, Rights of the Colored Men to Suffrage, 48–49 40. Ibid., 50–53. 41. The phrase was first known as the Delphic oracle’s response to a question from the Greek general Polycrates. Polycrates wanted to know the best means of locating the buried treasure of a defeated Persian general, Mardonius, following the Battle of Plataea in 477 B.C.E. The earliestrecorded source of this phrase in Greek is in Euripedes’s Heracleidae (ca. 419 B.C.E.). The earliestknown Latin source of the phrase is found in Pliny the Younger’s letters, which date to the first century C.E. Desiderius Erasmus, The Adages of Erasmus, ed. William Barker (Toronto, 2001), 72–73; Martin H. Manser, Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs: Meanings and Origins of More Than 1,700 Popular Sayings (New York, 2007), 164. 42. In 1850, the total value of all the slaves in the United States was estimated at $1,280,145,000. This amount, which was calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau, was based on average value of $400 per slave. U.S. Census Bureau, A Century of Population Growth from the First Census of the United States, to the Twelfth Census, 1790–1900 (Washington, D.C., 1909), 146.

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT (1861) New York Independent, 27 June 1861. Another text in Douglass’ Monthly, 4:484 (July 1861).

Shortly after the start of the Civil War, one of the nation’s leading religious journals, the New York Independent, underwent a major reorganization in management. Its new nominal editor was the prominent Congregational minister and reformer Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, but day-to-day operations were controlled by the assistant editor, Theodore Tilton. Douglass had editorialized frequently in his own newspapers on African American emigration, usually as an opponent. In the aftermath of the Harpers

Y7870-Douglass.indb 83

9/1/21 4:16 PM

84

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT

Ferry raid, Douglass wavered in his stance on emigration, printing recruitment advertisements for James Redpath’s Haytian Emigration Bureau that attempted to encourage a selective migration of free blacks to that Caribbean nation. In the spring of 1861, Douglass contemplated visiting Haiti to learn about the conditions for prospective emigrants, but he abruptly abandoned that idea when serious fighting broke out in the Civil War. Tilton worked to recruit Douglass as a regular contributor to the Independent, and this article by Douglass on Haitian emigration marked the first of several contributions to that periodical. Theodore Tilton to Douglass, 30 April 1862, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 718–19, FD Papers, DLC; Altina L. Waller, Reverend Beecher and Mrs. Tilton: Sex and Class in Victorian America (Amherst, Mass., 1982), 41–43; Levine, Dislocating Race and Nation, 179–200.

One effect of the heroic attempt to liberate the slaves of Virginia by John Brown and his noble little company of brave men, was a perfect storm of pitiless wrath and fury directed against the free colored people scattered over the slaveholding states. Several of these states, in their delirium of guilt and alarm, with more than Pharaoh1-like tyranny and cruelty, proposed the expulsion of free colored people from their borders.2 This scandalous and shocking measure, supported as usual by the tyrant’s plea—necessity—designed the better to protect and preserve slavery from internal as well as external danger—was, as all know, rigorously put in force in several of the more Southern states. The colored people were sternly compelled at once to choose between a condition of life-long slavery for themselves and for their posterity, and removal from those states. Being men, they preferred the latter; and thus the heart-rending spectacle was presented to the world of thousands of American born people, guilty of no crime but the color given them by their Creator, literally driven from their homes, from the soil watered by their tears, and enriched by their very blood. They were compelled to leave all behind them, and to seek new homes they knew not whither. The continent upon which they had toiled for more than two centuries, seemed to be gradually closing all its iron gates against them, and Whither shall we go? was the plaintive wail that went out from them into the ear of all Christendom. It was in this mournful state of facts, that Geffrard,3 the patriotic and philan-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 84

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT

85

thropic President of Hayti, touched with a noble feeling of sympathy and fraternity, won for himself, and for his country, the grateful applause of humane men throughout the world, by promptly offering to this stricken and outcast people a home and country within his dominions. The buoyant humanity of the Black Republic of the tropics was in startling contrast with the leaden indifference to the fate of these people by our professedly more enlightened and Christianized white Republics of the North. This act of Hayti at once secured for her, as it deserved, the lasting gratitude of the free colored people of the United States; and hence the origin, and rapid growth, and the present magnitude of a grand scheme of colonization, contemplating the removal of not only those who had been driven out of the slave states by the inhuman legislation referred to, but that of the entire free colored population of all the states. It is this last and new phase of Haytian colonization which causes hesitation and doubt, and demands at the hands of the friends of the colored race a little closer scrutiny than seemed to be required at the first. In its inception it was a most generous outburst of humane feeling, creditable alike to the Government and people of that country.4 It was furnishing, under congenial skies, an asylum and a home to a woe-smitten and an outcast people in the dark hour of their extremest need. But now this simple overture of benevolence has hardened into a grand scheme of public policy, and claims the acceptance of the whole colored people and their friends. It has become ethnological, philosophical, political, and commercial. It has its doctrines of races, of climates, of nationalities and destinies,—and offers itself as the grand solution of the destiny of the colored people of America. In this aspect, the Haytian Emigration movement challenges criticism and leaves room to question its wisdom. It is not at all doubted that such men as James Redpath,5 John Brown, 6 Jr., and other white gentlemen associated with them in this Emigration Movement, are sincere and earnest friends of the cause of freedom and of the colored race. They have shown their faith by their works. Nor is it doubted that persons of color, accustomed to the culture of tropical and semi-tropical productions, may much improve their fortunes by emigrating to Hayti on the liberal terms offered by the Haytian Government. Fugitive slaves from the more Southern States, who know all about raising cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, would find in Hayti a much more desirable home and country than in Canada, or New York or Massachusetts. It may also be fully admitted that any individual emigration, self-moved, self-sustained, and independent, like that which lands the German, the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 85

9/1/21 4:16 PM

86

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT

Irishman and the Scotchman upon American soil,7 may be equally advantageous in the case of many colored men. Such emigration is simply an individual concern, and neither asks the approval nor incurs the censure of any. Colored men have already done this to advantage in going to California, Australia,8 and elsewhere; and I, for one, am decidedly in favor of this kind of emigration. But very different is the present Emigration Movement. It offers itself as a national movement. It comes to us with a national creed, addresses us with political theories, and with theories of the proper distribution of the different varieties of men over the surface of the globe, and calls upon the man of color, like the old American Colonization Society9—in the name of nationality and duty to get himself out of this land of the white man, and betake himself to a particular latitude intended for him by his Creator. It has its headquarters, its offices, its numerous Secretaries, its traveling agents, its lecturers, and an able public journal and other publications proclaiming its doctrines, and calling upon all colored men to adopt them. Through the columns of its newspaper it tolerates the publication of nothing in the shape of controversy—assumes that the wisdom of emigration cannot be questioned. It has here in Rochester, as it has doubtless elsewhere, led to the sending around a class of colored men speaking in the name of the poor colored people, ever ready to avail themselves of such opportunities, to solicit funds from the benevolent to enable them to get away from the country, thus degrading as paupers those who stay as well as those who go. It has propagated the favorite doctrine of all those who despise and hate the colored man—that the prejudice of the whites is invincible, and that the cause of human freedom and equality is hopeless for the black man in this country. The very moment Haytian Emigration began to theorize, it began to take up the old exploded ideas of prejudice and caste—upon which both the African Civilization Society10 and the African Colonization Society11 are based. It would have the black man proud of his color, and determine his local habitations and his associations in the world by that fact. This attitude of the Haytian Emigration movement compels me to say I am not an emigrationist. While I hold up both hands for Hayti, grateful for her humanity, rejoice in her prosperity, point to her example with pride and hope, and would smite down any hand that would fling a shadow upon the pathway of her glory, I wish to remind those who claim to be the best representatives of her views and feelings that those who made Hayti what she is did not leave her, but remained there and worked out their own salvation.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 86

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT

87

I assume that more than two hundred years have demonstrated the ability of black people to live and flourish in the temperate climate of the United States; that we are now more than four millions in number,12 and that no mode of emigration contemplating our entire removal can possibly succeed; that we are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions as to religion and government, and shall rest our fate with Americans; that upon the whole our history here has been one of progress and improvement, and in all the likelihoods of the case, will become more so; that the lines of social and political distinction marking unjust and unnatural discriminations against us are gradually being effaced, and that upon the fall of slavery— as fall it must—these discriminations will disappear still more rapidly. I hold that all schemes of wholesale emigration tend to awaken, and keep alive, and confirm the popular prejudices of the whites against us. They serve to kindle hopes of getting us out of the country; and while they thus naturally produce in the whites indifference to our welfare, they distract and destroy in ourselves one very important element of progress, namely, the element of permanent location. A rolling stone gathers no moss.13 No people will much improve a land from which they are momentarily expecting to be excluded, or from which they are to go speedily of their own accord. Permanence, a local habitation, as well as a name, is essential to our progress. I object to these schemes of emigration because they uniformly assume to be true what experience even here in America has shown to be false—that prejudice against color is invincible. I hold that there is no such thing as a natural and unconquerable repugnance between varieties of men. All these artificial and arbitrary barriers give way before interest and enlightenment. “Lands intersected by a narrow frith abhor each other,”14 till they are taught by self-interest or pure enlightenment the folly of such hate. The hope of the world is in human brotherhood; in the union of mankind, not in exclusive nationalities; in bringing the ends of the earth together, not in widening the distance between them; in worldwide co-operation, not in barren and fruitless isolation; and until I give up the belief in the essential identity of human nature and human destiny, and shall adopt the belief that color is more than manhood, that progress is merely a fiction of the brain, that men were created to hate and destroy each other, and not to love, bless and improve each other, I shall continue to hope

Y7870-Douglass.indb 87

9/1/21 4:16 PM

88

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT

“It’s coming yet for a’that,— That man to man, the world all o’er, Shall brothers be” &c.15 1. The term “pharaoh” has had many uses, dating back to the third millennium B.C.E., but it traditionally refers to monarchs who sat on Egypt’s throne. In this document, the reference most likely is to Amenhotep II (1450–24 B.C.E.), the pharaoh described in the book of Exodus. David Noel Freedman et al., eds., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols. (New York, 1992), 5:288–89. 2. Southern whites panicked in response to news of John Brown’s attempted slave insurrection at Harpers Ferry. Slave patrols were increased and free blacks were pressured to emigrate. Ira Berlin, Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York, 1974), 370–80; Peter Wallenstein, “Incendiaries All: Southern Politics and the Harpers Ferry Raid,” in Paul Finkelman, ed., His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (Lexington, Va., 1995), 155–56. 3. Nicolas Geffrard (1806–1878), a mulatto, was a general in the Haitian Army when he mounted a coup to overthrow President Faustin Soulouque. Geffrard became president of Haiti in 1858; during his time in office, he brought stability to his country by improving infrastructure and overhauling the educational system. Geffrard supported the emigration of African Americans from the United States to Haiti. Hoping they would work in the Haitian fields, he offered them incentives like land at reasonable prices. Geffrard was ousted in 1867. Leon D. Pamphile, Haitians and African Americans: A Heritage of Tragedy and Hope (Gainesville, Fla., 2001), 50–52, 54, 58; James D. Henderson et al., eds., A Reference Guide to Latin American History (Armonk, N.Y., 2000), 117. 4. Shortly following Harpers Ferry, the Haitian government recruited the abolitionist James Redpath to organize a bureau to encourage American blacks to immigrate to the Caribbean nation. The bureau hired agents, operated its own newspaper, and ultimately sent over two thousand free African Americans as settlers to Haiti. Willis D. Boyd, “James Redpath and American Negro Colonization in Haiti, 1860–1862,” Americas, 12:169–82 (October 1955); Peter Hinks and John McKivigan, eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn., 2007), 2:565–66. 5. Born in Berwick-on-Tweed, Scotland, James Redpath (1833–91) immigrated with his family to the United States around 1850, and he soon found work as a reporter for Horace Greeley’s New York Daily Tribune. In the mid-1850s, he traveled throughout the South, reporting on the institution of slavery and calling for its immediate abolition. By the late 1850s, Redpath had moved to Kansas, where he edited the Doniphan Crusader of Freedom and supported the fight to make the territory a non-slaveholding state. Redpath befriended John Brown in Kansas and, after the latter’s execution, became his first biographer, writing The Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston, 1860). In 1859 and 1860, Redpath toured Haiti as a reporter and returned to the United States as the official Haitian lobbyist for diplomatic recognition, a status he secured within two years. During the Civil War, he was a front-line correspondent with the Union army commanded by William Tecumseh Sherman. In 1865, when South Carolina was under federal military occupation, Sherman appointed Redpath superintendent of the state’s public schools. Redpath returned to the North, and in 1868, he organized the first professional lecturing bureau, which included Douglass among its clients. During the 1880s, he returned to his earlier career as a journalist-activist by editing newspapers and writing books and pamphlets on behalf of Irish nationalism, woman suffrage, and socialism. Douglass to James Redpath, 10 April 1869, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Richard J. Daley, University of Illinois at Chicago; McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand; Charles F. Horner, The Life of James Redpath and the Development of the Modern Lyceum (New York, 1926); Boyd, “Redpath and American Negro Colonization,” 169–82; DAB, 15:443–44. 6. The eldest son of John Brown, John Brown, Jr. (1821–95), was born near Hudson, Ohio. In 1826, he moved with his family to Pennsylvania, where he was educated. Brown assisted his father in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 88

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE HAYTIAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT

89

farming and tanning ventures until 1849, after which the younger Brown farmed for himself in Ohio and lectured on phrenology. In 1855, he joined the rest of his family in Kansas to fight for the freestate cause. He was arrested and imprisoned for three months in Lecompton, Kansas, after his father killed five proslavery sympathizers in the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre of May 1856. Although he assisted his father in raising funds and volunteers, the younger Brown played no active role in the raid on Harpers Ferry and went into hiding in Ashtabula, Ohio, immediately following his father’s capture. In 1860–61, Brown worked as a traveling agent in Canada, recruiting potential migrants for James Redpath’s Haytian Emigration Bureau. After rheumatism ended his brief services as captain of Company K, Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War, Brown retired to Ohio to raise grapes. Cleveland Press, 3 May 1895; Ohio Historical Society, Inventory and Calendar of the John Brown, Jr. Papers, 1830–1892 (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), 1–2; Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and His Men (1894; New York, 1968), 567; McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand, 71, 79; Stephen Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown, 2d ed. (New York, 1984), 140–45, 160, 173, 316. 7. Nearly two million immigrants from Ireland arrived in the United States from 1820 to 1860. Many were refugees from the potato famine of the 1840s. They arrived economically destitute and provided much of the cheap labor for transportation improvements and industrial development across the North. Approximately one and a half million immigrants arrived in the United States during the same period from the German states. While some were political refugees from the failed revolutions of 1848, most came for economic reasons. German immigrants settled across the nation, most heavily in the emerging midwestern states. While immigrants from Scotland had played a prominent part in the colonial era, settling heavily in the Appalachian region, only about 50,000 more entered the United States from 1820 to 1850. Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York, 1988), 131–36; LaVern J. Rippley, The German Americans (Boston, 1976), 120–28; Raymond L. Cohn, Mass Migration under Sail: European Immigration to the Antebellum United States (New York, 2009), 23–40. 8. The discovery of gold in California in 1849 and in Australia in 1851 sparked a “rush” of settlers from the eastern United States to those then-remote territories, and a very diverse population of immigrants from around the world flocked to both gold strikes. As many as 300,000 arrived in California from 1849 to 1855, of whom an estimated 4,000 were of African descent, not all from the United States. Precise numbers of African American immigrants to the Australian gold fields cannot be determined, but estimates do not rise above 100. One of them, John Joseph of Baltimore, Maryland, became famous for his leading role in a miners’ rebellion in 1854. Herbert W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York, 2003), 103–121; Jeffrey Atkinson and David Andrew Roberts, “ ‘Men of Colour’: John Joseph and the Eureka Treason Trials,” Journal of Australian Colonial History, 10:75–98 (2008). 9. Founded in 1816, the American Colonization Society settled free black volunteer emigrants and emancipated slaves in its colony of Liberia on Africa’s west coast. Most free black leaders and later the abolitionists condemned the racist premises behind the colonization effort. Although endorsed by many prominent whites, including ministers and politicians, the society managed to transport only a few thousand to Africa before the Civil War. In the early 1850s, the longtime colonization advocate Henry Clay led an effort to revive support for the movement, which resulted in a slight increase in donations and in the number of emigrants in that decade. Philip J. Staudenraus, “The History of the American Colonization Society” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1958); EAA, 1:33–35. 10. In the late 1850s, Henry Highland Garnet reversed his initial opposition to colonization by founding the African Civilization Society, which supported voluntary immigration to Africa and Haiti. Never insisting on the wholesale exodus of blacks from America, Garnet argued that black people should move to where they might improve their economic opportunities. Moreover, he hoped to use emigration as a means of supporting American abolition by encouraging emigrants to grow cotton, in direct competition with Southern slaveholders, thereby weakening the slaveholders’ influence

Y7870-Douglass.indb 89

9/1/21 4:16 PM

90

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

on the American economy and political life. Joel Schor, Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice of Black Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1977), 91, 103; Lysle E. Meyer, “T. J. Bowen and Central Africa: A Nineteenth-Century Missionary Delusion,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 15:247–60 (1982); Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, “Leadership in the African Diaspora in the Americas Prior to 1860,” Journal of Black Studies, 24:63–64 (September 1993). 11. Douglass probably meant to refer to the American Colonization Society. 12. The U.S. Census of 1860 actually enumerated a total of 4,441,830 slaves and free blacks. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the United States in 1860, 594–95. 13. Publius Syrus, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave, trans. D[arius] Lyman (New York, 1862), 48. 14. William Cowper, “The Time Piece,” The Poems of William Cowper, ed. J. C. Bailey (London, 1905), 267, lines 16–17. 15. Douglass paraphrases from the last stanza of “For A’ That and A’ That” by Robert Burns (1759–96). Robert Burns, Poems and Songs, ed. James Kinsley (London, 1969), 482; Robert Burns, Songs by Robert Burns (London, 1907), 7, 15, 90–92.

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN (1862) New York Independent, 20 November 1862. Other texts in San Francisco Pacific Appeal, 27 December 1862.

The Confederate States of America realized early the importance of foreign diplomatic recognition in their efforts to be seen as a legitimate nation. Such recognition would have pressured Lincoln and the Union to accept their secession peacefully. Failing that, foreign recognition might have led to military support for the Confederacy, specifically in regard to Union blockades that threatened international commerce between the South and Europe. Diplomats representing the Confederacy were dispatched to Europe as early as March 1861 and would labor throughout the war to turn both governments and public opinion to their support. In the New York Independent, a popular religious journal circulated from 1848 to 1928, Douglass wrote the following appeal to Great Britain in response to the Confederate commissioners and their attempts to gain political recognition. Following its publication, Douglass wrote to the Independent’s editor, Theodore Tilton, that “the ‘Appeal’ was written at the earnest request of a friend in England—and will very likely find its way into many of the Provincial journals in that country.” The appeal was widely republished in British newspapers, including the Daily News; excerpted in the Daily Chronicle, Newcastle Guardian, and the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 90

9/1/21 4:16 PM

90

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

on the American economy and political life. Joel Schor, Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice of Black Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1977), 91, 103; Lysle E. Meyer, “T. J. Bowen and Central Africa: A Nineteenth-Century Missionary Delusion,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 15:247–60 (1982); Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, “Leadership in the African Diaspora in the Americas Prior to 1860,” Journal of Black Studies, 24:63–64 (September 1993). 11. Douglass probably meant to refer to the American Colonization Society. 12. The U.S. Census of 1860 actually enumerated a total of 4,441,830 slaves and free blacks. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the United States in 1860, 594–95. 13. Publius Syrus, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave, trans. D[arius] Lyman (New York, 1862), 48. 14. William Cowper, “The Time Piece,” The Poems of William Cowper, ed. J. C. Bailey (London, 1905), 267, lines 16–17. 15. Douglass paraphrases from the last stanza of “For A’ That and A’ That” by Robert Burns (1759–96). Robert Burns, Poems and Songs, ed. James Kinsley (London, 1969), 482; Robert Burns, Songs by Robert Burns (London, 1907), 7, 15, 90–92.

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN (1862) New York Independent, 20 November 1862. Other texts in San Francisco Pacific Appeal, 27 December 1862.

The Confederate States of America realized early the importance of foreign diplomatic recognition in their efforts to be seen as a legitimate nation. Such recognition would have pressured Lincoln and the Union to accept their secession peacefully. Failing that, foreign recognition might have led to military support for the Confederacy, specifically in regard to Union blockades that threatened international commerce between the South and Europe. Diplomats representing the Confederacy were dispatched to Europe as early as March 1861 and would labor throughout the war to turn both governments and public opinion to their support. In the New York Independent, a popular religious journal circulated from 1848 to 1928, Douglass wrote the following appeal to Great Britain in response to the Confederate commissioners and their attempts to gain political recognition. Following its publication, Douglass wrote to the Independent’s editor, Theodore Tilton, that “the ‘Appeal’ was written at the earnest request of a friend in England—and will very likely find its way into many of the Provincial journals in that country.” The appeal was widely republished in British newspapers, including the Daily News; excerpted in the Daily Chronicle, Newcastle Guardian, and the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 90

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

91

Leeds Mercury; and may have been republished in the lost December 1862 issue of Douglass’ Monthly. Henry Richardson, an English abolitionist and longtime correspondent of Douglass’s, wrote, “I quite think there is a turn of the tide observable, and that the Northern states are beginning to be looked upon with more favour. Your appeal has doubtless helped on this change.” In the early 1860s, Tilton tried to recruit Douglass as a regular contributor to the Independent, and the two became friends. As a reporter for the New York Observer, Tilton had made the acquaintance of the Reverends Henry Ward Beecher and George B. Cheever, who were instrumental in his becoming the managing editor of the Independent in 1856. Tilton succeeded Beecher as the editor of the Independent in 1862, continuing in that position until 1871. Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 22 November 1862, Frederick Douglass Papers, NRU; Henry Richardson to Douglass, 4 December 1862, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 756–58, FD Papers, DLC; Charles M. Hubbard, The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy (Knoxville, Tenn., 1998), 29, 55, 61; Frank Lawrence Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (Chicago, Ill., 1966), 51; ACAB, 6:120; DAB, 2:129–35.

Hear this, my humble appeal; and grant this, my most earnest request. I know your power; I know your justice; and, better still, I know your mercy; and with the more confidence, I, in my imperfect speech, venture to appeal to you. Your benevolent sons and daughters, at great sacrifice of time, of labor, and treasure, more than a quarter of a century ago, under the inspiration of enlightened Christianity, removed the yoke of cruel bondage from the bowed down necks of eight hundred thousand of my race, in your West India Islands;1 and later, a few of them, in their generosity, unasked, with silver and gold, ransomed me from him who claimed me as his slave, in the United States, and bade me speak in the cause of the dumb millions of my countrymen still in slavery.2 I am now fulfilling my appointed mission in making on the slaves’ behalf this appeal to you. I am grateful for your benevolence, jealous for your honor, but chiefly now I am concerned, lest, in the present tremendous crisis of American affairs, you should be led to adopt a policy which may defeat the now

Y7870-Douglass.indb 91

9/1/21 4:16 PM

92

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

proposed emancipation of my people, and forge new fetters of slavery for unborn millions of their posterity. You are now more than ever urged, both from within and from without your borders, to recognize the independence of the so-called Confederate States of America.3 I beseech and implore you, resist this urgency. You have nobly resisted it thus long. You can, and I ardently hope you will, resist it still longer. The proclamation of emancipation by President Lincoln will become operative on the first day of January, 1863.4 The hopes of millions, long trodden down, now rise with every advancing hour. Oh! I pray you, by all your highest and holiest memories, blast not the budding hopes of these millions by lending your countenance and extending your potent and honored hand to the blood-stained fingers of the impious slaveholding Confederate States of America. For the honor of the British name, which has hitherto carried only light and hope to the slave, and rebuke and dismay to the slaveholder, do not in this great emergency be persuaded to abandon and contradict that policy of justice and mercy to the negro which has made your character revered, and your name illustrious, throughout the civilized world. Your enemies even have been compelled to respect the sincerity of your philanthropy. Would you retain this respect, welcome not those brazen human fleshmongers, those brokers in the bodies and souls of men, who have dared to knock at your doors for admission into the family of nations. Their pretended government is but a foul, haggard, and blighting conspiracy against the sacred rights of mankind, and does not deserve the name of government. Its foundation is laid in the impudent and heaveninsulting dogma that man may rightfully hold property in man, and flog him to toil like a beast of burden. Have no fellowship, I pray you, with these merciless men-stealers; but rather with whips of scorpions5 scourge them beyond the beneficent range of national brotherhood. You long ago fixed the burning brand of your reprobation upon the guilty brow of the whole slave system. Your philanthropy, religion, and law—your noblest sons, living and dead—have taught the world to loathe and abhor slavery as the vilest of modern abominations. You have sacrificed millions of pounds and thousands of lives to arrest and put an end to the piratical slave-traffic on the coast of Africa;6 and will you now, when the light of your best teachings is finding its way to the darkest corners of the earth, and men are beginning to adopt and practically carry out your benevolent ideas,—will you now, in such a time, utterly dishonor your high example and your long cherished principles? Can you, at the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 92

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

93

bidding of importunity of those negro-driving lords of the lash, Mason7 and Morehead,8 whose wealth is composed of the wages of laborers which they have kept back by fraud and force, take upon you and your children the dreadful responsibility of arresting the arm now outstretched to break the chains of the American slave? Ah! but I know the plea. The North as well as the South has wronged the negro. But must you, because the loyal states have been guilty of complicity with slavery, espouse the cause of these who are still more guilty? Must you, while you reprobate the guilty agent, embrace in the arms of your friendship the still more guilty principal? Will you lash the loyal states for their want of genuine detestation of slavery, and yet in open day form an alliance with a band of conspirators and thieves who have undertaken to destroy the loyal Government of this country, perpetual and universal on this continent? Will you stand in the way of a righteous measure, because supported and urged by wrong and selfish motives? Will you prevent the slave from getting his due, because a sense of necessity and not a sense of moral obligation impels the payment? Oh! again, Great Britain, let me implore you, by all things high and sacred, fling away all false and selfish reasoning, and bear aloft higher than ever that standard of justice and humanity which has justly exalted you to the head of civilized nations. That the loyal states have grieviously wronged the black man—slave and free—is, alas! too true. That these states, even now, for the sake of an empty peace—there can be none other while slavery continues—might be induced to receive the rebels, slavery and all, into the Union, cannot well be disproved. And that their immeasurable blood-guiltiness is drawing down upon them the fierce judgments they now suffer, is a most solemn and instructive truth, for your edification as well as ours. There is no more exemption for nations than for individuals from the just retribution due to flagrant and persistent transgression. For the time being, America is the blazing illustration of this solemn truth. But yesterday she sat as a queen among the nations of the earth, knowing no sorrow and fearing none. She killed some of her prophets, and stoned those who were sent unto her, and who pointed to her great prosperity as a proof of her honesty. But now the evil day is upon her, and she is making one grand effort, through blood and tears, through fire and death, to return to the ways of righteousness and peace. In the name of the slave—whose fate for weal or for woe trembles in the balance—and for the sake of a war-smitten country, now struggling to save itself by doing right, I entreat you, beware what you do concerning us!

Y7870-Douglass.indb 93

9/1/21 4:16 PM

94

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

Can it be doubted that the hope so persistently kept alive by such organs of British public opinion as The London Times,9 and by such eminent statesmen as Mr. Gladstone,10 that recognition of the independence of the Confederate States is only a questions of time,—that this hope is one grand source of the strength of our slaveholding rebellion? Your early concession of belligerent rights to the rebels—the adoption of neutrality as between the loyal and the rebel governments11—the oft-repeated assertion in high places that the rebels can never be subdued—the ill-concealed exultation sometimes witnessed over disasters to our arms—the prompt action of your Government in the Trent affair, now happily settled by a ready and friendly compliance with your demand, although coupled with irritating menace—with much else which it can do no good and might do harm to mention here, have evidently served the bad purpose of keeping life and spirit in this horrible rebellion. I have no hesitation in saying that if you, Great Britain, had, at the outset of this terrible war, sternly frowned upon the conspirators, and had given your earnest and unanimous sympathy and moral support to the loyal cause, to-day might have seen America enjoying peace and security, and you would not have been the sufferer in all your commercial and manufacturing interests you now are. The misfortune is that your rebukes of the North have been construed into sympathy and approval at the South. Your good opinion of the slaveholders has been taken as a renunciation of your former abhorrence of slavery; and you have thus kept these confederate slave-masters in countenance from the beginning. But I will not deal in language of recrimination. There has been far too much of this already on both sides. Nor will I argue the question of difference between us. I can only appeal and entreat. Nevertheless, I will say that the issue between the North and the South is seldom fairly stated in Great Britain by those who take the Southern side. The Federal Government is held to be fighting utterly apart from any connection with the welfare of the four million slaves of the South. Theoretically the statement has a show of truth, but practically it is entirely false. This sophistry found its way where little expected, in the speech of Mr. Gladstone at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, when he argued that the interests of the negro were likely to be better cared for under the Southern Confederacy than in the old Union.12 An intelligent answer to the inquiry, Why did the South rebel against the Federal Government? will exhibit the unsoundness of that pretense. The whole history of the rebellion will show that the slaveholding rebels revolted, not because of any violation of the United States Constitution,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 94

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

95

or of any proposed violation of it, but from pure and simple opposition to the Constitution itself, and because, in their judgment, that Constitution does not sufficiently guard and protect slavery. The first serious objection to the Constitution dates back to 1789, and was raised in the Virginia Convention met to ratify that Constitution.13 Patrick Henry,14 one of the leaders of the struggle for severing the colonies from the British crown, declared himself against the Constitution, on the ground, as he said, that it gave power to the Federal Government to abolish slavery in all states, and that, with a strong anti-slavery sentiment, that power would surely be exercised. The answer to this objection by Mr. Madison15 is significant of the state of public opinion concerning slavery at that time, and shows that the objection of Mr. Henry could not be met by positive refutation; for Mr. Madison simply said, he hoped that no gentleman would vote against the Constitution upon an objection so discreditable to Virginia. The Constitution was too anti-slavery for Mr. Henry. The anti slavery sentiment which he anticipated three-quarters of a century ago, asserted itself in the election of Mr. Lincoln. Near the close of the late inglorious administration, Mr. Buchanan proposed several amendments to the Constitution, giving full and explicit guarantees for the better protection of slavery.16 The proposition as embodied by him—happily for the interests of freedom and humanity— found but little favor North or South; the former evidently opposed to the measure in itself; and the latter, believing it impossible to carry it, proceeded with the rebellion already determined upon. In this simple, brief statement may be clearly discerned the real cause of the rebellion. Wanting a slave-holding constitution, from which all hope of emancipation should be excluded, the Southern states have undertaken to make one, and to establish it upon the ruins of the old one, under which slavery could be discouraged, crippled, and abolished. The war, therefore, to maintain the old against the new Constitution is essentially an anti-slavery war, and ought to command the ardent sympathy and support of good men in all countries. What though our timid Administration at Washington, shrinking from the logical result of their own natural position as the defenders of an anti-slavery constitution against a radical slave-holding one, did at the first refuse to admit the real character of the war, and vainly attempt to conciliate by walking backward and casting a mantle over the revolting origin of the rebellion? What though they instructed their foreign agents to conceal the moral deformity of the rebels? You could not fail to know that

Y7870-Douglass.indb 95

9/1/21 4:16 PM

96

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

the primal causes of this war rested in the selfishness and wickedness of slavery, and a determination on the part of the slaveholders to make their stupendous crime and curse all-controlling and perpetual in America. But I will not weary you by statement or argument. The case is plain. The North is fighting on the side of liberty and civilization, and the South on the side of slavery and barbarism. You are suffering in your commerce and in your manufactures. Industry languishes, and the children of your poor cry for bread.17 God pity them! The calamity is great. But would any interference with us bring relief to those sufferers? You have shared with the American slaveholders the unhallowed gains of the blood-stained products of slave-labor, preferring Carolina slave to India free, making Manchester a party to the slave plantation, and largely in sympathy with the slaveholding spirit of America. What else in the world could have come of all this but participation with us in the common retribution? Must the world stand still, humanity make no progress, and slavery remain for ever, lest your cotton-mills should stop and your poor cry for bread? You are unable to obtain your usual supply of American cotton. Would this be made better by plunging yourselves into the hardships, expenses, horrors, and perils of a war, which would in any event shed no luster on your arms, and only feed the fires of national hate for a century to come—and just in this your time of need greatly diminish your American supply of corn? Can any thinking man doubt for one moment that intervention would be an aggravation rather than a mitigation of the evils under which your laborers mourn? It is insisted that you ought, from considerations of humanity towards both sections, intervene, and put an end to the fratricidal strife. Ah! but there’s the rub! Could you put an end to it? Never did wilder delusions beset a human brain. I say it in no menacing spirit, the United States, though wounded and bleeding, is yet powerful. Heavy as have been her losses, in life and treasure, her weaknesses from these causes offer no temptation to foreign assault, even supposing you could be influenced by such motives. But I have no taste for this view of the subject, and will not dwell upon it. The lesson of our civil war to you is the cultivation of cotton by free labor. It tells you that you should base your industry and prosperity on the natural foundations of justice and liberty. These are permanent. All else, transient—hay, wood, and stubble. A house built upon the sand can as well resist the winds and floods,18 as slavery can resist enlightenment and progress. The moral laws of the universe must be suspended, or slavery will go down. Look, therefore, to India, where your laws have carried

Y7870-Douglass.indb 96

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

97

liberty. Look to the West Indies, where your philanthropy has planted Christianity.19 Your resources are great and ample. You have the islands to the west of you, India to the east of you, and Africa with her perennial cotton-plant to the south of you.20 Intervene there, not with swords and guns and other warlike implements, but by means of peaceful industry. Convert a calamity into prosperity, a curse into a blessing. I fully believe in the general rectitude of the British heart. The poorest of all the sufferers in Lancashire21 would hardly be willing to purchase even life itself by replunging a liberated slave into hopeless slavery. Much less would they do so were another door open for relief. Abraham might have slain his son but for the appearance of a more appropriate sacrifice22—and you have a far better alternative than war with us. I will not weary you. The case is before you. No excuses, however plausible—no distances of time, however, remote—no line of conduct hereafter pursued, however excellent, will erase the deep stain upon your honor and truth, if, at this hour of dreadful trial, you interpose in a manner to defeat or embarrass the emancipation of the slaves of America. If at any time you could have honorably intervened in American affairs, it was when the Federal Government was vainly striving to put down the rebellion without hurting slavery—when our army and generals wore the brass collars of slave dogs, and hunted negroes for their rebel masters.23 That gloomy and disgusting period ended on the 22d Sept, 1862[.] From that day our war has been invested with a sanctity which will smite as with death even the mailed hand of Britain, if outstretched to arrest it. Let the conflict go on! There is no doubt of the final result, and though the war is a dreadful scourge, it will make justice, liberty, and humanity permanently possible in this country. 1. Under direction of Parliament, British colonies in the West Indies became, on 1 August 1834, the first to emancipate their slaves, freeing nearly 800,000. But this quasi emancipation came with stipulations: those slaves six years of age and under were freed, yet the rest remained “apprentices” for six years. In August 1838, the apprenticeship clause of the Emancipation Act of 1834 was eliminated two years earlier than planned, and an estimated 750,000 slaves were freed throughout the British Empire. David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York, 2006), 238; EAAH, 1:244. 2. In August 1846, Anna Richardson wrote Hugh Auld, asking him whether Douglass’s freedom had a price. Auld replied in October that he would manumit Douglass for £150 sterling. With her sister-in-law, Ellen Richardson, Anna took steps to raise the purchase money and made arrangements with American abolitionists, particularly Ellis Gray Loring of Boston, to handle the details of the negotiation. On 24 November 1846, Walter Lowrie of New York City, whom Loring had apparently deputed to carry on the negotiations, notified Hugh Auld that the £150 had arrived in New York and directed him to produce proof of legal ownership of Douglass. At about this time, Lowrie

Y7870-Douglass.indb 97

9/1/21 4:16 PM

98

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

also engaged the services of J. Meredith, a prominent Baltimore attorney, to act as an intermediary and ensure that the papers were in order. Less than a week later, Thomas Auld filed a bill of sale in Talbot County, signifying the transfer of Douglass to Hugh Auld; on 5 December 1846, Hugh Auld filed Douglass’s manumission papers in Baltimore County. Exactly one week afterward, the transaction was consummated, and Hugh Auld, via Meredith, gave Lowrie a copy of the bill of sale from Thomas Auld, a deed of manumission for Douglass, and a receipt showing he had received $711.66 for Douglass’s freedom. All these papers were placed in Douglass’s hands shortly thereafter. Douglass to the editor, Belfast Protestant Journal, in Lib., 28 August 1846; Walter Lowrie to Ellis Gray Loring, 15 December 1846, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frame 644, FD Papers, DLC; Talbot County Records, V. 60, 35–36, 30 November 1846, Talbot County, Maryland, Courthouse; Deed of Manumission for “Frederick Bailey, otherwise called Frederick Douglass,” 12 December 1846, Hugh Auld’s Receipt of Payment, 12 December 1846, reel 1, frames 637–43, FD Papers, DLC; NASS, 11 November 1847; NS, 3 December 1847; Glasgow Christian News, 23 December 1847. 3. The Confederate States of America’s first diplomatic commission, consisting of William Lowndes Yancey, Ambrose Dudley Mann, and Pierre A. Rost, failed to convince the major European powers to diplomatically recognize the Confederacy, with both Great Britain and France officially proclaiming neutrality. Realizing that its first envoys were failing in Europe, the Confederacy dispatched James Murray Mason, its chief diplomat to Great Britain, and John Slidell, diplomat to France, aboard the British mail packet Trent. The Union Navy intercepted that ship and forcibly removed the Confederate commissioners, leading to the Trent affair. Several weeks of tension between the United States and Britain followed, and in an effort to avoid war with Great Britain over neutrality rights, President Lincoln released Mason and Slidell, who continued on to Great Britain and France but ultimately failed to obtain political recognition. Hubbard, Burden of Confederate Diplomacy, 29, 55, 61; Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 51. 4. Issued on 1 January 1863 by President Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation stated that slaves within areas under Confederate control were freed. Because these areas did not take commands from Lincoln, the proclamation did not immediately emancipate any slaves. Rather, the proclamation acted as a tool of war by altering the Union’s goals from reunion only to include the abolition of slavery, ultimately leading to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. EAAH, 1:468. 5. The “whips of scorpions” is in reference to a 1610 poem by Giles Fletcher entitled “Christ’s Triumph over Death,” which is the third of four cantos of the long poem Christ’s Victory and Triumph, in Heaven, in Earth, over and after Death. Stanza 42 describes those souls who go to heaven or hell, the latter “fall into the graue / Where whippes of scorpions, with the stinging scourges, / Feed on the howling ghosts, and firie surges.” Giles Fletcher, “Christ’s Triumph over Death,” Complete Poems of Giles Fletcher, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London, 1876), 209. 6. From 1807 to 1867, Britain spent an enormous amount of money and naval resources on efforts to end the slave trade on the Atlantic coast of Africa, on average expending 2 percent of the country’s annual income. The Royal Navy, referred to as West Africa Squadrons, patrolled the coast to seize ships attempting to export slaves. It is estimated that Britain spent approximately £12,395 million on suppressing the slave trade—an amount equal to the profits generated by the trade before its 1807 ban. David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987), 92–97; Chaim D. Kaufmann and Robert A. Pape, “Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-Year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade,” International Organization, 53:636 (Autumn 1999). 7. James Murray Mason (1798–1871), grandson of the revolutionary patriot George Mason, served in the Virginia House of Delegates, the state constitutional convention of 1829, and the U.S. House of Representatives (1837–39). In 1847 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he remained until Virginia seceded. Mason became a close associate of John C. Calhoun and one of the most articulate and effective defenders of Southern rights. On 3 January 1850, he “gave notice of his intention . . . to introduce a bill to provide for the more effective execution” of the Constitution’s Fugitive

Y7870-Douglass.indb 98

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

99

Slave Clause, an intention that was carried out the following day. After months of debate, Mason’s much-amended bill passed in the Senate on 24 August 1851 and in the House of Representatives on 12 September 1851. Mason supported secession in 1860, and he served briefly in the Confederate Congress before being appointed commissioner to England. On 8 November 1861, while traveling on the British steamer Trent, Mason and John Slidell, the Confederacy’s diplomatic representative to France, were captured by Captain Charles Wilkes of the U.S. Navy and sent to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. This affair so strained relations between the United States and Great Britain that many feared war would break out. On his release in January 1862, Mason proceeded to England, but his efforts to gain British recognition of the Confederacy and intervention on its behalf were unsuccessful. At the close of the war, he went to Canada, where he stayed until 1868. Emory Thomas, The Confederate Nation (New York, 1979), 173–79; Campbell, Slave Catchers, 15–23; Ezra J. Warner and W. Buck Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress (Baton Rouge, 1975), 169–70; NCAB, 2:93; DAB, 12:364–65. 8. Douglass probably refers to Charles Slaughter Morehead (1802–68), the former proConfederate governor of Kentucky, who was then touring Europe. Born near Bardstown, Kentucky, he graduated from Transylvania University and practiced law. Morehead entered politics as a Whig and served in both the Kentucky legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives (1847–51). As the candidate of the American, or “Know-Nothing,” party, Morehead was Kentucky’s governor from 1855 to 1859. He worked for sectional compromise in the secession crisis, but Morehead’s strident criticism of Lincoln led to his arrest and imprisonment at Fort Warren. Released in January 1862, he fled to Canada and then England, where he delivered speeches on behalf of the Confederate cause. Thomas E. Sebrell II, Persuading John Bull: Union and Confederate Propaganda in Britain, 1860– 65 (Lexington, Ky., 2014), 182; R. J. M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (Baton Rouge, La., 2000), 64. 9. While sympathetic to the cause of Southern independence, the London Times published alternating opinions on recognition of the Confederacy by the British government and carried out an open debate via special correspondence, letters to the editor, and editorials. The 23 October 1862 issue featured a letter signed “your obedient servant, S.” It discussed the legality of recognizing nationstates, and the reasons for doing so, and concluded, “Let anyone apply these principles to the demand for recognition now made by the Southern Confederacy, and judge for himself with what justice he can refuse it.” London Times, 23 October 1862; Blackett, Divided Hearts, 75, 94. 10. William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98), British prime minister (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, 1892–94), was the personification of Victorian liberalism. The fourth son of a Liverpool merchant, he was educated at Oxford University. Intensely religious in his early years, Gladstone was elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1832. In 1859, Gladstone quit the Conservative party and joined Lord Palmerston’s Liberal ministry. In October 1862, Gladstone gave a speech at Newcastle in which he claimed that the Confederacy had “made a nation,” perhaps in an attempt to use his political power to sway the cabinet to officially recognize the Confederacy. As chancellor of the exchequer, a position he held in four terms, Gladstone set out to complete a free-trade program and to reduce taxes and public expenditures. Gladstone placed as much emphasis on the moral basis of politics as he did on the material basis. His drive for the abolition of church rates endeared him to the Nonconformists and helped transform the Liberal party into a powerful political force. Gladstone’s first term as prime minister (1868–74) featured significant reforms of the army, civil service, local government, and courts of law. In foreign affairs, Gladstone was committed to working for world peace and mutual understanding. In an age of resurgent British imperialism, however, Gladstone’s pacifistic outlook toward foreign affairs made him easy fodder for critics. Gladstone retired after Benjamin Disraeli’s Conservative government came to power in 1874, but in 1879 he returned to the political stump to protest Disraeli’s foreign policy. Gladstone’s later ministries of 1880–85, 1886, and 1892–94 were less productive than his first. The Liberal party, distracted by the Irish problem, became less responsive to the changing interests of the working classes, who gave economic and social improvements

Y7870-Douglass.indb 99

9/1/21 4:16 PM

100

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

priority over constitutional and religious questions. John Cannon, ed., The Oxford Companion to British History (New York, 1997), 415–17; Juliet Gardiner and Neil Wenborn, eds., The Columbia Companion to British History (New York, 1997), 340–41; H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone, 1809–1874 (Oxford, 1986), 133–34, 186; The Dictionary of National Biography, 22 vols. (London, 1921–22), 22:705–54. 11. Following the Union’s blockading of Confederate ports in April 1861, Britain deemed the Confederacy belligerent and declared neutrality the following month. This proclamation recognized a state of war between the North and South, granting the Confederacy wartime belligerent rights. These rights allowed it to openly exchange goods and money with neutral foreign territories in the interest of its war effort. Because of Britain’s neutrality and the belligerent status it granted to the Confederacy, the Union feared the Confederate States were close to gaining diplomatic recognition as a sovereign state. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 59–61. 12. Gladstone gave a speech at Newcastle upon Tyne on 7 October 1862 in which he proclaimed: “I can understand those who say—and I confess it to be my own opinion—that it is greatly for the general interest of the negro race that they should have to do with their own masters alone, and not, as has hitherto been the case, with their masters backed by the whole power of the Federal Government of the United States. Pray observe that that has been the state of things subsisting heretofore, and which some persons, I think mistakenly, have thought it desirable, in the interest of the negro, to maintain. The laws by which the slaves have been governed have been laws not made by the Federal Government, but by the owners of slaves themselves, while for the enforcement of these laws the slaveowners have, under the Constitution of the United States, had a right to call in aid the whole power of the American Union. I can, therefore, very well understand the arguments of those who think that it is not particularly to be desired in the interests of the negro race, that the American Union should be reconstituted.” London Times, 9 October 1862. 13. The Virginia Federal Convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution began on 4 June 1788 in Richmond at the Richmond Theatre. Among the 168 delegates present, prominent members included the Federalists Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, George Nicholas, and John Marshall supporting ratification; the Anti-Federalists George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, James Monroe, and Patrick Henry opposing; and Judge Edmund Pendleton serving as the convention’s president. The convention ratified the Constitution by a vote of 89 to 79 on June 25. John P. Kaminski, ed., A Necessary Evil? Slavery and the Debate over the Constitution (Madison, Wisc., 1995), 185–96. 14. Patrick Henry (1736–99), a Virginia patriot, lawyer, and Revolutionary statesman, attended the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia and was governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779. Henry opposed ratification of the U.S. Constitution because he believed that it took too much power from the states and granted too much to the federal government. Claiming, “As much as I deplore slavery, I see that prudence forbids its abolition,” Henry employed several arguments in the debate that questioned the government’s role in the slave trade. In particular, Henry believed that under the proposed Constitution, Congress could and would eventually abolish slavery altogether, possibly through a means such as army conscription. Bernard Bailyn et al., eds., The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters during the Struggle over Ratification; Part Two: January to August 1788 (New York, 1993), 673–92; William Wirt, The Life and Character of Patrick Henry, rev. ed. (New York, 1832); DAB, 7:554–59. 15. James Madison (1751–1836) of Virginia, known as the “Father of the Constitution,” was the fourth president of the United States. Madison argued that any attempt on the part of Congress to emancipate slaves would be “an usurpation of power” not expressly bestowed by the document. He also claimed that allowing the international slave trade to continue for twenty years—to which Henry and the other Anti-Federalists were opposed, since large numbers of imported slaves lowered the value of those already in possession—had been the only way to convince states in the South to ratify. He further contended that allowing the trade to continue temporarily under the Constitution was far better than allowing it to continue indefinitely under the Articles of Confederation. Moreover, he pointed out that the Constitution offered a stronger protection of slavery than that which existed

Y7870-Douglass.indb 100

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE SLAVE’S APPEAL TO GREAT BRITAIN

101

through article 4, section 2, clause 3, known as the Fugitive Slave Clause. Kaminski, Slavery and the Constitution, 160; ANB (online). 16. Following the election of Abraham Lincoln, Southern states began withdrawing from the Union. President James Buchanan, in an attempt to mollify the Southern states, endorsed a proposed thirteenth amendment, sponsored by Representative Thomas Corwin of Ohio. Popularly known as the “Corwin Amendment,” it stated, “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” The amendment passed the House and was delivered to the Senate two days before Lincoln’s inauguration, where it was successfully blocked. Alexander Tsesis, The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History (New York, 2004), 2. 17. The United States was highly integrated into the world commercial economy of the midnineteenth century; therefore, the Civil War produced trade disruptions that reverberated throughout the globe. Great Britain was particularly affected, since the United States was its primary trading partner. Central to the British economy was the mass production of finished goods, especially cotton textiles. This state of affairs made Britain extremely vulnerable when war broke out in 1861, since more than 70 percent of Britain’s cotton supply came from Southern states and over 90 percent of its finished goods exported to the United States were consumed in Northern states. Whether Britain sided with one of the American belligerents or remained neutral, as it actually did, segments of its economy were destined to suffer. Before the war’s first shot was fired, the British were rocked by the passage of the Morrill Tariff by an overwhelmingly Northern Republican Congress on 2 March 1861—an act made possible only by the absence of Democratic congressmen from seceded Southern states. This tariff raised all import duties to an average of 27 percent, but also contained protective duties approaching 50 percent on select goods such as pig iron and cutlery. As a result, British exports to the American North declined by 50 percent during 1861–62, only recovering to prewar levels after the end of hostilities in 1865. Worse yet, by the second year of the war, British imports of American cotton had declined 96 percent because of the combination of an informal Southern cotton embargo, intended to provoke Britain into recognizing the Confederate government, and a Northern blockade of Southern ports. The resulting “cotton famine” created mass unemployment in the British textile industry, which was centered in Lancashire. Although this localized depression reached its nadir in the fall of 1862, the textile industry did not really recover until American cotton imports fully resumed in 1866. Douglass wrote this piece while Britain’s economic distress was at its peak. Douglas R. Egerton, “Rethinking Atlantic Historiography in a Postcolonial Era: The Civil War in a Global Perspective,” Journal of the Civil War Era, 1:71–95 (March 2011); Marc-William Palen, “The Civil War’s Forgotten Transatlantic Tariff Debate and the Confederacy’s Free Trade Diplomacy,” Journal of the Civil War Era, 3:35–61 (March 2013); Niels Eichhorn, “North Atlantic Trade in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Case for Peace during the American Civil War,” Civil War History, 61:138–72 (June 2015). 18. Douglass alludes to a parable Jesus told in which a foolish man builds his house upon the sand, and it is destroyed, while a wise man builds his house upon rock, and it weathers the storm. Matt. 24–27, Luke 6:48–49. 19. Parliament’s British Abolition Act of 1833, which freed slaves less than six years old and required other slaves to “apprentice” for up to six years before they secured their freedom, did not immediately apply to slavery in India; however, it paved the way for emancipation there. In 1834, the British Abolition Act was applied to colonies in the Caribbean, which, in turn, heightened pressure to end slavery throughout the empire. Subsequent legislation by Britain made it more difficult for the slave system to continue in occupied portions of India. Officers of the East India Company were forbidden to have any involvement in the purchase or sale of slaves, and British courts refused to enforce property rights involving human chattel. These and other actions encumbering the slave system gradually decreased the practice in India, and in 1860 the Indian Penal Code made enslavement criminal, though slavery would still be practiced in parts of the subcontinent. EAA, 3:126, 370.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 101

9/1/21 4:16 PM

102

A PERTINENT QUESTION

20. The cotton famine induced by the Civil War provoked leaders in the British textile industry to search worldwide for alternative sources of raw cotton. Before 1861, cotton had been grown in India, Egypt, Brazil, and the West Indies, but it was considered far inferior to American cotton, and thus was bought and used only begrudgingly. Nevertheless, the desperation of textile manufacturers and the incentive of rising prices for raw cotton on the world market combined to significantly increase British imports throughout the war. Between 1860 and 1865, the importation of bales of raw cotton from India jumped from 510,000 to 1,212,000, from 110,000 to 510,000 from Egypt, from 43,000 to 138,000 from Brazil, and from 17,000 to 42,000 from the West Indies. Although this boom in non-American cotton collapsed upon the end of hostilities in 1865, the production of cotton in all these locales continued throughout the nineteenth century at levels that significantly exceeded those of the antebellum era. This expansion of global cotton production was yet another legacy of the Civil War. David G. Surdam, Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War (Columbia, S.C., 2001), 142–46, 152; Egerton, “Rethinking Atlantic Historiography,” 1:82–84. 21. The county of Lancashire, located in northwestern England and containing the cities of Manchester and Liverpool, became a globally significant center of production and trade during Britain’s eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution. The heart of Britain’s textile industry, it was home to hundreds of spinning and weaving mills and their hundreds of thousands of operatives and dependents. The cotton famine caused by the Civil War produced widespread destitution among this population. At the height of the crisis, in December 1862, at least 247,230 operatives were unemployed, and 485,434 people depended on forms of relief for survival. Mary Ellison, Support for Secession: Lancashire and the American Civil War (Chicago, 1972), 15, 222. 22. Gen. 22:9–12. 23. In the early stages of the Civil War, the return of fugitive slaves to their owners from behind Union lines was a common practice. General Robert C. Schenck, in the Department of Northeastern Virginia, instructed his subordinates that his camps “will not be permitted while I have command to be made a harbor for escaping fugitives . . . [they] always will be surrendered when demanded . . . by the lawful owner or his representatives.” It was not uncommon for some slaveholders to travel to Union camps to retrieve their fugitive slaves. These actions adversely affected black enthusiasm for the Union war effort. Attempting to standardize the federal government’s policy, Congress, on 9 July 1861, instructed Union troops that they were not responsible for seizing or returning fugitive slaves. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 130 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1880–1901), ser. 2, 1:75–95 (1880); Fred A. Shannon, “The Federal Government and the Negro Soldier, 1861–1865,” JNH, 11:565–67 (October 1926); Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 65–66.

A PERTINENT QUESTION (1865) Lydia Maria Child, The Freedmen’s Book (Boston, 1865), 93.

Published in late 1865, The Freedmen’s Book, edited by the veteran reformer Lydia Maria Child, was a compilation of short stories, essays, poems, and biographical sketches written by noted abolitionists and former slaves for the purpose of showcasing the accomplishments and courage of African American men and women. The book was intended as a primer for newly liberated

Y7870-Douglass.indb 102

9/1/21 4:16 PM

102

A PERTINENT QUESTION

20. The cotton famine induced by the Civil War provoked leaders in the British textile industry to search worldwide for alternative sources of raw cotton. Before 1861, cotton had been grown in India, Egypt, Brazil, and the West Indies, but it was considered far inferior to American cotton, and thus was bought and used only begrudgingly. Nevertheless, the desperation of textile manufacturers and the incentive of rising prices for raw cotton on the world market combined to significantly increase British imports throughout the war. Between 1860 and 1865, the importation of bales of raw cotton from India jumped from 510,000 to 1,212,000, from 110,000 to 510,000 from Egypt, from 43,000 to 138,000 from Brazil, and from 17,000 to 42,000 from the West Indies. Although this boom in non-American cotton collapsed upon the end of hostilities in 1865, the production of cotton in all these locales continued throughout the nineteenth century at levels that significantly exceeded those of the antebellum era. This expansion of global cotton production was yet another legacy of the Civil War. David G. Surdam, Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War (Columbia, S.C., 2001), 142–46, 152; Egerton, “Rethinking Atlantic Historiography,” 1:82–84. 21. The county of Lancashire, located in northwestern England and containing the cities of Manchester and Liverpool, became a globally significant center of production and trade during Britain’s eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution. The heart of Britain’s textile industry, it was home to hundreds of spinning and weaving mills and their hundreds of thousands of operatives and dependents. The cotton famine caused by the Civil War produced widespread destitution among this population. At the height of the crisis, in December 1862, at least 247,230 operatives were unemployed, and 485,434 people depended on forms of relief for survival. Mary Ellison, Support for Secession: Lancashire and the American Civil War (Chicago, 1972), 15, 222. 22. Gen. 22:9–12. 23. In the early stages of the Civil War, the return of fugitive slaves to their owners from behind Union lines was a common practice. General Robert C. Schenck, in the Department of Northeastern Virginia, instructed his subordinates that his camps “will not be permitted while I have command to be made a harbor for escaping fugitives . . . [they] always will be surrendered when demanded . . . by the lawful owner or his representatives.” It was not uncommon for some slaveholders to travel to Union camps to retrieve their fugitive slaves. These actions adversely affected black enthusiasm for the Union war effort. Attempting to standardize the federal government’s policy, Congress, on 9 July 1861, instructed Union troops that they were not responsible for seizing or returning fugitive slaves. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 130 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1880–1901), ser. 2, 1:75–95 (1880); Fred A. Shannon, “The Federal Government and the Negro Soldier, 1861–1865,” JNH, 11:565–67 (October 1926); Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 65–66.

A PERTINENT QUESTION (1865) Lydia Maria Child, The Freedmen’s Book (Boston, 1865), 93.

Published in late 1865, The Freedmen’s Book, edited by the veteran reformer Lydia Maria Child, was a compilation of short stories, essays, poems, and biographical sketches written by noted abolitionists and former slaves for the purpose of showcasing the accomplishments and courage of African American men and women. The book was intended as a primer for newly liberated

Y7870-Douglass.indb 102

9/1/21 4:16 PM

A PERTINENT QUESTION

103

slaves of all ages who were attending Southern schools set up by freedmen’s aid societies and the newly created federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, better remembered as the Freedmen’s Bureau. Modern scholars have observed that much of the book was “firmly grounded in the well-meaning tenets of Romantic education,” yet fault it for “at times infantilizing African-American adults.” Child penned a twenty-page sketch of Douglass’s life, focusing mainly on his slave youth and initial reaction to becoming free. She wrote Douglass for permission to include the sketch in her volume, which he readily granted, stating, “I have always read with grateful pleasure what you have from time to time written on the question of slavery.” Child also published in her primer a short statement of unknown derivation by Douglass, reprinted below, that touted the accomplishments of African Americans while complaining that few whites seem prepared to acknowledge them. Douglass to Lydia Maria Child, 30  July 1865, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 2:491–93; Jessica Enoch, Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students, 1865–1911 (Carbondale, Ill., 2008), 52; Lesley Ginzberg, “Race and Romantic Pedagogies in the Works of Lydia Maria Child,” in Romantic Education in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: National and Transatlantic Contexts, edited by Monika M. Elbert and Lesley Ginzberg (New York, 2014), 139, 148–49.

Is it not astonishing, that while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses and constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, and copper, silver and gold; that while we are reading, writing, ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific,1 breeding sheep and cattle on the hillside; living, moving, acting, thinking, planning; living in families as husbands, wives, and children; and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for immortal life beyond the grave;—is it not astonishing, I say, that we are called upon to prove that we are men?

Y7870-Douglass.indb 103

9/1/21 4:16 PM

104

RECONSTRUCTION

1. From its start in the seventeenth century, the American whaling industry had sent out ships manned by ethnically diverse crews. African Americans, as well as black crew members from the Caribbean, the Cape Verde Islands, and even mainland Africa, served on whaling vessels. There are records of all-black whaling crews and of ships sailing under African American captains in that lucrative industry. Allison L. Sharp, “Sailors and Merchant Mariners,” in Encyclopedia of African American Business, ed. Jessie Carney Smith, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn., 2006), 1:716–17.

RECONSTRUCTION (1866) Atlantic Monthly, 18:761–65 (December 1866).

In 1857, the Atlantic Monthly was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, by Francis Underwood and a group of New England writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriett Beecher Stowe, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Purchased by the publishing house Ticknor and Fields in 1859, the magazine featured articles regarding literature, culture, politics, economics, and social issues. Although the Atlantic first set out to have no political affiliation, it published articles in support of the Republican party during Reconstruction. Douglass submitted such a lengthy manuscript to Ticknor and Fields that he dubbed it an “elephant.” The Atlantic editor James Thomas Fields apparently decided to divide it into two articles that would run in successive months. Douglass’s contribution to the December 1866 issue condemned President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, which were seen as severely lenient toward the Southern states. In the 1866 congressional elections, Republicans had gained significant strength in both houses, despite the fact that the party in power usually loses seats in offyear elections. In the next Congress, Republicans would hold more than a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress over Democrats and Johnson’s few remaining conservative Republican allies, allowing them to easily override a presidential veto. With these elections, the power to shape Reconstruction policy shifted from the president to the Republican Congress. Douglass used his Atlantic Monthly piece to try to influence the new direction of Reconstruction. Ticknor and Fields to Douglass, 11 November 1866, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 224R, FD Papers, DLC; Heather Cox Richardson, West from Appomattox:

Y7870-Douglass.indb 104

9/1/21 4:16 PM

104

RECONSTRUCTION

1. From its start in the seventeenth century, the American whaling industry had sent out ships manned by ethnically diverse crews. African Americans, as well as black crew members from the Caribbean, the Cape Verde Islands, and even mainland Africa, served on whaling vessels. There are records of all-black whaling crews and of ships sailing under African American captains in that lucrative industry. Allison L. Sharp, “Sailors and Merchant Mariners,” in Encyclopedia of African American Business, ed. Jessie Carney Smith, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn., 2006), 1:716–17.

RECONSTRUCTION (1866) Atlantic Monthly, 18:761–65 (December 1866).

In 1857, the Atlantic Monthly was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, by Francis Underwood and a group of New England writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriett Beecher Stowe, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Purchased by the publishing house Ticknor and Fields in 1859, the magazine featured articles regarding literature, culture, politics, economics, and social issues. Although the Atlantic first set out to have no political affiliation, it published articles in support of the Republican party during Reconstruction. Douglass submitted such a lengthy manuscript to Ticknor and Fields that he dubbed it an “elephant.” The Atlantic editor James Thomas Fields apparently decided to divide it into two articles that would run in successive months. Douglass’s contribution to the December 1866 issue condemned President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, which were seen as severely lenient toward the Southern states. In the 1866 congressional elections, Republicans had gained significant strength in both houses, despite the fact that the party in power usually loses seats in offyear elections. In the next Congress, Republicans would hold more than a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress over Democrats and Johnson’s few remaining conservative Republican allies, allowing them to easily override a presidential veto. With these elections, the power to shape Reconstruction policy shifted from the president to the Republican Congress. Douglass used his Atlantic Monthly piece to try to influence the new direction of Reconstruction. Ticknor and Fields to Douglass, 11 November 1866, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 224R, FD Papers, DLC; Heather Cox Richardson, West from Appomattox:

Y7870-Douglass.indb 104

9/1/21 4:16 PM

RECONSTRUCTION

105

The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (New Haven, Conn., 2007), 57–58; Rodney P. Carlisle, Civil War and Reconstruction (New York, 2008), 284; Ellery Sedgwick, A History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1857–1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb (Amherst, Mass., 1994), 3, 104; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York, 1988), 267. THE assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress1 may very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn topic of reconstruction. Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best of reasons for this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled with by this. No political skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands statesmanship. Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results,—a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,—a strife for empire, as Earl Russell2 characterized it, of no value to liberty or civilization,—an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be the merest mockery of a Union,—an effort to bring under Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress.3 The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions. The Civil Rights Bill4 and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill5 and the proposed constitutional amendments,6 with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land,7 do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its

Y7870-Douglass.indb 105

9/1/21 4:16 PM

106

RECONSTRUCTION

own local affairs,—an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political idea,—no general assertion of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature. The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book. Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection. One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the highly instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the war. There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive teacher, though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come to us, and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for manhood, or the tyrant, in his

Y7870-Douglass.indb 106

9/1/21 4:16 PM

RECONSTRUCTION

107

pride and impatience, takes the initiative, and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the result is the same,—society is instructed, or may be. Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed, were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity? It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion, Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered by fifty years of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists,—poured out against slavery during thirty years,—even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed. It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire purification Congress must now address itself, with full purpose that the work shall this time be thoroughly done. The deadly upas,8 root and branch, leaf and fibre, body and sap, must be utterly destroyed. The country is evidently not in a condition to listen patiently to pleas for postponement, however plausible, nor will it permit the responsibility to be shifted to other shoulders. Authority and power are here commensurate with the duty imposed. There are no cloudflung shadows to obscure the way. Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony. If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the requisite materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now before it. Whether its members look at the origin, the progress, the termination

Y7870-Douglass.indb 107

9/1/21 4:16 PM

108

RECONSTRUCTION

of the war, or at the mockery of a peace now existing, they will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President9 stood in the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an apostasy which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. It was natural that they should seek to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to the side of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows now that it must go on without his aid, and even against his machinations. The advantage of the present session over the last is immense. Where that investigated, this has the facts. Where that walked by faith, this may walk by sight. Where that halted, this must go forward, and where that failed, this must succeed, giving the country whole measures where that gave us half-measures, merely as a means of saving the elections in a few doubtful districts. That Congress saw what was right, but distrusted the enlightenment of the loyal masses; but what was forborne in distrust of the people must now be done with a full knowledge that the people expect and require it. The members go to Washington fresh from the inspiring presence of the people. In every considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house, school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is now the popular passport to power. The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or else left at home. The strange controversy between the President and Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people. The high reconstructive powers which he so confidently, ostentatiously, and haughtily claimed, have been disallowed, denounced, and utterly repudiated; while those claimed by Congress have been confirmed. Of the spirit and magnitude of the canvass nothing need be said. The appeal was to the people, and the verdict was worthy of the tribunal. Upon an occasion of his own selection, with the advice and approval of his astute Secretary,10 soon after the members of Congress had returned to their constituents, the President quitted the executive mansion, sandwiched himself between two recognized heroes,—men whom the whole country

Y7870-Douglass.indb 108

9/1/21 4:16 PM

RECONSTRUCTION

109

delighted to honor,—and, with all the advantage which such company could give him, stumped the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, advocating everywhere his policy as against that of Congress.11 It was a strange sight, and perhaps the most disgraceful exhibition ever made by any President; but, as no evil is entirely unmixed, good has come of this, as from many others. Ambitious, unscrupulous, enegetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,—a political gladiator, ready for a “set-to”12 in any crowd,—he is beaten in his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and persistent attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers solemnly secured to Congress by the Constitution. No vindication could be more complete, no condemnation could be more absolute and humiliating. Unless reopened by the sword, as recklessly threatened in some circles, this question is now closed for all time. Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat theological question (about which so much has already been said and written), whether once in the Union means always in the Union,—agreeably to the formula, Once in grace always in grace,13—it is obvious to common sense that the rebellious States stand to-day, in point of law, precisely where they stood when, exhausted, beaten, conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal authority. Their State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property of the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there by no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress.14 These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order, should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate. It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the precise steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people are less concerned about these than the grand end to be attained. They demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States,—where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 109

9/1/21 4:16 PM

110

RECONSTRUCTION

This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall15 can now be tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work. The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the beginning, is simply to establish in the South one law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done. Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the negro is the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events, which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color or features of men, has determined the interests of the country as identical with and inseparable from those of the negro. The policy that emancipated and armed the negro—now seen to have been wise and proper by the dullest—was not certainly more sternly demanded than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was success in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the nation must fall or flourish with the negro. Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the Constitution of the United States, which declares that the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 110

9/1/21 4:16 PM

RECONSTRUCTION

111

citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal voter in all the States. 1. After a four-month break, during which supporters of President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policies were heavily rebuffed at the polls, the Thirty-ninth U.S. Congress convened in its second session in Washington on 3 December 1866. Foner, Reconstruction, 270–71. 2. Lord John Russell (1792–1878), first Earl Russell, was a Whig-Liberal statesman. A champion of political and social reforms during his lengthy career, he served as British prime minister from 1846 to 1852 and from 1865 to 1866. He also held office as home secretary (1835–39), colonial secretary (1839–41, 1855), and foreign secretary (1852–53, 1859–65). Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 828–29; DNB, 17:454–65. 3. The British press characterized Lord Russell’s arguments for his nation’s neutrality in the Civil War as based on his view that the conflict was “a struggle in which the North is striving for empire, and the South for independence.” London Review of Politics, Society, Literature, Art, and Science, 7:350 (3 October 1863); (London) Index, 4:271 (5 May 1864). 4. Douglass refers to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which the Senate passed on 2 February and the House of Representatives passed on 13 March. Negating Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s opinion in the Dred Scott case (1857) that blacks could not hold federal citizenship, the act declared that “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed,” were citizens of the United States and that their civil rights were to be protected regardless of race, color, or “previous condition of slavery.” Enforcement of the act’s provisions was given exclusively to the federal courts. Vetoed by President Johnson on 27 March, the act was passed over his veto on 9 April. The Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America, December 1865, to March, 1867 (Boston, 1868), 14:27; Patrick W. Riddleberger, 1866: The Critical Year Revisited (Carbondale, Ill., 1979), 86–104. 5. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois proposed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill in early February 1866. Congress had created the bureau in March 1865 as a temporary agency, designed to expire one year after the end of the Civil War. Trumbull’s measure would have extended the bureau’s life and provided further direct funding. Additionally, the bill authorized bureau agents to take control of cases involving blacks as well as to punish government officials who denied blacks the same civil rights as whites. Congress easily passed the bill in February, and Republicans assumed that Johnson would endorse the proposed legislation. But the president vetoed the bill, which drew intense criticism from both moderate and radical Republicans. Johnson rejected the idea that the federal government should provide educational and financial support to the freedmen, believing that the states should decide such issues. The veto, which was sustained by a two-vote margin in the Senate, was Johnson’s last successful veto. In July 1866, Congress overrode another presidential veto and passed an almost identical Freedmen’s Bureau Act. Foner, Reconstruction, 243, 245–49; Paul H. Bergeron, Andrew Johnson’s Civil War and Reconstruction (Knoxville, Tenn., 2011), 107–08; Edgar J. McManus and Tara Helfman, Liberty and Union: A Constitutional History of the United States, Concise Edition (New York, 2014), 225–26. 6. In January 1866, congressional Republicans introduced some seventy constitutional amendments, not only as part of the Reconstruction process but also as a means of establishing the parameters of victory in the Civil War. In April, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction proposed an amendment with five sections: the first clause proclaimed a national citizenship and stated that no state could abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens or deny them life, liberty, or property without due process before the law; the second provided for the appropriation of representatives in proportion to the number of male citizens denied suffrage; the third prohibited anyone who aided the Confederacy from voting in national elections until 1870; the fourth prohibited the payment of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 111

9/1/21 4:16 PM

112

RECONSTRUCTION

Confederate debt; and the fifth gave Congress the power to enforce all of these clauses. Following congressional debate, the third section, prohibiting former rebels from voting, was eliminated and replaced with a clause that banned from national and state office those who aided the Confederacy. In June 1866, Congress adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, and it was sent to the states for ratification. Ratifying the amendment was a condition for admittance to the Union; however, all Southern states except Tennessee refused to comply. It was not until July 1868 that the Fourteenth Amendment was officially ratified by all states and adopted. Avery Craven, Reconstruction: The Ending of the Civil War (New York, 1969), 172–73, 177–78; Foner, Reconstruction, 251–54; Tsesis, Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom, 57–58. 7. Douglass is referencing the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and prohibited involuntary servitude in the United States and its territories. Ohio representative James M. Ashley first proposed an amendment to abolish slavery in December 1863. The following year, the Senate managed to approve this amendment, but Republicans in the House were unable to secure the necessary two-thirds majority. Finally, on 31 January 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment passed in the House by a margin of 119 to 56 and was sent to the states for ratification. Foner, Reconstruction, 66; Tsesis, Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom, 38–40. 8. The upas, Antiaris toxicara, is native to Africa, China, Java, and other Indonesian islands. The sap of some varieties is said to be extremely poisonous and has been used to treat the tips of poisonous darts, spears, and arrows. Paul C. Freer, ed., The Philippine Journal of Science, 6 vols. (Manila, 1908), 3:41–42. 9. Andrew Johnson (1808–75) assumed the presidency on 15 April 1865, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, the self-educated Johnson served in the Tennessee legislature (1834–37, 1839–43) before being elected a Democratic congressman (1843–53), governor (1853–57), and U.S. senator (1857–62). In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson, a Unionist, military governor of Tennessee, and two years later Johnson was elected as Lincoln’s vice president. Radical Republicans opposed Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, and in 1867, after the president had attempted to oust Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, succeeded in impeaching him. At the Senate trial in 1868, conviction failed by one vote. After his presidential term, Johnson returned to Tennessee, where he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1874. Robert W. Winston, Andrew Johnson: Plebeian and Patriot (New York, 1928); James E. Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Boston, 1980). 10. William Henry Seward (1801–72) was a New York state senator (1830–32) and governor (1839–43) before serving as a U.S. senator (1849–61). He originally belonged to the Anti-Mason party, but became a leader of the Whig party during the 1830s and 1840s. By 1855, Seward had shifted his allegiance to the Republican party. During the Compromise of 1850, he first invoked the concept of “a higher law than the Constitution” to support abolition. As the decade progressed, Seward became more outspoken against slavery, characterizing the struggle as an “irrepressible conflict” between opposing forces. In 1856 and 1860, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination. Instead, he became Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state in 1861. Seward’s influence prevented European recognition of the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1867, he negotiated the U.S. purchase of the Alaska territory, known as “Seward’s Folly.” Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, 2 vols. (1899–1900; Gloucester, Mass., 1967); ACAB, 5:470–73; DAB, 16:615–21. 11. Ostensibly traveling to Chicago to participate in the dedication of a memorial to Stephen A. Douglas, Andrew Johnson undertook an extended speaking tour of the North from 28 August to 15 September 1866. Accompanied by several members of his cabinet and by such Civil War heroes as General Ulysses S. Grant and Admiral David G. Farragut, Johnson was politely received at his first stops, in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Albany. Heckling during his speech at Cleveland on 3 September, however, provoked Johnson into several undignified exchanges. Similar incidents occurred during speeches in St. Louis and Pittsburgh on the return trip from Chicago, and the Republican press accused Johnson of public drunkenness. His political opponents also ridiculed

Y7870-Douglass.indb 112

9/1/21 4:16 PM

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

113

the repetitiveness of Johnson’s addresses, especially the intemperate declaration that having fought the traitors in the South he was “swinging around the circle” to fight the traitors, such as Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, who lived in the North. Riddleberger, 1866, 217–23; Albert Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (Lawrence, Kans., 1979), 89–95; Eric L. McKittrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 428–29. 12. To give a challenge to. 13. Douglass paraphrases the “once saved always saved” doctrine, which was proposed by St. Augustine and popularized by Calvinists. Rom. 8:30; St. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, ed. Peter King (Cambridge, 2010), 197–205. 14. In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson began efforts toward the readmission of former Confederate states into the Union. At first, the president seemed to adopt Lincoln’s attitudes toward Reconstruction and implement strict, yet fair, conditions for readmission. But Johnson’s plans soon developed into a more lenient Reconstruction policy for the South. Along with granting amnesty to all Confederates who took an oath of allegiance to the United States—excluding high-ranking officers and those who owned more than $20,000 in taxable property—Johnson stipulated three requirements for Southern provisional governments: repeal secession ordinances, repudiate their war debts, and abolish slavery along with ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. In the fall, Southerners convened at constitutional conventions to reorganize their states, electing legislators, governors, and members of Congress. It soon became clear that the South had no intention of establishing a new political order to replace the old “slaveocracy.” Several former Confederate officials were elected to office; voters in Georgia went so far as to elect Confederate vice president Alexander H. Stevens to the U.S. Senate. Furthermore, Texas and Mississippi rejected the Thirteenth Amendment, and some Southern states refused to repudiate secession or their war debts. Johnson’s lenient attitude meant that the South’s prewar society and political leadership were virtually restored, much to the dismay of abolitionists and Radical Republicans. Foner, Reconstruction, 187–91, 194, 196; Richardson, West from Appomattox, 42, 46–47; Bergeron, Andrew Johnson’s Civil War, 75–76, 82. 15. The Great Wall comprises a series of walls built across northern and western China to protect the Chinese Empire from invasion. Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (259–210 B.C.E.), who unified China under the Qin dynasty, is believed to have constructed the first connected wall. Four long walls were either rebuilt or extended during the Western Han (206 B.C.E.–9 C.E.), Sui (581–618), Jin (1115–1234), and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties. Michael Dillon, ed. China: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary (Surrey, Eng., 1998), 122–23; Dorothy Perkins, Encyclopedia of China: The Essential Reference to China, Its History and Culture (New York, 1999), 190–91.

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE (1867) Atlantic Monthly, 19:112–17 (January 1867).

As editor of the Atlantic from 1861 to 1871, James Thomas Fields paid generously for exclusive contributions to the magazine. Douglass received one hundred dollars for the following article condemning leniency toward, and the political service of, exConfederates. In December 1865, Congress established the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in an effort to investigate the conditions of the former Confederate states and to decide whether

Y7870-Douglass.indb 113

9/1/21 4:16 PM

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

113

the repetitiveness of Johnson’s addresses, especially the intemperate declaration that having fought the traitors in the South he was “swinging around the circle” to fight the traitors, such as Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, who lived in the North. Riddleberger, 1866, 217–23; Albert Castel, The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (Lawrence, Kans., 1979), 89–95; Eric L. McKittrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 428–29. 12. To give a challenge to. 13. Douglass paraphrases the “once saved always saved” doctrine, which was proposed by St. Augustine and popularized by Calvinists. Rom. 8:30; St. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, ed. Peter King (Cambridge, 2010), 197–205. 14. In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson began efforts toward the readmission of former Confederate states into the Union. At first, the president seemed to adopt Lincoln’s attitudes toward Reconstruction and implement strict, yet fair, conditions for readmission. But Johnson’s plans soon developed into a more lenient Reconstruction policy for the South. Along with granting amnesty to all Confederates who took an oath of allegiance to the United States—excluding high-ranking officers and those who owned more than $20,000 in taxable property—Johnson stipulated three requirements for Southern provisional governments: repeal secession ordinances, repudiate their war debts, and abolish slavery along with ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. In the fall, Southerners convened at constitutional conventions to reorganize their states, electing legislators, governors, and members of Congress. It soon became clear that the South had no intention of establishing a new political order to replace the old “slaveocracy.” Several former Confederate officials were elected to office; voters in Georgia went so far as to elect Confederate vice president Alexander H. Stevens to the U.S. Senate. Furthermore, Texas and Mississippi rejected the Thirteenth Amendment, and some Southern states refused to repudiate secession or their war debts. Johnson’s lenient attitude meant that the South’s prewar society and political leadership were virtually restored, much to the dismay of abolitionists and Radical Republicans. Foner, Reconstruction, 187–91, 194, 196; Richardson, West from Appomattox, 42, 46–47; Bergeron, Andrew Johnson’s Civil War, 75–76, 82. 15. The Great Wall comprises a series of walls built across northern and western China to protect the Chinese Empire from invasion. Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (259–210 B.C.E.), who unified China under the Qin dynasty, is believed to have constructed the first connected wall. Four long walls were either rebuilt or extended during the Western Han (206 B.C.E.–9 C.E.), Sui (581–618), Jin (1115–1234), and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties. Michael Dillon, ed. China: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary (Surrey, Eng., 1998), 122–23; Dorothy Perkins, Encyclopedia of China: The Essential Reference to China, Its History and Culture (New York, 1999), 190–91.

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE (1867) Atlantic Monthly, 19:112–17 (January 1867).

As editor of the Atlantic from 1861 to 1871, James Thomas Fields paid generously for exclusive contributions to the magazine. Douglass received one hundred dollars for the following article condemning leniency toward, and the political service of, exConfederates. In December 1865, Congress established the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in an effort to investigate the conditions of the former Confederate states and to decide whether

Y7870-Douglass.indb 113

9/1/21 4:16 PM

114

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

any were entitled to representation at the national level. While Andrew Johnson issued presidential pardons and granted amnesty to a majority of former Confederates, desiring the immediate restoration of “the unrepresented states,” Congress remained wary of seating former rebels. Radicals worried that if the pardoned secessionists were readmitted to Congress, they would unite with northern Democrats and take control of the federal government. Throughout 1866, Congress continued to reject Southern representatives. Many members argued that while a presidential pardon could remove criminal status and prevent punishment, it could not restore political status. While the battle continued between Johnson and Congress over this issue, Southern states ultimately regained representation in Congress by ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment in 1867. Speaking directly to the newly elected Congress, Douglass contended that to deny African American men the right to vote was an attempt by the South to create a “degraded caste” with no political rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, which passed on 3 February 1870, granted voting rights to all men, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Ticknor and Fields to Douglass, 11 November 1866, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 224, FD Papers, DLC; Salmon P. Chase, The Salmon P. Chase Papers: Correspondence, 1865–1873, ed. John Niven, 5 vols. (Kent, Ohio, 1998), 5:98; Jonathan Truman Dorris, Pardon and Amnesty under Lincoln and Johnson: The Restoration of the Confederates to Their Rights and Privileges, 1861–1898 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1953), 318–23, 330; Foner, Reconstruction, 239–40, 259, 271; Sedgwick, History of the Atlantic Monthly, 75.

A VERY limited statement of the argument for impartial suffrage, and for including the negro in the body politic, would require more space than can be reasonably asked here. It is supported by reasons as broad as the nature of man, and as numerous as the wants of society. Man is the only government-making animal in the world. His right to a participation in the production and operation of government is an inference from his nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education. It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare that he shall not share in the making and directing of the government

Y7870-Douglass.indb 114

9/1/21 4:16 PM

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

115

under which he lives, than to say that he shall not acquire property and education. The fundamental and unanswerable argument in favor of the enfranchisement of the negro is found in the undisputed fact of his manhood. He is a man, and by every fact and argument by which any man can sustain his right to vote, the negro can sustain his right equally. It is plain that, if the right belongs to any, it belongs to all. The doctrine that some men have no rights that others are bound to respect, is a doctrine which we must banish, as we have banished slavery, from which it emanated. If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men,1 of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. The result is a war of races, and the annihilation of all proper human relations. But suffrage for the negro, while easily sustained upon abstract principles, demands consideration upon what are recognized as the urgent necessities of the case. It is a measure of relief,—a shield to break the force of a blow already descending with violence, and render it harmless. The work of destruction has already been set in motion all over the South. Peace to the country has literally meant war to the loyal men of the South, white and black; and negro suffrage is the measure to arrest and put an end to that dreadful strife. Something then, not by way of argument, (for that has been done by Charles Sumner,2 Thaddeus Stevens,3 Wendell Phillips,4 Gerrit Smith,5 and other able men,) but rather of statement and appeal. For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,)6 the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the American population. They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes. Here they are, four millions of them,7 and, for weal or for woe, here they must remain. Their history is parallel to that of the country; but while the history of the latter has been cheerful and bright with blessings, theirs has been heavy and dark with agonies and curses. What O’Connell8 said of the history of Ireland may with greater truth be said of the negro’s. It may be “traced like a wounded man through a crowd, by the blood.” Yet the negroes have marvelously survived all the exterminating forces of slavery, and have emerged at the end of two hundred and fifty years of bondage, not morose, misanthropic, and revengeful, but cheerful, hopeful, and forgiving. They now stand before Congress and the country, not complaining of the past, but simply asking for a better future. The spectacle of these dusky millions thus imploring, not demanding, is touching; and if American statesmen could be moved by a simple appeal to the nobler elements of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 115

9/1/21 4:16 PM

116

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

human nature, if they had not fallen, seemingly, into the incurable habit of weighing and measuring every proposition of reform by some standard of profit and loss, doing wrong from choice, and right only from necessity or some urgent demand of human selfishness, it would be enough to plead for the negroes on the score of past services and sufferings. But no such appeal shall be relied on here. Hardships, services, sufferings, and sacrifices are all waived. It is true that they came to the relief of the country at the hour of its extremest need. It is true that, in many of the rebellious States, they were almost the only reliable friends the nation had throughout the whole tremendous war. It is true that, notwithstanding their alleged ignorance, they were wiser than their masters, and knew enough to be loyal, while those masters only knew enough to be rebels and traitors. It is true that they fought side by side in the loyal cause with our gallant and patriotic white soldiers, and that, but for their help,—divided as the loyal States were,—the Rebels might have succeeded in breaking up the Union, thereby entailing border wars and troubles of unknown duration and incalculable calamity. All this and more is true of these loyal negroes. Many daring exploits will be told to their credit. Impartial history will paint them as men who deserved well of their country. It will tell how they forded and swam rivers, with what consummate address they evaded the sharp-eyed Rebel pickets, how they toiled in the darkness of night through the tangled marshes of briers and thorns, barefooted and weary, running the risk of losing their lives, to warn our generals of Rebel schemes to surprise and destroy our loyal army. It will tell how these poor people, whose rights we still despised, behaved to our wounded soldiers, when found cold, hungry, and bleeding on the deserted battle-field; how they assisted our escaping prisoners from Andersonville, Belle Isle, Castle Thunder,9 and elsewhere, sharing with them their wretched crusts, and otherwise affording them aid and comfort; how they promptly responded to the trumpet call for their services, fighting against a foe that denied them the rights of civilized warfare, and for a government which was without the courage to assert those rights and avenge their violation in their behalf; with what gallantry they flung themselves upon Rebel fortifications, meeting death as fearlessly as any other troops in the service. But upon none of these things is reliance placed. These facts speak to the better dispositions of the human heart; but they seem of little weight with the opponents of impartial suffrage. It is true that a strong plea for equal suffrage might be addressed to the national sense of honor. Something, too, might be said of national

Y7870-Douglass.indb 116

9/1/21 4:16 PM

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

117

gratitude. A nation might well hesitate before the temptation to betray its allies. There is something immeasurably mean, to say nothing of the cruelty, in placing the loyal negroes of the South under the political power of their Rebel masters. To make peace with our enemies is all well enough; but to prefer our enemies and sacrifice our friends,—to exalt our enemies and cast down our friends,—to clothe our enemies, who sought the destruction of the government, with all political power, and leave our friends powerless in their hands,—is an act which need not be characterized here. We asked the negroes to espouse our cause, to be our friends, to fight for us and against their masters; and now, after they have done all that we asked them to do,—helped us to conquer their masters, and thereby directed toward themselves the furious hate of the vanquished,—it is proposed in some quarters to turn them over to the political control of the common enemy of the government and of the negro. But of this let nothing be said in this place. Waiving humanity, national honor, the claims of gratitude, the precious satisfaction arising from deeds of charity and justice to the weak and defenseless,—the appeal for impartial suffrage addresses itself with great pertinency to the darkest, coldest, and flintiest side of the human heart, and would wring righteousness from the unfeeling calculations of human selfishness. For in respect to this grand measure it is the good fortune of the negro that enlightened selfishness, not less than justice, fights on his side. National interest and national duty, if elsewhere separated, are firmly united here. The American people can, perhaps, afford to brave the censure of surrounding nations for the manifest injustice and meanness of excluding its faithful black soldiers from the ballot-box, but it cannot afford to allow the moral and mental energies of rapidly increasing millions to be consigned to hopeless degradation. Strong as we are, we need the energy that slumbers in the black man’s arm to make us stronger. We want no longer any heavy-footed, melancholy service from the negro. We want the cheerful activity of the quickened manhood of these sable millions. Nor can we afford to endure the moral blight which the existence of a degraded and hated class must necessarily inflict upon any people among whom such a class may exist. Exclude the negroes as a class from political rights,—teach them that the high and manly privilege of suffrage is to be enjoyed by white citizens only,—that they may bear the burdens of the state, but that they are to have no part in its direction or its honors,—and you at once deprive them of one of the main incentives to manly character and patriotic devotion to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 117

9/1/21 4:16 PM

118

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

the interests of the government; in a word, you stamp them as a degraded caste,—you teach them to despise themselves, and all others to despise them. (Men are so constituted that they largely derive their ideas of their abilities and their possibilities from the settled judgments of their fellowmen, and especially from such as they read in the institutions under which they live. If these bless them, they are blessed indeed; but if these blast them, they are blasted indeed.) Give the negro the elective franchise, and you give him at once a powerful motive for all noble exertion, and make him a man among men. A character is demanded of him, and here as elsewhere demand favors supply. It is nothing against this reasoning that all men who vote are not good men or good citizens. It is enough that the possession and exercise of the elective franchise is in itself an appeal to the nobler elements of manhood, and imposes education as essential to the safety of society. To appreciate the full force of this argument, it must be observed, that disfranchisement in a republican government based upon the idea of human equality and universal suffrage, is a very different thing from disfranchisement in governments based upon the idea of the divine right of kings,10 or the entire subjugation of the masses. Masses of men can take care of themselves. Besides, the disabilities imposed upon all are necessarily without that bitter and stinging element of invidiousness which attaches to disfranchisement in a republic. What is common to all works no special sense of degradation to any. But in a country like ours, where men of all nations, kindred, and tongues are freely enfranchised, and allowed to vote, to say to the negro, You shall not vote, is to deal his manhood a staggering blow, and to burn into his soul a bitter and goading sense of wrong, or else work in him a stupid indifference to all the elements of a manly character. As a nation, we cannot afford to have amongst us either this indifference and stupidity, or that burning sense of wrong. These sable millions are too powerful to be allowed to remain either indifferent or discontented. Enfranchise them, and they become self-respecting and country-loving citizens. Disfranchise them, and the mark of Cain11 is set upon them less mercifully than upon the first murderer, for no man was to hurt him. But this mark of inferiority—all the more palpable because of a difference of color—not only dooms the negro to be a vagabond, but makes him the prey of insult and outrage everywhere. While nothing may be urged here as to the past services of the negro, it is quite within the line of this appeal to remind the nation of the possibility that a time may come when the services of the negro may be a second time required. His-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 118

9/1/21 4:16 PM

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

119

tory is said to repeat itself,12 and, if so, having wanted the negro once, we may want him again. Can that statesmanship be wise which would leave the negro good ground to hesitate, when the exigencies of the country required his prompt assistance? Can that be sound statesmanship which leaves millions of men in gloomy discontent, and possibly in a state of alienation in the day of national trouble? Was not the nation stronger when two hundred thousand sable soldiers13 were hurled against the Rebel fortifications, than it would have been without them? Arming the negro was an urgent military necessity three years ago,—are we sure that another quite as pressing may not await us? Casting aside all thought of justice and magnanimity, is it wise to impose upon the negro all the burdens involved in sustaining government against foes within and foes without, to make him equal sharer in all sacrifices for the public good, to tax him in peace and conscript him in war, and then coldly exclude him from the ballot-box? Look across the sea. Is Ireland, in her present condition, fretful, discontented, compelled to support an establishment in which she does not believe, and which the vast majority of her people abhor, a source of power or of weakness to Great Britain?14 Is not Austria wise in removing all ground of complaint against her on the part of Hungary?15 And does not the Emperor of Russia act wisely, as well as generously, when he not only breaks up the bondage of the serf, but extends him all the advantages of Russian citizenship?16 Is the present movement in England in favor of manhood suffrage—for the purpose of bringing four millions of British subjects into full sympathy and co-operation with the British government—a wise and humane movement, or otherwise?17 Is the existence of a rebellious element in our borders—which New Orleans, Memphis, and Texas show to be only disarmed, but at heart as malignant as ever, only waiting for an opportunity to reassert itself with fire and sword—a reason for leaving four millions of the nation’s truest friends with just cause of complaint against the Federal government?18 If the doctrine that taxation should go hand in hand with representation19 can be appealed to in behalf of recent traitors and rebels, may it not properly be asserted in behalf of a people who have ever been loyal and faithful to the government? The answers to these questions are too obvious to require statement. Disguise it as we may, we are still a divided nation. The Rebel States have still an antinational policy. Massachusetts and South Carolina may draw tears from the eyes of our tender-hearted President by walking arm in arm into his Philadelphia Convention,20 but a citizen of Massachusetts is still an alien in the Palmetto State.21 There is that, all over the South, which frightens

Y7870-Douglass.indb 119

9/1/21 4:16 PM

120

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

Yankee industry, capital, and skill from its borders. We have crushed the Rebellion, but not its hopes or its malign purposes. The South fought for perfect and permanent control over the Southern laborer. It was a war of the rich against the poor. They who waged it had no objection to the government, while they could use it as a means of confirming their power over the laborer. They fought the government, not because they hated the government as such, but because they found it, as they thought, in the way between them and their one grand purpose of rendering permanent and indestructible their authority and power over the Southern laborer. Though the battle is for the present lost, the hope of gaining this object still exists, and pervades the whole South with a feverish excitement. We have thus far only gained a Union without unity, marriage without love, victory without peace. The hope of gaining by politics what they lost by the sword, is the secret of all this Southern unrest; and that hope must be extinguished before national ideas and objects can take full possession of the Southern mind. There is but one safe and constitutional way to banish that mischievous hope from the South, and that is by lifting the laborer beyond the unfriendly political designs of his former master. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you at once destroy the purely sectional policy, and wheel the Southern States into line with national interests and national objects. The last and shrewdest turn of Southern politics is a recognition of the necessity of getting into Congress immediately, and at any price. The South will comply with any conditions but suffrage for the negro. It will swallow all the unconstitutional test oaths, repeal all the ordinances of Secession, repudiate the Rebel debt, promise to pay the debt incurred in conquering its people, pass all the constitutional amendments, if only it can have the negro left under its political control. The proposition is as modest as that made on the mountain: “All these things will I give unto thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”22 But why are the Southerners so willing to make these sacrifices? The answer plainly is, they see in this policy the only hope of saving something of their old sectional peculiarities and power. Once firmly seated in Congress, their alliance with Northern Democrats re-established, their States restored to their former position inside the Union, they can easily find means of keeping the Federal government entirely too busy with other important matters to pay much attention to the local affairs of the Southern States. Under the potent shield of State Rights, the game would be in their own hands. Does any sane man doubt for a moment that the men who followed Jefferson Davis through the late terrible Rebellion, of-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 120

9/1/21 4:16 PM

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

121

ten marching barefooted and hungry, naked and penniless, and who now only profess an enforced loyalty, would plunge this country into a foreign war to-day, if they could thereby gain their coveted independence, and their still more coveted mastery over the negroes? Plainly enough, the peace not less than the prosperity of this country is involved in the great measure of impartial suffrage. King Cotton is deposed, but only deposed, and is ready to-day to reassert all his ancient pretensions upon the first favorable opportunity. Foreign countries abound with his agents. They are able, vigilant, devoted. The young men of the South burn with the desire to regain what they call the lost cause;23 the women are noisily malignant towards the Federal government. In fact, all the elements of treason and rebellion are there under the thinnest disguise which necessity can impose. What, then, is the work before Congress? It is to save the people of the South from themselves, and the nation from detriment on their account. Congress must supplant the evident sectional tendencies of the South by national dispositions and tendencies. It must cause national ideas and objects to take the lead and control the politics of those States. It must cease to recognize the old slave-masters as the only competent persons to rule the South. In a word, it must enfranchise the negro, and by means of the loyal negroes and the loyal white men of the South build up a national party there, and in time bridge the chasm between North and South, so that our country may have a common liberty and a common civilization. The new wine must be put into new bottles.24 The lamb may not be trusted with the wolf.25 Loyalty is hardly safe with traitors. Statesmen of America! beware what you do. The ploughshare of rebellion has gone through the land beam-deep. The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow. The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder to-day at the harvest of blood sown in the spring-time of the Republic by your patriot fathers. The principle of slavery, which they tolerated under the erroneous impression that it would soon die out, became at last the dominant principle and power at the South. It early mastered the Constitution, became superior to the Union, and enthroned itself above the law. Freedom of speech and of the press it slowly but successfully banished from the South, dictated its own code of honor and manners to the nation, brandished the bludgeon and the bowie-knife over Congressional debate, sapped the foundations of loyalty, dried up the springs of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 121

9/1/21 4:16 PM

122

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

patriotism, blotted out the testimonies of the fathers against oppression, padlocked the pulpit, expelled liberty from its literature, invented nonsensical theories about master-races and slave-races of men, and in due season produced a Rebellion fierce, foul, and bloody. This evil principle again seeks admission into our body politic. It comes now in shape of a denial of political rights to four million loyal colored people. The South does not now ask for slavery. It only asks for a large degraded caste, which shall have no political rights. This ends the case. Statesmen, beware what you do. The destiny of unborn and unnumbered generations is in your hands. Will you repeat the mistake of your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? or will you profit by the blood-bought wisdom all round you, and forever expel every vestige of the old abomination from our national borders? As you members of the Thirty-ninth Congress decide, will the country be peaceful, united, and happy, or troubled, divided, and miserable. 1. A paraphrase of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision. Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford, 19 Howard 393 (1857), 407. 2. Charles Sumner (1811–74), U.S. senator and outspoken advocate of pacifism, antislavery, and racial justice, attended Harvard College (1826–30) and Harvard Law School (1831–33), where he became a friend and protégé of Justice Joseph Story. During the mid-1830s, Sumner practiced law in Boston, engaged in legal scholarship, and taught at Harvard before embarking on an extended tour of Europe from 1838 to 1840. His oratorical talents became evident at Boston’s 1843 Independence Day celebration, where he delivered a ringing antiwar address. A vocal critic of the Mexican War, Sumner was initially aligned with Massachusetts’s “Conscience Whigs” before joining the Free Soil movement in 1848. Sumner was ambivalent about social equality between whites and blacks, but steadfast in opposing legal discrimination based on race. In 1849, he served as pro bono legal counsel in the Sarah Roberts case, challenging the legality of racial segregation in Boston public schools. Two years later, a Democratic–Free Soil coalition elected him to the U.S. Senate, where he spent the remainder of his public career. Through such polished Senate orations as his 1852 “Freedom National” speech attacking the Fugitive Slave Law, Sumner became a leading figure in the antislavery cause. In 1856, his address “The Crime against Kansas” provoked a physical attack from the South Carolina congressman Preston S. Brooks, who beat Sumner into a state of semiconsciousness on the floor of the Senate. During his three-year convalescence, Sumner was elevated to martyrdom. Instrumental in organizing the Massachusetts Republican party, he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the 1860s and was among the first national politicians to urge emancipation as a war measure. Sumner, who was intent on securing suffrage rights, land, and education for the freedmen, became a leading architect of Radical Reconstruction and later led the drive to impeach and remove President Andrew Johnson. After breaking with President Ulysses S. Grant over the issue of U.S. acquisition of Santo Domingo, Sumner supported Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley in 1872. Congressional Globe, 32d Cong., 2d sess., 39–43; Lib., 21 January 1853; David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 1960), 180–81, 240–41; DAB, 18:208–14. 3. The son of a Vermont shoemaker, Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) graduated from Dartmouth College and moved to southeastern Pennsylvania to practice law. From 1833 to 1841, Stevens, an Anti-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 122

9/1/21 4:16 PM

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

123

Mason, served in the Pennsylvania legislature, where he championed the establishment of a free public school system. From 1849 to 1853, he was one of the most outspoken antislavery Whigs in the U.S. House of Representatives. Stevens helped organize the Republican party in his state and again served in Congress from 1859 to his death. As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee during the Civil War, he actively worked for emancipation, high tariffs, and a transcontinental railroad. As the leading House member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Stevens helped push the Fourteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 through Congress, despite the opposition of President Andrew Johnson and the hesitancy of conservative Republicans. Although in failing health, he served as one of the House managers in the unsuccessful impeachment trial of President Johnson. Fawn M. Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South (New York, 1959); Leonard P. Curry, Blueprint for Modern America: Non-military Legislation of the First Civil War Congress (Nashville, 1968), 26–27, 64, 98, 173; Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869 (New York, 1974), 34–35, 137, 149–50, 190–91, 224–25, 251; Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa, eds., The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, 2 vols. (Pittsburgh,1997–98), 1:232–33n; NCAB, 4:30–31; DAB, 17:620–25. 4. Born and raised in Boston and educated at Harvard, Wendell Phillips (1811–84) was one of the most prominent advocates of reform in the nineteenth century. In 1837, the young Phillips distinguished himself by denouncing the murder of the abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy. Active in the American Anti-Slavery Society, Phillips tended to support, but did not completely adhere to, William Lloyd Garrison’s brand of apolitical, disunionist abolitionism; as a delegate to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, Phillips agreed with Garrison that female delegates should be seated, but disagreed with him on nonresistance to slavery. Following the Civil War, Phillips became devoted to a number of reforms, including prohibition, penal reform, concessions to Native Americans, woman suffrage, and the labor movement. James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty’s Hero (Baton Rouge, 1986); Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); DAB, 14:546–47. 5. Gerrit Smith (1797–1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work in such reforms 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 enabling them to qualify 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 the organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and frequently assisted in financing 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. Harlow, Gerrit Smith; Sorin, New York Abolitionists, 269–87; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 170–80; McKivigan and Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith,” 20:61–76; NCAB, 2:322–23; DAB, 17:270–71. 6. Paraphrased from “for better, for worse” in Anglican marriage vows, the phrase can be originally found in the Anglican Church’s Book of Common Prayer (1549), based on earlier Latin texts. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church According to the Use of the Church of England and Ireland; Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, Pointed as They are to be Sung or Said in Churches; and the Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons (London, 1549), pt. viii. 7. U.S. Census data for 1870 show an African American population of 4,618,349. 1870 U.S. Census, Ohio, Franklin County, 55. 8. Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), an Irish lawyer and a member of Parliament, played a major role in both the British and American antislavery movements. After hearing the English abolitionist

Y7870-Douglass.indb 123

9/1/21 4:16 PM

124

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

James Cropper in 1824, O’Connell converted to abolitionism and balanced commitments to black freedom and Irish independence throughout the rest of his career. O’Connell served as a leader of the movement to repeal the Act of Union between England and Ireland, and he participated in the related campaign to remove the civil restrictions imposed on Catholics. In 1829, with strong support from antislavery politicians, O’Connell saw the bill for Catholic emancipation pass Parliament. 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. Five years later, he narrowly averted having to fight 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 female delegates at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 and made numerous attempts to rally abolitionist sentiment among Irish Americans in the following years. 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, Col., 1998), 306–08; DNB, 14:816–34. 9. Andersonville, Georgia—one of the most notorious Southern stockades built to house Union war prisoners—held more than 45,000 inmates during the Civil War. After the end of hostilities, the camp’s commandant, Henry Wirz, was tried and executed for the deaths of nearly 13,000 of those prisoners. Shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run, the Confederacy established a prison camp for captured Union enlisted men on Belle Isle, a 100-acre inland in the James River at Richmond. During the winter of 1863–64, as many as 10,000 prisoners were confined on Belle Isle. Two Confederate prison camps were popularly known as “Castle Thunder.” The one in Petersburg, Virginia, was a converted tobacco warehouse that received its nickname after artillery reports reverberated through its corridors during the Union siege of the city in 1864–65. The Richmond Castle Thunder was also a converted warehouse, but it housed mostly political prisoners and accused spies rather than captured Union soldiers. Mark M. Boatner III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York, 1959), 10, 57, 131. 10. The divine right of kings refers to the theory that a monarch derives his right to rule directly from God and therefore is not subject to the will of the people or any other earthly authority. Designed to justify monarchical absolutism, the doctrine lost its credibility mainly in the aftermath of the American and French revolutions. Douglass refers to this theory in comparing the disenfranchisement of blacks in a republican government with that of all subjects living under an absolute monarchy. Whereas the American republican government denied the vote to blacks amidst the promise of equality and universal suffrage, the monarch justified his absolute authority by citing the divine right of kings, which allowed him or her to freely disregard the will of the people. David Robertson, The Routledge Dictionary of Politics (2002; London, 2004), 152–53; Robert Jackson, Sovereignty: The Evolution of an Idea (Cambridge, 2007), 56–57; Brian Duignan, ed., The Britannica Guide to Ethics: Thinkers and Theories in Ethics (New York, 2011), 75–76. 11. For killing his brother, Abel, Cain was cursed and fated to wander “the face of the earth.” When Cain protested that others would kill him, God placed a mark on Cain so that whoever found him would not slay him. The Bible reports that Cain later “dwelled in the land of Nod east of Eden.” Gen. 4:11–13, 15–16. 12. Douglass quotes a proverb that can be attributed to Plutarch. Plutarch, “The Life of Sertorius,” in The Parallel Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, 11 vols. (Cambridge, 1923), 8:313.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 124

9/1/21 4:16 PM

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

125

13. Estimates vary, but there seem to have been around 180,000 African American soldiers serving in the Civil War. EAAH, 2:365. 14. Although the 1800 Act of Union merged Ireland with Great Britain under the United Kingdom, the relationship between the two countries remained strained throughout the nineteenth century. To many Irish, the union was one of subordination, and these nationalists continued to rebel against English rule. Most of the English, however, viewed themselves as benefactors helping the oppressed Irish peasantry free themselves from the corrupt Irish ruling class. It was instilled in many of the British that the Irish were inferior, violent, barbarous, and therefore incapable of efficiently ruling their own country. Thus, Ireland was ruled much like a colony, with the English taking control of local leadership and running the government to support English, not Irish, interests. The Irish resented this type of colonial rule as well as the common English belief in Irish inferiority. Patrick O’Farrell, England and Ireland since 1800 (New York, 1975), 2–6, 21, 31, 35–36, 49–51, 155; Carla King, “Michael Davit, Irish Nationalism and the British Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Victoria’s Ireland? Irishness and Britishness, 1837–1901, ed. Peter Gray (Dublin, Ire., 2004), 118; Virginia Crossman, “Local Government in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” in Was Ireland a Colony? Economics, Politics and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, ed. Terrence McDonough (Dublin, 2005), 103. 15. During the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, Emperor Ferdinand I accepted what were known as the April Laws, which granted Hungary autonomy in many aspects of government. But after Austria put down the revolution the following year, it denied the validity of the April Laws, which caused unrest among the Hungarians. During the 1860s, Hungarians grew more resentful of Austria’s political dominance, and the threat of revolution became apparent. In May 1867, an Austro-Hungarian compromise was written into law, and in June, the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph was crowned King of Hungary. While the compromise granted Hungary a certain level of independence from Vienna, it was clear the country was still part of the Hapsburg Empire. Under the compromise, the two countries would have the same monarch, a single currency, common foreign and defense policies, joint armed forces, and unified diplomatic representation. For a while, the compromise satisfied the Hungarians’ desire for political independence from Austria. C. A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire, 1790–1918 (New York, 1969), 341, 394, 413, 500, 506–10, 551–53; John W. Mason, The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867–1918 (1985; New York, 1997), 6; Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change (New York, 1998), 341–42. 16. On 19 February 1861, Tsar Alexander II signed legislation that abolished serfdom in Russia. Public announcement of this legislation, however, was not made until 5 March, the beginning of Lent. Alexander and his regime hoped that during this religious holiday season, the peasants would be in a more compliant and grateful mood and would thus be less susceptible to uprisings and discontent. Serfdom was not abolished by a single decree but by a number of measures leading to gradual emancipation. This process was divided into three stages: a two-year transitional period; an undetermined period of “temporary obligation” during which serfs were given permanent rights to allotments of land in return for fixed obligations; and a redemption operation in which peasants paid for their allotments in installments over a period of forty-nine years. Immediately following the February legislation, all serfs became legally free and were no longer wholly dependent on their estate owners. Additionally, they could be neither bought nor sold, nor punished by estate owners. They received the same legal status as free rural citizens, which allowed them to marry, buy and sell property, and enter into legally binding contracts. While many peasants were somewhat disillusioned by this legislation—particularly by the complex nature of the statues as well as the longevity of its implementation—others celebrated the beginning of the end of Russian serfdom. Daniel Field, The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855–1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 356–61; David Moon, The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia, 1762–1907 (London, 2001), 70–82. 17. With the Representation of the People Act of 1867 (commonly known as the Second Reform Act), the British Crown restructured property qualifications for enfranchisement in such a fashion

Y7870-Douglass.indb 125

9/1/21 4:16 PM

126

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE

as to double the eligible voting population. F. W. Maitland, The Constitutional History of England (Cambridge, 1955), 360. 18. During 1866, there was an increase in white violence against blacks in the South, especially in Memphis, New Orleans, and parts of Texas. On 1 May 1866, two teams of horses, one driven by a black man and the other driven by a white man, collided on a street in Memphis. After angry words were exchanged, the argument became violent. Nearby policemen rushed to the scene and were met by a group of discharged black veterans, who intervened. During the three days of racial violence following this incident, white mobs assaulted blacks on the streets and invaded a nearby shantytown that housed the families of black soldiers stationed at Fort Pickering. When the violence ended, at least forty-eight people were dead. Only two of the victims were white, and several hundred black houses, churches, and schools had been destroyed. Following the Memphis race riots, violence erupted in New Orleans in June 1866, arising mainly from Reconstruction politics. Former Confederates had risen to power in the city, and Governor James M. Wells constructed a plan to reconvene the Constitutional Convention of 1864, not only to enfranchise blacks but also to prohibit former rebels from voting. On 30 June, a group of two hundred blacks gathered in the streets to support the convention. Fighting soon broke out, and policemen, instead of attempting to curb the violence, joined their fellow whites in the attack. As a result, thirty-four blacks and three white Radicals were killed. In Texas, blacks were routinely beaten and murdered throughout 1866. Whites, many of them Ku Klux Klan members, were unrestrained by the government or military, and the Freedmen’s Bureau in the state was unable to establish any sense of order. Craven, Reconstruction, 185–87; Foner, Reconstruction, 119, 261–63; George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction (1984; Athens, Ga., 2007), 39, 43–44, 51–52; Christopher Bean, “The Post of Greatest Peril? The Freedmen’s Bureau Subassistant Commissioners and Reconstruction Violence in Texas, 1865–1869,” in Still the Arena of Civil War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865–1874, ed. Kenneth W. Howell (Denton, Tex., 2012), 39–40. 19. Although commonly attributed to the Revolutionary War patriot James Otis of Massachusetts, variations of the phrase had been in circulation for several decades in disputes between the American colonies and British Parliament. William Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts (1823; New York, 1970), 90. 20. Douglass is referring to President Andrew Johnson’s reaction to the proceedings of the National Union Convention held in Philadelphia, 14–16 August 1866. During the convention, delegates from South Carolina and Massachusetts entered the hall arm in arm in a display of reconciliatory spirit. While Johnson did not attend the convention, a committee led by Maryland senator Reverdy Johnson met with the president at the White House on 18 August to deliver the convention’s official proceedings. President Johnson praised the delegates from South Carolina and Massachusetts for coming together, united once again on the preservation of the Union. He continued by claiming that “when the dispatch informed me that in that vast body of men, distinguished for intellect and wisdom, every eye was suffused with tears on beholding the scene, I could not finish reading the dispatch to an associate with me in the office, for my own feelings overcame me.” Several newspapers printed these presidential remarks. Cleveland Daily Herald, 20 August 1866; Salt Lake City Daily Telegraph, 21 August 1866; Bergeron, Andrew Johnson’s Civil War, 124–25. 21. South Carolina is nicknamed the Palmetto State after its state tree, the sabal palmetto. Shankle, State Names, Flags, Seals, 145. 22. Matt. 4:9. 23. Soon after the South’s defeat in the Civil War, an ideology termed the “Lost Cause philosophy” surfaced, effectively rewriting the war’s purpose and outcome. According to this revisionist view, the South’s intent became a noble struggle for states’ rights rather than the maintenance of slavery, and Southerners argued that they had not been defeated in the war but simply outnumbered. Heartily endorsed in the South, this view of history became increasingly accepted, though inaccurate, well into the twentieth century, even influencing Northern states’ interpretation of the Civil

Y7870-Douglass.indb 126

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SALMON P. CHASE

127

War. In Lost Cause accounts, the war was romanticized and glorified, while the cruelty of slavery was completely ignored. Grady McWhiney, Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat (New York, 1969), vii-xi; David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 37–38, 258–60, 452–53; Dwight T. Pitcaithley, “The American Civil War and the Preservation of Memory,” Cultural Resource Management, 25:5–9 (2002). 24. Douglass refers to a parable that Jesus told. It is foolish to put new wine into old bottles because the old bottles will break, consequently ruining the bottle and the wine. Matt. 9:16–17 or Mark 2:21–22 25. Possibly an allusion to Isa. 11:6 or 65:25.

SALMON P. CHASE (1868) National Anti-Slavery Standard, 18 July 1868. Other texts in Louisville Courier-Journal, 22 July 1868; Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, 25 July 1868; Hillsboro (Ohio) Highland Weekly News, 6 August 1868; San Francisco Elevator, 11 September 1868.

Salmon Portland Chase (1808–73) served as a U.S. senator, cabinet officer, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He taught school briefly in Washington, D.C., before settling in Cincinnati, where he began a legal career and defended a number of fugitive slaves as well as the abolitionist editor James G. Birney. Initially a Whig, Chase joined the Liberty party in 1840, and in 1848 he presided at the Buffalo Convention of the Free Soil party. The next year, a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats in the Ohio legislature sent Chase to the U.S. Senate, where he remained until 1854. In the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase joined the Republican party, and from 1855 to 1859 he served as governor of Ohio. In 1861, he became Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury and quickly aligned himself with Radical Republicans, ultimately becoming the focus of opposition to Lincoln within the party. In July 1864, after an abortive movement to nominate him for the presidency, Chase resigned from the cabinet, only to be appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court in October. Before and after his appointment to the Court, Chase was a strong spokesman for black suffrage and the Radical program of Reconstruction. A persistent aspirant to the Republican presidential nomination, Chase also sought the Democratic nomination in 1868. Democratic leaders insisted that he denounce the Reconstruction Acts and abandon the principle of universal suffrage in order to receive

Y7870-Douglass.indb 127

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SALMON P. CHASE

127

War. In Lost Cause accounts, the war was romanticized and glorified, while the cruelty of slavery was completely ignored. Grady McWhiney, Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat (New York, 1969), vii-xi; David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 37–38, 258–60, 452–53; Dwight T. Pitcaithley, “The American Civil War and the Preservation of Memory,” Cultural Resource Management, 25:5–9 (2002). 24. Douglass refers to a parable that Jesus told. It is foolish to put new wine into old bottles because the old bottles will break, consequently ruining the bottle and the wine. Matt. 9:16–17 or Mark 2:21–22 25. Possibly an allusion to Isa. 11:6 or 65:25.

SALMON P. CHASE (1868) National Anti-Slavery Standard, 18 July 1868. Other texts in Louisville Courier-Journal, 22 July 1868; Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, 25 July 1868; Hillsboro (Ohio) Highland Weekly News, 6 August 1868; San Francisco Elevator, 11 September 1868.

Salmon Portland Chase (1808–73) served as a U.S. senator, cabinet officer, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He taught school briefly in Washington, D.C., before settling in Cincinnati, where he began a legal career and defended a number of fugitive slaves as well as the abolitionist editor James G. Birney. Initially a Whig, Chase joined the Liberty party in 1840, and in 1848 he presided at the Buffalo Convention of the Free Soil party. The next year, a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats in the Ohio legislature sent Chase to the U.S. Senate, where he remained until 1854. In the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase joined the Republican party, and from 1855 to 1859 he served as governor of Ohio. In 1861, he became Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury and quickly aligned himself with Radical Republicans, ultimately becoming the focus of opposition to Lincoln within the party. In July 1864, after an abortive movement to nominate him for the presidency, Chase resigned from the cabinet, only to be appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court in October. Before and after his appointment to the Court, Chase was a strong spokesman for black suffrage and the Radical program of Reconstruction. A persistent aspirant to the Republican presidential nomination, Chase also sought the Democratic nomination in 1868. Democratic leaders insisted that he denounce the Reconstruction Acts and abandon the principle of universal suffrage in order to receive

Y7870-Douglass.indb 127

9/1/21 4:16 PM

128

SALMON P. CHASE

the party’s nomination. While Chase did water down his position on these issues and received some initial support, the Democrats adopted a platform at their convention that he could not accept. Once again, he fell short of the presidential nomination, but this time Chase’s reputation suffered. He allowed his desire for office to overshadow his political principles, and to many he was simply considered an “opportunist of remorseless ambition.” In his article for the National Anti-Slavery Standard, Douglass offered a scathing critique of Chase and his reversal of political alliance. It was reprinted extensively in newspapers across the nation. Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, Ohio, 1987); James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970), 116–18, 153–54; John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (New York, 1995), 426–32; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 90; Reinhard H. Luthin, “Salmon P. Chase’s Political Career before the Civil War,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29:517–40 (March 1943); DAB, 4:27–34; John W. Blassingame, ed., Antislavery Newspapers and Periodicals, 5 vols. (Boston, 1980–84), 4:7–8.

The career of this distinguished man having now reached a termination hardly less instructive than melancholy, it becomes those who have felt the deepest interest in his life and character, to recognize the fact of his apostacy and protect themselves as far as possible from its damaging consequences, by holding his example up to moral indignation, and earnest reprobation. The position of Mr. Chase before the late Democratic Convention1—viewed in connection, with his early history and the sources from which he has mainly derived popular consideration—is certainly one of the saddest spectacles which can afflict the eyes of men. An Abolitionist of thirty years standing—a Liberty Party man of the olden time,2 when that party could only count seven thousand votes in the whole country—an Anti-Slavery lawyer, trusted most by the trembling fugitive from slavery3—an Abolition politician and statesman, indebted for his distinction, his high position among his countrymen mainly to his supposed unselfish and inflexible devotion to human liberty and especially to that of the much hated negro; is found at last, in the gutter before Tammany Hall—piteously imploring the Democratic party to nominate him as their candidate for the Presidency,4 urging as his chief recommendation

Y7870-Douglass.indb 128

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SALMON P. CHASE

129

his ability to demoralize a sufficient number of his old Anti-Slavery associates to put the government into the hands of the Democratic party the next four years. “What a falling off was there my countrymen!”5 Here is treachery compared with which that of Webster,6 Seward,7 Charles Francis Adams8 and Andrew Johnson, whitens into innocence. The fall of Mr. Chase is more scandalous and shocking than that of any other of which American history affords an example. His descent is from a point higher—he has fallen further—and he reaches a depth of infamy deeper, and hotter than that of any of his predecessors in treachery. It is only a few months ago that he was seeking to win to himself the votes of the colored men of the South on the ground that he more than any other prominent man best represented their interests and their rights, and now he is for a party whose chief claim to popular regard is based upon its hostility to the negro and its purpose to place him in a condition only less wretched than the slavery from which the war for the Union had rescued him. It is not many weeks since that good man GERRET SMITH was vigorously pressing the name of Mr. Chase for the Presidency.9 He was evidently surprised if not grieved, that I was not equally earnest in the same work. He could not understand why I should favor the nomination and election of Gen. Grant in preference to Chief Justice Chase. Mr. Smith will have no difficulty in understanding my preference now. The fact is I have for many years been troubled with doubts of this man’s Anti-Slavery trust-worthiness. Before Mr. Chase had betrayed that heroic woman, Margaret Garner,10 into the hands of Kentucky slave-hunters; before he deserted Mr. Lincoln, and sought to supplant him in 1864; before he accepted the Chief Justiceship, as the price of his support of the second election of Mr. Lincoln;11 before he manifested his inordinate desire for the Presidency by leaving the treasury (where his services were most needed by the country) in order to put himself in training for the Presidential nomination; before he framed excuses for his failure to try Jefferson Davis;12 before he brought the whole influence of his position and learning to shield Andrew Johnson from deserved impeachment, and before his present identification of himself, with all the vile abominations of the Democratic platform, I had uncomfortable impressions of the man of which I could not (though I often desired to) divest myself. A portrait of the character of Mr. Chase given me by Hon. Samuel Lewis, of Cincinnati when that good man and faithful Abolitionist was

Y7870-Douglass.indb 129

9/1/21 4:16 PM

130

SALMON P. CHASE

on his dying bed, has (despite of all efforts to shake it off and forget it) followed me for a dozen years and more, and has become more and more vivid as time and events have developed the true status of the man. The judgment of Mr. Lewis was that Mr. Chase was not to be trusted in any emergency—that he was coldly selfish and intensely ambitious—and that in furtherance of his ambition he would sacrifice the Abolition cause or any other. I was shocked by this portrait of Mr. Chase and disputed its accuracy at the time, but its ugly features have confronted me ever since. Hence, gross and unexpected as was the defection of Mr. Chase to many of his friends, it was not wholly unlooked for by me. He has confirmed the bad opinion of him in every particular. Greedy for the Presidency, he has not hesitated to renounce all ties of ancient friendship, to repudiate all obligations of gratitude, to disregard the sentiment of reserve which befits his present high office, to intrigue and scramble for a nomination at the hands of a party conspicuous for the bitterest hostility to the professed principles of his whole life, and whose triumph in the coming election would be the direst calamity. The signal defeat, rebuke and humiliation of the inordinate ambition of Chief Justice Chase, in some measure atones for the democratic baseness, which accomplished his seduction. He has soiled his judicial ermine in vain. He is, like Wolsey, left naked to his enemies.13 The two or three votes he got, instead of conferring honor, only render his isolation and destitution the more conspicuous. The Democrats “loved the treason,” but as usual, despised the traitor. His success, in the circumstances, would have been a sad disaster to the political morals of the country. As the case now stands, Mr. Chase is a warning to all after comers. He has parted with his principles, sold himself to the enemy and lost his price. A defense of Mr. Chase is already whispered. He merely meant to purify the Democratic party! He did not mean to descend to its level, but lift the party to his. He simply went into it to reform it. On this theory, folly is added to knavery. He attempts to deceive the Democratic party to purify it of deception! To defraud the party to make it more honest! To the democrats he says I am with you, I stand on your platform. To his old friends he says, I do no such thing, but stand where I have stood through life. I am willing that the democratic party shall come to me, but I have no purpose to go to it. This defense is now worse than the crime—and is only less hurtful because its lying hypocrisy is open and manifest to all. Hereafter, let us hear no more of Mr. Chase as the negro’s candidate or the negro’s friend. He is a deserter from our ranks, in face of the en-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 130

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SALMON P. CHASE

131

emy, and is simply not in the enemies ranks because—they despised and spurned him. His degradation is complete and he will have to live longer than Chief Justice Taney, if he outlives the memory of this flagrant transgression. In sorrow more than anger we part with him. His crime though great has met an equal punishment. Let us hope it will prove salutary if not to him, at least to others who may be tempted in like manner to betray their principles. FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. When the Democratic National Convention assembled in New York City in early July 1868, Chase was hopeful that he might secure that party’s presidential nomination. While he had made certain concessions to Democrats in an effort to appease party leaders, the platform adopted at the convention discouraged Chase. It intensely denounced Reconstruction and rejected the idea that the federal government could impose conditions for voting. In contrast, Chase was a longtime advocate of universal suffrage. Although he had differences with Congress over Reconstruction, the Democratic platform was more radical in its opposition. Chase was further disappointed when his longtime adversary, Francis P. Blair, Jr., was nominated as the vice presidential candidate. Blue, Salmon P. Chase, 292–95; Niven, Salmon P. Chase, 431–32. 2. By 1840, Salmon P. Chase had become disillusioned with the Whig party and its inaction on slavery. In the fall of 1841, he joined the Liberty party, but not without some misgivings regarding a party narrowly dedicated to abolition. Almost immediately after joining the party’s ranks, he began efforts to combine it with antislavery Whigs and Democrats. In the next few years, Chase participated in organizing conventions and letter-writing campaigns to entice antislavery men to join the party. By 1847, he realized the limitations of the Liberty party and began moving toward the creation of the broader-based Free Soil party, which opposed the westward spread of slavery. Niven, Salmon P. Chase, 62, 67, 69; Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, 1999), 333; Luthin, “Salmon P. Chase’s Political Career,” 29:517–19. 3. During his career as a lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, Chase came to be known as the “Attorney General for Runaway Negroes.” While the title was mainly used by his opponents, Chase took pride in his newly established reputation. In 1837, he defended Matilda, a maid of the abolitionist James Birney, who had recently been seized as a fugitive. Although he lost the case, he gained prominence by making an eloquent defense of natural rights while simultaneously questioning the boundaries between federal and state relations. In 1841, Chase defended Mary Towns, a former slave who had been living as a free woman in Cincinnati for ten years but was seized to be returned to Kentucky into slavery. Chase claimed that the slave owner’s affidavit did not declare Towns a fugitive, and so, on the basis of his positive law argument, she was freed. In 1845, a slave named Samuel Watson was taken voluntarily to Cincinnati by a steamboat with his owner, Henry Hoppess. When Watson disappeared, Hoppess found him standing on the landing and forced him back to the boat. When the incident was reported to Chase, he quickly sought a writ of habeas corpus to defend Watson and prove he was free. As in the Matilda case, Watson was ordered back to slavery, despite the attempt made by Chase. From these fugitive slave cases, Chase gained national recognition as a defender of antislavery principles. Blue, Salmon P. Chase, 31–33, 36–40; Niven, Salmon P. Chase, 50–56, 62–63, 76–78, 81–85. 4. The Democrats held their 1868 national convention in the newly constructed Tammany Hall. The building, located on Fourteenth Street in New York City, served as the home of the Tammany Society. The society, commonly referred to as simply “Tammany,” was established in 1789, and had previously met in a building located on the corner of Nassau and Frankfort. The dedication of the new Tammany Hall was held on 4 July 1868, the first day of the Democratic National Convention.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 131

9/1/21 4:16 PM

132

SALMON P. CHASE

Euphemia Vale Blake, History of the Tammany Society, or Columbian Order, from Its Organization to the Present Time (New York, 1901), 11; Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall (1901; New York, 1917), 215–16; Niven, Salmon P. Chase, 430. 5. A paraphrase of Julius Caesar, sc. 9, line 1574. 6. A lawyer, politician, and brilliant orator, Daniel Webster (1782–1852) was born in New Hampshire and educated at Dartmouth College. His career as a successful lawyer led him into politics, and he served in numerous elected and appointed positions throughout his life. His service in the U.S. Senate was especially noteworthy for his speeches on Federalist issues, and he is considered by some one of the best senators in U.S. history. Always a nationalist, Webster clashed with congressional states’-rights advocates such as John C. Calhoun. Usually, however, he was able to compromise and avoid talk of secession. Although he was an outspoken opponent of slavery and its spread into the territories, Webster provoked criticism from abolitionists over his involvement in the Compromise of 1850. In an effort to save the Union and thwart secession, Webster delivered a speech in the Senate on 7 March 1850 in support of the proposed compromise measures. His strategy was to deemphasize the moral aspect of slavery and separate abolitionists from the rest of the North in order to diminish their influence, saying that Northerners had a constitutional obligation to return fugitive slaves to their owners. Abolitionists publicly attacked the senator for his speech. Douglass claimed that Webster had the opportunity to display his power and influence as an orator “in a manner which would have done essential service to the cause of human freedom,” but instead he “occupied his time to no good purpose.” NS, 15 March 1850; Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (New York, 1997); Craig R. Smith, Daniel Webster and the Oratory of Civil Religion (Columbia, Mo., 2005), 227–28; ANB (online). 7. After the Civil War, William H. Seward continued serving as secretary of state under Andrew Johnson and clashed with congressional Radical Republicans, endorsing more moderate Reconstruction policies. On 28 August 1866, he joined Johnson on his speaking tour; Seward urged audiences to support the president, called for a speedy restoration of the Union, and favored the admission of Southern congressional representatives without further delay. The tour, known as the “swing around the circle,” was extremely unpopular, and Seward’s involvement in the event and his loyalty to Johnson prompted criticism from Republicans. Daily Cleveland Herald, 31 August 1866; Bancroft, Life of William H. Seward; ACAB, 5:470–73; DAB, 16:615–21. 8. Charles Francis Adams (1807–86), the third son of John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but he spent much of his childhood in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his father was the U.S. ambassador. After returning to the United States, Adams studied law in the office of Daniel Webster and graduated from Harvard College. Entering state politics, he served in the Massachusetts House from 1841 to 1843 and in the state senate from 1844 to 1845. In 1845, Adams assumed the editorship of the Boston Whig; three years later, he received the Free Soil party’s nomination as Martin Van Buren’s vice presidential running mate. Adams served a term in Congress (1859–61) as a Republican before accepting appointment from President Abraham Lincoln to become U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James. He remained ambassador under the Johnson administration and incited criticism from Radical Republicans during Reconstruction for opposing the employment of the military to remake Southern governments. While he acknowledged Johnson’s personal weaknesses, Adams supported his attempt to maintain executive power and viewed his impeachment as a disgrace. He also opposed black suffrage as long as there remained substantial opposition among white Southerners. Upon returning to Boston in 1868, Adams was practically ostracized by the Radical Republicans, many of whom believed that he was shifting to the Democratic party. Vowing to remain in political retirement unless otherwise compelled by duty, he left public life to edit the papers of his father and grandfather. Martin Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886 (Boston, 1961); NCAB, 8:351–53; DAB, 1:48–52. 9. On 12 June 1868, Gerrit Smith published a circular entitled Destroy Not Man’s Faith in Man! Accept the Right Man, Whichever Party Nominates Him! Smith gave a contingent endorsement to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 132

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SALMON P. CHASE

133

Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax, the hopeful Republican candidates for president and vice president. But he went on to write that he would rejoice to see Salmon P. Chase nominated for president, declaring, “If contrary to my expectations, the Democrats shall have the wisdom to nominate the Chief Justice,” along with an acceptable vice presidential candidate, “I shall prefer to vote for the Democratic Candidates.” Printed Ephemera Collection, portfolio 127, folder 31, DLC; Chase, Salmon P. Chase Papers, 5:232–33n. 10. Margaret Garner was a young slave woman who had spent her life in Kentucky on a small plantation called Maplewood, eighteen miles from Cincinnati. In January 1856, Garner, who was thought to have been around twenty-two, escaped into Ohio with her husband, Simon, their four children, and Simon’s father. Soon after crossing the border, the family was found by a group of slave catchers. Margaret became hysterical, declared that she would rather see her family dead before she would return to slavery, and proceeded to slit her two-year-old daughter’s throat with a butcher knife. She was apprehended before she could harm her other children or herself. The family was initially placed into federal custody, but the probate judge of Hamilton County issued a writ of habeas corpus in order to charge Garner with murder. A debate ensued over whether the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 violated habeas corpus and Ohio’s police power. After a trial that lasted two weeks, Garner and her family were sent back to slavery in Kentucky under the federal law. Chase, serving as Ohio’s governor at the time, let the courts decide the case without his involvement. After the trial concluded, he implored Governor Morehead of Kentucky to send the family back to Ohio. But by the time the papers were received, Garner’s owner had sold the family in New Orleans. Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffi n, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad; Being a Brief History of the Labors of a Lifetime in Behalf of the Slave, with the Stories of Numerous Fugitives, Who Gained Their Freedom Through His Instrumentality, and Many Other Incidents (Cincinnati, 1876), 559–62; Niven, Salmon P. Chase, 183–84; Sarah Mitchell, “Mother, Murderess, or Martyr? Press Coverage of the Margaret Garner Story,” in Seeking a Voice: Images of Race and Gender in the 19th Century Press, ed. David B Sachsman, S. Kittrell Rushing, and Roy Morris, Jr. (West Lafayette, Ind., 2009), 13, 19, 23; Julius Yanuck, “The Garner Fugitive Slave Case,” MVHR, 40:47–66 (June 1953). 11. Although Chase lost the Republican presidential nomination to Lincoln in 1860, he found that some Radicals preferred him to Lincoln as the party’s 1864 candidate. Radical Republicans, frustrated with Lincoln and his proposed plans for Reconstruction, were eager to replace him with someone more in line with their ideas. In early 1864, Senator Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas organized a committee that supported Chase and wrote a circular nominating him as a presidential candidate. Although the circular was marked confidential, newspapers began printing it in February 1864. It criticized Lincoln and warned that his reelection would bring more compromises and the continuation of the war, and it praised Chase for having “more of the qualities needed in a President during the next four years than are combined in any other available candidate.” Ultimately, Pomeroy’s circular backfired, causing Republicans to pledge their loyalty to Lincoln while placing Chase in a difficult position in the president’s cabinet. Although Chase admitted to allowing the committee to use his name, he claimed to have had no knowledge of the circular and offered his resignation as secretary of treasury. Lincoln did not accept the offer. By March, Chase had withdrawn his name from consideration. After Lincoln was renominated in June, he accepted a new offer of resignation from Chase. New York Tribune, 23 February 1864; Blue, Salmon P. Chase, 215–16, 221–23, 226; Niven, Salmon P. Chase, 357, 360–61, 365–66, 369. 12. Captured by Union soldiers soon after the collapse of the Confederate military resistance, Jefferson Davis languished in prison at Fortress Monroe in Virginia as federal authorities argued over whether to try him for treason. While also serving as presiding judge of the federal circuit court in Virginia, Chief Justice Chase delayed Davis’s trial while exploring jurisdictional issues. Privately, Chase favored leniency toward Davis and did not want to allow him a day in court to argue the legality of Southern secession. Chase also argued that Davis had already been punished for his offense by the newly enacted Fourteenth Amendment, which barred former high-ranking Confederate officials

Y7870-Douglass.indb 133

9/1/21 4:16 PM

134

THE WORK BEFORE US

from again holding public office. Therefore, Chase contended, a treason trial of Davis would violate the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against double jeopardy. The other judge on the Virginia circuit court disagreed with Chase, however, and Davis was instead freed by a full pardon from outgoing president Andrew Johnson that granted all Confederates clemency for the “offence of treason.” William Blair, Why Didn’t the North Hang Some Rebels? The Postwar Debate over Punishment for Treason (Milwaukee, Wisc., 2004), 15; C. Ellen Connally, “The Use of the Fourteenth Amendment by Salmon P. Chase in the Trial of Jefferson Davis,” Akron Law Review, 42:1165–1200 (2009). 13. Cardinal Wolsey made the speech containing the phrase “naked to mine enemies” as he left the court in disgrace in Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII, sc. 10, lines 1949–51. Wolsey was held responsible for the failure to secure a papal annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon so that the king could marry Anne Boleyn.

THE WORK BEFORE US (1868) New York Independent, 27 August 1868.

After receiving an invitation from Theodore Tilton, editor of the Independent, Douglass wrote the following article and responded, “If you deem [it] good enough for the place and the time, you may insert it in the columns of your grand Independent.” The article endorsed the Republicans Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax for the presidential election of 1868 over the Democratic party ticket of Horatio Seymour and Frank P. Blair. Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 6 August 1868, Gratz Collection, case 8, box 8, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; W. Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836–1892 (Baltimore, 1955), 98–108.

It is eminently creditable to the sagacity, if not to the honesty, of the Democratic leaders that they prefer to limit discussion of the merits of their party, in the present canvass, strictly to the platform adopted in New York by their Fourth of July National Convention.1 For very obvious reasons, they are “dead” against dead issues. There is as much shrewdness as apparent resignation in their willingness to let “bygones be bygones.”2 In this prompt, business-like course there would be much to commend if one did [illegible] it is a very ugly fact which it is designed to conceal. In the effort to withdraw the war record of the Democratic party there is either a sense of its criminality or a conviction of its present odiousness. Their policy evidently is to attack, not to defend; and in this they are wise. They are smart men, and largely gifted with powers of utterance; but the task

Y7870-Douglass.indb 134

9/1/21 4:16 PM

134

THE WORK BEFORE US

from again holding public office. Therefore, Chase contended, a treason trial of Davis would violate the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against double jeopardy. The other judge on the Virginia circuit court disagreed with Chase, however, and Davis was instead freed by a full pardon from outgoing president Andrew Johnson that granted all Confederates clemency for the “offence of treason.” William Blair, Why Didn’t the North Hang Some Rebels? The Postwar Debate over Punishment for Treason (Milwaukee, Wisc., 2004), 15; C. Ellen Connally, “The Use of the Fourteenth Amendment by Salmon P. Chase in the Trial of Jefferson Davis,” Akron Law Review, 42:1165–1200 (2009). 13. Cardinal Wolsey made the speech containing the phrase “naked to mine enemies” as he left the court in disgrace in Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII, sc. 10, lines 1949–51. Wolsey was held responsible for the failure to secure a papal annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon so that the king could marry Anne Boleyn.

THE WORK BEFORE US (1868) New York Independent, 27 August 1868.

After receiving an invitation from Theodore Tilton, editor of the Independent, Douglass wrote the following article and responded, “If you deem [it] good enough for the place and the time, you may insert it in the columns of your grand Independent.” The article endorsed the Republicans Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax for the presidential election of 1868 over the Democratic party ticket of Horatio Seymour and Frank P. Blair. Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 6 August 1868, Gratz Collection, case 8, box 8, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; W. Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836–1892 (Baltimore, 1955), 98–108.

It is eminently creditable to the sagacity, if not to the honesty, of the Democratic leaders that they prefer to limit discussion of the merits of their party, in the present canvass, strictly to the platform adopted in New York by their Fourth of July National Convention.1 For very obvious reasons, they are “dead” against dead issues. There is as much shrewdness as apparent resignation in their willingness to let “bygones be bygones.”2 In this prompt, business-like course there would be much to commend if one did [illegible] it is a very ugly fact which it is designed to conceal. In the effort to withdraw the war record of the Democratic party there is either a sense of its criminality or a conviction of its present odiousness. Their policy evidently is to attack, not to defend; and in this they are wise. They are smart men, and largely gifted with powers of utterance; but the task

Y7870-Douglass.indb 134

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE WORK BEFORE US

135

of defending the policy of their party during the war would leave time for little else, were they once to enter upon it. They therefore cast it aside altogether. They know that, like Lord Granby’s character, there are some things which can only pass without censure, as they pass without observation.3 No men more readily than they perceive the effect which time and events have wrought in the minds of men. Deeds which were once done with impunity, and even gloried in at the time of their perpetration, by a slight change in the varying current of events, assume an aspect too revolting for defense. It is now much easier to assail the Republican party for its awkward management of public affairs than to defend the efforts of Governor Seymour and his friends to resist the drafts and other necessary measures for the preservation of the Union.4 So far as the endeavor to divert attention from the position occupied by the Democratic party during the war may be taken as a confession, it is at least valuable to outsiders. It is always a decided gain to the cause of justice to have even an implied admission of guilt on the part of the culprit. Excellent, however, as confession is, it does very little good to anybody unless coupled with an honest purpose to forsake the evil way, and an earnest effort to reform. Of course, nothing of this sort is a part of the purpose of the Democratic leaders. No men know better than themselves that their party cannot afford to repent. A party without voters is among the most worthless of all worthless things. What the Democratic party now most of all wants is voters—members. These are to be had mainly from those classes of the American people who are proud of their contempt for humanity—who scout benevolence and brotherly kindness as the weakest nonsense. The party can only thrive where pride of race and narrow selfishness would appropriate to a class the rights which belong to the whole human family. To renounce this meanness would be to renounce its existence. Its mission is to keep alive all the malice which the negro’s loyalty and his limited freedom have kindled against him. This is the necessity of the party. The country is divided; and, when it is impossible for a party to receive support from one part, it must seek it in another. Abuse of the negro is not, therefore, always to be taken as a matter of choice on the part of Democratic editors and speakers; but rather as a necessity of the party to which they belong. How much the Democratic party might gain were it, merely with a view to its own strength, to endeavor to lead a new life is a speculation upon which I need not enter. The little effort made in that direction with Mr. Chase5 is thought to have done the party more harm than good. The

Y7870-Douglass.indb 135

9/1/21 4:16 PM

136

THE WORK BEFORE US

party is strongest with those who stand no nonsense of this decent sort. They want no smooth-faced concessions to virtue. They want the genuine pungent article of the negro, with two “gg’s.” Besides, nobody could well believe in it were the party to declare a change of heart and purpose. With a confessed trickster and falsifier as its standard-bearer (a man who, if the reports of his associates can be relief upon, secured his nomination by a course of cunning, duplicity, lying, treachery, and bribery unparalleled in the history of party politics), people would be slow to accept the professions of such a party. But let us not be deceived or diverted from the real work we have in hand. The contest to which all good and true men are summoned in the present canvass is no new one. It is, in fact, but a continuation of the mighty struggle of a great nation to shake off an old and worn-out system of barbarism, with all its natural concomitants of evil. It is a part of our thirty years’ effort to place the country in harmony with the age, and to make her what she ought to be—a leader, and not a mere follower, in the pathway of civilization. Rebellion has been subdued, slavery abolished, and peace proclaimed; and yet our work is not done. The Democratic party has changed the whole face of affairs. The foe is the same, though we are to meet him on a different field and under different leaders. In the ranks of Seymour and Blair6 is the rebel army, without its arms. Let not the connection of the present with the past be ignored nor forgotten. We are face to face with the same old enemy of liberty and progress that has planted agony at a million hearthstones in our land. There has been no change in the character or in the general purpose of the Democratic party. It is for peace or for war, or against either, precisely as it can be made to serve the great privileged class at the South, to which it belongs. The party that annexed Texas;7 that began and prosecuted the inglorious war against a neighboring Republic,8 thus setting the bad example subsequently followed by France and Austria—the strong against the weak;9 that hunted down the humane Seminoles with bloodhounds, because they gave shelter to slaves running away from Georgia;10 that avowed its purpose to suppress freedom of speech and of the press in time of peace in the interest of slavery; that repealed the Missouri Compromise, and opened the blackened tide of bondage upon the virgin soil of Kansas;11 that, from the beginning to the end of the late war against slavery in arms, uniformly sided with the rebels and against the loyal North—is the same party from footsole to crown, unchanged and unchangeable. Its character is not better

Y7870-Douglass.indb 136

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE WORK BEFORE US

137

known to loyal men than to the defeated rebels. It is neither strange nor surprising that the latter flock to it as the last resort of their Lost Cause. We have had many issues with the slave power during the past thirty years, but we have never had but one cause; and the same is true of the slave power. Indeed, the same is always true in all countries and in all times. The world has always been in some way divided essentially as parties are now divided in our country. Men change; principles are eternal. Holland—whether pleading her ancient charters; asking the removal of oppressive, dissolute, mercenary Spanish troops from her borders; opposing the establishment of new bishoprics; humbly appealing for the removal of the gifted but cruel and treacherous Cardinal Granville;12 or boldly resisting [illegible] horrors, the Inquisition—was all the while serving only one cause. The sacred liberty of conscience; the right of a man to form his own opinions upon all matters of religion—this was the cause of freedom then. While popery, on the other side, whether dealing in fair words or fierce blows, whether entangling its victims in cunningly-devised sophistries or torturing them with cord and steel, rack and fire, had but the same old cause—religious slavery. Think as we command, or die! As in our day men claim the right to dispose of the bodies of men, so they of Mother Church claimed the right to dispose of both soul and body. As stood the sturdy old Hollanders three centuries ago, so we stand to-day. Times change and new issues arise; men appear and disappear; but evermore the same old principles of good and evil, right and wrong, liberty and slavery, summon their respective votaries to the contest. The slaveholding rebels, struck down by Gen. Grant13 as by a thunderbolt, scarcely recover from the terrific shock before they stagger off to the Democratic party. There they go—stricken generals of the rebel army—Henry A. Wise14 and Wade Hampton,15 Toombs16 and Cobb,17 Forrest18 and Beauregard.19 The evil spirits cast out of the man among the tombs take refuge in the herd of swine. We shall see with what consequences to the poor animals in November, and to themselves. The policy, but not the purpose, of the rebels is changed. Names are nothing. It matters little to them by what name the thing for which they strive is called; and equally indifferent are they as to the means they employ. Success is the main consideration. Secession and rebellion were undertaken for one purpose, and one purpose alone—and that was to secure to the slaveholding class permanent control over the black laborers of the South. It was to give to white

Y7870-Douglass.indb 137

9/1/21 4:16 PM

138

THE WORK BEFORE US

capital a firmer hold and a tighter grip upon the throat of the negro. They believed in the Divine appointment of slavery. What they believed then they believe now; what they meant then they mean now. Here and there in the rebel states there may be found a man who has honestly renounced his ancient faith, and accepted the true doctrine of liberty and the great principle of Equal Rights; but the mass of Southern white men and women are in heart and purpose the same as when they confronted the free North on the battle-field. You may send General Lee20 a million of dollars for his rebel college; but, while Arlington Heights is the resting-place of our loyal dead,21 you will get no sign of a hearty renunciation of the malign purpose for which he drew his rebel sword. The South to-day is a field of blood. Murder runs riot in Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Assassination has taken the place of insurrection. Armed bands of rebels stalk abroad at midnight with blackened faces, and thus disguised go forth to shoot, stab, and murder their loyal neighbors. It is impossible to exaggerate the solemn character of the crisis. While Andrew Johnson remains in the presidential chair, and the Democratic party, with Seymour and Blair, are in the field, feeding the rebel imagination with a prospect of regaining through politics what they lost by the sword, the South must continue the scene of war she is. The work to which every loyal man and woman in the country is now called is to employ every possible honorable means, between now and November, to defeat and scatter the Democratic party. Our one work now is to elect Grant and Colfax22—and that by a vote so pronounced and overwhelming as to extinguish every ray of hope to the rebel cause. 1. Douglass probably alludes to the preface of the 1868 Democratic National Party Platform, which stated, “Recognizing the questions of slavery and secession as having been settled for all time to come by the war, or the voluntary action of the Southern States in Constitutional Conventions assembled, and never to be renewed or reagitated.” Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “Democratic Party Platforms: Democratic Party Platform of 1868,” The American Presidency Project, 4 July 1868 (online). 2. A variation of this phrase “that bygones betwixt my Lord and me may be bygones” is first found in Samuel Rutherford to Lady Culross, 30 July 1636, Letters of Samuel Rutherford (London, 1891), 139. 3. John Manners, Marquis of Granby (1721–70), lieutenant general and colonel of the Royal Horse Guards (blues), commanded British forces in Germany during the Seven Years’ War and was appointed commander in chief of British forces in 1766. The pamphleteer “Junius” publicly attacked Granby in 1769, and the quotation to which Douglass refers comes from Junius’s public letter of 3 March 1769 to Sir William Draper, who had rushed to Granby’s defense. The Political Contest; Containing a Series of Letters Between Junius and Sir William Draper, 3d ed. (London, 1769), 29; DNB, 17:937–39.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 138

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE WORK BEFORE US

139

4. Horatio Seymour (1810–86) began his career as a New York Democrat in the 1840s. He was elected to the state legislature in 1841, became mayor of Utica in 1842, and returned to the legislature in 1844, where he was a strong advocate for improving the Erie Canal. Seymour was a member of the Hunker faction of the New York Democratic party, opposed to Martin Van Buren. Along with the other Hunkers, Seymour supported James K. Polk’s policy to extend slavery. When the Hunkers gained control of the Democratic party after 1848, Seymour was their candidate for governor. His opposition to nativism and his veto of the antiliquor Maine Law caused him to lose a bid for reelection. In 1862, after a decade of retirement, Seymour was again elected governor of New York, and once in office, he worked to delay and limit the implementation of the Civil War draft. During the July 1864 draft riot in New York City, Seymour attempt to quell the disturbance in a speech that Republicans accused of being sympathetic toward the rioters’ cause. Seymour was defeated in the 1864 gubernatorial election, but remained politically active. In 1868, he served as the reluctant and unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee. Steward Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York (Cambridge, Mass., 1938); ACAB, 5:470–73; DAB, 16:615–21; ANB (online). 5. Salmon P. Chase. 6. Francis Preston Blair, Jr. (1821–75), also known as Frank, was a statesman and Union army officer born in Lexington, Kentucky, to Francis Preston Blair and Eliza Violet Gist. An undisciplined scholar, he was expelled from several colleges, including Yale and the University of North Carolina. He eventually finished his schooling at Princeton University in 1841, although the faculty refused to issue his diploma because of his behavior; he was granted his degree the following year after the intervention of a professor. He finished law school at Transylvania University in 1842 and was admitted to the bar in Lexington. He then moved to St. Louis to share a practice with his brother Montgomery, who would later serve in President Lincoln’s cabinet. Blair became active in Democratic party politics and served in the army during the war with Mexico. He married Appoline Alexander in 1847, and together they had eight children. Despite owning slaves, he opposed slavery’s westward expansion and supported the Compromise of 1850. In 1856, he was elected to the U.S. House as not only the single Free Soiler from a slave state, but also as a Democrat who supported the Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont. Blair supported Lincoln in 1860 and worked tirelessly to secure his presidential nomination at the Chicago Republican Convention. A supporter of the Union during the Civil War, he left Congress in 1862 and was appointed a brigadier general in the Union Army. After the war, he opposed the Radical Republicans and supported President Johnson’s lenient Reconstruction policies. As a result of his loyalty to Johnson and his efforts to reorganize the Democratic party in Missouri, he was chosen to serve as Horatio Seymour’s running mate in the 1868 presidential election. Blair was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1871, serving until 1873. He moved back to Missouri and served as the state superintendent of insurance until he died in 1875, the result of head injuries suffered during a fall. Elbert B. Smith, Francis Preston Blair (New York, 1980), 95–96, 189–91, 235, 262–63, 307–09, 317–18, 392, 412–13, 421; William E. Parrish, Frank Blair: Lincoln’s Conservative (Columbia, Mo., 1998); ANB (online). 7. In early 1845, Congress voted to annex Texas by a simple majority vote. Texas became the twenty-eighth state in December of that year and was given the option of splitting into five states at any point in the future. Texas, originally part of Mexico, was populated with slaveholding Americans who had settled with the permission of the Mexican government, provided they relinquished their slaves. The reluctance of the American settlers to assimilate to Mexican social and political life, in large part because of their support of slave labor, resulted in revolution and the creation of the Republic of Texas in 1836. From the beginning of the republic, Texans had always intended to annex themselves to the United States, but concern over the extension of slavery and application of the gag rule in Congress delayed the request for a number of years. In 1844, annexation became a central issue in the presidential election. Following James K. Polk’s election, President John Tyler tried to push Texas annexation through Congress by simple majorities. The Democratic-controlled House complied, but it took a combination of Democratic and Southern Whig votes to pass the Senate. Randolph Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton

Y7870-Douglass.indb 139

9/1/21 4:16 PM

140

THE WORK BEFORE US

Rouge, La., 1989), 12–53; Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985), 217–20; Paul R. Bergeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence, Kans., 1987), 51–60. 8. The Mexican War (1846–48) occurred as the result of a border dispute between the United States and Mexico, but was rooted in the issue of slavery. Texas was annexed in 1845, and tensions with Mexico blossomed when the United States declared the boundary of the new state to extend to the Rio Grande—much farther south than the Nueces River border recognized by the Mexican government. President James K. Polk, who had ambitions to annex California and New Mexico, pursued a policy aimed at provoking Mexico into war. An American army led by General Zachary Taylor set out to enforce Polk’s boundary proclamation, resulting in skirmishes with Mexican troops. In May 1846, Congress declared war on Mexico. After a series of successful campaigns by American troops, Mexico surrendered in February 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally ended the war and gave the United States not only the disputed territory in Texas but also land extending to the Pacific Ocean. The discussion over the existence of slavery in this massive territory formed the crux of national political debate during the following decade. Many abolitionists condemned the Mexican War as nothing more than an attempt by Southern politicians to acquire more area for the expansion of slavery. K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York, 1974); Campbell, Empire for Slavery, 35–36, 48–49. 9. Following the War of Reform (1858–61) in Mexico, European powers intervened to help settle Mexico’s internal problems caused by the conflict. While Britain and Spain were mostly interested in seeking payments for debts and compensation for property damaged during the war, France looked to overthrow President Benito Juárez’s government and establish a Catholic monarchy in Mexico. France’s leader, Napoleon III, believed that because the United States was distracted with its civil war, it would not enforce the Monroe Doctrine, which prohibited new European colonial efforts in the Western Hemisphere. The Austrian archduke Maximilian arrived in Mexico in May 1864 to serve as the new emperor and faced no real opposition from the United States. He initially ruled the country in relative security, though President Lincoln, and later Johnson, permitted arms and ammunition from the United States to reach Juárez’s forces in Mexico. Upon the conclusion of the Civil War in the spring of 1865, the U.S. government pressured the French to abandon their efforts in Mexico, and approximately 3,000 American veterans enlisted in Juárez’s military. Soon after, Napoleon III pulled out French forces, essentially abandoning Maximilian. The Austrian emperor attempted to retain control of Mexico with a small loyalist army, but he was defeated and executed on 19 June 1867, thus ending the Second Mexican Empire. Percy Falcke Martin, Maximilian in Mexico: The Story of the French Intervention, 1861–1867 (New York, 1914), 413–14, 429–30; Michele Cunningham, Mexico and the Foreign Policy of Napoleon III (New York, 2001), 24, 197–98; J. Burton Kirkwood, The History of Mexico, 2d ed. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2010), 105–08; M. M. McAllen, Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico (San Antonio, Tex., 2014), xi, 38, 51. 10. The United States engaged in a series of three military conflicts (1816–19, 1835–42, and 1855–58) in an effort to subdue the Seminoles of the Florida Territory. These wars were motivated by a desire for Indian removal and an end to the refuge that Seminoles offered runaway slaves. The second of these conflicts, fought mainly during the Democratic administrations of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, was by far the bloodiest, with massacres, large-scale battles, and prolonged guerrilla skirmishing that caused the majority of Seminoles to be killed or deported westward. John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War (Gainesville, Fla., 1967); EAA, 2:611–12. 11. The much-amended bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska was originally introduced into Congress by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. This measure allowed residents of those territories to decide whether they would permit slavery on the “popular sovereignty” principle. In the final version, passed on 30 May 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act voided the provision of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that forbade slavery in the old Louisiana Purchase (north of 36°30´) and established the doctrine of congressional nonintervention with slavery in the territo-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 140

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE WORK BEFORE US

141

ries. P. Orman Ray, The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise: Its Origin and Authorship (Cleveland, 1909), 16, 182–87; David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (New York, 1976), 55, 160–77; Michael F. Holt, The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 2004), 103–05. 12. In 1566, Phillip II of Spain, who also ruled the Netherlands as the Duke of Burgundy, attempted to impose Spanish political practices and Catholic orthodoxy on the Low Countries. His actions were met with rioting and protests, which escalated into a full-scale uprising in 1576. Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–86), comte de La Baume Saint Amour, was a Burgundian nobleman elevated to the religious office of cardinal in 1561. He served his Habsburg monarch in a number of diplomatic missions and briefly directed efforts to repress the Dutch revolt. After decades of fighting the Spanish, the Dutch effectively won their independence in 1609. Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), 68–78, 118–23, 172–73, 189–98; Pieter Geyl, The Revolt of the Netherlands, 1555–1609 (1932; London, 1966), 71–72, 78, 108–14, 145–48, 254. 13. Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822–85), eighteenth president of the United States (1869–77) and general in chief of all Union armies in the final year of the Civil War, personally directed the Union forces in Virginia in 1864–65. William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (1981; New York, 1982); ACAB, 2:709–25; DAB, 7:492–501. 14. Henry Alexander Wise (1806–76), governor of Virginia from 1856 to 1860, graduated from Washington College in Pennsylvania, studied law under the famed jurist Henry St. George Tucker, and briefly practiced law in Nashville, Tennessee, before entering Virginia politics as a Jacksonian Democrat and opponent of nullification. Serving in Congress from 1833 to 1844, he attracted considerable notoriety for his impassioned defense of slavery and Southern rights. Wise switched allegiances for a time to the Whig party, supporting the Harrison-Tyler presidential ticket of 1840, and served as the ambassador to Brazil under the Tyler administration. During the 1850s, Wise, again a Democrat, successfully opposed Know-Nothingism in Virginia, arguing in part that the new party harbored antislavery sentiments. As governor, Wise reacted zealously to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and desired particularly to implicate Douglass. He requested that President Buchanan hire two Virginia detectives as special federal agents to capture Douglass and deliver him to Virginia authorities. Even after Douglass had left the United States, Wise employed a detective “to find out the whereabouts of the Negro Frederick Douglass and keep an eye on his movements and associates.” The Northern press reported that a group of prominent Southerners, including Wise, had offered $50,000 for Douglass’s capture. After his term as governor, Wise served as a delegate to the Washington Peace Convention of 1861 and as a general in the Confederate Army. Wise did not resume his political career after the war, but two of his sons served in the U.S. House of Representatives as Republicans. Douglass to the editor of the Rochester Democrat [and America], 31 October 1859, reprinted in DM, 2:162–63 (November 1859); FDP, 5 January 1860; Barton H. Wise, The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, 1806–1876 (New York, 1899); Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 180–85; ACAB, 6:579–80; DAB, 20:423–25. 15. Wade Hampton (1818–1902) was born in Columbia, South Carolina, and spent most of his early years on his father’s plantations. In 1836, he graduated from the University of South Carolina and began to study law, although he never practiced. During the antebellum years, Hampton principally devoted himself to the management of his father’s Mississippi plantations, which he both improved and expanded. From 1852 to 1856, he served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, and in 1856 he moved to the state senate, where he remained until his resignation in 1861. Opposing the movement to reopen the African slave trade and finding secession constitutionally defensible but inexpedient, he never gained political popularity in his state. During the Civil War, however, he fully supported the South and won fame as a cavalry commander. With the defeat of the South, Hampton defended the section’s motives but accepted defeat with all its consequences. These conciliatory policies were unpopular during Reconstruction, and Hampton returned to private life in an unsuccessful effort to revive his cotton-planting enterprises. In 1876, however, the Democrats nominated Hampton

Y7870-Douglass.indb 141

9/1/21 4:16 PM

142

THE WORK BEFORE US

for governor of South Carolina. With the support of a well-organized campaign in which quasimilitary “red shirt” clubs terrorized potential Republican voters, Hampton won the gubernatorial election, although the incumbent Republican governor, Daniel H. Chamberlain, also claimed victory. When President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South Carolina statehouse, Hampton’s forces were able to seize complete control of the state government. Hampton remained as governor until 1878, when the state elected him U.S. senator. Thwarted in his bid for a third Senate term in 1890, Hampton went into semiretirement until President Grover Cleveland appointed him commissioner of the Pacific Railway in 1893. After President William McKinley’s dismissal of him from that office in 1897, Hampton withdrew from public life. Edward L. Wells, Hampton and Reconstruction (Columbia, S.C., 1907); William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869–1879 (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 343–44; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, 4 vols. (New York, 1971), 2:1558; Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (New York, 1975), 406–12; ACAB, 3:70; NCAB, 12:177–78; DAB, 8:213–15. 16. Douglas probably refers to Robert Toombs (1810–85), a native Georgian who attended Union College in Schenectady, New York, before returning to his home state to practice law and manage extensive landholdings. Toombs rose through the political ranks from the Georgia state legislature to the U.S. House of Representatives, finally reaching the U.S. Senate. He remained a Whig until that party’s demise, after which he reluctantly became a Democrat. Following Georgia’s secession, Toombs withdrew from the Senate and served the Confederacy, first as secretary of state and later as brigadier general. He declined a pardon from Andrew Johnson and refrained from most postwar political activity to focus on his legal career. Robert Toombs, A Lecture Delivered in the Tremont Temple, Boston, Massachusetts, on the 26th January 1856 (Washington, D.C., 1856), 10; Ulrich B. Phillips, The Life of Robert Toombs (New York, 1913); William Y. Thompson, Robert Toombs of Georgia (Baton Rouge, 1966). 17. Howell Cobb (1815–68), born into a wealthy Georgia planter family, graduated from the University of Georgia and briefly practiced law. A Democrat from a largely non-slaveholding district, Cobb won election to Congress in 1842 and served sporadically until his appointment as secretary of the treasury by Buchanan in 1857. Cobb was a supporter of the Compromise of 1850, and he was briefly a member of the Constitutional Union party while serving as Georgia’s governor in the early 1850s. Chastened by defeat in an 1854 senatorial election, Cobb subsequently moved toward a secessionist stance. During the Civil War, Cobb fought in the Sixteenth Georgia Regiment, rising to the rank of major general. He resumed his law practice after the war, and following a pardon by Andrew Johnson became a vehement critic of Reconstruction. Horace Montgomery, Howell Cobb’s Confederate Career (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1959); Robert P. Brooks, “Howell Cobb and the Crisis of 1850,” MVHR, 4:279–98 (December 1917); Warner and Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress, 56–57; DAB, 4:241–44. 18. Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–77) was born in Bedford County, Tennessee. Denied a formal education, Forrest taught himself writing, speaking, and mathematics. The family moved to Mississippi in 1834, where Forrest’s father died three years later. As the eldest son, Forrest worked first as a livestock trader and then as a slave trader to support the large family. He was soon wealthy enough to purchase two plantations, one in Mississippi and one in Arkansas. Forrest married Mary Ann Montgomery in 1845, and four years later the couple moved to Memphis, where he became active in local politics and city affairs. During the Civil War, Forrest enlisted in the Confederate Army, in which he was able to buy the title of lieutenant colonel by raising and equipping his own cavalry battalion. Forrest’s many successes and skillful strategizing resulted in his being commissioned as major general in 1863 and lieutenant general in 1865. The most controversial incident of his military career involved his role in the massacre of hundreds of black Union soldiers and white Southern Unionist prisoners at Fort Pillow in April 1864. The spring raid of Union general James H. Wilson led to Forrest’s surrender near Selma, Alabama, in May 1865. After the war, Forrest returned to Memphis, where he acted as president of the Marion & Memphis Railroad until it went bankrupt in the early 1870s. Forrest played an important role in the early activities of the Ku Klux Klan and was named the first

Y7870-Douglass.indb 142

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE WORK BEFORE US

143

Grand Wizard in 1867; however, he did not remain active with the group once it began using more violent tactics. He later reversed his anti-black-suffrage views and even became the first white man to speak to the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association, a forerunner of the NAACP, in 1875. Jack Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography (New York, 1993); John D. Wright, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Civil War Era Biographies (New York, 2013), 199–200; DAB, 6:532–33. 19. Pierre Gustave Toutant (P. G. T.) Beauregard (1818–93) was the third of seven children in a prominent Creole sugar-planting family. Against his family’s wishes, Beauregard enrolled in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (1834–38) and finished second out of forty-five classmates. During the Mexican War, Beauregard earned the rank of brevet major and helped plan the Battle of Chapultepec. In January 1861, Beauregard was appointed superintendent of West Point but was dismissed less than a week later, presumably for his Southern political leanings. Beauregard resigned from the U.S. Army following Louisiana’s secession and enlisted as the Confederacy’s first brigadier general. As commander of the defenses of Charleston, South Carolina, Beauregard ordered the first shots of the Civil War during the bombardment of Fort Sumter. He also participated in the First Battle of Bull Run and the Peninsular Campaign. The most controversial incident in Beauregard’s military career occurred during the 1862 Battle of Shiloh. Upon the death of General Albert Sidney Johnston, Beauregard assumed command of the Confederate forces and halted the battle for that evening. The Union Army then had enough time to bring in reinforcements and launch a counterattack that routed Beauregard’s troops. President Jefferson Davis blamed Beauregard for the loss of Shiloh, which caused Beauregard to see only limited combat action for the remainder of the war. Beauregard returned to Louisiana, where he served as superintendent of the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad; president of the New Orleans and Carrollton Street Railway; supervisor of the Louisiana Lottery from 1877 until his death in 1893; adjutant general of the Louisiana state militia starting in 1879; and New Orleans’s elected commissioner of public works in 1888. He also worked for political reform through the founding of the Reform party in Louisiana in 1872, a coalition of moderate Democrats who supported civil rights and suffrage for African Americans, and the Unification party in 1873, which sought to lower taxes with the support of the black vote. T. Harry Williams, P.G.T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray (Baton Rouge, La., 1955); ACAB, 1:210–11; NCAB, 4:178–79; DAB, 2:111–12. 20. Robert Edward Lee (1807–70) was the son of the Revolutionary War hero Henry “LightHorse Harry” Lee and scion of one of Virginia’s most distinguished families. He graduated from West Point in 1829, and throughout his military career he attracted the praise of superiors, particularly for his service under Winfield Scott in the Mexican War. In 1859, he supervised the capture of John Brown following the failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When Virginia seceded, he followed his beloved state into the Confederacy. Despite a lackluster performance early in the war, Lee was given command of the main Confederate force in the Virginia theater in June 1862. From then on, Lee campaigned brilliantly, defeating Union forces twice the size of his own and staving off Confederate defeat in the East for nearly three years. After his surrender, he returned to Richmond as a paroled prisoner of war. In September 1865, he became president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. Lee scrupulously avoided involvement in the political controversies of Reconstruction. Besides broadening and modernizing the college’s curriculum, Lee tripled the size of its endowment, attracting many small donations from former Confederate veterans as well as a $10,000 donation from reaper inventor Cyrus McCormick. Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York, 1995); Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York, 1934–35); Charles Bracelen Flood, Lee: The Last Years (Boston, 1981); Burke Davis, To Appomattox: Nine April Days, 1865 (New York, 1959), 96–101, 379–87; E. B. Long and Barbara Long, The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865 (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), 663–64, 670–71; DAB, 11:120–29. 21. Confederate general Robert E. Lee and his wife, Mary Ann Randolph Custis Lee, owned a large estate on Arlington Heights in Virginia, opposite the national capital, at the beginning of the Civil War, which quickly became a headquarters for the Union Army. Fortifications were constructed on its high ground, and Forts Whipple and McPherson were the first military garrisons established

Y7870-Douglass.indb 143

9/1/21 4:16 PM

144

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

on the Arlington land. Following the establishment of the National Cemetery System on 17 July 1862, burial grounds were constructed in Alexandria, Virginia, and at the Old Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C. Once burial space became scarce at these locations, the U.S. government forcibly purchased the Arlington estate on 11 January 1864, under the Act for the Collection of Direct Taxes in the Insurrectionary Districts within the United States, for $26,800. The first burial at Arlington took place on 13 May 1864, and on 15 June 1864, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton formally designated Arlington House and the surrounding 200 acres a military cemetery. Karl Decker and Angus McSween, Historic Arlington: A History of the National Cemetery from Its Establishment to the Present Time, with Sketches of the Historic Persons Who Occupied the Estate Previous to its Seizure by the National Government—Parke Custis and His Times—the Career of Lee, with Descriptions of Life in Virginia During the Early Part of the Century (Washington, D.C., 1892), 14, 44, 60–61, 68–69, 72, 78–79; Dean W. Holt, American Military Cemeteries, 2d ed. (Jefferson, N.C., 2010), 334–35. 22. Schuyler Colfax (1823–85), a congressman and vice president of the United States, was born in New York City. In 1834, his mother was remarried to George W. Matthews, and the family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana, where Colfax worked as a clerk in his stepfather’s store. When Matthews was elected county auditor on the Whig ticket, Colfax moved with him to South Bend and served as his deputy until 1849. Colfax read law, but his passion was politics. In 1844, he married Evelyn Clark, and shortly thereafter he bought a half interest in a local paper, which he renamed the St. Joseph Valley Register. For nearly two decades, he served as its editor, and the paper became a major Whig—and later Republican—newspaper in Indiana. In 1854, he opposed the passage of the KansasNebraska Act while supporting temperance and nativism, which led him to join the Know-Nothing party in Indiana. He then successfully ran for Congress as a representative of the “People’s party,” an early Indiana version of the Republican party. He served in Congress from 1855 to 1869 and was elected Speaker of the House in 1863, serving until his departure from Congress in 1869. Although not an early supporter of Lincoln, he championed the Republican party and advised the president on Indiana politics throughout the war. Regarded as conservative, competent, and loyal, he was nominated by the Republicans to run with Ulysses S. Grant in the 1868 election. During his time in office, however, Colfax was plagued by scandal; he accepted contributions from a government contractor, often requested railroad passes, and became involved in the Crédit Mobilier scandal. In the 1872 election, the Republicans did not retain Colfax as the vice presidential candidate, and in March 1873 he left politics. Despite these ethical issues, many of his supporters argued that he had been treated unfairly, and he remained popular. He became a successful orator and traveled throughout the country, speaking on temperance, Lincoln, and the American West. He collapsed on one of his lecture tours and died in Mankato, Minnesota, in 1885. Edward Winslow Martin, The Life and Public Services of Schuyler Colfax: Together with His Most Important Speeches (New York, 1868), 12–14, 19–20, 153–56, 237–244; ANB (online).

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY (1871) “Frederick Douglass’s Diary (Santo Domingo 1871),” Frederick Douglass National Historical Site, FDDO 2090.

One of the most controversial diplomatic initiatives of the Reconstruction era was the Grant administration’s attempt to annex the Dominican Republic. In 1869, Grant’s personal representative, General Orville Babcock, had negotiated a treaty of annexation with Dominican president Buenaventura Báez. The Senate twice

Y7870-Douglass.indb 144

9/1/21 4:16 PM

144

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

on the Arlington land. Following the establishment of the National Cemetery System on 17 July 1862, burial grounds were constructed in Alexandria, Virginia, and at the Old Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C. Once burial space became scarce at these locations, the U.S. government forcibly purchased the Arlington estate on 11 January 1864, under the Act for the Collection of Direct Taxes in the Insurrectionary Districts within the United States, for $26,800. The first burial at Arlington took place on 13 May 1864, and on 15 June 1864, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton formally designated Arlington House and the surrounding 200 acres a military cemetery. Karl Decker and Angus McSween, Historic Arlington: A History of the National Cemetery from Its Establishment to the Present Time, with Sketches of the Historic Persons Who Occupied the Estate Previous to its Seizure by the National Government—Parke Custis and His Times—the Career of Lee, with Descriptions of Life in Virginia During the Early Part of the Century (Washington, D.C., 1892), 14, 44, 60–61, 68–69, 72, 78–79; Dean W. Holt, American Military Cemeteries, 2d ed. (Jefferson, N.C., 2010), 334–35. 22. Schuyler Colfax (1823–85), a congressman and vice president of the United States, was born in New York City. In 1834, his mother was remarried to George W. Matthews, and the family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana, where Colfax worked as a clerk in his stepfather’s store. When Matthews was elected county auditor on the Whig ticket, Colfax moved with him to South Bend and served as his deputy until 1849. Colfax read law, but his passion was politics. In 1844, he married Evelyn Clark, and shortly thereafter he bought a half interest in a local paper, which he renamed the St. Joseph Valley Register. For nearly two decades, he served as its editor, and the paper became a major Whig—and later Republican—newspaper in Indiana. In 1854, he opposed the passage of the KansasNebraska Act while supporting temperance and nativism, which led him to join the Know-Nothing party in Indiana. He then successfully ran for Congress as a representative of the “People’s party,” an early Indiana version of the Republican party. He served in Congress from 1855 to 1869 and was elected Speaker of the House in 1863, serving until his departure from Congress in 1869. Although not an early supporter of Lincoln, he championed the Republican party and advised the president on Indiana politics throughout the war. Regarded as conservative, competent, and loyal, he was nominated by the Republicans to run with Ulysses S. Grant in the 1868 election. During his time in office, however, Colfax was plagued by scandal; he accepted contributions from a government contractor, often requested railroad passes, and became involved in the Crédit Mobilier scandal. In the 1872 election, the Republicans did not retain Colfax as the vice presidential candidate, and in March 1873 he left politics. Despite these ethical issues, many of his supporters argued that he had been treated unfairly, and he remained popular. He became a successful orator and traveled throughout the country, speaking on temperance, Lincoln, and the American West. He collapsed on one of his lecture tours and died in Mankato, Minnesota, in 1885. Edward Winslow Martin, The Life and Public Services of Schuyler Colfax: Together with His Most Important Speeches (New York, 1868), 12–14, 19–20, 153–56, 237–244; ANB (online).

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY (1871) “Frederick Douglass’s Diary (Santo Domingo 1871),” Frederick Douglass National Historical Site, FDDO 2090.

One of the most controversial diplomatic initiatives of the Reconstruction era was the Grant administration’s attempt to annex the Dominican Republic. In 1869, Grant’s personal representative, General Orville Babcock, had negotiated a treaty of annexation with Dominican president Buenaventura Báez. The Senate twice

Y7870-Douglass.indb 144

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

145

defeated Grant’s attempt to get this treaty approved, largely because of vociferous opposition by a faction of the president’s own Republican party led by Charles Sumner. To rally public support for his policy, Grant persuaded Congress to authorize him to send a commission to the Dominican Republic to investigate political and economic conditions there and to ascertain popular sentiment toward American annexation. Although he regarded the position as “inconsiderable and unimportant,” Douglass accepted appointment as assistant secretary to the Santo Domingo commission. The commissioners, their staff, and numerous reporters left New York City on 17 January 1871 and arrived at Samaná Bay seven days later. Douglass participated in the commission’s interviews with Dominican governmental officials and civic leaders and was also charged with contacting English-speaking blacks who had migrated from the United States to the Samaná area during the Civil War. Douglass purchased a pocket planner and used it as a travel diary, recording the names of new acquaintances, his schedule of daily activities, and random observations about the Dominican Republic. The commission arrived back in Washington, D.C., on 26 March 1871 and soon thereafter published a report strongly favorable to annexation. Opponents of annexation remained obdurate, however, and the treaty was never approved. The diary was found among Douglass’s possessions at Cedar Hill, his Washington, D.C., home. Douglass to Hamilton Fish, 3 April 1871, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 589, FD Papers, DLC; NNE, 19 January, 23 February, 6 April 1871; Washington National Republican, 24 February 1871; Washington Evening Star, 28 March 1871; Charles Callan Tansill, The United States and Santo Domingo, 1798–1873: A Chapter in Caribbean Diplomacy (1938; Gloucester, Mass., 1967), 428–40; Merline Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and the Annexation of Santo Domingo,” JNH, 62:390–400 (October 1977). January 4 Wednesday. Col. Enrique Abreu1 / Samana.—2 / Lewis Horan3 / Samana / J.L. Marciacq4 / Welcher Buck / Mrs Savery. January 5 Thursday. Children / Rev Theopolis James.5 / Gen. James— 6 / Cha[r]ges all the / present Troubles / upon Hayti / Alexander Jackson / Henry Allen.7 / Port au Prince8

Y7870-Douglass.indb 145

9/1/21 4:16 PM

146

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

January 6 Friday. The Georgiana January 16 Monday. Astor House.9 / Prof Ward.10 / Sheppard of N. / Repub—11 / Gen Boynton12 Gaz— / Phillips Herald—13 Marvin / World14 Fulton ~ B / Am:15 Ramsdell T.16 January 17 Tuesday. U.S. Steamship Tenn: 17/ Capt Wm G. Temple[.]18 / The Com: Sworn in—19 / Set sail for San Domingo / at Two O. clk— Weather / Cool, clear pleasant— January 18 Wednesday. Hon. B. F. Wade20 made / Pres[iden]t of the Com. / The Com: decides their / number to be 21. They / vote that no bills shall / be contracted for wines / liquors or segars— That Reporters pay [the] / their own expenses. / Charles made messenger.21 Com. Inquiry. January 19 Thursday. Wind high. Ship rolling. / In the Gulf—Charley / sick. Few able to keep / Dinner— I, one of the / few. We [illegible] hard work / to keep plates on table. January 20 Friday. Calm, warm, sunny— / summerlike. A Bark / on star[board] quarter. / Address22 Baez—23 / I make suggestions / as to its words—They are accepted January 22 Sunday. Three Hund Ms24 / from Sam. High / hopes of reach / Sam. Tom— or day / after—Reporters / eager for news— January 23 Monday. Barran only see s / hip, sky and wind / and very little of the latter. / Silvana Costa January 24 Tuesday. Arrived at Samana / at two O.C.25 Received / kindly by the peo. / by Col. Enrique / Abreu. Talked freely of America. / The most beautiful / Bay—The Fort / The people January 25 Wednesday & 26 Thursday. Why did Domina26 so speedily / through off Spain— after / seeking alli[ance]. They did not / seek it. It was Santana27 / Hamilton .28 Sp[an] ill treatm[en]t. / Won’t allow colored. Catholic, C. / The poor did care one way or other / Cabral.29 Gentleman—Baez has majority / freedom of religion— “Letter___”? How many / 600 or 700. 1824. Increase large family—10. Pray do in manner / school. with Baptist school. / no school by the state in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 146

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

147

Samana.30 / Two days in 20 yrs. [Came] yellow by [illegible] / the Earthquake. 1842. Had Earthquake / three weeks ago.31 Land private property / ? What interest. Court Justice of Peace / Leased his place. Ten years ago— / leased land. It can’t be worse off / than they are. Taxed by Spain $100 / Complains of tax. Stopped the method— / “Luperon” “Treachery”—32 Baez Pres. by / force of Arms. “Wins and stick to them.” / ages 19. Silvana Costa.33 Abreu. January 29 Sunday. Spent on the strand of Samana / Bay—or Clara Bay with Mr. / Dichmain an old settler / here of 60 years. He knew / Toussaint34 Cristophe35 / to and told me much of the / struggle for freedom by these / heroes and of the atrocities / perpetrated by the French / under the first Nap.36 January 30 Monday. Set sail for Santo Mingo City—37 / The coast grand The sea / rough. Many seasick— / and sick of the sea.— Past / Puerto Rico at night and / did not see it. Flying fish. / Dolphin. January 31 Tuesday. Arrived in the Rhodestead38 / of Santo Domingo— but too / late to land. The Rhodestead / is exceedingly rough and our / ship rolls at anchor as in / the open sea. All are eager to / land and see the ancient city / founded by Columbus.39 The surf. February 1 Wednesday. On Shore: old colored man at / the wharf. lived here 48 years / speaks English, from Balto. / Com: rent an empty house. Refuse / the Palace put at their service / by Pres[iden]t Baez. A city of churches / The Bells interminable jingle— / People well dressed polite / and orderly. February 2 Thursday. Com: paid respects to / res[iden]t Baez at Palace.40 / Mr Wade read address / White41 tr[an]s[la]ted in French / Pres[iden]t Baez replied / in Spanish. Would / give Com all the aid / in his power, wanted / them to be thorough / see opposed as well as February 3 Friday. Wrote letters all day for / home. It is intensely hot / but not too hot for / me. Com. doing noth / A little hitch about / meals. Old prejudice / Aristocracy on a small / scale. February 4 Saturday. Was in company with Gen[era]l / Segel42 shown through the old / castle at Santo Domingo / where Christopher Columbus /

Y7870-Douglass.indb 147

9/1/21 4:16 PM

148

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

was confined and died— 43 This / was the event of the day to / us—There are it is said, / many prisoners still in the / castle and some of them are / sentenced death February 5 Sunday. While bathing in the surf / among the rocks—was handled / very roughly by a heavy / wave from the sea—much / bruised and came near / being swept of[f] to the / sharks. Spoke to the / Methodists from the U.S.44 February 6 Monday. Suffering from my bruises and / feel little like work. Charley / is copying the Casneau / Contracts45 and is winning / golden opinions for his / penmanship. February 7 Tuesday. Took a long walk by the river. House / of Columbus—Oldest in Am:46 The / place where the first slaves were / landed.47 Dogwood and Mahogany— / [Market] outside the wall. Canoes / Ferry scow. School. 11 children— / David R. Brooks,48 Gross,49 Hamilton,50 / examined. A deputation of 12. rep— / [3] societies. All in favor of Annex / was called in: made an address / to them. They said they were not [sent]. February 8 Wednesday. A walk along the coast peculiar / character of the rocks, black & / craggy— Put in acct. $23.00 February 9 Thursday. First ride on a Santo Domingo / horse. The air this day is / cool and bracing, but still / summerlike / Elvira Garcia. Isabel. Emelia Mary, the mother. February 10 Friday. The T[r]ibu[ne] arrived Am. papers— / Grand reading day—Funny acct / from the world. The fall of / Paris,51 our French cook in / tears—Yo abla espanio? / El abla espanio. February 11 Saturday. Dull. There seems but little / more to learn here as / to the disposition of the / people every body seems for / annexation. February 12 Sunday. Walked two miles this morn. / Bath on the beach. Made / a call upon David Brooks / The ruins of the old church / of San Francisco. Bee Hives / Dogs. Cockfight Sunday / Governor of the city. / Col Abreu dined with com: / Evident breach of good / manners. What it was

Y7870-Douglass.indb 148

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

149

February 13 Monday. A ride to the Beach—Invited / to Dine with Col. / Abreu. but failed through / misunderstanding. Worked / hard on Spanish / Mr. Sheppard52 called / to say goodbye. February 14 Tuesday. The commission is no[w] closing / their labors here preparing / to start out for other / points—in the country— / Every thing is kept secret / that can be—but that / is very little. February 15 Wednesday. Dr Howe53 started on his / ex. in country— / Wheelwright54 & / other accom him— / Reports reach us that / the people are every where / raising the American flag / in the interior. Thus giving / a direct contradiction to / the idea that the country / is opposed to annexion. February 16 Thursday. A glorious bath on the / beach—a mile and half / west of Santo Mingo— / Furiously studying Spanish— February 18 Saturday. Visited the Senate in com / with the commis— Much / evidence taken as / to the debt—small / but not ascertained / exactly. A ride with / Judge Burton55 to Mr. / Shoemakers.56 February 19 Sunday. Mr Gross states that when / Boyer57 came here 1821 / freed the slaves but failed / to educate and this / explains the present / difference between the / blacks and the lighter / colored people of the / Island. February 20 Monday Elijah Gross— / Santo Domingo February 21 Tuesday. Sailed fr[om] S. do. for Asua.58 / Presid. Baiz on board. / He seems pleased with atten / paid him February 22 Wednesday. Asua. Three miles inland from the shore / has been burnt down 3 times. Is / now an assemblage of inferior / houses of the country. A small / stream of pure water passes / through it. Rain rarely falls here / and the river is lost to the / sand before it reaches the / sea. There much catus [illegible] [illegible] & some lignumvita.59

Y7870-Douglass.indb 149

9/1/21 4:16 PM

150

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

February 23 Thursday. Senator Wade is a shore / taking testimony— which / he finds all one way. / Every body is for annex. / Baez has two thousand men / [illegible] wait on attack by Cabral.60 February 24 Friday. There is about (Marchena’s)61 / Three miles from Asua a fine / sugar plantation of 800 acres / This planta shows what can / be done with the climate / and soil of Santo Domingo. / There a mountain of [illegible] / in lights from Asua. / The popu about nine / hundred. February 26 Sunday. Spent this day on shore / in company with Drs / Newcomb,62 Parry63 / and Mr Bromell.64 We / are all ordered aboard for / Monday night—with a / view to sailing for Port Au / prince. February 27 Monday. Should’ve sailed to day for Por P / but was detained by Dr Howes / washing. It would have been / cheaper to have fitted him / out with a new suit. Too much of this sort of thing / during our mission February 28 Tuesday. Doctor Howe is now on board, / and we shall soon be off to sea / for P. Au Prince. The day is a / [illegible] tropical day— beauty / ful and warm. The view of the / mountains of Santo Domingo / from the sea is surpassingly / grand. All are on deck / enjoying the scene. March 1 Wednesday. Got a glimse of Alto Villa65 at / 8 clock last night. March 2 Thursday. Arrived at Port Au P. / Splendid bay bounded / by lofty mountains. The / distant views of the / city cheerful. The heat / somewhat oppressive. / It is too late to go on / shore— Steamer Hor / net66 and Spanish / Man of War Brig. March 3 Friday. Port Au P. upon a nearer / view—sadder, / Houses inferior, / streets dirty, people / depressed in spirit / general lack of / cheerfulness and full / of suspicion. Minister Bassett67 & wife— 68 March 4 Saturday. Minister and Consul / visit our ship— / What did and what / did not happen / Remained in P. Au P. March 7 Tuesday. Left P. Au P. morning for Kingston

Y7870-Douglass.indb 150

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

151

March 10 Friday. left P. Au P. for / Kingston Jam— 69 / Consul Pearl / Constantine Burke70 March 16 Thursday. Left Kingston for / Key West71 March 18 Saturday. The first breathe / of reviving N. / air. With at table / Wade and Howe March 19 Sunday. Off the southeron / Coast of Cuba. / Voyaging to Key / West—Cool Norther / blowing. Sighted / Cuba, Cape Cape / Antonia72 March 20 Monday. Still in sight the / Island Cuba— / Only fifty miles / last night, shall / not reach Key / West till tomorrow. March 21 Tuesday. Light house in sight / Key West 12 miles / beyond. Pilot James / Cain—colored. March 23 Thursday. Left Key West to day— / at twelve o clk— / bound to Charles / ton—73 1. The report from the Santo Domingo Commission includes an interview with Colonel Enrique Abreu conducted on 28 January 1871. He described his official position as commandant of Santa Bárbara de Samaná and special agent of José Silvano Acosta, governor of the province of Samaná. Immediately after signing the provisional annexation treaty with the United States, the Dominican government appointed Abreu as a special agent charged with preventing the concession or granting of government lands around Samaná to the U.S. government or its citizens. His primary mission was to deny Americans the government-owned Levantados, the islands in the Bay of Samaná. The committee directly asked Abreu if he knew of concessions or grants given to William L. Cazneau or Joseph W. Fabens, and he replied that he was aware of none. Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo, With the Introductory Message of the President, Special Reports Made to the Commission, State Papers Furnished by the Dominican Government, and the Statements of over Seventy Witnesses (Washington, D.C., 1871), 39, 209–11. 2. A well-protected deep-water bay, thirty miles long and ten miles wide, on the northeastern Atlantic coast of the Dominican Republic. It was first located by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage in 1492. The United States and several European powers had long shown interest in purchasing this strategic region for use as a naval base. Gerald Horne, Confronting Black Jacobins: The United States, the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic (New York, 2015), 213, 238–39, 262–63; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1656. 3. Virginian-born Lewis Horan settled at Santa Bárbara de Samaná in the late 1860s and conducted a mercantile business there. He testified before the Santo Domingo Commission on economic conditions in that region and affirmed his belief that the populace desired American annexation. Other witnesses before the commission testified that Horan was also engaged in small-scale land speculation in the province. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 39, 213–15, 219.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 151

9/1/21 4:16 PM

152

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

4. In the 1830s and 1840s, the French-born Jean-Louis Marciacq lived in New Orleans. While there, he became an American citizen and published some of the writings of leading Creole poets and intellectuals. Marciacq later resided in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he conducted a school. He had been in Santa Bárbara de Samaná only a few months before appearing before the Santo Domingo Commission. He testified that local Dominicans favored annexation and expected trade with the United States to increase greatly as a consequence, but he told the commission that a majority of Haitians would oppose a similar annexation effort. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 39, 215–17. 5. Douglass confuses the names of two Dominican brothers who testified before the Santo Domingo Commission. The Reverend Jacob James (c. 1823–?) was born in the United States but migrated with his parents to the Caribbean at age two. He became a Methodist minister in Santa Bárbara de Samaná in the mid-1860s and led a congregation of 250 members. James described himself to the commission as “a full black,” and he said his congregants moved there from the United States in the 1820s, when President Jean-Pierre Boyer of Haiti had united the island of Hispaniola and encouraged immigration. James testified that the region had great economic potential if annexed by the United States. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 39, 229–31. 6. The Dominican native Theophilus James was educated in England. He settled in Haiti in 1861, took part in a successful revolution led by Sylvain Salnave, and served as a general in Salnave’s army. When Salnave was overthrown as president in 1869, James fled first to Nassau and then to Samaná, to rejoin his brother. James reported strong support throughout the nation for annexation by the United States. If annexation failed, he predicted that there would be political chaos and that efforts would be made to persuade another power to occupy the country. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 39, 228–29. 7. In December 1869, Henry Allen (1800–?) of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, wrote Ulysses S. Grant asking for help from the U.S. government in seeking compensation from Haitian officials for a substantial amount of business property burned by the government in anti-American protests the previous June. Allen was born in Maryland and migrated to Haiti in 1824. Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon, 32 vols. (Carbondale, Ill., 1967–2012), 20:15; Horne, Confronting Black Jacobins, 300. 8. The capital and chief seaport of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, is located in the southwestern part of the country. The city is situated at the end of the Gulf of Gonaïves at N 18°32´, W 72°10´. It was founded in 1749 by French sugar planters in an area originally called Saint-Dominique, renamed Haiti in 1804. Saul Cohen, ed., The Columbia Gazetteer of the World, 3 vols. (New York, 1998), 2:2489–90. 9. Reputedly the first luxury hotel in New York City, the Astor House was constructed by John Jacob Astor and opened in 1836. A glass rotunda added in the 1850s enclosed the building’s central courtyard, and its restaurant was among the city’s most stylish. By the 1870s, the Astor House was regarded by many as old-fashioned, but it remained in business until the early twentieth century. Kenneth T. Jackson, The Encyclopedia of New York, 2d ed. (New Haven, Conn., 2010), 79. 10. Henry Augustus Ward (1834–1906), professor and naturalist, was born in Rochester, New York. He received only an informal education until he met Professor Louis Agassiz, who encouraged him to study at Harvard. In 1854, he journeyed to Paris, where he studied at the School of Mines. He traveled throughout Europe and Africa, collecting rocks and minerals, and returned to the United States in 1859. Two years later, he was appointed professor of natural sciences at the University of Rochester, holding that post until 1866. After serving as a naturalist on the Santo Domingo Commission in 1871, he devoted the rest of his life to traveling the world, training students, and serving as a supplier of specimens to museums across the country. New York Times, 5 July 1906; Charles Ripley and Charles A. Dana, eds., American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, 16 vols. (New York, 1881), 16:449; General Catalogue of the University of Rochester, 1850–1911 (Rochester, N.Y., 1911), 171; Leonard Schlup and James G. Ryan, eds., Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age (Armonk, N.Y., 2003), 522.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 152

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

153

11. Arthur Shepherd was managing editor of the Washington National Republican. He was also an alderman in the District of Columbia in 1870. His brother, Alexander R. Shepherd, was director of the district’s Board of Public Works. He oversaw considerable roadway, sewage, and building construction. Alexander became a target of congressional corruption investigations that also implicated Arthur. John H. Crane, The Washington Ring (Washington, D.C., 1872), 5–7; Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1962), 1:313–82; William van Zandt Cox, “Matthew Gault Emery, the Last Mayor of Washington, 1870–1871,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 20:28, 30, 55 (1917). 12. Henry Van Ness Boynton (1835–1905) was born in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, to the Reverend Charles B. Boynton and Maria Van Buskirk. After moving with his family to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1846, he studied at Woodward College and the Kentucky Military Institute, graduating from those institutions in 1855 and 1858, respectively. He then served as professor of mechanics and astronomy at the Kentucky Military Institute until the outbreak of the Civil War. He entered the service as major of the Thirty-fifth Ohio Volunteers and was promoted to colonel in April 1864. Having served with distinction at Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, he received the Medal of Honor. In December 1865, he became the Washington, D.C., correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette. He then served as a brigadier general in the Spanish-American War, where he remained behind the front lines, organizing troops. Boynton was vital in the effort to preserve the battlefields at Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge, and he served as the president of the relevant commission from 1897 until his death in 1905. New York Times, 4 June 1905; Walter B. Palmer, “Old Fraternity Records,” Scroll of Phi Delta Theta, 22:366–67 (April 1897); Society of the Army of the Cumberland, Thirty-third Reunion, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1905 (Cincinnati, 1906), 157–58. 13. William B. Phillips was the chief editorial writer at James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald during much of Reconstruction. Phillips had been more supportive of Andrew Johnson than Bennett and even sought an appointment from that administration. Garry Boulard, The Swing around the Circle: Andrew Johnson and the Train Ride That Destroyed a Presidency (New York, 2008), 156–57. 14. Douglass conflates the identity of two men accompanying the Santo Domingo Commission on board the U.S.S. Tennessee. Archibald R. Marvine (1848–76) was appointed the commission’s assistant geologist and mineralogist. Born in Auburn, New York, Marvine studied mineralogy at Harvard, where he later became an instructor. He participated in a number of important surveys of the American West and ultimately held a post with the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey. William Henry Hurlburt (1827–95) represented the New York World on the expedition to the Dominican Republic. Hurlburt had grown up in South Carolina and studied at Harvard before launching a journalistic career, first at the New York Times and then at the New York World, which he eventually edited. Hurlburt later resided in Europe and published numerous works of popular history. Daniel W. Crofts, A Secession Crisis Enigma: William Henry Hurlbert and “The Diary of a Public Man” (Baton Rouge, 2010); American Journal of Science and Arts, 11:424 (May 1876). 15. Charles Carroll Fulton (1815–83), journalist and Republican leader, was born in Philadelphia. He began his career as an apprentice at the Philadelphia National Gazette and eventually bought the Washington Advocate, owning it for five years. He then found employment at the Baltimore Sun, first as a compositor and then as an assistant editor. While at the Sun, he became the first agent of the Associated Press in Baltimore. Fulton purchased an interest in the Baltimore American in 1853, and in 1862 he became the sole owner of the paper. During the Civil War, he served not only as the editor of the American, but also as a special correspondent for the paper. A supporter of Lincoln, Fulton represented the administration’s only real newspaper ally amid secessionist sentiment in Baltimore. A member of the Republican party—and of the Republican National Committee for eight years—he attended every national convention as a delegate from 1864 until his death, excepting the year 1880. He traveled to Europe six times and published a volume of letters from his explorations, entitled Europe Viewed through American Spectacles (1874). Philadelphia North American, 8 June 1883; J. Cutler Andrews, The North Reports the Civil War (Pittsburgh, 1955), 26; Richard A. Schwarzlose,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 153

9/1/21 4:16 PM

154

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

The Nation’s Newsbrokers: The Formative Years; From Pretelegraph to 1865, 2 vols. (Evanston, Ill., 1989), 1:249. 16. Hiram J. Ramsdell (1839–87), originally from Laona, New York, began his journalistic career as an editor of the Wellsboro (Pa.) Agitator. He served for three years in the Sixth Pennsylvania Reserve Regiment during the Civil War, and in 1866 he moved to Washington, D.C. After serving as a reporter for the Washington bureau of the New York Tribune, he became a Washington correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial, Philadelphia Times, and Philadelphia Press. He then returned as a correspondent to the Tribune under Zebulon White. Ramsdell also held the post of a special agent in the Post Office Department. In 1871, he purchased a copy of the Treaty of Washington, which settled claims between Britain and the United States arising from events during the Civil War. After publishing the still-secret treaty in the Tribune, he was called to testify in the U.S. Senate to reveal his source. After refusing, Ramsdell was briefly jailed. In 1881, President Garfield appointed him register of wills in Washington, D.C.—a position he held until 1886. Philadelphia North American, 26 May 1887; Portage (Wisc.) State Register, 28 May 1887; Donald A. Ritchie, Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 84, 89–90; Victor Fischer and Michael B. Frank, eds., Mark Twain’s Letters, 1870–71, 6 vols. (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), 4:340n. 17. Built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1865 as the U.S.S. Madawaska, the frigate U.S.S. Tennessee was launched in July 1865—too late to participate in the Civil War. The Tennessee was powered by a combination of screw engines and sails and was the largest ship in the U.S. Navy when launched. It served as flagship for the Asiatic and the North Atlantic squadrons before it was retired in 1886. K. Jack Bauer and Stephen S. Roberts, Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy: Major Combatants (Westport, Conn., 1991), 57. 18. Captain William G. Temple (1824–94), commander of the U.S.S. Tennessee, was born in Vermont, joined the U.S. Navy as a midshipman in 1840, and served with distinction in the Mexican War and the Civil War. Temple distinguished himself during the amphibious operations against Fort Fisher. In 1870, he had been serving as the assistant judge advocate when he was promoted to captain and given command of the Tennessee in 1870. Temple subsequently served in shore assignments until promoted to rear admiral in early 1884, after which he soon retired. Washington Evening Star, 29 June 1894. 19. The records of the Santo Domingo Commission report its first meeting on board the Tennessee on 18 January 1871, “twenty-four hours at sea.” Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 35. 20. Benjamin Franklin Wade (1800–78), antislavery lawyer, judge, and legislator, was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, moved to Ohio as a young man, and eventually entered into a law partnership with Joshua Giddings. In 1837, Wade was elected as a Whig to the Ohio senate, where his opposition to stricter fugitive slave laws possibly cost him reelection. He served again in the state legislature from 1841 to 1843, and in 1847 he was appointed presiding judge of the Third Ohio Judicial Circuit. Four years later, Whigs and Free Soilers united to elect him to the U.S. Senate. In the 1850s, he converted to Republicanism and was an outspoken opponent of any move to expand the limits of slavery. An advocate of aggressive military measures during the Civil War, Wade served as chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and, with Congressman Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, sponsored the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, an alternative to Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy, which the president vetoed. After the war, he continued to advocate Congressional Reconstruction and was one of the leading critics of Andrew Johnson’s conciliatory policies toward the South. As president pro tempore of the Senate at the time of Johnson’s 1868 impeachment trial, Wade stood to gain the presidency upon Johnson’s conviction. Johnson survived impeachment, but Wade, whose radicalism applied to woman suffrage and labor legislation as well as to Reconstruction issues, had alienated many politicians and voters. He never again held public office, but served on the Santo Domingo Commission and was a presidential elector for Rutherford B. Hayes. Albert G. Riddle, The Life of Benjamin F. Wade (Cleveland, 1886); Hans L. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade: Radical Republican from Ohio (New York, 1963); DAB, 19:303–05.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 154

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

155

21. The reports from the Santo Domingo Commission list Charles R. Douglass as a “messenger” accompanying the party sailing on the U.S.S. Tennessee. There is no other record of his activities during the tour. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 35–36 (1917). 22. Douglass probably refers to the commission’s address to Dominican president Buenaventura Báez, delivered by Benjamin F. Wade during a public audience on 2 February 1871: “Mr. PRESIDENT: We have the honor to place in your hands an autograph letter of the President of the United States, which will explain to you the object of our mission. Your excellency will see that it is a mission of peace and good will. We come under instructions from Congress, sanctioned by the President of the United States, to make sundry inquiries regarding the republic of which you are the chief magistrate. These instructions explain themselves. We trust that we shall be received as friends, and afforded such simple facilities for the prosecution of our inquiries as may be necessary. Accept sir, through us, the most cordial wishes of the people of the United States for the lasting peace and prosperity of the Dominican Republic.” Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 40. 23. Buenaventura Báez Mendez (1812–84) was born in Azua to a wealthy landowning father and a mulatto slave mother and was educated in France. After the War for Independence (1844–49) from Haiti concluded successfully, leadership of the new Dominican Republic alternated for the next thirty years between the northern Blue party, led by Pedro Santana (1801–64), and the southern Red party, led by Báez. To secure their persons and property from domestic rivals, confront the spiraling national debt, and ward off a Haitian invasion, a number of caudillos (strong men) repeatedly sought to protect their nation from annexation by foreign powers. Spain recolonized the Dominican Republic at Santana’s invitation in 1861, but retreated after the bloody popular resistance the Dominicans named the War of the Restoration (1863–65). During the Spanish annexation, Báez moved to Europe, where he lived off subsidies and titles bestowed by Spain’s queen. When Spanish defeat appeared imminent, Báez renounced his allegiance to the Crown and relocated to Curaçao to orchestrate his return to power. Restoration inaugurated twenty years of political chaos as conflict between conservative Reds and liberal Blues resulted in more than fifty revolts and at least twenty-one changes of government. Báez held the presidency three times during the era—the longest period being from May 1868 to January 1874, during which he encouraged U.S. annexation. Báez died in exile in 1884. Modern historians of the Dominican Republic universally denounce Santana and Báez for creating a national culture in which political and economic chaos was the norm. Sumner Welles, Naboth’s Vineyard: The Dominican Republic, 1844–1924, 2 vols. (1928; Mamaroneck, N.Y., 1966), 1:66–67, 76, 91–92, 96, 100, 136–37, 301–02; Richard A. Haggerty, ed., Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies (Washington, D.C., 1991), 12–18; Frank Moya Pons, The Dominican Republic: A National History (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1995), 219–32; Eric Paul Roorda, Lauren Derby, and Raymundo González, eds., The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham, N.C., 2014), 141, 146. 24. Miles. 25. O’clock. 26. Christopher Columbus landed on the island that he called Hispaniola (Española) in 1492 and declared it a colony of Spain. It served as the administrative and logistical base for Spain’s conquest of most of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America during the sixteenth century. In the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Spain ceded the western third of the island to France. Spain’s colony was named Santo Domingo and France’s Saint-Domingue until it won its independence in 1804 and took the name Haiti. In 1821, Santo Domingo acquired independence from Spain, but in 1822, it was invaded and occupied by Haiti. In 1844, Santo Domingo threw off Haitian rule and declared itself the Dominican Republic. Economic and political instability opened the door to Spanish annexation in 1861, but this was rejected decisively in 1865. Haggerty, Dominican Republic and Haiti, 3–18. 27. Don Pedro Santana y Familias, the first Marquis of Las Carreras (1801–64), was the principal military leader of the successful 1844 independence movement of the Dominican Republic from Haitian control. He exiled other independence leaders and ruled dictatorially as president from 1844 to 1848. Overthrown, Santana returned twice to the nation’s presidency (1853–56 and 1858–61). As the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 155

9/1/21 4:16 PM

156

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

nation fell into chaos and poverty during his last term, he persuaded the Spanish to resume overlordship, and was rewarded with a title of nobility, an appointment as governor of the new colony, and a handsome annual pension. Howard J. Wiarda and Michael J. Kryzanek, The Dominican Republic: A Caribbean Crucible, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo., 1992), 28–30; Horne, Confronting Black Jacobins, 194, 224–25, 295. 28. A descendant of African American emigrants from Philadelphia, Joseph P. Hamilton (1827– ?) appeared before the Santo Domingo Commission in Santa Bárbara de Samaná on 29 January 1871. Then a Methodist preacher, Hamilton testified that political chaos during the 1860s had ruined his agricultural and mercantile enterprises. He desired U.S. annexation to restore prosperity to the region. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 39, 222–24. 29. At the time of the commission’s visit, two insurgencies were flaring in the Dominican Republic. General José María Cabral (1816–99), who had been an ally of Buenaventura Báez, seized the presidency for himself, acting in that role from August 1866 to January 1868. With covert support from the government of neighboring Haiti, Cabral had control of much of western Dominican Republic in early 1871. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 7–8, 280–83. 30. Probably a reference to a private academy in Santa Bárbara de Samaná run by George Lewis Judd, the son of a white Baptist missionary who had settled in Haiti but sought exile in the Dominican Republic after a revolution displaced President Sylvain Salnave in 1869. The English-language school, popularly dubbed the “Baptist school,” attracted students mainly from the children of descendants of African American immigrants. Judd testified to the Santo Domingo Commission that a majority of Haitians as well as Dominicans would welcome annexation by the United States. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 223, 225–29. 31. Since the Caribbean was known to be an earthquake-prone region, the committee sought to determine the frequency and severity of earthquakes on the island, which undoubtedly prompted Douglass’s notation here. Residents interviewed by the commission noted that the last great destructive earthquake had occurred in 1842, but that “slight shocks” were a common, nearly annual occurrence. In fact, on 23 November 1871, the New York Times cited a report from Santo Domingo that tremors had been felt there on 30 October. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 22, 220, 277. 32. Gregorio Luperón (1839–97) was born in humble circumstances in the northern Dominican port city of Puerto Plata. He rose to prominence as a military leader during the War of the Restoration, which thwarted Spanish efforts to recolonize the Dominican Republic. In response to President Buenaventura Báez’s efforts to secure annexation between 1868 and 1871, Luperón joined General José María Cabral, the other major leader of the northern Blue party, in a pact to overthrow Báez and maintain Dominican national sovereignty. Famous for his audacity, Luperón purchased a steamship that had served as a blockade-runner during the Civil War, and in 1869 he used it to ferry Dominican nationalist revolutionaries from Haiti through a screen of U.S. naval vessels operating in support of Báez. More significant were the defiant letters protesting American annexation that Luperón wrote to President Ulysses S. Grant and Republican senators in 1869 and 1870, which directly contributed to the death of the scheme in 1871. It is not clear which of these initiatives Douglass is referring to here, or whether Douglass actually considered them “treachery” or was merely recording the response of Dominicans he interviewed. Ultimately, if one approved of Báez’s goal of U.S. annexation, as Douglass did, then all activities by Luperón and his allies to undermine that effort qualified as treason. Among modern Dominicans, Gregorio Luperón is highly esteemed as a nationalist who successfully resisted foreign intrusions in their country. Welles, Naboth’s Vineyard, 1:361–64; Pons, Dominican Republic, 228–29; Roorda, Derby, and González, Dominican Republic Reader, 141, 171–72. 33. The governor of Samaná province was José Silvano Acosta (1824–?), who described himself to the Santo Domingo Commission as a Creole born in that province. The Spanish had appointed him governor, and he continued in that post when the Dominican Republic gained independence. He testified in favor of annexation, to bring tranquility to the nation. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 39, 209.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 156

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

157

34. Born around 1744 to a literate slave father, François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture was raised near LeCap in the North Province of Saint-Domingue, in present-day Haiti. Like his father, L’Ouverture learned to read while he was a slave growing up on the plantation. When the slaves of Saint-Domingue revolted, L’Ouverture emerged as a capable military leader, commanding an army of 55,000 men to victory over the combined European forces of England, France, and Spain in 1794. This victory guaranteed him the role of leader of newly independent Haiti. In 1802, he was taken prisoner by the French, who had returned to reclaim the island. While awaiting sentencing, L’Ouverture died of pneumonia in April 1803 after enduring ten months of harsh conditions in a French prison. Ralph Korngold, Citizen Toussaint (Boston, 1944); Martin Ros, Night of Fire: The Black Napoleon and the Battle for Haiti (New York, 1994); Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience; The Concise Desk Reference (New York, 1999), 904–05. 35. Henry Christophe was born to a slave mother in 1767, probably in British Grenada, and arrived in northern Saint-Domingue at a very young age. He gained his freedom while managing a hotel in Cap-Français, a task that gave him a taste for politics as well as an affinity for European culture. He distinguished himself as a soldier throughout the decade-long Haitian Revolution, and was made a general by Toussaint L’Ouverture in 1802. After the death of Toussaint in 1803 and the assassination of the self-proclaimed emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806, Christophe engaged in a brief struggle for power against Alexandre Pétion. Haiti was soon divided between these strongmen and their supporters, with Pétion at the head of a mulatto-ruled southern Republic of Haiti and Christophe as the president of a black-dominated northern State of Haiti. In 1811, Christophe declared himself King Henry I and set about creating a kingdom that would demonstrate black achievement in a world dominated by white powers. At the expense of tens of thousands of lives, he constructed the formidable Citadel Henry (now Citadelle Laferrière), the opulent Sans-Souci Palace, and multiple grand residences. Christophe’s policy of corvée, a system of coerced plantation labor similar to slavery, provided the revenue to fund his many projects, but came at the price of the loyalty of the Haitian people. When Christophe suffered a debilitating stroke in 1820, he committed suicide rather than suffer at the hands of vengeful subjects. Christophe left a complex legacy; he contributed significantly to Haitian independence from outside control, but at a weighty cost to the well-being of his people. Hubert Cole, Christophe, King of Haiti (New York, 1967); Haggerty, Dominican Republic and Haiti, 215–18; Victor-Emmanuel Roberto Wilson and Jacqueline Van Baelen, “The Forgotten Eighth Wonder of the World,” Callaloo, 15:849–56 (Summer 1992). 36. In late 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte, first consul of France, charged General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc with leading a military expedition to capture or kill Toussaint L’Ouverture and the leaders of his black army and to reestablish slavery and white rule in Saint-Domingue. Landing in February 1802 at the head of twenty thousand French troops, Leclerc quickly occupied the colony’s ports and convinced nearly all black officers, including L’Ouverture, to retire to private life. In June, L’Ouverture was seized and imprisoned in France, where he died in April 1803. More importantly, in July, word reached Saint-Domingue that the French would restore slavery, whereupon a popular uprising broke out. Desperate to maintain control, Leclerc began massacring black troops and civilians suspected of disloyalty, which only fueled resistance. Upon Leclerc’s death from yellow fever, General Donatien Rochambeau launched a true terror campaign in which black prisoners were systematically shot, burned, drowned, crucified, and broken on the rack. Eyewitnesses claim that he imported special man-eating dogs from Cuba to maul blacks for the entertainment of white planters, and he slaughtered some prisoners by locking them in the holds of ships and gassing them with sulfur. These tactics unified black resistance under the leadership of General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave, who instilled in his army the goal of killing every white person in the colony. Massive attrition due to yellow fever and black defiance, along with renewed war with Britain, forced Rochambeau to flee the island in November 1803, ending all French hopes of regaining their former colony. Carolyn  E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint-Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 157

9/1/21 4:16 PM

158

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

Tenn., 1990), 204–36; Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789–1804: A Brief History with Documents (Boston, 2006), 175–79; Philippe R. Girard, “Liberté, Égalité, Esclavage: French Revolutionary Ideals and the Failure of the Leclerc Expedition to SaintDomingue,” French Colonial History, 6:67–69 (2005). 37. The capital, largest city, and economic hub of the Dominican Republic, the port of Santo Domingo de Guzmán is located on the southern coast of the Caribbean nation. Founded in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus, the city is the longest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Western Hemisphere. Santo Domingo was the site of the first university, cathedral, castle, monastery, and fortress in the hemisphere. In 1821, the city was briefly the capital of an independent nation, but the eastern half of Hispaniola soon united with Haiti. In 1844, Santo Domingo again became the capital of an independent nation, the Dominican Republic. In 1861, Spain regained control of the country, maintaining power until its expulsion following the War of Restoration in 1865. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 413–14, 1696. 38. A rhodestead (roadstead) is the reasonably safe, sheltered body of water in which ships moor while awaiting their turn to enter the port of call. 39. The navigator and explorer Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) was the son of a weaver from a village near Genoa. John Murray (firm), Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy, 15th ed. (London, 1883), 88. 40. According to a New York Times reporter who accompanied the commission, the Presidential Palace was located on a hill three hundred yards above the city’s Eastern Gate. Containing only six to eight large rooms, it was unworthy of the title of palace, but since it was two stories high and sported Moorish arches, whitewashed brick walls, marble floors, and mahogany doors, it was “probably the finest building in the Republic.” The reporter claimed that superstitious locals believed that “no President or Governor who inhabits it leaves it alive,” wryly noting that President Báez refused to dwell in it. New York Times, 24 February 1871. 41. The son of a banker from Syracuse, New York, Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) graduated from Yale University and went on to teach history at the University of Michigan. He returned to New York State in the 1860s and helped found Cornell University, where he served as its first president. After his service on the Santo Domingo Commission, White held the posts of U.S. ambassador to Russia (1892–94) and Germany (1897–1902). Andrew Dickson White, The Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, 2 vols. (New York, 1904); Glenn C. Altschuler, Andrew D. White: Educator, Historian, Diplomat (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979). 42. Born in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Franz Sigel (1824–1902) was a junior officer in that nation’s army when he helped lead an uprising against its monarch in the Revolution of 1848. He fled into exile, first to Great Britain but ultimately the United States. Sigel was a teacher before the Civil War, when he volunteered as an officer in the Union Army. He served with distinction in Missouri and had risen to the rank of major general by early 1862. Sigel’s subsequent military performance was mediocre, but he was popular with the largely German American troops placed under his command. After the war, Sigel worked as a newspaper editor, first in Baltimore and then New York City. He received a variety of minor patronage appointments from Republican administrations and then from the Democrat Grover Cleveland. Stephen D. Engle, Yankee Dutchman: The Life of Franz Sigel (Baton Rouge, La., 1999). 43. Douglass is misinformed here. Neither Christopher Columbus nor any of his family members died in prison in the city of Santo Domingo. There was a period of almost two months in the fall of 1500 when Columbus and his two brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, were stripped of their high positions in the government of Hispaniola on charges of tyranny and incompetence and were imprisoned in Santo Domingo. Nevertheless, upon arriving in Spain in chains in December, the men were pardoned by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and most of their titles and property were restored. While the monarchs had lost faith in Columbus’s ability to govern, they valued his skills as a seaman and explorer, heartily supporting his fourth voyage to the Caribbean, in 1502. Columbus

Y7870-Douglass.indb 158

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

159

died and was buried in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506. The castle Douglass refers to is the Fortaleza Ozama, built between 1502 and 1505 to guard the entrance to the port of Santo Domingo. Used as a prison well into the twentieth century, the fort was erroneously termed “the jail of Columbus” for centuries. William D. Phillips, Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (New York, 1992), 223–25, 227–28, 240; Roorda, Derby, and González, Dominican Republic Reader, 41; Silvio A. Bedini, ed., The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (New York, 1992), 1:203. 44. Douglass had interviewed a Methodist missionary, the Reverend Jacob James, in Santa Bárbara de Samaná. That city, with its large population of émigrés from the United States, was the center of Methodism in the Dominican Republic. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 229, 231. 45. William L. Cazneau was a Boston native who in the 1830s acquired both wealth as a speculator in western lands and fame as a leader in the Texas independence movement. In the 1840s, he wed Jane McManus Storms, the daughter of a New York congressman, and for the next three decades they wielded their influence to advance dozens of schemes designed to enrich themselves and exert U.S. power in Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. In 1853, Cazneau was appointed by President Franklin Pierce as special agent to the Dominican Republic, charged with acquiring leasing rights to Samaná Bay for use as a U.S. naval station. Having failed in this mission, the Cazneaus established residence outside Santo Domingo, where they hatched speculative ventures ranging from mining, banking, and cotton production to colonization projects for both ex-slaves and whites. At the conclusion of the Civil War, the Cazneaus used their influence to popularize the idea of U.S. annexation of the Dominican Republic, commonly referred to as Santo Domingo. The Cazneaus’ long-standing association with slavery, the Democratic party, and unsavory speculation fueled opposition among the Republican majority in the Senate, even though the project was proposed by President Ulysses S. Grant. In response to Senate concerns, the Santo Domingo Commission assiduously recorded in their final report the multiple contracts and government grants—mostly mining concessions—the Cazneaus held on the island, as Douglass mentions here in his diary. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 183–84; Horne, Confronting Black Jacobins, 228–30, 261–62, 270–71, 284–86; Pope Atkins and Larman C. Wilson, The Dominican Republic and the United States: From Imperialism to Transnationalism (Athens, Ga., 1998), 17–18, 22–27; Robert E. May, “Lobbyist for Commercial Empire: Jane Cazneau, William Cazneau, and U.S. Caribbean Policy, 1846–1878,” Pacific Historical Review, 48:383–412 (August 1979). 46. Douglass is probably referring to the Alcázar de Colón, built and inhabited by the son of Christopher Columbus, Diego, when he was governor of Hispaniola from 1509 to 1515 and viceroy of the Indies from 1520 to 1524. An impressive palace containing fifty rooms and extensive gardens, it fell into ruin during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Part of the structure was restored in the 1950s, and today it is home to the Museo Alcázar de Diego Colón, which exhibits European medieval and Renaissance art. It is part of the Santo Domingo Colonial Zone, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990. Christopher P. Baker, National Geographic Traveler: Dominican Republic, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 2011), 60, 66, 72. 47. Modern historians continue to disagree over the details of the introduction of African slaves to Hispaniola, Spain’s first colony. Some scholars believe that gentlemen accompanying Columbus on his second voyage (1493–96) brought their African slaves with them from Spain. If true, those slaves were Spanish-speaking Christians, were domestic servants rather than field laborers, and definitely did not land on Santo Domingo, since that port city was established in 1498. Other historians point to the period of 1502–03, when Nicolas de Ovando, newly appointed governor of Hispaniola, arrived in Santo Domingo with Spanish-born African slaves intended for use in the new enterprise of sugar cane cultivation. Still others emphasize that Santo Domingo was not truly integrated into the larger Atlantic slave trade until the 1510s. That said, Douglass’s larger point is correct: African slavery was introduced to the New World in Hispaniola, and Santo Domingo, its capital and main port, was the arrival point for tens of thousands of African slaves for over three centuries. Franklin W. Knight, ed., General History of the Caribbean, vol. 3: The Slave Societies of the Caribbean (London, 1997), 13,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 159

9/1/21 4:16 PM

160

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

42; Carlos Andujar, The African Presence in Santo Domingo (East Lansing, Mich., 2012), 16, 23, 31, 39–40, 64; Haggerty, Dominican Republic and Haiti, 5, 49. 48. Baltimore-born David Brooks (c. 1803–?) migrated to Santo Domingo City in the mid-1820s. He testified in favor of annexation by the United States because he deemed native Dominicans incapable of self-government. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 252–53. 49. Elijah R. Gross testified before the Santo Domingo Commission in Santo Domingo City on 7 February 1871. Born in Philadelphia, he migrated to the island in the mid-1820s. Gross held several important posts in the military and in the Haitian and the Dominican civilian governments. At the time, he was a judge. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 254–55. 50. Joseph Hamilton. 51. The invading army of Prussia had captured Paris on 28 January 1871 after a four-month siege, ending effective military resistance in the Franco-Prussian War. Thanks to the transatlantic cable, major New York City newspapers, such as the Tribune, carried detailed reports of the event on 31 January 1871. 52. Arthur Shephard. 53. Born into one of Boston’s leading families, Samuel Gridley Howe (1801–76) graduated from Brown University in 1821 and the Harvard Medical School in 1824. For the next six years, Howe participated as a soldier, surgeon, and relief worker in the Greek rebellion against Turkish rule. After returning to the United States, he pioneered in the education of the blind, deaf, and insane. Howe married Julia Ward in 1843, and the two coedited the Free Soil newspaper the Boston Commonwealth in the early 1850s. His active support for the free-state movement in Kansas brought Howe into close contact with John Brown, who recruited Howe as one of the “Secret Six” who financed the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. After that incident, Howe wrote a public letter disclaiming any advance knowledge of Brown’s plans and briefly fled to Canada, returning later to testify before the congressional panel investigating the raid. During the Civil War, he assisted the U.S. Sanitary Commission; at the conflict’s conclusion, he served on the Freedman’s Inquiry Commission. In 1871, Howe traveled to Santo Domingo as one of the three members of the commission, which Douglass accompanied as secretary. Jeffery Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, the Secret Six, and a Theory of Slave Violence (Philadelphia, 1982), 26; ACAB, 3:283–84; NCAB, 8:372–73; DAB, 9:296–97. 54. A graduate of Harvard University in 1844, Henry Blatchford Wheelwright (1824–92) went on to study medicine at the Harvard Medical School, but he did not receive a degree. Instead, he practiced homeopathic medicine in Massachusetts and worked in several capacities for the state, including as general agent of the Board of State Charities. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 36; Edward Wheelwright, The Class of 1844: Harvard College, Fifty Years after Graduation (Cambridge, Mass., 1896), 246–49. 55. The Kentucky native and lawyer Allan A. Burton helped found the Republican party in that state. He briefly held an appointment as a federal judge in the Dakota Territory before being sent as U.S. ambassador to New Grenada (Colombia) during Lincoln’s administration. In the face of considerable political instability in Colombia, Burton worked to keep the Isthmus of Panama free of European influence. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 36; John E. Hurt, My View of the Twentieth Century (n.p., 2005), 8. 56. Possibly the “F. Schumacher” noted in the Santo Domingo Inquiry Commission’s report as, together with Louis P. Angenard, holding a commission from the Dominican government to construct a railroad in the nation’s south. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 183–84. 57. Jean-Pierre Boyer was born in Port-au-Prince, the capital city of Saint-Domingue, in 1776. His father was a French tailor and his mother a former African slave. He was educated in France and served in the French Republican Army before returning to the colony in 1793 with the aim of overthrowing royalist rule. As with all of Haiti’s “founding fathers,” Boyer’s allegiances shifted repeatedly during the chaotic years of the revolution, but in 1803 he and fellow mulatto leader Alexandre Pétion allied with the black leaders Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe to decisively repulse the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 160

9/1/21 4:16 PM

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

161

French army and establish Haitian independence. Upon the division of Haiti after the assassination of Dessalines in 1806, Boyer served as chief aide and adviser during President Pétion’s rule of the southern Republic of Haiti. When Pétion died in 1818, Boyer assumed the presidency and quickly united all of Haiti when King Henry Christophe committed suicide in 1820. Boyer likewise took advantage of internal conflict in eastern Hispaniola to bloodlessly incorporate the newly independent Santo Domingo into Haiti in February 1822. One of Boyer’s first acts proclaimed the emancipation of all slaves in the former Spanish colony, which naturally alienated the white elites and encouraged many to emigrate. Boyer’s further efforts to Haitianize the Dominicans, by redistributing land and instituting French as the official language, devastated the economy and most cultural institutions, particularly education. Boyer’s fall from power at the hands of disgruntled Haitians was followed, within a year, by the successful ousting of Haitian occupation troops and the establishment of the Dominican Republic. Haggerty, Dominican Republic and Haiti, 10–11, 217–19; John Edward Baur, “Mulatto Machiavelli: Jean Pierre Boyer and the Haiti of His Day,” JNH, 32: 315–20 (July 1947). 58. Founded in 1504, the port city of Azua de Compostela is the administrative and economic center of Azua province, located west of the Dominican Republic’s capital of Santo Domingo on that nation’s southern coast. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 133. 59. A tree indigenous to the Caribbean and South America, valued for its hard wood, which had been exported to Europe since the sixteenth century. 60. The official report of the Santo Domingo Commission noted that the standing army of the Dominican Republic had been abolished during the period of the restoration of Spanish suzerainty in 1861–65. The subsequent political instability prevented the commission from estimating the exact number of military forces loyal to President Báez. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 6–9, 167–68. 61. This is probably an allusion to the well-watered region south of Azua between the Bia and Jura rivers, reputedly the site of the most productive sugar plantations in the nation. Marchena was a small city in southwestern Spain and the likely inspiration for the Dominican plantation described by Douglass. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 85; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1148. 62. Born in Pittstown, New York, Wesley Newcomb (1808–92) studied medicine at the Vermont Medical School and opened a practice in Albany. Newcomb developed an interest in marine shells and traveled around the world for his research, residing many years in Hawaii and California. He accompanied the Santo Domingo commissioners as a sanitary expert in 1870, later submitting reports on conditions in Santo Domingo City, Samaná, and San Cristobal, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He later served as a curator and instructor at Cornell University. Robert Edwards Carter Stearns, “In Memoriam—Dr. Wesley Newcomb,” Nautilus, 5:121–24 (March 1892); Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 36, 38, 42, 73–75, 89–93, 120; ACAB, 17:563. 63. English-born Charles Christopher Parry (1823–90) migrated with his parents to upstate New York. After completing a medical degree at Columbia University, he settled in Davenport, Iowa, in 1846. Soon after, he joined the federal government’s scientific survey of the new territories gained in the Mexican War. Parry made more botanical surveys of the Rocky Mountain region in the 1860s in the employ of the U.S. Agriculture Department, which later dispatched him with the Santo Domingo Commission. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 36, 42, 71–73 86–89; Charles A. White, “Biographical Memoir of Charles Christopher Parry,” Annals of Iowa, 7:413–30 (1906). 64. A U.S. Department of Agriculture employee, the little-known H. Brummel accompanied the Santo Domingo Commission and traveled with Henry A. Ward through the Samaná Peninsula, assessing its agricultural potential. Botanical samples gathered by Brummel and Charles Christopher Parry in the Dominican Republic were donated to Harvard University. Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1869 (Washington, D.C., 1870), 93; Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 36, 38, 81–84. 65. Alta Velo Island is actually located off the southwestern coast of the Dominican Republic. First visited by Christopher Columbus in 1494, this small uninhabited island was claimed by the United States through the Guano Island Act of 1856. U.S. and Dominican authorities disputed each

Y7870-Douglass.indb 161

9/1/21 4:16 PM

162

SANTO DOMINGO TRAVEL DIARY

other’s claims to the valuable guano deposits on the island. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 30, 183, 191; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 53. 66. Douglass probably describes the decommissioned U.S. Navy vessel Hornet. This ship, originally titled the Lady Sterling, was built in Great Britain as a blockade-runner for the Confederacy. It was captured after an engagement with the U.S. Navy off Wilmington, North Carolina, in October 1864. Repaired and renamed the Hornet, the speedy steamer served the U.S. Navy for the remainder of the war. Sold into private hands in 1869, the Hornet had just transported weapons to Cuban revolutionaries in early January 1871 when Douglass saw it. Captured by the Spanish in 1872 and renamed the Marco Aurelia, the vessel was broken up around 1894. New York Times, 26 January 1871; Naval Historical Center, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1959–81), 3: Paul H. Silverstone, Civil War Navies, 1844–1883 (New York, 2006), 50. 67. Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett (1833–1908) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, to Tobias Bassett, a mulatto, and Susan Gregory Bassett, a Pequot Indian. He attended Wesleyan Academy at Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and graduated with honors from the Connecticut State Normal School. While employed as the principal of a high school in New Haven, Connecticut, he continued his studies at Yale College. From 1857 to 1859, he served as the principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia while also teaching mathematics, natural sciences, and classics. In 1869, President Grant appointed him U.S. minister to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, making Bassett America’s first black diplomat. He served in Port-au-Prince for eight years. Following his resignation, he served as consul general for Haiti in New York from 1879 to 1888. Douglass was appointed U.S. minister to Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1889, and Bassett, an old friend, worked as his secretary and interpreter until 1891. The Haitian government appointed him vice consul general in 1898, a position he held until his death in 1908. Christopher Teal, Hero of Hispaniola: America’s First Black Diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bassett (Westport, Conn., 2008); Elizabeth J. Normen et al., African American Connecticut Explored (Middletown, Conn., 2013), 225–29; Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York, 1982), 32. 68. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Eliza Park Bassett (1836–95) had eight children with her husband, including a son, Frederick Douglass Bassett, who died in 1877 at the age of three. Teal, Hero of Hispaniola. 69. Kingston, Jamaica, was founded in 1692 on the southeastern coast of the island, facing a natural harbor protected by a long sandspit, the Palisadoes. It had become the largest town and trading center in Jamaica by 1716. Sir Charles Knowles transferred governmental offices from Spanish Town to Kingston in 1755, but the next governor rescinded that act. Despite this, Kingston continued to grow and take over functions previously carried out in Spanish Town. The capital was officially moved to Kingston by an act of government passed in 1872. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 950. 70. Douglass probably refers to the Jamaican lawyer Samuel Constantine Burke (1836–1900), who held the post of crown solicitor from 1870 to 1890. Burke was a campaigner for greater selfgovernment on the island. Alistair C. Campbell, The Life of Samuel Constantine Burke, 1836–1900 (Mona, Jamaica, 1991). 71. Originally used as a burial site for the Calusa people, Key West was first settled by Europeans after the arrival of Juan Ponce de León in 1521 and the establishment of Florida as a Spanish territory. In 1763, Great Britain took control of Florida, though the Spanish regained control about twenty years later. In 1815, the Spanish governor of Cuba in Havana deeded the island of Key West to Juan Pablo Salas, an officer of the Royal Spanish Navy Artillery posted in Saint Augustine, Florida. He then sold the island twice—first for a sloop valued at $575 to General John Geddes, a former governor of South Carolina, and then to a U.S. businessman, John W. Simonton, during a meeting in a Havana café on 19 January 1822, for the equivalent of $2,000 in pesos. Finally, on 25 March 1822, Lieutenant Commander Matthew C. Perry claimed the keys as U.S. property. During the Civil War, Key West remained under the control of the Union when Florida seceded and joined the Confederate States of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 162

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

163

America. Most locals supported the South, however, with many even flying Confederate flags over their houses. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 934. 72. Douglass is most likely referring to the San Antonio Cape, the westernmost extremity of the island of Cuba and part of the Pinar del Río province. Its point juts out between the Gulf of Guanahacabibes to the north and Corrientes Bay to the south. A lighthouse, situated on Cape San Antonio, shines around fifteen miles out to sea. U.S. Hydrographic Office, West Indies Pilot: Bermuda Islands, Bahama Islands and the Greater Antilles, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1913), 200; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1661. 73. The U.S.S. Tennessee landed the Santo Domingo Commission at Charleston, South Carolina, on 26 March 1871. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 5.

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE (1872) U.S. Grant and the Colored People (Washington, D.C., 1872). Other texts in Grant or Greeley—Which? (Washington, D.C., 1872), 7; NNE, 8 August 1872; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig and Courier, 12 August 1872; San Francisco Elevator, 24, 31 August 1872.

The presidential election of 1872, between the incumbent, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Liberal Republican and Democratic party candidate, Horace Greeley, was the result of a divided Republican party. Plagued by scandal during his first presidential administration, Grant was commonly accused during the campaign of accepting gifts from favor seekers and compensating them with offices. Liberal Republicans, contending that the goals of Reconstruction had been met, sought to reconcile with the South, demanding “the immediate and absolute removal of all disabilities imposed on account of the rebellion.” They further supported local self-government, a tenet that appealed to the Democratic party. The Democratic party nominated Greeley in the hope of defeating Grant. Douglass, however, remained a loyal Grant supporter and wrote the following pamphlet for the Union Republican Congressional Committee, addressed to the African American voter. He reprinted it in his own New National Era three weeks after delivering it to Republican campaign officials, who used their congressional members’ franking privilege to distribute such literature for free. Newspapers from coast to coast republished Douglass’s endorsement of Grant, in whole or in part, from either the pamphlet or the Era. The committee also reproduced an excerpt from Douglass’s remarks in a second campaign pamphlet,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 163

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

163

America. Most locals supported the South, however, with many even flying Confederate flags over their houses. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 934. 72. Douglass is most likely referring to the San Antonio Cape, the westernmost extremity of the island of Cuba and part of the Pinar del Río province. Its point juts out between the Gulf of Guanahacabibes to the north and Corrientes Bay to the south. A lighthouse, situated on Cape San Antonio, shines around fifteen miles out to sea. U.S. Hydrographic Office, West Indies Pilot: Bermuda Islands, Bahama Islands and the Greater Antilles, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1913), 200; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1661. 73. The U.S.S. Tennessee landed the Santo Domingo Commission at Charleston, South Carolina, on 26 March 1871. Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 5.

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE (1872) U.S. Grant and the Colored People (Washington, D.C., 1872). Other texts in Grant or Greeley—Which? (Washington, D.C., 1872), 7; NNE, 8 August 1872; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig and Courier, 12 August 1872; San Francisco Elevator, 24, 31 August 1872.

The presidential election of 1872, between the incumbent, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Liberal Republican and Democratic party candidate, Horace Greeley, was the result of a divided Republican party. Plagued by scandal during his first presidential administration, Grant was commonly accused during the campaign of accepting gifts from favor seekers and compensating them with offices. Liberal Republicans, contending that the goals of Reconstruction had been met, sought to reconcile with the South, demanding “the immediate and absolute removal of all disabilities imposed on account of the rebellion.” They further supported local self-government, a tenet that appealed to the Democratic party. The Democratic party nominated Greeley in the hope of defeating Grant. Douglass, however, remained a loyal Grant supporter and wrote the following pamphlet for the Union Republican Congressional Committee, addressed to the African American voter. He reprinted it in his own New National Era three weeks after delivering it to Republican campaign officials, who used their congressional members’ franking privilege to distribute such literature for free. Newspapers from coast to coast republished Douglass’s endorsement of Grant, in whole or in part, from either the pamphlet or the Era. The committee also reproduced an excerpt from Douglass’s remarks in a second campaign pamphlet,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 163

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

164

along with pro-Grant endorsements from former abolitionists and African American leaders. William Best Hesseltine, Ulysses  S. Grant, Politician (New York, 1935), 145–46; Robert  W. Burg, “Amnesty, Civil Rights, and the Meaning of Liberal Republicanism, 1862–1872,” American Nineteenth Century History, 4:29–60 (Fall 2003). To the Colored People of the United States: There are many dissemblers and falsifiers of the Greeley1 party in the South who are seeking the control of the colored voters, by declaring to them that President Grant is not, and never has been, a faithful and sincere friend of my race.2 Indeed, Senator Sumner makes a charge of this kind,3 and while I would not for a moment imply that I have lost faith in the honored Senator’s sincerity and integrity, still I must declare that President Grant’s course, from the time he drew the sword in defence of the old Union in the Valley of the Mississippi till he sheathed it at Appomattox,4 and thence to this day in his reconstruction policy and his war upon the Ku-Klux,5 is without a deed or word to justify such an accusation. In substantiation of my opinion—and I think I may say my race is a unit with me in this opinion—I desire to submit to you, and to the country through you, the following plain and truthful statement of the facts as the records prove them to be. state of public opinion. And first, let me recall the state of public opinion as regards the extent to which the welfare and rights of four millions of my enslaved people6 were involved during the first year and a half of the war. I quote from the letter of Mr. Lincoln’s, dated August 23,1862: “My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either save or destroy slavery.”7 Mr Lincoln, in his proclamation, warned the rebels that he would, on the first day of January following, proclaim emancipation in those States where the people shall be in rebellion against the United States. That glorious proclamation he accordingly issued; but Kentucky, Tennessee, and portions of Louisiana and Virginia were not included in it,8 he was always in advance. General Grant commanded the armies which were moving southward from Cairo9 and operating in territory affected and unaffected by

Y7870-Douglass.indb 164

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

165

the proclamation. I find, by consultation with an ex-officer in that army, who knew all the orders issued, that General Grant was always up with, or in advance of, authority furnished from Washington in regard to the treatment to those of our color then slaves. Thus a large number of our people, through his orders, were furnished employment within his lines, or transportation to homes and places of comfort for themselves and families and education for their children in the North. And when he reached northern Mississippi, or the region where the people of our color were more numerous, I find that he issued November 11, 1862, before the Emancipation Proclamation and before authority was furnished from Washington, but solely on his own conviction of the military necessity and right, an order caring for our people.10 Those of our people fleeing from slavery had been not inaptly designated contrabands of war by General Butler.11 Those of us who participated in or witnessed these scenes can recall with sufficient vividness the exodus from slavery to liberty through the Federal lines whenever the soldiers in blue appeared. he foresees the evil and provides means to avoid it. General Grant saw the demoralizing effect upon the army of thousands of men, women, and children pouring through the camps; he recognized, too, the humane consideration which would not allow, even in those disturbed and fearful scenes, the starvation of those negroes, in regard to whom, as slaves, the Government had not yet fixed its policy. Selecting an officer for the purpose, in Special Order No. 15, dated Headquarters 13th Army Corps, Department of the Tennessee, Legrange, Tennessee, November 11, 1862, he directed this officer to “take charge of the contrabands who came into the camp, organize them into suitable companies for work, see that they were properly cared for, and set them to work. He ordered suitable guards detailed for their protection, and the officer to report to him in person.”12 He followed this with ample orders to the Commissary General and Quartermaster General for issuing of rations, clothing for men, women, and children, and implements necessary for use in their labor. In General Orders No. 13, dated Headquarters 13th Army Corps, Department of the Tennessee, Oxford, Mississippi, December 17, 1862, still half a month before the Emancipation Proclamation, he made the same officer General Superintendent of these affairs for the Department, with authority to designate assistants; and, in a word, increasing his authority,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 165

9/1/21 4:16 PM

166

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

specifying more fully the details of his duties, the kind of labor in which our people were to be employed, and enforcing their compensation. They were to fill every position occupied by the soldier save what depended upon his enlistment. Their wives and children were also to be cared for and given employment as far as possible.13 he anticipates the freedmen’s bureau. Indeed, looking over a report of the General Superintendent, which was printed in the winter of 1865, and favorably reviewed by the North American Review,14 I find that each military post came to have an office, and that office had one officer to care for supplies furnished them, another for the enforcement of justice in their behalf, another for their medical attendance, another for their education. All abandoned property was ordered used for them. In all these benefits I find white refugees shared also. Here was the full germ of the Freedemen’s Bureau15 apparent in the orders of General Grant before the Emancipation Proclamation, not as a theory, but as a practical solution of the relation of slaves in the South to the suppression of the rebellion, and in the interest of the welfare of all concerned. How do these facts comport with the accusations in question? We know General Grant dislikes everything dramatic, yet what a scene is this for the contemplation of the people of our color! Here, in the midst of the terrible scenes of war, still slaves, so far as law and the action of Government is concerned, they are as far as possible protected in their families and lives, sheltered and clothed, their sick furnished medicines, and the well furnished with employment that they might learn self-support. After slavery was declared abolished as spring approached, the Government determined to employ the freedmen as soldiers, and Adjutant General Thomas16 was sent out with proper authority to organize regiments in the Mississippi Valley. Already one company of colored troops had been organized, furnished with arms, and put on duty. General Grant was at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana.17 His General Orders No. 25, say: “Commissaries will issue supplies, and quartermasters will furnish stores on the same requisitions and returns as are required from the troops. It is expected that all commanders will especially exert themselves in carrying out the policy of the Administration, not only in organizing colored regiments and rendering them efficient, but also in removing prejudice against them.”18 Was this opposing the organization of troops?

Y7870-Douglass.indb 166

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

167

General Grant, in his letter to General Lee, October 19, 1864, although declining to discuss the slavery question, declares, “I shall always regret the necessity of retaliating for wrongs done our soldiers, but regard it my duty to protect all persons received into the army of the United States, regardless of color or nationality!”19 he was always ready to hear concerning the freedmen. I learn from an ex-officer, who was thoroughly cognizant of the facts, that in the midst of the fearful labor around Vicksburg,20 General Grant always found time to attend to the calls necessary to make upon him in regard to the colored people or colored troops, that he gave every aid to the development of their industry and the means of their improvement. He favored no Utopian schemes, and sought practical solution of every difficulty in the way of the welfare of our people. That when before Vicksburg, he, and his associates in the chief command of the troops, who, night and day, were pressing the siege, found time to listen to an extended report of the officer he had placed in charge of our people in the November previous. This report he afterwards forwarded to President Lincoln with a private letter, dated June 11, 1863, in which he says: “Finding that negroes were coming into our lines in great numbers and receiving kind or abusive treatment according to the peculiar view of the troops they first came in contact with, and not being able to give that personal attention to their care and use the matter demanded, I determined to appoint a General Superintendent over the whole subject, and give him such assistants as the duties assigned him might require. I have given him such aid as was in my power, by the publication, from time to time, of such orders as seemed to be required, and generally at the suggestion of the Superintendent.[”]21 He speaks of the results up to that date as of great service to the blacks in having them provided for, when otherwise they would have been neglected, and to the Government in finding employment for the negro whereby he might earn what he was receiving. And in closing, directs special attention to that portion of the report which would suggest orders regulating the subject which a Department Commander is not competent to issue. abraham lincoln was satisfied with him. The officer who delivered this letter and report to Mr. Lincoln, states that Mr. Lincoln received them with the greatest satisfaction, asking many questions about General Grant’s views upon the whole subject of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 167

9/1/21 4:16 PM

168

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

the treatment of the colored people, and in thus learning something in detail of the success of General Grant’s plans and the usefulness in his judgment, of colored soldiers, he repeated the expressions of his gratification that a General who was winning such military successes over the rebels was able, from a military standpoint, to give him so many practical illustrations of the benefits of the emancipation policy.22 he organizes free labor where he goes. I find in a printed copy of a letter to Mr. Levi Coffin,23 then in England, written by the General Superintendent,24 and dated at Vicksburg only a year after its fall, a statement that “this supervision, embracing the territory within the lines of our army, from Cairo down the Mississippi to Red River, together with the state of Arkansas, numbered in its care during the past year 113,650 freedmen. These are now disposed as follows: In military service as soldiers, laundresses, cooks, officers’ servants, and laborers in the various staff departments, 41,150; in cities, on plantations, and in freedmen’s villages and cared for, 72,500. Of these, 62,300 are entirely self-supporting—the same as any industrial class anywhere—as planters, mechanics, barbers, hack-men, dray men, &c., conducting enterprises on their own responsibility, or as hired laborers. The remaining 10,200 receive subsistence from the Government. Thirty thousand of them are members of families whose heads are carrying on plantations, and have under cultivation 4,000 acres of cotton, and are to pay the Government for their subsistence from the first income of crop. The other 7,200 include the paupers (those over and under the self-supporting age, the crippled and sick in hospital) of the 113,650, and those engaged in their care, and instead of being unproductive, have now under cultivation, 500 acres of corn, 790 acres of vegetables, and 1,500 acres of cotton, besides the work done at wood chopping, &c. There are reported in the aggregate something over 100,000 acres of cotton under cultivation. Of these about 7,000 acres are leased and cultivated by blacks. Some of these are managing as high as 300 or 400 acres. It is impossible to give, at the present date, any definite statement of many of the forms of industry. Fifty-nine thousand cords of wood are reported to me by Col. Thomas, Superintendent and Provost Marshall of Freedmen, as cut within the lines of 110 miles on the river banks above and below this place. It would be only a guess to state the entire amount cut by the people under this supervision; it must be enormous. The people have been paid from 50 cents to $2.50 per cord for

Y7870-Douglass.indb 168

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

169

cutting. This wood has been essential to the commercial and military operations on the river. “Of the 113,650 blacks here mentioned, 13,130 have been under instruction in letters; about 4,000 have learned to read quite fairly, and about 2,000 to write.”25 So our people were helped by General Grant’s policy through this terrible transition. he sees no peace while there is slavery. August 16, 1864, General Grant wrote Mr. Washburne26 the celebrated letter so widely quoted, in which he affirms that the Confederate leaders had robbed the cradle and the grave to carry on the war, urging that our friends in the North could have no hope for peace from separation; and among the special reasons in reply to “peace on any terms,” he affirms that the South would demand the restoration of their slaves already free; they would demand indemnity for losses sustained; they would demand a treaty which would make the North slave hunters for the South; they would demand pay for every slave that escaped to the North.27 In his last and noted order to the great army, dated June 2, 1865, General Grant distinctly recognizes the good results they had accomplished; affirms that they had “overthrown all armed opposition to the enforcement of the laws, and the proclamation forever abolishing slavery—the cause and pretext of the rebellion.”28 May we not justly say, will it not be the unquestioned sentiment of history that the liberty which Mr. Lincoln declared with his pen General Grant made effectual with his sword—by his skill in leading the Union armies to final victory? But I prefer that General Grant shall speak for himself, by here quoting from his private letter to Mr. Washburne, and published without the General’s knowledge or permission, dated August 30, 1863, in which he said: “The people of the North need not quarrel over the institution of slavery. What Vice President Stephens acknowledges as the corner-stone of the Confederacy is already knocked out. Slavery is already dead, and cannot be resurrected. It would take a standing army to maintain slavery in the South, if we were to make peace to-day guaranteeing to the South all their former constitutional privileges. “I never was an Abolitionist—not even what could be called anti slavery—but I try to judge fairly and honestly, and because patent to my mind, early in the rebellion, that the North and South could never live in peace with each other except as one nation. As anxious as I am to see peace, and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 169

9/1/21 4:16 PM

170

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

that without slavery, re-established, I would not therefore be willing to see any settlement until this question is forever settled.”29 In a letter written by Mr. Lincoln to General Grant, April 30, 1864, is this emphatic sentence: “I wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time.”30 he has been true in peace as in war. But since he became President how faithfully has he carried out his pledges in which we are most directly interested? In his inaugural, March 4, 1867, we find these wise words in regard to suffrage and the fifteenth amendment: “The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now, and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the fifteenth article of amendment to the Constitution.”31 Indeed, his language often points to his clear apprehension of the fact that peace could only be restored by removing the causes of disturbance. In his message in regard to Mississippi and Virginia, April 7, 1869, while he urges the restoration of the States to their proper relations to the Government as speedy as possible, he clearly states that it must be conditioned that the people of those States shall “be willing to become peaceful and orderly communities, and to adopt and maintain such constitutions and laws as will effectually secure the civil and political rights of all persons within their borders.[”]32 he commends the industry of the freedmen. True to all his instincts, all his declarations and acts in his first annual message, he has for our people as freedmen a kind word, and declares “the freedmen, under the protection they have received, are making rapid progress in learning, and no complaints are heard of lack of industry on their part where they receive fair remuneration for their labor[”]; and among the reasons which he finds for gratitude to the Giver of all good, is a country “with a population of forty millions of free people, all speaking one language; with facilities for every mortal to acquire an education; with institutions closing to none the avenues to fame or any blessing of fortune that may be coveted; with freedom of the pulpit, the press, and the school.” Again, he declares that the “second great object of the Govern-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 170

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

171

ment is to secure protection to the person and property of the citizen of the United States in each and every portion of our common country wherever he may choose to move, without reference to original nationality, religion, color, or politics, demanding of him only obedience to the laws and proper respect for the rights of others.”33 the ratification of the 15th amendment. Though, as he said, it is unusual to notify the two Houses by message, of the promulgation of the ratification of an amendment to the Constitution, yet he sent one in regard to the ratification of the fifteenth amendment, in which he said: “Institutions like ours, in which all power is derived directly from the people, must depend mainly upon their intelligence, patriotism, and industry. I call the attention, therefore, of the newly-enfranchised race to the importance of their striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws i would say, withold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizen. The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people.”34 The “Father of his country,” in his farewell address, used this language: “Promote, then, as a matter of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of the Government gives force to public opinion it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”35 In his first annual message to Congress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message. I repeat that the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change, and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came to life. The change will be beneficial in proportion to the heed that is given to the urgent recommendations of Washington. If these recommendations were important then, with a population of but a few millions, how much more important now, with a population of forty millions, and increasing in a rapid ratio. I would, therefore, call upon Congress to take all the means within their constitutional powers to promote and encourage popular education throughout the country; and upon the people everywhere to see to it that all who possess and exercise political rights shall have the opportunity to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 171

9/1/21 4:16 PM

172

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the Government a blessing, and not a danger. colored men appointed to officer. An inquiry into the appointments of colored men to office under General Grant gives results more satisfactory than I anticipated. No records, so far as I learn, appear to be kept of the color of the appointees. I can only ascertain facts by my own personal knowledge and from the personal knowledge of others acquainted with the appointees. It is impossible for me to [illegible] the exact number, but I find them in all departments of the civil service. Two have been appointed foreign Ministers,36 several Collectors of Customs, some Assessors of Internal Revenue,37 and so on down through all the various grades of the service—as route agents, postmasters, clerks, messengers, &c., according to the intelligence and character of the applicants.38 I should have been glad to have obtained the exact number of appointees of our color. In one Department at Washington I found 2[illegible]9, and many more holding important positions in its service in different parts of the country. In other Departments I ascertain corresponding gratifying facts as I pursued the inquiry, meeting some new man at every step, and left it satisfied, as I think any colored man would be, that there has been a hearty disposition to disregard all past prejudices and treat us in the matter of appointments according to our merits. The appointments to West Point, as overcoming the army prejudices, are well known, and too significant to be overlooked.39 protection against the ku-klux. And what shall I say of his enforcement of the law for the preservation of life and property in the South, whereby the savage outrages of organizations, known as Ku-Klux Klans, upon an innocent and suffering people have been so generally suppressed? What a change has come? These outrages, the burning of school-houses and churches, the whipping and shooting of teachers, the midnight murder of men and women without cause by masked villains, were so contrary to the ideas of the country that they hardly seemed possible in a civilized land. But by the quiet yet firm course of General Grant in enforcing the law, thousands have openly acknowledged the crimes charged, the organizations stand confessed to the amazement of all good men North and South, and peace has come to many places as never before. The scourging and slaughter of our people have so far ceased.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 172

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

173

History will not mistake the first and yet humane part General Grant has performed in this work. Have not all violence and injustice to us ceased, it is not because he has failed to do his duty, but because of the prejudices and opposition of those who now claim to be the special friends of the colored man. And should not the good work of peace and good will go on till every American citizen is known in the law and treated the same without regard to his color, it will be by the fatal success of those who  assail General Grant, and would defeat his election, and thus prevent the successful accomplishment of his benign purpose of perpetual union for the country and of assured liberty and protection to every person in it. Indeed, I closed the inquiry thoroughly satisfied, and believe that any man of my race would be, with the same facts before him, that with General Grant at the head of the Administration of the country we are assured, in due time, not only of our rights, but of our privileges. Let me now come to my own personal relations with General Grant, as well as my own personal knowledge of him; for I have the honor to know him well. Very much that you have heard concerning him is true, and very much is false. He, like most public men, has been severely criticized, not only as an officer, but as a man. Here, then, is my testimony concerning him. During my varied public career of more than thirty years, I have, perhaps, more than any other colored man of my times, been brought into direct contact with our nation’s great men, and taking my whole experience into account, I affirm that after our martyred President, Abraham Lincoln, and Senator Charles Sumner, no man in high position has manifested in his intercourse with me upon all occasions and in all places a more entire freedom from vulgar prejudice of race and color, than Ulysses S. Grant. I have called upon him often,40 (never, however, to solicit office for myself or for others,) and have always found him to be easily accessible, gentlemanly, and cordial. Like most of you when meeting with distinguished white persons, I was on the lookout when meeting with General Grant for some indication of the presence in his manners and words of the slavery-born aversion to my race. I found nothing of the kind in him. You have heard that General Grant is a man of few words, and the inference has been drawn by his enemies, that he is a man of few ideas.41 Never was an inference more unjust. It often requires more talent to be silent, than to speak. It is the merit of this man that he knows just when to speak, and when to be silent. I have heard him converse, and converse freely, and to those who have seen him only in his silent moods my statement will

Y7870-Douglass.indb 173

9/1/21 4:16 PM

174

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

hardly be credited, that few men in public life, or otherwise, can state facts with greater clearness and fluency, than General Grant. I have often been called upon to reconcile my exalted opinion of President Grant with the fact that I failed to be invited with the Commissioners of Inquiry to Santo Domingo to dine with the President at the White House.42 I have two answers to those who inquire of me on this point. First. The failure of the President to invite me could not have been because my personal presence on account of color would have been disagreeable to him, for he never withheld any social courtesy to General Tate, the Minister of Plenipotentiary from the Republic of Hayti, a man of my own complexion;43 and in this connection I may state that during the war he showed himself as free from Indian prejudice as negro prejudice, by retaining upon his staff General Eli Parker.44 It is, besides, impossible that color is the explanation of the omission to invite me, because the gentlemen whom he did invite had dined with me daily during ten weeks on an American ship, under an American flag, and in presence of representatives of the leading presses of the United States, and this doubtless by the President’s special direction. It is further obvious that color had nothing to do with the omission, because other gentlemen accompanying the expedition to Santo Domingo equally with myself, though white, failed to receive an invitation to dine at the White House. The only Commissioners provided for by the act of Congress, were Messrs, B. F. Wade,45 Andrew D. White,46 and S. G. Howe, with one Secretary, Mr. Allan A. Burton.47 These gentlemen called in a body upon the President and were invited in an informal way to dine with him. I was not in company with the Commissioners when this call was made, and did not see the President until afterward. Had I been in company with the Commissioners at the time of their visit, I have no question but that an invitation would have been extended to me as freely as to any of the gentlemen of the Commission who were invited. My second answer is that my devotion to General Grant rests upon high and broad public grounds, and not upon personal favor. I see in him the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race from all the malign reactionary, social and political elements that would whelm them in destruction. He is the rock-bound coast against the angry and gnawing waves of a storm-tossed ocean saying, thus far only shalt thou come. Wherever else there may be room for doubt and uncertainty, there is nothing of the kind with Ulysses S. Grant as our candidate. In the midst of political changes he is now as ever—unswerving and inflex-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 174

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

175

ible. Nominated regularly by the time-honored Republican party,48 he is clothed with all the sublime triumphs of humanity which make its record. That party stands to-day free from alloy, pure and simple. There is neither ambiguity in its platform nor incongruity in its candidates. U.S. Grant and Henry Wilson,49 the one from the West and the other from the East—the soldier and the Senator—are men in whom we can confide. No two names can better embody the precious and priceless results of the suppression of rebellion and the abolition of slavery. We can no more array ourselves against these candidates and this party than we can resume our chains or insult our mothers. We are allied to the Republican party by every honorable sentiment of the human soul. While affection and gratitude bind us to the party, the well known character of the Democratic party, and the long line of antecedents of that party, repel us and make it impossible for us to cast in our lots with it. To vote for Messrs. Greeley and Brown50 would justly invite to our heads the contempt and scorn of honest men. We should not only brand ourselves as political knaves but as political fools, meanly marching to occupy a position to which we are invited by the Democratic party, which party during the last forty years has existed almost exclusively to make sure our slavery and degradation as a race. The key-note of the whole Greeley movement was sounded by Mr. James E. Doolittle51 upon taking the chair of the convention that nominated Mr. Greeley. He announced as one of the objects of the movement the “overthrow of negro supremacy.” Can any negro be so blind as not to see the meaning of this? Where has the negro been supreme in this country? Is the simple exercise of the elective franchise (for surely this is all we have exercised) to be overthrown? We leave the question with you. In view of the foregoing facts, the following most excellent letter should be added: Executive MANSION, Washington, D.C., May 9, 1872.

GENTLEMEN: I am in receipt of your invitation extended to me to attend a mass meeting, to be held for the purpose of aiding in securing civil rights for the colored citizens of our country. I regret that a previous engagement will detain me at the Executive Mansion, and that I shall not be able to participate with you in person in your efforts to further the cause in which you are laboring. I beg to assure you, however, that I sympathize most cordially in any effort to secure for all our people, of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 175

9/1/21 4:16 PM

176

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

whatever race, nativity, or color, the exercise of those rights to which every citizen should be entitled. I am, very respectfully, U.S. GRANT 52

Such is the record of the great chieftain whose sword cleft the hydrahead of treason, and by whose true heart and good right arm you gained the ballot, that glorious insignia of your citizenship. Such is the record of the wise statesman for whom you trusted your first ballot for President; for no other than him can you trust your second. Rally, then, to his support with that resistless spirit in which you fought for your liberties, with that deep sincerity in which you mourned the foul death of your liberator— Lincoln—and with the same exultant hope in which you made General Grant your first President, with your first votes in 1868. FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Washington, July 17, 1872. 1. Horace Greeley (1811–72), journalist, reformer, and Republican politician, was the founder and lifelong editor of the New York Tribune. Born in Amherst, New Hampshire, Greeley moved to New York City in 1831 and became coeditor of a small literary periodical in 1834. With the sponsorship of William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed, Greeley soon entered the field of political journalism, editing Whig campaign weeklies in 1838 and again in 1840. The next year, he launched the Tribune, which quickly outstripped its local competitors and attained a large circulation throughout the North. Under Greeley, the Tribune became the leading editorial voice of the Republican party during the 1850s. Openly hostile to abolitionism during the early 1840s, Greeley grew steadily more radical on the slavery issue, but his racial attitudes mirrored the ambivalence of many Northern free-labor spokesmen. In his Recollections, Greeley claims to have rejected colonization during the mid-1830s, but he gave periodic support to emigrationist schemes throughout the antebellum era, clashing repeatedly with Frederick Douglass, James McCune Smith, and other black leaders over the issue. In 1872, Greeley secured the presidential nomination from the newly formed Liberal Republican party, pitting himself against Grant and the Republicans he had supported before and after the war. The Democrats, unable to find a suitable candidate and wishing to unite the opposition vote, also nominated Greeley for president, making him the first-ever presidential candidate for two political parties. Ultimately, Grant won reelection, securing every state in the North. Exhausted, disappointed, and grieving the recent death of his wife, Greeley became despondent and died three weeks after the election. Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York, 1868); Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Horace Greeley: Nineteenth-Century Crusader (Philadelphia, 1953); Ralph Ray Fahrney, Horace Greeley and the “Tribune” in the Civil War (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1936); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1970), 262– 63, 297–300; McFeely, Grant, 383–85; Robert C. Williams, Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom (New York, 2006), 293, 295–96, 298–99, 305; DAB, 7:528–34. 2. While not considered an abolitionist or a radical antislavery man, Grant defended black rights, both as a general and as president. From a pragmatic standpoint, Grant realized that emancipation would greatly benefit the Union, and so he embraced blacks as soldiers. He also successfully set up refugee camps to serve as “a prototype for a humane transition from slavery to freedom” while acting as the commander in the Mississippi Valley. After the war, he generally supported civil rights

Y7870-Douglass.indb 176

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

177

legislation, but he did not push for social equality between the races. During his first administration, Grant made efforts, albeit limited, to defend black political rights. For example, he supported the Fifteenth Amendment as well as the series of acts passed between 1870 and 1872 that helped enforce it. He also signed three measures, known as the Force Acts, designed to combat violence against blacks in the South with the power of the federal government. Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865 (2000; Minneapolis, Minn., 2014), 162–63, 186–87; Joan Waugh, U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2009), 72–73, 115–16, 138, 141; Thomas R. Pegram, “Reconstruction during the Grant Years: The Conundrum of Policy,” in A Companion to the Reconstruction Presidents, 1865–1881, ed. Edward O. Frantz (Chichester, Eng., 2014), 281. 3. The professional relationship between Senator Charles Sumner and President Ulysses Grant began negatively. From the moment Grant took office, Sumner realized that the new president was not going to defer to the seasoned politician, as he had previously assumed. Sumner expected to serve as secretary of state and was displeased when Grant not only passed him over for the position but also failed to ask for his advice on whom to appoint. Tensions between the two men escalated during the dispute over the annexation of Santo Domingo, beginning in 1870. While Grant pushed hard to pass the annexation treaty, he was met with resistance from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed by Sumner. The senator opposed annexation on the grounds that it would complicate relations with European powers, involve the United States in the Dominican civil war, and threaten the independence of the neighboring black republic of Haiti. Erroneously believing that Sumner desired annexation, Grant was taken aback when the senator emerged as the opposition’s leader. By the 1872 election, Sumner, having been ousted as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, openly broke with Grant and threw his support to Horace Greeley. The senator argued that Grant had not worked hard enough to pass the Civil Rights Bill or to combat violence against blacks in the South. Ultimately, Sumner believed that the rights of the freedmen would be more secure under an administration led by Greeley rather than Grant. Moorfield Storey, Charles Sumner (Boston, 1900), 382–99; David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York, 1970), 552; McFeely, Grant, 334, 340–41, 351; Foner, Reconstruction, 495–96, 506–07. 4. General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Grant at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865. In the days leading up to his surrender, Lee requested to meet with Grant on the battlefield to negotiate peace, but the Union general continued to insist that he would accept only the complete surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Poorly supplied and surrounded by larger Union forces, Lee finally agreed. Most notable regarding Grant’s role at Appomattox were his generous terms of surrender, which included allowing the paroled Confederate soldiers to return to their homes, therefore implying that those who surrendered would be pardoned. He even offered 25,000 rations to the Rebels after Lee explained that his men were destitute. Saluting Lee as he rode away from Appomattox, Grant halted the firing of victory cannons out of respect for his fellow Americans. McFeely, Grant, 217, 219, 220; Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York, 2001), 402–04, 406. 5. From 1869 to 1872, the depredations of the Ku Klux Klan spread throughout the South, particularly in Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Since the Klan’s strength exceeded the power of any one state to control it, President Grant and Congress took measures to curb the terror. In his first few years in office, Grant cautiously helped reinforce state militias so that they could combat the Klan. On 31 May 1870, Congress passed the Enforcement Act. Intended primarily to protect the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment, the act made it a federal felony for anyone in disguise to deprive someone of his or her rights or to retaliate against someone for exercising them. This bill received President Grant’s support and laid the basis for further federal indictments against the Klan. Under growing public pressure, especially from Republicans in the South, President Grant and Congress created a committee in January 1871 to investigate the Klan further. From this inquest issued the Ku Klux Klan Act of 20 April 1871, which made any conspiracy to travel on public highways in disguise with the purpose of depriving anyone of his or her rights a federal offense. The

Y7870-Douglass.indb 177

9/1/21 4:16 PM

178

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

act empowered the president to use U.S. troops against the Klan and to suspend habeas corpus if necessary. President Grant speedily issued a proclamation in support of the act and gave warning to conspirators in the South. When Klan terror became extremely alarming in North and South Carolina during the summer of 1871, Grant sent Attorney General Amos T. Akerman there to investigate; by mid-October, Grant had suspended habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties, and Akerman began making mass arrests. Although Grant’s actions had inhibited some of the Klan’s expansiveness by 1872, he had by no means thwarted the silent society. Klan activities continued unabated in many districts of the South, while political considerations and constraints upon the exercise of federal power within the states often checked the hand of President Grant. James E. Sefton, The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (Baton Rouge, 1967), 220–29; Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (1971; Baton Rouge, La., 1995), 383–418; Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant, 238–51; McFeely, Grant, 367–73. 6. The U.S. census of 1860 enumerated 4,441,830 slaves and free blacks. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the United States in 1860, 594–95. 7. This Lincoln quotation, cited by Douglass, comes from his 22 August 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. A few days before, Greeley had penned a letter to Lincoln, immediately printed in the Tribune, in which he reprimanded the president for being too conservative on the issue of emancipation. In his reply, Lincoln reiterated his main objective in the war: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” In his citation of this Lincoln quotation, Douglass omits the words “in this struggle.” New York Tribune, 20 August 1862; Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859–1865: Speeches, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings, Presidential Messages and Proclamations, ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York, 1989), 357–58. 8. On 1 January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, which by executive order freed most black slaves in the states in secession. The proclamation was the political and social outgrowth of the reality of the Civil War. Initially, President Lincoln could not emancipate slaves without losing conservative Democratic support in the North and in Border States; later he was unable to emancipate them, because an act of emancipation set against the Union’s lack of military success would make the Union look weak. The platform for emancipation began when General Benjamin Butler defined captured slaves as contraband, which prompted congressional Republicans to pass the First and Second Confiscation Acts. Using his war powers as president and following a military victory at Antietam on 17 September 1862, Lincoln announced the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves held in rebel states on 1 January 1863 would be free. On that date, he signed the permanent Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln did not believe that his war powers extended to Border States not in open rebellion or to portions of rebel states then under Union control. Therefore, slaves in many counties in Tennessee, Virginia, and Louisiana, as well as in the Border States, were unaffected by the proclamation, which made vital the crafting of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery. Despite the proclamation’s somewhat limited application to states in open rebellion, historians note that the conservative use of Lincoln’s war powers in this matter successfully avoided the legal problems of emancipation created by the Confiscation Acts; began to shift the Union’s focus of the war from a legal battle against rebellion to a moral battle against slavery; and started a gradual change within the country regarding race relations. John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, N.Y., 1963), 50–56, 61; Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953–55), 5:433–36; David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 5 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2000), 2:650–52. 9. Cairo is the southernmost city in Illinois—stretching farther south than Richmond, Virginia—and is located in Alexander County. The Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge at Cairo, and the city borders Missouri and Kentucky. Cairo represented one of the most strategic points in the Union at the beginning of the Civil War because of its southern location and position on the two riv-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 178

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

179

ers. In September 1861, Grant established his headquarters at Cairo and received orders to hold back any Confederate moves northward along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers into the Midwest. Grant remained in command of troops at Cairo until February 1862, when the northern line of Confederate forces was pushed southward. John McMurray Lansden, A History of the City of Cairo, Illinois (Chicago, 1910), 32, 136; McFeely, Grant, 89–91; Edward G. Longacre, General Ulysses S. Grant: The Soldier and the Man (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 98; T. K. Kionka, Key Command: Ulysses S. Grant’s District of Cairo (Columbia, Mo., 2006), 1, 6. 10. In 1862, Grant was confronted with the issue of how to care for the slaves entering Union lines. Although at first hesitant to accept blacks into his camp, Grant changed course following the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, issued in September 1862. In November, following Grant’s occupation of Grand Junction, Tennessee, thousands of blacks flocked to his ranks. He ordered his assistant adjunct general, John A. Rawlins, to issue Special Orders No. 17 in an effort to organize the “contrabands” into working groups, as well as to supply them with clothing and food. Soldiers were assigned to guard the workers, and others provided medical attention and distributed rations. Grant appointed Chaplain John Eaton of the Twenty-seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment as general superintendent of contrabands, and together the two men “began one of the largest-scale military establishments for helping the freedmen.” Douglass cites this particular order as Special Orders No. 15, issued on 11 November 1862, as does Eaton in his memoirs. According to The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, another version of Special Orders No. 17 lacks the section regarding Eaton, suggesting that perhaps the orders may have been entered in Grant’s records incorrectly. John Eaton and Ethel Osgood Mason, Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen: Reminiscences of the Civil War with Special Reference to the Work for the Contrabands and Freedmen of the Mississippi Valley (New York, 1907), 5; George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Philadelphia, 1955), 21–22; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 6:315–16n; McFeely, Grant, 126–27. 11. Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818–93) was one of the most famous “political generals” of the Civil War. A native of New Hampshire and a graduate of Colby College, Butler established prosperous law practices in both Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts. An active Democratic politician, Butler attended his party’s 1860 national convention, where he supported Jefferson Davis for the presidential nomination. Later that year, he unsuccessfully ran for governor of Massachusetts on a Democratic ticket pledged to John Breckinridge for president. As a brigadier general of the Massachusetts militia, Butler won national prominence for leading the troops that pacified pro-Confederate Baltimore, thereby reopening Washington’s communications with the North. While commander of Union forces at Fortress Monroe in Virginia in the summer of 1861, he began the policy of sheltering runaway slaves within his lines as “contrabands of war.” In October 1861, Lincoln removed Butler from command of Fortress Monroe and sent him to recruit soldiers in New England. While military governor of New Orleans in 1862, Butler alienated the conquered population and embarrassed Washington with his General Order No. 28, which threatened that Southern women demonstrating contempt for Union troops would be treated as prostitutes. An incompetent field commander, Butler was finally relieved after Lincoln’s reelection made his political support for the administration no longer crucial. Following the war, he served six terms as a Republican congressman and was a leader in the impeachment effort against Andrew Johnson. Returning to the Democratic party, Butler was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1882, and two years later he ran as the presidential candidate of the Greenback-Peoples’ party. Richard S. West, Jr., Lincoln’s Scapegoat General: A Life of Benjamin F. Butler, 1818–1893 (Boston, 1965); Robert Werlich, “Beast Butler”: Biography of Union Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler (Washington, D.C., 1962); ACAB, 1:477–78; NCAB, 1:121–24. 12. Douglass is actually referring to Grant’s Special Orders No. 17, issued on 13 November 1862. Eaton and Mason, Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen, 5; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 6:315–16n. 13. By order of Grant, Assistant Adjutant General John A. Rawlins issued General Orders No. 13 on 17 December 1862. The order appointed Chaplain John Eaton of the Twenty-seventh Ohio

Y7870-Douglass.indb 179

9/1/21 4:16 PM

180

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

Volunteer Infantry Regiment as general superintendent of contrabands for the department. It also gave Eaton the power to select assistant superintendents to aid him in organizing the freedmen into “working parties.” These working groups would perform jobs such as harvesting cotton and working on railroads and steamboats. The freedmen were to be clothed “and in every way provided for, out of their earnings so far as practicable,” with an account being kept of all earnings and expenditures, subject to inspection. Eaton was also ordered to collect, inventory, and distribute all contributions, including clothing, made to the freedmen. Lastly, the order mandated that “in no case will negroes be forced into the service of the Government, or be enticed away from their homes except when it becomes a military necessity.” Eaton and Mason, Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen, 26–27; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 6:316–17n. 14. The report that Douglass refers to is John Eaton’s Report of the General Superintendent of Freedmen, Department of the Tennessee and State of Arkansas, for 1864, printed in 1865. Eaton’s account, along with several reports from other freedmen’s departments, was reviewed in the October 1865 edition of the North American Review. As Douglass suggests, the review of the report was favorable, stating that “of all the government reports named at the head of this article, that of Colonel Eaton, of the Department of the Tennessee and State of Arkansas, for the last year, is the most full, and treats of the most extensive system of superintendence.” In the detailed report, Eaton adds that on behalf of the freedmen, “all the wise and humane” plans of Grant “antedate the past year,” alluding to the fact that Grant had long since been making efforts to provide and care for former slaves entering his lines. John Eaton, Report of the General Superintendent of Freedmen, Department of the Tennessee and State of Arkansas, for 1864 (Memphis, Tenn., 1865), 5; “General Orders of the Freedmen’s Bureau; First, Second, and Third Annual Reports of the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society (Educational Commission); Freedmen’s Record; First, Second, and Third Annual Reports of the National Freedmen’s Relief Association; The National Freedman; Annual Report of the Western Freedmen’s Association; Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Bulletin; Chicago Freedmen’s Bulletin; Reports of the Superintendents of Freedmen for Eastern Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, and of the Board of Education for Freedmen, Department of the Gulf. 1864, 1865,” NAR, 101:538–49 (October 1865). 15. Legislation suggested by President Lincoln to create the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, passed Congress in March 1865. Although originally authorized for only a single year after the conclusion of the Civil War’s military hostilities, the bureau remained in operation until 1872. The bureau originally supplied displaced Southerners, whites as well as blacks, with temporary rations, shelter, health care, and other essential services. Most whites soon ceased taking assistance from the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Andrew Johnson unsuccessfully attempted to block legislation to extend its mandate. Under the leadership of General O. O. Howard, the bureau expanded its mission into establishing schools and arbitrating labor disputes concerning freedmen. The bureau engendered vociferous opposition in the South, and Grant allowed financial appropriations for the bureau’s operations to dwindle. He terminated the agency in 1872 after reassigning Howard to deal with western Indian problems. Foner, Reconstruction, 68–70, 82–88, 144–51. 16. Born in New Castle, Delaware, Lorenzo Thomas (1804–75) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1823. He went on to serve in the Seminole War and the Mexican War and served as General Winfield Scott’s chief of staff until promoted to the position of adjutant general of the army in 1861, with the rank of brigadier general. In March 1863, Thomas was ordered to the Mississippi Valley to organize black regiments, where he was supposed to meet with Douglass. But the latter declined the appointment to become a recruiter. In February 1868, Thomas permitted President Andrew Johnson to appoint him secretary of war ad interim in the place of Edwin Stanton, precipitating the impeachment crisis. As for the black regiment organized before Stanton’s 25 March 1863 orders to Thomas, Douglass is most likely referring to the First South Carolina Colored Volunteers. While other black regiments were formed in Kansas and Louisiana, the soldiers in South Carolina

Y7870-Douglass.indb 180

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

181

represented the Union’s “first large-scale organized effort” to arm blacks. According to the historian Dudley Cornish, the regiment was also the only one to have the full authorization of the War Department. Under the leadership of General David Hunter, the First South Carolina Colored Volunteers was mustered into the army on 31 January 1863. Dudley Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York, 1966), 67, 78, 92, 95, 113, 216; Benedict, Compromise of Principle, 297; Foner, Reconstruction, 8, 335; ACAB, 6:84; DAB, 18:441–42. 17. In January 1863, Grant ordered two of his generals—John McClernand and William T. Sherman—to move troops to Young’s Point and Milliken’s Bend. Situated on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi, this location served as the winter quarters of Grant’s army. Having failed to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, the previous autumn, Grant continued his pursuit of the city while headquartered at Milliken’s Bend. McFeely, Grant, 126, 128; Smith, Grant, 228; Longacre, General Ulysses S. Grant, 168. 18. By order of Grant, Assistant Adjutant General John A. Rawlins issued General Orders No. 25 on 22 April 1863. The only correction to Douglass’s citation of the order is that it reads “from other troops” instead of “from the troops.” OR, ser. 3, 3:147 (1899). 19. Douglass correctly quotes Grant’s letter to Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Modern scholars, however, have concluded that Grant’s letter was originally dated 10 October instead of 19 October 1864. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 12:323–24. 20. General Ulysses S. Grant, in concert with the Union Navy, oversaw a six-week siege of the key Confederate Mississippi River city of Vicksburg from 22 May to 4 July 1863. Defended by Confederate general John C. Pemberton, the city and over 30,000 troops surrendered only when food and supplies were exhausted, with no prospects of relief. The victory successfully split off the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy and ensured Union control of the Mississippi. On 29 June 1863, three black regiments, the Forty-sixth, Forty-ninth, and Fifty-first U.S. Colored Troops, participated in an indecisive skirmish at Mound Plantation in Louisiana. John David Smith, “Let Us All Be Grateful That We Have Colored Troops that Will Fight,” in Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era, ed. Smith (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002), 46; Long and Long, Civil War Day by Day, 373–79. 21. Douglass correctly quotes Grant’s report to Lincoln, dated 11 June 1863, regarding the Union Army’s treatment of Mississippi blacks. Douglass omits one section of the letter, which follows Grant’s statement that he was determined to appoint a superintendent and give him assistants as the duties assigned him might require. Grant goes on to say that he chose Mr. Eaton for the superintendent position and that “his labors in his undertaking have been unremitting and skillful.” Douglass then correctly summarizes the closing of Grant’s report, in which he notes that Eaton successfully provided for the blacks under his care and helped them find employment when they would have otherwise been neglected. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 8:342. 22. In June 1863, John Eaton traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to meet with Grant regarding his 29 April 1863 report on the recent work he and his assistant superintendents had accomplished regarding the freedmen. Although he expected to simply submit his report to Assistant Adjutant General John A. Rawlins, Grant requested that Eaton read the report to him instead. Upon hearing the report, Grant instructed Eaton to travel to Washington to share it with Lincoln. He also included a personal letter to the president describing Eaton’s appointment and his evaluation of the superintendent’s work. Eaton left Vicksburg on 2 July, bound for Washington, D.C. He gave the president Grant’s personal letter, dated 11 June 1863, along with a copy of his own report. According to Eaton, Lincoln’s “cordial manner” put him at ease, and the president immediately began to discuss his “fighting General.” Lincoln asked questions regarding the freedmen and told Eaton he would take his report to the Soldiers’ Home that night to review it and meet with him again at the White House in the morning. After meeting with Lincoln the next day, Eaton recalled that the president “left me in no doubt as to the satisfaction with which he had read the information therein.” Before Eaton left Washington, Lincoln requested that he report to the American Freedmen Inquiry Commission in New

Y7870-Douglass.indb 181

9/1/21 4:16 PM

182

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

York. The members of this commission had been appointed to consider the subject of the Department of Tennessee’s policy toward the freedmen “in the present emergency,” and Eaton agreed to meet with them. Eaton and Mason, Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen, 63–64, 86–93; Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War, 5 vols. (New York, 1956), 4:406–07. 23. Levi Coffin (1798–1877), raised in North Carolina, was a Quaker antislavery advocate. His devout religious beliefs led him to defy Southern principles and become a supporter of the antislavery cause. In 1821, Coffin, along with his cousin Vestal Coffin, organized a Sunday school for African Americans and taught some slaves how to read the Bible. Pressured by local slaveholders, Coffin closed his school, and in 1826 he and his wife, Catherine, moved to Indiana. Coffin established a store in Wayne County and began to aid slaves escaping to freedom. For his efforts, Coffin earned the title “President of the Underground Railroad,” and his home became known as “Grand Central Station.” During his time in Indiana, Coffin also was a founding member of the Indiana State Anti-Slavery Society. In 1847, Coffin moved to Cincinnati and started a business that sold products produced only by free labor. During the Civil War, Coffin served as a member of the Western Freedmen’s Aid Society, helping educate former slaves. In 1867, Coffin continued his antislavery work and traveled to Paris as a delegate to the International Anti-Slavery Society. A year before his death, Coffin completed an autobiography detailing his abolitionist labors. Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffi n; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:39, ANB (online); DAB, 4:268–69. 24. John Eaton (1829–1906) was born in Sutton, New Hampshire, graduated from Dartmouth College, and taught in schools in Ohio. He then attended Andover Theological Seminary. Ordained in 1861, Eaton joined the army as chaplain of the Twenty-seventh Ohio Infantry Regiment. In November 1862, Grant appointed Eaton to oversee the numerous Southern blacks who had flocked to the Union lines. Following orders from Grant, Eaton organized the freedmen into camps and provided them with supplies to meet their physical and educational needs. They were also directed to work picking cotton, cutting wood, and building railroads. As general superintendent of freedmen in the Department of the Tennessee, Eaton’s jurisdiction included Tennessee as well as Arkansas. Over the course of the war, he was given the rank of colonel of a regiment of blacks and later promoted to brigadier general. Eaton’s efforts to safeguard and provide for the freedmen within the Union lines set a precedent for the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was established in March 1865. Eaton was appointed an assistant commissioner of the bureau, given supervision of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and sections of Virginia. Following his resignation from the army in December 1865, he edited a Unionist newspaper, the Memphis Post, in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1866–67. President Grant appointed Eaton to the board of visitors at West Point in 1869, and the following year he selected Eaton as U.S. commissioner of education. Eaton thereafter became president of Marietta College (1886–91) and later of Sheldon Jackson College (1895–99). Bentley, History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 21–23, 59–60; Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy toward Southern Blacks, 1861– 1865 (Westport, Conn., 1973), 120, 188–89; McFeely, Grant, 126–27; Longacre, General Ulysses S. Grant, 162; DAB, 5:608–09. 25. John Eaton, general superintendent of freedmen, wrote a letter to Levi Coffin on 5 July 1864. Douglass quotes a portion of this letter to emphasize how freedmen benefited from Grant’s policy. There are some slight differences between Douglass’s citation and the printed letter. Instead of “thirty thousand of them are members of families whose heads are carrying plantations,” Eaton wrote “three thousand.” In another instance, Douglass writes that it is “1,500 acres of cotton,” while the letter reads “1,600 acres.” Douglass also writes that “13,130 have been under instruction in letters,” while Eaton cites the number as “13,320.” Two other insignificant differences: Douglass writes “cut within the lines” and it “would be only a guess,” while the Eaton letter reads “out within the lines” and it “would only be a guess.” Joseph Warren, comp., Extracts from the Reports of Superintendents of Freedmen, From Records in the Office of Col. John Eaton, Jr., General Superintendent of Freedmen, Department of the Tennessee and State of Arkansas, series 2: June 1864 (Vicksburg, Miss., 1864), 50–51.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 182

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

183

26. One of the four sons in a farm family from Livermore, Maine, to serve as a Republican congressman, Elihu Benjamin Washburne (1816–87) studied law after working as a farmer and a journalist. He moved to Galena, Illinois, to establish a law practice and soon became a respected Whig party leader, attending the 1844 and 1852 national conventions. After losing an election for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1848, he won the seat in 1852 and served eight consecutive terms. Highlights of Washburne’s congressional career were his opposition to all forms of subsidies to railroad companies and his sponsorship of military promotions for his close friend Ulysses S. Grant. As a reward, Grant appointed Washburne to be his secretary of state, but he switched him after only a few days in office to the post of U.S. minister to France, where he served until 1877. At the 1876 and 1880 Republican National Conventions, Washburne received a small number of votes for the presidential nomination and finished second in the balloting for the vice presidential spot in the latter campaign. Gallard Hunt, comp., Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburne: A Chapter in American Biography (New York, 1925), 155–289; McFeely, Grant, 75–76, 83–84, 154, 294–95; ACAB, 6:370–71; NCAB, 4:14–15; DAB, 19:504–06. 27. On 16 August 1864, Grant wrote a letter to Elihu B. Washburne, discussing the frail state of the Confederate forces he had encountered. Taking into account the Rebels’ high desertion rate and scarce resources, Grant argued that their only hope at that point was a divided North. Douglass correctly summarizes Grant’s claims that to have peace “on any terms,” the South would demand the restoration of their slaves, compensation for any losses, and assistance from the North in hunting slaves. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 12:16–17. 28. Douglass correctly cites a portion of Grant’s 2 June 1865 letter. The rest of the sentence from which Douglass cites is as follows: “and opened the way to the Rightful Authorities to restore Order and inaugerate [sic] Peace on a permanent and enduring basis on every foot of American soil.” Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 15:120–21. 29. Douglass’s quotation of Grant’s 30 August 1863 letter to Elihu B. Washburne differs slightly from the one reproduced in John Y. Simon’s The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. For example, Douglass spelled the Confederate vice president’s name “Stephens,” while Grant misspelled it as “Stevens.” Other differences include spelling discrepancies and Douglass’s addition of italics at the end of the quotation. Massachusetts senator Henry Wilson first made the contents of this letter public during the Republican State Convention held in Boston in September 1863. During a speech, Wilson claimed to have seen a letter written by Grant in which the general expressed that while he was not an abolitionist or an antislavery man, he believed that the North and the South could unite only as a free nation. Months after the convention, some newspapers printed portions of this letter from Grant to Washburne to support Wilson’s statements regarding Grant’s views on slavery. Boston Daily Advertiser, 25 September 1863; Lowell (Mass.) Daily Citizen and News, 14 December 1863; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig and Courier, 15 December 1863; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 9:217–18. 30. Douglass correctly quotes Lincoln in the president’s letter to Grant dated 30 April 1864. The full quotation reads: “Not expecting to see you again before the Spring campaign opens, I wish to express, in this way, my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it.” Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 591–92. 31. Douglass correctly cites this particular quotation from Grant’s inaugural address. But Grant delivered it on 4 March 1869, not in 1867, as Douglass suggests. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 19:142. 32. On 7 April 1869, Grant addressed Congress on the issue of restoring former Confederate states to the Union. He argued that any state must “be willing to become peaceful and orderly communities, and to adopt and maintain such constitutions and laws as will effectually secure the civil and political rights of all persons within their borders” before rejoining the Union. Grant then mentioned the state conventions of Virginia and Mississippi, which had met recently to adopt constitutions in preparation for state elections and eventual restoration to the United States. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 19:163–64.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 183

9/1/21 4:16 PM

184

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

33. Grant delivered his annual message to Congress on 6 December 1869. Douglass uses three excerpts from this address. He correctly cites the first two quotations, and the third is only slightly different, according to the speech published in Grant’s scholarly papers edited by John Y. Simon. The beginning of the original quotation reads, “First among these is strict integrity in fulfilling all our obligations. Second; is to secure protection to the person and property of the citizen of the United States.” The remainder of the passage, which Douglass cites, is correct. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 20:18, 20, 37. 34. On 30 March 1870, President Grant delivered a speech to Congress in support of the Fifteenth Amendment. Overall, Douglass correctly cites portions of Grant’s address, with only some minor differences. Douglass begins to quote Grant with the sentence that starts “Institutions like ours” and continues for two paragraphs, ending with Grant’s call to the people to ensure that political rights are exercised properly, making everyone’s “share in the Government a blessing, and not a danger.” Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 20:130–32. 35. In his 30 March 1870 speech to Congress, Grant referred to and quoted George Washington. Douglass includes Grant’s quotation of Washington in his own citation of Grant’s address. The sentence “In his first annual message to Congress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message” is part of Grant’s speech as he refers to Washington’s two annual messages, and is not Douglass referring to any annual speeches given by Grant. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 20:130–32. 36. Douglass is referring to Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, ambassador to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and James Milton Turner, ambassador to Liberia. James Milton Turner (1840–1915) was born a slave in St. Louis County, Missouri, to John Turner, a free farrier, and Hannah Turner, a slave of Aaron and Theodosia Young. In 1844, Turner and his mother were freed. In the mid-1850s, his parents sent him to preparatory school at Oberlin College. He left after two years, returning to Missouri and working as a porter until the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, he served as a body servant to a Union officer, Colonel Madison Miller. In 1865, he became a member of the Missouri Equal Rights League and served as the organization’s secretary. Turner taught at a black school from 1868 to 1869 and then worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau as an agent of the state department of education for seven months. In March 1871, President Grant appointed Turner U.S. minister resident and consul general in Liberia. He served as minister until 1878. Upon returning to America, he established the Colored Emigration Aid Association in an effort to help establish homes for blacks who had fled the South during Reconstruction. He also represented the black former slaves of the Cherokee Indians and succeeded in getting Congress to pass the Cherokee Freedmen’s Act in 1888, which allotted money to the freedmen. Following many years as a public servant, Turner became disillusioned with the Republican party and politics in general, and his work as a black leader diminished. Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith, Cornel West, eds., Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 5 vols. (New York, 1996), 1:289; DAB, 19:66–67; ANB (online). 37. Grant did appoint some blacks as customs collectors and revenue assessors during his administration. In 1869, Edwin Belcher, representing the third district of Georgia, served as the first black assessor of internal revenue appointed by Grant. That same year, Grant also appointed Charles Edmund Nash as inspector of customs in New Orleans. James Thomas Rapier was then appointed assessor of internal revenue for the Second District in Alabama in 1871. These men represent a few of the better-known blacks who occupied these lucrative patronage positions. J. Clay Smith, Jr., Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844–1944 (Philadelphia, 1993), 195; Stephen Middleton, ed., Black Congressmen during Reconstruction (Westport, Conn., 2002), 267, 310; Richard Bailey, Neither Carpetbaggers Nor Scalawags: Black Officeholders During the Reconstruction of Alabama, 1867–1878 (1991; Montgomery, Ala., 2010), 213. 38. During Grant’s administration, African Americans held all levels of federal positions, as Douglass suggests. In Washington, D.C., blacks occupied offices such as clerks, postmasters, justices of the peace, and census marshals. For example, Grant appointed John A. Gray, who was a

Y7870-Douglass.indb 184

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

185

caterer and restaurant owner, to the District’s governor council in 1871. Pliny Locke served as the first black appointee to a civil service job, holding clerkships at the Freedmen’s Bureau (1871–72) and the Treasury Department (1872–76). Also serving in the Treasury Department, John H. Smythe was appointed as a revenue agent in 1872. John M. Langston, one of the most prominent spokesmen for the Republican party after the Civil War, worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau as the general inspector. Grant also appointed him to the Board of Health of the District of Columbia in 1871, and he served until 1877. Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction (New York, 1993), 90, 93, 127–28, 135, 201; Middleton, Black Congressmen during Reconstruction, 126. 39. In 1870, James Webster Smith became the first black cadet appointed to the U.S. Military Academy. That same year, three other young black men were appointed but denied admittance: two based on medical reasons and a third, Michael Howard, for failing his entrance examination. While Douglass seems to imply that Grant directly appointed blacks to West Point, it is more likely that he simply approved the nominations made by congressmen. In fact, Grant appeared somewhat indifferent toward the issue of blacks attending the academy. For example, when white cadets harassed Smith, the Northern philanthropist David Clark urged the president to support Smith and promote him as an example of racial equality in society. According to the historians William S. McFeely and Eric Foner, Grant ignored Clark’s advice and did not offer Smith protection from his tormentors. Although Smith was the first black admitted to West Point, the first black to graduate was Henry O. Flipper in 1877. Between 1870 and 1889, only twenty-three blacks were nominated to attend the U.S. Military Academy. Out of the twelve that were admitted, only three graduated: Henry O. Flipper in 1877, John H. Alexander in 1887, and Charles Young in 1889. George L. Andrews, “West Point and the Colored Cadets,” International Review, 9:477–98 (November 1880); Stephen E. Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point (Baltimore, 1966), 232–33; Theodore J. Crackel, West Point: A Bicentennial History (Lawrence, Kans., 2002), 115, 145; McFeely, Grant, 356, 375–79; Foner, Reconstruction, 531. 40. During Grant’s two administrations, Douglass frequented Washington, D.C., eventually moving there in 1870. He served as editor of the New National Era, a newspaper based in the nation’s capital, from 1870 to 1874. During his first term, Grant created a commission to inquire for the annexation of Santo Domingo to the United States, and in 1871 he appointed Douglass to serve as its assistant secretary. Douglass returned from the Caribbean in late March 1871, and Grant appointed him to a two-year term on the Territorial Government’s legislative council the following month. This governmental body acted as the legislature for Washington, D.C. Although he resigned less than two months later, Douglass characterized his appointment as an example of Grant’s “high sense of justice, fairness, and impartiality.” During this time, the lives of Grant and Douglass intersected frequently, and there were several other occasions when the two men might have met. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:486, 496, 500, 502–03, 505; John Muller, Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia (Charleston, S.C., 2012), 37–38, 42–45; Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and Santo Domingo,” 390–94, 397. 41. During his childhood, many who knew Grant characterized him as reserved and “reluctant to draw attention to himself.” This restrained manner continued into adulthood, and as he gained popularity, his reputation as a man of few words became well known. Although some mistook his reservation for coldness, others admired his brevity. President Lincoln dealt with enough outspoken, immodest Union generals to appreciate Grant’s direct and simple nature. Grant disliked public speaking, yet everywhere he went after the war, people gathered around him, often clamoring for him to make a few remarks. Many citizens could relate to his ordinary demeanor and his straightforwardness, which contributed to his popularity as president. As the historian Jean Edward Smith concluded, the “answer to the riddle of Grant’s success, it was decided, lay in his unpretentious but resolute demeanor, his shy but manly bearing.” McFeely, Grant, 154–55, 234; Smith, Grant, 288–91, 295, 300; Longacre, General Ulysses S. Grant, 11–12.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 185

9/1/21 4:16 PM

186

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

42. President Grant invited members of the Santo Domingo Commission to dine with him at the White House upon their return to Washington, D.C., in March 1871. But Douglass was not extended an invitation, much to the chagrin of black leaders, equal rights advocates, and anti-Grant forces. Neither the president nor Douglass immediately addressed the matter publicly. During the presidential election the following year, Horace Greeley and his supporters used this incident to prove Grant’s hypocrisy on the issue of equal rights. This letter, written by Douglass over a year after the dinner, was his first public response to the incident. He not only attempted to satisfy those who criticized him for remaining silent on the issue, but also used this platform to reiterate his support for Grant’s reelection, despite any injury he might have felt for being excluded from the commissioners’ dinner. Concord (N.H.) Independent Statesman, 6 June 1872; Walter Gaston Shotwell, Life of Charles Sumner (New York, 1910), 675; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 277; Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and Santo Domingo,” 62:394. 43. General Alexander Tate was the Haitian minister to the United States during Grant’s administration. Tate arrived in Washington, D.C., in November 1869. He attended the New Year’s Day reception on 1 January 1870 at the White House and was cordially welcomed by Grant, who displayed no racial animosity toward the black diplomat. According to the New York Tribune, this was not Tate’s first trip to the United States. He had lived in the country for several months during the start of the Civil War, residing for a time in Washington, D.C. Under the Haitian president Sylvain Salnave, he served as secretary of foreign affairs and finances before being appointed minister to the United States. Following both the overthrow of the Haitian government and Salnave’s execution on 15 January 1870, Tate resigned and remained in the United States. New York Tribune, 22 November 1869; Washington Evening Star, 22 November 1869; Rayford W. Logan, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776–1891 (1941; Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 335–37; McFeely, Grant, 337. 44. Ely Samuel Parker (1828–95) was born on the Tonawanda Reservation in New York State to the Seneca chief William Parker and Elizabeth (Johnson) Parker. Parker was educated at a Baptist mission school during his early childhood years, Yates Academy in Orleans County, and, eventually, Cayuga Academy in Aurora, New York. Prevented from practicing law because he was an Indian, Parker studied civil engineering, and in 1857 he was appointed by the Treasury Department as superintendent in Galena, Illinois, to supervise the construction of two buildings. It was in Galena in 1860 that Parker met Ulysses S. Grant and formed a long-lasting friendship. In 1861, Parker was replaced as superintendent, and he spent the next two years on the Tonawanda Reservation, despite his unceasing efforts to join the Union Army. Finally, in 1863, Parker was commissioned an assistant adjutant general and joined General Grant’s staff in Vicksburg, Mississippi, becoming Grant’s personal secretary within a year. Present during Lee’s surrender to Grant, Parker wrote the official copy of the terms of surrender. Following the war, Parker served on a commission between the U.S. government and southwestern Indian tribes that had supported the Confederate Army. In 1869, when Grant became president, Parker was appointed U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American to hold that office. William H. Armstrong, Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union General and Seneca Chief (Syracuse, N.Y., 1978); ANB (online). 45. Benjamin Franklin Wade. 46. Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) was born in Homer, New York, to Horace White, a wealthy businessman and banker, and Clara Dickson White. By the age of twenty-five, White had earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Yale College, studied in France and Germany, and served as a translator for Thomas Seymour, the U.S. minister to Russia. From 1857 to 1863, White held a position as professor of history and rhetoric at the University of Michigan, where he was well known for his exuberance, unconventional teaching methods, and abolitionist views. Although he did not serve in the Civil War, White drilled students who were preparing to enlist and traveled to England to dissuade the British from supporting the South. Upon his return to the United States, White was elected to the New York state senate, where he served from 1864 to 1867. In 1865, along with fellow senator Ezra Cornell, White founded Cornell University and became its first president, serving

Y7870-Douglass.indb 186

9/1/21 4:16 PM

U.S. GRANT AND THE COLORED PEOPLE

187

from 1868 to 1885. White also had a lengthy diplomatic career, serving as U.S. minister to Germany (1879–81), U.S. minister to Russia (1892–94), and U.S. ambassador to Germany (1897–1902). Additionally, White served as the head of the U.S. delegation at The Hague International Peace Conference in 1899 before finally retiring in 1902. Altschuler, Andrew D. White; ANB (online). 47. Allan A. Burton (1820–78) was born in Garrard County, Kentucky, to Robert A. Burton and Sallie (Williams) Burton. At age nineteen, Burton enrolled in Transylvania University in Lexington, where he studied law. In 1842, Burton was admitted to the bar and served as a judge in Garrard County, in several adjoining counties, and on the Kentucky Court of Appeals for twenty years. Although raised in a proslavery family, Burton was antislavery and served as a Kentucky delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1860, where Lincoln was nominated for president. From 1861 to 1868, Burton served as the U.S. minister resident in Bogota, Colombia, and in 1871, under President Grant, Burton was appointed to the U.S. Commission to Santo Domingo, serving as secretary and interpreter. As secretary, he compiled a report of the commission for the U.S. government. Upon his return to the United States, Burton returned to the practice of law in Lancaster, Kentucky. The History of Livingston County, Illinois (Chicago, 1878), 763–65. 48. The Republican National Convention was held on 5 June 1872 in Philadelphia. Despite Grant’s sustained popularity, a group of Republicans was willing to run against the president, favoring a limited government led by the intellectually well bred. Although these men, discouraged by the corruption and unabated Southern resistance to Reconstruction under the Grant administration, bolted to form the Liberal Republican party, the delegates at the national convention unanimously nominated Grant as the Republican presidential candidate. Henry Wilson, a senator from Massachusetts, replaced Schuyler Colfax as the president’s running mate. Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, 7 June 1872; McFeely, Grant, 380–83; Smith, Grant, 547–48, 549n, 550n. 49. Elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts by a coalition of Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, and Democrats in 1855, Henry Wilson (1812–75) strongly advocated the abolition of slavery as a political goal. In 1862, he introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and as a Radical Republican, he was one of the strongest voices denouncing the Black Codes enacted under Presidential Reconstruction. In 1865, he introduced a bill aimed at nullifying all laws and ordinances discriminating against freedmen and former slaves. Wilson replaced Schuyler Colfax as vice president during Ulysses S. Grant’s second term, but died in office. Ernest McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical (London, 1971), 94–95, 197–98. 50. Horace Greeley secured the presidential nomination of the Liberal Republican party on 1  May 1872 in Cincinnati, with Governor B. Gratz Brown of Missouri running second. The liberals had garnered Greeley’s support by eliminating the free-trade plank from their platform. As the campaign progressed, Greeley’s stump speeches hinged on what he called a “New Departure,” and throughout the campaign, he focused on amnesty and sectional reconciliation. On 9 July, the Democratic National Convention adopted the liberal platform, along with Greeley’s nomination. Republican attacks on Greeley were swift and harsh, and Douglass, in columns in his New National Era, denounced him as having never been a genuine opponent of slavery. Greeley’s own words were used against him, as the Tribune’s editor had for years attacked Democrats and others with whom he was now ostensibly united. Late in the campaign, Greeley’s wife, Molly, succumbed to dropsy (edema) and other maladies, but by then Greeley had already witnessed Republican victories in North Carolina, Maine, Vermont, and the “October states,” Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Greeley and the liberals carried only six states, all along on the border or in the South. Greeley died before the Electoral College met. James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield, 2 vols. (Norwich, Conn., 1884–86), 2:520–36; Van Deusen, Horace Greeley, 400–420; Earle Dudley Ross, The Liberal Republican Movement (1919; New York, 1967), 36, 56–59, 79, 92–94, 140, 157–60, 183. 51. James Rood Doolittle (1815–97) was born in Hampton, New York, and graduated from Geneva (Hobart) College in 1834. After practicing law in western New York for thirteen years, he moved to Racine, Wisconsin, in 1851. Originally a Democrat with free-soil principles, Doolittle joined the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 187

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK HERALD

188

Republican party in 1856 and was elected to the U.S. Senate the following year. Although a supporter of a vigorous military effort in the Civil War, he had favored gradual emancipation and colonization before the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. When he refused to follow the Wisconsin legislature’s instructions to support the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, that body called on him to resign. Doolittle voted for acquittal in Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial. Aligning himself with the Democrats after 1868, he lost his Senate seat and subsequent races for governor and the U.S. House of Representatives. Doolittle presided over the 1872 Democratic National Convention, which endorsed the Liberal Republicans’ nomination of Horace Greeley for president. LaWanda C. Fenlason Cox and John Henry Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865–1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (1963; New York, 1976), 215–16, 224, 227; Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1930; New York, 1958), 123–31; ACAB, 2:201–02; DAB, 5:274–75. 52. On 9 May 1872, Douglass presided over a meeting on the subject of civil rights in Washington, D.C. Previously, members of a committee of invitation—Edward S. Atkinson, Frederick G. Barbadoes, George T. Downing, Frederick Douglass, Jr., and John W. Le Barnes—had invited President Grant to attend the meeting. Douglass quotes the president’s response to that invitation. The letter published in Grant’s scholarly papers edited by John Y. Simon differs only slightly from Douglass’s reproduction, which includes the words “this evening” following the phrase “engagement will detain me at the Executive Mansion.” Milwaukee (Wisc.) Sentinel, 10 May 1872; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig and Courier, 10 May 1872; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 23:99.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK HERALD (1874) U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Report, 2 April 1880, U.S. Congress, 46th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report 440 (Serial 1895), Appendix, 42–44.

Douglass’s connection to the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, popularly known as the Freedman’s Bank, was one of the most disappointing episodes of his post–Civil War public career. The bank had been authorized by Congress in March 1865 to meet the financial needs of the emancipated slaves and grew to operate thirty-seven branches in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The national economic panic in 1873 revealed a major financial weakness in the Freedman’s Bank, much of it a result of incompetent and corrupt management. In mid-March 1874, a reorganized board of trustees appointed Douglass the bank’s president in hope of restoring public confidence in its solvency. A month later, Douglass issued the following public letter to the press to deny newspaper reports that the bank’s main office in Washington had closed its doors because it lacked currency. He asked for the “patience” of the bank’s depositors while its affairs were being stabilized. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:313–18;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 188

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK HERALD

188

Republican party in 1856 and was elected to the U.S. Senate the following year. Although a supporter of a vigorous military effort in the Civil War, he had favored gradual emancipation and colonization before the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. When he refused to follow the Wisconsin legislature’s instructions to support the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, that body called on him to resign. Doolittle voted for acquittal in Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial. Aligning himself with the Democrats after 1868, he lost his Senate seat and subsequent races for governor and the U.S. House of Representatives. Doolittle presided over the 1872 Democratic National Convention, which endorsed the Liberal Republicans’ nomination of Horace Greeley for president. LaWanda C. Fenlason Cox and John Henry Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865–1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (1963; New York, 1976), 215–16, 224, 227; Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1930; New York, 1958), 123–31; ACAB, 2:201–02; DAB, 5:274–75. 52. On 9 May 1872, Douglass presided over a meeting on the subject of civil rights in Washington, D.C. Previously, members of a committee of invitation—Edward S. Atkinson, Frederick G. Barbadoes, George T. Downing, Frederick Douglass, Jr., and John W. Le Barnes—had invited President Grant to attend the meeting. Douglass quotes the president’s response to that invitation. The letter published in Grant’s scholarly papers edited by John Y. Simon differs only slightly from Douglass’s reproduction, which includes the words “this evening” following the phrase “engagement will detain me at the Executive Mansion.” Milwaukee (Wisc.) Sentinel, 10 May 1872; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig and Courier, 10 May 1872; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 23:99.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK HERALD (1874) U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Report, 2 April 1880, U.S. Congress, 46th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report 440 (Serial 1895), Appendix, 42–44.

Douglass’s connection to the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, popularly known as the Freedman’s Bank, was one of the most disappointing episodes of his post–Civil War public career. The bank had been authorized by Congress in March 1865 to meet the financial needs of the emancipated slaves and grew to operate thirty-seven branches in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The national economic panic in 1873 revealed a major financial weakness in the Freedman’s Bank, much of it a result of incompetent and corrupt management. In mid-March 1874, a reorganized board of trustees appointed Douglass the bank’s president in hope of restoring public confidence in its solvency. A month later, Douglass issued the following public letter to the press to deny newspaper reports that the bank’s main office in Washington had closed its doors because it lacked currency. He asked for the “patience” of the bank’s depositors while its affairs were being stabilized. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:313–18;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 188

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK HERALD

189

Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 37–39, 174–75, 183–99, 211–13.

Washington, April 29, 1874.

To the Editor of the New York Herald:1 The reference in the Herald of Tuesday to the present condition of the Freedman’s Bank was not only just but considerate and generous, and displays your well-known love of fair play.2 While that reference told the simple truth about the bank, there was nothing in it to produce distrust and start a run upon its deposits. Of course no banking institution in the land can well afford to invite runs upon its deposits, and it is not generous to excite such runs without good and almost irresistible necessity. Within the last eighteen months the Freedman’s Bank, by reason of suspicions set afloat through the press and otherwise, has suffered three heavy runs upon its deposits.3 The last one of these, which occurred during the late financial panic, required half a million dollars to carry the bank safely through it, and the fact that it was able to survive a shock which brought other long-standing and long-trusted institutions to the ground may just now be stated, without boasting, in its favor. The Freedman’s Bank, as its name imports, was especially established to encourage and assist the freedmen to save and increase their hard-earned money and thus to help them in the race to knowledge and higher civilization. This institution has been in existence less than ten years, and during that time it has held and handled with profit to its depositors not less than $25,000,000. The bank now comes before the public, after the severest valuation of its property, rating articles at their lowest cash value in these dull times, with its liabilities $217,000 in excess of its assets. Every business man will see at once that with assets amounting, as they do, to more than $3,000,000, if only tolerably well managed and let well alone, a few months only would be required to enable it to overcome this small excess of liabilities and pay all its depositors a small amount of interest.4 My connection with the Freedman’s Bank as its president is of very recent date.5 I accepted the position with the honest purpose to forward, as well as I might, the beneficent objects had in view by its founders, to watch and guard the hard earnings of my people, and to see that those  earnings shall be kept to their profit, if possible, but kept safely, at any rate.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 189

9/1/21 4:16 PM

190

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK HERALD

In regard to the condition of the branches, I sent last night through the Associated Press6 all over the Southern States a quieting telegram,7 assuring our depositors that, in the opinion of the officers of the bank, if the depositors will exercise only a reasonable degree of patience, we shall be able to pay dollar for dollar; and this is my opinion now. Respectfully yours, FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. The owner and publisher of the New York Herald in 1874 was James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (1841–1898), who had assumed that post from his father, the newspaper’s founder, in 1866. A prototypical playboy and yachtsman, the younger Bennett turned much of the paper’s editorial direction over to managing editor Thomas B. Connery. Don Carlos Seitz, The James Gordon Bennetts, Father and Son, Proprietors of the New York Herald (Indianapolis, Ind., 1928), 217–19, 239, 251–53, 352; DAB, 2:199–202. 2. Douglass alludes to a report in the 28 April 1874 issue of the New York Herald claiming that the Washington, D.C., branch of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company had closed its doors the previous day to avoid a run by its depositors. An accompanying story indicated that business was conducted as usual on that day at the bank’s branch office in New York City. Douglass expresses gratitude for the comment in the first story in the Herald that “responsibility for the conduct of that business does not rest with the present managers, who have been in office but four weeks.” The Herald instead blamed the comptroller of the currency’s office for concealing evidence of mismanagement from congressional investigators. 3. The Freedman’s Bank had experienced runs following the publication of the March 1873 report of the comptroller of the currency and during the widespread financial panic sparked by the failure of the firm of Jay Cooke and Company the next September. Douglass is probably referring to the response to the comptroller’s report of March 1874. When released in April, it disclosed a deficit of $217,866.15, which many viewed as evidence of fraud and mismanagement. Panic among depositors ensued, and runs on the Freedman’s Bank induced some branches to require sixty days’ notice before funds could be withdrawn. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 187–91; Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 87. 4. Douglass’s optimistic assessment proved unfounded. The federal government closed the Freedman’s Bank and liquidated its resources to repay depositors, a process that took nearly a decade to complete. The government was able to return only 62 percent of the depositors’ investments. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 211–15. 5. The trustees elected Douglass to the presidency of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company on 14 March 1874. While he had intended to assume his duties on 1 April, he was apparently at his desk on 30 March. He held this position until the bank’s official demise on 2 July 1874. Douglass to Henry Highland Garnet, 19 March 1874, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 730, FD Papers, DLC; Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 85–86; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 183. 6. Founded in 1846, the Associated Press served as a nonprofit news cooperative for the sharing of reports among New York City’s leading newspapers. The telegraph permitted stories to be sent almost instantaneously to newspapers. Faced with regional rivals, the AP grew into a national organization during the Civil War. Douglass’s telegram to the AP allowed him to reach a wide readership in order to quell worries regarding the financial solvency of the Freedman’s Bank. Schwarzlose, Nation’s Newsbrokers, 2:14–17, 59–62. 7. The New York Herald, Tribune, and Times, along with other major newspapers, published stories on Tuesday, 28 April 1874, and the following day, commenting on the comptroller of the cur-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 190

9/1/21 4:16 PM

GEN. O. O. HOWARD AGAIN ACQUITTED

191

rency’s pessimistic assessment of the financial health of the Freedman’s Bank. The Times was the most critical, calling the bank’s problems “deeply disgraceful to its managers” and “almost criminal.” The story was outweighed, however, by reports of the burial services for Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, which dominated most of those newspapers’ columns. New York Herald, 28 April 1874; New York Tribune, 28 April 1874; New York Times, 28, 29 April 1874.

GEN. O. O. HOWARD AGAIN ACQUITTED (1874) Chicago Advance, 4 June 1874.

In March 1874, Major General Oliver Otis Howard faced a court-martial, charged with misappropriation of funds intended for black soldiers under his command during the Civil War, as well as with corruption throughout his appointment as commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Although the statute of limitations protected Howard, he requested that the investigation take place in order to clear his name. The military court, presided over by General Philip Sheridan, acquitted Howard of all charges. In the pages of the Chicago Advance, Douglass defended Howard, known as the “Christian General” because of his religious piety, and praised him for his contributions to the advancement of the African American race. Published from 1867 to 1917, the Advance was an evangelical newspaper that claimed to be the “leading organ of the Congregationalists of the West.” C .A. Cook and Co’s United States Newspaper Directory (Chicago, 1876), 24.

However trite the saying, it is a normal fact that truly great men encounter great trials. They are, however, very frequently, more indebted to the relentless persecutions of their envious and malignant enemies, than to the kind, but less active devotion of their friends. Byron might have lavished his wayward fancies in the monotonous obscurity of a lordly indolence, and passed into utter oblivion, but for the venomous assaults upon him of the “British Bards and Scotch Reviewers.”1 The brutal assault of Brooks2 upon Sumner3 in the Senate was the culminating deed of violence by which that statesman’s life became forever dedicated to the cause of human freedom. That act did not perhaps rankle in the heart of Sumner with half the power that it pervaded the hearts of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 191

9/1/21 4:16 PM

GEN. O. O. HOWARD AGAIN ACQUITTED

191

rency’s pessimistic assessment of the financial health of the Freedman’s Bank. The Times was the most critical, calling the bank’s problems “deeply disgraceful to its managers” and “almost criminal.” The story was outweighed, however, by reports of the burial services for Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, which dominated most of those newspapers’ columns. New York Herald, 28 April 1874; New York Tribune, 28 April 1874; New York Times, 28, 29 April 1874.

GEN. O. O. HOWARD AGAIN ACQUITTED (1874) Chicago Advance, 4 June 1874.

In March 1874, Major General Oliver Otis Howard faced a court-martial, charged with misappropriation of funds intended for black soldiers under his command during the Civil War, as well as with corruption throughout his appointment as commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Although the statute of limitations protected Howard, he requested that the investigation take place in order to clear his name. The military court, presided over by General Philip Sheridan, acquitted Howard of all charges. In the pages of the Chicago Advance, Douglass defended Howard, known as the “Christian General” because of his religious piety, and praised him for his contributions to the advancement of the African American race. Published from 1867 to 1917, the Advance was an evangelical newspaper that claimed to be the “leading organ of the Congregationalists of the West.” C .A. Cook and Co’s United States Newspaper Directory (Chicago, 1876), 24.

However trite the saying, it is a normal fact that truly great men encounter great trials. They are, however, very frequently, more indebted to the relentless persecutions of their envious and malignant enemies, than to the kind, but less active devotion of their friends. Byron might have lavished his wayward fancies in the monotonous obscurity of a lordly indolence, and passed into utter oblivion, but for the venomous assaults upon him of the “British Bards and Scotch Reviewers.”1 The brutal assault of Brooks2 upon Sumner3 in the Senate was the culminating deed of violence by which that statesman’s life became forever dedicated to the cause of human freedom. That act did not perhaps rankle in the heart of Sumner with half the power that it pervaded the hearts of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 191

9/1/21 4:16 PM

192

GEN. O. O. HOWARD AGAIN ACQUITTED

others, but it rendered him, by necessity if not by choice, a life-long leader against the cohorts of slavery. He was then and there in the eyes of the nation consecrated with his own blood, in the face of the slave-holding power and by that power itself, in the very Temple where it had for half a century held almost irresponsible supremacy. A free-soil Democrat exclaimed when that deed was done, “Henceforth slavery is doomed. Freedom needs no better battle flag than Sumner’s bloody shirt!”4 Men are sometimes forced to become the very embodiment of principles they at first but faintly advocate, and, if sincere, all efforts to crush such men, if their motives be but pure, only tend to exalt them. Gen. O. O. Howard5 has become as odious to the black man’s enemies, as was Charles Sumner and John Brown,6 and, like those men, the more he is reviled, traduced and persecuted for the freedman’s sake, the more he grapples their growing millions to his heart—the more he resembles the embodiment of the ideal they would worship. The more he is accused and tried, the more he will appear like good gold refined and purified by fire. He has now been thrice accused, and thrice acquitted, of the most odious accusations, by three dissimilar tribunals—acquitted because he could not justly be convicted. The most blood-hound sagacity and lynx-eyed7 scrutiny, have labored to ferret out some single charge with which to brand his name with infamy, or to discover even some technical error to justify a censure, but all efforts were in vain; even the rigid, exacting and summary trial by courtmartial, has failed to find a single flaw in all the long years of service of this gallant and intrepid friend of man. The Statute of Limitation, with which the wisdom of the law invariably protects the innocent from being harassed with unjust charges for acts which might at the time have been justified, or their criminality disproved, was unselfishly—and, as some thought, rashly—waived by Gen. Howard, to allow the whole record of his official life to undergo the most thorough scrutiny. Conscious of his own innocence, and confident of the over-ruling justice of a divine Providence, he did not fear the ordeal, nor trust in vain; but with the same undaunted faith that bore him through the battles of the war—wounded, scarred and maimed, it is true, but still triumphant—he has met and conquered all his more covert and less manly opponents, in all the dark star-chamber trials8 and entangling civil and military inquisitions they have been able to institute against him. Every assault upon his integrity has recoiled upon his assailants and resulted to his advantage; and, by the very efforts to drive him from his

Y7870-Douglass.indb 192

9/1/21 4:16 PM

GEN. O. O. HOWARD AGAIN ACQUITTED

193

holy mission, he has become more and more devotedly dedicated to the cause of freedom and the amelioration of mankind than ever could have been possible, had no such infamous and malicious machinations have been perpetrated against him. He has become great, because he has labored sincerely to do good, and when men strike against the good, they strike against the Author of all goodness, and the blow sooner or later recoils upon themselves. Gen. Howard’s name has, by the industry of his opponents, been heralded over every section of the country, by telegraph, by press, by letter, and by every gossiping device that malice could invent to blast his fame and impair his power; but, instead of blasting the one or lessening the other, they have produced the very opposite result; they have blazoned forth and impressed upon the whole American people a just conviction of the glowing virtues of a modest and meritorious man, of whom they would else have remained in comparative ignorance. They have concentrated attention upon the man, of whom they would else have remained in comparative ignorance. They have concentrated attention upon the man, and the more the people hear and see, the more they admire, until now his enemies begin to retract and feign to sympathize with him and to deprecate his persecution as unwise, if not unjust. Oh, yes, gentlemen, it is “unwise”; nay, more than unwise, it is madness thus to kick against the pricks. But whom the gods determine to destroy they first make mad,9 and just such madness has been manifested by the advocates of oppression ever since the first assault upon Sumner in the Senate. Gen. Howard’s brother officers, with all their West Point proclivities of pride and caste, could not close their eyes to his glorious record upon the tented field, nor forget their own self-respect so much as to heed the groundless clamor of unworthy calumniators whose envy and jealousy towards the man, and hatred toward the race he dared to befriend, had  instigated the investigation in the base hope to disparage him and to injure them. The court was composed of men of integrity—above suspicion—of men who, though they were not his special friends, were incapable of being swayed by fear, or won by favor to swerve from the most scrupulous regard to right and duty. They acquitted him upon every charge. But had he been convicted, had he been stricken down and overwhelmed with the floods of defamation poured upon him—had the foul breath of slander for a time stifled justice and triumphed over his integrity—we still believe that at length the truth would prevail over falsehood, and greater good

Y7870-Douglass.indb 193

9/1/21 4:16 PM

194

GEN. O. O. HOWARD AGAIN ACQUITTED

would inure both to him, and the cause he has so faithfully served. When Gen. O. O. Howard was selected by President Lincoln10 —not at the General’s desire, but from the President’s own knowledge of the man—“to stand between the freedman and his former masters,” he became the inevitable victim of the numberless persecutions that his envious competitors, as well as the malignant enemies of himself and the race, could devise for his overthrow. Though he had not sought, he did not shrink from the duties of the new position any more than he had shrunk from those perhaps less arduous and less perilous in the open field, where his health had been impaired, his right-arm lopped off, and his life so frequently endangered, but where his character, more dear than either, had not been assailed. He has conquered greatness upon the field for freedom; he has achieved greatness in council, and by devotion to good works in behalf of the black man, the Indian, and the unfortunate of his own color. He has had greatness thrust upon him11 in heaps of intended infamy which the alchemy of heaven has transformed into greatness and glory. He has been so constantly driven into the hearts and affections of the people he has served—he has become so inseparably connected with so many schemes for their amelioration, he has been so often calumniated for the zeal he has manifested for their welfare, and persecuted because of his success in their behalf—that they feel, as do all who sympathize with them, that General Howard, like Sumner, Brown, and Lincoln, must be a marked instrument in the hands of Providence, and destined for some still nobler and more exalted mission in the interests of mankind yet undeveloped. WASHINGTON. 1. Lord Byron’s first poetry collection, Fugitive Pieces, was privately printed in 1806 and publicly published as Hours of Idleness the following year. The latter received scathing reviews that deemed it immature and self-indulgent. In 1809, Byron responded with British Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a satire mocking his critics, including William Wordsworth and most of the British literary establishment. Byron then departed on a two-year tour of Continental Europe, during which he composed his first masterpiece, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Leslie A. Marchand, Byron: A Biography, 3 vols. (New York, 1957), 1:133–34, 142, 166–72. 2. Preston Smith Brooks (1819–57) was born in Edgefield County, South Carolina. Brooks was a member of one of the most prominent slaveholding families in South Carolina’s Upcountry, and he was privately educated. In 1839, he was expelled from the College of South Carolina for unruly behavior, without receiving a degree. After being wounded in a duel with Louis Wigfall in 1840, Brooks walked with a cane for the rest of his life. In 1844, he was elected to a single term in the South Carolina House of Representatives. He was admitted to the bar in 1846 in Edgefield County, and in 1853 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat. On 22 May 1856, while serving his second term in Congress, Brooks assaulted Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane on the floor of the Senate. The beating was motivated by Brooks’s outrage over Sumner’s 19 and 20 May 1856 speech, “The Crime Against Kansas,” which had included a personal attack on Brooks’s cousin,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 194

9/1/21 4:16 PM

GEN. O. O. HOWARD AGAIN ACQUITTED

195

Senator Andrew P. Butler. Although Sumner barely survived the caning, members of the House of Representatives were unable to muster the two-thirds majority required to expel a sitting member of Congress. Nonetheless, Brooks resigned his seat in July 1856. Viewed as a hero in his home state, however, he was promptly elected to fill the vacancy created by his own resignation. Brooks remained a member of Congress until his death in January 1857. Donald, Sumner and the Civil War, 282–97; Heidler and Heidler, Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, 1:288–89; DAB, 3:88; ANB (online). 3. Charles Sumner. 4. Although the author of this statement cannot be identified, the statement refers to the caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks, which caused the South Carolina congressman to be reviled in the North and lionized in the South. Northerners considered Brooks’s assault an attack on free speech, while Southerners considered it a just punishment for Sumner’s speech. The image of Sumner’s bloody shirt was used to represent the danger posed by the slave power of the South. Southerners believed that Sumner’s bloody shirt was physically used to mock them and their support of slavery, but Northerners were merely using it as a metaphor for their disgust with Southern actions. Eric Walther, The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s (Lanham, Md., 2004), 97–101; Manisha Sinha, “The Caning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War,” Journal of the Early Republic, 23:233–262 (Summer 2003); Williamjames Hull Hoffer, The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism, and the Origins of the Civil War (Baltimore, 2010), 1–11. 5. General Oliver Otis Howard (1830–1909) was born to a farming family in Leeds, Maine. A well-educated man, Howard received a degree from Bowdoin College and then attended the U.S. Military Academy, graduating fourth in his class in 1854. Before the Civil War, Howard became deeply religious, converting to evangelical Christianity during his service in the Third Seminole War in 1857. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War, but his combat record was mixed. While he won the Medal of Honor for heroism and lost an arm during the Battle of Fair Oaks, his command of the Eleventh Corps of the Army of the Potomac was problematic at best. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, his refusal to follow orders led to the total collapse of his command, and at Gettysburg the Eleventh Corps was once again badly defeated, running from the field in panic during the fighting on the first day. Transferred west after Gettysburg, Howard finished the war under General William T. Sherman’s command, serving with distinction and skill. After the Civil War, he was appointed commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, serving from May 1865 to July 1874. While he seems to have genuinely desired to help recently freed slaves—he founded Howard University, which was open to blacks and women, in 1867—his record as commissioner was not impressive. This may have partially been due to naiveté, since he did not publicly recognize that white Southerners would respect the newly won rights of African Americans. Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, Major General, United States Army, 2 vols. (New York, 1908); John A. Carpenter, Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard (New York, 1999); A. J. Langguth, After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace (New York, 2014), 103–15. 6. Born in Torrington, Connecticut, John Brown (1790–1859) grew up in Hudson, Ohio. After receiving a rudimentary education, he unsuccessfully attempted to work as a tanner, a wool dealer, and a farmer. A longtime supporter of emancipation, Brown became more militant in his antislavery activities after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In 1855, Brown followed four of his sons to Kansas, where he became a leader of the armed opposition to the admission of the territory as a slave state. Because of his participation in the massacre of proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek in May 1856, he became a nationally known figure. In 1857, Brown secretly began to recruit men and raise funds for a plan to establish a base in the southern Appalachian Mountains, from which they would raid plantations and free slaves. Brown’s plotting culminated in the unsuccessful attack by a small band on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859. Captured and tried for treason under Virginia law, he was executed on 2 December 1859 and immediately became a martyr to many Northerners. Richard O. Boyer, The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and a History (New York, 1973); Oates, To Purge This Land; ACAB, 1:404–07; NCAB, 2:307–08; DAB, 3:131–34.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 195

9/1/21 4:16 PM

196

FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY

7. “Lynx-eyed” is an earlier version of the term “hawk-eyed” and means “sharp-sighted.” The entire phrase meant “to examine the issue as closely as possible.” 8. Star-chamber trials are trials or hearings that make a mockery of due process by preventing defendants from exercising their lawful rights. The practice began in King Henry VII’s courts and continued into the reigns of his descendants. Such trials were held in a large chamber at the Royal Palace in Westminster that had stars painted on the roof. Here, judgments and punishments were predetermined, and defendants were routinely denied their rights under English law. Thomas Gardner and Terry Anderson, Criminal Evidence: Principles and Cases, 7th ed. (Stamford, Conn., 2009), 153; Daniel L. Vande Zande, “Coercive Power and the Demise of the Star Chamber,” American Journal of Legal History, 50:326 (Philadelphia, 2008). 9. The quotation “But whom the gods determine to destroy, they first make mad” appears in Western thought as early as ancient Greece. While the idea may be derived originally from a line in Antigone by Sophocles—“Evil sometimes seems good to a man whose mind a god leads to destruction”—it appears in several prominent nineteenth-century American works, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Masque of Pandora and William Anderson Scott’s Daniel: A Model for Young Men. William Anderson Scott, Daniel: A Model for Young Men (New York, 1854), 248; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1858), 3:165; Sophocles, The Tragedies of Sophocles in English Prose, a New Literal Translation, trans. John Hall (London, 1844), 227. 10. General Oliver Otis Howard was selected to head the Freedmen’s Bureau by President Abraham Lincoln shortly before the latter’s assassination. Howard was officially appointed by President Andrew Johnson at the recommendation of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Paul Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation (Athens, Ga., 1997), 1; John Cox and LaWanda Cox, “General O. O. Howard and the ‘Misrepresented Bureau,’ ” Journal of Southern History, 19:432 (November 1953). 11. Twelfth Night, sc. 10, lines 1125–26.

TO THE DEPOSITORS OF THE FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY (1874) U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Report, 2 April 1880, U.S. Congress, 46th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report 440 (Serial 1895), Appendix, 44–45.

Soon after taking over the presidency of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company in April 1874, Douglass became aware of the institution’s insolvency. He, along with a new board of trustees, struggled to correct the internal management policies that had contributed to the bank’s financial woes. Douglass also lent the bank $10,000 to help it meet pressing obligations. In mid-June, Congress passed legislation intended to assist those reorganization efforts and restore public confidence in the bank. Shortly after the law was enacted, Douglass issued the following circular to the Freedman’s Bank’s depositors, describing the sources of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 196

9/1/21 4:16 PM

196

FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY

7. “Lynx-eyed” is an earlier version of the term “hawk-eyed” and means “sharp-sighted.” The entire phrase meant “to examine the issue as closely as possible.” 8. Star-chamber trials are trials or hearings that make a mockery of due process by preventing defendants from exercising their lawful rights. The practice began in King Henry VII’s courts and continued into the reigns of his descendants. Such trials were held in a large chamber at the Royal Palace in Westminster that had stars painted on the roof. Here, judgments and punishments were predetermined, and defendants were routinely denied their rights under English law. Thomas Gardner and Terry Anderson, Criminal Evidence: Principles and Cases, 7th ed. (Stamford, Conn., 2009), 153; Daniel L. Vande Zande, “Coercive Power and the Demise of the Star Chamber,” American Journal of Legal History, 50:326 (Philadelphia, 2008). 9. The quotation “But whom the gods determine to destroy, they first make mad” appears in Western thought as early as ancient Greece. While the idea may be derived originally from a line in Antigone by Sophocles—“Evil sometimes seems good to a man whose mind a god leads to destruction”—it appears in several prominent nineteenth-century American works, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Masque of Pandora and William Anderson Scott’s Daniel: A Model for Young Men. William Anderson Scott, Daniel: A Model for Young Men (New York, 1854), 248; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1858), 3:165; Sophocles, The Tragedies of Sophocles in English Prose, a New Literal Translation, trans. John Hall (London, 1844), 227. 10. General Oliver Otis Howard was selected to head the Freedmen’s Bureau by President Abraham Lincoln shortly before the latter’s assassination. Howard was officially appointed by President Andrew Johnson at the recommendation of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Paul Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation (Athens, Ga., 1997), 1; John Cox and LaWanda Cox, “General O. O. Howard and the ‘Misrepresented Bureau,’ ” Journal of Southern History, 19:432 (November 1953). 11. Twelfth Night, sc. 10, lines 1125–26.

TO THE DEPOSITORS OF THE FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY (1874) U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Report, 2 April 1880, U.S. Congress, 46th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report 440 (Serial 1895), Appendix, 44–45.

Soon after taking over the presidency of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company in April 1874, Douglass became aware of the institution’s insolvency. He, along with a new board of trustees, struggled to correct the internal management policies that had contributed to the bank’s financial woes. Douglass also lent the bank $10,000 to help it meet pressing obligations. In mid-June, Congress passed legislation intended to assist those reorganization efforts and restore public confidence in the bank. Shortly after the law was enacted, Douglass issued the following circular to the Freedman’s Bank’s depositors, describing the sources of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 196

9/1/21 4:16 PM

FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY

197

the bank’s difficulties, outlining recent corrective measures, and beseeching them not to withdraw their funds. These efforts fell short, however, and the bank was forced to cease operations the following month. Douglass had to wait for years until federally managed liquidation procedures returned just sixty-two cents on the dollar to depositors. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 183–99, 211–13.

[25 June 1874.]

To the depositors of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company: The recent legislation of Congress, so amending the charter of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company as to place the institution upon a broader and firmer basis and give to its trustees a larger measure of discretion and control of its management,1 may be well enough made the occasion for a brief statement of facts and circumstances which have a bearing upon the legislation in question and upon the future existence and success of the Freedman’s Bank. It is very evident that Congress was animated in its legislation by a generous desire to conserve and strengthen an institution of known usefulness to the people in whose interest it was created. In regard to the condition of this corporation, certain facts have already come to public knowledge through the publication of the report of Mr. Meigs,2 the bank examiner. It is not necessary to disguise or explain away by false processes the facts therein stated. It is known that on the 1st of January, 1874, our liabilities exceeded our assets to the extent of $217,000, and it is also known that nothing has occurred since that time to materially diminish the space between these assets and liabilities, though it is due to state that several considerable loans which were supposed at the time the report was made to be bad, have turned out to be good loans. This deficit, now admitted and never denied by the undersigned, is very easily accounted for, and it may serve a good purpose to state the cause of its existence. First. The managers of the “Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company” have unfortunately endeavored to make the Freedman’s Bank compete with older and better-established institutions of the kind in attracting and securing a large amount of deposits, by holding out the inducement of a larger percentage of interest than was warranted by the earnings of the bank.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 197

9/1/21 4:16 PM

198

FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY

Of course any corporation, nation, or family which spends more than it earns will in due time find its coffers exhausted. Second. Another cause of this deficit of $200,000 is found in the fact that the former managers of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company undertook to do too much work in another direction; impressed as they were with the sense of the many benefits of savings institutions among the freedmen of the South, they were tempted into a sort of banking missionary movement. They started, established, and supported branches of the institution in remote places in the Southern States, and where it was almost impossible that they could become speedily self-sustaining.3 Third. It cannot be doubted that a third cause has in a large measure operated against the success of the Freedman’s Bank, and this cause happens to be one which it is most difficult to deal with,—because it is inherent in the enterprise itself,—and one which no wisdom that the managers of the bank can exercise can counteract or remove. This institution conspicuously and pre-eminently represents the idea of progress and elevation of a people who are just now emerging from the ignorance, degradation, and destitution entailed upon them by more than two centuries of slavery. A people who are hated not because they have injured others but because others have injured them. This feeling of caste, this race malignity, has naturally enough taken about the same offence at the Freedman’s Bank as it did at the existence of the Freedman’s Bureau. It is as desirous to destroy the former as it was to destroy the latter. Fourth. Still another and greater source of evil has been the senseless runs made from time to time upon the bank. These have compelled the withdrawal of large sums of money from very safe and profitable investments, and diverted the regular business of the bank from making money for its depositors to the work of obtaining the means of meeting the demands of these disastrous panics. The Freedman’s Bank has been subjected to no less than three of these raids during the last eighteen months. The run made upon the bank by the failure of Jay Cooke & Co. cost us not less then $50,000, and required the withdrawal of a half million of dollars from safe and profitable investments.4 Add to these causes the general prostration of business, the great loss of confidence to all moneyed institutions, the disturbed condition of affairs, especially in the District of Columbia, where most of our loans have been made, and you will easily understand why the Freedman’s Bank is now under a heavy strain and found it necessary to seek protection in the recent amendments to its charter. In respect to the future of the bank some of the main sources of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 198

9/1/21 4:16 PM

FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY

199

danger and ruin have been entirely removed. The trustees, governed by an increasing concern for the safety of their depositors rather than for large profits in the way of interest, have abandoned their unwise competition with others in the offer of a high percentage of interest, and have now resolved to pay only such a rate as the net earnings of the bank will warrant them in paying. They have also given up their wild and visionary schemes of banking, and have abandoned the policy of establishing branches in remote corners of the country. They will now establish none where there is not a very strong likelihood of their becoming self-sustaining. Not only have they discarded the policy of extension, they have adopted the policy of closing up as speedily as is convenient and practicable the non-paying branches now in operation. They are not only for decreasing the number of branches but also the number of employés, and for reducing the salaries of their agents to the lowest point consistent with securing the services of good men. With this retrenchment in expenses, with wise and vigorous management, and with the returning confidence of our people, it is believed that the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, which has already been a powerful instrument in promoting the moral, social, and intellectual welfare of our people, will survive and flourish despite the machinations of its enemies. The effect of the legislation recently enacted upon the bank will naturally inspire confidence. It is indirectly a strong indorsement of the honesty and ability of the trustees of the institution. It puts the destiny of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company more completely than heretofore within their power and discretion. It devises an honest method of keeping the institution in continued and successful operation, while it at the same time enables it to accomplish all the objects usually sought in suspension. It completely divorces the past from the present and future; it separates the old from the new, and allows the dead past to bury its dead;5 it aims to protect the new depositor from all the mistakes and misfortunes connected with the management and past condition of the bank. For the interests of the old depositors it enables the trustees to hold their securities as long as may be necessary to reap the full amount of interest they are capable of drawing, and then allows the trustees to fill up the chasm which may exist between assets and liabilities. It puts it in the power of the officers and agents of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company to say with confidence and truth to all our old depositors, give us time and we will pay you every dollar due you from the company. To the new depositors it enable us to say with even more confidence, you may deposit with safety and profit. You are neither affected by past losses nor past mismanagement. Your

Y7870-Douglass.indb 199

9/1/21 4:16 PM

200

FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY

money shall not be in any way mixed up with the old nor taken to pay old debts. It shall be held as special and invested for your special benefit. In one aspect this bill may be said to place the old bank in liquidation while it at the same time creates a new one. It preserves the old body but infuses it with new life, and gives it a better assurance of continued existence. What is now needed is wisdom, courage, skill, and determination. With these the Freedman’s Savings Bank may be made not only a success in itself, but a grand means of success to the colored people of the South, to whom it has already taught important lessons of industry, economy, and saving. The history of civilization shows that no people can well rise to a high degree of mental or even moral excellence without wealth. A people uniformly poor and compelled to struggle for barely a physical existence will be dependent and despised by their neighbors, and will finally despise themselves. While it is impossible that every individual of any race shall be rich—and no man may be despised for merely being poor—yet no people can be respected which does not produce a wealthy class. Such a people will only be the hewers of wood and drawers of water, and will not rise above a mere animal existence.6 The mission of the Freedman’s Bank is to show our people the road to a share of the wealth and well being of the world. It has already done much to lift the race into respectability, and, with their continued confidence and patient co-operation, it will continue to reflect credit upon the race and promote their welfare. It has long been a bitter complaint against the Freedman’s Bank that it withdrew money from distant localities and invested it here at the capital. The bill which has now become a law has removed all ground of complaint on this point. It provides that loans shall be made in the vicinity of the different branches, so that the people who deposit their money may now feel assured that it will not be withdrawn to build up Washington, but will be employed to quicken industry and improve the condition of the country where it is collected.7 This feature of the bill alone goes far to recommend the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company to the confidence and favor of the colored people. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, President. 1. Douglass refers to Congress’s last attempt to revitalize the bank. A bill passed on 20 June 1874 was meant to reform the bank’s internal structure and protect new income by treating assets as “special deposits” not subject to old liabilities. This legislation gave the trustees authority to close the bank and appoint three commissioners to oversee its dissolution if they decided it could not be saved. The trustees attempted to appoint a board of commissioners composed of their relatives, but

Y7870-Douglass.indb 200

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE EMANCIPATED MAN WANTS KNOWLEDGE

201

the secretary of the treasury rejected their slate. The trustees then selected Robert Purvis, John A. J. Creswell, and Robert H. T. Leipold to oversee liquidation of the bank. NNE, 9 May 1874; Washington Evening Star, 14 May 1874; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 192–99; Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 101. 2. In late April 1874, Charles Austin Meigs (1816–83), an examiner for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, reported the Freedman’s Bank’s assets at a value of $3,121,101, with liabilities valued at $3,338,896.15—resulting in a deficit of $217,886.15. Later, John A. J. Creswell, one of three commissioners appointed to repay the bank’s depositors, testified to a House select committee that in December 1874, the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company had liabilities equal to $2,879,031.78 and assets equal to $2,693,095.20, producing a deficiency of just under $200,000. U.S. Congress, House, Freedmen’s Bank, House Report 502, 44th Cong., 1st sess., 1876, 1–2; Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 84; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 187–88, 187n. 3. At its peak, the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company had thirty-seven branches. By the time of its closing, in 1874, thirty-four remained open. As early as 1867, though, several branches, including those in Alexandria, Huntsville, and Vicksburg, were in crisis, since their expenses exceeded deposits. Other branches, such as those in Augusta, Houston, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee, were to be carefully monitored by the bank’s main office because of similar concerns. Poor accounting practices and neglectful oversight made it difficult to ascertain exactly how many branches were “non-paying.” Branches in smaller black communities, such as those in Lynchburg, Chattanooga, Raleigh, Atlanta, and Montgomery, clearly outspent deposits, but experts believe that as many as half the branches at the time of the bank’s closing may have been “non-paying.” Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 98–99; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 37–39, 174–75. 4. There had been runs on the Freedman’s Bank following the publication of the March 1873 report of the comptroller of the currency, as well as during the widespread financial panic sparked by the failure of the firm of Jay Cooke and Company the following September. Douglass is probably referring to the response to the comptroller’s report of March 1874. When released in April, it disclosed a deficit of $217,866.15, which many viewed as evidence of fraud and mismanagement. Panic among depositors ensued, and runs on the Freedman’s Bank induced some branches to require sixty days’ notice before funds could be withdrawn. Douglass to the editor of the New York Herald, 29 April 1874, in U.S. Senate, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, Appendix, 44–45; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 187–91; Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 87. 5. This line is found in the sixth stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “A Psalm of Life,” originally published in the Knickerbocker in October 1838 and then in his first collection, Voices of the Night, the following year. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, rev. ed., 7 vols. (Boston, 1872), 1:16–17. 6. The phrase “hewers of wood and drawers of water” comes from Joshua 9:21, 23. 7. The recently passed congressional legislation required that half of the bank’s deposits be invested in the communities of its branches, and the remainder invested in federal bonds or deposited in a national bank by the bank’s Washington, D.C., board of officers. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 193–94.

THE EMANCIPATED MAN WANTS KNOWLEDGE (1875) American Missionary Magazine, 19:171 (August 1875).

Along with four other writers, Douglass contributed a brief response that was printed following the text of the short pamphlet The Nation Still in Danger: or, Ten Years after the War: A Plea by

Y7870-Douglass.indb 201

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE EMANCIPATED MAN WANTS KNOWLEDGE

201

the secretary of the treasury rejected their slate. The trustees then selected Robert Purvis, John A. J. Creswell, and Robert H. T. Leipold to oversee liquidation of the bank. NNE, 9 May 1874; Washington Evening Star, 14 May 1874; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 192–99; Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 101. 2. In late April 1874, Charles Austin Meigs (1816–83), an examiner for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, reported the Freedman’s Bank’s assets at a value of $3,121,101, with liabilities valued at $3,338,896.15—resulting in a deficit of $217,886.15. Later, John A. J. Creswell, one of three commissioners appointed to repay the bank’s depositors, testified to a House select committee that in December 1874, the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company had liabilities equal to $2,879,031.78 and assets equal to $2,693,095.20, producing a deficiency of just under $200,000. U.S. Congress, House, Freedmen’s Bank, House Report 502, 44th Cong., 1st sess., 1876, 1–2; Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 84; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 187–88, 187n. 3. At its peak, the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company had thirty-seven branches. By the time of its closing, in 1874, thirty-four remained open. As early as 1867, though, several branches, including those in Alexandria, Huntsville, and Vicksburg, were in crisis, since their expenses exceeded deposits. Other branches, such as those in Augusta, Houston, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee, were to be carefully monitored by the bank’s main office because of similar concerns. Poor accounting practices and neglectful oversight made it difficult to ascertain exactly how many branches were “non-paying.” Branches in smaller black communities, such as those in Lynchburg, Chattanooga, Raleigh, Atlanta, and Montgomery, clearly outspent deposits, but experts believe that as many as half the branches at the time of the bank’s closing may have been “non-paying.” Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 98–99; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 37–39, 174–75. 4. There had been runs on the Freedman’s Bank following the publication of the March 1873 report of the comptroller of the currency, as well as during the widespread financial panic sparked by the failure of the firm of Jay Cooke and Company the following September. Douglass is probably referring to the response to the comptroller’s report of March 1874. When released in April, it disclosed a deficit of $217,866.15, which many viewed as evidence of fraud and mismanagement. Panic among depositors ensued, and runs on the Freedman’s Bank induced some branches to require sixty days’ notice before funds could be withdrawn. Douglass to the editor of the New York Herald, 29 April 1874, in U.S. Senate, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, Appendix, 44–45; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 187–91; Fleming, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 87. 5. This line is found in the sixth stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “A Psalm of Life,” originally published in the Knickerbocker in October 1838 and then in his first collection, Voices of the Night, the following year. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, rev. ed., 7 vols. (Boston, 1872), 1:16–17. 6. The phrase “hewers of wood and drawers of water” comes from Joshua 9:21, 23. 7. The recently passed congressional legislation required that half of the bank’s deposits be invested in the communities of its branches, and the remainder invested in federal bonds or deposited in a national bank by the bank’s Washington, D.C., board of officers. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 193–94.

THE EMANCIPATED MAN WANTS KNOWLEDGE (1875) American Missionary Magazine, 19:171 (August 1875).

Along with four other writers, Douglass contributed a brief response that was printed following the text of the short pamphlet The Nation Still in Danger: or, Ten Years after the War: A Plea by

Y7870-Douglass.indb 201

9/1/21 4:16 PM

202

THE EMANCIPATED MAN WANTS KNOWLEDGE

the American Missionary Association. Prepared by the American Missionary Association’s corresponding secretary, the Reverend Martin E. Strieby, the pamphlet detailed the poor status of educational opportunities afforded to African Americans in the Southern states and called on the North to offer its assistance. The American Missionary Association, an active abolitionist organization, had lobbied Northern churches to take a stronger stand against slavery since before the Civil War. After the Civil War, the association sent hundreds of teachers into the South to educate freedmen. Some of these efforts evolved into full-fledged institutions of higher education, such as Atlanta University, Dillard University, Fisk University, Howard University, and Talladega College. The Nation Still in Danger: or, Ten Years after the War: A Plea by the American Missionary Association (New York, 1875); McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 114– 15; EAA, 1:39–40. I am obliged by your circular entitled “The Nation still in danger.” There is much of wholesome truth and timely warning in its pages. The mere abolition of the form of slavery in the South, while the spirit of slavery is permitted to shape itself into new forms, will neither benefit the emancipated class nor the class from which they were emancipated. Ignorance, superstition and groveling sensuality were the natural outgrowths of slavery and slaveholding religion. These evils could not be reached by the forcible abolition of slavery. Time and patient labor are required for this, and I rejoice that the Association you represent1 has been able to do so much of the needed work. Through two hundred years of bondage the slave was permitted to hear only the gospel of contentment. He was told to be contented with ignorance, with slavery, with superstition and with a sensual religion—full of animal heat and excitement—of boundless ecstasy and boundless depression. All his hopes and aspirations were to be fixed upon another world. The present world was nothing for him—the other world everything. What the emancipated man wants now is knowledge. To get this he needs money and land, something that will give him time to think and improve his mind. His poverty and destitution are his greatest obstacles to progress. Teach him how to make the best of this world, how to be useful to himself, his family, to the community and to the world of mankind. Most of our colored preachers represent the old

Y7870-Douglass.indb 202

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLORED EXODUS

203

religion borrowed from their masters, and are hardly fit for the new work of moral reconstruction needed at the South. The new times require new men and new ideas. I certainly wish you success in your humane and educational work. 1. Formed in 1846 in Albany, New York, the American Missionary Association was an organization of Christian abolitionists who chose not to associate with established missionary agencies of the major denominations. Early leaders of the group included Lewis Tappan (treasurer) and Simeon S. Jocelyn and George Whipple (secretaries). The organization promoted education and missionary activities for blacks in the United States and abroad. By 1855, the American Missionary Association had more than one hundred missions in North America as well as posts in Egypt, Thailand, Haiti, Jamaica, and West Africa. In addition to establishing missions, the American Missionary Association made major contributions to the antislavery movement in churches and formed an important medium through which Christian abolitionists could lobby American churches for antislavery action. McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 114–15; Clifton H. Johnson, “The American Missionary Association, 1846–61” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1958).

THE COLORED EXODUS (1879) Washington National View, 24 May 1879. Another text in Washington National Republican, 5 May 1879; Topeka (Kans.) Colored Citizen, 24 May 1879; Subject File, reel 13, frame 15, FD Papers, DLC.

Frustrated by discriminatory labor practices, the lack of educational opportunity, and violent white opposition to their political participation, thousands of blacks from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, and other Southern states launched the “Exoduster” movement in early 1879. These blacks began a poorly coordinated migration to Kansas and adjacent areas of the Midwest. Although many former abolitionists supported the migration, Douglass remained unswervingly opposed to the Exodus movement, believing that conditions for blacks in the South would soon improve and that to leave would indicate surrender to white pressure. After criticizing the Exodus in an address in Baltimore on 4 May 1879, Douglass was called upon by Lee Crandall, editor of the National View, the weekly Washington, D.C., newspaper of the Greenback Labor party, to clarify his opposition to the Exodusters. This widely reprinted article provoked what Douglass labeled “base accusations” from “maligners” throughout the subsequent summer. He finally agreed to present a detailed

Y7870-Douglass.indb 203

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLORED EXODUS

203

religion borrowed from their masters, and are hardly fit for the new work of moral reconstruction needed at the South. The new times require new men and new ideas. I certainly wish you success in your humane and educational work. 1. Formed in 1846 in Albany, New York, the American Missionary Association was an organization of Christian abolitionists who chose not to associate with established missionary agencies of the major denominations. Early leaders of the group included Lewis Tappan (treasurer) and Simeon S. Jocelyn and George Whipple (secretaries). The organization promoted education and missionary activities for blacks in the United States and abroad. By 1855, the American Missionary Association had more than one hundred missions in North America as well as posts in Egypt, Thailand, Haiti, Jamaica, and West Africa. In addition to establishing missions, the American Missionary Association made major contributions to the antislavery movement in churches and formed an important medium through which Christian abolitionists could lobby American churches for antislavery action. McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 114–15; Clifton H. Johnson, “The American Missionary Association, 1846–61” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1958).

THE COLORED EXODUS (1879) Washington National View, 24 May 1879. Another text in Washington National Republican, 5 May 1879; Topeka (Kans.) Colored Citizen, 24 May 1879; Subject File, reel 13, frame 15, FD Papers, DLC.

Frustrated by discriminatory labor practices, the lack of educational opportunity, and violent white opposition to their political participation, thousands of blacks from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, and other Southern states launched the “Exoduster” movement in early 1879. These blacks began a poorly coordinated migration to Kansas and adjacent areas of the Midwest. Although many former abolitionists supported the migration, Douglass remained unswervingly opposed to the Exodus movement, believing that conditions for blacks in the South would soon improve and that to leave would indicate surrender to white pressure. After criticizing the Exodus in an address in Baltimore on 4 May 1879, Douglass was called upon by Lee Crandall, editor of the National View, the weekly Washington, D.C., newspaper of the Greenback Labor party, to clarify his opposition to the Exodusters. This widely reprinted article provoked what Douglass labeled “base accusations” from “maligners” throughout the subsequent summer. He finally agreed to present a detailed

Y7870-Douglass.indb 203

9/1/21 4:16 PM

204

THE COLORED EXODUS

explanation of his position at the annual meeting of the American Social Science Association, scheduled for September in Saratoga, New York. Douglass failed to appear to deliver that address, but allowed it to be published nonetheless. Two years later in his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, he was still laboring to defend his reputation from criticism from other leading African Americans in regard to the Exodus. New York Times, 5 May 1879; Douglass to Blanche K. Bruce, 25 August 1879, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 366–67, FD Papers, DLC; Douglass, “The Negro Exodus from the Colored States,” Journal of Social Science, 11:1–21 (May 1880); Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:510–33, ser. 2, 3:335–44; Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York, 1992), 7–10, 184–201, 247–50; Robert G. Athearn, In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879–80 (Lawrence, Kans., 1978), 233–38. Editor of the National View:1 Sir: I cheerfully accept your offer of a limited space in your columns, in which to state the grounds of my opposition to the so called colored exodus.2 I am, briefly, opposed to that movement, because it is not the proper solution of the Southern question. That question will not be solved and cannot be solved until the constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal rights shall be peacefully executed in every State of the Union, South as well as North. I am opposed to this exodus, because it is a wretched substitute for the fulfillment of the national obligations by which the Government is held and firmly bound to protect every American citizen, of whatever color, upon any and every part of the American domain. I am opposed to this exodus, because it is an untimely concession to the idea that colored people and white people cannot live together in peace and prosperity unless the whites are a majority, and control the Legislation and hold the offices of the State. I am opposed to this exodus because it will cast upon the people of Kansas and other Northern States a multitude of deluded, hungry, homeless, naked, and destitute people to be supported in a large measure by alms. I am opposed to this exodus, because it will enable our political adversaries to make successful appeals to popular prejudice, (as in the case of the Chinese,)3 on the ground these people, so ignorant and helpless, have been imported for the purpose of making

Y7870-Douglass.indb 204

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLORED EXODUS

205

the North solid by out-voting intelligent white Northern citizens. I am opposed to this exodus, because rolling stones gather no moss, and I agree with Emerson, that the men who made Rome, or any other locality worth going to see staid there. There is in my judgment no part of the U. S. where an industrious and intelligent colored man can serve his race more wisely and efficiently than upon the soil where he was born and reared and is known. I am opposed to this exodus, because I see in it a tendency to convert colored laboring men into traveling tramps, first going North because they are persecuted, and then returning South because they have been deceived and disappointed in their expectations: who will excite against themselves and against our whole race an increased measure of popular contempt and scorn. I am opposed to this exodus, because I believe that the condition of existence in the Southern States are steadily improving, and that the colored man there will ultimately realize the fullest measure of liberty and equality accorded and secured in any section of our country. It is all nonsense (and perhaps something worse) and almost beneath contempt to compare the evils (great as they are) from which the colored man is now fleeing to the North, with those endured by colored men in the time of slavery. The men who make this comparison with a view to convict me of inconsistency know that there is nothing analogous in the two situations. There the black man was a chattel; now he is a man and a man among men. Then the black man was a slave: now he is a free man. Then the black man had no legal or constitutional rights which anybody was bound to respect; now he has all the legal and constitutional rights which are guaranteed to the most exalted citizen of the republic. It is true that these rights have been in many instances cloven down by violence, and that for the present the Constitution is inoperative: but shall we, who have borne so many hardships and outrages and seen so many changes in our favor, now throw up the sponge, abandon our vantage ground of possession, which is nine points of the law, and go among strangers in pursuit of homes in a cold and uncongenial climate, rather than remain on the soil of our birth, where we may live down persecution and oppression. If there is any part of the U. S. to which the negro has a stronger claim for peaceful residence than any other, that part is that lying south of Mason and Dixon’s line.4 Whatever the South is in point of wealth and civilization the negro has made her. His labor has converted the Southern wilderness into fruitful fields, and dotted them about with comfortable homes. His arm has leveled her forest, extracted the stumps, reclaimed her waste places, graded her roads, supported her commerce, developed her resources: in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 205

9/1/21 4:16 PM

206

THE COLORED EXODUS

a word tilled her soil with his hard hands moistened with sweat, and enriched it with his blood, and has a claim to remain on her soil against all comers. Armed as the negro is now, with legal and constitutional guarantees, and being the muscular and laboring arm of the South, I cannot yet believe that with these advantages he is so destitute of manual power, that he cannot make living terms with those who want his labor, and who must have it or accept poverty and ruin instead. My counsel to him, therefore, is to bide his time to labor and wait, in the full assurance time and events will sooner or later, establish his rights in the South upon enduring foundations. I have seen many attempts to lash colored men into schemes of emigration. I am old enough to remember the Haytian emigration scheme fifty-our years ago;5 another to the British West Indies forty years ago;6 another still to Central America sixteen years ago;7 and they only served to unsettle the minds of the colored people, deranging their plans of enterprise for home improvements, and were transient, as I believe this one will be. The hundreds may go, but the millions will stay behind, and will finally have their wisdom in so doing rewarded with peace and prosperity. FREDERICK DOUGLASS 1. Lee Crandall (1832–1926) was the editor of the National View, the official newspaper of the Greenback Labor party, which was published in Washington, D.C., from 1879 until 1888. A native of New York, Crandall lived in New Orleans at the start of the Civil War and served as an officer in the Confederate Army until he was captured at the Battle of Mine Creek, Kansas, in October 1864. After the war, he lived in Philadelphia, where he was a branch manager of the New York Graphic. By 1878, he was the secretary of the Pennsylvania Greenback Labor party—the same office he held for the national party during most of his tenure as editor of the National View. Crandall then moved to Arizona, where he engaged in copper and gold mining; in 1901, he was elected president of the Confederate Mining Company. In 1914, he was appointed deputy collector of internal revenue for Washington, D.C. During his twelve years of federal employment, Crandall was a prominent figure in the city because of his leadership roles in Confederate veterans’ activities. New York Times, 4 May, 14 July 1879, 7 August 1880; Washington Post, 2 March 1919, 4 June 1923, 21 December 1924; Atlanta Constitution, 12 September 1926; N. W. Ayer and Son, N. W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual: Containing a Catalogue of American Newspapers, a List of All Newspapers of the United States and Canada, 1880 (Philadelphia, 1880), 94; “Col. Lee Crandall, Pres., Confederate Mining Co.,” Confederate Veteran, 10:88 (January 1902); Mark A. Lause, The Civil War’s Last Campaign: James B. Weaver, the Greenback-Labor Party, and the Politics of Race and Section (Lanham, Md., 2001), 56; “Lee Crandall: Colonel, Confederate States of America Army,” Arlington National Cemetery Website (online). 2. A number of prominent black leaders and politicians, including James E. O’Hara, Isaiah C. Wears, B. F. Watson, and Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce, agreed with Douglass’s views. Painter, Exodusters, 184–201, 247–50; Athearn, In Search of Canaan, 233–38. 3. White citizens of the United States had demonstrated a long history of anti-Chinese prejudice before immigrants from China began arriving in large numbers during the California Gold Rush of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 206

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLORED EXODUS

207

1849–50. Americans from nearly all classes and regions considered the Chinese utterly devoid of religion, morality, or hygiene, and popular print culture commonly depicted them as a subhuman species, usually as insects or rodents. Despite their intense animosity to Chinese culture, white Americans of the Civil War era nevertheless agreed that Chinese workers were industrious, persevering, frugal, and willing to endure hardship without complaint—qualities admired by all except those competing with Chinese immigrants in the rapidly expanding unskilled wage labor market. Accordingly, the fifteen years following 1865 were marked by lavish schemes by entrepreneurs for the mass importation of indentured Chinese workers to operate Southern plantations, Western mines, and Eastern factories. Vociferous and sometimes violent efforts were organized by white laborers to enact discriminatory labor and housing laws and to restrict Chinese immigration. Most large-scale Chinese labor importation initiatives proved fleeting and ineffective; the total number of Chinese immigrant laborers increased steadily throughout the period. In 1882, after nearly a decade of economic depression and labor unrest, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which denied Chinese laborers entry into the United States for a period of ten years. The act was strengthened and renewed in 1892 and made permanent in 1902. In 1943, it was repealed by Congress to improve America’s relations with the Nationalist Chinese government, with which it was allied in the war against Japan. New York Times, 5 October 1873, 7 April 1876, 1 March 1877; Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 3–16, 254–59; Rosanne Currarino, The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age (Urbana, Ill., 2011), 36–59. 4. Disputes between Pennsylvania to the North and Maryland and Virginia to the South were resolved when the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon determined and marked the precise borders between these colonies in 1763–67. Hubertis M. Cummings, The Mason and Dixon Line: Story for a Bicentenary, 1763–1963 (Harrisburg, Pa., 1962). 5. In 1824, the Haitian Jean-Pierre Boyer began working with a group of black and white New York ministers, including Samuel Cornish, Peter Williams, and Loring D. Dewey, to recruit African American migrants to the Caribbean republic. Support grew in other cities, such as Philadelphia, where Richard Allen and James Forten endorsed the effort. Many supporters, who viewed this as a combination of religious and political missionary work, agreed with the white abolitionist Benjamin Lundy that the elevation of Haiti would aid antislavery efforts in the United States. As many as 6,000 traveled to Haiti to settle in rural colonies, but financial difficulties forced Boyer to cease subsidizing the migration. By the 1840s, all immigrants had abandoned the rural plantations, with most returning to the United States and the remainder resettling in Haitian cities. Chris Dixon, African America and Haiti: Emigration and Black Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 2000), 34–47; Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787–1863 (Urbana, Ill., 1975), 76–80. 6. In the 1830s, the African American minister Lewis Woodson of Pittsburgh supported black migration from the United States to British colonies in Canada and the West Indies as a means of escaping racial prejudices. In 1839, sugar planters on Trinidad attempted to recruit free African Americans to replace their former slaves as workers. This effort found support in African American communities, from Baltimore to Boston. But the largely urban migrants soon began sending home complaints about working conditions in the Caribbean, and no more than a few hundred ever settled there. Dixon, African America and Haiti, 64; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 101, 114. 7. In the late 1850s, African American leaders such as H. Ford Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and J. D. Harris had advanced proposals for large-scale immigration to Central America. Harris corresponded with the Missouri Republican politician Francis J. Blair, Jr., who had advocated for such colonization in congressional speeches as a means of spreading American influence in the isthmus. In 1862, Blair persuaded Congress to appropriate $600,000 for President Abraham Lincoln to begin colonizing African Americans in Central America. Lincoln explored proposals to create a colony on the island of Chiriqui, off the coast of Honduras, and appointed Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas to recruit settlers. Some historians argue that Lincoln advocated colonization as a means of making his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation more politically palatable. By 1863, Lincoln

Y7870-Douglass.indb 207

9/1/21 4:16 PM

208

NEGROES, MONGOLS AND HEBREWS

had abandoned the Chiriqui plan to briefly focus on an effort to colonize American blacks on Haiti’s Vache Island. The following year, surviving settlers were brought home from the island, and Lincoln lost all further interest in colonization programs. Robert E. May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Future of Latin America (New York, 2013), 183–84; Dixon, African America and Haiti, 112–14, 153–57; Michael Vorenberg, “Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Black Colonization,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 14:26–45 (Summer 1993).

NEGROES, MONGOLS AND HEBREWS (1880) ChR, 23 December 1880.

The nineteenth century was plagued with discrimination against religious and racial minorities. Douglass often compared the plight of black slaves to that of the Jews. He likewise addressed the oppression of Chinese immigrants, who first came to America in large groups during the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s. In the pages of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s Christian Recorder, Douglass addressed these groups and questioned why those of a Christian nation persecuted and perpetuated violence against them. Along with the Christian Recorder, the A.M.E. Church had several publications. Its first, the A.M.E. Magazine, began in 1841 and ended in 1848. The church then purchased the Mystery, run by the black leader Martin Delany, and renamed it the Christian Herald. In 1852, the publication was renamed the Christian Recorder and moved from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, where it continued to be published until 1960. From 1868 to 1884, Benjamin Tucker Tanner was its editor. William Seraile, Fire in His Heart: Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner and the A.M.E. Church (1998; Knoxville, Tenn., 2000), 20, 100.

Very opposite are the characters and attainments of these three races of men, and yet they strongly resemble each other in one important particular, in the Christian virtue of peace. They are of all the races of men the most patient and forbearing under wrong and violence. The Indian with his tomahawk and scalping-knife spurns the yoke of slavery and dies in his tracks, preferring to go into the presence of the Great Spirit with the tyrant’s blood upon his hands to meekly bowing his neck to the yoke of a hateful bondage. The Celt, proud, impetuous and reckless, is ready for the open field of war when he is strong, and for assassination when he

Y7870-Douglass.indb 208

9/1/21 4:16 PM

208

NEGROES, MONGOLS AND HEBREWS

had abandoned the Chiriqui plan to briefly focus on an effort to colonize American blacks on Haiti’s Vache Island. The following year, surviving settlers were brought home from the island, and Lincoln lost all further interest in colonization programs. Robert E. May, Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Future of Latin America (New York, 2013), 183–84; Dixon, African America and Haiti, 112–14, 153–57; Michael Vorenberg, “Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Black Colonization,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 14:26–45 (Summer 1993).

NEGROES, MONGOLS AND HEBREWS (1880) ChR, 23 December 1880.

The nineteenth century was plagued with discrimination against religious and racial minorities. Douglass often compared the plight of black slaves to that of the Jews. He likewise addressed the oppression of Chinese immigrants, who first came to America in large groups during the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s. In the pages of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s Christian Recorder, Douglass addressed these groups and questioned why those of a Christian nation persecuted and perpetuated violence against them. Along with the Christian Recorder, the A.M.E. Church had several publications. Its first, the A.M.E. Magazine, began in 1841 and ended in 1848. The church then purchased the Mystery, run by the black leader Martin Delany, and renamed it the Christian Herald. In 1852, the publication was renamed the Christian Recorder and moved from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, where it continued to be published until 1960. From 1868 to 1884, Benjamin Tucker Tanner was its editor. William Seraile, Fire in His Heart: Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner and the A.M.E. Church (1998; Knoxville, Tenn., 2000), 20, 100.

Very opposite are the characters and attainments of these three races of men, and yet they strongly resemble each other in one important particular, in the Christian virtue of peace. They are of all the races of men the most patient and forbearing under wrong and violence. The Indian with his tomahawk and scalping-knife spurns the yoke of slavery and dies in his tracks, preferring to go into the presence of the Great Spirit with the tyrant’s blood upon his hands to meekly bowing his neck to the yoke of a hateful bondage. The Celt, proud, impetuous and reckless, is ready for the open field of war when he is strong, and for assassination when he

Y7870-Douglass.indb 208

9/1/21 4:16 PM

NEGROES, MONGOLS AND HEBREWS

209

is weak, and most other races are like them in this respect.1 Far down the ages, a thousand years before the Christian era, amid the learning and religions of Egypt, among the people who taught the world to propitiate the gods by burnt-offering and sacrifices, the Negroes and the Hebrews toiled together as slaves under the yoke of a hateful bondage, after fainting under burdens and dying under the lash.2 Today three races, Negroes, Hebrews and Mongols, are the special objects of oppression persecution and wrong, in the eyes of Christian nations. Why is this? Why is the Mongol murdered in California,3 the Negro in Mississippi,4 and the Jew persecuted and oppressed in Europe?5 Can it be because these people conform their lives more closely to Christian precepts and examples than do the so-called Christian people among whom their lot is cast? Is the Negro and the Jew too Christ-like? Or are the people who persecute them hypocrites and liars when they claim to be the followers of Christ? The Jew is said to be hated in Europe because he is rich, the Negro in America because he is poor. The Chinese is hated because he is industrious and the Negro because he is indolent. But I will not pursue the subject. I leave it to you, Dr. Tanner,6 to answer the questions here suggested or leave them to your respected readers as you may think best. Please accept my kind congratulations and best wishes for the success of your effort to lift up and defend the rights of our oppressed people at all points. 1. Some social historians have characterized traditional Celtic culture in a way that closely resembles that of the antebellum South. Just as the English found Celtic customs barbaric, the North criticized the South for slavery and its rather unindustrialized state. The Celts were characterized as a people who enjoyed drinking, fighting, hunting, and leisure. They preferred to enjoy the gaieties of life rather than work in the pursuit of riches. In this view, the Celts were portrayed as characteristically violent. Proud and argumentative, they were ready to duel anyone who challenged their honor. Warfare, in its many forms, was extremely important to the Celtic culture. In Scotland, clansmen were always armed when they traveled, and the amount and the scale of violence in the country were unknown in England. Similarly, Southerners in the United States, influenced by the Celtic culture, were quicker to resort to violence than Northerners, especially when honor was in question. Generally, the Celts were agrarian, favored leisure to work, and often turned to violence in order to solve their issues. Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1988); Nora Chadwick, The Celts (1971; New York, 1991), 131. 2. Exod. 1:8–14. 3. The first Chinese immigrants are thought to have entered California in the late 1840s with the discovery of gold. Like any frontier state, California faced a shortage of labor, and Chinese workers helped fill this void. But as more and more Chinese laborers poured into California, they were met with economic, moral, and political resistance. While some considered the Chinese a “mongrel” race, the economic argument against the Chinese immigrants was the most prevalent. As a whole, Chinese men and women worked for cheaper wages, and native-born Americans, along with European immigrants, claimed that they could not compete with them. Anti-Chinese groups sprouted not only in California but also in places such as Boston and New York. Many critics drew analogies to slavery because California whites claimed they could not compete with the Chinese willingness to work for

Y7870-Douglass.indb 209

9/1/21 4:16 PM

210

NEGROES, MONGOLS AND HEBREWS

low wages, just as free labor could not survive in the American South during the antebellum period in competition with slaves. There were several mob attacks on Chinese immigrants in California, the first large-scale one occurring in Los Angeles in October 1871, in which eighteen people were killed. Anti-Chinese sentiment in California reached a climax in 1878, when delegates met to draft a new state constitution. Although the convention failed to adopt a section that would have prohibited further Chinese immigration to California, the constitution still contained discriminatory acts toward the Chinese. Delegates did pass a law that fined businesses and corporations for hiring Chinese workers, although the U.S. Circuit Court declared it unconstitutional two weeks later. Elmer Clarence Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (1939; Champaign, Ill., 1991), 11–15, 25–31, 48–57, 67–73; Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785–1882 (1969; Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 7–14; Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (1971; Berkeley, Calif., 1995), 1–7, 18. 4. During the 1870s, conservative whites in Mississippi became increasingly discontented with Reconstruction policies and desired to return the Democrats to power, which would restore the racial order of the antebellum period. Political “White Men’s Clubs” were established across the state to unite white voters against not only the Republican-led Reconstruction, but also black voters. By 1875, many had turned to a program of violence to intimidate blacks from voting for the Republican party. Race riots broke out across the state, and the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups ran rampant, harassing and killing black—and white—Republicans. The organized violence and intimidation was known as the “Mississippi Plan,” and it allowed the Democrats to successfully sweep the state in the 1875 election. During the 1876 presidential election, other Southern states—most notably South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida—implemented their own versions of the “Mississippi Plan” in order to defeat Republicans. After a close presidential campaign between the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and the Democrat Samuel Tilden, a compromise was made whereby Hayes would be president as long as federal troops were withdrawn from the South. Reconstruction ended, but the violence and discrimination against blacks in the South, especially in Mississippi, raged on. Vernon Lane Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 1865–1890 (1947; New York, 1965), 181–85; Michael Newton, The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi: A History (Jefferson, N.C., 2010), 12, 18–26; Ben Wyne, “Mississippi,” in Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Alton Hornsby, Jr. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2011), 432–33. 5. The persecution of Jews in Europe has existed for many centuries, varying in intensity and volume. By the nineteenth century, anti-Semitism had become deep rooted, and evidence of violence against Jews arose in universities, the government, and churches as well as the streets. During this time period, anti-Semitic literature became widespread, and it increasingly described the Jewish people as thieves, cheats, and degenerates. Journalists such as the German Wilhelm Marr invented a form of anti-Semitism that appealed to feelings of envy and frustration, claiming that the Jews were a minority growing in wealth and power while the majority suffered. In countries like Russia, sporadic pogroms or violent riots erupted against the Jews, and racism and discrimination escalated in France and Austria-Hungary. In 1880, organized gangs in Berlin attacked Jews in the street, chased them from cafés, and broke the windows of their stores. In the German provinces, several synagogues were set on fire. Although Jews had experienced violence and persecution in Europe throughout history, anti-Semitism flourished in the late nineteenth century with a virulence that would escalate to unimaginable heights. Vamberto Morais, A Short History of Anti-Semitism (New York, 1976), 173–74, 183; Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, 4 vols. (New York, 1985), 4:17–21; Rachel Jakobowicz, Jews and Gentiles: Anti-Semitism and Jewish Assimilation in German Literary Life in the Early 19th Century (New York, 1992), 6, 23; David Aberbach, The European Jews, Patriotism, and the Liberal State, 1789–1939: A Study of Literature and Social Psychology (New York, 2013), 1, 3, 9, 28. 6. Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835–1923), an African Methodist Episcopal bishop, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While studying at Avery College in Allegheny City (now Pittsburgh) from 1852 to 1857, he supported himself as a part-time barber. In 1856, he converted to Methodism,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 210

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

211

received a license to preach, and then trained at the Western Theological Seminary, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. In 1860, he was ordained both deacon and elder in the A.M.E. Church. In 1858, he married Sarah Elizabeth Miller, and together they had seven children, one of which was Henry Ossawa Turner, who became a well-known painter. During the Civil War, Tanner ministered to freedmen in the U.S. Navy and founded the Alexander Mission in Washington, D.C. He next served as a minister to churches in Georgetown and Baltimore, and then became principal of the A.M.E. school in Frederick, Maryland. In 1868, he was appointed chief secretary of the A.M.E. General Conference and editor of its journal, the Christian Recorder, continuing in the latter role for sixteen years. In 1884, he helped found the AME Church Review quarterly and served as its first editor. The General Conference elected him bishop in 1888, and he traveled to Canada, Bermuda, and the West Indies to oversee A.M.E. activities. Some of his publications include An Apology for African Methodism (1867), The Negro’s Origin; or, Is He Cursed of God? (1869), and Theological Lectures (1894). Seraile, Benjamin Tucker Tanner; DAB, 18:296; ANB (online).

THE COLOR LINE (1881) North American Review, 132:566–77 (1 June 1881).

Founded in Boston in 1815 by William Tudor and members of the Anthology Club, the North American Review was the first literary magazine in the United States and continues to be the longestrunning periodical of its kind. Originally published bimonthly, it later became a quarterly publication and included poetry, fiction, and nonfiction as well as articles regarding social, political, and cultural subjects. Douglass frequently contributed, often writing about racial and political issues. In this 1881 article, he discusses the theory of instinctive racial prejudice as an inherent part of human nature. He presents seven propositions discounting this theory and argues that prejudice is based more on social standing and class discrimination than on color. Responses to the article varied by region. A Kansas newspaper stated the article was “written with dignity” and “indignant eloquence.” Alternatively, a Southern newspaper stated “that [color] line was here before Mr. Douglass and it will remain here after he is gone—unless he carries the colored people away with him.” Topeka Weekly Commonwealth, 9 June 1881; Goldsboro (N.C.) Star, 25 June 1881; “History,” NAR (online).

FEW evils are less accessible to the force of reason, or more tenacious of life and power, than a long-standing prejudice. It is a moral disorder,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 211

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

211

received a license to preach, and then trained at the Western Theological Seminary, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. In 1860, he was ordained both deacon and elder in the A.M.E. Church. In 1858, he married Sarah Elizabeth Miller, and together they had seven children, one of which was Henry Ossawa Turner, who became a well-known painter. During the Civil War, Tanner ministered to freedmen in the U.S. Navy and founded the Alexander Mission in Washington, D.C. He next served as a minister to churches in Georgetown and Baltimore, and then became principal of the A.M.E. school in Frederick, Maryland. In 1868, he was appointed chief secretary of the A.M.E. General Conference and editor of its journal, the Christian Recorder, continuing in the latter role for sixteen years. In 1884, he helped found the AME Church Review quarterly and served as its first editor. The General Conference elected him bishop in 1888, and he traveled to Canada, Bermuda, and the West Indies to oversee A.M.E. activities. Some of his publications include An Apology for African Methodism (1867), The Negro’s Origin; or, Is He Cursed of God? (1869), and Theological Lectures (1894). Seraile, Benjamin Tucker Tanner; DAB, 18:296; ANB (online).

THE COLOR LINE (1881) North American Review, 132:566–77 (1 June 1881).

Founded in Boston in 1815 by William Tudor and members of the Anthology Club, the North American Review was the first literary magazine in the United States and continues to be the longestrunning periodical of its kind. Originally published bimonthly, it later became a quarterly publication and included poetry, fiction, and nonfiction as well as articles regarding social, political, and cultural subjects. Douglass frequently contributed, often writing about racial and political issues. In this 1881 article, he discusses the theory of instinctive racial prejudice as an inherent part of human nature. He presents seven propositions discounting this theory and argues that prejudice is based more on social standing and class discrimination than on color. Responses to the article varied by region. A Kansas newspaper stated the article was “written with dignity” and “indignant eloquence.” Alternatively, a Southern newspaper stated “that [color] line was here before Mr. Douglass and it will remain here after he is gone—unless he carries the colored people away with him.” Topeka Weekly Commonwealth, 9 June 1881; Goldsboro (N.C.) Star, 25 June 1881; “History,” NAR (online).

FEW evils are less accessible to the force of reason, or more tenacious of life and power, than a long-standing prejudice. It is a moral disorder,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 211

9/1/21 4:16 PM

212

THE COLOR LINE

which creates the conditions necessary to its own existence, and fortifies itself by refusing all contradiction. It paints a hateful picture according to its own diseased imagination, and distorts the features of the fancied original to suit the portrait. As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate. Prejudice of race has at some time in their history afflicted all nations. “I am more holy than thou”1 is the boast of races, as well as that of the Pharisee. Long after the Norman invasion and the decline of Norman power, long after the sturdy Saxon had shaken off the dust of his humiliation and was grandly asserting his great qualities in all directions, the descendants of the invaders continued to regard their Saxon brothers as made of coarser clay than themselves, and were not well pleased when one of the former subject race came between the sun and their nobility. Having seen the Saxon a menial, a hostler, and a common drudge, oppressed and dejected for centuries, it was easy to invest him with all sorts of odious peculiarities, and to deny him all manly predicates.2 Though eight hundred years have passed away since Norman power entered England, and the Saxon has for centuries been giving his learning, his literature, his language, and his laws to the world more successfully than any other people on the globe, men in that country still boast their Norman origin and Norman perfections. This superstition of former greatness serves to fill out the shriveled sides of a meaningless race-pride which holds over after its power has vanished. With a very different lesson from the one this paper is designed to impress, the great Daniel Webster once told the people of Massachusetts (whose prejudices in the particular instance referred to were right) that they “had conquered the seas, and had conquered the land,” but that “it remained for them to conquer their prejudices.”3 At one time we are told that the people in some of the towns of Yorkshire cherished a prejudice so strong and violent against strangers and foreigners that one who ventured to pass through their streets would be pelted with stones.4 Of all the races and varieties of men which have suffered from this feeling, the colored people of this country have endured most. They can resort to no disguises which will enable them to escape its deadly aim. They carry in front the evidence which marks them for persecution. They stand at the extreme point of difference from the Caucasian race, and their African origin can be instantly recognized, though they may be several removes from the typical African race. They may remonstrate like

Y7870-Douglass.indb 212

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

213

Shylock—“Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter, as a Christian is?”5—but such eloquence is unavailing. They are negroes—and that is enough, in the eye of this unreasoning prejudice, to justify indignity and violence. In nearly every department of American life they are confronted by this insidious influence. It fills the air. It meets them at the workshop and factory, when they apply for work. It meets them at the church, at the hotel, at the ballot-box, and worst of all, it meets them in the jury-box. Without crime or offense against law or gospel, the colored man is the Jean Valjean of American society.6 He has escaped from the galleys, and hence all presumptions are against him. The workshop denies him work, and the inn denies him shelter; the ballot-box a fair vote, and the jury-box a fair trial. He has ceased to be the slave of an individual, but has in some sense become the slave of society. He may not now be bought and sold like a beast in the market, but he is the trammeled victim of a prejudice, well calculated to repress his manly ambition, paralyze his energies, and make him a dejected and spiritless man, if not a sullen enemy to society, fit to prey upon life and property and to make trouble generally. When this evil spirit is judge, jury, and prosecutor, nothing less than overwhelming evidence is sufficient to overcome the force of unfavorable presumptions. Everything against the person with the hated color is promptly taken for granted; while everything in his favor is received with suspicion and doubt. A boy of this color is found in his bed tied, mutilated, and bleeding, when forthwith all ordinary experience is set aside, and he is presumed to have been guilty of the outrage upon himself; weeks and months he is kept on trial for the offense, and every effort is made to entangle the poor fellow in the confused meshes of expert testimony (the least trustworthy of all evidence). This same spirit, which promptly assumes everything against us, just as readily denies or explains away everything in our favor. We are not, as a race, even permitted to appropriate the virtues and achievements of our individual representatives. Manliness, capacity, learning, laudable ambition, heroic service, by any of our number, are easily placed to the credit of the superior race. One drop of Teutonic blood is enough to account for all good and great qualities occasionally coupled with a colored skin; and on the other hand, one drop of negro blood, though in the veins

Y7870-Douglass.indb 213

9/1/21 4:16 PM

214

THE COLOR LINE

of a man of Teutonic whiteness, is enough of which to predicate all offensive and ignoble qualities. In the presence of this spirit, if a crime is committed, and the criminal is not positively known, a suspicious-looking colored man is sure to have been seen in the neighborhood. If an unarmed colored man is shot down and dies in his tracks, a jury, under the influence of this spirit, does not hesitate to find the murdered man the real criminal, and the murderer innocent. Now let us examine this subject a little more closely. It is claimed that this wonder-working prejudice—this moral magic that can change virtue into vice, and innocence to crime; which makes the dead man the murderer, and holds the living homicide harmless—is a natural, instinctive, and invincible attribute of the white race, and one that cannot be eradicated; that even evolution itself cannot carry us beyond or above it. Alas for this poor suffering world (for four-fifths of mankind are colored), if this claim be true! In that case men are forever doomed to injustice, oppression, hate, and strife; and the religious sentiment of the world, with its grand idea of human brotherhood, its “peace on earth and good-will to men,”7 and its golden rule,8 must be voted a dream, a delusion, and a snare. But is this color prejudice the natural and inevitable thing it claims to be? If it is so, then it is utterly idle to write against it, preach, pray, or legislate against it, or pass constitutional amendments against it. Nature will have her course, and one might as well preach and pray to a horse against running, to a fish against swimming, or to a bird against flying. Fortunately, however, there is good ground for calling in question this high pretension of a vulgar and wicked prepossession. If I could talk with all of my white fellow-countrymen on this subject, I would say to them, in the language of Scripture: “Come and let us reason together.”9 Now, without being too elementary and formal, it may be stated here that there are at least seven points which candid men will be likely to admit, but which, if admitted, will prove fatal to the popular thought and practice of the times. First. If what we call prejudice against color be natural, i.e., a part of human nature itself, it follows that it must be co-extensive with human nature, and will and must manifest itself whenever and wherever the two races are brought into contact. It would not vary with either latitude, longitude, or altitude; but like fire and gunpowder, whenever brought together, there would be an explosion of contempt, aversion, and hatred. Secondly. If it can be shown that there is anywhere on the globe any considerable country where the contact of the African and the Caucasian

Y7870-Douglass.indb 214

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

215

is not distinguished by this explosion of race-wrath, there is reason to doubt that the prejudice is an ineradicable part of human nature. Thirdly. If this so-called natural, instinctive prejudice can be satisfactorily accounted for by facts and considerations wholly apart from the color features of the respective races, thus placing it among the things subject to human volition and control, we may venture to deny the claim set up for it in the name of human nature. Fourthly. If any considerable number of white people have overcome this prejudice in themselves, have cast it out as an unworthy sentiment, and have survived the operation, the fact shows that this prejudice is not at any rate a vital part of human nature, and may be eliminated from the race without harm. Fifthly. If this prejudice shall, after all, prove to be, in its essence and in its natural manifestation, simply a prejudice against condition, and not against race or color, and that it disappears when this or that condition is absent, then the argument drawn from the nature of the Caucasian race falls to the ground. Sixthly. If prejudice of race and color is only natural in the sense that ignorance, superstition, bigotry, and vice are natural, then it has no better defense than they, and should be despised and put away from human relations as an enemy to the peace, good order, and happiness of human society. Seventhly. If, still further, this aversion to the negro arises out of the fact that he is as we see him, poor, spiritless, ignorant, and degraded, then whatever is humane, noble, and superior, in the mind of the superior and more fortunate race, will desire that all arbitrary barriers against his manhood, intelligence, and elevation shall be removed, and a fair chance in the race of life be given him. The first of these propositions does not require discussion. It commends itself to the understanding at once. Natural qualities are common and universal, and do not change essentially on the mountain or in the valley. I come therefore to the second point—the existence of countries where this malignant prejudice, as we know it in America, does not prevail; where character, not color, is the passport to consideration; where the right of the black man to be a man, and a man among men, is not questioned; where he may, without offense, even presume to be a gentleman. That there are such countries in the world there is ample evidence. Intelligent and observing travelers, having no theory to support, men whose testimony would be received without question in respect of any

Y7870-Douglass.indb 215

9/1/21 4:16 PM

216

THE COLOR LINE

other matter, and should not be questioned in this, tell us that they find no color prejudice in Europe, except among Americans who reside there. In England and on the Continent, the colored man is no more an object of hate than any other person. He mingles with the multitude unquestioned, without offense given or received. During the two years which the writer spent abroad, though he was much in society, and was sometimes in the company of lords and ladies, he does not remember one word, look, or gesture that indicated the slightest aversion to him on account of color.10 His experience was not in this respect exceptional or singular. Messrs. Remond,11 Ward,12 Garnet,13 Brown,14 Pennington,15 Crummell,16 and Bruce,17 all of them colored, and some of them black, bear the same testimony. If what these gentlemen say (and it can be corroborated by a thousand witnesses) is true there is no prejudice against color in England, save as it is carried there by Americans—carried there as a moral disease from an infected country. It is American, not European; local, not general; limited, not universal, and must be ascribed to artificial conditions, and not to any fixed and universal law of nature. The third point is: Can this prejudice against color, as it is called, be accounted for by circumstances outside and independent of race or color? If it can be thus explained, an incubus may be removed from the breasts of both the white and the black people of this country, as well as from that large intermediate population which has sprung up between these alleged irreconcilable extremes. It will help us to see that it is not necessary that the Ethiopian shall change his skin, nor needful that the white man shall change the essential elements of his nature, in order that mutual respect and consideration may exist between the two races. Now it is easy to explain the conditions outside of race or color from which may spring feelings akin to those which we call prejudice. A man without the ability or the disposition to pay a just debt does not feel at ease in the presence of his creditor. He does not want to meet him on the street, or in the market-place. Such meeting makes him uncomfortable. He would rather find fault with the bill than pay the debt, and the creditor himself will soon develop in the eyes of the debtor qualities not altogether to his taste. Some one has well said, we may easily forgive those who injure us, but it is hard to forgive those whom we injure. The greatest injury this side of death, which one human being can inflict on another, is to enslave him, to blot out his personality, degrade his manhood, and sink him to the condition of a beast of burden; and just this has been done here during more than two centuries. No other people under heaven, of whatever type or

Y7870-Douglass.indb 216

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

217

endowments, could have been so enslaved without falling into contempt and scorn on the part of those enslaving them. Their slavery would itself stamp them with odious features, and give their oppressors arguments in favor of oppression. Besides the long years of wrong and injury inflicted upon the colored race in this country, and the effect of these wrongs upon that race, morally, intellectually, and physically, corrupting their morals, darkening their minds, and twisting their bodies and limbs out of all approach to symmetry, there has been a mountain of gold—uncounted millions of dollars—resting upon them with crushing weight. During all the years of their bondage, the slave master had a direct interest in discrediting the personality of those he held as property. Every man who had a thousand dollars so invested had a thousand reasons for painting the black man as fit only for slavery. Having made him the companion of horses and mules, he naturally sought to justify himself by assuming that the negro was not much better than a mule. The holders of twenty hundred million dollars’ worth of property in human chattels procured the means of influencing press, pulpit, and politician, and through these instrumentalities they belittled our virtues and magnified our vices, and have made us odious in the eyes of the world. Slavery had the power at one time to make and unmake Presidents, to construe the law, dictate the policy, set the fashion in national manners and customs, interpret the Bible, and control the church; and, naturally enough, the old masters set themselves up as much too high as they set the manhood of the negro too low. Out of the depths of slavery has come this prejudice and this color line. It is broad enough and black enough to explain all the malign influences which assail the newly emancipated millions to-day. In reply to this argument it will perhaps be said that the negro has no slavery now to contend with, and that having been free during the last sixteen years, he ought by this time have contradicted the degrading qualities which slavery formerly ascribed to him. All very true as to the letter, but utterly false as to the spirit. Slavery is indeed gone, but its shadow still lingers over the country and poisons more or less the moral atmosphere of all sections of the republic. The money motive for assailing the negro which slavery represented is indeed absent, but love of power and dominion, strengthened by two centuries of irresponsible power, still remains. Having now shown how slavery created and sustained this prejudice against race and color, and the powerful motive for its creation, the other four points made against it need not be discussed in detail and at length, but may only be referred to in a general way.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 217

9/1/21 4:16 PM

218

THE COLOR LINE

If what is called the instinctive aversion of the white race for the colored, when analyzed, is seen to be the same as that which men feel or have felt toward other objects wholly apart from color; if it should be the same as that sometimes exhibited by the haughty and rich to the humble and poor, the same as the Brahmin feels toward the lower caste,18 the same as the Norman felt toward the Saxon, the same as that cherished by the Turk against Christians,19 the same as Christians have felt toward the Jews,20 the same as that which murders a Christian in Wallachia,21 calls him a “dog” in Constantinople, oppresses and persecutes a Jew in Berlin, hunts down a socialist in St. Petersburg, drives a Hebrew from an hotel at Saratoga, that scorns the Irishman in London,22 the same as Catholics once felt for Protestants, the same as that which insults, abuses, and kills the Chinaman on the Pacific slope23—then may we well enough affirm that this prejudice really has nothing whatever to do with race or color, and that it has its motive and mainspring in some other source with which the mere facts of color and race have nothing to do. After all, some very well informed and very well meaning people will read what I have now said, and what seems to me so just and reasonable, and will still insist that the color of the negro has something to do with the feeling entertained toward him; that the white man naturally shudders at the thought of contact with one who is black—that the impulse is one which he can neither resist nor control. Let us see if this conclusion is a sound one. An argument is unsound when it proves too little or too much, or when it proves nothing. If color is an offense, it is so, entirely apart from the manhood it envelops. There must be something in color of itself to kindle rage and inflame hate, and render the white man generally uncomfortable. If the white man were really so constituted that color were, in itself, a torment to him, this grand old earth of ours would be no place for him. Colored objects confront him here at every point of the compass. If he should shrink and shudder every time he sees anything dark, he would have little time for anything else. He would require a colorless world to live in—a world where flowers, fields, and floods should all be of snowy whiteness; where rivers, lakes, and oceans should all be white; where islands, capes, and continents should all be white; where all the men, and women, and children should be white; where all the fish of the sea, all the birds of the air, all the “cattle upon a thousand hills,”24 should be white; where the heavens above and the earth beneath should be white, and where day and night should not be divided by light and darkness, but the world should be one eternal scene of light. In such a white world, the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 218

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

219

entrance of a black man would be hailed with joy by the inhabitants. Anybody or anything would be welcome that would break the oppressive and tormenting monotony of the all-prevailing white. In the abstract, there is no prejudice against color. No man shrinks from another because he is clothed in a suit of black, nor offended with his boots because they are black. We are told by those who have resided there that a white man in Africa comes to think that ebony is about the proper color for man. Good old Thomas Whitson25—a noble old Quaker—a man of rather odd appearance—used to say that even he would be handsome if he could change public opinion. Aside from the curious contrast to himself, the white child feels nothing on the first site of a colored man. Curiosity is the only feeling. The office of color in the color line is a very plain and subordinate one. It simply advertises the objects of oppression, insult, and persecution. It is not the maddening liquor, but the black letters on the sign telling the world where it may be had. It is not the hated Quaker, but the broad brim and the plain coat. It is not the hateful Cain, but the mark by which he was known.26 The color is innocent enough, but things with which it is coupled make it hated. Slavery, ignorance, stupidity, servility, poverty, dependence, are undesirable conditions. When these shall cease to be coupled with color, there will be no color line drawn. It may help in this direction to observe a few of the inconsistencies of the color-line feeling, for it is neither uniform in its operations nor consistent in its principles. Its contradictions in the latter respect would be amusing if the feeling itself were not so deserving of unqualified abhorrence. Our Californian brothers, of Hibernian descent, hate the Chinaman, and kill him, and when asked why they do so, their answer is that a Chinaman is so industrious he will do all the work, and can live by wages upon which other people would starve.27 When the same people and others are asked why they hate the colored people, the answer is that they are indolent and wasteful, and cannot take care of themselves. Statesmen of the South will tell you that the negro is too ignorant and stupid properly to exercise the elective franchise, and yet his greatest offense is that he acts with the only party intelligent enough in the eyes of the nation to legislate for the country. In one breath they tell us that the negro is so weak in intellect, and so destitute of manhood, that he is but the echo of designing white men, and yet in another they will virtually tell you that the negro is so clear in his moral perceptions, so firm in purpose, so steadfast in his convictions, that he cannot be persuaded by arguments or intimidated by threats, and that nothing but the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 219

9/1/21 4:16 PM

220

THE COLOR LINE

shot-gun can restrain him from voting for the men and measures he approves. They shrink back in horror from contact with the negro as a man and a gentleman, but like him very well as a barber, waiter, coachman, or cook. As a slave, he could ride anywhere, side by side with his white master, but as a freeman, he must be thrust into the smoking car. As a slave, he could go into the first cabin; as a freeman, he was not allowed abaft the wheel. Formerly it was said he was incapable of learning, and at the same time it was a crime against the State for any man to teach him to read. To-day he is said to be originally and permanently inferior to the white race and yet wild apprehensions are expressed lest six millions of this inferior race will somehow or other manage to rule over thirty-five millions of the superior race.28 If inconsistency can prove the hollowness of anything, certainly the emptiness of this pretense that color has any terrors is easily shown. The trouble is that most men, and especially mean men, want to have something under them. The rich man would have the poor man, the white would have the black, the Irish would have the negro, and the negro must have a dog, if he can get nothing higher in the scale of intelligence to dominate. This feeling is one of the vanities which enlightenment will dispel. A good but simple-minded Abolitionist said to me that he was not ashamed to walk with me down Broadway arm-in-arm in open daylight, and evidently thought he was saying something that must be very pleasing to my self-importance, but it occurred to me, at the moment, this man does not dream of any reason why I might be ashamed to walk arm-in-arm with him through Broadway in open daylight. Riding in a stage-coach from Concord, New Hampshire, to Vergennes, Vermont, many years ago,29 I found myself on very pleasant terms with all the passengers through the night, but the morning light came to me as it comes to the stars; I was as Dr. Beecher30 says he was at the first fire he witnessed, when a bucket of cold water was poured down his back—“the fire was not put out, but he was.” The fact is, the higher the colored man rises in the scale of society, the less prejudice does he meet. The writer has met and mingled freely with the leading great men of his time,—at home and abroad, in public halls and private houses, on the platform and at the fireside,—and can remember no instance when among such men has he been made to feel himself an object of aversion. Men who are really great are too great to be small. This was gloriously true of the late Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Henry Wilson, John P. Hale,31 Lewis Tappan,32 Edmund Quincy,33 Joshua R. Giddings,34 Gerrit Smith, and Charles Sumner, and many others among

Y7870-Douglass.indb 220

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

221

the dead. Good taste will not permit me now to speak of the living, except to say that the number of those who rise superior to prejudice is great and increasing. Let those who wish to see what is to be the future of America, as relates to races and race relations, attend, as I have intended, during the administration of President Hayes,35 the grand diplomatic receptions at the executive mansion, and see there, as I have seen,36 in its splendid east room with the wealth, culture, refinement, and beauty of the nation assembled, and with it the eminent representatives of other nations,— the swarthy Turk with his “fez,”37 the Englishman shining with gold, the German, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Japanese, the Chinaman, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Sandwich Islander,38 and the negro,—all moving about freely, each respecting the rights and dignity of the other, and neither receiving not giving offense. “Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a’ that, That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth, May bear the gree, and a’ that; “That man to man, the world o’er, Shall brothers be, for a’ that.”39 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. Douglass quotes Isaiah 65:5 and alludes to Jesus’s description of Pharisees in Matthew 23. In the latter, the Pharisees are described as hypocrites who obey rules outwardly but fail to care for others as God expects. 2. Although the English and the Normans assimilated with relative ease following the Norman Conquest in 1066, prejudice against the Anglo-Saxons remained. Many Normans possessed an “ethnocentric feeling of cultural superiority” and often characterized the English Anglo-Saxons as drunken, cowardly, treacherous, and irreligious. Normans, who spoke French, claimed the English language sounded like dogs barking. Anglo-Saxons were believed to be dreamy and abstract as well as gluttonous. Furthermore, the Normans viewed themselves as the embodiment of a warrior race, while they described the English as depraved weaklings. H. R. Lyon, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (1962; New York, 1963), 315–18; D. J. A. Matthew, The Norman Conquest (New York, 1966), 42, 129; Hugh M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity, 1066–c. 1220 (New York, 2003), 83–84, 301; Christopher Daniell, From Norman Conquest to Magna Carta: England, 1066–1215 (New York, 2003), 27. 3. Douglass is referring to a speech that Webster made on 29 April 1850 in front of the Revere House in Boston, Massachusetts. In this address, Webster urged the people of Massachusetts to uphold and obey the Fugitive Slave Act even if they disagreed with the law. Douglass seems to paraphrase this particular section of Webster’s speech. The full quotation reads: “Sir, the question is, whether Massachusetts will stand to the truth, against temptation! Whether she will be just against temptation! Whether she will defend herself against her own prejudices! She has conquered every thing else in her time; she has conquered this ocean which washes her shore; she has conquered her own sterile soil; she has conquered her stern and inflexible climate; she has fought her way to the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 221

9/1/21 4:16 PM

222

THE COLOR LINE

universal respect of the world; she has conquered everybody’s prejudices but her own. The question now is, whether she will conquer her own prejudices!” Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, 30 April 1850; Lib., 5 July 1850; Daniel Webster, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 18 vols. (Boston, 1903), 13:388–89. 4. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, residents of some towns in Yorkshire, England, retained a reputation of inhospitality toward strangers or foreigners. For example, John Wesley, an Anglican evangelist and founder of Methodism, traveled to Huddersfield in Yorkshire to preach in May 1757. After his visit, he wrote, “A wilder people I never saw in England. The men, women, and children filled the street as we rode along, and appeared just ready to devour us.” Two years later, he still labeled the people of Huddersfield as “the wildest congregation I have seen in Yorkshire.” In the early 1810s, several incidents occurred in which skilled textile artisans attacked new mechanized looms, since these “Luddites” believed the technology threatened their livelihood. As a result of these riots, hostility against strangers in Yorkshire towns escalated. Residents of Stanningley were known to stone groups of travelers, and the people of Pudsey were often charged with attacking and insulting strangers. In an 1868 article published in London’s Quarterly Review, the prejudice of the people of Yorkshire against strangers was characterized as taking “an unpleasantly active form,” partly because of the physical isolation of many towns within the county. Joseph Lawson, Letters to the Young on Progress in Pudsey during the Last Sixty Years (Stanningley, Eng., 1887), 56, 62; “Yorkshire Life and Character,” Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers 22:488–89 (March 1868); “Article II,” Quarterly Review 145:329–30 (April 1878); Nehemiah Curnock, ed., The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 8 vols. (New York, 1909) 4:210, 333. 5. The Merchant of Venice, sc. 13, lines 1211–16. 6. Douglass compares “the colored man” to Jean Valjean, protagonist of the French novel Les Misérables, who faces the stigma of being an ex-convict. Valjean changes his identity and repeatedly rises to prominence, but each time a prison guard recognizes him, Valjean is forced to start over in a new location. Through this comparison, Douglass suggests that the African American is capable of great things, but is held back by racism. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (New York, 1889). 7. Luke 2:14. 8. Matt. 7:12. 9. Douglass quotes Isaiah 1:18. Though the verse seems straightforward, God is appealing to the Israelites to practice mercy and justice so that he might make their sins “as white as snow.” Reason in this instance therefore refers not only to the humans’ ability to think logically, but also to their obligation to obey God’s law by protecting the weak and “relieving the oppressed” (Isa. 1:17). 10. Douglass toured the British Isles from August 1845 to April 1847. He made observations similar to those in this article in his second and third autobiographies about the lack of racism he encountered there. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:224–25; 3:181–82, 188–91. 11. The noted black antislavery lecturer Charles Lenox Remond (1810–73) was born to free parents in Salem, Massachusetts, where, like his father, he worked as a barber. Remond became active in reform movements at an early age. He served as a member of the Colored Association of Massachusetts, and when it merged with the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, he became an officer in that organization. By 1838, Remond had begun his career as a lecturer under the auspices of the American Anti-Slavery Society. A delegate to the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, Remond traveled and lectured in the British Isles for sixteen months. Upon his return, Remond was employed as a lecture agent by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and he and Douglass frequently traveled together on lecture tours. Their close association was troubled by a growing rift between Douglass and Garrison, and in 1852, Remond announced his intention to cancel his subscription to Frederick Douglass’ Paper in protest of Douglass’s adoption of nonGarrisonian views of the U.S. Constitution. During the Civil War, Remond was a recruiting officer for the black Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry. Illness curtailed his reform activities after the war. FDP, 20 May 1852; New York Daily Times, 26 December 1873; NNE, 8 January 1874; Jane H. Pease

Y7870-Douglass.indb 222

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

223

and William H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks’ Search for Freedom, 1830–1861 (New York, 1974), 46; Les Wallace, “Charles Lenox Remond: The Lost Prince of Abolitionism,” NHB, 40:696–701 (May–June 1977); NCAB, 2:303; DAB, 15:499–500. 12. The parents of Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817–c. 1866) carried him along in their escape from slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore around 1820. The family settled six years later in New York City, where young Ward received an elementary education. He embraced religion in 1833 and was ordained in 1839. His two New York congregations, at South Butler (1841–43) and Courtland (1846–51), consisted mostly of whites, but Ward vigorously agitated for the rights of both slaves and free blacks. The American Anti-Slavery Society appointed Ward a lecturing agent in 1839. As one of the earliest black supporters of political abolitionism, Ward acted as a spokesman for the Liberty party after 1844. Ward studied law and medicine briefly, and also tried his hand at editing during the late 1840s. His Impartial Citizen, published from Syracuse, failed financially, as did a second newspaper venture. In 1851, Ward’s leading role in the Jerry Rescue caused him to fear arrest, and he immigrated to Canada. While there, he launched the Provincial Freeman in 1853 and acted as an agent for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. In the latter capacity, Ward journeyed to Britain on a fund-raising tour. In 1855, he published Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro and accepted a British Quaker’s gift of fifty acres of land in Jamaica. He lived his last decade on the island, farming, writing, and ministering to a small Baptist congregation. NS, 2 February 1849; Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History, 2d ed. (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 206–08, 227, 265–66, 361, 395; Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York, 1969), 79, 98, 133, 138, 210. 13. 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 after spending two years lecturing in Great Britain on behalf of the free-labor movement. An early proponent of black immigration to Africa, he founded the African Civilization Society. Garnet, in his appeal sanctioning slave uprisings before the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, in August 1843, praised Madison Washington. After the Civil War, Garnet was president of Avery College in Pittsburgh and U.S. minister to Liberia (1881–82). Schor, Henry Highland Garnet; 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 (online). 14. William Wells Brown (c. 1816–84) was born a slave in Lexington, Kentucky, but spent much of his youth near St. Louis, Missouri. He fled slavery in 1834, taking the name Wells Brown from a Quaker man who aided his escape. Brown was employed as a lecturer for the Western New York and Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Societies between 1843 and 1849, and was active in universal reform movements advocating temperance, women’s rights, and prison reform. He lectured in Great Britain from 1849 to 1855, to moderate acclaim. Brown studied medicine informally, but chose to remain active in reforms instead of committing to professional medical practice. He published a number of historical books concerning blacks and slavery, beginning in 1847 with his autobiography, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. His first history, The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, appeared in 1863 and ran through ten editions in three years. His best-known literary production was the novel Clotel, written while he toured Great Britain in the early 1850s. R. J. M. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers: The Lives of Six Nineteenth-Century Afro-Americans (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), 45, 48, 95–96, 101–02; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 35, 42, 50–51; DAB, 3:161. 15. Born Jim Pembroke, James William Charles Pennington (1809–71) was born a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and was trained as a blacksmith. His flight north at the age of twenty-one led him to the home of a Pennsylvania Quaker who taught him to read and write. Later, Pennington

Y7870-Douglass.indb 223

9/1/21 4:16 PM

224

THE COLOR LINE

found work and began teaching black children in Newtown, Long Island, and then in New Haven, Connecticut, where he also studied theology. Pennington’s ministerial career began in 1838 in Newtown, and in 1840 he entered the Congregational ministry in Hartford, Connecticut, where he preached until 1847, later serving as a pastor (1848–55) of Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City. In 1843, Pennington traveled to England as a delegate-at-large to the World’s Anti-Slavery Conference in London and then lectured in London, France, and Belgium. He so impressed his European audiences that the University of Heidelberg awarded him an honorary doctor of divinity degree. Fearing recapture after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, Pennington again traveled abroad, but abolitionist friends bought his freedom in 1851 for $150. He was an active member of both abolitionist and black self-improvement organizations. In addition to many sermons, addresses, and regular contributions to the Anglo-African Magazine, Pennington wrote A Text Book of the Origins and History, etc., etc., of the Colored People (1841), a query, based on biblical references, into the Negro’s ancestry and character, and an autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849). Carter G. Woodson, ed., The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written during the Crisis, 1800–1860 (Washington, D.C., 1926), 642–51; Martin Robison Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (1852; New York, 1968), 113; William Wells Brown, The Rising Son; or, The Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race (Boston, 1874), 461–63; Rhoda G. Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 49–51, 53, 88–89, 108–10, 418; NCAB, 14:307; DAB, 14:441–42. 16. Alexander Crummell (1819–98) was born in New York City to Charity Hicks, a freeborn woman, and Boston Crummell, an African. He attended the Oneida Institute in upstate New York. In 1844, Crummell was ordained an Episcopal priest, and following an attempt to establish a congregation in Philadelphia, he moved back to New York with his wife and children in 1845. He participated in the antislavery movement by working in the New York offices of the American Anti-Slavery Society and serving as the New England correspondent for the Colored American. In 1847, Crummell traveled to England to raise money for a new church by delivering antislavery lectures around the country. He not only raised funds for his church but also began studying at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and soon made arrangements for his family to join him abroad. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1853, he journeyed to Liberia as a missionary of the Episcopal Church of the United States. With the exception of a brief lecturing tour of the United States from April 1861 to October 1862, Crummell lived in Liberia, working as a missionary and an English professor, until he fled the country following a coup in 1871. While Crummell initially opposed the American Colonization Society, he advocated black immigration after his time in Liberia. He also supported separate organizations for the races, specifically with the aim of advancing the interests of people of African descent. Back in the United States, Crummell established a congregation at St. Luke’s in Washington, D.C., and served there until 1894. He also continued to travel and lecture, and in 1897 he founded the American Negro Academy. Gregory U. Rigsby, Alexander Crummell: Pioneer in Nineteenth-Century PanAfrican Thought (New York, 1987); Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (New York, 1989); William H. Ferris, Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture (1920; New York, 1969); DANB, 145–47; ANB (online). 17. Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841–98) was born a slave near Farmville, Virginia. In early adulthood, he escaped to the free state of Kansas, where he established and taught in the first elementary school for blacks. In February 1869, Bruce, convinced that there were greater opportunities in the South, moved to Mississippi, where he was made supervisor of elections in Tallahatchie County. In 1870, Bruce moved to Jackson, where he was elected sergeant at arms of the state senate. Later, having moved to Bolivar County, he was elected sheriff and tax assessor. In 1874, the state legislature elected Bruce to the U.S. Senate, making him the second black man to represent Mississippi in that office. During his single Senate term, Bruce championed pensions for black war veterans, the protection of Indian lands, and federal intervention to safeguard voting rights. The Senate chose him to head a

Y7870-Douglass.indb 224

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

225

committee to conclude the business of the bankrupt Freedman’s Bank, which succeeded in refunding 62 percent of the depositors’ money. Remaining a power in the Mississippi Republican party, Bruce received federal appointments as register of the treasury (1881–85, 1897–98) and recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1889–93). Douglass and Bruce frequently appeared together at political events in Washington, D.C., and consulted on political strategy. On 24 June 1878, Bruce married Josephine Beal Wilson of Cleveland, Ohio. Douglass alludes to the couple’s four-month honeymoon tour of Europe. Lawrence Otis Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty (New York, 2006); Maurine Christopher, Black Americans in Congress (New York, 1976), 15–24; DANB, 74–76. 18. A Brahmin, often spelled “Brahman,” is a member of the highest-ranking Hindu caste in India. Traditionally believed to have originated in the mouth of Purusha (God), the majority of Brahmins were priests, scholars, religious leaders, and philosophers. The Brahmins dominated Indian society in the nineteenth century, and some scholars attribute this to British rule in the country during this time period. Brahmins, traditionally aligned with education, entered postprimary schools in disproportionate numbers. Once graduated, they had access to newly created professions within the British administration, further enhancing their position within Indian society. In the late nineteenth century, seeds of dissatisfaction among the lower castes began to grow as a direct response to the Brahmins’ close relationship to the British, their occupation of high positions within the government, and their discrimination toward non-Brahmins. The anti-Brahmin movement in India gained ground in the twentieth century. André Béteille, Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village (1965; Berkeley, Calif., 1971), 45, 48–9, 61–2; Marguerite Ross Barnett, The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India (Princeton, N.J., 1976), 15–17; James Heitzman and Robert L. Worden, eds., India: A Country Study, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C., 1996), xxxvii, 7, 270, 282–83, 787; S. H. Patil, Community Dominance and Political Modernisation: The Lingayats (New Delhi, 2002), 113–16. 19. On 29 May 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered the city of Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire and solidifying their own. During the early nineteenth century, non-Muslims within the Ottoman Empire were organized into millets, or religious bodies with a decidedly political function. The three millets—Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Jewish—were headed by a sultan-appointed cleric who resided in Istanbul and conducted the affairs of the community freely as long as he remained loyal to the sultan. While these non-Muslims groups were tolerated and enjoyed a relatively symbiotic relationship with the Muslim Turks, they were also classified as second-class subjects. Often, Christians were forced to pay higher taxes and were unable to testify in court. Through the seventeenth century, Christian boys were conscripted into the military or placed in administrative positions, where they were required to convert to Islam and to learn the Turkish language. The relationship between Christians and Muslims began to dramatically shift in the late nineteenth century with the increase of European economic, political, and ideological influence in the empire. Many Muslims, fearing Christian uprisings, initiated violent attacks against the non-Muslim population in Ottoman cities throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. William Denton, The Christians in Turkey (London, 1863), 14, 51, 58; Philip Walters, “Eastern Europe since the Fifteenth Century,” in A World History of Christianity, ed. Adrian Hastings (London, 1999), 284–85; Bruce Alan Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (New York, 2001), 3, 61, 130; Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (2005; New York, 2007), 213; Mehrdad Kia, Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2011), 4, 111–12. 20. Christian anti-Jewish sentiments became intense during the High Middle Ages, roughly the period between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, when Jews became increasingly viewed as a threat to Christian societies. Characterized as “dangerous outsiders,” Jews were tortured, murdered, and often expelled from areas they had resided in for centuries. Christianity, born of Judaism, accepted Jesus of Nazareth as the messiah, while Jews claimed he was a prophet but not the savior.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 225

9/1/21 4:16 PM

226

THE COLOR LINE

Christians believed that Jesus was crucified at the hands of the Jews and therefore called Jews by the epithet “Christ-killers.” Christians also accused Jews of poisoning wells, killing Christian children in order to use their blood for religious rituals, and desecrating the consecrated host designated for Mass. By the end of the Middle Ages, Christian contempt for Jews no longer stemmed exclusively from Judaism itself; rather, it took on a racial characteristic. Even if a Jew converted to Christianity, he still possessed “Jewishness,” and this new, racially based belief directly influenced anti-Semitism in the nineteenth century. Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Defi nition of Antisemitism (1990; Berkeley, Calif., 1996), 57, 311; William Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate (1993; New York, 2004), xix, 225–26; Edward Kessler, An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations (New York, 2010), 5–6; Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (Brookline, Mass., 2012), 58, 65–70, 81–86, 127. 21. Located north of the Danube River and south of the Southern Carpathians, Wallachia was founded as a principality in the early fourteenth century by Basarab I after a rebellion against Charles I of Hungary. The Ottoman Empire ruled over Wallachia from the early fifteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century, interrupted by brief periods of Russian control. Wallachia then united with Moldavia to form the United Principalities in 1859, renamed Romania in 1866, and then officially became the Kingdom of Romania in 1881. Slavery—primarily of those of Roma (Gypsy) ethnicity— existed in the region from before the founding of the Principality of Wallachia until its gradual abolition during the 1840s and 1850s. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 2053–54; EAA, 2:575–80. 22. Although the 1800 Act of Union merged Ireland with Great Britain as the United Kingdom, the relationship between these two nationalities remained strained. While union offered political and strategic advantages to England, the British maintained a racial prejudice against their new compatriots. Many English believed that the Irish were not fit to have a government of their own, and the “Irish question” evolved into a question of how Ireland could become less Irish and more British. Throughout the nineteenth century, the British upheld common stereotypes of the Irish, based mainly on race, religion, and class. These stereotypes caricatured the Irish as inferior, perpetually lazy peasants whose Catholic religion was based on superstition and loyalty to a foreign ruler. Following the devastating potato famine in the late 1840s, thousands of Irish immigrated to England. While Irish immigration into English cities was nothing new, the rapid arrival of these impoverished people, coupled with growing sentiments of intolerance toward the Irish, manifested into a “perception of the Irish that was based less and less on goodwill and more on fear.” By the end of the 1850s, England had come to treat Ireland more as a colony than a constituent part of the kingdom. Edward G. Lengel, The Irish through British Eyes: Perceptions of Ireland in the Famine Era (Westport, Conn., 2002), 3, 6, 130, 142, 145, 152; Nick Pelling, Anglo-Irish Relations, 1798–1922 (New York, 2003), 12; Michael de Nie, The Eternal Paddy: Irish Identity and the British Press, 1798–1882 (Madison, Wisc., 2004), 3–6, 11, 13–18, 100, 267, 269. 23. The first Chinese immigrants are thought to have entered California in the late 1840s with the discovery of gold. Along the West Coast, the Chinese were welcomed into frontier communities, since they helped meet the need for labor. Generally, these immigrants were employed in fields that few Americans found desirable, such as mining and railroad construction. Chinese laborers worked for cheaper wages than whites did, and they were valued for their hard work. But as more Chinese immigrants poured into California, they were met with economic, moral, and political resistance. One recurring complaint was the belief that the Chinese entered the United States under labor contracts from the Chinese government as part of a system similar to slavery. Though there was no evidence to support this claim, many considered the Chinese too similar to slaves—whites on the West Coast could not compete with their willingness to work for cheap wages, just as free labor could not survive in the American South during the antebellum period, because of slavery. While the Chinese were not the only immigrant group in the United States to work for low wages, they were arguably the most despised because of the perceived peculiarity of their culture. They were labeled as opium smokers and accused of introducing foreign diseases into the white population. In the 1850s, officials in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 226

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

227

California passed laws prohibiting the Chinese from testifying for or against whites in court, and in the 1870s they were denied access to naturalization. Several mobs attacked Chinese immigrants in California, the first large-scale attack occurring in October 1872 in Los Angeles, in which eighteen people were killed. The Chinese were not only subject to prejudice and physical violence, but also to legal discrimination and, eventually, exclusion from the country. Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York, 1909), 21–22, 46–47, 59–60, 75, 80; Sandmeyer, Anti-Chinese Movement in California, 11–15, 28–29, 34, 37, 48, 50; Saxton, Indispensable Enemy, 2, 6, 18; Pyong Gap Min, “Asian Immigration: History and Contemporary Trends,” in Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues, ed. Pyong Gap Min (New York, 2006), 9–10. 24. Ps. 50:10. 25. Thomas Whitson (1796–1864) was a veteran abolitionist and Underground Railroad agent. Born in West Fallowfield, Pennsylvania, of Hicksite Quaker parentage, Whitson received little formal education and enlivened many antislavery meetings with his forceful, yet ungrammatical, speeches. He attended the 1833 convention that founded the American Anti-Slavery Society and was the first to sign its declaration of principles. Whitson sided with the Garrisonians in the abolition schism of 1840 and strongly supported nonresistant principles. Robert C. Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania (Lancaster, Pa., 1883), 67–70, 131; NASS, 3 December 1864. 26. Gen. 4:15. 27. Many Irish immigrants first encountered the Chinese as they traveled to California during the Gold Rush in the 1850s. Finding themselves in direct competition with the Chinese for jobs, the Irish resented the Chinese for working at lower wages and replacing white immigrant laborers, often in unskilled trades. While the relationship between Irish and black workers in the late nineteenth century was anything but harmonious, the most intense form of Irish prejudice against a minority group was directed toward the Chinese. They attacked Chinese workers both politically and physically, and as anti-Chinese sentiment gained ground in the late 1870s, the Irish emerged as the movement’s strongest supporters in areas of California. Denis Kearney (1847–1907), an Irish political leader in San Francisco, helped form the Workingmen’s party, which used the slogan “And whatever happens, the Chinese must go.” While the Workingmen’s party enjoyed limited success in 1878 and 1880, Kearney’s anti-Chinese campaign, supported by the Irish workers in California, aided in the passage of the 1882 Exclusion Act, which prohibited Chinese immigration to the United States. Joseph Lee and Marion R. Casey, Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States (New York, 2006), 360; Jay P. Dolan, The Irish Americans: A History (New York, 2008), 179–80; Scott D. Seligman, The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo (Hong Kong, 2013), 111–13. 28. The 1880 U.S. Census reported the following racial statistics: 6,580,703 “Colored” and 43,402,970 “White” Americans. The census took special note of the fact that African Americans outnumbered whites in three states: Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880) (Washington, D.C., 1880), xxvii–xxviii. 29. Douglass recounted this incident in a speech in Cork, Ireland, delivered on 14 October 1845. Before then, the only confirmed connection of Douglass with Concord, New Hampshire, was a series of speeches he delivered there on 11–18 February 1844. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:xcii, 45. 30. Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87), the fourth son of the Presbyterian clergyman Lyman Beecher and brother of the antislavery novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the noted pastor of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church for forty years. After graduating from Amherst College in 1834, Beecher studied at Lane Theological Seminary and served as the pastor of Presbyterian churches in Lawrenceburg and Indianapolis, Indiana, before becoming minister at Plymouth Church in 1847. Committed to making the church an active instrument of social reform, Beecher, in his sermons, addressed the major social and political issues of his time with a force and drama that established him as one of the century’s

Y7870-Douglass.indb 227

9/1/21 4:16 PM

228

THE COLOR LINE

major orators. Though he denounced the evil of slavery, he denied that a constitutional basis existed for interfering with the institution in states where it was already in practice. Instead, Beecher urged that its exclusion from the territories would achieve abolition gradually and peacefully. His theology minimized doctrinal differences and stressed the religious worth of personal loyalty to Christ. In 1882, he led his church out of the Congregational denomination. In addition to writing extensively for the secular press, Beecher edited two widely read religious journals: the New York Independent (1861–63) and the Christian Union (1870–81). His reputation survived the five years of public discussion that preceded both civil and church trials stemming from the journalist Theodore Tilton’s charge that adulterous relations existed between Tilton’s wife and Beecher. Marie Caskey, Chariot of Fire: Religion and the Beecher Family (New Haven, Conn., 1978), 208–48; NCAB, 3:129–30; DAB, 2:129–35. 31. Born in Rochester, New Hampshire, John Parker Hale (1806–73) graduated from Bowdoin College and went on to practice law in Dover in his native state. After serving briefly in the state house of representatives, he held the appointed office of U.S. Attorney for the District of New Hampshire from 1834 to 1841. The next year, Hale won election as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, where his opposition to the “gag rule” and the annexation of Texas cost him renomination. In 1846, however, a coalition of Liberty party and antislavery Democrats elected him to the U.S. Senate. The Liberty party nominated him for president in 1848, but he withdrew, supporting the formation of the Free Soil party and its candidate, Martin Van Buren. In 1852, as the presidential candidate of the Free Democrats, Hale attracted almost 160,000 votes. In 1855, the new Republican party returned him to the Senate, where he served a decade before holding the post of U.S. ambassador to Spain until 1869. Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); EAA, 1:31–18. 32. Lewis Tappan (1788–1873), a wealthy New York merchant and abolitionist, devoted much of his career to religious and benevolent enterprises. Before the Panic of 1837, he achieved considerable financial success as a partner in and credit manager of his brother Arthur’s silk company. In 1841, Tappan founded the first U.S. commercial credit rating agency, and eight years later he retired to devote his time to philanthropic projects. Strongly influenced by the revivalist Charles G. Finney during the 1830s, Tappan was an early supporter of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the American Bible Society, a founder of the New York Evangelist, a sometime patron of Oberlin College, and a chief financial backer of the Broadway Tabernacle Church. Converted to the cause of immediate emancipation by Theodore D. Weld, Tappan helped organize the New York Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Mob attacks in 1834 and 1835 only deepened his antislavery convictions. Committed to racial equality, Tappan worked unsuccessfully to end segregation in churches and to increase black involvement in the American Anti-Slavery Society’s internal affairs. In 1840, he broke with William Lloyd Garrison over the issue of political action and the advisability of linking abolitionism with other reforms. Tappan was active from 1839 to 1841 in securing freedom for the African captives of the slave ship Amistad and also maintained close ties with British abolitionists, especially leaders of the British and Foreign AntiSlavery Society. During the mid-1840s, Tappan joined Frederick Douglass and other Garrisonians in attacking the Free Church of Scotland for accepting donations from American slaveholders. In 1846, he abandoned efforts to convert older benevolent associations to abolitionism and helped found the American Missionary Association, an agency distinguished for its work among the freedmen during and after the Civil War. A founder and dominant figure in the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Tappan supported the Liberty party in 1844, but shunned the Free Soilers in 1848. Following passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Tappan gave lukewarm support to the newly created American Abolition Society, a radical yet ephemeral successor to the defunct American and Foreign AntiSlavery Society. Douglass was also active in the new group, but differed with Tappan over the use of violence in attacking slavery. Although Tappan voted for John C. Frémont in 1856, he did not support the Republicans enthusiastically until the election of 1864. The principal postwar accomplishment of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 228

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE COLOR LINE

229

the elderly Tappan was the completion of a biography of his brother Arthur in 1870. Bertram WyattBrown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969); DAB, 18:303–04. 33. Son of Josiah Quincy, a Boston Federalist leader and president of Harvard University, Edmund Quincy (1807–77) joined the abolitionists in reaction to the murder of Elijah Lovejoy in 1837. A close associate of William Lloyd Garrison, Quincy was the corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1844 to 1853. He served on many other abolitionist committees, contributed frequently to Garrisonian publications, and often edited the Liberator during Garrison’s absences. NS, 21 January 1848; Massachusetts Historical Society, Tribute of the Massachusetts Historical Society to the Memory of Edmund Quincy and John Lothrop Motley (Boston, 1877), 6; NCAB, 6:93–94; DAB, 15:306–07. 34. Joshua Reed Giddings (1795–1864), a radical abolitionist and congressman from Ohio, was first elected to the House of Representatives as a Whig in 1838. He vigorously opposed the “gag rule,” the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War. In 1842, Giddings received a congressional sanction for his actions during negotiations with Great Britain over the Creole affair. While negotiations were under way, he introduced resolutions supporting the slaves’ right to mutiny. In 1848, Giddings left the Whig party to join the Free Soilers and then allied himself with the Republicans after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In late October 1852, Giddings came to New York, where he joined Douglass in the campaign to elect Gerrit Smith to Congress. One of the founders of the Ohio Republican party, he lost his congressional seat after failing to be renominated in 1858. Giddings had been a strong supporter of John Brown, writing encouraging letters to him in Kansas. Lincoln appointed Giddings U.S. consul general to Canada, a post he held in Montreal until his death. FDP, 29 October 1852; Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings; ACAB, 4:478; BDUSC (online). 35. Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–93), nineteenth president of the United States, had served as governor of his home state of Ohio (1867–71) and as a Republican congressman (1865–67). Although Hayes had supported the Radical Reconstruction program while in Congress, events during Grant’s administration convinced him that the remaining Southern Republican state governments, led by carpetbaggers and blacks, could no longer sustain themselves, even with federal military intervention. As president, Hayes attempted to rejuvenate the Southern Republican party through a program of sectional reconciliation aimed at attracting former Whigs and Douglas Democrats to the party. He believed that the goodwill of Southern whites was better protection for the political and civil rights of blacks than a federal military force. Soon after his inauguration, Hayes ordered U.S. troops in Charleston and New Orleans away from the statehouses and back to their garrisons, causing the Republican governments in South Carolina and Louisiana to collapse in the face of armed threats from their Democratic opponents. Hayes appointed numerous Southern Democrats to federal office, including the former Confederate general David M. Key, who became his postmaster general. Despite Hayes’s hope, few new Southern white voters joined the Republican party, and it shrank into a powerless minority in most of the region for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Kenneth E. Davison, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Westport, Conn., 1972); Keith Dan Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, La., 1973), 246–51, 317–21; Vincent P. DeSantis, Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877–1897 (1959; New York, 1969), 66–132; Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 335–52. 36. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Douglass marshal of the District of Columbia in 1877. While it was customary for the marshal to attend state functions at the White House and introduce guests of the president, Douglass was not offered this duty. Douglass did not enjoy a particularly close relationship with Hayes, although it seemed the president did value his opinion on certain topics. For instance, Hayes met with Douglass in February 1877, before taking office, to discuss the issue of Reconstruction and the condition of blacks in the South. He concluded that Douglass gave him “many useful hints about the whole subject.” While Douglass did not serve in a formal capacity during receptions and state dinners at the White House, there is evidence that he attended some important events during Hayes’s administration. For example, in 1879, 1880, and 1881, he attended the New

Y7870-Douglass.indb 229

9/1/21 4:16 PM

230

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

Year’s reception at the White House. He also attended, along with his wife, Anna, the Diplomatic Corps Reception held at the Executive Mansion on 24 February 1881. Douglass stated that he was a “welcome visitor at the Executive Mansion on state occasions and all others, while Rutherford B. Hayes was President of the United States.” Philadelphia North American, 2 January 1879; Little Rock Daily Arkansas Gazette, 12 May 1880; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 2 January 1881; Boston Daily Advertiser, 25 February 1881; Rutherford B. Hayes, Hayes: The Diary of a President, 1875–1881, ed. T. Harry Williams (New York, 1964), 74–75, 83–84, 311; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 291; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:518. 37. A fez is a brimless hat in the shape of a straight cylinder or a tapered cone, made of felt or cloth. Typically red in color, it is usually topped with a black or dark blue tassel. The fez comes in a variety of styles, from stiff and tall to soft, shorter, and rounded. While the fez may have originated in ancient Greece, it is most commonly associated with Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. Sultan Selim III made the fez part of military uniforms in the late 1790s, and it was made an official part of military dress in 1827. During this time, the fez was also popular in Egypt and was worn by the Zouaves, French soldiers stationed in North Africa. According to one author, the fez was the most enduring piece of military garb in European history. In the United States, the fez is best known as the signature headpiece of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine—now known as Shriners International—a fraternity founded by two New York Masons, William Fleming and William “Billy” Florence, in 1870. Beverly Chico, Hats and Headwear around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2013), 175, 177; Alexander Maxwell, Patriots against Fashion: Clothing and Nationalism in Europe’s Age of Revolution (New York, 2014), 140–45, 150; Tracy Jenkins, “Fez,” in Ethnic Dress in the United States: A Cultural Encyclopedia, ed. Annette Lynch and Mitchell D. Strauss (Lanham, Md., 2015), 121. 38. The Sandwich Islands was the name given to the Hawaiian Islands by Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy in 1778, chosen in honor of one of his sponsors, First Lord of the Admiralty John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich. The contemporary name, which began to replace “Sandwich Islands” in the 1840s, is derived from that of the main island, Hawaii. The Hawaiian Islands consist of the exposed archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and an undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian-Emperor chain, formed by volcanic activity in the North Pacific Ocean. It was governed by a sovereign monarchy until the monarchy was overthrown in 1893, and in 1898 the islands were annexed by the United States. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 767. 39. An excerpt from Robert Burns’s 1795 poem “A Man’s a Man For A’ That.” Burns, Poems and Songs, 256.

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY (1881) Century Magazine, 23:125–31 (November 1881). Other texts in Chicago Tribune, 27 November 1881; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:153–56.

Douglass wrote three autobiographies that recounted his birth into and escape from slavery, as well as his life up until the time of each publication. The first two, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), withheld details of his escape in order to protect

Y7870-Douglass.indb 230

9/1/21 4:16 PM

230

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

Year’s reception at the White House. He also attended, along with his wife, Anna, the Diplomatic Corps Reception held at the Executive Mansion on 24 February 1881. Douglass stated that he was a “welcome visitor at the Executive Mansion on state occasions and all others, while Rutherford B. Hayes was President of the United States.” Philadelphia North American, 2 January 1879; Little Rock Daily Arkansas Gazette, 12 May 1880; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 2 January 1881; Boston Daily Advertiser, 25 February 1881; Rutherford B. Hayes, Hayes: The Diary of a President, 1875–1881, ed. T. Harry Williams (New York, 1964), 74–75, 83–84, 311; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 291; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:518. 37. A fez is a brimless hat in the shape of a straight cylinder or a tapered cone, made of felt or cloth. Typically red in color, it is usually topped with a black or dark blue tassel. The fez comes in a variety of styles, from stiff and tall to soft, shorter, and rounded. While the fez may have originated in ancient Greece, it is most commonly associated with Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. Sultan Selim III made the fez part of military uniforms in the late 1790s, and it was made an official part of military dress in 1827. During this time, the fez was also popular in Egypt and was worn by the Zouaves, French soldiers stationed in North Africa. According to one author, the fez was the most enduring piece of military garb in European history. In the United States, the fez is best known as the signature headpiece of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine—now known as Shriners International—a fraternity founded by two New York Masons, William Fleming and William “Billy” Florence, in 1870. Beverly Chico, Hats and Headwear around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2013), 175, 177; Alexander Maxwell, Patriots against Fashion: Clothing and Nationalism in Europe’s Age of Revolution (New York, 2014), 140–45, 150; Tracy Jenkins, “Fez,” in Ethnic Dress in the United States: A Cultural Encyclopedia, ed. Annette Lynch and Mitchell D. Strauss (Lanham, Md., 2015), 121. 38. The Sandwich Islands was the name given to the Hawaiian Islands by Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy in 1778, chosen in honor of one of his sponsors, First Lord of the Admiralty John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich. The contemporary name, which began to replace “Sandwich Islands” in the 1840s, is derived from that of the main island, Hawaii. The Hawaiian Islands consist of the exposed archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and an undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian-Emperor chain, formed by volcanic activity in the North Pacific Ocean. It was governed by a sovereign monarchy until the monarchy was overthrown in 1893, and in 1898 the islands were annexed by the United States. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 767. 39. An excerpt from Robert Burns’s 1795 poem “A Man’s a Man For A’ That.” Burns, Poems and Songs, 256.

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY (1881) Century Magazine, 23:125–31 (November 1881). Other texts in Chicago Tribune, 27 November 1881; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:153–56.

Douglass wrote three autobiographies that recounted his birth into and escape from slavery, as well as his life up until the time of each publication. The first two, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), withheld details of his escape in order to protect

Y7870-Douglass.indb 230

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

231

those who aided him and to avoid divulging details that could harm others attempting to escape. It was not until his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), that he published the specific details of his escape. The following excerpt from Life and Times was published in one of the first issues of the Century Magazine, which had just succeeded Scribner’s Monthly Magazine. The associate editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, had suggested it in a letter to Douglass: “It is very common . . . for portions of a volume to appear first in a magazine and we believe it is generally agreed that the sale of the book is thus increased.” Douglass was paid $100 for the rights to publish the first chapter of the second part of Life and Times. Underwood informed Douglass that this text had to be condensed to fit within the pages of the November issue. Century Magazine was published from 1881 to 1930. It featured both fiction and nonfiction, and at the height of the magazine’s popularity, subscriptions reached a quarter of a million. Robert Underwood Johnson to Douglass, 16 May, 29  September 1881, Douglass Collection, General Correspondence, reel 3, frames 459–60, 505R–506L, FD Papers, DLC; Arthur J. Bond, The Best Years of the Century (Urbana, Ill., 1981); ACAB (online).

In the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly forty years ago, and in various writings since, I have given the public what I considered very good reasons for withholding the manner of my escape. In substance these reasons were, first, that such publication at any time during the existence of slavery might be used by the master against the slave, and prevent the future escape of any who might adopt the same means that I did. The second reason was, if possible, still more binding to silence: the publication of details would certainly have put in peril the persons and property of those who assisted. Murder itself was not more sternly and certainly punished in the State of Maryland than that of aiding and abetting the escape of a slave.1 Many colored men, for no other crime than that of giving aid to a fugitive slave, have, like Charles T. Torrey,2 perished in prison. The abolition of slavery in my native State and throughout the country, and the lapse of time, render the caution hitherto observed no longer necessary. But even since the abolition of slavery, I have sometimes thought it well enough to baffle curiosity by saying that

Y7870-Douglass.indb 231

9/1/21 4:16 PM

232

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

while slavery existed there were good reasons for not telling the manner of my escape, and since slavery had ceased to exist, there was no reason for telling it. I shall now, however, cease to avail myself of this formula, and, as far as I can, endeavor to satisfy this very natural curiosity. I should, perhaps, have yielded to that feeling sooner, had there been anything very heroic or thrilling in the incidents connected with my escape, for I am sorry to say I have nothing of that sort to tell; and yet the courage that could risk betrayal and the bravery which was ready to encounter death, if need be, in pursuit of freedom, were essential features in the undertaking. My success was due to address rather than courage, to good luck rather than bravery. My means of escape were provided for me by the very men who were making laws to hold and bind me more securely in slavery. It was the custom in the State of Maryland to require the free colored people to have what were called free papers. These instruments they were required to renew very often, and by charging a fee for this writing, considerable sums from time to time were collected by the State. In these papers the name, age, color, height, and form of the freeman were described, together with any scars or other marks upon his person which could assist in his identification. This device in some measure defeated itself—since more than one man could be found to answer the same general description. Hence many slaves could escape by personating the owner of one set of papers; and this was often done as follows: A slave, nearly or sufficiently answering the description set forth in the papers, would borrow or hire them till by means of them he could escape to a free State, and then, by mail or otherwise, would return them to the owner. The operation was a hazardous one for the lender as well as for the borrower. A failure on the part of the fugitive to send back the papers would imperil his benefactor, and the discovery of the papers in possession of the wrong man would imperil both the fugitive and his friend. It was, therefore, an act of supreme trust on the part of a freeman of color thus to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another might be free. It was, however, not unfrequently bravely done, and was seldom discovered. I was not so fortunate as to resemble any of my free acquaintances sufficiently to answer the description of their papers. But I had one friend—a sailor—who owned a sailor’s protection, which answered somewhat the purpose of free papers3—describing his person, and certifying to the fact that he was a free American sailor. The instrument had at its head the American eagle, which gave it the appearance at once of an authorized document. This protection, when in my hands, did not describe its bearer very accurately. Indeed, it called for

Y7870-Douglass.indb 232

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

233

a man much darker than myself, and close examination of it would have caused my arrest at the start. In order to avoid this fatal scrutiny on the part of railroad officials, I arranged with Isaac Rolls,4 a Baltimore hackman,5 to bring my baggage to the Philadelphia train just on the moment of starting, and jumped upon the car myself when the train was in motion. Had I gone into the station and offered to purchase a ticket, I should have been instantly and carefully examined, and undoubtedly arrested. In choosing this plan I considered the jostle of the train, and the natural haste of the conductor, in a train crowded with passengers, and relied upon my skill and address in playing the sailor, as described in my protection, to do the rest. One element in my favor was the kind feeling which prevailed in Baltimore and other sea-ports at the time, toward “those who go down to the sea in ships.”6 “Free trade and sailors’ rights”7 just then expressed the sentiment of the country. In my clothing I was rigged out in sailor style. I had on a red shirt and a tarpaulin hat,8 and a black cravat9 tied in sailor fashion carelessly and loosely about my neck. My knowledge of ships and sailor’s talk came much to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to stern,10 and from keelson to cross-trees,11 and could talk sailor like an “old salt.”12 I was well on the way to Havre de Grace13 before the conductor came into the negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of his black passengers. This was a critical moment in the drama. My whole future depended upon the decision of this conductor. Agitated though I was while this ceremony was proceeding, still, externally, at least, I was apparently calm and selfpossessed. He went on with his duty—examining several colored passengers before reaching me. He was somewhat harsh in tone and peremptory in manner until he reached me, when, strange enough, and to my surprise and relief, his whole manner changed. Seeing that I did not readily produce my free papers, as the other colored persons in the car had done, he said to me, in friendly contrast with his bearing toward the others: “I suppose you have your free papers?” To which I answered: “No, sir; I never carry my free papers to sea with me.” “But you have something to show that you are a freeman, haven’t you?” “Yes, sir,” I answered; “I have a paper with the American eagle on it, and that will carry me around the world.” With this I drew from my deep sailor’s pocket my seaman’s protection, as before described. The merest glance at the paper satisfied him, and he took my fare and went on about his business. This moment of time

Y7870-Douglass.indb 233

9/1/21 4:16 PM

234

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

was one of the most anxious I ever experienced. Had the conductor looked closely at the paper, he could not have failed to discover that it called for a very different-looking person from myself, and in that case it would have been his duty to arrest me on the instant, and send me back to Baltimore from the first station. When he left me with the assurance that I was all right, though much relieved, I realized that I was still in great danger: I was still in Maryland, and subject to arrest at any moment. I saw on the train several persons who would have known me in any other clothes, and I feared they might recognize me, even in my sailor “rig,”14 and report me to the conductor, who would then subject me to a closer examination, which I knew well would be fatal to me. Though I was not a murderer fleeing from justice, I felt perhaps quite as miserable as such a criminal. The train was moving at a very high rate of speed for that epoch of railroad travel, but to my anxious mind it was moving far too slowly. Minutes were hours, and hours were days during this part of my flight. After Maryland, I was to pass through Delaware— another slave State, where slave-catchers generally awaited their prey, for it was not in the interior of the State, but on its borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and active. The border lines between slavery and freedom were the dangerous ones for the fugitives. The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds on his trail in full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or noisily than did mine from the time I left Baltimore till I reached Philadelphia. The passage of the Susquehanna River15 at Havre de Grace was at that time made by ferry-boat, on board of which I met a young colored man by the name of Nichols, who came very near betraying me. He was a “hand” on the boat, but, instead of minding his business, he insisted upon knowing me, and asking me dangerous questions as to where I was going, when I was coming back, etc. I got away from my old and inconvenient acquaintance as soon as I could decently do so, and went to another part of the boat. Once across the river, I encountered a new danger. Only a few days before, I had been at work on a revenue cutter, in Mr. Price’s ship-yard in Baltimore, under the care of Captain McGowan.16 On the meeting at this point of the two trains, the one going south stopped on the track just opposite to the one going north, and it so happened that this Captain McGowan sat at a window where he could see me very distinctly, and would certainly have recognized me had he looked at me but for a second. Fortunately, in the hurry of the moment, he did not see me; and the trains soon passed each other on their respective ways. But this was not my only hair-breadth escape. A German black-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 234

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

235

smith whom I knew well was on the train with me, and looked at me very intently, as if he thought he had seen me somewhere before in his travels. I really believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray me. At any rate, he saw me escaping and held his peace. The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most, was Wilmington. Here we left the train and took the steam-boat for Philadelphia. In making the change here I again apprehended arrest, but no one disturbed me, and I was soon on the broad and beautiful Delaware, speeding away to the Quaker City.17 On reaching Philadelphia in the afternoon, I inquired of a colored man how I could get on to New York. He directed me to the William-street depot,18 and thither I went, taking the train that night. I reached New York Tuesday morning, having completed the journey in less than twenty-four hours. My free life began on the third of September, 1838. On the morning of the fourth of that month, after an anxious and most perilous but safe journey, I found myself in the big city of New York, a free man—one more added to the mighty throng19 which, like the confused waves of the troubled sea, surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway.20 Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every hand, my thoughts could not be much withdrawn from my strange situation. For the moment, the dreams of my youth and the hopes of my manhood were completely fulfilled. The bonds that had held me to “old master” were broken. No man now had a right to call me his slave or assert mastery over me. I was in the rough and tumble of an outdoor world, to take my chance with the rest of its busy number. I have often been asked how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the “quick round of blood,”21 I lived more in that one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In a letter writen to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: “I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.”22 Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil. During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were, dragging a heavy chain which no strength of mine could break; I was not only a slave, but a slave for life. I might become a husband, a father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 235

9/1/21 4:16 PM

236

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God’s work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible make-shifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject slave—a prisoner for life, punished for some transgression in which I had no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly endeavor to secure my freedom. This contest was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy. But my gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and power of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite so free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the street, a few hours after my landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once known well in slavery. The information received from him alarmed me. The fugitive in question was known in Baltimore as “Allender’s Jake,” but in New York he wore the more respectable name of “William Dixon.”23 Jake, in law, was the property of Doctor Allender,24 and Tolly Allender, the son of the doctor, had once made an effort to recapture Mr. Dixon, but had failed for want of evidence to support his claim. Jake told me the circumstances of this attempt, and how narrowly he escaped being sent back to slavery and torture. He told me that New York was then full of Southerners returning from the Northern watering-places;25 that the colored people of New York were not to be trusted;26 that there were hired men of my own color who would betray me for a few dollars;27 that there were hired men ever on the lookout for fugitives; that I must trust no man with my secret; that I must not think of going either upon the wharves or into any colored boardinghouse, for all such places were closely watched; that he was himself unable to help me; and, in fact, he seemed while speaking to me to fear lest I myself might be a spy and a betrayer. Under this apprehension, as I suppose, he showed signs of wishing to be rid of me, and with whitewash28 brush in hand, in search of work, he soon disappeared. This picture, given by poor “Jake,” of New York, was a damper to my enthusiasm. My little store of money would soon be exhausted, and since it would be unsafe for me to go on the wharves for work, and I had no introductions elsewhere, the prospect for me was far from cheerful. I saw the wisdom of keeping away from the ship-yards, for, if pursued, as I felt certain I should be, Mr. Auld,29 my “master,” would naturally seek me

Y7870-Douglass.indb 236

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

237

there among the calkers. Every door seemed closed against me. I was in the midst of an ocean of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger to every one. I was without home, without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without work, and without any definite knowledge as to what course to take, or where to look for succor. In such an extremity, a man had something besides his new-born freedom to think of. While wandering about the streets of New York, and lodging at least one night among the barrels on one of the wharves, I was indeed free—from slavery, but free from food and shelter as well. I kept my secret to myself as long as I could, but I was compelled at last to seek some one who would befriend me without taking advantage of my destitution to betray me. Such a person I found in a sailor named Stuart,30 a warm-hearted and generous fellow, who, from his humble home on Centre street, saw me standing on the opposite sidewalk, near the Tombs prison.31 As he approached me, I ventured a remark to him which at once enlisted his interest in me. He took me to his home to spend the night, and in the morning went with me to Mr. David Ruggles,32 the secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee,33 a co-worker with Isaac T. Hopper,34 Lewis and Arthur Tappan,35 Theodore S. Wright,36 Samuel Cornish,37 Thomas Downing,38 Philip A. Bell,39 and other true men of their time. All these (save Mr. Bell, who still lives, and is editor and publisher of a paper called the “Elevator,” in San Francisco)40 have finished their work on earth. Once in the hands of these brave and wise men, I felt comparatively safe. With Mr. Ruggles, on the corner of Lispenard and Church streets,41 I was hidden several days, during which time my intended wife42 came on from Baltimore at my call, to share the burdens of life with me. She was a free woman, and came at once on getting the good news of my safety. We were married by Rev. J. W. C. Pennington,43 then a well-known and respected Presbyterian minister. I had no money with which to pay the marriage fee, but he seemed well pleased with our thanks. Mr. Ruggles was the first officer on the “Underground Railroad” whom I met after coming North, and was, indeed, the only one with whom I had anything to do till I became such an officer myself. Learning that my trade was that of a calker, he promptly decided that the best place for me was in New Bedford, Mass.44 He told me that many ships for whaling voyages were fitted out there, and that I might there find work at my trade and make a good living. So, on the day of the marriage ceremony, we took our little luggage to the steamer John W. Richmond,45 which, at that time, was one of the line running between New York and Newport,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 237

9/1/21 4:16 PM

238

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

R. I.46 Forty-three years ago colored travelers were not permitted in the cabin, nor allowed abaft47 the paddle-wheels of a steam vessel. They were compelled, whatever the weather might be,—whether cold or hot, wet or dry,—to spend the night on deck.48 Unjust as this regulation was, it did not trouble us much; we had fared much harder before. We arrived at Newport the next morning, and soon after an old fashioned stage-coach, with “New Bedford” in large yellow letters on its sides, came down to the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker49 gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage,—Friends William C. Taber50 and Joseph Ricketson,51—who at once discerned our true situation, and, in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get in.” I never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way to our new home. When we reached “Stone Bridge”52 the passengers alighted for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no breakfast, and, when asked for our fares, I told the driver I would make it right with him when we reached New Bedford. I expected some objection to this on his part, but he made none. When, however, we reached New Bedford, he took our baggage, including three music-books,—two of them collections by Dyer,53 and one by Shaw,54 —and held them until I was able to redeem them by paying to him the amount due for our rides. This was soon done, for Mr. Nathan Johnson55 not only received me kindly and hospitably, but, on being informed about our baggage, at once loaned me the two dollars with which to square accounts with the stage-driver. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson reached a good old age, and now rest from their labors. I am under many grateful obligations to them. They not only “took me in when a stranger” and “fed me when hungry,”56 but taught me how to make an honest living. Thus, in a fortnight after my flight from Maryland, I was safe in New Bedford, a citizen of the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts. Once initiated into my new life of freedom and assured by Mr. Johnson that I need not fear recapture in that city, a comparatively unimportant question arose as to the name by which I should be known thereafter in my new relation as a free man. The name given me by my dear mother was no less pretentious and long than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in Maryland, dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey. Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself from the slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called myself Johnson; but in New Bedford I found

Y7870-Douglass.indb 238

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

239

that the Johnson family was already so numerous as to cause some confusion in distinguishing them, hence a change in this name seemed desirable.57 Nathan Johnson, mine host, placed great emphasis upon this necessity, and wished me to allow him to select a name for me. I consented, and he called me by my present name—the one by which I have been known for three and forty years—Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady of the Lake,”58 and so pleased was he with its great character that he wished me to bear his name. Since reading that charming poem myself, I have often thought that, considering the noble hospitality and manly character of Nathan Johnson—black man though he was—he, far more than I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that, if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile with a view to my recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like him of the “stalwart hand.”59 The reader may be surprised at the impressions I had in some way conceived of the social and material condition of the people at the North. I had no proper idea of the wealth, refinement, enterprise, and high civilization of this section of the country. My “Columbian Orator,”60 almost my only book, had done nothing to enlighten me concerning Northern society. I had been taught that slavery was the bottom fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea, I came naturally to the conclusion that poverty must be the general condition of the people of the free States. In the country from which I came, a white man holding no slaves was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken man, and men of this class were contemptuously called “poor white trash.”61 Hence I supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were ignorant, poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the North must be in a similar condition. I could have landed in no part of the United States where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast, not only to life generally in the South, but in the condition of the colored people there, than in New Bedford. I was amazed when Mr. Johnson told me that there was nothing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts that would prevent a colored man from being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him.62 There, too, the black man’s children attended the public schools with the white man’s children, and apparently without objection from any quarter.63 To impress me with my security from recapture and return to slavery, Mr. Johnson assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave out of New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their lives to save me from such a fate.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 239

9/1/21 4:16 PM

240

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

The fifth day after my arrival, I put on the clothes of a common laborer, and went upon the wharves in search of work. On my way down Union street I saw a large pile of coal in front of the house of Rev. Ephraim Peabody, the Unitarian minister.64 I went to the kitchen door and asked the privilege of bringing in and putting away this coal. “What will you charge?” said the lady. “I will leave that to you, madam.” “You may put it away,” she said. I was not long in accomplishing the job, when the dear lady put into my hand two silver half-dollars. To understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money, realizing that I had no master who could take it from me,—that it was mine—that my hands were my own, and could earn more of the precious coin,—one must have been in some sense himself a slave. My next job was stowing a sloop65 at Uncle Gid. Howland’s wharf66 with a cargo of oil for New York. I was not only a freeman, but a free working-man, and no “master” stood ready at the end of the week to seize my hard earnings. The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being fitted out for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The sawing this wood was considered a good job. With the help of old Friend Johnson (blessings on his memory) I got a saw and “buck,”67 and went at it. When I went into a store to buy a cord with which to brace up my saw in the frame, I asked for a “fip’s”68 worth of cord. The man behind the counter looked rather sharply at me, and said with equal sharpness, “You don’t belong about here.” I was alarmed, and thought I had betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents, called fourpence in Massachusetts. But no harm came from the “fi’penny-bit” blunder, and I confidently and cheerfully went to work with my saw and buck. It was new business to me, but I never did better work, or more of it, in the same space of time on the plantation for Covey, the negro-breaker,69 than I did for myself in these earliest years of my freedom. Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford three and forty years ago, the place was not entirely free from race and color prejudice. The good influence of the Roaches,70 Rodmans,71 Arnolds,72 Grinnells,73 and Robesons74 did not pervade all classes of its people. The test of the real civilization of the community came when I applied for work at my trade, and then my repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so happened that Mr. Rodney French,75 a wealthy and enterprising citizen, distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering76 to be done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr. French

Y7870-Douglass.indb 240

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

241

for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ me, and I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon reaching the float-stage, where others calkers were at work, I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to hardships that made ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my trade I could have earned two dollars a day, but as a common laborer I received but one dollar. The difference was of great importance to me, but if I could not get two dollars, I was glad to get one; and so I went to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The consciousness that I was free—no longer a slave—kept me cheerful under this, and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts. For instance, though colored children attended the schools, and were treated kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum refused, till several years after my residence in that city, to allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its hall.77 Not until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker,78 Ralph Waldo Emerson,79 and Horace Mann80 refused to lecture in their course while there was such a restriction, was it abandoned. Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New Bedford to give me a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of work that came to hand. I sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, moved rubbish from back yards, worked on the wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and scoured their cabins. I afterward got steady work at the brass-foundry owned by Mr. Richmond.81 My duty here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and empty the flasks in which castings were made; and at times this was hot and heavy work. The articles produced here were mostly for ship work, and in the busy season the foundry was in operation night and day. I have often worked two nights and every working day of the week. My foreman, Mr. Cobb, was a good man, and more than once protected me from abuse that one or more of the hands was disposed to throw upon me. While in this situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the mental running like water, was more favorable to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while I was performing the up and down motions of the heavy beam by which the bellows was inflated

Y7870-Douglass.indb 241

9/1/21 4:16 PM

242

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

and discharged. It was the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and I look back to it now, after so many years, with some complacency and a little wonder that I could have been so earnest and persevering in any pursuit other than for my daily bread. I certainly saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire me with such interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands found to do. I am glad to be able to say that, during my engagement in this foundry, no complaint was ever made against me that I did not do my work, and do it well. The bellows which I worked by main strength was, after I left, moved by a steam-engine. 1. Douglass exaggerates. While the crime of murder could be punished by death, assisting the escape of fugitive slaves in the state of Maryland was met, according to law, with imprisonment. In 1818, Maryland passed “An act entitled, A further additional supplement to the act entitled, An act concerning Crimes and Punishments,” which imposed a penalty of up to six years’ imprisonment to any free person in Maryland responsible for enticing, persuading, or assisting runaway slaves. Three decades later, in 1849, the state law became more severe, increasing the prison sentence for assisting runaway slaves to a minimum of six years and a maximum of fifteen. Laws Made and Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Maryland (1817), ch. 157; Laws Made and Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Maryland (1850), ch. 296. 2. Douglass refers to Charles Turner Torrey (1813–46), born in Massachusetts and educated at Yale. While a student at Andover Theological Seminary, he organized an antislavery society there. Later a Congregational minister, Torrey was one of the leaders of the anti-Garrisonian faction in Massachusetts and served both as the agent of the Massachusetts Abolition Society and as the first editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist. Torrey left the paper in 1841 to go to Washington, D.C., as a freelance reporter. In Annapolis, Maryland, the following year, he was arrested as an abolitionist while reporting on a “Convention of Slaveholders” and was acquitted after a brief trial. Moving to New York for a short while to edit the Albany Patriot, Torrey moved to Baltimore around 1843 to engage in business and to carry out his scheme for transporting fugitive slaves to free states along a prearranged route. It is said that in two years he helped about four hundred slaves escape from Maryland and Virginia. Arrested for this activity in 1844, Torrey was convicted and sentenced to six years’ hard labor. He died of tuberculosis in a Baltimore prison. J. C. Lovejoy, Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey, Who Died in the Penitentiary of Maryland, Where He Was Confi ned for Showing Mercy to the Poor (Boston, 1847); Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830–1860 (London, 1960), 163–64; DAB, 18:595–96. 3. “Seamen’s Protection Certificates” were issued to American seamen, both white and black, to protect merchant sailors from being seized when working. A typical certificate identified its holder’s name, age, place of birth, height, and any distinguishing physical features, such as tattoos or scars; nonwhites were additionally required to provide a racial designation. The certificate was signed (or marked) by its holder and included the signature of a witness attesting to the truth of the certificate’s information. Because the protection granted its holders American citizenship, many blacks applied for the certificates. The advantages of protection became more and more limited for blacks after South Carolina passed its Negro Seamen Acts in 1822, which prohibited black sailors from disembarking in the state’s ports. Alabama, Louisiana, and the Spanish Caribbean colonies followed suit with variations of the law in the 1830s and 1840s. Despite these restrictions, African Americans often invoked the certificates as evidence of their citizenship rights. W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 5, 199–200; Ira Dye, “Early American Merchant Seafarers,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 120:332–33 (October 1976).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 242

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

243

4. Isaac Rolls (c. 1799–?) was a free black cabdriver, or hack, in Baltimore at the time of Douglass’s flight from slavery. Until 1870, the U.S. Census recorded his name as “Isaac Roles.” He was married to Lucretia Johnson. 1840 U.S. Census, Maryland, Baltimore County, 13; 1860 U.S. Census, Maryland, Baltimore County, 268; 1870 U.S. Census, Maryland, Baltimore County, 220. 5. Driver of a hackney coach; a cabman. 6. Ps. 107:23. 7. “Free trade and sailors’ rights” refers to the slogan adopted by the United States during the War of 1812. “Free trade” denotes the ability of one nation to conduct its commercial affairs without interference by a foreign power, and “sailors’ rights” refers to the practice of impressment aboard American and British ships. Before and during the War of 1812, this phrase became an American war cry and could often be seen on banners flying above American ships. Ransom H. Gillet, Democracy in the United States (New York, 1868), 41–42; Alfred Thayer Mahan, Sea Power in Its Relations to the War of 1812, 2 vols. (London, 1905), 1:135–36; Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana, Ill., 1989), 156–57. 8. A hat worn by sailors that is made of canvas impregnated with tar to make it waterproof. 9. A man’s article of clothing usually tied around the neck. 10. Fore to aft, or front to back. 11. Keelson is a longitudinal structure in the framing of a wooden ship, fastened to the keel by long bolts passing through the floor timbers. The keelson helps prevent deformations in the hold’s frame by distributing the effect of concentrated loads over a considerable length. 12. A common nickname for a well-seasoned sailor. 13. Havre de Grace is a community in northeastern Maryland on Chesapeake Bay. Originally settled in 1658, it was incorporated as a town in 1785, burned by the British in the War of 1812, and rebuilt. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 767. 14. Slang for a nautical uniform. 15. The Susquehanna River is located in central New York. Originating in Otsego Lake, it winds 444 miles south through the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania and ends at Chesapeake Bay near Havre de Grace, Maryland. Virtually the entire length of this shallow, rock-filled river is unsuitable for navigation. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:3060. 16. Captain John McGowan (c. 1804–91), a well-known U.S. revenue marine officer, lived in Baltimore at the time of Douglass’s escape from slavery; he had recently been promoted to captain. His career included service as both a revenue cutter captain aboard the Polk and as a navy officer in the Mexican War and the Civil War. At the outbreak of the Civil War, McGowan gained brief national renown as the commander of the Star of the West, a merchant steamer. With Fort Sumter under siege, President Lincoln ordered McGowan to resupply the fort, but the Rebel batteries in Charleston’s harbor cut off his progress. His ship was the first to take Rebel fire in the war, and after the attempt, he took command of the Cuyahoga and remained in New York until the war’s end. His son, John Jr., followed his father into the navy, advancing to the rank of rear admiral by 1904. Boston Daily Advertiser, 21 January 1891; Ellen McGowan Biddle, Reminiscences of a Soldier’s Wife (1907; Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2002), x, xi, 73. 17. Quaker City is a nickname of Philadelphia. Founded in 1682 by William Penn, Philadelphia, Greek for “City of Brotherly Love,” was established as a safe haven for the peace-loving Quakers. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2423. 18. Actually, Douglass meant the Willow Street Depot, located in Philadelphia. The city’s original railroad line traveled from Eighth Street to Broad, up Broad to Willow, out to Fairmount and the Columbia Railroad Bridge across the Schuylkill, and then up an incline to Belmont and to the West. Francis Burke Brandt and Henry Volkmar Gummere, Byways and Boulevards in and about Historic Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1925), 206. 19. At the time of Douglass’s arrival, in 1838, New York City was America’s largest, with a population of approximately 300,000. Filled with new immigrant populations from Germany and Ireland, the city had become home to peoples from across Europe. The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Wards,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 243

9/1/21 4:16 PM

244

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

located south of Canal Street, were the city’s most densely populated areas, housing most of the new immigrants. Douglass found himself in the midst of this community; Ruggles’s home on Lispenard Street was one block south of Canal Street. New York Times, 17 July 1921; Jay P. Dolan, “Immigrants in the City: New York’s Irish and German Catholics,” Church History, 41:354–55 (September 1972). 20. Central to the culture and business of nineteenth-century New York City, Broadway bustled with activity. The avenue was marked by stores and fancy hotels as well as theaters that provided inexpensive entertainment to New Yorkers of all social classes. In 1836, John Jacob Astor opened a six-story, three-hundred-room hotel on Broadway, just west of City Hall Park. First called the Park Hotel and later renamed the Astor House, it was the most prestigious hotel in the nation for many decades. Broadway was a constant center of activity, and trying to cross the street was considered risky, since it was crowded with carriages and omnibuses. The street was home to many of America’s first department stores and had gained a reputation as a fashionable shopping district by midcentury. The five-block strip intersected by Canal, Grand, Broome, Spring, Prince, and Houston streets was an especially popular area for window-shoppers. Broadway became a more serious business district as it reached beyond the City Hall Park area, where publishers, law firms, and newspapers found fashionable addresses for their businesses. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York, 1999), 404, 436, 600, 668, 692. 21. Douglass possibly quotes a passage in Philip James Bailey’s (1816–1902) epic poem Festus, which first appeared anonymously in 1839: “Life’s more than breath, and the quick round of blood; / It is a great spirit and a busy heart. / The coward and the small in soul scarce do live. / One generous feeling—one great thought—one deed / Of good, ere night, would make life longer seem / Than if each year might number a thousand days.” Philip James Bailey, Festus, 8th ed. (London, 1866), 47. 22. Douglass alludes to the story of Daniel and the lions’ den. Dan. 6:1–28. 23. This runaway slave from Baltimore might well have lived in New York City under the pseudonym William Dixon. He escaped slavery in 1832, but was apprehended by local authorities acting on a writ signed by his Maryland owner, Dr. Joseph Allender, claiming that he was a fugitive named “Jake.” The white abolitionist Isaac Hopper obtained a lawyer to represent Dixon, and the case wore on through the courts. Dixon was released when his alleged owner declined to continue paying the jailer two dollars a week for his care. The legal case was never resolved, but Dixon regained his freedom. NASS, 23 May 1844; Daniel Meaders, Kidnappers in Philadelphia: Isaac Hopper’s Tales of Oppression, 1780–1843 (New York, 1994), 375–81. 24. Dr. Joseph Allender lived in Fells Point, at Thames and Market streets, at least through the early 1830s. Douglass lived in a house owned by Dr. Allender on Philpot Street when the Aulds moved there in the late 1820s. Douglass to Benjamin F. Auld, 24 March 1894, SC-163, Mrs. Howard V. Hall Collection of Auld Family Papers, Hall of Records Commission, Annapolis, Md.; Matchett’s Baltimore Directory for 1827, 14. 25. Wealthy Southerners frequently traveled to fashionable Northern watering places, including Saratoga Springs, Balston, Newport, and Cape May. Known for the medicinal qualities of their mineral water, these resort communities promised visitors relief from such ailments and diseases as dyspepsia, constipation, rheumatism, joint problems, diabetes, and vertigo. Many southerners who visited resorts such as Saratoga Springs did not vacation there for the waters exclusively; the balls, nightly social activities, and the opportunity to mix with others of high social standing were as much an attraction as the area water cures. M. L. North, Saratoga Waters, or, The Invalid at Saratoga (New York, 1840), 45–50, 64–65; John Hope Franklin, A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North (Baton Rouge, La., 1976), 26–29. 26. New York State’s abolition laws came into effect in 1827. Two years after Douglass’s arrival there, the 1840 census listed no slaves as residents of New York City. The same year, the free black population of the city reached its highest point at 16,358. In 1850, the free black population had dropped to 13,815, in part because of the federal Fugitive Slave Law enacted that year. Unlike European immigrants, free blacks did not live in relative isolation in ethnic or national communities;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 244

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

245

rather, they spread throughout the city, finding accommodation wherever white landlords would allow them to rent. Likewise, racism limited their employment opportunities to largely menial tasks, many of which were procured daily on the street. Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, eds., Slavery in New York (New York, 2005), 144, 282, 298–99; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 64–100, 267–314. 27. Free blacks were known to have acted independently in catching fugitives and as decoys for white kidnappers. Perhaps the most successful black kidnapper was John Purnell, who worked with the Cannon-Johnson gang. Purnell was ultimately found guilty on two counts of kidnapping and sentenced to forty-two years in prison. By taking advantage of their race, these kidnappers were able to gain the trust of their victims, eventually creating suspicion and uncertainty among the free black population. Carol Wilson, Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780–1865 (Lexington, Ky., 2009), 32–37. 28. A solution of lime and water or whiting, sizing, and water, used to paint walls, ceilings, and other architectural elements. 29. Thomas Auld. 30. This person was identified as “Stewart” in Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom, but no other information about him has been located. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:196. 31. The Tombs, New York City’s first prison, was completed in 1838. Although its given name was the Halls of Justice, it was more commonly referred to as “the Tombs” because it resembled a mausoleum. The prison was infamous for its structural problems—it was built on former marshland—and the resultant damp and cold made for unhealthy conditions for prisoners. The Tombs also became notorious for abuse, corruption, bribery, and prison escapes. Controversy surrounded the prison until its forced closure in 1902. A second prison at the same location, “the Tombs II,” shared many of the same difficulties as its predecessor, leading to its closure by a federal justice. The current iteration is the Tombs IV. Carl Sifakis, Encyclopedia of American Prisons (New York, 2003), 260–62. 32. David Ruggles (1810–49), a free black man, was born and educated in Norwich, Connecticut. In 1827, he moved to New York, where he worked as a grocer. In 1834, he opened a print shop and bookstore that specialized in abolitionist literature. Ruggles became active in the New York antislavery movement, serving as a writer, lecturer, and traveling agent for the reform publication Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals. He also was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, an editor of the Genius of Freedom and the Mirror of Liberty, and a secretary to the New York Vigilance Committee. His career in the antislavery movement ended abruptly in 1842 when blindness forced him to curtail his activities and seek medical attention. At the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Florence, Massachusetts, he underwent hydrotherapy, which temporarily relieved his blindness. Soon thereafter he began a new career as a hydrotherapist in Northampton, Massachusetts, treating such celebrated individuals as Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd Garrison. His reputation as a hydrotherapist gave him a prominence that rivaled his stature as an abolitionist. NASS, 20 December 1849; Lib., 21 December 1849; New York Evangelist, 27 December 1849; Salem, Ohio, Anti-Slavery Bugle, 29 December 1849; NS, 1 February 1850; Penn, Afro-American Press, 536–38. 33. Northern blacks, along with some sympathetic white supporters, maintained a loose, clandestine system to clothe, feed, and shelter fugitive slaves from the South. These vigilance committees also operated to expose the presence of slave hunters and, on occasion, to rescue fugitives in the process of being returned to their masters. The New York City Vigilance Committee was founded in November 1835, with David Ruggles serving as its secretary. Ruggles’s penchant for aggressive and even extralegal activities to protect fugitives led other members of the committee to force his resignation in 1839. Without Ruggles’s leadership, the organization languished for a decade until it became the nucleus of a statewide vigilance society in 1848. Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks’ Search for Freedom, 1830–1861 (New York, 1974), 207–12; Larry Gara,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 245

9/1/21 4:16 PM

246

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (Lexington, Ky., 1996), 101, 104–09; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 68–72, 203–04. 34. Isaac Tatem Hopper (1771–1852) was a New York bookseller and, with Lydia Maria Child, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard from 1841 to 1845. His involvement with abolitionism began before 1800 when, while living in Pennsylvania, he aided fugitive slaves in their escape. He belonged to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society until his relocation to New York in 1829. There he became active in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass first met Hopper in the Tombs jail in New York City, where Hopper was incarcerated for helping a fugitive escape to Boston. Hopper had become a Quaker in 1793, but the sect disowned him in 1841 for his uncompromising abolitionist activities. Lib., 14 May 1852; NASS, 21 May 1852; Lydia Maria Child, Isaac T. Hopper: A True Life (Boston, 1853); ANB (online); NCAB, 2:330. 35. Arthur Tappan (1786–1865) began his career as a dry-goods clerk in Boston, but by the age of fifty he had become a prosperous silk-jobbing merchant in New York City. Believing that his wealth obligated him to be “a STEWARD of the Lord,” Tappan gave generous amounts of time and money to such reform organizations as the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, the American Home Missionary Society, and other efforts to root out moral vice, including intemperance. Oberlin College was founded largely through his financial contributions. He also made timely contributions at an early period to Garrison’s Liberator. After renouncing his membership in the American Colonization Society, Tappan devoted most of his philanthropic energies to the antislavery movement. In 1833, he helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society. Seven years later, he left it because of tactical disagreements with the Garrisonians and helped organize the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Tappan served as the first president of both these major antislavery organizations and was an early supporter of the Liberty party. When missionary societies with which he had been affiliated failed to adhere to his antislavery principles, he cut ties with them, and in 1846, he helped to establish the American Missionary Association. Tappan tried to promote schools and colleges for free blacks in the North, but local racism hindered his efforts. Lewis Tappan, The Life of Arthur Tappan (New York, 1870); Wyatt-Brown, Tappan and the War against Slavery; ACAB, 6:33; NCAB, 2:320–21; DAB, 18:298–300, 303–04. 36. Theodore Sedgwick Wright (1797–1847)—clergyman, abolitionist, and reformer—worked tirelessly to aid fellow African Americans. He became a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and the anti-Garrisonian American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. In the 1830s, Wright lectured for the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and he made important speeches against prejudice and colonization in front of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society in 1837. Wright also served on the executive committees of the Union Missionary Association and the American Missionary Association, organizations that sent missionaries to Africa. In 1844, Wright supported the Liberty party and served on the committee to choose its presidential and vice presidential candidates. A dedicated reformer, Wright pursued temperance, sought voting rights for African Americans in New York, supported education for blacks, and chaired the New York Vigilance Committee, a group organized to aid fugitive slaves and protect free blacks from kidnapping. New York Evangelist, 1 April 1847; Washington National Era, 8 April 1848; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 45–46, 68, 80, 171–72, 184–85; DANB, 675–76. 37. Samuel Cornish (c. 1795–1859), a black Presbyterian minister, helped found the First Colored Presbyterian Church of New York in 1822. In 1827, Cornish was coeditor, with John Russwurm, of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper in the United States. Resigning the editorship after only six months, Cornish then served as an agent for the New York Manumission Society’s African Free Schools. In 1829, he started an abolitionist newspaper, Rights of All, which failed after less than a year. Between 1837 and 1839, Cornish edited the Colored American and later served as pastor of the black Presbyterian church in Newark, New Jersey. Walter M. Merrill and Louis Ruchames, eds., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971–81), 6:328n; Hutton, Early Black Press in America, 6–9.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 246

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

247

38. Thomas Downing (1791–1866), a New York restaurant owner, was born a slave in Accomack County, Virginia, but was manumitted at an early age. To escape the possibility of reenslavement, he moved north and fought in the War of 1812 before settling in Philadelphia. In 1819, he moved to New York City and worked as a caterer until establishing his own restaurant in the financial district. The Oyster House became a favorite eatery among New York merchants and politicians. Downing’s business success enabled him to afford European educations for several of his children and to support benevolent causes, including abolition and civil rights for African Americans. In 1837, Downing helped draft a petition seeking the repeal of property qualifications for black voters in New York. He also served on the New York Vigilance Committee and was a member of the Committee of Thirteen, a group that opposed the Fugitive Slave Law and was dedicated to assisting those who broke it. New York Times, 12 April 1866; New York Herald, 12 April 1866; NASS, 21 April 1866; New York Colored American, 16 January, 20 February 1841; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 107, 171; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 35, 46, 128, 138, 197, 236, 285, 295, 394; ANB (online). 39. Philip A. Bell (1808–89) was educated at the New York City Free School and worked at a variety of occupations in his youth, including as an agent for the Liberator. He was secretary of a January 1831 public meeting of New York blacks that protested against the colonization movement. In 1837, Bell helped found and edit the Weekly Advocate, later renamed the New York Colored American, which was an important forum for black opinion until its demise in 1842. In the 1850s, he operated an employment agency for New York City blacks and was active in literary, temperance, and mutual relief societies, as well as in the antislavery movement. Bell attended many of the antebellum National Negro Conventions and lectured for equal suffrage for blacks. Moving to California in 1860, Bell briefly ran a real estate agency before returning to journalism, first as associate editor of the San Francisco Pacific Appeal and later as owner and editor of the San Francisco Elevator. In the 1870s, Bell was president of the Equal Rights League of California, a politically independent group that lobbied Republican politicians for better treatment of blacks. New York Colored American, 8 December 1838; San Francisco Elevator, 12 June 1868, 11 January, 15 November 1873; William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization; or, an Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes of the American Colonization Society (New York, 1832), 13–17; Penn, AfroAmerican Press, 32–34, 94–98; Robert C. Dick, Black Protest: Issues and Tactics (Westport, Conn., 1974), 84, 173–77, 267; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 20, 31, 95; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 113–14, 175, 195, 210; James A. Fisher, “A History of the Political and Social Development of the Black Community in California, 1850–1950” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1971), 72–75, 97–100, 140–46; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 35, 46, 128, 175–76, 237, 299. 40. The Elevator was an African American newspaper edited from San Francisco by Philip A. Bell, beginning 18 April 1865. The newspaper consisted of four seven-column pages, and was published every Friday, priced fifteen cents an issue. The newspaper was established for the promotion of blacks advocating inclusion with, rather than separation from, white Americans. Besides civil liberties and politics, the Elevator focused on science, drama, and literature. Bell had twenty-five years of editorial experience at the time he founded the Elevator, including stints at the Colored American and the Pacific Appeal. By the 1880s, the Elevator had become the longest-running black newspaper of the nineteenth century. It ceased production with Bell’s death on 24 April 1889. Penn, Afro-American Press, 94, 95; EAAH, 1:123–24. 41. After arriving in New York, Douglass stayed at 36 Lispenard Street on the corner of Church Street, in a boardinghouse operated by David Ruggles. The building also housed an abolitionist newspaper and served as a stop along the Underground Railroad, sheltering more than 600 fugitives during their escape from slavery. Ruggles lived at 67 Lispenard Street, where he ran an African American bookstore, likely the first of its kind. Although fire destroyed the bookstore in September 1835, Ruggles maintained his residence there. Hutton, Early Black Press in America, 152; Dorothy Porter, “David Ruggles, an Apostle of Human Rights,” JNH, 28:23–50 (January 1943).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 247

9/1/21 4:16 PM

248

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

42. Anna Murray Douglass (c. 1813–82), Frederick Douglass’s first wife, was born free in Denton, Caroline County, Maryland. She was the eighth child of Bambarra Murray and his wife, Mary, slaves who had been manumitted shortly before Anna’s birth. At seventeen she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a domestic. She met Douglass at meetings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, helped finance his escape, and, according to plan, joined him in New York City, where they were married on 15 September 1838. During Douglass’s tour of the British Isles in 1845– 47, she remained in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she supported herself by binding shoes. There she gained a reputation for frugality and skillful household management—qualities that would contribute greatly to her family’s financial prosperity over the years. A member of the Lynn Ladies’ AntiSlavery Society and a regular participant in the annual antislavery bazaars in Boston, she continued her antislavery activities after moving to Rochester in 1847. Unlettered, reserved, and, according to her husband, never completely at ease in white company, she seldom appeared at public functions with Douglass. She was nevertheless affectionately remembered by her husband’s associates as a “warm” and “hospitable” hostess at their home. On 9 July 1882, Anna Douglass suffered an attack of paralysis in Washington, D.C. She died there on 4 August. In January 1884, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a white woman. Lib., 18 November, 2 December 1853; ChR, 20 July l882; Washington Post, 5 August l882; Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Read before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” 51:552–53; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 149, 151, 154, 159; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 9–10, 100–101, 106, 109–10, 297–98. 43. James William Charles Pennington. 44. New Bedford, in Bristol County, Massachusetts, was one of the world’s leading whaling ports in the nineteenth century. The whaling industry and related shipping operations boomed after the American Revolution, peaking in the 1850s. Whale oil for lighting was the city’s largest export, and in 1856, when a new city hall was erected, the motto “Lucem Diffundo” (we light the world) was placed on its seal. The city’s businesses and whaling fleet required large numbers of workers, and African Americans soon became a significant element of New Bedford’s diverse population. Kathryn Grover, The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (Amherst, Mass., 2001), 18–36; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:2153–54; James M. Lindgren, “ ‘Let Us Idealize Old Types of Manhood’: The New Bedford Whaling Museum, 1903–1941,” NEQ, 72:163–206 (June 1999). 45. Built in Providence, Rhode Island, and launched in 1838, the side-wheeled steamer John W. Richmond quickly established its reputation as one of the fastest ships connecting New York City to New England ports. In 1840, the ship was sold to new owners in Maine. Providence Institute for Savings, Ships and Steamships of Old Providence: A Brief Account of the Famous Merchants, Sea Captains, and Ships of the Past (Providence, R.I., 1919), 46–47. 46. A major Colonial-era seaport located on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, thirty miles south of Providence. By the mid-nineteenth century, the small city was being transformed into a resort for the wealthy, including Southern slaveholders, seeking respite from the summer heat. Franklin, Southern Odyssey, 26–29. 47. Behind, in the rear. 48. Many historians point out that legalized segregation on public transportation was not widespread until the Jim Crow era, beginning in the late nineteenth century. Although the term “segregation” did not specifically denote “racial separation” until around the beginning of the twentieth century, exclusionary practices aboard all manner of public conveyances, including steamboats, were commonplace for blacks and women. As with Northern railroads, these practices varied greatly aboard steamboats. Douglass’s experiences traveling on vessels between Northern coastal cities before the Civil War indicate that he was sometimes excluded by the will of white passengers and on other occasions by that of the crew, ranging from exclusion from a dinner table to exclusion from fi rstclass accommodations. Lib., 1 October 1841; Alfred Avins, ed., The Reconstruction Amendments’

Y7870-Douglass.indb 248

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

249

Debates: The Legislative History and Contemporary Debates in Congress on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (Richmond, Va., 1967), 204, 431, 482, 554, 576–77, 632–33; George M. Fredrickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New York, 1995), 94–98. 49. The Religious Society of Friends was founded by George Fox in Great Britain during the mid-seventeenth century. Fox emphasized the immediacy of Christ’s teachings and therefore found ordained ministers, a set liturgy, and consecrated buildings to be irrelevant. Central to the sect’s teachings is the “Inner Light”—an innate sense of the divine and the direct working of Christ in the human soul—which leads to simplicity, purity, and truthfulness, moral attributes central to its doctrine. During their early history, Quakers faced persecution, mostly from their refusal to take oaths, pay tithes, or enlist in military service. As a result, the North American colony of Pennsylvania was founded in 1682 as a refuge for Quakers. In 1743, the Society of Friends became the first religious denomination to condemn slavery as morally evil and to require its members to free their slaves. The Quakers were strong adherents of gradual emancipation, and they dominated the ranks of the Revolutionary-era abolition societies that persuaded the Northern states to end slavery. Three basic Quaker tenets led to support for abolition. First, the belief that all people are equal in the sight of God led to concerns that through forced slavery, masters were denying their slaves the chance to reach God. Second, Quakers held to a tradition of nonviolence and pacifism, which was inconsistent with the constant threat of violence and force that kept people in bondage. Finally, Quaker abhorrence of ostentation or sloth led to a dismissal of slavery on the grounds that slaves were used as symbols of conspicuous consumption. Although the public controversy stirred up by abolitionism caused many Quakers to turn away from participation in the post-1831 antislavery movement, such prominent abolitionists as Benjamin Lundy and Angelina and Sarah Grimké were Quakers. Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton, N.J., 1985), 17–18; F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London, 1974), 538–39; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 22, 28, 37; Miller and Smith, Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, 303, 607–13. 50. A descendant of one of the earliest settlers of New Bedford, Massachusetts, William C. Taber (1797–?) operated a profitable store that sold books, stationery, charts, and engravings. In the 1850s, Taber led local businessmen in converting from whale oil to gas, coal oil, and kerosene for illumination, and became the first president of the New Bedford Gas Light Company. He was long active in the city’s financial institutions, serving at times as a director of the Marine Bank and the New Bedford Institution for Savings. Taber represented New Bedford at one point in the Massachusetts senate. An ardent Quaker, Taber held the post of first clerk at the New Bedford Monthly Meeting for nineteen years. He married Hannah Shearman of the same town. Henry H. Crapo, ed., The New Bedford Directory [for 1836] (New Bedford, 1836), 84; idem, The New Bedford Directory [for 1841] (New Bedford, 1841), 19; idem, The New Bedford Directory [for 1845] (New Bedford, 1845), 14; idem, The New Bedford Directory [for 1856] (New Bedford, 1856), 164; D. Hamilton Hurd, comp., History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men (Philadelphia, 1883), 91–92, 105, 148; Leonard Bolles Ellis, History of New Bedford and Its Vicinity, 1602–1892 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1892), 422, 469, 475, 517, 566, 638, 721; Alanson Borden, ed., Our County and Its People: Descriptive and Biographical Record of Bristol County, Massachusetts (Boston, 1899), 353–54, 372–73, 416–17, 343. 51. Joseph Ricketson (1771–1841) was the owner of a candle factory and oil refinery in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He helped form the Bedford Fire Society in 1807, served as a cashier and a director of the New Bedford Commercial Bank, and was a trustee of the New Bedford Lyceum and Athenaeum. A Quaker, Ricketson was committed to reform and antislavery endeavors. In 1834, he became one of the founders of the Anti-Slavery Society of New Bedford. Although Ricketson was a scrupulously honest and hardworking businessman, his last years were spent in near poverty after several serious business reversals. Crapo, New Bedford Directory [for 1836], 18; idem, New Bedford Directory [for 1841], 30; Daniel Ricketson, The History of New Bedford, Bristol County,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 249

9/1/21 4:16 PM

250

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

Massachusetts (New Bedford, 1858), 232–34; Leonard Bolles Ellis, History of the Fire Department of the City of New Bedford, Massachusetts, 1772–1890 (New Bedford, 1890), 10; idem, New Bedford and Its Vicinity, 252, 509, 516–17, 629; Borden, Our County, 351, 353, 406; Hurd, Bristol County, 92, 105, 111; Vital Records of New Bedford, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, 3 vols. (Boston, 1932), 1:386, 3:138; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 123–24, 144, 146. 52. Stone Bridge Village is a district at the northern end of the town of Tiverton, Rhode Island. Activity in the area began when a ferry service was established in 1640. The ferry continued until about 1794. That year, the first stone bridge was built, connecting Aquidneck Island and Tiverton and allowing for faster communication and transportation. Settlement grew, and several cottages and public facilities were soon established near the stone bridge. Nancy Jensen Devin and Richard V. Simpson, Tiverton and Little Compton (Charleston, S.C., 1997), 9–11. 53. Samuel Dyer (1785–1835) was a native Englishman and the seventh child of James Dyer and Sarah Barton. Before leaving England, he married Sarah Owen in 1807; they had four children. Dyer arrived in New York in 1811, where he became a music teacher and composer. In 1812, he moved to Philadelphia, and after a visit to England in 1815, he moved to Baltimore, where he published a few volumes of songs, including Anthems (1817) and New Selection of Sacred Music (1817). He is most widely known for introducing the sacred tune “Mendon,” or “German Air,” to congregations in the United States. Frank J. Metcalf, American Writers and Compilers of Sacred Music (New York, 1925), 205–10. 54. Oliver Shaw (1779–1848) was one of eight children born to John Shaw and Hannah Heath in Middleboro, Massachusetts. As a result of accident and illness, he became completely blind by twenty-one. After moving to Providence, Rhode Island, he became a church organist and piano and voice teacher. He published several music books, mostly of his own compositions, including Providence Selection of Psalms and Hymns (1815), The Melodia Sacra (1819), Original Melodies (1832), and The Social Sacred Melodist (1835). Metcalf, Writers and Compilers of Sacred Music, 179–84. 55. Owners of a confectionery shop and a thriving catering business, Nathan Johnson (?–1880) and Mary Page Johnson (?–c. 1870) were two of the most prominent blacks in New Bedford, Massachusetts. They helped and housed black fugitives on many occasions, and Nathan was an active abolitionist, once serving as a manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1832, Nathan represented New Bedford at the National Negro Convention in Philadelphia, and in 1837 he was one of three local African Americans chosen to question all county political candidates about their views on slavery and the slave trade. Johnson left New Bedford for California in 1849, and he did not return until after his wife, who had remained behind, died in 1871. New York Colored American, 18 November 1837; Henry H. Crapo, ed., The New Bedford Directory [for 1838] (New Bedford, 1838), 77; Vital Records of New Bedford, 2:309, 396; Barbara Clayton and Kathleen Whitley, Guide to New Bedford (Chester, Conn., 1979), 134–35; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 2:712. 56. Matt. 25:35. 57. According to the 1840 census, there were eleven black families in New Bedford with the surname Johnson. Counting all members of those households, there were forty-one African American Johnsons in the town. A historian of New Bedford’s black community dismisses the census record keeping of that group as “next to worthless.” 1840 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 357–465; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 310n. 58. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) published The Lady of the Lake in Edinburgh in 1810. Ellen Douglas and her father, Lord James of Douglas, a medieval Scottish chieftain, are the principal characters. Walter Scott, The Complete Poetical Works of Scott (Boston, 1900), 152–208; Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 5th rev. ed. (New York, 1998), 542, 875–76. 59. Likely a reference to canto 1, stanza 28, lines 565–67 of Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake: “ ‘I never knew but one,’ he said, / ‘Whose stalwart arm might brook to wield / A blade like this in battle-field.’ ” Scott, Complete Poetical Works, 162. 60. Boston schoolteacher and bookseller, Caleb Bingham (1757–1817) compiled the Columbian Orator (1797), one of the first textbooks on English grammar and rhetoric published in the United

Y7870-Douglass.indb 250

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

251

States. It contained short extracts from speeches by such famous orators as William Pitt, George Washington, Charles James Fox, and Cicero, as well as plays and poems on the themes of patriotism, education, and freedom. The Columbian Orator remained one of the most popular textbooks of its kind in America through the 1820s. Bingham contributed an essay on oratorical skills, “General Directions for Speaking,” the rules of which Douglass followed in his early years as a public speaker. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:66, 118, 123, 161; NCAB, 8:19; DAB, 2:273–74. 61. Derogatory term pertaining to the poor white population of the South. Mitford M. Mathews, ed., A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1951), 2:1283. 62. Adopted in 1780, the Massachusetts state constitution makes no reference to a color bar for elected officials. As first written, the constitution made no provision for amendment, but when Maine was separated from Massachusetts in 1820, reformers held a constitutional convention that approved nine amendments, none of which limited black participation in government. In 1853, a second convention attempted a complete revision of the constitution, but failed. Robert J. Taylor, ed., Massachusetts Colony to Commonwealth: Documents on the Formation of Its Constitution, 1775–1780 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 127–46; League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, Massachusetts State Government (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 51–52. 63. Although Douglass encountered racial discrimination on occasion in New Bedford, the Massachusetts seaport had long sustained a stable and moderately prosperous black community in its midst. Among the principal cities of Massachusetts, only Boston operated a segregated public school system after the mid-1840s. Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790– 1860 (Chicago, 1961), 153; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 180–81, 230–31. 64. Ephraim Peabody (1807–56) was born in Wilton, New Hampshire. After attending college at Bowdoin and seminary at the Harvard Divinity School, he began his pastoral career in Meadville, Pennsylvania, in 1830. A minister for four years in Cincinnati, Peabody became the Unitarian minister in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1838, a position he held for the next eight years. His congregation was located on the corner of Union and 8th streets. In 1846, Peabody became the minister at King’s Chapel in Boston, where he remained until his death. ACAB, 4:688. 65. “Stowing” was the nautical term for placing cargo or provisions in proper order on a ship; sloop—a single-masted sailing vessel. 66. Gideon Howland, Jr. (1770–1847), known to fellow townsmen as “Uncle Gid,” was a partner in the prosperous shipping and whaling firm of Isaac Howland, Jr., and Company, which maintained offices at #3 Commercial Wharf in New Bedford. Douglass probably found day laborer’s work at Gideon Howland’s wharf, located at the foot of North Street near the Fairhaven bridge. Crapo, New Bedford Directory [for 1845], 46; Ellis, New Bedford and Its Vicinity, 249, 509, 516; William M. Emery, The Howland Heirs (New Bedford, 1919), 61–63, 116; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 146. 67. A sawbuck, or sawhorse, is a frame composed of two crotches and a crossbar. It holds wood to be cut and is usually used in conjunction with a heavy saw sometimes called a bucksaw. 68. A fip, or fipenny, was a small-value coin. 69. An allusion to the Maryland yeoman framer Edward Covey (1806?–75), who had been given oversight of Douglass by Thomas Auld for the year 1834. Covey started out as a farm renter in Talbot County, Maryland, but had managed to accumulate $23,000 in real estate by 1850. Covey’s reputation as a slave breaker enabled him to rent or even to receive the free use of field hands from local slave owners anxious to have their slaves taught proper discipline. Harriet Lucretia Anthony, the great-granddaughter of Aaron Anthony, remembered that “Mr. Covey was really noted for his cruelty and meanness.” Inventory of the Estate of Edward Covey, 15 May 1875, Talbot County Inventories, TNC#3, 578, Talbot County, Maryland, Courthouse; Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of My Bondage and My Freedom, folders 93, 203, Dodge Collection, Hall of Records Commission, Annapolis, Md.; 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 240 (free schedule); Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:89–109; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 117–31. 70. William Rotch (1734–1828) was a whaling merchant in New Bedford, Massachusetts. A Quaker, he and his son, William Jr. (1759–1850), were well-known abolitionists. William Sr.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 251

9/1/21 4:16 PM

252

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

periodically bought slaves’ indentures to help them pay for their freedom. William Jr. was one of the founding members of the Providence Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, for the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race. Along with this, he was responsible for obtaining information on incidents of cruelty inflicted on slaves and crews aboard New England ships. Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 35–36; DAB, 8:186–87. 71. This wealthy New Bedford Quaker family was closely allied with the city’s Rotch family through ties of marriage and business. Orphaned in Newport, Rhode Island, Samuel Rodman, Sr. (1753–1835), was apprenticed to a whaling and mercantile firm that also engaged in the slave trade. He married Elizabeth Rotch (1785–1856), the daughter of the wealthy merchant and whaler William Rotch, Sr. Rodman took over Rotch’s Nantucket whaling business and relocated it to New Bedford in 1798. Although a critic of slavery, Rodman was condescending in his attitudes toward New Bedford’s blacks. Elizabeth Rodman lent her social prominence to the antislavery activities of New Bedford women, providing the first signature on a petition requesting Congress to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Their son, Samuel Rodman, Jr. (1792–1876), was devoted to the causes of temperance and antislavery. In 1831, the younger Rodman hosted such early abolitionists as Benjamin Lundy and Arnold Buffum when they lectured in New Bedford. Samuel Rodman, Jr., ran the family whaling firm and owned a cotton mill in Fall River. He left the abolitionist ranks after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, since he had sided with Daniel Webster on the need to obey congressional legislation as the price of union. Charles Henry Jones, Genealogy of the Rodman Family, 1620–1886 (Philadelphia, 1886), 39–41, 70–71; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 6, 20–21, 36, 44, 123, 220–21, 284–85. 72. James Arnold (1781–1868) moved from Providence to New Bedford at the beginning of the century, where he married Sarah (?–1860), the daughter of William Rotch, Jr. In time he became a wealthy merchant and whale ship owner. He opened the extensive pastoral gardens of his Country Street residence to the public on Sundays and later gave a donation to Harvard University to found the Arnold Arboretum. Arnold was known to hire fugitive slaves, and along with his wife, he gave generously to both abolitionist causes and to the care of infirm sailors. The Arnolds left their original Quaker affiliation to become Unitarians in the 1820s. Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 22, 104, 230, 255–56, 285. 73. Joseph Grinnell (1788–1885) was a New Bedford merchant. In 1815, he established the Fish and Grinnell firm with the purpose of acting as agents for New Bedford’s whaling and oil merchants. By 1825, his brothers, Henry (1799–1874) and Moses (1803–77), had joined the firm. Moses became an ardent supporter of the Union during the Civil War and joined the Union Defense Committee. Joseph established a cotton factory in New Bedford in the hope that the town would cease to rely solely on the whaling trade. He became president of the Marine Bank in 1832 and president of the Boston and Providence Railroad in 1841. He represented Massachusetts in Congress from 1843 to 1851. DAB, 8:3–4; BDUSC (online). 74. Born in Philadelphia, Andrew Robeson (1787–1862) married into the wealthy Rodman family and relocated to New Bedford, where he prospered in whaling and later in the textile industry. In 1825, the city’s Quaker meeting denied him membership for unspecified reasons. Robeson was a vice president of the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society in the 1830s and later a staunch Garrisonian abolitionist and active Underground Railroad conductor. Kate Hamilton Osborne, An Historical and Genealogical Account of Andrew Robeson of Scotland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and of His Descendants from 1653 to 1916 (Philadelphia, 1916), 144–45; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 13, 22, 124, 158, 172, 181, 240, 281. 75. Rodney French (c. 1802–82) was a successful boatbuilder in New Bedford and a prominent public official. In 1841, he was the chairman of the board of selectmen and later served as mayor. French reputedly once constructed ships for the slave trade but gradually developed antislavery sentiments. He vehemently opposed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and appeared publicly with Douglass in 1853. Early in the Civil War, Douglass proudly reported that “our old friend” French commanded a Union Navy squadron that was blockading Southern ports. FDP, 12 August 1853; DM, 4:561 (De-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 252

9/1/21 4:16 PM

MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

253

cember 1861); New York Times, 1 May 1882; Crapo, New Bedford Directory [for 1841], 70; Ellis, New Bedford and Its Vicinity, 306. 76. To cover the bottom and sides of a ship with copper. 77. Founded in 1828 by the city’s elite, the New Bedford Lyceum functioned as a source of public education by providing lectures on literature, philosophy, and science. A widely publicized controversy arose in the mid-1840s when abolitionists protested against the segregated seating of blacks at the lyceum’s lectures. In response to appeals from abolitionists, both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sumner canceled lectures there in 1846. Local abolitionists then formed the rival New Bedford Lyceum Lecture Association and sponsored lecturers appearing before integrated audiences. Ricketson, History of New Bedford, 324–25; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 176–80. 78. Theodore Parker (1810–60), a Massachusetts reformer and Unitarian minister, was a theologian, abolitionist, and leading opponent of the Fugitive Slave Law. He served on Boston’s Committee of Vigilance and worked with the New England Emancipation Aid Society, groups that aided fugitive slaves. In the early 1850s, Parker helped two of his parishioners, William and Ellen Craft, avoid capture by Georgia slave catchers. In 1859, Parker was a member of the secret committee that provided aid for John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry. Following the failed action, he had to flee the country. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:52; ANB (online). 79. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), essayist, philosopher, and poet, was born to a prominent family in Boston, Massachusetts. After retiring from pastoral duties in 1832, Emerson settled in Concord, where he lived out the rest of his years. His eight-chapter essay Nature (1836) reflects the Transcendentalist philosophies of comity, beauty, language, and discipline. These principles appear throughout Emerson’s works, particularly his poetry. His best-known works include Poems (1847), Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), and the essays “Self-Reliance” (1841) and “The American Scholar” (1837). Emerson also published regularly in the Dial and the Atlantic Monthly. Although he never fully identified himself with the abolitionists, Emerson embraced their sentiments, frequently opening the doors of his pastorate to them. Emerson preached once at New Bedford, in 1834, but he refrained from doing so again because of the growing controversy surrounding the town lyceum’s refusal to sell lecture tickets to blacks. In a letter published in both the Liberator and the National Anti-Slavery Standard, Emerson condemned its exclusionist practices. Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 176–80; ACAB, 2:343–48; NCAB, 3:416–18; DAB, 6:132–41. 80. The noted American educational reformer Horace Mann (1796–1859) was the youngest son of a yeoman farmer from Franklin, Massachusetts. Admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1823, Mann practiced law in Dedham and Boston until 1833, and was elected to the Massachusetts General Court (1827–33). From 1833 to 1837, he served in the state senate, advocating state care for the insane and manifesting an interest in educational reform. As secretary (1837–48) of the first state board of education and as editor (1838–48) of his semimonthly Common School Journal, Mann promoted a tax-supported public school system, seeing a nonsectarian common education as an economic leveler and the foundation of democratic government. In 1848, Mann succeeded John Quincy Adams as the Whig representative for Massachusetts’s Eighth Congressional District, and two years later he was reelected as a Free Soiler. In Congress, Mann was an outspoken opponent of the extension of slavery in the territories and thus opposed the Compromise of 1850. During the last years of his life, Mann acted as the first president (1852–59) of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Horace Mann, Slavery: Letters and Speeches (Boston, 1853), 225, 324; Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Biography (New York, 1972); Ernest Cassara, “Reformer as Politician: Horace Mann and the Anti-Slavery Struggle in Congress, 1848–1853,” Journal of American Studies, 5:247–63 (December 1971); Larry Gara, “Horace Mann: Antislavery Congressman,” Historian, 32:19–33 (November 1969); ACAB, 4:190–91; NCAB, 3:78–79; DAB, 12:240–43. 81. The shop of A. D. Richmond and Company, brass founders and coppersmiths, was located at 103 North Water Street in New Bedford. The proprietors were Anthony D. Richmond and Andrew Cragie, both of New Bedford. According to an 1865 advertisement, the shop produced a variety of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 253

9/1/21 4:16 PM

254

ABOLISH THE VICE PRESIDENT

bolts, spikes, nails, and eyebolts, as well as plumbing supplies for water closets, shower baths, and bathtubs. The establishment also specialized in the custom production of patent composition leadand brass-tipped candle molds. The New Bedford Directory, no 10. (New Bedford, Mass., 1865), cover, 118.

ABOLISH THE VICE PRESIDENT (c. 1882) Miscellany File, reel 31, frame 313, FD Papers, DLC.

In the voluminous collection of materials donated to the Library of Congress in 1972 by the National Park Service when the latter gained possession of Cedar Hill, Douglass’s post–Civil War home in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was a collection of clippings from many late nineteenth-century newspapers. While the sources of most of these documents are easily identifiable, a few are not. Among the latter was an unmarked clipping containing Douglass’s reflections on the post-Reconstruction political system. Among a number of suggestions Douglass made for reforming that system was the abolition of the vice presidency. In his lifetime, Douglass had been strongly disappointed with the policies of the four vice presidents who had been elevated to the nation’s highest office by the death of a sitting president: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, and Chester Arthur. The observation by Douglass that the vice presidency was often a consolation prize awarded to a party faction that had failed to win the presidential nomination seems to refer to Arthur, who joined the Republicans’ 1880 ticket when his Stalwart faction’s choice for president, Ulysses S. Grant, had been rejected by the party in favor of James A. Garfield of Ohio. Douglass felt Arthur had squandered the Republicans’ opportunity to restore rights that African Americans had lost in the South and opened the door for the Democrat Grover Cleveland to capture the White House in 1884. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:382–85, 393–95.

This Is One of the Reforms Suggested by Frederick Douglass. Our republic is fortunate in exemption from foreign foes. The ocean is its bulwark against transatlantic ambition. We are spared the burden of standing armies, which impoverish and oppress other nations. In and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 254

9/1/21 4:16 PM

254

ABOLISH THE VICE PRESIDENT

bolts, spikes, nails, and eyebolts, as well as plumbing supplies for water closets, shower baths, and bathtubs. The establishment also specialized in the custom production of patent composition leadand brass-tipped candle molds. The New Bedford Directory, no 10. (New Bedford, Mass., 1865), cover, 118.

ABOLISH THE VICE PRESIDENT (c. 1882) Miscellany File, reel 31, frame 313, FD Papers, DLC.

In the voluminous collection of materials donated to the Library of Congress in 1972 by the National Park Service when the latter gained possession of Cedar Hill, Douglass’s post–Civil War home in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was a collection of clippings from many late nineteenth-century newspapers. While the sources of most of these documents are easily identifiable, a few are not. Among the latter was an unmarked clipping containing Douglass’s reflections on the post-Reconstruction political system. Among a number of suggestions Douglass made for reforming that system was the abolition of the vice presidency. In his lifetime, Douglass had been strongly disappointed with the policies of the four vice presidents who had been elevated to the nation’s highest office by the death of a sitting president: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, and Chester Arthur. The observation by Douglass that the vice presidency was often a consolation prize awarded to a party faction that had failed to win the presidential nomination seems to refer to Arthur, who joined the Republicans’ 1880 ticket when his Stalwart faction’s choice for president, Ulysses S. Grant, had been rejected by the party in favor of James A. Garfield of Ohio. Douglass felt Arthur had squandered the Republicans’ opportunity to restore rights that African Americans had lost in the South and opened the door for the Democrat Grover Cleveland to capture the White House in 1884. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:382–85, 393–95.

This Is One of the Reforms Suggested by Frederick Douglass. Our republic is fortunate in exemption from foreign foes. The ocean is its bulwark against transatlantic ambition. We are spared the burden of standing armies, which impoverish and oppress other nations. In and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 254

9/1/21 4:16 PM

ABOLISH THE VICE PRESIDENT

255

under our soil we have boundless resources. Envy itself cannot impugn the wisdom of our institutions. Our enterprise, industry and invention can supply all that is needed to our health, prosperity and happiness. These things it is well to call to mind on this our national natal day. But we should do more than contemplate our perfections. What is good we should make better, and what is bad we should abolish altogether. Our security is not without a menace. More and more the presidency of the republic is becoming a prize to be battled and bartered for. Rival parties and rival factions in parties keep the country in feverish excitement from term to term, and, what is worse, it is not impossible that at no distant day parties may be so evenly divided that the bayonet and not the ballot may be employed to decide who shall be president. That condition was nearly reached in the case of President Hayes.1 It is to be regretted that the electoral college, clothed with all the power contemplated by the framers of the constitution, has become a dead letter. Its function was to make the choice of president wise, certain and final.2 The vice president, too, is a source of danger to the republic. We have no business to have any man visible who is only separated from the great office of the president by the breath of another. Men are but men[.] The prayer of the Redeemer is, “Lead us not into temptation.”3 It should not be forgotten that the vice president is nearly always the choice of a defeated faction.4 Without his knowledge or conscious participation, he may be made the means, in wicked hands, to accomplish selfish ends. He may favor measures which may mean millions to his supporters, but which can only be carried into effect by a favoring president. For these reasons, and for others which I have neither the time nor the space to assign, the office of vice president should be abolished, and to meet the contingency some other and wiser method should be adopted[.] Another danger is a growing contempt for rulers and the laws. There should be an end put to mob law. And, above all, the shameful idea that the national government has no power to protect its own citizens, in any and every part of the United States, without the consent of any individual state, should be banished from American statesmanship, and protection should go hand in hand with allegiance. 1. Douglass alludes to the controversies accompanying the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes’s victory in the disputed 1876 presidential election. Foner, Reconstruction, 564–87. 2. The idea for the Electoral College came from the Constitutional Convention’s Committee on Postponed Matters. It was finally adopted and then hastily inserted into the final draft of the Constitution, but only after similar proposals had been voted down three times in earlier sessions of the convention. Scholars now believe that a significant number of the delegates to the Constitutional

Y7870-Douglass.indb 255

9/1/21 4:16 PM

256

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

Convention favored selecting the president of the United States through a direct, or popular, vote, but were never able to muster a large enough majority to defeat either of the other two competing methods of selecting the nation’s leader: election by the nation’s governors or by the national legislature. Therefore, the Electoral College was seen as a compromise between those delegates who favored popular democracy and those (generally regarded as the more aristocratic element) who feared it. Likewise, in settling on an indirect method of electing the president, the framers believed that the national electoral process would be safeguarded from conflicts between competing interest groups—already on full display at the convention—which they feared were inevitable once George Washington, the uncontested choice for the nation’s first president, left office. Michael T. Rogers, “ ‘A Mere Deception—a mere Ingus Fatus on the People of America’: Lifting the Veil on the Electoral College,” in Electoral College Reform: Challenges and Possibilities, ed. Gary Baugh (New York, 2010), 19–40; Robert L. Maddex, The U.S. Constitution A to Z (Washington, D.C., 2002), 158–60; Leonard W. Levy and Kenneth L. Karst, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, 2d ed., 6 vols. (New York, 2000), 2:866–67. 3. Douglass quotes the Lord’s Prayer. Matt. 6:13. 4. Douglass’s claim that the vice presidency was almost always given to a representative of a defeated faction within the successful party is largely borne out by facts, at least during his lifetime. Like the Electoral College, the office of the vice presidency was something of an afterthought at the Constitutional Convention. As a result, other than serving as the presiding officer of the Senate, with the responsibility of casting the tie-breaking vote when necessary, neither the duties of a vice president nor the method of his selection was clearly defined. Before passage of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, each member of the Electoral College simply cast two votes for the office of the president, and the person receiving the second-largest number of votes automatically became the nation’s vice president, regardless of any differences he might have with the newly elected president. After 1804, each elector cast a single vote for each office, which allowed the emerging political parties to provide voters with tickets consisting of separate candidates for each office. In the nineteenth century, however, the running mate was usually chosen at the discretion of the party, not the presidential nominee. As Douglass noted, that choice was almost always dictated by the party’s need to placate a faction, or factions, within its own ranks or to appease a region or state in order to appeal to the greatest number of voters in the electorate and the Electoral College. Jody C. Baumgartner, The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered (London, 2006), 7–22; Jody C. Baumgartner and Thomas F. Crumblin, The American Vice Presidency: From Shadow to Spotlight (New York, 2015), 29–36; David A. Schultz, ed., Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution, 2 vols. (New York, 2009), 2:777.

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES (1883) Washington Bee, 5 May 1883. Other texts in ChR, 24 May 1883; Cleveland Gazette, 22 September 1883.

On 5 May 1883, Frederick Douglass and a group of fellow African American leaders based in Washington, D.C., issued a public call for a “National Convention of Colored Men” to meet in that city in September in order to address the “political condition of [the] vast number of Negroes in the this country . . . [which] demands attention and careful consideration as to its improvement.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 256

9/1/21 4:16 PM

256

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

Convention favored selecting the president of the United States through a direct, or popular, vote, but were never able to muster a large enough majority to defeat either of the other two competing methods of selecting the nation’s leader: election by the nation’s governors or by the national legislature. Therefore, the Electoral College was seen as a compromise between those delegates who favored popular democracy and those (generally regarded as the more aristocratic element) who feared it. Likewise, in settling on an indirect method of electing the president, the framers believed that the national electoral process would be safeguarded from conflicts between competing interest groups—already on full display at the convention—which they feared were inevitable once George Washington, the uncontested choice for the nation’s first president, left office. Michael T. Rogers, “ ‘A Mere Deception—a mere Ingus Fatus on the People of America’: Lifting the Veil on the Electoral College,” in Electoral College Reform: Challenges and Possibilities, ed. Gary Baugh (New York, 2010), 19–40; Robert L. Maddex, The U.S. Constitution A to Z (Washington, D.C., 2002), 158–60; Leonard W. Levy and Kenneth L. Karst, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, 2d ed., 6 vols. (New York, 2000), 2:866–67. 3. Douglass quotes the Lord’s Prayer. Matt. 6:13. 4. Douglass’s claim that the vice presidency was almost always given to a representative of a defeated faction within the successful party is largely borne out by facts, at least during his lifetime. Like the Electoral College, the office of the vice presidency was something of an afterthought at the Constitutional Convention. As a result, other than serving as the presiding officer of the Senate, with the responsibility of casting the tie-breaking vote when necessary, neither the duties of a vice president nor the method of his selection was clearly defined. Before passage of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, each member of the Electoral College simply cast two votes for the office of the president, and the person receiving the second-largest number of votes automatically became the nation’s vice president, regardless of any differences he might have with the newly elected president. After 1804, each elector cast a single vote for each office, which allowed the emerging political parties to provide voters with tickets consisting of separate candidates for each office. In the nineteenth century, however, the running mate was usually chosen at the discretion of the party, not the presidential nominee. As Douglass noted, that choice was almost always dictated by the party’s need to placate a faction, or factions, within its own ranks or to appease a region or state in order to appeal to the greatest number of voters in the electorate and the Electoral College. Jody C. Baumgartner, The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered (London, 2006), 7–22; Jody C. Baumgartner and Thomas F. Crumblin, The American Vice Presidency: From Shadow to Spotlight (New York, 2015), 29–36; David A. Schultz, ed., Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution, 2 vols. (New York, 2009), 2:777.

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES (1883) Washington Bee, 5 May 1883. Other texts in ChR, 24 May 1883; Cleveland Gazette, 22 September 1883.

On 5 May 1883, Frederick Douglass and a group of fellow African American leaders based in Washington, D.C., issued a public call for a “National Convention of Colored Men” to meet in that city in September in order to address the “political condition of [the] vast number of Negroes in the this country . . . [which] demands attention and careful consideration as to its improvement.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 256

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

257

Within a fortnight, however, the meeting place for the convention was changed from Washington to Louisville, Kentucky. This prompted T. Thomas Fortune, the editor of the New York Globe, to publicly accuse Douglass of arranging the change in venue at the behest of the White House. He claimed that such a public renewal of calls for further action on civil rights in the nation’s capital would serve only to embarrass President Chester A. Arthur and the Republican party. Douglass vehemently denied the accusations, stating that he and the president had never “uttered a word” on the subject. Scholars now believe that the change in venue was, in fact, prompted by a concern among black leaders, who believed that holding the convention in Washington just as the Supreme Court was preparing to consider the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 might prove detrimental to their cause. The convention met on 24 September 1883 and differed in its aims considerably from the originally planned meeting. Although the convention was attended by approximately three hundred delegates from twenty-six states and the District of Columbia, the change of venue sparked a prolonged controversy that caused most prominent blacks to boycott the convention. Barnes, Frederick Douglass, 314–17; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:85–86. To the colored men of the United States: During a convention of the colored citizens of the District of Columbia, Col. P. H. Carson1 offered the following resolution, which was adopted: Whereas the political condition of a vast number of negroes in this country is such as to demand attention and careful consideration as to its improvement: Therefore be it Resolved, That the president of this convention be, and he is hereby, requested to appoint a committee of twenty-five, to be composed of citizens of this district, such committee to make arrangements through correspondence with prominent colored men in the country for the holding of a National Convention during the month of September, 1883, in this city, and that the chairman of this convention be a member ex-officio of the committee.2 In compliance with the above resolution, adopted by the colored people of the District of Columbia in convention assembled to celebrate the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 257

9/1/21 4:16 PM

258

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

anniversary of their emancipation, this committee of its creation hereby issues the following call, which it believes should be and will be promptly answered by the colored men throughout the United States: Seriously considering the undeniable and lamentable fact that the present condition of the colored people is insecure, and the future far more alarming, we deem it wise to call their serious attention to these very suggestive points and ask that they meet in National Convention and give them their due consideration and action: 1. We are not given a fair remuneration for our labor in the south and not protected by law in securing even that trifling pittance for which we do toil. 2. We are not allowed fair and equal educational advantages in the public schools in most parts of the country. 3. Our civil rights are still infringed upon all over the country, not withstanding the passage of the acts of Congress for our protection in that particular. 4. That our political rights are now almost wholly ignored, and the voice of six and one half millions of people3 with peculiar interests at stake lost from the legislative halls of government. 5. That the colored men have given one million and a quarter of votes for the advancement and perpetuation of good and peaceful government ever since they have been enfranchised,4 and that the executive officers of the government have not in return given them protection and encouragement half commensurate with their power and fidelity to the government. 6. That according to the signs of the times the country is on the eve of a great political revolution, and it behooves us as a race to make our interest paramount to those of any party or sect; that it is our duty to unite and strike out some bold policy line of action, which will bring us nearer to the estate of full citizenship and power when this great revolution is over. We therefore recommend to the colored people of the several States that they meet in State conventions some time prior to the month of September, 1883, and elect delegates to a National Convention to be held in Washington, D. C., twenty-fourth day of September, 1883; and that the basis of representation be: Colored population—1 delegate to 25,000, giving to each State 3 representatives, provided it has a colored population of not less than 10,000, and in no case less than 1 delegate. The representation under this plan, according to the census of 1880, will be as follows : Alabama, 24; Georgia, 29; North Carolina, 20; South Carolina, 25; Virginia,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 258

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

259

25; Mississippi, 26; Louisiana, 20; Tennessee and Texas, each 16; Kentucky, 11; Arkansas and Maryland, each 9; Missouri, 6; Florida, 5; Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia, each 3; Pennsylvania and Ohio, each 4; California, Colorado, Nebraska, Connecticut, Iowa, Rhode Island, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts and Minnesota, each 1; in all 288. Yours for the interests of the race, FREDERICK DOUGLASS, CHAIRMAN, JAS. G. GREGORY, 5 SECRETARY, ARTHUR S. A. SMITH,6 CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, P. H. CARSON, JOHN F. COOK,7 W. R. LAWS, ESQ.,8 GEO. W. WILLIAMS,9 COLLINS CRUSER,10 C. B. FISHER,11 J. BROOKS,12 G. S. BOSTON,13 SOLOMON G. BROWN.14 W. A. TALLIAFERRO,

R. T. GREENER,15 JOHN M. BROWN,16 W, C. CHASE,17 JOHN A. GRAY,18 W. M. H. BOOKER, J. W. FREEMAN, J. A. JOHNSON, JAS. H. SMITH,19 R. J. COLLINS, 20 E. A. ATKINSON, 21 J.F.N. WILKINSON22 ROBERT LAWS, 23 MIL’N M. HOLLAND24 COMMITTEE.

1. Known as the “Black Croker,” the Maryland native Perry H. Carson (c. 1850–1909) was credited with “dominating” the District of Columbia’s black vote for nearly forty years. Indeed, locals said that it was his “attitude [that] decided political battles” in the nation’s capital. In 1864, Carson volunteered for the U.S. Army, and in 1867 he settled in Washington, D.C., where he quickly rose to prominence in the local Republican party. By 1880, Carson was working as a court bailiff, and by the end of that decade, he was also operating a successful hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, which became known as something of a “regular hangout” for politicians. In the 1880s and 1890s, he was described as knowing how to get the most out of the “political spoils system.” Carson served as a delegate to four National Republican Conventions, starting in 1876. In recognition of his efforts at organizing black veterans—known as the Boys in Blue—in support of Republican candidates during the 1876 campaign, he was given the honorary title of “colonel” by President Ulysses S. Grant. Carson served as a member of the National Republican Committee as well as the president of the Blaine Invincible Republican Organization, a political club, in Washington, D.C. Although Carson never ran for elected office, his involvement in Republican politics was so well known that in the 1900 census, his occupation was simply listed as politician. 1870 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 441; 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 26; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 197A; Washington Post, 21 January 1896; New York Times, 1 November, 1909; Baltimore (Md.) Sun, 1 November 1909; T. Thomas Fortune, After War Times: An African American Childhood in Reconstruction-Era Florida, ed. Daniel R. Weinfeld (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2014), 51. 2. The same quotation attributed to Perry Carson appears in the Washington Bee, 5 May 1883. 3. According to the 1880 U.S. Census, there were 50,155,783 people living in the United States, of whom 6,580,793 were African American. EAAH, 2:388.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 259

9/1/21 4:16 PM

260

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

4. Although this figure cannot be confirmed, it is possible. In the 1868 election alone, it has been estimated that 500,000 blacks in the South voted. Larry J. Sabato and Howard R. Ernst, eds., Encyclopedia of American Political Parties and Elections (New York, 2007), 323. 5. James Monroe Gregory (1849–1909) was born to free parents in Lexington, Virginia. While he was still an infant, his parents moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where they remained until 1859, when they moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Educated in private and public institutions, Gregory entered Oberlin College in 1865. While attending Oberlin, he was a candidate for admittance to West Point, but his appointment was denied by President Andrew Johnson. Shortly thereafter, he transferred to Howard University, where he was promised a job upon graduation. After graduating in 1870, Gregory spent several years as an instructor in both mathematics and Latin at Howard before being promoted to professor of Latin in 1875. In 1880, he was appointed a trustee of the public schools of the District of Columbia, and during that same decade he served four years as the secretary of the Republican Central Committee of the District of Columbia. In 1883, Gregory was one of three delegates (another of whom was Douglass) sent from the District of Columbia to the National Convention of Colored Men, held in Louisville, Kentucky. After founding the American Association of Educators of Colored Youth in 1890, he went on to serve as its president for eight consecutive years. In 1893, he published Frederick Douglass the Orator, and in 1897 he became the principal of the Bordentown Industrial and Manual Training School in Bordentown, New Jersey, where he remained until his retirement in 1915. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 197A; 1900 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Burlington County, 95A; 1910 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Burlington County, 106; William J. Simmons, Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising (Cleveland, 1887), 631–41; Fortune, After War Times, 97; EAAH, 2:121. 6. Probably the Washington, D.C., native Arthur A. Smith (c. 1852–?). Smith first appears as a mixed-race seventeen-year-old printer’s apprentice in the 1870 Census. Later, in both the 1880 Census and the 1900 Census, his occupation is listed as printer at the U.S. Government Printing Office. 1870 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 780; 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 134C; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 135A; 1910 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 10B. 7. John Francis Cook, Jr. (1833–1910), a native of the District of Columbia, was born to a prominent African American minister and educator, the Reverend John Francis Cook, Sr., and a mixed-race mother. He was educated at his father’s school, Union Seminary, in Washington, D.C., before attending Oberlin College in Ohio. After spending a few years as a teacher in New Orleans, Cook returned to the District of Columbia in 1861, where he taught at Union Seminary until it closed in 1867. That same year, Cook entered the civil service, working as a clerk at the office of the city’s collector of taxes. In 1868, he was elected to the board of aldermen, and in 1869 he was elected to the office of city registrar. He served as a justice of the peace from 1869 to 1876 and was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1872 and 1880. In 1874, he was appointed district tax collector by President Grant and held that post until 1884. He was also a trustee of Howard University. At the time of his death, Cook was considered the wealthiest African American in the District of Columbia. His wife, Helen Appo Cook (1837–1913), was a prominent clubwoman and social leader in Washington’s black community. 1870 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 15; 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 32; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 143A; Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, 5 vols. (New York, 2005), 2:226–27; Jessie Carney Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women: Book II (Detroit, 1996), 138–37; EAAH, 1:427. 8. Possibly William R. Laws (c. 1842–?), a Virginia-born black laborer found living in the District of Columbia between 1880 and 1900. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 17; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 200A; U.S. City Directories, 1821–1989, Ancestry.com (online). 9. Mistakenly identified as the well-known soldier, clergyman, legislator, and historian George Washington Williams (1849–91), George W. Williams (c. 1842–?), who signed the call for the National Convention of Colored Men, was a mixed-race native of the District of Columbia who coowned a successful restaurant and catering business in the nation’s capital, located at 348 Pennsylva-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 260

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

261

nia Avenue, during the 1870s and 1880s. George Washington Williams first pointed out the confusion over who signed the call in an article published in the New York Globe on 19 May 1883. Writing from his vacation home in Massachusetts, Williams categorically denied having signed the call, stated his opposition to the convention, and identified the man who had signed it as someone who lived in Washington and “keeps a saloon.” 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 52; John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams: A Biography (Chicago, 1985), 166–67, 314; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 314–15; U.S. City Directories, 1821–1989, Ancestry.com (online); EAAH, 3:344–46. 10. Probably Collin B. Crusor (c. 1833–?), a black native of the District of Columbia, who worked as a guard at the district jail in the 1870s and 1880s. His son, Dr. Collin B. Crusor, Jr., was a graduate of Howard University. 1870 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 194; 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 194; Washington Times, 2 April 1905. 11. Charles Bennett Fisher (1839–1903) was a freeborn native of Alexandria, Virginia. In 1860, he served on a Mississippi riverboat, the Fanny Bullitt, which transported cannons and munitions to Fort Pillow, Tennessee. The following year, Fisher settled in Fall River, Massachusetts, where he worked as a bookbinder. While living in Massachusetts in 1862, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He was initially enrolled as a landsman on the U.S.S. Kearsarge, but in February 1864 his commanding officer promoted him to wardroom cook. This position of some authority paid a higher wage than that of seaman and charged Fisher with acquiring provisions for the officers’ dining room. While serving on the Kearsarge, he took part in the Battle of Cherbourg, in which the C.S.S. Alabama was sunk in the English Channel. This was the only case of combat on the high seas between the Union and Confederate navies during the Civil War. After leaving the navy at the end of 1864, Fisher settled in Washington, D.C., where he spent many years as a clerk in the Treasury Department. In 1865, he helped found the First Separate Battalion of the District of Columbia, an all-black National Guard unit known as the Butler Zouaves, and was eventually promoted to the rank of colonel. In 1888, Fisher helped organize the Colored High School Cadet Corp of the District of Columbia. His Civil War diary was published in 1983 as Diary of Charles B. Fisher. 1870 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 357; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 71A; Washington Evening Star, 28 January 1903; Augustus D. Ayling, comp., Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1866 (Concord, N.H., 1895), 1120; Steven J. Ramold, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy (DeKalb, Ill., 2002), 166–71. 12. A native of Virginia, the Reverend John Henry Brooks (1830–84) was a wagon driver for the Union Army during the Civil War. In 1866, Brooks, along with seven other former slaves, cofounded the Fifth Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., now known as the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church. Brooks served as its first senior pastor until his death in 1884, by which time the congregation had grown to over 1,800 members. 1870 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 14; 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 18; John W. Cromwell, “The First Negro Churches in the District of Columbia,” JNH, 7:94 (January 1922); District of Columbia Selected Deaths and Burials, 1840–1964, Ancestry.com (online). 13. Probably George H. Boston (c. 1841–1913), listed in the 1880 Census as a Massachusettsborn mixed-race contractor. Boston is listed in Washington, D.C., city directories from roughly 1868 through 1900 and is variously described as a painter, a builder, and a laborer. In his final enumeration in the U.S. Census, in 1910, he is described as a widowed laborer employed by the government. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 14; 1910 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 22B; U.S. City Directories, 1821–1989, Ancestry.com (online); District of Columbia, Selected Deaths and Burials, 1840–1964, Ancestry.com (online). 14. A native of the District of Columbia, Solomon G. Brown (1829–1906) was the freeborn son of two former slaves. At the age of fifteen, he began work at the Washington, D.C., post office and was assigned to assist Samuel F. B. Morse in installing the nation’s first telegraph line. Brown worked as a technician for Morse for seven years. In 1852, he was hired as a general laborer by Joseph Henry to work at the newly opened Smithsonian Institution. By 1864, Brown had risen to the position of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 261

9/1/21 4:16 PM

262

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

museum assistant, and in 1869 he was made registrar in charge of transportation, registry, and storage of all animal specimens and other materials received by the institution. From 1870 to 1887, Brown also assisted in preparing the maps and drawings of nearly all lectures delivered at the Smithsonian. Although he lacked a formal education, Brown gained wide recognition in the field of natural history and lectured extensively on a variety of scientific topics in Washington, D.C., and in nearby cities such as Baltimore and Alexandria. Brown was a trustee of Wilberforce University and founder of the Pioneer Sabbath School in Washington, D.C., and he served as superintendent of the North Washington Mission Sunday School. In 1866, he was elected president of the North Washington National Union League, and from 1871 to 1874, he served three consecutive terms in the legislature of the District of Columbia. He died within a few months of his retirement from the Smithsonian Institution in 1906. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 152A; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 234A; DANB, 70–71; Appiah and Gates, Africana, 1:644–45. 15. Philadelphia-born Richard T. Greener (1844–1922) was the first African American to graduate from Harvard College. Greener then read law and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1876. He taught in Howard University’s Law Department, eventually becoming its dean (1879–80). Greener came into conflict with Frederick Douglass, who then served as a Howard University trustee, over the question of the western migration of 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 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, where he remained 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 (online); DAB, 7:578–79. 16. Born in Delaware, John Mifflin Brown (1817–93) was the mixed-race grandson of a Methodist minister. Educated both privately and in a series of public schools, he entered Oberlin College in 1841. In 1844, before his graduation, Brown moved to Detroit and opened the city’s first school for African American children. That same year, he accepted a call to assume the pastorate of the local A.M.E. church, where he served until 1847. In 1849, Brown was ordained a deacon by the Ohio Conference of the church and was assigned to an A.M.E. congregation in Columbus, Ohio. While there, he was also appointed principal of Union Seminary, the first school owned and operated by the A.M.E. Church. In 1852, Brown joined the Indiana Conference and took up a missionary appointment to Louisiana, where he remained for the next five years. After spending a year in Louisville, Kentucky, he was moved to Baltimore, where he led a number of churches between 1858 and 1864. From 1864 to 1868, Brown served as secretary of the Parent Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the A.M.E. Church. In 1868, he was elected the eleventh bishop of the A.M.E. Church and placed in charge of the Seventh Episcopal District, which included South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. From 1872 to 1876, he was in charge of the Sixth Episcopal District (Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana), and from 1876 to 1880, he was head of the Second District, which covered Baltimore, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. In 1884, Brown was put in charge of the First Episcopal District (Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, and New England) of the A.M.E. Church and was moved to the Fourth District, which encompassed Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, and California. He ended his career as bishop of a reorganized Fourth Episcopal District, which was composed of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Iowa. Brown cofounded the Payne Institute in 1871, which later became Allen University in South Carolina. He was a supporter of the “Back to Africa” movement and an advocate for the ordination of women. There are twenty-nine churches in fifteen states named for him. Larry G. Murphy, J. Gordon Melton, and Gary L. Ward, eds., Encyclopedia of African American Religions (New York, 2011), 124–26; Appiah and Gates, Africana, 1:642. 17. William Calvin Chase (1854–1921) was born into an affluent family of free African Americans in the District of Columbia. As a child, he was taught by John F. Cook, Jr., at Union Seminary

Y7870-Douglass.indb 262

9/1/21 4:16 PM

TO THE COLORED MEN OF THE UNITED STATES

263

before completing his secondary education in the Preparatory Department of Howard University. In 1875, he became the Washington correspondent of the Boston Observer, where he was quickly recognized as both a skilled reporter and a zealous champion of civil rights. At the same time, he also gained a less complimentary reputation for being extremely difficult to work with and for being equally zealous in his willingness to attack even the most highly regarded members of the black community whenever he disagreed with them. In 1879, Chase worked briefly as a reporter for the Boston Co-Operator, then as a reporter and society editor for the Washington Plain Dealer, and finally as editor of the Argus (which he renamed the Free Lance). In 1882, he was hired to take over as editor of the Washington Bee, a four-page weekly founded the year before by William V. Turner. From 1883 to 1884, he studied law at Howard University, and in 1889 he passed the bar in both Virginia and the District of Columbia. Throughout his tenure as publisher and editor of the Washington Bee, Chase was a tireless advocate for civil rights, printing articles and editorials denouncing discrimination in both the federal civil service and the armed services, as well as investigating subjects such as police brutality. Although he remained a Republican, he grew increasingly disillusioned with the national Republican party over time and eventually threw his support behind the Socialist party in both the 1904 and 1916 elections. In 1900 and 1912, however, he served as a delegate to the Republican National Conventions. During his years as a newspaper man, Chase engaged in public disputes with many of the nation’s foremost black leaders, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois. He continued as publisher and editor of the Washington Bee until his death in 1921. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 343; John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport, Conn., 1994), 130–34; Jack Rummel, African-American Social Leaders and Activists (New York, 2003), 27–28; EAAH, 1:351–52. 18. John A. Gray (c. 1834–?), a caterer, lived in Washington, D.C., where he served some of the district’s most notable families, including Douglass’s. President Grant appointed both Gray and Douglass to the district’s first Legislative Council in 1871. While a member of the council, Gray proposed a plan to protect small property owners from the Board of Public Works, which had introduced new assessments for improvements to their property. Gray later became the proprietor of the Hamilton House at 14th and E streets. 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 2B; Milwaukee (Wisc.) Sentinel, 18 April 1871; Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, 7 vols. (New York, 1951–90), 2:636; Whyte, Uncivil War, 29, 106, 144, 161, 166, 251, 258, 283. 19. Probably John H. Smith (c. 1851–?), who was identified in the 1880 Census as a black native of Delaware working as a messenger for the Treasury Department. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 75. 20. In all likelihood, this was Richmond Collins (c. 1830–?), a black Virginia-born minister. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 21. 21. Probably Edward S. Atkinson (1838–?), who first appears in the 1870 Census as a mixed-race Maryland-born dishwasher. In the 1880 Census, he is listed as a messenger for the Interior Department. By 1891, Atkinson was working as a messenger for the Navy Department, and in his final appearance in the census, in 1900 (age sixty-one), he was still working as a government messenger. 1870 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 87; 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 27; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 18B; U.S. Register of Civil, Military, and Naval Services, 1863–1959, Ancestry. com (online). 22. John Francis Nicholas Wilkinson (1832–1912) was a mixed-race native of Washington, D.C. In 1857, he was hired as a custodian at the Library of Congress Law Library, where he worked until his death. Over the years, he was promoted to library assistant, and while he lacked any formal training as a librarian, he was considered for promotion to the professional rank of assistant librarian because of his knowledge of the collection and his skill at assisting library patrons. Although the promotion did not materialize, Wilkinson is now regarded as a pioneer of African American librarianship. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 26; 1910 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 43A; Alma Dawson, “Celebrating African-American Librarians and Librarianship,” Library Trends, 48:62 (Summer 2000).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 263

9/1/21 4:16 PM

264

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN

23. This is probably the Virginia native Robert S. Laws (c. 1846–?), who worked as both a schoolteacher and a Baptist minister for most of his career in Washington, D.C. Laws also served for a brief time in the 1860s as the minister of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in the Freedmen’s Village, located on Robert E. Lee’s former plantation in Arlington, Virginia. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 2; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 12A; Anthony J. Gaughan, The Last Battle of the Civil War: United States versus Lee, 1861–1883 (Baton Rouge, La., 2011), 30, 50. 24. The Texas native Milton Murray Holland (1844–1910) was one of three sons born to Captain Bird Holland, secretary of state of Texas in 1861, and a slave named Matilda Holland, who belonged to the captain’s half brother. In the 1850s, Holland and his two brothers, William H. and James, were purchased and freed by their father before being sent to Ohio, where they were enrolled in the Albany Manual Labor Academy. There, Holland trained as a shoemaker. In 1861, Holland attempted to enlist in the Union Army, but was turned down because of his color. Undaunted, he applied to the Quartermaster’s Department and was assigned as aide-de-camp to Colonel Nelson H. Van Vorhes of the Eighteenth and Ninety-second Ohio Infantry Regiments. In June 1863, Holland enlisted in the 127th Ohio Infantry, which became the Fifth U.S. Colored Infantry. Promoted first to drillmaster, then to sergeant, and finally to master sergeant, Holland achieved high military distinction in September 1864 at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm (also known as New Market Heights), Virginia, when he assumed command of his company after all its officers had been killed or wounded. For his actions, which were credited as being instrumental in the regiment’s victory, Holland was awarded the Medal of Honor in April 1865. He later saw action at the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond in Virginia, as well as at the capture of Fort Fisher in North Carolina. He mustered out in September 1865 and returned to Ohio, where he again worked as a shoemaker. In 1869 he moved to Washington, D.C., where he had been offered a clerkship in the Treasury Department. In 1872 he graduated from Howard University, where he studied law, and passed the bar for both the Supreme Court and the District of Columbia. In 1887, Holland retired from the civil service and went into private practice, specializing in real estate law. He returned to the civil service a few years later, however, having been offered the position of chief of division of the Second Auditor’s Office, where he oversaw the accounts of the War Department. Holland founded the Alpha Life Insurance Company, one of the first black-owned insurance companies in the United States, in 1892. In addition to his insurance business, he also served as president of the Capital Savings Bank and general manager of the Industrial Building and Savings Company. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 12; J. W. Jones, The Story of American Heroism, Thrilling Narratives of Personal Adventures During the Great Civil War as Told by the Medal Winners and Roll of Honor Men (Springfield, Ohio, 1897), 516–17; Mary L. Bowman, comp., Civil War Veterans of Athens County, Ohio: Biographical Sketches (Athens, Ohio, 1989), 1:61–65; Jonathan Sutherland, African Americans at War: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2004), 1:749; Ronald S. Coddington, African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album (Baltimore, 2012), 153–56.

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN (1883) New York American Reformer, 2:388 (November 1883).

The 15 October 1883 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 null and void sparked protest from African Americans and whites alike. In an 8–1 decision, the majority opinion held that the act was unconstitutional because it compromised the right of states to provide their own legislative

Y7870-Douglass.indb 264

9/1/21 4:16 PM

264

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN

23. This is probably the Virginia native Robert S. Laws (c. 1846–?), who worked as both a schoolteacher and a Baptist minister for most of his career in Washington, D.C. Laws also served for a brief time in the 1860s as the minister of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in the Freedmen’s Village, located on Robert E. Lee’s former plantation in Arlington, Virginia. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 2; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 12A; Anthony J. Gaughan, The Last Battle of the Civil War: United States versus Lee, 1861–1883 (Baton Rouge, La., 2011), 30, 50. 24. The Texas native Milton Murray Holland (1844–1910) was one of three sons born to Captain Bird Holland, secretary of state of Texas in 1861, and a slave named Matilda Holland, who belonged to the captain’s half brother. In the 1850s, Holland and his two brothers, William H. and James, were purchased and freed by their father before being sent to Ohio, where they were enrolled in the Albany Manual Labor Academy. There, Holland trained as a shoemaker. In 1861, Holland attempted to enlist in the Union Army, but was turned down because of his color. Undaunted, he applied to the Quartermaster’s Department and was assigned as aide-de-camp to Colonel Nelson H. Van Vorhes of the Eighteenth and Ninety-second Ohio Infantry Regiments. In June 1863, Holland enlisted in the 127th Ohio Infantry, which became the Fifth U.S. Colored Infantry. Promoted first to drillmaster, then to sergeant, and finally to master sergeant, Holland achieved high military distinction in September 1864 at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm (also known as New Market Heights), Virginia, when he assumed command of his company after all its officers had been killed or wounded. For his actions, which were credited as being instrumental in the regiment’s victory, Holland was awarded the Medal of Honor in April 1865. He later saw action at the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond in Virginia, as well as at the capture of Fort Fisher in North Carolina. He mustered out in September 1865 and returned to Ohio, where he again worked as a shoemaker. In 1869 he moved to Washington, D.C., where he had been offered a clerkship in the Treasury Department. In 1872 he graduated from Howard University, where he studied law, and passed the bar for both the Supreme Court and the District of Columbia. In 1887, Holland retired from the civil service and went into private practice, specializing in real estate law. He returned to the civil service a few years later, however, having been offered the position of chief of division of the Second Auditor’s Office, where he oversaw the accounts of the War Department. Holland founded the Alpha Life Insurance Company, one of the first black-owned insurance companies in the United States, in 1892. In addition to his insurance business, he also served as president of the Capital Savings Bank and general manager of the Industrial Building and Savings Company. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 12; J. W. Jones, The Story of American Heroism, Thrilling Narratives of Personal Adventures During the Great Civil War as Told by the Medal Winners and Roll of Honor Men (Springfield, Ohio, 1897), 516–17; Mary L. Bowman, comp., Civil War Veterans of Athens County, Ohio: Biographical Sketches (Athens, Ohio, 1989), 1:61–65; Jonathan Sutherland, African Americans at War: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2004), 1:749; Ronald S. Coddington, African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album (Baltimore, 2012), 153–56.

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN (1883) New York American Reformer, 2:388 (November 1883).

The 15 October 1883 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 null and void sparked protest from African Americans and whites alike. In an 8–1 decision, the majority opinion held that the act was unconstitutional because it compromised the right of states to provide their own legislative

Y7870-Douglass.indb 264

9/1/21 4:16 PM

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN

265

protection for citizens’ civil rights. In the lone dissent, Judge John Marshall Harlan claimed that the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments intended to protect former slaves from racial discrimination. Congress therefore had a right, Harlan concluded, to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment “by appropriate legislation, which may be of direct and primary character,” as was the Civil Rights Act of 1875. According to Harlan, this civil rights legislation was within constitutional bounds when it allowed Congress to regulate the actions of states, as well as those of individuals and corporations, to ensure people of all races equal access to public accommodations and facilities. In the American Reformer, Douglass praised Harlan for his dissent and decried the Supreme Court’s decision as “almost akin to treachery.” The U.S. government would not pass civil rights legislation again until the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), 26–62, 72; Floyd Barzilia Clark, The Constitutional Doctrines of Justice Harlan (Baltimore, 1915), 9–15.

In the early days of the Anti-Slavery conflict, when Anti-Slavery men were few and were often ridiculed for their numerical insignificance, I was wont to console myself with what seemed to many a transcendental idea, that one man with God is a majority;1 that if such a man does not represent what is he does represent what ought to be, and what ultimately will be. The colored people and their friends may well enough avail themselves of this sublime consolation in their present situation, and in view of the righteous and heroic stand taken in defence of liberty and justice by Justice John M. Harlan.2 He has felt himself called upon to isolate himself from his brothers on the Supreme Bench, and to place himself before the country as the true expounder of the Constitution as amended, and of the duty of the National Government to protect and defend the rights of citizens against any infringement of their liberty. The opinion which he has given to the country, as to the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Bill, places his name among the ablest jurists who have occupied the Bench of the Supreme Court. No utterance from that Bench, since the celebrated and splendid opinion given by Judge Curtis3 against Judge Taney’s4 infamous Dred Scott decision, has equaled this opinion in ability, thoroughness, comprehensiveness and conclusive reasoning. Compared with it the decision of the eight judges was as an egg shell to a cannon ball. We are

Y7870-Douglass.indb 265

9/1/21 4:16 PM

266

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN

told in Scripture that one shall chase a thousand,5 but one opinion like this could put to flight ten thousand of such decisions as the thin, gaunt and hungry one which denies the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Bill, and the duty of the Federal Government to protect the rights and liberties of its own citizens. No man, unless blinded by passion, prejudice, or selfishness, can read this opinion without respect and admiration for the man behind it. Where the decision of the Court is narrow, superficial and technical, the opinion of Judge Harlan is broad and generous, and grapples with substance rather than shadow, with things as they are rather than with abstractions. I look upon the decision of the Supreme Court, in this case, as an act of surrender, almost akin to treachery. If any one thing was settled by the Rebellion it was that allegiance was, first of all, due, not to the States, but to the nation, and that protection and allegiance go together. For this principle the nation spent mountains of money and sacrificed a half a million of men, but now the decision of the Supreme Court affirms the principle, by which this expenditure of blood and treasure was forced upon the country, to be constitutional. “I go out with my State!” So said Alexander Stephens of Georgia,6 and so said Robert E. Lee, of Virginia. “My allegiance is due to the State that protects me in my liberties,” so they said, and went off and put arms in their hands and bullets in their pockets, with which to shoot down the defenders of the nation. Nothing has happened since the war for the Union, so calculated to encourage the war-exploded dogma of State rights, and humiliate the nation, as this decision of the Supreme Court. Well may the newspapers all over the South laud and magnify this decision. Well may they gloat in triumph over the negro citizen and declare they have now got him just where they want him. They can put him in a smoking car or baggage car, take him as freight or as a passenger, take him or leave him at a railroad station, exclude him from inns, drive him from all places of amusement and instruction, without the least fear that the National Government will interfere for the protection of his liberty. In the name of all that is honorable and just, I ask: Was it this for which two hundred thousand black men bared their bosoms to the storm of rebel canon? Was it for this they reached out their iron arm and clutched with their steel fingers the faltering flag of their country? Was it for this that thousands of them perished at Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Petersburg and Fort Wagner?7 By all around, above, below, Be sure the indignant answer, No!8

Y7870-Douglass.indb 266

9/1/21 4:16 PM

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN

267

No! The brave statesmen who framed the reconstruction of the rebellious States, upon the basis of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, never meant to deceive or desert the faithful colored allies, and leave them in the forlorn and desperate situation described by this unfortunate decision. Nevertheless, the late slave-holding and rebel States have good grounds in this decision for their grim and ghastly exultation over the fallen condition of the colored citizen since the war. It is supported by eight of the nine pillars of the highest court in the land. Just here, perhaps, is one of the saddest features of the case. That Court is composed of nine Republican judges, each appointed by a Republican President, and each confirmed by a Republican Senate.9 And yet of the nine only one is found worthy to hold up the liberal side of the American Constitution—only one who dares to respect the beneficent intentions of the loyal statesmen of the country, and to secure to colored citizens the rights plainly written down in the Constitution. No wonder that Republicans like Senator Sherman10 and other statesmen of the period declare their intention not to acquiesce silently in this decision. As to Justice John M. Harlan, no man in America at this moment occupies a more enviable position. His attitude is one of marked moral sublimity. The marvel is that, born in a slave State, as he was, and accustomed to see the colored man degraded, oppressed and enslaved, and the white man exalted; surrounded by the peculiar moral vapor inseparable from the slave system, he should so clearly comprehend the lessons of the late war and the principles of reconstruction, and, above all, that in these easy-going days he should find himself possessed of the courage to resist the temptation to go with the multitude. He has chosen to discharge a difficult and delicate duty and he has done it with great fidelity, skill and effect. In other days, when Garrison, Phillips, Sumner, Wilson11 and others spoke, wrote and moved among men, Old Massachusetts did not leave to Kentucky the honor of supplying the Supreme Bench with a moral hero. That state then spoke through the cultivated and legal mind of Judge Curtis. Happily for us, however, Kentucky has not only supplied the needed strength and courage to stem the current of proslavery reaction, but she has also supplied in Justice Harlan patience, wisdom, industry and legal ability, as well as heroic courage. I hope The Reformer12 will do what it can to expose and defeat the mischievous efforts being made by certain leading newspapers, to misrepresent those who take issue with the decision of the Supreme Court. Unable to resist the arguments in favor of the Civil Rights Bill they persist

Y7870-Douglass.indb 267

9/1/21 4:16 PM

268

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN

in declaring it to be a Social Rights Bill. The object is very apparent. It is to arouse a vulgar and stupid prejudice. There is no ground whatever for confounding civil rights with social privileges. One rests upon individual preferences as variable as the winds. No law can define them and no government can enforce them; the other is founded upon principles of law and the Constitution of the State and capable of definition and enforcement by law. What has riding in the same railroad car, being sheltered at the same inn, attending the same show, looking at the same animals, sitting in the same theatre, to do with social equality? As well might it be said that to buy goods at the same store, meat at the same market, to live on the same street, or in the same town or city makes men socially equal. Men may live in all these relations and yet be as wide apart, socially, as the poles of the moral universe. WASHINGTON, D.C., NOVEMBER, 1883. 1. Douglass paraphrases a quote from Wendell Phillips’s speech “Lesson of the Hour”: “One, on God’s side, is a majority.” Wendell Phillips, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Boston, 1872), 263. 2. John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) was born in Boyle County, Kentucky, and educated at Centre College in Danville and Transylvania University in Lexington. Despite being a slaveholder, Harlan joined the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. A lawyer since 1853, he served as Kentucky’s attorney general from 1863 to 1867. Harlan unsuccessfully sought the Kentucky governorship on the Republican ticket in 1871 and 1875, but he regained political influence by campaigning strenuously for Rutherford B. Hayes’s election as president. Hayes rewarded that support by appointing Harlan an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1877. Known as “the great dissenter,” Harlan wrote 316 dissenting opinions out of a total of 703 opinions during his thirty-three years on the highest court. Loren P. Beth, The Development of the American Constitution, 1877–1917 (New York, 1971), 195–96; Lois B. Moreland, White Racism and the Law (Eugene, Ore., 1970), 64–78; Louis Filler, “John M. Harlan,” in The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789–1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions, ed. Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, 5 vols. (New York, 1969–78), 2:1281–95; DAB, 34:296–72. 3. Benjamin Robbins Curtis (1809–74) was the only Whig appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Massachusetts native graduated from Harvard University in 1829 and then Harvard Law School in 1831. He served in the state legislature, but established his reputation mainly as a lawyer. Although he disapproved of slavery, he endorsed the Compromise of 1850. At the urging of Daniel Webster, President Fillmore appointed Curtis to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Levi Woodbury. Curtis was one of the two dissenters in the Dred Scott decision, disagreeing with the majority’s rejection of the slave Scott’s bid for emancipation. Curtis disagreed with Chief Justice Roger Taney’s claim that African Americans had never been citizens of any state and therefore were ineligible to bring suit in federal courts. Attempting to avoid inflaming the political dispute over the federal government’s ability to prohibit slavery from the territories, he found narrow legal grounds to favor the emancipation of Scott and his wife. Soon after his dissent, Curtis resigned his Supreme Court seat, claiming that the Dred Scott decision had been guided by sectional politics instead of by the law. He resumed a lucrative legal practice and again gained national prominence as the chief counsel for Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial. Henry J. Abraham, Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court, 3d ed. (New York, 1992), 111, 114; Earl M. Maltz, “The Last Angry Man: Benjamin Robbins Curtis and the Dred Scott Case,” Chicago-Kent Law Review, 82:265–76 (December 2006).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 268

9/1/21 4:16 PM

CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDGE HARLAN

269

4. Roger B. Taney. 5. Douglass refers to Deut. 32:30. 6. Confederate vice president Alexander Hamilton Stephens (1812–83) was born in Taliaferro County, Georgia, graduated from University of Georgia, and practiced law at Crawfordsville in his native state. From 1843 to 1859, Stephens was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, first as a Whig and then, after 1852, as a Democrat. In the 1860 presidential election, Stephens supported Stephen A. Douglas but nevertheless followed his state into secession. As the Confederacy’s vice president, he eventually became a strong critic of Jefferson Davis’s centralizing war policies. In February 1865, Stephens was one of three Confederate commissioners at the abortive Hampton Roads Peace Conference. Briefly jailed after the war, he returned to Congress from 1873 to 1882 and was governor of Georgia at the time of his death. Rudolph von Abele, Alexander H. Stephens: A Biography (New York, 1946); Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York, 1954), 254, 258–59; Warner and Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress, 231–33. 7. The newly recruited black Union Army soldiers fought creditably in their earliest combat engagements in 1863. The all-black First and Third Louisiana Regiments—raised in New Orleans— charged Confederate entrenchments surrounding Port Hudson, Louisiana, multiple times on 27 May 1863, sustaining serious casualties. On 29 June 1863, three black Union Army regiments participated in bloody skirmishing at Mound Plantation during the Vicksburg campaign. A division of U.S. Colored Troops, led by Brigadier General Edward Ferrero, sustained heavy casualties in the disastrous assault on Confederate lines at Petersburg on 30 July 1864. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment had distinguished itself in the attack on Fort Wagner, which occurred on Morris Island near Charleston on 18–19 July 1863. Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 8–9,12–21, 214–20; Long and Long, Civil War Day by Day, 373–79, 548–49. 8. Douglass incorrectly quotes “By all around, above, below, / Be ours the indignant answer— No!” from “Stanzas for the Times.” John Greenleaf Whittier, The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (Boston, 1880), 51. 9. There were nine justices serving on the U.S. Supreme Court at the time of its 1883 decision in the Civil Rights Cases: Samuel F. Miller (1816–90) of Iowa, appointed by Lincoln in 1862; Stephen J. Field (1816–99), a nominal Democrat, also appointed by Lincoln in 1863; Joseph P. Bradley (1813–92), appointed by Grant in 1870; Morrison R. Waite (1816–88), the chief justice, appointed by Grant; John M. Harlan (1833–1911), appointed by Hayes in 1877; William B. Woods (1824–87), also appointed by Hayes; Stanley Matthews (1824–89), appointed by Garfield in 1881; Horace Gray (1828–1902), appointed by Arthur in 1881; and Samuel Blatchford (1820–93), appointed by Arthur in 1882. Abraham, Justices and Presidents, 118–21, 128–29, 131–39, 420. 10. The younger brother of the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, John Sherman (1823–1900) worked as a surveyor before commencing the practice of law at the age of twenty-one. A founder of Ohio’s Republican party, he served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from the Cleveland district (1855–61). In 1861, the Ohio legislature elected Sherman to the U.S. Senate, where he stayed until 1897, excepting four years spent as Rutherford B. Hayes’s secretary of the treasury. A highly pragmatic politician, he usually sought the middle ground on controversial Reconstruction and economic issues. Sherman’s efforts to obtain the Republican presidential nomination in 1880, 1884, and 1888 proved futile. He served as William B. McKinley’s secretary of state, but he resigned in 1900 because of his antiexpansionist sentiments. As a senator who supported and helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Sherman was greatly disappointed in the Supreme Court’s 1883 decision to overturn sections 1 and 2. He claimed that these amendments, which were passed in favor of liberty and equal rights, should not be “perverted or evaded as a criminal statute.” He argued that the decision weakened the “foundation stone of Republican principles” and that “inequality made by law is tyranny and should be resisted by constant opposition and agitation.” New York Tribune, 20 November 1883; John Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1895); Robert Sobel, Biographical Directory of the U.S. Executive Branch, 1774–1971 (Westport, Conn., 1971), 328; Charles W. Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic: The Republican Party and the Southern Question, 1869–1900 (Lawrence, Kans., 2006), 195; NCAB, 3:198–201.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 269

9/1/21 4:16 PM

270

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

11. William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and Henry Wilson. 12. Published in New York City for just two years (1883–84), the American Reformer was a politically independent biweekly pro-prohibition journal. The American Reformer also published articles advocating black civil rights, the humane treatment of Native Americans, and curbs on political corruption. The journal was organized and managed by Charles Wesley Cushing, A. A. Hopkins, and William McGatchell, who merged it with the New York Voice in 1885. Benjamin Fish Austin, Forgotten Prohibition Leaders of America (London, 1895), 33.

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN (1883) Harper’s Weekly, 27:782–83 (8 December 1883).

The October 1883 Supreme Court decision overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a major blow to postemancipation African American rights. Douglass spoke and wrote against the ruling in the fall of 1883. Two months after the court’s verdict, he assessed the status of Southern freedmen—taking into account education, religious activities, and land ownership—in the 8 December 1883 issue of Harper’s Weekly. Although Douglass adopts a somber tone, stating that “freedom has been more in name than fact,” he ends with a hopeful decree that African Americans will steadily rise in spite of their present condition. Harper’s Weekly was a popular journal, published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916. The magazine featured articles on politics, society, and literature alongside humorous and serious political cartoons and other illustrations. During the antebellum period, the paper attempted to remain neutral regarding slavery and Southern states’ rights—so much so, in fact, that other papers often referred to it as the “Weakly.” In 1862, George William Curtis, a Republican who warmly supported Lincoln, became the publication’s new editor. His views were reflected in the Weekly, which took a decidedly more Republican turn during and after the war. While the paper still claimed to be nonpartisan, it frequently endorsed Republican candidates until the 1884 election, when the Weekly promoted the campaign of the Democrat Grover Cleveland. As a result, the publication lost considerable circulation and finally merged with the New York Independent in 1916. Frank Luther Mott, History of American Magazines, vol. 2, 1850–1865 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), 469–87.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 270

9/1/21 4:16 PM

270

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

11. William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and Henry Wilson. 12. Published in New York City for just two years (1883–84), the American Reformer was a politically independent biweekly pro-prohibition journal. The American Reformer also published articles advocating black civil rights, the humane treatment of Native Americans, and curbs on political corruption. The journal was organized and managed by Charles Wesley Cushing, A. A. Hopkins, and William McGatchell, who merged it with the New York Voice in 1885. Benjamin Fish Austin, Forgotten Prohibition Leaders of America (London, 1895), 33.

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN (1883) Harper’s Weekly, 27:782–83 (8 December 1883).

The October 1883 Supreme Court decision overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a major blow to postemancipation African American rights. Douglass spoke and wrote against the ruling in the fall of 1883. Two months after the court’s verdict, he assessed the status of Southern freedmen—taking into account education, religious activities, and land ownership—in the 8 December 1883 issue of Harper’s Weekly. Although Douglass adopts a somber tone, stating that “freedom has been more in name than fact,” he ends with a hopeful decree that African Americans will steadily rise in spite of their present condition. Harper’s Weekly was a popular journal, published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916. The magazine featured articles on politics, society, and literature alongside humorous and serious political cartoons and other illustrations. During the antebellum period, the paper attempted to remain neutral regarding slavery and Southern states’ rights—so much so, in fact, that other papers often referred to it as the “Weakly.” In 1862, George William Curtis, a Republican who warmly supported Lincoln, became the publication’s new editor. His views were reflected in the Weekly, which took a decidedly more Republican turn during and after the war. While the paper still claimed to be nonpartisan, it frequently endorsed Republican candidates until the 1884 election, when the Weekly promoted the campaign of the Democrat Grover Cleveland. As a result, the publication lost considerable circulation and finally merged with the New York Independent in 1916. Frank Luther Mott, History of American Magazines, vol. 2, 1850–1865 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), 469–87.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 270

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

271

Whether the lately emancipated slaves in the Southern States have made any sensible degree of progress since they obtained their freedom is a question often put to me in a tone of doubt and denial. Another question, equally pertinent, and even more momentous in view of the history of Yazoo, Hamburg, and the recent slaughter at Danville,1 is this: Have the recent slave-holders made any sensible degree of progress in civilization since the emancipation of their slaves? Are they more industrious, honest, and humane than when they bought, sold, and flogged their fellow-men to toil for them without wages? These two questions, like the two sides of a horse, should go together, since they are largely dependent upon each other. Plainly enough the recent bondsmen can make little progress without the consent and co-operation of the ruling class among whom they live, and who own the land upon which they live. Nobody seems to doubt the progress of the masters, but everybody is curious to know how the freedmen are getting along. Well, it is not for me to speak for the late slave-holders. They have never been in want of defenders. It is mine, by your leave and magnanimity, to speak for the class less favored. The answer to the question now put to them is of vital importance. If it shall be found that the freedmen are progressive and improving, that they only need time, patience, and a fair chance in the race of life to become useful citizens, making the nation prosperous in peace and powerful in war, there is, I believe, justice and generosity enough in the American people to supply the needed conditions of success. If, on the other hand, they are found to be nonprogressive, worse masters to themselves than their old masters were to them, that liberty neither improves their character nor condition, they are sure to be treated in the end as cumberers of the ground, and will in due season perish from the earth. Civilization is all love and tenderness toward whatever accords and co-operates with it, but implacable, cruel, and remorseless to all obstacles. It spares neither forest, mountain, nor ocean, and it will not spare Indian, Mongolian, or Ethiopian. All must go along with it, or be crushed beneath its swift-flying wheels. Before answering pro or con concerning the progress of the freedmen, candid men will see the justice of another inquiry, namely, what these people were before they were emancipated, under what conditions they were emancipated, and what have been the means of improvement within their reach since they were emancipated? All will admit that it would be manifestly and grossly unfair to judge the freedmen without taking their antecedents into account. They should be measured, not from

Y7870-Douglass.indb 271

9/1/21 4:16 PM

272

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

the height yet to be attained, but from the depths from which they have come. My relation to these people does not make me close my eyes against facts favorable or unfavorable to them. I know no race in my regard but the human race. The same feeling that led me to risk my life to save that of a white boy in my boyhood2 made me espouse the cause of the slave as soon as I was able to think. The question asked at the beginning of this article includes mental, moral, and material improvement. What the American people want to know, and have a right to know, is whether the lately enslaved lead better lives and have made for themselves more comfortable conditions of existence than in slavery—whether during these twenty years they have advanced, stood still, or retrograded. Let us first compare their mental condition of twenty years ago with what it is at present. Prior to emancipation the colored intellect of the South made no visible sign—and could make no sign—of life or power. It was suppressed and shrouded in darkness. Letters were unknown. The law made fine and imprisonment the penalty for teaching one of these sable children to read.3 So far down were they in the scale of intelligence that they were deemed by many incapable of mastering the rudiments of an English education. Even in religion nothing more than oral instruction was allowed them. “Servants, obey your masters, and be contented with your lot,”4 was the most they got of this, but of this they got abundance, both by arguments from the pulpit on Sunday and by the rhetoric of the lash in the field on Monday. In those days a colored man who could read was a curiosity, and was generally set down in the estimation of the white people as a dangerous character. It would be easy to enlarge upon this mental midnight darkness, but I will leave something to the reflection of the intelligent reader. I affirm that in nothing have these illiterate and benighted people made more progress than in the acquisition of knowledge. There are now in the Southern States, according to statistics in the Bureau of Education at Washington, between two and three hundred thousand colored children attending schools during some portion of the year.5 Of course this is but a small proportion of the children there of school age, and for whom there is no provision. The amount of illiteracy is therefore still great and deplorable. The indisposition inherited from slavery to allow the States to be taxed for the education of the laboring classes is still strong, and the general government, which had no hesitation in crossing State lines to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 272

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

273

catch slaves, has thus far too much respect for the sovereign dignity of the States to cross there lines to secure civil rights or education to its citizens. It may be adduced as a fair argument that the freed people have made some progress in the matter of education, that now nobody can be found to deny their capacity for education. If any such could be found, they would only need to visit the public schools here in Washington, and witness the qualifications of the colored teachers and the aptitude of the colored pupils to have their doubts and denials made ridiculous. Colored children, to the credit of the statesmen of twenty years ago, have commodious schoolhouses, competent teachers, and are pursuing the same course of study that white children pursue, and with almost equal success. With respect to the moral progress of the lately enslaved class I am sorry to speak in a somewhat lower tone. But the same rule of judgment should be applied here as elsewhere. They are in this respect, as well as others, the legitimate results of their antecedents. The sense of right and the voice of conscience had little chance of cultivation in the relation of master and slave. Conduct in that relation was guided by force and fear. Mutual interest and common welfare were excluded from that relation. Its corner-stone was composed of the blood-cemented fragments of the moral constitution of human nature. Each party to it found himself impelled to do that which was not to the advantage of the other. They were mutual enemies on the same territory, and in daily unfriendly contact. In his notes on Virginia Mr. Jefferson says, “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unlimited despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.”6 In such a state of society the moral sense was blunted, and the voice of conscience suppressed. The attributes of a manly character such as liberty now demands had no chance of development. The master forced what he could and all he could from the slave, and the slave in turn stole all he could from the master, his only restraint being the fear of detection and punishment. He was born into a society organized to defraud him of the results of his labor, and he naturally enough thought it no robbery to obtain by stealth—the only way open to him—a part of what was forced from him under the hard conditions of the lash. I do not pretend to deny that there was ever a generous slave-holder or honest slave, for I know the contrary, but I equally know that the system made tyrants of one class and thieves of the other. As to social relations, the system was even more destructive and deadly. Its victims were herded together like horses, sheep, and swine,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 273

9/1/21 4:16 PM

274

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

without the restraints of moral instructions or decency. The master was made more important by every addition to his slaves. Marriage did not exist; the family was abolished.7 The young had no reputation to gain, and the old had none to lose. Let it be remembered in respect to the morals of these people that streams are not easily diverted from the well-worn channels; that the moral character formed under the conditions thus feebly described is not easily or speedily reformed[.] There is not only much to learn, but much to unlearn. It is sad to think of the multitude who only dropped out of slavery to drop into prisons and chain-gangs, for the crimes for which they are punished seldom rise higher than the stealing a pig or a pair of shoes; but it is consoling to think that the fact is not due to liberty, but to slavery, and that the evil will disappear as these people recede from the system in which they were born. From what has been now said it must not seem that I have conceded that there has been no improvement in the manners and morals of the freedmen since emancipation. I do not admit any such thing, for in morals, as in mental power, according to my knowledge, obtained from many sources of information, there is a visible and growing improvement both as to honesty and chastity. What was once done among these people not only with impunity, but with mirthful boasting, and without apparent sense of wrong or shame, does not now escape the rebuke and reprobation of a large and growing class of their own color. There is everywhere among them a dawning recognition of the new order of life and society into which freedom has brought them, and they are gradually adjusting themselves to the requirements of a higher civilization. Churches, preachers, teachers, Sunday-schools, night schools, day schools, singing schools, and other schools, societies for mutual aid, debating societies, libraries, and literary clubs, lawyers, doctors, editors, and newspapers, have sprung up and have multiplied with wonderful rapidity. These come not from immorality. Sin is death to such effort. They show an upward tendency which may well invite patient and benevolent effort in their behalf, and justify Mr. Slater in his magnificent donation to the cause of their elevation.8 It is noticeable, too, that the old camp-meeting emotional religion is subsiding among them, and that thought is taking the place of feeling.9 In the dark time of slavery, when this world held only toil, stripes, and pain for them, they were easily wrought into paroxysms of momentary joy by the painted and promised glories of another world. They are now beginning to see that something can be made of this world as well as

Y7870-Douglass.indb 274

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

275

of the other. Of course some of them are still wearing the old cast-off theological hats and coats of fifty years ago, but the young people who have learned to read and write have no further use for these old garments. They now demand an educated, chaste, and upright ministry. This spirit of improvement has cost the old-time preachers many sighs and groans. They see in it only decline of true religious feeling. However that may be, it is evident that morals and manners have gained by the change, and will continue to gain as the lamp of knowledge grows brighter among them. No doubt that even the wild incoherent Sambo10 sermons were a help in time of slavery. It was something to be told that their suffering time would soon be over, and that for stripes on earth they would have stars in heaven, even though it was clumsily and wildly told; but the rant of those days will not do for these. These old-fashioned preachers minister to passion, decry the intellect, and induce contentment in ignorance and stupidity, and are hence a hinderance to progress. The effect aimed at by their preaching is to excite feeling, and raise a shout—a thing which can be as well done by an eloquent stump-speaker as by any modern Whitefield.11 Among the instrumentalities which have been most effective in lifting up these people to a higher plane of life none is more worthy of mention than the American Missionary Association. While it has taken the church among the freedmen, it has not forgotten to take the school-house. But nearly all denominations, Catholic as well as Protestant, have rushed into this vast field, each after its kind, to labor for the salvation of the late slaves. This is the more surprising in view of the long years during which our churches could more easily see the heathen thousands of miles over the wide waste of waters than at home. But let the dead past bury its dead. I now come to the question as to what was the physical condition of these people before emancipation; and in referring to it I bear in mind that I am speaking to many of a generation to whom slavery is little more than a name, and who have no adequate idea of what that name covered. I have had this class of readers in mind in all I have said, and I deem it fortunate that you have allowed me to speak my word on this subject through your respected journal. With the exception of a few highly favored house servants, the physical condition of the slaves was indescribably wretched. A bushel of corn and eight pounds of salt pork per month were considered a large allowance for a full-grown man. The huts in which they lived left them largely exposed to the mercy of the elements. Their beds were boards, and their covering a miserable blanket, with which they were served not even once a year. Much of the time they were worked under the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 275

9/1/21 4:16 PM

276

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

lash in all weathers. Want, exposure, and cruelty brought to them bodily ills and general physical deterioration often to the extent of repulsive deformity. That physical well-being is essential to physical perfection is easily demonstrated both in the case of man and beast. Men laugh at the irregular make-up of the negro, but forget that no people, white or black, could preserve the finer attributes of physical manhood subjected to two hundred and fifty years of slavery. The woes of the slave mother can be read in the faces of her children. Slavery has twisted their legs, flattened their feet, and imparted a depressed and cowardly aspect to their features. Let those who laugh rather be ashamed of the crime against human nature which has produced the deformity over which they make merry. Looking at the freedmen to-day, in that class which remains on the old plantation, we see but little improvement in food or raiment, in form or feature. Twenty years are but a speck in the life of a race. Still, even here there is improvement. Many have managed to get a few acres and a little home of their own. In the State of Louisiana colored people pay taxes on more than twenty millions’ worth of property, and in Georgia, according to the late Senator Hill,12 of that State, they paid taxes five years ago on six millions. I doubt not of a showing equally creditable in North Carolina, Virginia, and other of the old Slave States. The manner in which these people were set free should never be overlooked. No people were ever emancipated under conditions more unfavorable for good results. The Israelites had spoils of the Egyptians;13 the serfs of Russia had three acres of land given to each head of a family;14 the West India slave was permitted to remain upon the old plantation;15 but the American slave was turned loose to the open sky without money, land, or friends, and, worst of all, under the fierce resentment of those who owned the land from which he must obtain his bread. These in the heat of momentary wrath drove him away; and away he went, free, but free only to want, hunger, and pain; free to the chilling blasts of winter, free to starve. Off he went with his sick and well, young and old, and the infant in arms. Many died, and the mortality for a time caused the belief that the race would speedily die out. From the gallery of the United States Senate I heard an able Senator from the North answer Mr. Sumner’s plea for suffrage with the remark that it was useless to legislate for these people, since they were sure to die out in a short time.16 But the old masters who thus resented emancipation relented, if they did not repent, and after a time called back the freedmen to their old fields and quarters. They saw that they had sent away the hands, but had left the mouths, and that they still needed the negro to work their

Y7870-Douglass.indb 276

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

277

fields—a fortunate discovery for both. Instead of dying out, as predicted, the census tells us these people have increased ten per cent. faster than the native-born white people of the South.17 In conclusion: When I consider that these people have only been free during the last twenty years, and that this freedom has been more in name than in fact; when I consider the manner in which their emancipation was brought about, not with the consent, but against the consent, of the masters; when I consider the fact that it was born of blood boiling over on the battle-field, the wounded pride and sullen determination it left in the old master class smarting under defeat, and the many obstacles thrown in the way of the progress of these people—I am far from discouraged or dissatisfied. On the contrary, I see the colored people steadily rising, and I believe they will ultimately fully justify all the endeavors made in their behalf, and fulfill the highest hopes of their friends. 1. Douglass refers to three incidents of organized, large-scale violence perpetrated by Southern whites to prevent African Americans from voting, thereby suppressing their political power. On 1 September 1875 in Yazoo City, Mississippi, a Republican election rally was disrupted by gunfi re, resulting in one dead and many wounded. Over the following days, hundreds of armed whites organized themselves into “rifle clubs” and rushed to Yazoo City to “restore order,” either murdering or driving from the area all Republican officeholders regardless of race. As a result of sustained antiblack violence throughout the fall canvass, the white supremacist Democratic party gained control of the Mississippi state government and maintained power for a century. Noting the events in Mississippi, Democrats in South Carolina devised a similar strategy of instigating racial conflict, murdering Republican officeholders and party leaders, and intimidating African American voters during the 1876 campaign. Exemplary of this scheme to “redeem” the state from Republican rule was the “Hamburg Massacre” in early July, in which whites disrupted an African American Independence Day celebration and used the heightened racial tensions as an excuse for mobilizing armed militias, publicly executing prominent blacks, and ransacking homes and businesses in the black community. The Democratic party had regained full control of Virginia politics by the mid-1870s; however, by the early 1880s it was divided between conservative “Redeemers,” representing the state’s large business interests, and the “Readjusters,” a coalition of poor white farmers, small business owners, and African Americans who had previously voted Republican. Desperate to regain control of the state legislature after four years of Readjuster rule, the Redeemer faction provoked racial conflict in Danville, a town with a slight black majority, throughout the summer and fall preceding state elections in 1883. In August, three African Americans from the town were convicted and hanged for a murder they denied committing, and on 3 November three African Americans were killed and many others were wounded in preelection violence. These incidents, along with other forms of intimidation, significantly reduced the number of black voters throughout Virginia, and the Redeemers regained control of state politics that fall. Albert T. Morgan, Yazoo; or, On the Picket Line of Freedom in the South; A Personal Narrative (1884; Columbia, S.C., 2000), 140–50, 363–81, 452–512; Foner, Reconstruction, 559–63, 570–72; Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst, Mass., 1988), 24–25; Stephen Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 64–71; Stephen Budiansky, The Bloody Shirt: Terror after Appomattox (New York, 2008), 194–212, 221–47.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 277

9/1/21 4:16 PM

278

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

2. Douglass did not recount such an incident in any of his autobiographies, but the white boy most likely was Daniel Lloyd (1811–75), the youngest son of Edward Lloyd V. As a child on the Wye Plantation in Maryland, Douglass was both a servant and a playmate to Lloyd; together, the two roamed the woods of Talbot County. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 54–56. 3. Although the belief that African American literacy had the potential to undermine slavery pervaded the antebellum South, state antiliteracy laws directed toward African Americans were neither universal nor uniform. The historian Heather Andrea Williams found laws that prohibited teaching slaves in Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina, as well as statutes that forbade teaching any person of color, whether slave or free, in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, and Virginia. She identified no such laws in Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee, or Texas. Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005), 203–13, 216. 4. Eph. 6:5 and Col. 3:22. 5. The Department of Education was established by Congress in 1867 to collect and distribute statistics on the condition and progress of education throughout the nation. Some Republican congressmen hoped this small department would blossom into a powerful bureaucracy that would help develop and maintain uniform national standards for public education. Most congressmen, though, regardless of party or region, continued to believe that nearly all education policy should be formulated by state and local governments. Therefore, in 1869 the department was downgraded to a bureau within the Department of the Interior, and for the next century it was restricted largely to amassing and publishing domestic and foreign educational statistics and preparing pamphlets on best practices. It is not clear why Douglass claims that the Bureau of Education statistics showed that “between two and three hundred thousand colored children” attended Southern schools. In fact, the annual Report of the Commissioner of Education from 1880 to 1883 shows 700,000–800,000 African American students enrolled in Southern schools, though the percentage of enrolled school-age students varied greatly by state. The Report for 1880 notes, apparently for the purpose of comparison, that General O. O. Howard, the commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, reported in 1870 that “colored schools” under his supervision had 247,000 students enrolled. Perhaps this is the source of Douglass’s reference. New York Times, 2 January 1873; Bureau of Education, Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1880 (Washington, D.C., 1882), lvii, lxii; idem, Report of the Commissioner for 1881 (Washington, D.C., 1883), lxxxi; idem, Report of the Commissioner for 1882–83 (Washington, D.C., 1884), xlviii. 6. The following is the exact quotation by Thomas Jefferson: “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.” “Query 18,” Notes on the State of Virginia, in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings (New York, 1984), 288. 7. Although masters could permit their slaves to “marry,” American slave codes did not recognize such unions as contractual or legal; rather, they were merely “moral” arrangements. Some masters promoted slave marriage because such arrangements conformed to their own religious beliefs and because they felt it might render their slaves easier to discipline. On large plantations, slaveholders saw slave marriage and family life as a way to promote contentment among bondsmen in order to discourage escape. On the other hand, “abroad” marriages—those between slaves owned by different masters—were more likely to engender some dissatisfaction. The most compelling reason for slaveholders to promote marriage, however, was economic, since such unions increased slave populations. By law, the offspring of the Lloyd slave Ned Roberts and Aaron Anthony’s slave Esther Bailey would have belonged to the latter master. A marriage of these two slaves would not have shared the negative features of most abroad marriages, because of the geographic proximity of the Anthony and Lloyd households. Douglass’s comment, therefore, seems to allude to more sinister motives behind Anthony’s desire to keep the couple apart. These motives may be seen through Douglass’s description of Esther’s torture at the hands of her master. Wilma King, Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America

Y7870-Douglass.indb 278

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

279

(Bloomington, Ind., 1995), 1–19; John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York, 1972), 77–104; Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (1985; New York, 2010), 11–43; E. Franklin Frazier, “The Negro Slave Family,” JNH, 15:198–259 (April 1930). 8. In April 1882, John F. Slater, a cotton manufacturer from Norwich, Connecticut, established a trust fund of one million dollars for the educational advancement of African Americans in the South. The board of trustees appointed by Slater consisted of distinguished men from the North and the South, beginning with ex-president Rutherford B. Hayes, and including sitting Supreme Court justices, industrialists, college presidents, and eminent clergymen. The board appointed the Reverend Atticus G. Haygood, a Methodist minister who was the president of Emory College, as the trust’s first agent, and charged him with preparing a plan for the fund’s use. Haygood proposed that disbursements from the Slater Fund largely go to “institutions which give instruction in trades and other manual occupations that will enable colored youths to make a living and to become useful citizens.” The board enthusiastically endorsed Haygood’s plan, and it remained the Slater Fund’s guiding philosophy until its disestablishment in the 1930s. Historians widely agree that the fund’s support significantly contributed to Southern black schools’ move toward an industrial education curriculum in the 1880s and 1890s, although they disagree on the underlying motives and long-term consequences of this trend. Though fully acknowledging the conservative racial views of the Slater Fund board members, many historians see them as genuine (though flawed) philanthropists who sought to remedy the lack of educational opportunities for Southern blacks and positively affected millions of lives in the process. Other historians see the Slater Fund board members as elite white supremacists who shaped African American education for purposes of economic and social control. It should be noted that when Douglass praised John F. Slater for the establishment of his trust in 1883, it was still in its nascent stages. New York Times, 13 April 1882; Bureau of Education, Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1883–84 (Washington, D.C., 1885), lxiv–lxv; John E. Fisher, The John F. Slater Fund: A Nineteenth Century Affirmative Action for Negro Education (Lanham, Md., 1986); Roy E. Finkenbine, “ ‘Our Little Circle’: Benevolent Reformers, the Slater Fund and the Argument for Black Industrial Education, 1882–1908,” Hayes Historical Journal, 6:6–22 (1986). 9. Douglass’s claim here that significant numbers of African Americans had changed their religious preferences since general emancipation appears exaggerated. After the Civil War, a wide array of churches and religious organizations in the North and the South and representing both black and white denominations launched missionary initiatives to serve Southern freedmen. Since most Southern African Americans were provided with a range of denominational choices for the first time, it was natural that some, especially those in the emerging middle class, chose to affiliate with churches other than the two that dominated African American participation in the antebellum years: the Methodist and Baptist Churches. Nevertheless, at the turn of the twentieth century, a large majority of Southern African Americans continued to be members of local churches affiliated with national black Baptist and Methodist denominations. These bodies inevitably displayed some continuity in theology and worship with their antebellum origins in slavery and oppression, yet they were also deeply marked by efforts throughout the late nineteenth century to professionalize their clergy. Throughout this period, nearly all denominations—black and white—struggled to establish and maintain a range of schools, colleges, and seminaries to standardize the education and training of their leaders. It is primarily this trend that gives Douglass’s comments their relevance. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Religious Bodies: 1906 (Washington, D.C., 1910), I, 136–39; William E. Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865–1900 (Baton Rouge, La., 1993). 10. Although the term “sambo” was not taboo in larger American society until the 1960s, it was already considered derogatory by African Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, making Douglass’s use of it here notable. Scholars differ on the word’s exact origin, but they agree that by the seventeenth century, it was commonly used in the Atlantic world to refer to males of both African and Indian parentage. By the early nineteenth century, the term was used in the English-speaking world

Y7870-Douglass.indb 279

9/1/21 4:16 PM

280

THE CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN

to denote any man of African descent, especially those described as stereotypically “Negro”—ignorant, lazy, carefree, and jolly, with an affinity for showmanship and entertaining. In this light, Douglass’s comments are quite critical of “old-time” black preachers, whom he typifies as ignorant men who used passionate sermons to emotionally manipulate and entertain their audience rather than to edify or intellectually empower them. Joseph Boskin, Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American Jester (New York, 1986), 34–41. 11. In 1740, the English revivalist George Whitefield (1714–70) denounced the physical abuses of slavery and urged the evangelization and Christianization of slaves in “Letter to the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina.” But Whitefield never condemned physical slavery as strongly as he attacked the spiritual slavery of sin. In 1747, he purchased a plantation and slaves in South Carolina to support his financially troubled orphanage near Savannah, Georgia, and shortly thereafter urged trustees of the colony of Georgia to legalize slavery. Stephen J. Stein, “George Whitefield on Slavery: Some New Evidence,” Church History, 42:243–56 (June 1973); Frank J. Klingberg, The Anti-Slavery Movement in England: A Study in English Humanitarianism (1926; New York, 1968), 47–49; Matthew Simpson, ed., Cyclopaedia of Methodism, 5th rev. ed. (Philadelphia, 1882), 941–42; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (New York, 1966), 148. 12. Born in Jasper County, Georgia, Benjamin Harvey Hill (1823–82) graduated from the University of Georgia in 1843; the following year, he began practicing law near LaGrange. Hill became a Whig leader in the 1850s, and in 1856, he backed Millard Fillmore, the Know-Nothing candidate. Hill served in the Confederate Senate, where he strenuously defended Jefferson Davis against critics. He opposed Reconstruction until its goals became law, and then urged Georgians to accept it and take up new issues. In 1872, Hill lost a bid for the U.S. Senate, but three years later he won a congressional seat in a special election to fill a vacancy. In 1877, he became a U.S. senator and served as a leading proponent of North-South reconciliation. Haywood J. Pearce, Jr., Benjamin H. Hill: Secession and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1928); BDUSC (online); ACAB, 3:203; NCAB, 10:194; DAB, 9:25–27. 13. Exod. 1:8–14. 14. Tsar Alexander II’s Emancipation Manifesto of 5 March 1861 freed most classes of Russian serfs, including those laboring on private 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 Events that Changed the World in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Frank W. Thackeray and John E. Findling (Westport, Conn., 1996), 93–111; N. M. Druzhinin, “The Emancipation Legislation,” in Emancipation of the Russian Serfs, ed. Terence Emmons (New York, 1963), 19–25. 15. The Slavery Abolition Act emancipated approximately 800,000 slaves throughout the island colonies of the British West Indies on 1 August 1834. Though heralded as a great humanitarian act by most abolitionists across the Atlantic world, the law’s passage required compromises with planter interests that hindered most freedmen’s transition from slavery to freedom. To prevent an anticipated exodus of labor from the plantations, the act made all slaves over six years of age bound apprentices of their former masters for a period of four to six years and required them to work without compensation for forty-five hours a week. The act required planters to provide their former slaves with plots of land on which to grow food and established a body of magistrates to ensure the law was properly and fairly enforced. Although the condition of some urban apprentices improved immediately, the act was poorly enforced by the magistrates, and most planters continued to treat their field servants as brutally as they had when those workers were their slaves. When Parliament amended the act and initiated general emancipation in 1838, freedmen left the plantations in droves, preferring to eke out a meager subsistence on rented plots rather than to submit themselves and their families to further planter abuse. The resulting precipitate drop in commodity exports throughout the West Indies led British governments, from the 1840s onward, to actively recruit laborers from India, China, and (ironically)

Y7870-Douglass.indb 280

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

281

Africa—so-called coolies—to work ten-year indentures on the plantations of their Caribbean colonies. Seymour Dresher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (New York, 2002), 121–43; Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 236–38, 285; Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge, La., 2008), 2–4; Stanley L. Engerman, “Economic Adjustments to Emancipation in the United States and British West Indies,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 13:195–201 (Autumn 1982). 16. Douglass appears to be referring to statements made by Senator James R. Doolittle, a conservative Republican from Wisconsin, who opposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed black men the right to vote. In a Senate speech delivered on 8 February 1869, Doolittle employed a range of standard nineteenth-century racist arguments to insist that the “negro race” was too socially and economically incompetent to be enfranchised. In fact, he suggested that African Americans needed to be removed either to Caribbean islands or to western reservations in order to avoid competition with whites; otherwise, Doolittle claimed, “this weak, this feeble, this inferior, this subject, this dependent race will be trampled in the dust as certain as we see the red man of the forest being trampled under the foot of the Anglo-Saxon.” Congressional Globe, 40th Congress, 3d Session, 1010–12; NASS, 29 May 1869. 17. Douglass’s claim that the increase in population of African Americans in the former slave states outpaced that of the white population by 10 percent in the years since the Civil War does not stand up under scrutiny. The overall growth rate for the African American population in those states between 1860 and 1880 was 2.4 percent, while that of the white population in the same states was slightly higher, 2.6 percent. In addition, state-by-state comparisons of the rates of growth in both populations do not come close to matching the figure Douglass cited. Indeed, of the fifteen states (the eleven states of the Confederacy plus the slave-owning border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) under examination, only Texas experienced anything close to a 10 percent rise in its population, and that was limited to the white population. But Douglass’s premise is not entirely wrong, since the rate of growth of the black population in eight of the fifteen states (Mississippi, North Carolina, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana) outpaced that of the white population, but only by a few percentage points. Census.gov (online); Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (online); “Legacy of Slavery in Maryland,” Maryland State Archives, Maryland.gov (online).

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE (1884) North American Review, 139:79–99 (July 1884). Other text in ChrR, 19 June 1884.

In 1884, Douglass was invited to contribute to a series of articles written by various authors for the North American Review, entitled “The Future of the Negro Race.” The subjects of these brief essays ranged from immigration to Africa, political participation, and miscegenation. The editors of the Review sought a wide range of authors and opinions, and the spirit of the essays ranged from hopeful to overtly racist. Of the nine contributors, two others in addition to Douglass were African American, Richard T. Greener and J. A. Emerson. Two authors, John T. Morgan and Zebulon

Y7870-Douglass.indb 281

9/1/21 4:16 PM

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

281

Africa—so-called coolies—to work ten-year indentures on the plantations of their Caribbean colonies. Seymour Dresher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (New York, 2002), 121–43; Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 236–38, 285; Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge, La., 2008), 2–4; Stanley L. Engerman, “Economic Adjustments to Emancipation in the United States and British West Indies,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 13:195–201 (Autumn 1982). 16. Douglass appears to be referring to statements made by Senator James R. Doolittle, a conservative Republican from Wisconsin, who opposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed black men the right to vote. In a Senate speech delivered on 8 February 1869, Doolittle employed a range of standard nineteenth-century racist arguments to insist that the “negro race” was too socially and economically incompetent to be enfranchised. In fact, he suggested that African Americans needed to be removed either to Caribbean islands or to western reservations in order to avoid competition with whites; otherwise, Doolittle claimed, “this weak, this feeble, this inferior, this subject, this dependent race will be trampled in the dust as certain as we see the red man of the forest being trampled under the foot of the Anglo-Saxon.” Congressional Globe, 40th Congress, 3d Session, 1010–12; NASS, 29 May 1869. 17. Douglass’s claim that the increase in population of African Americans in the former slave states outpaced that of the white population by 10 percent in the years since the Civil War does not stand up under scrutiny. The overall growth rate for the African American population in those states between 1860 and 1880 was 2.4 percent, while that of the white population in the same states was slightly higher, 2.6 percent. In addition, state-by-state comparisons of the rates of growth in both populations do not come close to matching the figure Douglass cited. Indeed, of the fifteen states (the eleven states of the Confederacy plus the slave-owning border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) under examination, only Texas experienced anything close to a 10 percent rise in its population, and that was limited to the white population. But Douglass’s premise is not entirely wrong, since the rate of growth of the black population in eight of the fifteen states (Mississippi, North Carolina, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana) outpaced that of the white population, but only by a few percentage points. Census.gov (online); Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (online); “Legacy of Slavery in Maryland,” Maryland State Archives, Maryland.gov (online).

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE (1884) North American Review, 139:79–99 (July 1884). Other text in ChrR, 19 June 1884.

In 1884, Douglass was invited to contribute to a series of articles written by various authors for the North American Review, entitled “The Future of the Negro Race.” The subjects of these brief essays ranged from immigration to Africa, political participation, and miscegenation. The editors of the Review sought a wide range of authors and opinions, and the spirit of the essays ranged from hopeful to overtly racist. Of the nine contributors, two others in addition to Douglass were African American, Richard T. Greener and J. A. Emerson. Two authors, John T. Morgan and Zebulon

Y7870-Douglass.indb 281

9/1/21 4:16 PM

282

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

Baird Vance, were former Confederate officers who later became U.S. senators when restrictions on high-ranking ex-Confederates serving politically were lifted following the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Their essays, the first in the series, took an unsurprisingly negative view of the future of African Americans in the country; they were against miscegenation, favorable toward immigration to Africa, and overtly paternalistic toward blacks. While an essay by J. H. Walworth was more hopeful that African Americans’ political and social privileges would increase, it contended that intermarriage would be only a “remote possibility” once African Americans attained “pride of race.” Taking a more optimistic approach were essays by Douglass, Joel Chandler Harris, Richard T. Greener, Oliver Johnson, and Samuel C. Armstrong. Douglass’s contribution stated unequivocally that African Americans would not migrate to Africa and would eventually unite with whites in “human brotherhood.” While Douglass did not directly address intermarriage between the races, as so many of the other authors did, the topic was undoubtedly on his mind. In January 1884, Douglass married his second wife, Helen Pitts, a white woman from New York who served as his clerk while he was recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. Throughout 1884, Douglass received harsh criticism from whites and blacks alike, many of whom felt he had betrayed the race that he had worked so diligently to support. Even Douglass’s children from his first marriage disapproved of the new union, as indicated by their absence from the wedding ceremony. And although Pitts’s father was an abolitionist and a supporter of Douglass, he and other members of her family were similarly unsupportive of their marriage. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 318–323; ANB (online).

It would require the ken of a statesman and the vision of a prophet combined to tell with certainty what will be the ultimate future of the colored people of the United States, and to neither of these qualifications can I lay claim. We have known the colored man long as a slave, but we have not known him long as a freeman and as an American citizen. What he was as a slave we know; what he will be in his new relation to his fellowmen, time and events will make clear. One thing, however, may safely be laid down as probable, and that is, that the negro, in one form and com-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 282

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

283

plexion or another, may be counted upon as a permanent element of the population of the United States. He is now seven millions, has doubled his number in thirty years, and is increasing more rapidly than the more favored population of the South.1 The idea of his becoming extinct finds no support in this fact. But will he emigrate? No! Individuals may, but the masses will not. Dust will fly, but the earth will remain. The expense of removal to a foreign land, the difficulty of finding a country where the conditions of existence are more favorable than here, attachment to native land, gradual improvement in moral surroundings, increasing hope of a better future, improvement in character and value by education, impossibility of finding any part of the globe free from the presence of white men,—all conspire to keep the negro here, and compel him to adjust himself to American civilization. In the face of history I do not deny that a darker future than I have indicated may await the black man. Contact of weak races with strong has not always been beneficent.2 The weak have been oppressed, persecuted, driven out, and destroyed. The Hebrews in Egypt,3 the Moors in Spain,4 the Caribs in the West Indies,5 the Picts in Scotland,6 the Indians7 and Chinese8 in our own country, show what may happen to the negro. But happily he has a moral and political hold upon this country, deep and firm, one which in some measure destroys the analogy between him and other weak peoples and classes. His religion and civilization are in harmony with those of the people among whom he lives. He worships with them in a common temple and at a common altar, and to drag him away is to destroy the temple and tear down the altar. Drive out the negro and you drive out Christ, the Bible, and American liberty with him. The thought of setting apart a State or Territory and confining the negro within its borders is a delusion. If the North and South could not live separately in peace, and without bloody and barbarous border wars, the white and black cannot. If the negro could be bottled up, who could or would bottle up the irrepressible white man? What barrier has been strong enough to confine him? Plainly enough, migration is no policy for the negro. He would invite the fate of the Indian, and be pushed away before the white man’s bayonet. Nor do I think that the negro will become more distinct as a class. Ignorant, degraded, and repulsive as he was during his two hundred years of slavery, he was sufficiently attractive to make possible an intermediate race of a million, more or less.9 If this has taken place in the face of those odious barriers, what is likely to occur when the colored man puts away his ignorance and degradation and becomes educated and prosperous?

Y7870-Douglass.indb 283

9/1/21 4:17 PM

284

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

The tendency of the age is unification, not isolation; not to clans and classes, but to human brotherhood. It was once degradation intensified for a Norman to associate with a Saxon;10 but time and events have swept down the barriers between them, and Norman and Saxon have become Englishmen. The Jew was once despised and hated in Europe, and is so still in some parts of that continent; but he has risen, and is rising to higher consideration, and no man is now degraded by association with him anywhere.11 In like manner the negro will rise in the social scale. For a time the social and political privileges of the colored people may decrease. This, however, will be apparent rather than real. An abnormal condition, born of war, carried him to an altitude unsuited to his attainments. He could not sustain himself there. He will now rise naturally and gradually, and hold on to what he gets, and will not drop from dizziness. He will gain both by concession and by self-assertion. Shrinking cowardice wins nothing from either meanness or magnanimity. Manly self-assertion and eternal vigilance are essential to negro liberty, not less than to that of the white man. FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. Douglass’s claim—that the black population of the South had increased more rapidly than the white population over the past thirty years—was not borne out by the numbers reported in the U.S. Census. In 1850, the combined white population of the fifteen slave-owning states was 6,184,576, and the African American population (both free and slave) of those states was 3,117,995. In 1880, the total white population of those same states was just under 12.5 million, while the total black population was slightly over 6 million. While the population for both groups had doubled (more or less) over thirty years, if anything the white population had grown at a slightly higher rate than the African American population. University of Virginia, Historical Census Browser (online). 2. Even before the end of the Civil War, reports of widespread suffering, disease, and death among freed blacks, especially in urban environments, began circulating across the South. These reports were viewed as proof that emancipation was harmful to the health and well-being of African Americans. After the war, similar claims about rising death rates (due to disease) and skyrocketing rates of infant mortality among Southern blacks continued to spread. Southern apologists used these rumors to argue that lacking the medical care, shelter, food, and clothing that had once been provided by their former owners, the now-free African Americans were increasingly doomed to fall victim to illness and disease, and that eventually this would threaten the survival of the race. Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Low Country (New York, 2011), 274; John David Smith, An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865–1918 (1985; Carbondale, Ill., 2008), 48–49. 3. Douglass is referring to the biblical account of the enslavement of the Hebrew people in Egypt. Initially welcomed as guests during a period of famine in Canaan, over time the Hebrews— that is, the descendants of the house of Jacob—were reduced to a state of bondage and were not freed until Moses led them out of Egypt and into the “promised land.” Gen. 45:1–28, Exod. 1:1–22; William D. Johnstone, “Exodus,” in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, ed. James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2003), 73–75.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 284

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

285

4. Beginning in 1478, with the introduction of the Inquisition to those portions of southern Spain that had recently been returned to Christian control, the Moors were subjected to state-sanctioned religious persecution. In 1492, the conquest of Granada (the sole surviving Moorish kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula), led by the forces of the “Catholic Monarchs” Ferdinand and Isabella, resulted in the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. In 1568, after appealing to the Ottoman Empire for military assistance, the Moriscos (nominally Catholic descendants of former Spanish Moors) launched a large-scale revolt against their Christian conquerors. But the Ottomans declined to support their coreligionists, and the uprising was quickly and brutally suppressed. More than a century of organized persecution culminated in 1609 when the Moriscos too were forcibly expelled from Spain. James B. Minihan, One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups (Westport, Conn., 2000), 44; Carl Waldman and Catherine Mason, eds., Encyclopedia of European Peoples, 2 vols. (New York, 2006), 2:560–64. 5. Although a number of distinct ethnic groups, including the Caribs (or Cariban-speaking people), were living in the Caribbean in 1492, “Carib” quickly became a catchall designation used by the Spanish for any native group or tribe, both in the islands and on the mainland, who met their efforts at conquest with any sort of armed resistance. Characterized as warlike cannibals, Caribs were specifically excluded from the 1503 Spanish law that forbade the enslavement of Indians. As a result, the Spanish—followed by the Dutch, English, and French—systematically pursued a policy of military campaigns involving the capture, resettlement, enslavement, and then conversion of the Carib peoples. The results of that persecution, combined with the impact of exposure to European diseases, proved devastating; by the end of the eighteenth century, it is estimated that the total Carib population had fallen by approximately 80 percent. Philip P. Boucher, Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs, 1492–1763 (Baltimore, 1992), 13–31, 94–107; Alisa V. Petrovich, “Perception and Reality: Colbert’s Native American Policy,” Louisiana History, 39:73–83 (Winter 1998). 6. The Picts, as the Romans dubbed them, were a tribal people located in what is now northern Scotland. Although their early history remains obscure, they engaged in a lengthy territorial struggle with the Scots, a Celtic people originally from Ireland. The Picts reached the summit of their power and influence in the early eighth century, exerting control over most of northern and eastern Scotland. By the 790s, however, Viking raids along Scotland’s northern coast began to undermine their position, and the Scots were able to benefit from the Picts’ subsequent decline. In 843, the Scots’ king, Kenneth I MacAlpin, absorbed what remained of the Picts and was able to establish what would become known as the Kingdom of Scotland. As a result, it was assumed that the victorious Scots eradicated all traces of Pictish culture. Although modern scholars now believe that Pictish culture played as significant a role in the development of Scottish culture as that of the Scots, it is likely that Douglass is alluding to this now outdated belief. Dean R. Snow, “Scotland’s Irish Origins,” Archaeology, 54:46–52 (July/August 2001); Waldman and Mason, Encyclopedia of European Peoples, 2:591–93. 7. During Douglass’s lifetime, the United States repeatedly broke its treaties with Native American tribes, ejected them from their ancestral lands, and forced them onto reservation lands, which were not only inferior in quality but all too often far removed from their original homelands. Native American cultures were further disrupted by war, starvation, disease, and missionary activity. In some cases, Native American children were removed and placed in government-sanctioned boarding schools, where every effort was made to sever all links with their native heritage. Barry M. Pritzker, A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and People (New York, 2000), xii–xiii, 10, 18, 243; Russell M. Lawson, ed., Encyclopedia of American Indian Issues Today, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2013), 2:495–502. 8. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the number of Chinese immigrants residing in the United States remained quite small. Between 1849 and 1882, however, over 300,000 Chinese entered the country. Primarily used as low-paid, unskilled laborers, they were largely employed in mining, railroad construction, fishing, and agriculture across the western United States. Even before the Chinese began to arrive in the country in significant numbers, they were portrayed negatively in the American

Y7870-Douglass.indb 285

9/1/21 4:17 PM

286

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

press as a race of morally corrupt heathens. Consequently, Chinese laborers were often confronted with hostility from white workers and exposed to numerous discriminatory policies imposed by local, state, and federal authorities. Among the most significant anti-Chinese measures were California’s 1850 Foreign Miners Tax, which imposed special taxes on both Chinese and Mexican miners; the Page Act (1875), which barred the immigration of contract laborers and prostitutes from Asia; and most importantly, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned the entry of all Chinese laborers to the United States. The last act was renewed in both 1892 and 1902, and in 1904 it was made a permanent part of U.S. immigration policy. The ban remained in effect until 1943, when Congress passed the Magnuson Act, which repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and permitted the Chinese to apply for naturalization, allowing them to once again enter the country legally. Kathleen Arnold, ed., Anti-Immigration in the United States: An Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2011), 105–13; Yu Zhou, “Chinese Immigrants in the Global Economy,” in Migration and Immigration: A Global View, ed. Maura I. Toro-Morn and Marixsa Alicea (Westport, Conn., 2004), 37–41. 9. The 1890 Census recorded 956,989 individuals as mulattoes, 105,135 as quadroons, and 69,936 as octoroons, thus identifying a total of 1,132,060 mixed-race (African American and European American) men, women, and children living in the United States at that time. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Abstract of the Eleventh Census: 1890, 4–5. 10. Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the native (Anglo) Saxon population was governed by a relatively small (Franco-) Norman aristocracy, which initially strove to maintain its distinct culture and language, a French dialect known as Anglo-Norman. Although this division between the Saxon majority and the aristocratic Norman minority began to erode within a few generations, it was not until the fifteenth century, during the Hundred Years’ War, that the aristocracy severed its remaining links with France, adopted English as its language, and became fully integrated into a new and recognizable English culture. In the nineteenth century, the conflict between the “Teutonic” Saxons and the “Latin” Normans was highly mythologized and used to illustrate both the racial and cultural superiority of “Saxon” countries over “Latin” nations. Siobhan Brownlie, Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, Eng., 2013), 111–30; Waldman and Mason, Encyclopedia of European Peoples, 2:560–64. 11. During the nineteenth century, Europe’s Jewish population increasingly became the target of discrimination and persecution. Because of increasing anxiety about Jews’ growing political and economic power, both assimilated and unassimilated Jews proved to be easy targets. Conservative reaction to the liberalizing tendencies of the Enlightenment, combined with rising nationalistic movements (particularly in Germany and Russia) following the Napoleonic Wars, helped fuel the backlash against European Jews. As a result, anti-Semitism became a political stance, rather than just a cultural attitude, as European anti-Semites began to categorize Jews as belonging to a different race from the supposedly superior “Aryan” (white, northern European) race, leading to governmentsanctioned segregation and continued acts of discrimination. Such efforts reached their climax during the late nineteenth century with the launch of a series of pogroms (mob attacks on Jews and their property) across eastern Europe following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Over the next forty years, thousands of European Jews were brutally killed, and millions more fled the continent, including an estimated 2.5 million who settled in the United States. Richard S. Levy, Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2005), 1:20–22, 190–91, 238–39, 318, 2:450–51, 586–87; Waldman and Mason, Encyclopedia of European Peoples, 1:462–63.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 286

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE DEMOCRATIC RETURN TO POWER—ITS EFFECT? (1885) A.M.E. Church Review, 1:213–15 (January 1885).

Grover Cleveland, the sitting Democratic governor of New York, defeated the Republican candidate, James G. Blaine, a former Speaker of the House and U.S. senator from Maine, for president in 1884. In what proved to be a particularly close election, with just over 1,000 votes in New York effectively determining its outcome, both campaigns were rocked by scandal. Blaine was accused of political corruption, and Cleveland was exposed as having fathered a child out of wedlock. As a result, each campaign resorted to mudslinging on an almost unprecedented scale. In defeating Blaine, Cleveland became the first Democrat to win the White House since 1856. The following essay appeared in the A.M.E. Church Review, a publication from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, as part of a collection of responses by influential African Americans to Cleveland’s election. Launched in July 1884, under the editorship of the Reverend Benjamin Tucker Tanner, the A.M.E. Church Review sought political, theological, and scholarly contributions from prominent African Americans, including political leaders, church bishops, journalists, educators, and lawyers. Tanner had previously been the editor of the Philadelphia Christian Recorder, where he had published an essay by Douglass in 1880. Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn, eds., Social Protest Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1862–1939 (Knoxville, Tenn., 2000), xvi, xviii, xxi– xxiii; Donald Richard Deskins, Hanes Walton, and Sherman C. Puckett, Presidential Elections, 1798–2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Elections Data (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2010), 229–35.

Before we speculate upon the effects of the late election, it may be well to consider what that election was, and by what means it was accomplished. Attention to this in the present instance may render speculation unnecessary. The fact thus understood proclaims its own predictions. First: The Republican party which has conducted the Government during the last four and twenty years, which has suppressed a stupendous

Y7870-Douglass.indb 287

9/1/21 4:17 PM

288

THE DEMOCRATIC RETURN TO POWER

slaveholding rebellion, abolished slavery, enfranchised the freedmen, reconstructed the rebellious states, made the American negro an American citizen, proclaimed equality as the fundamental law of the land, lifted the nation from bankruptcy to the highest financial credit,1 created for it a sound currency, resumed specie payment, made a dollar in paper worth a dollar in gold,2 paid off half of an immeasurable National debt, stamped out the idea of repudiation, protected American industry, made the country prosperous, elevated the nation to a plane of civilization high above that on which it found it twenty-four years ago, has now been defeated, and driven from place and power to make room for another party, one which has strongly and persistently opposed all the beneficent measures of the now defeated Republican party. Second: To the question, How has this been done? I answer. Not by any fairly obtained judgment of the American people upon the issues involved between the two great political parties, not by dissatisfaction with the principles and policy of the Republican party, or by an honest preference for the principles and policy the Democratic party,—but disaffections, rival ambitions, personal animosities, deliberate apostasies, flagrant treachery, the gratification of individual pride and personal hate,—the exaltation of these above the claims of public interests, fully explains this fall of the Republican party and the victory of its rival, the Democratic party. The latter has not conquered by its own strength, but by Republican weakness.3 Third: Is this weakness permanent? I think not. The causes of it are superficial, transient and perishable. They have no place in the fundamental and enduring principles of the Republican party. They are not the army, but the dust and smoke raised by protracted battle; not objects, but incidents. While human nature is what it is, no party so long in power as the Republican party has been, could fail of developing such elements of weakness. There are always those who wish to be greatest in a rising kingdom, while none wish to be greatest in a falling one. In some senses, success brings weakness; failure, strength. The defeat of the Republican party will naturally silence many angry voices in that party, allay many personal animosities, and subdue many rival ambitions, and thus make the party stronger than at any time during the past eight years. I therefore reject the notion that the Republican party is dead or dying. On the contrary, I expect to see it more united, bold, and earnest in the assertion of its principles, and policy than it has been since the days of Sumner, Wade4 and Morton.5

Y7870-Douglass.indb 288

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE DEMOCRATIC RETURN TO POWER

289

Fourth: There is little to be said of the agency of the solid South6 in bringing about this result. It is made solid not by discussion and deliberate choice, but by bullet and bludgeon, by midnight assault and assassination. There has been no election there since the inauguration of President Hayes.7 In the case before us, the result there was known before there was a vote cast, or a poll opened, before there was even a ballot printed, a speech made, or an editorial written. Here one hundred and fifty-three electoral votes were ready to be counted for Cleveland at any time after the day he was nominated.8 Fifth: It would be irrational to deny that the accession of the Democratic party to power is a temporary calamity, both to the country and the colored people. It will be claimed as a victory for the solid South, and of the methods by which the South is made solid. It exposes the colored man to greater insolence, insults, oppression and violence. The baser sort of white men in the South are not above striking a man when he is down, and because he is down. In the noisy exultation that comes to us from the South, I hear only joy over the prostrate negro; joy over the fact that, as a political factor, he is now not only under the heel of the individual Southern states, but under the heel of the nation. Cleveland Reform means to the baser sort, impunity for violence and oppression. Sixth: I however think this period of suffering will not last long. There will be satiety here, as elsewhere. Even the taste for blood may fail. Besides, I am not without hope even of the Democratic party. Though it is, by its history and antecedents, bitterly opposed to every measure of justice and equality urged in our favor, it is still composed of men, men with heads and hearts like other men. They may do as badly and worse in future than they have done in the past, and yet they may do incomparably better than our fears. It would be unwise to assume their inflexible and unchangeable hostility to our rights. The world moves and the Democratic party moves with it. The school of adversity is a great teacher. Twenty-four years is a long time to attend such a school, and the party must be dull indeed, if it has not learnt something in that time. Besides, statesmanship is itself subject to sudden changes and surprises. Sir Robert Peel9 surprised his party in England by repealing the corn laws10 of which he had long been the ablest defender. Disraeli,11 after long years of opposition to extending suffrage, suddenly strengthened the Tory party by granting a larger measure of suffrage than the Liberals even had asked for.12 The Law and Order party of Rhode Island, after resisting for years all efforts to enlarge the borders

Y7870-Douglass.indb 289

9/1/21 4:17 PM

290

THE DEMOCRATIC RETURN TO POWER

of suffrage in that state, proved itself more liberal at last, than the party organized to promote suffrage.13 In view of these facts and arguments, I will not cease to hope that the Democratic party may yet adjust itself to the demands of justice and civilization. Seventh: I am not sure that the Republican party, untrammeled by the responsibility which belongs to the possession of power, will not be about as effective in our defence now, as it has ever been. It is still a powerful party. If the Democratic party has the present, the Republican party has the future. With all the elements of weakness which led to its defeat, the SOLID SOUTH and ST. JOHN14 among the rest, out of four millions of voters, that party came within a few hundred votes of electing its Presidential candidate. I hold therefore, that the aspect of affairs is far from hopeless, and that, on the contrary, there is much in the outlook to cheer and encourage the hearts of the oppressed. The Democratic party may not be a good party, but it may be a wise party, and wisdom in statesmanship, is sometimes safer than simple goodness. 1. Douglass’s claim is hard to substantiate. Although the nation’s economy had begun to improve significantly by 1879, following a serious depression kicked off by the Panic of 1873, that turnaround was of short duration. In 1882, a banking panic in New York plunged the nation into another period of depression, which lasted until 1885. Credit shortages, rising unemployment, and reductions in overall production led modern scholars to characterize the events that took place during the year of the election as the Panic of 1884. David Glasner, ed., Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1997), 149–51; Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr., The 100 Most Important American Financial Crises: An Encyclopedia of the Gravest Points in American Economic History (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2015), 101–05. 2. In 1875, Republicans passed the Resumption Act, which authorized the resumption of specie (gold and silver) payments for greenbacks (paper money) from the Civil War era, which were being taken out of circulation. The act went into effect on 1 January 1879. Cynthia Clark, ed., The American Economy: A Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2011), 1:380. 3. Factional infighting among the Republicans led to a combative national convention before the election of 1884. Among the most divisive issues were concerns over the legitimacy of the exercise of political patronage (or the spoils system) and the misuse of political office for personal gain. “Mugwumps,” who represented the proreform, “liberal” wing of the Republican party, refused to support either the convention’s eventual nominee, James G. Blaine, who had long been accused of using public office for his own gain, or the incumbent, President Chester A. Arthur, who was seen as favoring the continuation of the spoils system. Another faction within the Republican party was the Stalwarts. While they supported the patronage system, they felt they had failed to fully benefit from it, and they refused to support President Arthur. Even after the convention selected Blaine, the infighting continued. The Mugwumps eventually threw their support behind the Democrat party’s candidate, Grover Cleveland, the reformist governor of New York. Douglass had sided with the Stalwarts on account of their stronger position on African American civil rights and later blamed Blaine for the party’s defeat. George Childs Kohn, The New Encyclopedia of American Scandal (New York, 2000), 280; Leonard Schlup and James G. Ryan, eds., Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age (Armonk, N.Y., 2003), 465–66; Deskins, Walton, and Puckett, Presidential Elections, 229–30.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 290

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE DEMOCRATIC RETURN TO POWER

291

4. Charles Sumner and Edward Wade. 5. Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (1823–77) was born in Wayne County, Indiana. Removed from school at the age of fifteen and apprenticed to his half brother, a hatter, Morton practiced that trade for three and a half years. He then studied at Miami University and began the practice of law in Centerville, Indiana, in 1847. Morton rose quickly in prominence in his new profession. Although initially a Democrat, Morton left that party in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor of Indiana in 1854. Elected lieutenant governor in 1860, he succeeded to the governorship when Henry S. Lane was chosen U.S. senator by the Indiana legislature. He served in that office from 1861 to 1867, and during the Civil War he engaged in bitter political conflicts with Democrats in the state legislature. From 1867 until his death, Morton was a U.S. senator. He soon broke with Andrew Johnson and became both a leader of the Radical Republicans and later an advocate of inflationary “soft money” policies. William Dudley Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, Ind., 1899); E. Orville Johnson, “Oliver P. Morton: A Study of His Career as a Public Speaker and of His Speaking on Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction Issues” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1957), 1, 11, 16, 23, 39, 46, 86; ACAB, 4:431–32; DAB, 13:262–64; BDUSC (online). 6. In the late nineteenth century, the “Solid South” referred to the supposedly monolithic vote of the Southern states for the Democratic party. During Reconstruction, Southern whites detested the so-called Northern carpetbaggers and scalawags, who, through the Republican party, controlled most state governments. The Democratic party appealed to resentful white Southerners after the Confederacy’s defeat, and Democratic politicians came to rely on the former Confederate states to be solidly in the Democratic corner. Ironically, the phrase “Solid South” was popularized by the Confederate cavalry leader John Singleton Mosby, who startled many Southerners when he supported the Republican (and Union Army veteran) Rutherford B. Hayes over the Democrat Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election. In a widely publicized letter, Mosby wrote, “Suppose Hayes is elected with a solid South against him—what are you going to do then?” Mosby’s use, in the context of a Southerner fighting the solidity of the South, gave the phrase an air of political excitement. After Mosby’s letter was published, Harper’s Weekly reported, “The Solid South is the Southern Democracy seeking domination of the United States through the machinery of the Democratic party.” Republicans at the time were delighted that a red-blooded Southerner like Mosby had used the term in a negative light regarding his native region, and the New York Tribune, recognizing the danger of political conglomeration, stated, “The claim of a ‘solid South’ is likely to do the Democrats fully as much harm as good.” Nevertheless, the South voted solidly Democratic well into the mid-twentieth century. William Safire, Safire’s New Political Dictionary: The Defi nitive Guide to the New Language of Politics (New York, 1993), 730–31. 7. Following the disputed presidential election of 1876, in which the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden defeated the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote but failed to conclusively carry the Electoral College, Congress established a fifteen-member Electoral Commission to resolve the issue and decide who was to be the next president of the United States. Following several months of negotiations, the commission finally awarded the election to Hayes. In exchange for this, however, Republicans agreed to what is remembered as the Compromise of 1877, which ended Reconstruction in the South by completely withdrawing all remaining federal troops from the former Confederate states. In doing so, the Republicans also effectively ended the federal government’s efforts to protect and promote African American civil rights, in particular the right to vote, in the South. As a result, African American participation in the electoral process increasingly came under attack, eventually leading to decades of their virtual disenfranchisement. Joel Shrock, The Gilded Age (Westport, Conn., 2004), 17–19; Richard M. Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (Chicago, 2004), 47–56. 8. Douglass was correct in his claim that Cleveland won all the electoral votes of the Southern states. Indeed, not only did Cleveland carry all of the former Confederate states, he also carried all

Y7870-Douglass.indb 291

9/1/21 4:17 PM

292

THE DEMOCRATIC RETURN TO POWER

the former slaveholding border states as well. Deskins, Walton, and Puckett, Presidential Elections, 232–33. 9. Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), second baronet and Conservative (Tory) statesman, began his political career in the House of Commons at the age of twenty-one. During his career, he held office as chief secretary for Ireland, home secretary, first secretary of the treasury, chancellor of the exchequer, and twice reached the prime minister’s office (1834–35, 1841–46). Sally Mitchell, ed., Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1988), 585–86; S. J. Connolly, ed., The Oxford Companion to Irish History, 2d ed. (1998; New York, 2007), 461; Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 737–38; DNB, 15:655–68. 10. In 1815, Britain’s growing population was turning the country into a food importer rather than exporter. As a result, Parliament passed a Corn Law that prohibited the importation of wheat until the domestic price reached eighty shillings a quarter. Similar provisions were placed on other cereals. The Corn Laws remained a center of parliamentary debate during Douglass’s first visit to England, in 1845. Sir Robert Peel, fearing the conjunction of high food prices, agitation against the import restrictions, and mass unemployment, realized that political stability required the repeal of the Corn Laws. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845 provided an excuse for Peel to propose total repeal. Although he carried repeal in 1846, which took full effect in 1849, Peel’s decision brought havoc to his party, the Tories. Long the representatives of the pro-protectionist landed aristocracy, the Tories viewed Peel’s decision to repeal the Corn Laws as a betrayal of traditional party commitments. Peel’s action split the Tories into a free-trade minority and a protectionist majority. By 1853, however, even the Tory majority had abandoned the idea of protection, and the death of the Corn Laws came to symbolize the triumph of liberal, free-trade ideas. Norman McCord, The Anti-Corn Law League, 1838–1846 (London, 1958), 15–16, 96–103, 111–16, 188–207; Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 245. 11. Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), first Earl of Beaconsfield, was born the son of a Jewish literary antiquarian. Baptized in 1817, Disraeli entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1825. Between 1826 and 1833, he published a number of novels that illustrated his political principles. In 1835, he stated his conservative stance explicitly in A Vindication of the English Constitution. He began his parliamentary career in 1837 as a Tory representing Maidstone. Disraeli maintained that the novel was the best way to mold public sentiment and published his best-known novels—Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845), and Tancred (1847)—while opposing his party leader, Robert Peel, on the issue of Corn Law repeal. Disraeli served three times as chancellor of the exchequer (1852, 1858–59, and 1866–67) and was responsible for the 1867 Reform Act, which enfranchised the urban working classes in England and Wales: a policy change that ultimately benefited the conservatives. Disraeli served twice as Conservative prime minister of Great Britain (1868, 1874–80), supporting moderate social reform and an activist foreign policy. Philip Davis, The Victorians, 1830–1880, vol. 8 of The Oxford English Literary History, 13 vols., ed. Jonathan Bate (Oxford, 2002–06), 574–75; Christopher Haigh, ed., The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 1985), 349; DNB, 5:1006–22. 12. The Second Reform Act (1867) was steered through Parliament by Benjamin Disraeli while serving as chancellor of the exchequer in the cabinet of the Conservative prime minister Lord Derby. The bill originally called for an expansion of the electorate to include all householders in a borough who had been resident for at least two years and who paid their rates (local taxes). This provision would have increased the number of men eligible to vote by around 400,000. During parliamentary debate, however, Disraeli agreed to accept a series of amendments that, among other provisions, reduced the residency qualification to one year and allowed “compounders” (renters whose rates were included in their rent and paid by their landlords) to vote. As a result, once the act became law, the number of potential new voters rose to over 700,000 men. Disraeli’s reputation was so enhanced by his success in shepherding the bill through Parliament that he replaced Lord Derby as head of the Conservative party and prime minister when the latter was forced to resign due to ill health in February 1868. Bob Whitfield, The Extension of the Franchise, 1832–1931 (Oxford, 2001), 203–06; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 292

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAS AMERICA NEED OF A WESTMINSTER ABBEY?

293

13. By the early 1840s, Rhode Island was one of the last Northern states to retain a propertyowning qualification for voting in its state constitution. In October 1841, the Suffrage party of Rhode Island called an extralegal convention to write a new state constitution. As part of it, the party proposed eliminating all property qualifications for white males, including the foreign born, but it excluded African Americans entirely. Although Douglass and other leading abolitionists joined the efforts of the local Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society to sway the new party to delete this clause, the convention delegates refused to do so, and the constitution was overwhelmingly approved. Rhode Island state authorities, however, did not recognize the Suffrage party’s constitution. In November 1841, the state government convened a legal constitutional convention, but the electorate rejected its efforts in March 1842. A month later, the Suffrage party, operating under its own constitution, elected its leader, Thomas Dorr, governor of Rhode Island. After a failed attempt to seize the Providence Arsenal, Dorr fled the state and the Suffrage party fell apart. Supporters of the officially sanctioned constitutional convention—reorganized as the Law and Order party—reconvened and drafted a new constitution that lifted the ban against African Americans’ right to vote. But it also limited the franchise to native-born adult males and left intact a minimal property qualification for all voters. In November 1842, after a year of turmoil, Rhode Island adopted the Law and Order party’s constitution. Thomas J. Balladino and Kyle L. Kreider, Of the People, by the People, for the People: A Documentary Record of Voting Rights and Electoral Reform, 2 vols. (Denver, Colo., 2010), 1:47; Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, 2009), 59–60; Hanes Walton, Jr., Sherman C. Puckett and Donald R. Deskins, Jr., The African American Electorate: A Statistical History, 2 vols. (Los Angeles, Calif., 2012), 1:138–39. 14. John Pierce St. John (1833–1916) was a former Republican governor of Kansas who ran for president in the election of 1884 as the Prohibition party’s candidate. Fearing that St. John might pull more votes from the Republicans than the Democrats, a group of pro-temperance Republicans urged him to drop out of the race, as did Douglass (for similar reasons) in an editorial published in the New York Tribune in October 1884. It was rumored that some Republicans tried to bribe St. John to drop out of the race. In the end, however, he refused to pull out of the election and went on to win over 150,000 votes. St. John’s decision not to withdraw from the election was regarded as being of particular significance in New York, where he won 25,000 votes, since Cleveland’s margin of victory over Blaine was just over 1,000 votes. Lisa M. F. Anderson, The Politics of Prohibition: American Governance and the Prohibition Party, 1869–1933 (New York, 2013), 103–05; Scott C. Martin, ed., Sage Encyclopedia of Alcohol: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2015), 1005.

HAS AMERICA NEED OF A WESTMINSTER ABBEY? (1885) Brooklyn Magazine, 3:16 (October 1885).

Unfortunately, no surviving correspondence provides details about a short piece that Douglass wrote for the Brooklyn Magazine for a forum on the need for the United States to create a resting place for its national heroes, to be modeled after Britain’s Westminster Abbey. Douglass was in distinguished company among the contributors to this forum, which included past secretaries of state Thomas Bayard and Hamilton Fish, military

Y7870-Douglass.indb 293

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAS AMERICA NEED OF A WESTMINSTER ABBEY?

293

13. By the early 1840s, Rhode Island was one of the last Northern states to retain a propertyowning qualification for voting in its state constitution. In October 1841, the Suffrage party of Rhode Island called an extralegal convention to write a new state constitution. As part of it, the party proposed eliminating all property qualifications for white males, including the foreign born, but it excluded African Americans entirely. Although Douglass and other leading abolitionists joined the efforts of the local Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society to sway the new party to delete this clause, the convention delegates refused to do so, and the constitution was overwhelmingly approved. Rhode Island state authorities, however, did not recognize the Suffrage party’s constitution. In November 1841, the state government convened a legal constitutional convention, but the electorate rejected its efforts in March 1842. A month later, the Suffrage party, operating under its own constitution, elected its leader, Thomas Dorr, governor of Rhode Island. After a failed attempt to seize the Providence Arsenal, Dorr fled the state and the Suffrage party fell apart. Supporters of the officially sanctioned constitutional convention—reorganized as the Law and Order party—reconvened and drafted a new constitution that lifted the ban against African Americans’ right to vote. But it also limited the franchise to native-born adult males and left intact a minimal property qualification for all voters. In November 1842, after a year of turmoil, Rhode Island adopted the Law and Order party’s constitution. Thomas J. Balladino and Kyle L. Kreider, Of the People, by the People, for the People: A Documentary Record of Voting Rights and Electoral Reform, 2 vols. (Denver, Colo., 2010), 1:47; Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, 2009), 59–60; Hanes Walton, Jr., Sherman C. Puckett and Donald R. Deskins, Jr., The African American Electorate: A Statistical History, 2 vols. (Los Angeles, Calif., 2012), 1:138–39. 14. John Pierce St. John (1833–1916) was a former Republican governor of Kansas who ran for president in the election of 1884 as the Prohibition party’s candidate. Fearing that St. John might pull more votes from the Republicans than the Democrats, a group of pro-temperance Republicans urged him to drop out of the race, as did Douglass (for similar reasons) in an editorial published in the New York Tribune in October 1884. It was rumored that some Republicans tried to bribe St. John to drop out of the race. In the end, however, he refused to pull out of the election and went on to win over 150,000 votes. St. John’s decision not to withdraw from the election was regarded as being of particular significance in New York, where he won 25,000 votes, since Cleveland’s margin of victory over Blaine was just over 1,000 votes. Lisa M. F. Anderson, The Politics of Prohibition: American Governance and the Prohibition Party, 1869–1933 (New York, 2013), 103–05; Scott C. Martin, ed., Sage Encyclopedia of Alcohol: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2015), 1005.

HAS AMERICA NEED OF A WESTMINSTER ABBEY? (1885) Brooklyn Magazine, 3:16 (October 1885).

Unfortunately, no surviving correspondence provides details about a short piece that Douglass wrote for the Brooklyn Magazine for a forum on the need for the United States to create a resting place for its national heroes, to be modeled after Britain’s Westminster Abbey. Douglass was in distinguished company among the contributors to this forum, which included past secretaries of state Thomas Bayard and Hamilton Fish, military

Y7870-Douglass.indb 293

9/1/21 4:17 PM

294

HAS AMERICA NEED OF A WESTMINSTER ABBEY?

heroes such as David Porter and William T. Sherman, the historians Francis Parkman and Benjamin F. Lossing, and other prominent politicians, academics, and literary men. No woman’s opinion was solicited, and Douglass was the only nonwhite author asked to participate. No consensus emerged regarding the need for a national burial ground, or “pantheon for the repose of the nation’s illustrious dead,” as the magazine phrased the question. The Brooklyn Magazine was a literary monthly founded by William Bok, an editor for Scribner’s publishing house, to boost the reputation of its namesake home and proselytize on behalf of the worldviews of the rising urban middle class. The periodical developed a close connection with Bok’s pastor, Brooklyn’s Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher, and regularly published his sermons. In 1887, Bok sold the magazine to the wealthy Brooklyn businessman Rufus T. Bush, who renamed it the American Magazine. “Has America Need of a Westminster Abby?,” Brooklyn Magazine, 3:10–16 (October 1885); Hans Krabbendam, The Model Man: The Life of William Bok, 1863–1930 (Amsterdam, Neth., 2001), 39–45; Mott, A History of American Magazines, 37.

I have read thus far nothing as to the wisdom of the proposed National burial place for the Nation’s great dead. Nor have I given to the subject any considerable thought, but my impression is altogether favorable to the proposition, and shall be glad to see it made practical. In what I have to say in favor of it, I may only repeat the sentiments already much better expressed by others. But as this is a case where the union of many voices may be of greater force than that of an individual, I willingly mingle mine with that of the multitude. First: I hold that our national great men are related to the nation as the waves are related to the sea. Their altitude force and majesty indicate the vastness, depth and grandness of the ocean of which they are a part, mighty in themselves, that by which they are created and sustained, is mightier. Their names and fame are not alone the property and credit of their families and friends, they belong to the nation on whose broad breast they have been raised and supported, and it has a right to perpetuate their memory in all reasonable ways that may best contribute to the welfare, honor and glory of itself. The Scriptural statement that no man lives unto himself,1 is in some sense true of the humblest, but it is especially true of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 294

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAS AMERICA NEED OF A WESTMINSTER ABBEY?

295

a nation’s great men. Such men whether poets, philosophers, statesmen, reformers, or patriots are a legitimate part of the lustre of the nation itself. Secondly: A national Pantheon,2 in a national centre like the City of Washington, where shall repose the dust of our admitted great men, would do much to keep alive, magnify and perpetuate their memory. Such a place would exert a beneficent influence in promoting the sentiment of patriotism, and laudable ambition in public men of all parts of our common country. Thirdly: The existence of such a burial place would save the country a repetition of the painful experience through which we have just passed in respect to the sepulchre of the remains of our most illustrious statesman and captain, U. S. Grant.3 Fourthly: That Washington is the proper place for such a Pantheon, can hardly be disputed. It is the point at which our nationality touches that of all other nations, where treaties are made, where questions of peace and war are settled, where the policy of the nation is evolved, where the national legislature assembles, where the Executive of the nation resides, where the laws of the nation are enacted, adjudicated and executed, where the nation’s attention is directed by a thousand avenues, and hence, the place of all others from which the good influence of such an institution could radiate. It may be objected to as tending to centralization, but the dangers in that direction are far less than in the opposite one. Here, as elsewhere, the whole is greater than a part, the individual States are great but the United States are greater. The ocean is as pure as the streams that enter into it, and experience has shown that it is far better to secure loyalty to the nation, than allegiance to the individual States; the greater includes the lesser, save the nation and we save the States. FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. Rom. 14:7. 2. Designed by Jacques-Germain Soufflot, the basilica of Saint Geneviève, patron saint of Paris, was built in the Latin Quarter between 1758 and 1790. In 1791, following the death of Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, the National Constituent Assembly declared the basilica the property of France, renamed it the Panthéon, and turned it into a national mausoleum where the leaders of the Revolution and other “great men” were to be buried from that point forward. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte returned the building to the Catholic Church, but in 1830, after the July Revolution, it was converted back into a national mausoleum. Following the 1848 Revolution, which led to the formation of the Second French Republic, the building was rechristened the Temple of Humanity, but in 1851, after president Louis Napoléon Bonaparte dissolved the republic and declared himself emperor (Napoleon III), the building was rededicated to Sainte Geneviève. In May 1885, the government of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 295

9/1/21 4:17 PM

296

AMERICAN AUTHORS ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

the Third Republic took control of the building in order to provide a suitable burial site for Victor Hugo. Since then, the Panthéon has remained the French national mausoleum, providing a final resting place for over two hundred men and women, including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marie and Pierre Curie, Émile Zola, Jean-Paul Marat, and Alexandre Dumas. Allan Braham, The Architecture of the French Enlightenment (London, 1989), 30–47; Avner Ben-Amos, “Monuments and Memory in French Nationalism,” History and Memory, 5:56–62, 64, 71–77 (Fall–Winter, 1993); Paul A. Ranogajec, “Soufflot, The Panthéon of Paris” (online). 3. Within twenty-four hours of the death of Ulysses S. Grant on 23 July 1885, a veritable bidding war erupted over where the former president would be buried. Towns across Illinois and Ohio, as well as cites such as Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., offered sites for the Grant family’s consideration. Grant had made no public statements regarding his final resting place, although in private he had mentioned three possible locations, including New York City, to his son Fred. He only directed that wherever the site might be, provisions had to be made to include space for his wife to be buried next to him. Mayor William R. Grace of New York City telegraphed the family immediately upon hearing of Grant’s death to offer them their choice of land within any park in the city for the burial site. Two of Grant’s sons, as well as several trusted family friends, visited New York City on 27 July to inspect a number of possible sites, but they focused mainly on two locations: Riverside Park and Central Park. The following day, the family informed the city that they had settled on Riverside Park, and Mayor Grace organized the Grant Monument Association, whose members included former president Chester A. Arthur, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and J. P. Morgan. Six months later the association was incorporated by New York’s General Assembly with twenty-nine trustees, including Arthur, Hamilton Fish, Charles Dana, James Gordon Bennett, and Joseph Pulitzer. The group launched a public campaign to raise one million dollars in private donations to fund the construction and maintenance of the monument, with the belief that the entire project would take no more than five years to finish. By Thanksgiving 1886, only $100,000 had been raised, and in the end it would take almost twelve years to complete the General Grant National Memorial. It was not until 17 April 1897, in a ceremony attended by several hundred thousand spectators, that Ulysses S. Grant was finally laid to rest in “Grant’s Tomb.” Joan Waugh, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2009), 270–81; Gladys L. Knight, ed., Pop Culture Places: An Encyclopedia of Places in American Popular Culture, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2014), 2:343–46.

AMERICAN AUTHORS ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT (1886) James Russell Lowell, “Open Letters: International Copyright,” Century Magazine, 31:629 (February 1886). Other texts in Douglass to “Dear Sir,” [c. 3 November 1885], Douglass to editor of the Century Magazine, 4 November 1885, General Correspondence File, reel 9, frame 298, reel 4, frame 233, FD Papers, DLC; American Copyright League, What American Authors Think about International Copyright (New York, 1888), 5.

On 2 November 1885, the editor of the Century Magazine asked Douglass whether he would be interested in contributing “a brief and pithy communication on the subject of international copyright” to an upcoming issue of the magazine. He then explained that he was hoping to have a number of “well-known American

Y7870-Douglass.indb 296

9/1/21 4:17 PM

296

AMERICAN AUTHORS ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

the Third Republic took control of the building in order to provide a suitable burial site for Victor Hugo. Since then, the Panthéon has remained the French national mausoleum, providing a final resting place for over two hundred men and women, including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marie and Pierre Curie, Émile Zola, Jean-Paul Marat, and Alexandre Dumas. Allan Braham, The Architecture of the French Enlightenment (London, 1989), 30–47; Avner Ben-Amos, “Monuments and Memory in French Nationalism,” History and Memory, 5:56–62, 64, 71–77 (Fall–Winter, 1993); Paul A. Ranogajec, “Soufflot, The Panthéon of Paris” (online). 3. Within twenty-four hours of the death of Ulysses S. Grant on 23 July 1885, a veritable bidding war erupted over where the former president would be buried. Towns across Illinois and Ohio, as well as cites such as Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., offered sites for the Grant family’s consideration. Grant had made no public statements regarding his final resting place, although in private he had mentioned three possible locations, including New York City, to his son Fred. He only directed that wherever the site might be, provisions had to be made to include space for his wife to be buried next to him. Mayor William R. Grace of New York City telegraphed the family immediately upon hearing of Grant’s death to offer them their choice of land within any park in the city for the burial site. Two of Grant’s sons, as well as several trusted family friends, visited New York City on 27 July to inspect a number of possible sites, but they focused mainly on two locations: Riverside Park and Central Park. The following day, the family informed the city that they had settled on Riverside Park, and Mayor Grace organized the Grant Monument Association, whose members included former president Chester A. Arthur, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and J. P. Morgan. Six months later the association was incorporated by New York’s General Assembly with twenty-nine trustees, including Arthur, Hamilton Fish, Charles Dana, James Gordon Bennett, and Joseph Pulitzer. The group launched a public campaign to raise one million dollars in private donations to fund the construction and maintenance of the monument, with the belief that the entire project would take no more than five years to finish. By Thanksgiving 1886, only $100,000 had been raised, and in the end it would take almost twelve years to complete the General Grant National Memorial. It was not until 17 April 1897, in a ceremony attended by several hundred thousand spectators, that Ulysses S. Grant was finally laid to rest in “Grant’s Tomb.” Joan Waugh, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2009), 270–81; Gladys L. Knight, ed., Pop Culture Places: An Encyclopedia of Places in American Popular Culture, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2014), 2:343–46.

AMERICAN AUTHORS ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT (1886) James Russell Lowell, “Open Letters: International Copyright,” Century Magazine, 31:629 (February 1886). Other texts in Douglass to “Dear Sir,” [c. 3 November 1885], Douglass to editor of the Century Magazine, 4 November 1885, General Correspondence File, reel 9, frame 298, reel 4, frame 233, FD Papers, DLC; American Copyright League, What American Authors Think about International Copyright (New York, 1888), 5.

On 2 November 1885, the editor of the Century Magazine asked Douglass whether he would be interested in contributing “a brief and pithy communication on the subject of international copyright” to an upcoming issue of the magazine. He then explained that he was hoping to have a number of “well-known American

Y7870-Douglass.indb 296

9/1/21 4:17 PM

AMERICAN AUTHORS ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

297

authors, educators, and divines” publicly endorse the idea of the United States signing an international copyright agreement in advance of the next session of Congress, when legislation to that effect was expected to be introduced. Douglass complied with his request and completed the following piece on 4 November 1885. It was published in the February 1886 issue of the Century Magazine. Two years later, after Congress had failed to act, the American Copyright League included Douglass’s piece in its manifesto, What American Authors Think about International Copyright, which was part of a new campaign for American recognition of international copyright laws. The United States finally signed its first reciprocal international copyright agreement in 1891. Editor of the Century Magazine to Douglass, 2 November 1885, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frame 233, reel 9, frame 298, FD Papers, DLC.

I have given very little thought to the subject of an International Copyright1 and can offer nothing especially important as to the form and feature such a law should embody; but I can very readily assent to the justice of the principle upon which such a law is desired and demanded. Whatever by mind or by muscle, by thought or by labor, a man may have produced, whether it shall be useful or ornamental, instructive or amusing, whether book, plow, or picture, the said producer has in it a right of property superior to that of any other person at home or abroad. If any arrangement can be devised which will secure this superior and fundamental right to authors, without imposing unreasonable restrictions upon the spread of knowledge, and without operating unequally and unfairly towards the authors and artists of the respective countries concerned, I am for such an International Copyright. FRED’K DOUGLASS. 1. Beginning with the passage of the Copyright Act of 1790, U.S. law denied copyright protection to written material by foreign citizens. This allowed American publishers to reprint foreign works cheaply, which was both highly profitable and instrumental in keeping the cost of books relatively low for consumers well into the nineteenth century. By the 1870s, however, as the work of American authors began to sell overseas, the economic interests of the nation’s publishers and its authors began to shift, and both began to lobby Congress in favor of the adoption of laws that would recognize copyright internationally. Douglass’s opinion was likely being solicited in 1885 in regard to either the Hawley or the English bill. Both bills, which were introduced in Congress in January of that year, proposed lifting the ban on foreigners holding copyright in the United States and establishing

Y7870-Douglass.indb 297

9/1/21 4:17 PM

298

THE FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE

reciprocal copyright internationally for all works published after the passage of the bill. Even with the public support of President Chester A. Arthur, however, neither bill managed to make it out of committee, and no action was taken. It was not until the passage of the Copyright Act of 1891, also known as the Platt-Simmonds Act, that the United States began to benefit from reciprocal copyright by extending limited protection to authors from a select number of foreign nations. Catherine Seville, “Nineteenth-Century Anglo-US Copyright Relations: The Language of Piracy versus the Moral High Ground,” in Copyright and Piracy: An Interdisciplinary Critique, ed. Lionel Bently, Jennifer Davis, and Jane C. Ginsburg (New York, 2010), 19–43; Uma Suthersanen, “Bleak House or Great Expectations? The Literary Author as a Stakeholder in Nineteenth-Century International Copyright Politics,” in Copyright and Other Fairy Tales: Hans Christian Andersen and the Commodification of Creativity, ed. Helle Porsdam (Cheltenham, Eng., 2006), 41; Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York, 2004), 149.

THE FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE (1886) North American Review, 142:437–40 (May 1886).

In a letter dated 13 March 1886, James Redpath, managing editor of the North American Review, invited Douglass to write the following article. Redpath informed Douglass that the magazine’s head editor, Allen Thorndike Rice, had asked Redpath to “get up a symposium on the future of the colored race in America,” and Redpath appealed to Douglass personally: “Unless I can get you to open it I would not care to publish such a symposium.” The Review experienced a great change in its content when Rice took the editorial helm in 1876. Shying away from traditional journalist contributors, Rice sought “men of action” to discuss the latest social, political, and scientific issues. Under his guidance, the magazine increased its readership and profits. By the mid-1880s, Rice had relinquished his main editorial duties and given Redpath, a former abolitionist and associate of John Brown, authority over soliciting material and shaping the magazine’s content. Douglass, an occasional contributor to the magazine, obliged Redpath and wrote the following article, in which he prophesized that the color line would inevitably be blended through intermarriage. He argued that he was not advocating for intermarriage, but rather for the fading of divisive color lines over time. Douglass had experienced intense criticism after marrying a white woman, Helen Pitts, two years prior, so this article held significant personal resonance. James Redpath to Douglass, 15 March 1886, General Cor-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 298

9/1/21 4:17 PM

298

THE FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE

reciprocal copyright internationally for all works published after the passage of the bill. Even with the public support of President Chester A. Arthur, however, neither bill managed to make it out of committee, and no action was taken. It was not until the passage of the Copyright Act of 1891, also known as the Platt-Simmonds Act, that the United States began to benefit from reciprocal copyright by extending limited protection to authors from a select number of foreign nations. Catherine Seville, “Nineteenth-Century Anglo-US Copyright Relations: The Language of Piracy versus the Moral High Ground,” in Copyright and Piracy: An Interdisciplinary Critique, ed. Lionel Bently, Jennifer Davis, and Jane C. Ginsburg (New York, 2010), 19–43; Uma Suthersanen, “Bleak House or Great Expectations? The Literary Author as a Stakeholder in Nineteenth-Century International Copyright Politics,” in Copyright and Other Fairy Tales: Hans Christian Andersen and the Commodification of Creativity, ed. Helle Porsdam (Cheltenham, Eng., 2006), 41; Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York, 2004), 149.

THE FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE (1886) North American Review, 142:437–40 (May 1886).

In a letter dated 13 March 1886, James Redpath, managing editor of the North American Review, invited Douglass to write the following article. Redpath informed Douglass that the magazine’s head editor, Allen Thorndike Rice, had asked Redpath to “get up a symposium on the future of the colored race in America,” and Redpath appealed to Douglass personally: “Unless I can get you to open it I would not care to publish such a symposium.” The Review experienced a great change in its content when Rice took the editorial helm in 1876. Shying away from traditional journalist contributors, Rice sought “men of action” to discuss the latest social, political, and scientific issues. Under his guidance, the magazine increased its readership and profits. By the mid-1880s, Rice had relinquished his main editorial duties and given Redpath, a former abolitionist and associate of John Brown, authority over soliciting material and shaping the magazine’s content. Douglass, an occasional contributor to the magazine, obliged Redpath and wrote the following article, in which he prophesized that the color line would inevitably be blended through intermarriage. He argued that he was not advocating for intermarriage, but rather for the fading of divisive color lines over time. Douglass had experienced intense criticism after marrying a white woman, Helen Pitts, two years prior, so this article held significant personal resonance. James Redpath to Douglass, 15 March 1886, General Cor-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 298

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE

299

respondence File, reel 32, frames 112R–113, FD Papers, DLC; McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand, 178–79.

It is quite impossible, at this early date, to say with any decided emphasis what the future of the colored people will be. Speculations of that kind, thus far, have only reflected the mental bias and education of the many who have essayed to solve the problem. We all know what the negro has been as a slave. In this relation we have his experience of two hundred and fifty years before us, and can easily know the character and qualities he has developed and exhibited during this long and severe ordeal. In his new relation to his environments, we see him only in the twilight of twenty years of semi-freedom; for he has scarcely been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the lash on his back and the fetters on his limbs. He stands before us, to-day, physically, a maimed and mutilated man. His mother was lashed to agony before the birth of her babe, and the bitter anguish of the mother is seen in the countenance of her offspring. Slavery has twisted his limbs, shattered his feet, deformed his body and distorted his features. He remains black, but no longer comely.1 Sleeping on the dirt floor of the slave cabin in infancy, cold on one side and warm on the other, a forced circulation of blood on the one side and chilled and retarded circulation on the other, it has come to pass that he has not the vertical bearing of a perfect man. His lack of symmetry, caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which cannot well be overestimated, and should be taken into account, when measuring his speed in the new race of life upon which he has now entered. As I have often said before, we should not measure the negro from the heights which the white race has attained, but from the depths from which he has come. You will not find Burke,2 Grattan,3 Curran4 and O’Connell5 among the oppressed and famished poor of the famine-stricken districts of Ireland. Such men come of comfortable antecedents and sound parents. Laying aside all prejudice in favor of or against race, looking at the negro as politically and socially related to the American people generally, and measuring the forces arrayed against him, I do not see how he can survive and flourish in this country as a distinct and separate race, nor do I see how he can be removed from the country either by annihilation or expatriation. Sometimes I have feared that, in some wild paroxysm of rage, the white race, forgetful of the claims of humanity and the precepts of the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 299

9/1/21 4:17 PM

300

THE FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE

Christian religion, will proceed to slaughter the negro in wholesale, as some of that race have attempted to slaughter Chinamen,6 and as it has been done in detail in some districts of the Southern States. The grounds of this fear, however, have in some measure decreased, since the negro has largely disappeared from the arena of Southern politics, and has betaken himself to industrial pursuits and the acquisition of wealth and education, though even here, if over-prosperous, he is likely to excite a dangerous antagonism; for the white people do not easily tolerate the presence among them of a race more prosperous than themselves. The negro as a poor ignorant creature does not contradict the race pride of the white race. He is more a source of amusement to that race than an object of resentment. Malignant resistance is augmented as he approaches the plane occupied by the white race, and yet I think that that resistance will gradually yield to the pressure of wealth, education, and high character. My strongest conviction as to the future of the negro therefore is, that he will not be expatriated nor annihilated, nor will he forever remain a separate and distinct race from the people around him, but that he will be absorbed, assimilated, and will only appear finally, as the Phoenicians now appear on the shores of the Shannon, in the features of a blended race.7 I cannot give at length my reasons for this conclusion, and perhaps the reader may think that the wish is father to the thought,8 and may in his wrath denounce my conclusion as utterly impossible. To such I would say, tarry a little, and look at the facts. Two hundred years ago there were two distinct and separate streams of human life running through this country. They stood at opposite extremes of ethnological classification: all black on the one side, all white on the other. Now, between these two extremes, an intermediate race has arisen, which is neither white nor black, neither Caucasian nor Ethiopian, and this intermediate race is constantly increasing. I know it is said that marital alliance between these races is unnatural, abhorrent and impossible; but exclamations of this kind only shake the air.9 They prove nothing against a stubborn fact like that which confronts us daily and which is open to the observation of all. If this blending of the two races were impossible we should not have at least one-fourth of our colored population composed of persons of mixed blood, ranging all the way from a dark-brown color to the point where there is no visible ad[-]mixture. Besides, it is obvious to common sense that there is no need of the passage of laws, or the adoption of other devices, to prevent what is in itself impossible.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 300

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE

301

Of course this result will not be reached by any hurried or forced processes. It will not arise out of any theory of the wisdom of such blending of the two races. If it comes at all, it will come without shock or noise or violence of any kind, and only in the fullness of time, and it will be so adjusted to surrounding conditions as hardly to be observed. I would not be understood as advocating intermarriage between the two races. I am not a propagandist, but a prophet. I do not say that what I say should come to pass, but what I think is likely to come to pass, and what is inevitable. While I would not be understood as advocating the desirability of such a result, I would not be understood as deprecating it. Races and varieties of the human family appear and disappear, but humanity remains and will remain forever. The American people will one day be truer to this idea than now, and will say with Scotia’s inspired son: “A man’s a man for a’ that.”10 When that day shall come, they will not pervert and sin against the verity of language as they now do by calling a man of mixed blood, a negro; they will tell the truth. It is only prejudice against the negro which calls every one, however nearly connected with the white race, and however remotely connected with the negro race, a negro. The motive is not a desire to elevate the negro, but to humiliate and degrade those of mixed blood; not a desire to bring the negro up, but to cast the mulatto and the quadroon down by forcing him below an arbitrary and hated color line. Men of mixed blood in this country apply the name “negro” to themselves, not because it is a correct ethnological description, but to seem especially devoted to the black side of their parentage. Hence in some cases they are more noisily opposed to the conclusion to which I have come, than either the white or the honestly black race. The opposition to amalgamation, of which we hear so much on the part of colored people, is for most part the merest affection, and, will never form an impassable barrier to the union of the two varieties. FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. A paraphrase of Sol. 1:5. 2. A Whig member of Parliament and political philosopher, Edmund Burke (1729–97) is considered the father of modern conservatism. He was an outspoken advocate of greater freedoms in Ireland, America, and India, yet he was critical of revolutions that upset the established order, such as the French Revolution. His speeches, which were often three hours long, reflected his immense knowledge of literature and government. Burke’s stylized delivery was not meant for the masses, and even his colleagues would tire of his lengthy and detailed orations. Burke was never considered an

Y7870-Douglass.indb 301

9/1/21 4:17 PM

302

THE FUTURE OF THE COLORED RACE

easy man to get along with, and his temper worsened in his later years. He became violent during his speeches and even threw items at colleagues during his rants. Burke’s great intellect garnered him enough respect to be tolerated for his outbursts. Edmund Burke, Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches, ed. Peter J. Stanlis (Garden City, N.Y., 1963), 1–37; DNB, 3:345–65. 3. Henry Grattan (1746–1820), orator and statesman, helped achieve legislative independence for the Irish Parliament while serving in that body during the 1780s. After his election to the British Parliament in 1805, he sponsored a variety of unsuccessful measures for Roman Catholic relief. Stephen L. Gwynn, Henry Grattan and His Times (Dublin, Ire., 1939); DNB, 8:418–25. 4. John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) was a well-known Irish orator, politician, and lawyer, recognized for his ready wit and sharp tongue. In his legal work, he frequently argued on behalf of “lost causes.” Curran attended Trinity College, Dublin, and then entered the Middle Temple, London, to study law. Entering the Irish bar in 1775, he mostly practiced chancery law. Later, he served as a king’s counsel and in the Irish House of Commons. Curran also fought in five duels, both as the challenged and the challenger. DNB, 5:332–40. 5. Daniel O’Connell. 6. Violent attacks against Chinese immigrants in the western United States occurred periodically after the Civil War, including an extremely violent incident in Los Angeles in October 1871, which killed twenty. Douglass probably alludes to a more recent wave of rioting in the Wyoming Territory and Washington State in 1885 and 1886. Motivated largely by economic competition, white rioters attacked “Chinatown” neighborhoods, destroyed businesses, and expelled residents. President Grover Cleveland dispatched the U.S. military to restore order, and the federal government eventually compensated victims. Charles McClain, Chinese Immigrants and American Law (New York, 1984), 191–93; Richard E. Welch, Jr., The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (Lawrence, Kans., 1988), 65–75. 7. Douglass is referring to Ireland’s ancient pseudohistory, first recorded in the early Middle Ages, which identified the Irish as the direct descendants of a mixed group of Scythian and Phoenician warriors known as the Milesians, who conquered Ireland around 1000 B.C.E. While many variations of this Irish origin myth existed, one common theme was a direct link between the Phoenician colonies of the Iberian Peninsula, the home of the Milesians, and Ireland. Tales of ancient Ireland, including those involving the Milesians, became quite popular in the second half of the nineteenth century and played an import role in both an emerging sense of Irish nationalism and the Irish Literary Revival. Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse, N.Y., 2004), 23–26; Vincent J. Cheng, Joyce, Race, and Empire (New York, 1995), 49–50; Seumas MacManus, The Story of the Irish Race: A Popular History of Ireland (1921; New York, 1970), 1–22. 8. Henry IV, Part 2, sc. 12, line 2546. 9. It seems highly likely that Douglass is alluding to the storm of criticism his interracial marriage to Helen Pitts provoked in 1884. Not only had his family objected to the union, but it was also viciously attacked in the African American press. Indeed, Douglass’s second marriage led at least some members of the black community to question his “race pride.” Over time, much of the controversy subsided, but for some leaders in the black community, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, it would remain a point of contention long after Douglass’s death. Ronald R. Sundstrom, The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice (Albany, N.Y., 2008), 14; William Seraile, Bruce Grit: The Black Nationalist Writings of John Edward Bruce (Knoxville, Tenn., 2003), 34; Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass, 98–100; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 319–21. 10. Douglass quotes a line from Robert Burns’s song “For A’ That and A’ That.” Burns, Poems and Songs, 482.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 302

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND (1886) A.M.E. Church Review, 3:136–45 (October 1886). Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 16, frames 113–20, 189–95, reel 19, frames 408–14, FD Papers, DLC.

Douglass’s honeymoon with his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, was delayed from April to September 1886 by a confirmation fight in the U.S. Senate concerning Grover Cleveland’s nominee to succeed him as recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia. During that summer, Douglass prepared an article for the A.M.E. Church Review, recalling his earlier visit to Ireland in the mid1840s and his friendship with the Irish nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell. Several manuscript and typescript drafts of the article survive in the archives of the Library of Congress. The oldest of these hints that the origin of the piece might have been a lecture that Douglass prepared to deliver to an unidentified “association,” probably in the District of Columbia. It contains a reference to a lecture given two weeks earlier to the same group by the Reverend William Henry Milburn, then chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives. That text alludes to the debate in Great Britain over a proposal by William E. Gladstone’s Liberal government to extend home rule to Ireland. Douglass voices his support for that effort in the speech manuscript. No evidence has been uncovered to indicate whether the speech was delivered. By the time the A.M.E. Church Review article went to press, the home rule bill had failed in Parliament, causing a sudden end to Gladstone’s ministry. The published article contains revised language reflecting the change in political events, but otherwise remains the text prepared for a lecture. San Francisco Call, 11 April 1903; Simmons, Men of Mark, 972–77.

Though a man so wise as the late Ralph Waldo Emerson has told us that they who made Rome worth going to see stayed there, and though a distinguished senator has asked somewhat derisively and petulantly, “What have Americans to do with abroad”, as though Americans had reached the utmost limit of possible knowledge attainable by travel among, and contact with, other nations, yet we Americans are found in all lands and languages and do more travelling than any other people of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 303

9/1/21 4:17 PM

304

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

modern times. It is possible that this migratory habit is much in excess of a wise moderation, but that benefits arise from it, cannot be utterly denied. The tendency of mankind is ever towards a higher civilization. To this end there are many agents employed: Art, Science, Commerce, Literature, and even War, are such helps; but there is perhaps, no agency more potent and effective in that direction than the knowledge attained and attainable by travelers who make themselves acquainted with the peoples and institutions other than their own. Imitation, though not the highest of human talents, is, nevertheless, one which plays an important part in the matter of human progress. Men learn what is wisest and best by comparison of one thing with another, and travel affords the best means of such comparison. Besides, men are made broad or narrow by their environments. It is not, however, of the philosophy of travel or of civilization that I propose to write; but of the Emerald Isle1—the land of Burke2 and Sheridan,3 of Gratton4 and Curran,5 of O’Connell6 and Father Matthew;7 a land renowned in song and story for its statesmen, orators, patriots, and heroes, but alas! a land which has been for ages the scene of misrule and social misery, and which today is, as it has been in the past, the standing and stubborn puzzle of its own reformers and of British statesmanship. With better intentions, with loftier aspirations, with larger experience or with a more masterly intellect, no British statesmen has ever attempted to grapple with what is called the Irish problem, than William E. Gladstone;8 yet, if that only is a solution which solves, his effort has, for the present at least, signally failed.9 England to-day seems further from accepting his Irish policy than when it was first proposed. The age does not favor the creation of small nationalities. In Great Britain, as in this country, liberty and civilization are thought to be safer in the Union than out of it—safer with the whole than with a part—with the mass of the people acting together under one common government than with the few acting in a separate government. The example of the United States in refusing to be dismembered, and the example of the unification of Italy10 and of Germany,11 have exerted a silent, but large influence in this direction. Naturally enough, however, there is a strong feeling in this country favorable to what is called “Home Rule” for Ireland.12 The relation we sustain to that country both by geography and population, makes her condition and destiny a matter of deep interest to us. Millions of her sons are our countrymen. They are the ruling element in many of our large towns and cities.13 In fact Irishmen are said to rule everywhere except in Ireland. They are powerful in Boston, they control in New York, and they dictate

Y7870-Douglass.indb 304

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

305

the policy of the Pacific States in relation to Chinamen and other competing laborers.14 That their rule is just and benignant in all respects cannot be successfully maintained—but the Irish are linked and interlinked with the whole American people in the bonds of common country, patriotism, and liberty. It is, therefore, not strange that the American people, in their all-abounding sympathy for Ireland, should share the resentment of her sons in this country to what they consider the wrongs inflicted upon her by British rule, nor is it strange that this feeling should, in some measure, blind us to the insufficiency of the means proposed as a remedy for her misfortunes. I have often said that of all things in this world the hardest to obtain, is even and exact justice whether to individuals or nations. It is hard for a Turk to be just to a Christian, hard for a Christian to be just to a Jew, hard for a Californian to be just to a Chinaman, hard for an American to be just to a negro, hard for an Englishman, having dominated Ireland for ages, to be just to an Irishman, and, on the other hand, it is hard for an Irishman, under the influence of a sense of ancient wrongs, to be entirely just in his judgment of measures proposed to remedy the wrongs of his country. As time and events have educated the American people on the negro question, so time and events will have to educate both the English and the Irish people as to what is the wisest and best for both. Interesting to us by reason of kinship and population, Ireland is, and must always be, interesting to us by reason of our proximity, and our increasing facilities for intercourse with her. Once her shores were separated from us by months, now the separation is measured only by days. Distance may lend enchantment to the view,15 but it is the land that lies nearest us that has the deepest and strongest hold upon our affections. Ireland is now our next door neighbor. Hers is the first land to greet and gladden the eyes of the American voyager as he nears the shores of Europe. I shall never forget the thrill of pleasure and excitement, the eager rush of passengers from cabin to deck, when on my first voyage abroad, forty-one years ago, it was announced by some keen-eyed mariner that the shores of Ireland were in sight.16 Our voyage had been a pleasant one and the ocean had been more than kind and gentle to us; but whatever may be the character of the voyage, rough or smooth, long or short, the sight of land, after three thousand miles of sea, ship and sky, is unspeakably grateful to the eye and heart of the voyager. The charms of the ocean easily give place to those of the land. The swiftest steamer is too slow, and the shortest voyage too long for most of us. The roll of the ocean is exhilarating for a time, but the steadiness and stability of the firm old earth, especially if one

Y7870-Douglass.indb 305

9/1/21 4:17 PM

306

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

does not happen to be a good sailor, are far more desirable. The feeling of a transatlantic voyager—upon first landing upon a foreign shore—is that nothing short of the attraction of home could tempt him to recross the sea. We may sing as we please of “the sea, the sea, the deep blue sea,” and long for a voyage over its “merry waters,” but we shall find in it something wild, desolate and appalling. When we think of its unfeeling way of swallowing up great ships, with cargoes, gallant sailors, helpless passengers, regardless of prayers and tears for mercy, your “deep, blue sea” is not the fairest among ten thousand and altogether lovely.17 As the distance decreased between our ship and the shore, and the bold, rugged, ragged outline of the Irish Coast disclosed its character,18 it was impossible to drive from my mind the gloomy thought now expressed. Here was land, it is true, but it was worn and rent with uncounted ages of conflict with the gigantic billows of the broad Atlantic, and its menacing rocks, aided by darkness and storm, may well be contemplated with a shudder. Many a craft has here gone down to rise no more, and many a gallant sailor has here fought his last battle with the elements. Those who have sailed along the rugged and mountainous coast of the State of Maine from Portland to Bar Harbor19 may easily form some just idea of the Irish coast and its perils. As Ireland is the first land to greet and gladden the eye of the transatlantic voyager, so it is the last to disappear from the view of the cisatlantic voyager. There is always something sad in seeing the dark blue sea rise between us and the land we are leaving, perhaps for the last time. This is so even with a foreign land. It was certainly so with me. There are few who go abroad who do not make friends and acquaintances from whom it is hard to part forever, and land and people become so associated that in parting we do not separate the one from the other. The separation from the people is not complete till we leave the country, and the land disappears from view forever. I was strongly impressed with this feeling when I looked, for what seemed the last time, on the shores of Ireland. If this is true of one leaving a foreign land, a thousand fold more true is it for one leaving his native land, where the ties are a thousand times stronger. Not even the comforting thought of going to a better and happier country can dispel the bitter anguish of an Irish emigrant, when he sees one after another of the familiar hills and mountains of his beloved native land sink below the distant horizon. It is a moment when strong hearts fail and nature speaks in tears. If I am asked by your respected readers, as I probably shall be, for most of them are, I doubt not, under forty years old, why I made the voy-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 306

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

307

age to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, I suppose I should muster courage to tell them, however humiliating it might seem. It would rather be a proud thing to be able to say, I went abroad as a gentleman and a scholar, to seek pleasure or to enlarge my stock of knowledge by observation and study of the peoples, countries and civilizations older than our own; but truth does not allow me any such high-sounding purposes. The fact is, I went to England and Ireland for the purpose of finding liberty and shelter denied me at home. I was a slave—a fugitive slave, and neither the American flag nor the American eagle could protect me. The going away of a man from a republic in search of liberty in a monarchy was a striking commentary upon the institutions of both countries and the inappropriateness of names signifying things. At that time the republic meant slavery and the monarchy freedom, at least so it was in my case. While, however, abroad for freedom, I will not deny that I gained some knowledge as well. I saw many great and wise people and made many friends. I have a good word to say for the Irish people just here. However harsh and oppressive the sons of Erin may feel and act towards the oppressed classes when they take up their abode in his country, I am bound to say that I found among them in their own country a warm welcome and safe asylum. Those who go to the Emerald Isle expecting to find a country given up to lawless violence, from which neither persons nor property are safe, and where only misery and utter destitution prevail, will find how mistaken have been their impressions when they walk the orderly streets of the beautiful city of Dublin, the seat of Ireland’s ancient greatness and now the centre of the Irish law, learning, refinement and civilization. To be sure, like other great transatlantic cities, it has a new and an old part, with the characteristics peculiar of each. The old is dark, dilapidated and sinister, abounding in painful evidences of misery and destitution; the other light, clean and elegant, abounding in evidences of wealth, comfort and refinement. Nowhere in the world can extremes more opposite in human conditions be seen than in this fine city of Dublin. Attraction and repulsion, virtue and vice, elevation and depression, do not, like wheat and tares, grow together here, but in their respective localities. In one you see only the mansions of the rich, where all is elegant, refined and beautiful; in the other the wretched hovels of the poor, where all is miserable and repulsive. The contrast between the one section and the other is painful to contemplate, and a sigh comes up from the depths of the soul asking why should these things be and where is the remedy? To this no answer has yet been given. Of course the same extremes of wealth and poverty, of refinement and brutality, may be seen in all large cities, though

Y7870-Douglass.indb 307

9/1/21 4:17 PM

308

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

not so glaringly as I saw it in Dublin, where misery seemed so out of proportion with comfort, the one so much the rule and the other so much the exception. Many of the business streets of Dublin will bear favorable comparison with those of New York and Philadelphia, notably that known as Sackville Street.20 It is broad, straight, far-reaching and grand. It is, in fact, the pride of Dublin. It is lined on either side with fine stores, laden with the riches of all lands and languages. Dublin can boast of many noble and commanding public buildings. The Custom House,21 the Parliament House and the Bank of Ireland22 are buildings that would attract attention and admiration anywhere. Strolling about in the new and aristocratic part of Dublin, observing its well-clothed men and its elegantly dressed women, the later models of beauty and refinement; observing its splendid equipages, with servants in livery, you would not expect the appalling extent of wretchedness and misery to be found within its borders, or of the country of which it is the ancient capital. But leave the city, roam among the beautiful Wicklow hills, within one hour’s ride of the beautiful city, and you will meet with the most distressing examples of ignorance, pauperism and suffering. Persistent beggars, who can neither be persuaded nor compelled to let you alone, will dog your every step and assail your ears with tales of deepest woe, against which it is impossible to steel your heart, and equally impossible for you to administer relief.23 I was told by a friend who was with me on one of these strolls, and who saw me dealing out my pennies to the beggars, that I must stop, that I might empty my pockets every day to the beggars and myself become a beggar like the rest, without at all diminishing the number or the wants of the beggars,—many of whom were, he said, professional. Professional or not I thought, here is no counterfeited misery. There are some things in the world that will tell the truth. Words may lie, but the human voice will tell the truth. Through it the deepest feelings will reach the ear and heart. You will hear in the voices of the poor people hear tones that you never heard before, and such as I hope you will not often hear elsewhere. They tell of centuries of oppression and sorrow far more impressively than speech. I was often called upon while in Ireland to speak upon slavery, but I found so much misery in that country that I could not well talk of American slavery. How can I ask these people, who have so many wrongs to redress and so much suffering to relieve at home, to look after wrongs and oppressions abroad, was a questions that constantly forced itself upon me at every turn. I visited many towns and cities in Ireland, both in the north and south of the country. Cork in the south and Belfast in the north are the two cit-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 308

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

309

ies which may be well enough taken as typical of the civilization of each section.24 The difference between these is about as distinctly marked as is the difference between the northern and southern sections of our own country, and they show the same superior progress of the one over the other. The cause of the difference between the North and the South in the United States is explained by one word—Slavery. I can only hint at the cause of the difference between the North and South of Ireland. I think that both religion and blood have much to do with the disparity between the two. The south of Ireland is overwhelmingly Catholic and withal distinctly Irish in blood. The quickening influence of foreign admixture had been little felt here. Not only the Irish brogue is heard here, but often the Irish language. Though English is generally spoken, the Irish tongue has not yet been quite forgotten or supplanted.25 An amusing story was told me in this connection of Daniel O’Connell. He had been announced to make a great political speech in the south of Ireland, at a time of much political excitement about the repeal of the union between England and Ireland,26 and in England it seemed very important to hear just what the great Irish agitator was saying to the easily inflammable Irish people. The London “Times,” surnamed the “Thunderer,”27 always alert and determined to be equal to this as well as to every other occasion, was at the pains and expense of sending over the Channel an expert verbatim reporter to report the speech. When O’Connell was made aware of the sinister presence he determined to thwart and confound his old adversary. He ordered that a table and a chair should be courteously furnished to the highly-accomplished reporter, and when he was seated, had sharpened his pencils, smoothed down his papers and prepared to catch every word, the wily O’Connell advanced to the front of the platform with a mirthful twinkle in his eye, and, to the amazement and utter confusion of the would-be reporter, harangued his audience and worked them up to the highest pitch of excitement in his own native, unreportable tongue of which the reporter could not understand a single word. The poor fellow was compelled to sit there utterly confounded, and serve as an object of amusement both to the speaker and to the crowd. No public man was perhaps more beloved by any people than Daniel O’Connell was by the people of his country. The first sight I caught of him, after landing in Ireland,28 was near Sackville Street Bridge.29 He was then on his way to Conciliation Hall, where he was to make a speech on essentially the same question which to-day so deeply agitates the United Kingdom.30 It was then called Repeal, but meant Home Rule all the same. He was just from Derrynane, his country-seat, where he had

Y7870-Douglass.indb 309

9/1/21 4:17 PM

310

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

been spending several months resting from his arduous labors in the cause of Irish liberty. It was a cool October day, and he was, as usual, wrapped in his cloak, walking at a rapid rate towards the great hall, followed by a squad of ragged little boys shouting in tones of loving admiration, “There goes Dan! There goes Dan!” And the great man beamed upon the ragged urchins with a look of overflowing affection and delight, as though they were his own children greeting his coming to his home after a long absence. A more beautiful and touching picture it has seldom been my good fortune to witness. With all the rest of the world I had heard much of Daniel O’Connell as an orator and as the greatest man of his country, and this day it was my privilege to see the man and to stand upon the platform of Conciliation Hall with him, and to hear him address an expectant crowd of his countrymen. I, with the rest, expected much, and though, in such cases, expectations are seldom realized, the present instance was an exception. I was not only not disappointed in my expectations; but I found them exceeded. I had heard and read much of the great orator and liberator; how he could sway and control the feelings of his people; how he could move them to mirth or tears; how he could rouse to fiercest indignation and wrath; how he could in the open air hold the attention of twenty and even thirty thousand people; still I made allowance for enthusiasm and exaggeration, and tempered my thought accordingly; but a few sentences of this man’s deep, rich, musical and almost miraculous voice, as it swept over the vast multitude, uttered without effort, without gestures, with arms folded upon his deep broad chest, dispelled all doubt of the vastness and grandeur of his power with his people, and, indeed, with any people who might come under the spell of his eloquence. In the address delivered on this occasion he showed himself a broad-hearted philanthropist as well as a patriot. I shall never forget his eloquent reference to American slavery, when, drawing himself up to his full height and holding in his hand a copy of O. A. Brownson’s Review,31 he said: “I am here charged with attacking the American Institution, as slavery is called. I am not ashamed of that attack. My sympathy is not confined to the narrow limits of my own Green Island. My spirit walks abroad upon the clement waters. Wherever there is oppression, I hate the oppressor; wherever the tyrant rears his head, I will deal my bolts upon it; and wherever there is sorrow and suffering, there is my spirit to succor and relieve.” The worst enemy of Mr. O’Connell could not accuse him of insincerity in his anti-slavery professions. He saw a man in the negro, in spite of his color. In introducing me to this great Repeal meeting, he playfully called me the black O’Connell of America.32

Y7870-Douglass.indb 310

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

311

He was not only a man of words and wisdom, but, like most of the great orators of his country, he was a man of wonderfully ready wit, and had the faculty of giving a man a nick-name that would stick to him through life. Replying to one of the fierce invectives of the great Disraeli, he stigmatized him as the lineal descendant of the impenitent thief upon the cross, and, powerful as Disraeli became afterwards, these terrible words stuck to him through all his future career.33 The London “Times,” desiring to turn the tables upon Mr. O’Connell, and to prove that his denunciation of Irish land-lords should be directed against himself, sent a commissioner to Ireland to spy out and report to the “Times” the condition of tenants holding under Mr. O’Connell, and the report was certainly a most damaging arraignment.34 It described Mr. O’Connell’s tenants as among the most miserable of all the most miserable class in Ireland. In Kircheveen, a village owned by O’Connell, of nine hundred inhabitants, the commissioner stated there was not a single pane of glass to be seen. It was an assemblage of wretched huts, without the least approach to comfort or health.35 In replying, Mr. O’Connell did not, as I hoped, show that the condition of his tenantry was misrepresented, but simply denounced the commissioner as the “Gutter Commissioner,”—and to his statement that there was not a single pane of glass to be seen in his village, he simply said: “I wish he had as many pains in his body;” and this mode of dealing with the public accusation seemed altogether satisfactory to his audience.36 Such a mode of disposing of unpleasant allegations would hardly be deemed convincing in America, though it must be said that this mode is not confined to Ireland. Mr. O’Connell’s method of receiving Americans visiting his country was rough on slaveholders. A gentleman from this country being introduced to the Liberator, and about to extend his hand, was suddenly stopped, as O’Connell withdrew his hand, saying: “Pardon me, sir; but I make it a rule never to give my hand to an American without asking if he is a slaveholder.” The gentleman answered good-naturedly: “No, Mr.  O’Connell, I am not a slaveholder, but I am willing to discuss the question of slavery with you.” “Pardon me again,” said O’Connell; “discuss it with me! Without meaning you the least harm in the world,— should a gentleman come into my study and propose to discuss with me the rightfulness of picking pockets, I would show him the door, lest he should be tempted to put his theory into practice.” His quickness to see and turn a point to advantage was as remarkable as the depth and power of his pathos. He could amuse as well as make men feel and think. A

Y7870-Douglass.indb 311

9/1/21 4:17 PM

312

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

sea-captain, who had taken a cargo of iron to the coast of Africa, on his return was invited to dine with O’Connell; while dining, and speaking of his voyage, Mr. O’Connell asked him how he made out with his cargo of iron. “Oh, pretty well,” said the captain, “but on landing we found the iron terribly worm-eaten.” “Indeed,” said O’Connell, “but may I inquire what kind of a worm you found on board your ship that could eat iron?” “O,” said the captain, “it was very like a bug.” “Ah!” said O’Connell, “I understand, we have a bug in Ireland which eats iron, but we call it a humbug!”37 One act of this great Irishman deserves to be held in everlasting memory by everybody, and especially by the colored people of the United States. It is this: Certain slaveholders of this country had sent him money to aid him in his agitation of repeal, but with their contributions coupled a protest against his denunciations of American slavery. He sent back the money! He denounced it as stained with innocent blood, and said he would not purchase the freedom of Ireland with the price of the negro’s blood in America. It was a stinging rebuke.38 His conduct in this respect was in striking and creditable contrast with that of Mr. John Mitchell, another distinguished Irish Liberator, who had hardly reached the shores of America from banishment and penal servitude before he wished himself the owner of a plantation in Alabama well stocked with negro slaves.39 I have spoken of the marked difference of civilization in the North and South of Ireland. This difference will strike the mind of any one travelling through these two sections of that country. The North seemed to me far in advance of the South in all the elements of progress. This is neither due to the differences of climate nor the superior fertility of the soil. In these respects the South would seem to have a decided advantage over the North. All the natural conditions there seem favorable to the development of wealth and prosperity. It is never too hot nor too cold to labor; the country is well supplied with warmth and moisture,—the two great sources of life and well-being. The lack of prosperity in the South is due, I think, to three causes: Religion; want of diversified food; and freedom from foreign ad-mixture. The South is Roman Catholic; its people live mainly on potatoes, and the population is purely Irish. They are agricultural, strangers alike to manufactures and commerce. They attract to themselves neither a mixed diet, nor a mixed population. The great Humbold has said, that while one acre of wheat will only sustain life in two persons during one year, an acre potatoes will sustain life in eight persons during the same period, while one acre of bananas will support forty persons during a year.40 Now, the people in the South of Ireland, owing to the absence of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 312

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

313

other means of livelihood are compelled by high rents and enforced poverty, to live on small farms, and, as they generally have large families, they are obliged to raise and live on potatoes. Now, I believe it is demonstrated and admitted, that not only from the structure of the human body, but also from the teachings of experience, it is manifest that no people can be strong and flourish, either mentally or physically, upon a single article of diet. Equally does it appear that any race or variety of people will deteriorate which shall remain entirely apart from other races and varieties of men. In fact, it does not appear that oneness, in population, oneness in the matter of religious belief, or oneness in diet, is favorable to progress. Contact, variety, competition, are essential to the life, both of individuals and nations. Uniform religious opinion brings mental quiet, and mental quiet brings mental stagnation, and mental stagnation brings death to human progress. Latin civilization under the influence of one church, one faith, one baptism, was dying, until the Latin races began to invite freedom of thought and opinion—till philosophy began to claim a place beside theology. But, aside from these and other causes, the South of Ireland and the whole of Ireland, are suffering to-day from wrongs inflicted centuries ago, and though many of these wrongs have been long since legally redressed, ages will be required to free that country from their baneful effects. The strong statement of Daniel O’Connell, that the history of Ireland may be traced like a wounded man through a crowd by the blood, will not be disputed by any man who has read any impartial history of that country. I am not of those who blame England for all the misfortunes of Ireland, but the Catholic population have a terrible indictment to bring against England. The following summary of hardships imposed upon Irish Catholics, is from the pen of Sydney Smith, himself an English clergyman, and one not likely to be too severe upon the behaviour of his country. “If the child of a Catholic turned Protestant, he was taken away from his father and put into the hands of a Protestant relation. No Papist could purchase a freehold or release for more than thirty years, or inherit it from an intestate Protestant—or from an intestate Catholic—or dwell in Limerick or Galway—or hold an advowson, or buy an annuity for life. Fifty pounds was given for discovering a Popish archbishop, thirty pounds for a Popish clergyman—and ten shillings for a schoolmaster. No one was allowed to be trustee for Catholics; no Catholic was allowed to take more than two apprentices, no Papist to be solicitor, sheriff, or to serve on grand juries. Horses for Papist might be seized for the militia, for

Y7870-Douglass.indb 313

9/1/21 4:17 PM

314

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

which militia Papists were to pay double and to find Protestant substitutes. Papists were prohibited from being present at vestries, or from being high or petty constables; and when residents of town, they were compelled to find Protestant watchmen. Barristers and solicitors marrying Catholics were exposed to the penalties of Catholics. Persons plundered by privateers during a war with any Papish prince were reimbursed by a levy on the Catholic inhabitants where they lived. All Popish priests celebrating marriage contrary to George I, Caps. 3, were to be hanged.”41 When we remember that a sense of injustice and wrong may be handed down from generation to generation, that it may be increased rather than diminished by admissions and concessions on the part of the oppressor, it does not appear strange that the Catholic part of the population of Ireland, should still look back to the days of their proscription, and nurse their resentment towards England, the power by which they were inflicted. I have favored “Home Rule” for Ireland for two reasons:—First, because Ireland wants “Home Rule”, and Secondly, because it will free England from the charge of continued oppression of Ireland. Whether the condition of the Irish people would be improved by the change, is another question;—but whether they are improved or not, the proper judges, and the responsibility should be laid upon them. I am for the fair play for the Irishman, the negro, the Chinaman, and for all men of whatever country or clime, and for allowing them to work out their own destiny without outside interference. 1. Around 1795, William Drennen gave the nickname the “Emerald Isle” to Ireland because of its prevailing lush green fields. William Morris and Mary Morris, Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (New York, 1977), 201. 2. Edmund Burke. 3. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816), orator, playwright, and politician, entered the British Parliament in 1780 as a supporter of Charles James Fox. An active supporter of Catholic emancipation, Sheridan condemned the 1798 insurrection and opposed the Act of Union. DNB, (online). 4. Henry Grattan. 5. John Philpot Curran. 6. Daniel O’Connell. 7. Regarded in Ireland as the “Apostle of Temperance,” Father Theobald Mathew (1790–1856) was born in County Tipperary to a family related to the local landed gentry. He joined the Capuchin order in 1808, and was ordained a priest in 1814. The next year, Mathew was assigned to a mission in Cork, where he became popular for his charitable activities on behalf of the Catholic poor. In April 1838, after his conversion to temperance, Mathew founded the Total Abstinence Society of Cork, which discountenanced the use of spirits except for medicinal purposes. Mathew allegedly converted six million Irish to teetotalism. Douglass witnessed a ceremony in which a thousand postulants took the pledge of abstinence from Mathew. When famine ravaged southern Ireland in the 1840s, Mathew devoted most of his energy to feeding and caring for the destitute. After Mathew’s

Y7870-Douglass.indb 314

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

315

death, the Irish temperance movement rapidly faded. James Bermingham, A Memoir of the Very Rev. Theobald Mathew, with an Account of the Rise and Progress of Temperance in Ireland (New York, 1841); Patrick Rogers, Father Theobald Mathew: Apostle of Temperance (Dublin, Ire., 1943); Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815–1872 (Pittsburgh, 1971), 103, 126, 165–68, 180, 211, 334, 390. 8. William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98) was the personification of Victorian liberalism. The fourth son of a Liverpool merchant, he received his education at Oxford University and served four terms as British prime minister (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, 1892–94). Intensely religious in his early years, Gladstone was elected to Parliament as a Conservative Tory in 1832. In 1859, Gladstone quit the Conservative party and joined Lord Palmerston’s Liberal ministry. As chancellor of the exchequer, a position he held four times, Gladstone set out to complete the free trade program and reduce taxes and public expenditures. Gladstone placed as much emphasis on the moral basis of politics as on the material. His drive for the abolition of church rates endeared him to Nonconformists and helped transform the Liberal party into a powerful political force. Gladstone’s first term as prime minister featured significant reforms of the army, civil service, local government, and law courts. In foreign affairs, Gladstone was committed to the notion of the “law of nations,” an overriding imperative to work for world peace and mutual understanding. In an age of resurgent British imperialism, however, Gladstone’s pacifistic outlook on foreign affairs made him easy fodder for critics who demanded a more aggressive stance. Gladstone retired from politics after Benjamin Disraeli’s conservative government came to power in 1874, but in 1879 he returned to the political stump to protest Disraeli’s foreign policy. Gladstone’s later ministries were less productive than his first one. The Liberal party, distracted by the Irish problem, became less responsive to the changing interests of the working classes, which prioritized economic and social improvements over constitutional and religious questions. Gladstone’s great oratorical flair, organizational skill, and capacity to meet new challenges with fresh ideas made him one of the most enduring political figures in British history. Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 415–417; Gardiner and Wenborn, Columbia Companion to British History, 340–341; DNB, Supplement, 22:705–54. 9. In 1886, while serving his third term as prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone declared his government’s support for Irish home rule. His efforts to secure the Home Rule Bill’s passage through Parliament were defeated, however, after a significant number of his party members (who became known as the Liberal Unionists) abandoned the government and joined the Conservatives in voting against the bill. As a result, Gladstone was forced to call an election later that same year, which he lost. The Conservatives, under the leadership of Robert Cecil, the 3rd Marquis of Salisbury (or Lord Salisbury), took control of the government and remained in power until 1892. Malcolm Pearce and Geoffrey Stewart, British Political History, 1867–2001: Democracy and Decline (1992; New York, 2012), 117–24; Christopher Hugh, ed., The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland (New York, 2000), 259. 10. Italian unification began in 1857 with the founding of the Italian National Society. The following year, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia signed the Treaty of Plombiers with France. The treaty called for the expansion of Piedmont-Sardinia into the new Kingdom of Upper Italy, which would include Lombardy, Venetia, Parma, Modena, and Romagna in exchange for ceding Savoy and Nice to France. Austria, which controlled most of the affected territories, declared war in April 1859, but was defeated in less than two months, and most of the disputed lands fell under the control of the French and their Italian allies. In August 1859, the provisional governments of Tuscany, Parma, and Modena petitioned for admittance to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. At roughly the same time, Garibaldi and around 1,100 of his Redshirts landed in Sicily with the intention of breaking up the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Within weeks, Garibaldi and his troops had liberated Sicily, crossed the straits of Messina, entered Naples, and begun planning their march on Rome. Before Garibaldi could reach the city, however, the armies of Piedmont-Sardinia defeated the papal forces. As a result, by the end of October 1859, all of Italy except the city of Rome and Venetia was under the physical

Y7870-Douglass.indb 315

9/1/21 4:17 PM

316

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

control of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. In March 1860, plebiscites were held in Naples, Sicily, and the Papal States to confirm that the inhabitants wished to become subjects of the king of Piedmont-Sardinia (Victor Emmanuel) and be governed under that kingdom’s 1848 Constitution. The newly constituted Kingdom of Italy held its first national parliament in Turin the following month. Venetia became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, and Rome (except Vatican City, which remains an independent state) became its capital in 1870. Asa Briggs and Patricia Clavin, Modern Europe, 1789–Present (1997; New York, 2003), 92–104; Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe, 1800–1914 (1987; New York, 2003), 189–212. 11. Although German unification was a key goal of the failed liberal revolution of 1848, it was finally achieved through the deft manipulation of war and diplomacy undertaken by the conservative Prussian minister-president, Otto von Bismarck, between 1859 and 1870. The process began in 1859 with the formation of the German Nationalverein by a group of liberal leaders who concluded that unification would be possible only if Prussia took the lead role. The second major development was Bismarck’s success in eliminating the Austrian Empire’s influence on German affairs, following Prussia’s victory in the brief Austro-Prussian War of 1866. This enabled Bismarck to form the North German Confederation (made up of twenty-two previously independent states), with the king of Prussia serving as both head of state and commander in chief. In 1870, following the successful conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck was able to force the French to pay both a large financial indemnity and to cede control of Alsace-Lorraine to the Prussians. This show of strength led the remaining independent German states to agree to accept unification. As a result, on 18 January 1871, the Prussian king, Wilhelm, was proclaimed German emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, and Bismarck was rewarded by being appointed first chancellor of the new German Empire. Briggs and Clavin, Modern Europe, 98–108; Gildea, Europe, 1800–1914, 197–212. 12. In 1882, Irish Parliamentary party members John and William Redmond toured the United States, seeking support for the Irish home rule movement. Their efforts proved to be a great success: they raised over £15,000 for the cause. In addition, party leaders were then able to demonstrate to Gladstone that there was widespread moral and financial support for home rule across the Irish diaspora community, particularly in the United States. This helped persuade him to introduce a home rule bill to Parliament in 1886. By 1890, however, the failure of Gladstone’s bill, combined with the troubles that engulfed the Irish Parliamentary party after the exposure of its leader Charles Stewart Parnell’s affair with a wife of a political colleague, led to a precipitous decline in financial support for the movement from the United States. American support for home rule began to increase again in May 1891 with the creation of the Irish National Federation of America (INFA), which was formed for the express purpose of “aiding in the advance of Home Rule in Ireland.” In less than a year, branches of the INFA had been established in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis. By the time of Douglass’s death, in 1895, more than 150 branches of the INFA were scattered across the United States. David Brundage, Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798–1998 (New York, 2016), 123–32. 13. The political influence of Ireland on the United States extends back to the colonial era, when large numbers of Protestant Scots-Irish immigrants began settling in each of the original thirteen colonies. Indeed, five of the nation’s first six presidents had Scots-Irish ancestors. Moreover, the ScotsIrish played an important part in settling Appalachia, the Ohio River Valley, and the Deep South. Starting in the 1820s and 1830s, however, increasing numbers of Irish Catholics began immigrating to the United States, followed by at least an additional 900,000 who arrived during the Great Famine in the 1840s. Anti–Irish Catholic sentiment fueled, at least in part, the formation of the Know-Nothing movement (and political party) in the 1850s. During the Civil War, Irish-born and ethnic Irish soldiers served in great numbers in both the Union and the Confederate armies. At the same time, the violent New York draft riots in July 1863 were largely fueled by angry Irish mobs. Urban-based Irish political machines first began to appear in the 1820s, but it wasn’t until the 1870s that they began to reach the zenith of their influence and play a leading role in determining the outcome of elections in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 316

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

317

cities across the United States. By 1890, Irish American machines controlled over half of the nation’s largest cities, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Similarly, Irish immigrants and their descendants played important roles in the labor movement, perhaps most famously exemplified by their involvement with organizations such as the Molly Maguires and the Knights of Labor. Patrick J. Hayes, ed., The Making of Modern Immigration: An Encyclopedia of People and Ideas, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2010), 1:540–44; William E. Watson and Eugene J. Holm, Jr., eds., Irish Americans: The History and Culture of a People (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2015), 67–72. 14. Although the Irish living on the West Coast were notably less antagonistic toward abolition than their counterparts on the East Coast, they were, on the whole, virulently anti-Chinese. Irish on the West Coast actively engaged in race-baiting and committed pogrom-like assaults on Chinese workers, all in the name of consolidating the trade union movement in California. Indeed, the president of the Workingman’s party, which had a significant following in the Irish community and led the campaign in favor of legislation designed to exclude Chinese workers, was the Irish native Denis Kearney. However, anti-Chinese sentiment was not universal, and Frank Roney, the Belfast-born labor leader, openly declared his opposition to the most extreme opponents of the Chinese presence on the West Coast. Malcolm Campbell, Ireland’s New Worlds: Immigrants, Politics, and Society in the United States and Australia, 1815–1922 (Madison, Wisc., 2005), 101–02; Paula S. Rothberg, Race, Class and Gender in the United States, 7th ed. (New York, 2007), 18. 15. Douglass paraphrases a line from Thomas Campbell’s poem Pleasures of Hope, part  1, line 7. W. A. Hill, The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, With Notes and a Biographical Sketch (London, 1851), 1. 16. On 16 August 1845, Douglass boarded the British steamship Cambria in Boston. He disembarked in Liverpool, England, on 28 August 1845. This was Douglass’s first trip to Europe. Barnes, Douglass, 45–46. 17. The phrases “fairest among ten thousand” and “altogether lovely” are from the Song of Solomon 5:16 and 5:10. 18. Ireland’s west coast is exposed to the full brunt of the Atlantic Ocean’s swells, which mix dangerously with the unpredictable flow of the country’s largest river, the Shannon. The Irish west coast is jagged, hugged by a scattering of stony islands and lined by submerged rocks. The most famous example of the treacherous nature of its waters is the near-total destruction of the Spanish Armada off Ireland’s west coast in August 1588, which led to the loss of at least 20 ships and around 6,000 men, over 3,700 of whom drowned. Roger Oliver, Sailing around the UK and Ireland (London, 2011), 68; Eugene L. Rasor, English/British Naval History to 1815: A Guide to the Literature (Westport, Conn., 2004), 100–101. 19. The coast of Maine is frequently plagued by howling storms and shrouded in fog. Those conditions, along with the maze of jagged islands and submerged rocks that fringe the coast, make its waters notoriously difficult to navigate. Charles A. Stansfield, Jr., Haunted Maine: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Pine Tree State (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2007), 2; James Claflin, Lighthouses and Life Saving: Along the Coast of Maine and New Hampshire Coast (Charleston, S.C., 2003), 29, 37. 20. Located on the north side of Dublin, Sackville Street was originally known as Drogheda Street. It was renamed in 1745 after Lionel Cranfield Sackville, the 1st Duke of Dorset and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1731–37, 1751–55). Sackville Street was regarded as the premier thoroughfare in the country. Improvements to the street were made in 1772 and again in 1789. In 1792, Sackville Street was connected to the south side of Dublin with the construction of the Carlisle Bridge over the River Liffey. The street was renamed in honor of Daniel O’Connell in the early 1880s. Frank Hopkins, Rare Old Dublin: Heroes, Hawkers and Hoors (Dublin, Ire., 2002), 114–15; David Dicksen, Dublin: The Making of a Capital City (Cambridge, Mass., 2014), 165, 475. 21. Dublin’s Custom House is a neoclassical building designed by the architect James Gandon. The building, which opened in 1791, on the bank of the Liffey, included decorated façades and end pavilions. It was topped by a copper dome with four clocks and, above that, a statue of Hope. Fionn

Y7870-Douglass.indb 317

9/1/21 4:17 PM

318

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

Davenport, Dublin: City Guide (London, 2010), 114–16; Siobhan Marie Kilfeather, Dublin: A Cultural History (New York, 2005), 55–56. 22. The Bank of Ireland was originally the seat of the Irish Parliament. Edward Lovett Pearce, a leading Palladian architect, designed the building. Construction began in 1729 and was completed in 1739, at a cost of £40,000. The first of several renovations was undertaken by James Gandon within a few years of its opening. In 1801, following the dissolution of the Irish Parliament, the building was sold to the Bank of Ireland with the proviso that the interior be transformed in such a manner that it could never be used as a parliament again. Even so, the chamber of the defunct House of Lords remains largely intact and is well preserved. Davenport, Dublin, 75; Kilfeather, Dublin, 73. 23. By the early nineteenth century, the Wicklow Hills, located in southeastern Ireland in County Wicklow and portions of the contiguous counties of Carlow, Wexford, and Dublin, were known for the stark contrast between their scenic beauty and the abject poverty of the people who lived there. Indeed, the noted Irish playwright, poet, and journalist J. M. Synge famously described the region as a “gloomy and squalid place [where] the people [were] wretched.” G. N. Wright, A Guide to the County of Wicklow (London, 1822), 147; J. M. Synge, The Complete Works of J. M. Synge: Plays, Prose and Poetry, ed. Aidan Arrowsmith (London, 2008), xv. 24. From 31 August 1845 to 6 January 1846, Frederick Douglass visited Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and Belfast while on an abolitionist speaking tour of Ireland. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:xcvi–xcvii. 25. Although wealthier parts of Ireland such as Ulster and Leinster adopted English before the Great Famine of the 1840s, it was not until the late nineteenth century that poorer areas such as Connaught and Munster (located in southern and southwestern Ireland) became truly bilingual. The introduction of English-medium national schools into those areas, largely in response to parents’ demands that their children be as well equipped to immigrate to Great Britain and the United States as their peers in other parts of Ireland, expanded bilingualism at a remarkably rapid pace. By 1891, just over 38,000 monoglot Gaelic speakers remained in Ireland, out of a total population of over 4 million. Brogues, or Anglo-Irish dialects, were many and varied and could be found all over Ireland. Reginald Byron, Irish America (New York, 1999), 123–24; W. H. A. Williams, ’Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Songs, 1800–1920 (Champaign, Ill., 1996), 3. 26. On 6 April 1830 in Dublin, Daniel O’Connell organized the Society of the Friends of Ireland of All Religious Persuasions to promote a number of causes, including the abolition of the malt, paper, and coal duties and repeal of the Act of Union (1801). O’Connell’s primary focus eventually shifted almost entirely to the repeal movement, beginning with remarks made at a public dinner in Killarney. This change was followed by a series of “Repeal breakfasts” and the formation of the National Association of Ireland for Full and Prompt Justice or Repeal. Over the next thirteen years, O’Connell spoke in support of repeal in countless settings, but the most significant of these publicspeaking engagements was the series of “Monster Meetings”—so called because each was attended by around 100,000 people—which he conducted all over Ireland in the early 1840s. MacDonagh, Emancipist, 33–52, 186–190, 225–39; Thomas E. Hachey and Lawrence J. McCaffrey, The Irish Experience since 1800: A Concise History (2010; New York, 2015), 41–60. 27. The nickname dates back to 1829, when the London Times was accused by its rivals of being unnecessarily sensational in its coverage of the mysterious death of a peer (Lord Graves). In response to the criticism of the other leading London newspapers, John Thadeus Delane, the editor of the Times, described the paper as having “thundered out” its coverage of both the death and the coroner’s inquest that followed. Subsequently, the term “thundering” was picked up and used by the paper’s critics to describe the editorial voice of the Times. William Maginn, one of the cofounders of the Standard, is credited with having coined the nickname. Stanley Morison et al., The History of the Times: The Thunderer in the Making, 1785–1841, 4 vols. (1935; Millwood, N.Y., 1985), 1:390–411; Lindsay Rogers, “The Thunderer,” Journal of International Affairs, 10:170–77 (1956).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 318

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

319

28. Douglass was first introduced to Daniel O’Connell on 29 September 1845 at Conciliation Hall in Dublin. Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin, Tasting Freedom: Octavius Cato and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America (Philadelphia, 2010), 64. 29. In 1792, the Carlisle Bridge was built in Dublin to connect Sackville Street to the south bank of the Liffey. The bridge, however, was structurally unsound, and by 1824 it was in need of major repairs. Even after attempts were made to address those issues, by 1852, it was considered the most dangerous bridge in the British Empire. In 1880, the Carlisle Bridge was torn down and replaced by a new bridge, which was named in honor of Daniel O’Connell. Hopkins, Rare Old Dublin, 114–15; Dicksen, Dublin, 165, 475. 30. Douglass addressed a meeting of the Loyal National Repeal Association in Dublin’s Conciliation Hall on 29 September 1845. Built in 1841 as the headquarters for O’Connell’s Repeal Association, Conciliation Hall was a massive two-and-a-half-story stone hall located a block from the Sackville Street Bridge. It housed a large assembly room and many smaller offices. After O’Connell’s death, in 1847, the hall was converted into a grain warehouse and then into a theater. London (Eng.) Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly, 28 October 1843; Lib., 24, 31 October 1845. 31. While it is impossible to confirm the accuracy of Douglass’s story, it is true that Daniel O’Connell was attacked in the pages of Brownson’s Quarterly Review for his “unprovoked” attack on American slavery in its seventh issue, dated 7 July 1845. Patrick W. Carey, Orestes A. Brownson: A Bibliography, 1826–1876 (Milwaukee, Wisc., 1997), 63. 32. Douglass heard Daniel O’Connell speak at a meeting of the Loyal National Repeal Association at Conciliation Hall, Dublin, on 29 September 1845. Near the conclusion of the rally, O’Connell introduced Douglass to the audience and asked him to say a few words. Long an abolitionist, O’Connell had, in 1835, expressed the need for a “Black O’Connell” to inspire African American slaves to protest for their freedom. While some scholars refer to Douglass’s autobiographical writings as evidence of this introduction, contemporary newspapers covering the event do not confirm that O’Connell introduced Douglass as the “Black O’Connell” on this occasion. Dublin Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 30 September 1845; Lib., 24, 31 October 1845; Fionnghuala Sweeney, Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World (Liverpool, Eng., 2007), 29n; Lee Jenkins, “ ‘The Black O’Connell’: Frederick Douglass and Ireland,” Nineteenth Century Studies (1999), 13:24–26. 33. Douglass alludes to the execution of Jesus and the two thieves at Calvary. During the crucifixion, two malefactors were placed on either side of Jesus. One mocked Jesus, while the second reproached the first. Jesus told the second malefactor that they would meet in paradise, while the first received no good news. Daniel O’Connell was the source of this insult to Disraeli, who had in 1832 secured from the “Liberator” a letter of recommendation to the electors of Wycombe as a Radical candidate. Three years later, Disraeli stood as Tory candidate for Taunton, attacking his former supporter as an “incendiary traitor.” Angered by this betrayal, O’Connell retaliated publicly, denouncing Disraeli as a “liar in action and words”—an anti-Semitic attack that was ironic, since O’Connell strongly supported Jewish emancipation. Disraeli’s Jewish ancestry was well known, but his family removed him from the boarding school at which he had received lessons in Hebrew, baptized him, and transferred him to a new school. Having been baptized, Disraeli was eligible for election to Parliament in 1837, rather than having to wait until after emancipation in 1858. Despite frequent personal attacks leveled against his ethnic background, Disraeli persisted in his political career. He did not hide his Jewish heritage; rather, he proudly proclaimed it, but by taking an evangelical stance toward Judaism, he focused on Jewish conversion and the inclusion of Jews in politics based on their historical commonalities with Protestants. Luke 23:32–43; London Examiner, 3 May 1835; Bangor (Wales) North Wales Chronicle, 12 May 1835; Moses Coit Tyler, Glimpses of England: Social, Political, Literary (New York, 1898), 130–31; Denis Gwynn, Daniel O’Connell, rev. ed. (Oxford, 1947), 209–11; David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (New York, 1994), 330–34, 387–88;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 319

9/1/21 4:17 PM

320

THOUGHTS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN IRELAND

Abraham Gilam, “Anglo-Jewish Attitudes toward Benjamin Disraeli during the Era of Emancipation,” Jewish Social Studies, 42:313–22 (Summer–Fall 1980). 34. O’Connell’s reputation as a landlord had been assailed by a series of reports to the London Times in 1845 by one of its correspondents, Thomas Campbell Foster. Foster accused O’Connell of charging high rents and doing little to improve living conditions for the tenants on his estates in County Kerry. Foster charged that the reason O’Connell never evicted tenants was primarily to enhance his political reputation. London Times, 18 November, 3, 25 December 1845; Maurice R. O’Connell, Daniel O’Connell: The Man and His Politics (Dublin, Ire., 1990), 110–11. 35. Foster’s reporting for the Times had singled out poor conditions in Cahirciveen, a hamlet that had swelled to nearly a thousand residents as O’Connell granted perpetual leases for building sites. To refute Foster’s charges, O’Connell documented more than £4,000 donated to community improvements. O’Connell, Daniel O’Connell, 111. 36. In speeches to the Repeal Association, O’Connell had used this term in his refutation of Thomas Campbell Foster’s attacks as well as in labeling the reporter a “boundless liar.” The following year, O’Connell was able to cite another English investigator, W. E. Forster, for an investigation of famine conditions in Kerry that absolved him of neglect or abuse of his tenants. O’Connell, Daniel O’Connell, 110, 151. 37. It is impossible to confirm Douglass’s story, but there is ample evidence that Daniel O’Connell used the term “humbug” in both private correspondence and public discourse. For example, he made references to “wicked” and “deluding” humbug as well as to people who would “humbug you to your face.” Thomas Clarke Luby, The Life and Times of Daniel O’Connell (London, 1880), 97, 106, 244, 312, 328, 335–36, 500; Daniel O’Connell, Correspondence of Daniel O’Connell: The Liberator, ed. W. J. Fitzpatrick, 2 vols. (New York, 1888), 2:267, 456. 38. Douglass correctly describes O’Connell’s policy of refusing contributions from American slaveholders for the Repeal Association. This policy contributed to a drop in financial aid from Irish Americans and fueled disputes in the Irish ranks when “Young Ireland” leaders such as Thomas Davis and William Smith O’Brien rejected the antislavery policy, deeming it an unnecessary distraction to the nationalist cause. O’Connell, Daniel O’Connell, 121–31. 39. The son of a New Light Presbyterian clergyman descended from Scottish Covenanters, the Irish nationalist John Mitchel (1815–75) was born in Dungiven, County Derry, and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1834. He studied law, and in 1840 he began a promising career as a solicitor in Bannbridge. Personal friendships and political sympathy soon attracted him to the Young Ireland circle, a youthful group of nationalist reformers active in Daniel O’Connell’s Loyal National Repeal Association. He settled in Dublin in 1845, and for three years he served as the chief political editor of the Young Irelanders’ periodical, the Nation. In July 1846, he and other Young Irelanders, restive under the O’Connellite emphasis on parliamentary agitation and moral suasion, refused to repudiate physical force as an instrument of social change and consequently left the Repeal Association. Inspired by the February 1848 revolution in Paris, Mitchel launched his United Irishman the same month, urging that popular resistance to English rule and Irish landlordism begin, thereby paving the way for an independent Irish republic. In May, he was convicted under the recently enacted Treason and Felony Act, and in 1850 he was sent to a convict colony in Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania). He escaped three years later, and by early 1854 he was in New York City publishing a weekly, the Citizen, whose proslavery sympathies were scorned in Frederick Douglass’ Paper and by British and American abolitionists. During the Crimean War, Mitchel lost hope that armed assistance would overthrow English rule in Ireland. Alarmed by the surge of Know-Nothingism in the North, he accepted an invitation to conduct a Southern lecture tour in the spring of 1854. He moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, took up farming, and founded the Southern Citizen (1857–59), which he later moved to Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, he edited the Richmond Enquirer (1862) and the Richmond Examiner (1863–65). After his release from a federal prison in 1866, he retired to New York City and continued his career in journalism. He returned to Ireland in 1874, and in 1875 he was elected to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 320

9/1/21 4:17 PM

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

321

Parliament from Tipperary. He died before he could take his seat. John Mitchel, Jail Journal (1876; Washington, D.C., 1996); William Dillon, Life of John Mitchel, 2 vols. (London, 1888); Alfred John Webb, A Compendium of Irish Biography: Comprising Sketches of Distinguished Irishmen, and of Eminent Persons Connected with Ireland by Office or by their Writings (Dublin, Ire., 1878), 340–42; Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (1952; Princeton, N.J., 1967), 407–11; Denis Gwynn, Young Ireland and 1848 (Cork, Ire., 1949), 49–78, 98–198, 272; Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1940), 155; ACAB, 4:341. 40. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), a Prussian geographer, studied mineralogy at the University of Frankfurt and the University of Gottingen and then worked for the Prussian government as the superintendent of mines. From 1799 to 1803, Humboldt traveled extensively in the Americas, where he studied the natural world and developed his holistic theory of nature, which integrated the study of biology, geology, geophysics, archaeology, and meteorology. The work resulting from his travels and extensive study was published in thirty-three volumes as Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (1805–34). Humboldt continued to travel to Mexico, Peru, and Cuba, enhancing human knowledge of the natural world. He is credited as one of the harbingers of modern empirical scientific methods and is considered the founder of the modern science of geography. Humboldt believed that bananas produced 130 times more calories per acre than wheat, and 44 times more than potatoes. He also maintained that the acreage required to yield either 33 pounds of wheat or 99 pounds of potatoes would produce over 4,000 pounds of bananas. Gerard Helferich, Humboldt’s Cosmos: Alexander Von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See the World (New York, 2004); Charles A. Goodrich, A New Encyclopedia: Or, Compendium of Universal Knowledge (Philadelphia, 1831), 52; Shawn William Miller, An Environmental History of Latin America (New York, 2007), 63; The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, 12 vols. (New York, 1973), 3:1100–103. 41. Douglass paraphrases rather than quotes directly from a book review in the Edinburgh Review by the English Anglican minister Sydney Smith (1771–1845) of Henry Parnell’s History of the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Union (London, 1808). A highly partisan Whig, Smith’s barbed wit was employed to great effect in the causes of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. Sydney Smith, The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, 3 vols. (London, 1840), 1:153–60; DNB, 18:527–31.

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1886) Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York, 1886), 315–25. Other text in Washington Bee, 17 July 1886.

Allen Thorndike Rice edited the North American Review, the oldest literary magazine in the United States, from 1876 until his death in 1889. In 1885, he sought to gather a collection of sketches of Abraham Lincoln from a variety of prominent individuals who had known Lincoln intimately. Rice’s editorial assistant, James Redpath, wrote the following to the poet (and contributor) Walt Whitman about the project: “He proposes to get every man of note now living who ever met Lincoln to write down in plain

Y7870-Douglass.indb 321

9/1/21 4:17 PM

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

321

Parliament from Tipperary. He died before he could take his seat. John Mitchel, Jail Journal (1876; Washington, D.C., 1996); William Dillon, Life of John Mitchel, 2 vols. (London, 1888); Alfred John Webb, A Compendium of Irish Biography: Comprising Sketches of Distinguished Irishmen, and of Eminent Persons Connected with Ireland by Office or by their Writings (Dublin, Ire., 1878), 340–42; Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (1952; Princeton, N.J., 1967), 407–11; Denis Gwynn, Young Ireland and 1848 (Cork, Ire., 1949), 49–78, 98–198, 272; Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1940), 155; ACAB, 4:341. 40. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), a Prussian geographer, studied mineralogy at the University of Frankfurt and the University of Gottingen and then worked for the Prussian government as the superintendent of mines. From 1799 to 1803, Humboldt traveled extensively in the Americas, where he studied the natural world and developed his holistic theory of nature, which integrated the study of biology, geology, geophysics, archaeology, and meteorology. The work resulting from his travels and extensive study was published in thirty-three volumes as Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (1805–34). Humboldt continued to travel to Mexico, Peru, and Cuba, enhancing human knowledge of the natural world. He is credited as one of the harbingers of modern empirical scientific methods and is considered the founder of the modern science of geography. Humboldt believed that bananas produced 130 times more calories per acre than wheat, and 44 times more than potatoes. He also maintained that the acreage required to yield either 33 pounds of wheat or 99 pounds of potatoes would produce over 4,000 pounds of bananas. Gerard Helferich, Humboldt’s Cosmos: Alexander Von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See the World (New York, 2004); Charles A. Goodrich, A New Encyclopedia: Or, Compendium of Universal Knowledge (Philadelphia, 1831), 52; Shawn William Miller, An Environmental History of Latin America (New York, 2007), 63; The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, 12 vols. (New York, 1973), 3:1100–103. 41. Douglass paraphrases rather than quotes directly from a book review in the Edinburgh Review by the English Anglican minister Sydney Smith (1771–1845) of Henry Parnell’s History of the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Union (London, 1808). A highly partisan Whig, Smith’s barbed wit was employed to great effect in the causes of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. Sydney Smith, The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, 3 vols. (London, 1840), 1:153–60; DNB, 18:527–31.

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1886) Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York, 1886), 315–25. Other text in Washington Bee, 17 July 1886.

Allen Thorndike Rice edited the North American Review, the oldest literary magazine in the United States, from 1876 until his death in 1889. In 1885, he sought to gather a collection of sketches of Abraham Lincoln from a variety of prominent individuals who had known Lincoln intimately. Rice’s editorial assistant, James Redpath, wrote the following to the poet (and contributor) Walt Whitman about the project: “He proposes to get every man of note now living who ever met Lincoln to write down in plain

Y7870-Douglass.indb 321

9/1/21 4:17 PM

322

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

words and as accurately as human memory will record, just what Lincoln did; just how Lincoln looked; just what impression Lincoln made on him. However, he does not want the last clause (that is to say, the impression) recorded by anybody but only names that will go down in history.” With Redpath’s assistance, Rice gathered thirty-three sketches from politicians, military generals, journalists, and religious leaders. Contributors included Henry Ward Beecher, Schuyler Colfax, Cassius M. Clay, Robert Ingersoll, Benjamin F. Butler, the deceased Ulysses S. Grant (via an excerpt from his diary), and Douglass, the only African American included. The book was well received; one reviewer wrote, “These reminiscences are of such a character as to elicit universal and absorbing attention.” A British edition was published by Blackwood in 1886, and one British reviewer wrote of Douglass’s addition: “By far the best essays in the collection before us are those by Walt Whitman and by Mr. Frederick Douglas [sic] . . . The kindness and gentleness of the man are described in simple and touching words.” Harrisburg (Pa.) Telegraph, 3 July 1886; Detroit Free Press, 2 Oct 1886; London Times, 27 December 1886; Redpath to Walt Whitman, 16 July 1885, in Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, 2 vols. (Boston, 1905), 2:74–75; McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand, 180–81.

I DO not know more about Mr. Lincoln than is known by countless thousands of Americans who have met the man. But I am quite willing to give my recollections of him and the impressions made by him upon my mind as to his character. My first interview with him was in the summer of 1863,1 soon after the Confederate States had declared their purpose to treat colored soldiers as insurgents, and their purpose not to treat any such soldiers as prisoners of war subject to exchange like other soldiers.2 My visit to Mr. Lincoln was in reference to this threat of the Confederate States. I was at the time engaged in raising colored troops,3 and I desired some assurances from President Lincoln that such troops should be treated as soldiers of the United States, and when taken prisoners exchanged like other soldiers; that when any of them were hanged or enslaved the President should retaliate. I was introduced to Mr. Lincoln on this occasion by Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas;4 I met him at the Executive Mansion.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 322

9/1/21 4:17 PM

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

323

I was somewhat troubled with the thought of meeting one so august and high in authority, especially as I had never been in the White House before, and had never spoken to a President of the United States before. But my embarrassment soon vanished when I met the face of Mr. Lincoln. When I entered he was seated in a low chair, surrounded by a multitude of books and papers, his feet and legs were extended in front of his chair. On my approach he slowly drew his feet in from the different parts of the room into which they had strayed, and he began to rise, and continued to rise until he looked down upon me, and extended his hand and gave me a welcome. I began, with some hesitation, to tell him who I was and what I had been doing, but he soon stopped me, saying in a sharp, cordial voice: “You need not tell me who you are, Mr. Douglass, I know who you are. Mr. Sewell5 has told me all about you.” He then invited me to take a seat beside him. Not wishing to occupy his time and attention, seeing that he was busy, I stated to him the object of my call at once. I said: “Mr. Lincoln, I am recruiting colored troops. I have assisted in fitting up two regiments in Massachusetts, and am now at work in the same way in Pennsylvania,6 and have come to say this to you, sir, if you wish to make this branch of the service successful you must do four things: “First–You must give colored soldiers the same pay that you give white soldiers.7 “Second–You must compel the Confederate States to treat colored soldiers, when taken prisoners, as prisoners of war. “Third–When any colored man or soldier performs brave, meritorious exploits in the field, you must enable me to say to those that I recruit that they will be promoted for such service, precisely as white men are promoted for similar service. “Fourth–In case any colored soldiers are murdered in cold blood and taken prisoners, you should retaliate in kind.” To this little speech Mr. Lincoln listened with earnest attention and with very apparent sympathy, and replied to each point in his own peculiar, forcible way. First he spoke of the opposition generally to employing negroes as soldiers at all, of the prejudice against the race, and of the advantage to colored people that would result from their being employed as soldiers in defense of their country. He regarded such an employment as an experiment, and spoke of the advantage it would be to the colored race if the experiment should succeed. He said that he had difficulty in getting colored men into the United States uniform; that when the purpose

Y7870-Douglass.indb 323

9/1/21 4:17 PM

324

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

was fixed to employ them as soldiers, several different uniforms were proposed for them, and that it was something gained when it was finally determined to clothe them like other soldiers.8 Now, as to the pay, we had to make some concession to prejudice. There were threats that if we made soldiers of them at all white men would not enlist, would not fight beside them. Besides, it was not believed that a negro could make a good soldier, as good a soldier as a white man, and hence it was thought that he should not have the same pay as a white man. But said he, “I assure you, Mr. Douglass, that in the end they shall have the same pay as white soldiers.” As to the exchange and general treatment of colored soldiers when taken prisoners of war, he should insist to their being entitled to all privileges of such prisoners. Mr. Lincoln admitted the justice of my demand for the promotion of colored soldiers for good conduct in the field, but on the mater of retaliation he differed from me entirely. I shall never forget the benignant expression of his face, the tearful look of his eye and the quiver of his voice, when he deprecated a resort to retaliatory measures. “Once begun,” said he, “I do not know where such a measure would stop.” He said he could not take men out and kill them in cold blood for what was done by others. If he could get hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored prisoners in cold blood, the case would be different, but he could not kill the innocent for the guilty. Before leaving Mr. Lincoln, Senator Pomeroy said: “Mr. President, Mr. Stanton is going to make Douglass AdjutantGeneral9 to General Thomas,10 and is going to send him down the Mississippi to recruit.” Mr. Lincoln said in answer to this: “I will sign any commission that Mr. Stanton will give Mr. Douglass.” At this point we parted. I met Mr. Lincoln several times after this interview. I was once invited by him to take tea with him at the Soldiers’ Home.11 On one occasion, while visiting him at the White House, he showed me a letter he was writing to Horace Greeley in reply to some of Greeley’s criticisms against protracting the war. He seemed to feel very keenly the reproaches heaped upon him for not bringing the war to a speedy conclusion; said he was charged with making it an Abolition war instead of a war for the Union, and expressed his desire to end the war as soon as

Y7870-Douglass.indb 324

9/1/21 4:17 PM

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

325

possible.12 While I was talking with him Governor Buckingham13 sent in his card, and I was amused by his telling the messenger, as well as by the way he expressed it, to “tell Governor Buckingham to wait, I want to have a long talk with my friend Douglass.” He used those words. I said: “Mr. Lincoln, I will retire.” “Oh, no, no, you shall not, I want Governor Buckingham to wait,” and he did wait for at least a half hour. When he came in I was introduced by Mr. Lincoln to Governor Buckingham, and the Governor did not seem to take it amiss at all that he had been required to wait. I was present at the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, the 4th of March, 1865.14 I felt then that there was murder in the air, and I kept close to his carriage on the way to the Capitol, for I felt that I might see him fall that day. It was a vague presentiment. At that time the Confederate cause was on its last legs, as it were, and there was a deep feeling. I could feel it in the atmosphere here. I did not know exactly what it was, but I just felt as if he might be shot on his way to the Capitol. I cannot refer to any incident, in fact, to any expression that I heard, it was simply a presentiment that Lincoln might fall that day. I got right in front of the east portico of the Capitol, listened to his inaugural address, and witnessed his being sworn in by Chief Justice Chase.15 When he came on the steps he was accompanied by Vice-President Johnson.16 In looking out in the crowd he saw me standing near by, and I could see he was pointing me out to Andrew Johnson. Mr. Johnson, without knowing perhaps that I saw the movement, looked quite annoyed that his attention should be called in that direction. So I got a peep into his soul. As soon as he saw me looking at him, suddenly he assumed rather an amicable expression of countenance. I felt that, whatever else the man might be, he was no friend to my people. I heard Mr. Lincoln deliver this wonderful address. It was very short; but he answered all the objections raised to his prolonging the war in one sentence—it was a remarkable sentence. “Fondly do we hope, profoundly do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue until all the wealth piled up 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, we must still say, as was said three thousand years ago, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”17 For the first time in my life, and I suppose the first time in any colored man’s life, I attended the reception of President Lincoln on the evening of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 325

9/1/21 4:17 PM

326

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the inauguration. As I approached the door I was seized by two policemen and forbidden to enter. I said to them that they were mistaken entirely in what they were doing, that if Mr. Lincoln knew that I was at the door he would order my admission, and I bolted in by them. On the inside I was taken charge of by two other policemen, to be conducted as I supposed to the President, but instead of that they were conducting me out the window on a plank. “Oh,” said I, “this will not do, gentlemen,” and as a gentleman was passing in I said to him, “Just say to Mr. Lincoln that Fred. Douglass is at the door.” He rushed in to President Lincoln, and almost in less than a half a minute I was invited into the East Room of the White House.18 A perfect sea of beauty and elegance, too, it was. The ladies were in very fine attire, and Mrs. Lincoln19 was standing there. I could not have been more than ten feet from him when Mr. Lincoln saw me; his countenance lightened up, and he said in a voice which was heard all around: “Here comes my friend Douglass.” As I approached him he reached out his hand, gave me a cordial shake, and said: “Douglass, I saw you in the crowd to-day listening to my inaugural address. There is no man’s opinion that I value more than yours: what do you think of it?” I said: “Mr. Lincoln, I cannot stop here to talk with you, as there are thousands waiting to shake you by the hand;” but he said again, “What did you think of it?” I said: “Mr. Lincoln, it was a sacred effort,” and then I walked off. “I am glad you liked it,” he said. That was the last time I saw him to speak with him. In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln I was impressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race. He was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color, and I thought that all the more remarkable because he came from a State where there were black laws.20 I account partially for his kindness to me because of the similarity with which I had fought my way up, we both starting at the lowest round of the ladder. I must say this for Mr. Lincoln, that whenever I met him he was in a very serious mood. I heard of those stories he used to tell, but he never told me a story. I remember of one of Mr. Lincoln’s stories being told me by General Grant.21 I had called on him, and he said: “Douglass, stay here, I want to tell you about a little incident. When I came to Washington first, one of the first things that Lincoln said to me was, ‘Grant, have you ever read the book by Orpheus C. Kerr?’ ‘Well, no, I never did,’ said I. Mr. Lincoln said: ‘You ought to read it, it is a very interesting book. I have had a good deal of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 326

9/1/21 4:17 PM

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

327

satisfaction reading that book. There is one poem there that describes a meeting of the animals. The substance of it being that the animals and a dragon, or some dreadful thing, was near by and had to be conquered, and it was a question as to who would undertake the job. By and by a monkey stepped forward and proposed to do the work up. The monkey said he thought he could do it if he could get an inch or two more put on his tail. The assemblage voted him a few inches more to his tail, and he went out and tried his hand. He was unsuccessful and returned, stating that he wanted a few more inches put on his tail. The request was granted, and he went again. His second effort was a failure. He asked that more inches be put on his tail and he would try a third time.’ At last,” said General Grant, “it got though my head what Lincoln was aiming at, as applying to my wanting more men, and finally I said: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I don’t want any more inches put on my tail.’ ”22 It was a hit at McClellan,23 and General Grant told me the story with a good deal of gusto. I got the book afterward and read the lines of Orpheus C. Kerr. There was one thing concerning Lincoln that I was impressed with, and that was that a statement of his was an argument more convincing than any amount of logic. He had a happy faculty of stating a proposition, of stating it so that it needed no argument. It was a rough kind of reasoning, but it went right to the point. Then, too, there was another feeling that I had with reference to him, and that was that while I felt in his presence I was in the presence of a very great man, as great as the greatest, I felt as though I could go and put my hand on him if I wanted to, to put my hand on his shoulder. Of course I did not do it, but I felt that I could. I felt as though I was in the presence of a big brother, and that there was safety in his atmosphere. It was often said during the war that Mrs. Lincoln did not sympathize fully with her husband in his anti-slavery feeling, but I never believed this concerning her, and have good reason for being confirmed in my impression of her by the fact that, when Mr. Lincoln died and she was about leaving the White House, she selected his favorite walking cane and said: “I know of no one that would appreciate this more than Fred. Douglass.” She sent it to me at Rochester, and I have it in my house to-day, and expect to keep it there as long as I live.24 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 1. In the company of Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, Douglass had an interview with Lincoln at the White House on 10 August 1863. Douglass’s account of this meeting appears in Life and Times as well as here. Douglass to George L. Stearns, 12 August 1863, Abraham Barker Scrap Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Tyler Dennett, ed., Lincoln and the Civil War in the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 327

9/1/21 4:17 PM

328

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York, 1939), 79; Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York, 1962), 168. 2. On 23 December 1862, Confederate president Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation ordering that all black Union troops “captured in arms be at once delivered over to the executive authorities of the respective States to which they belong to be dealt with according to the laws of said States.” On 1 May 1863, the Confederate Congress passed legislation to authorize this practice. Since state laws would have treated the prisoners as armed insurrectionists, such action was equivalent to a death sentence. To discourage the Confederates from carrying out this policy, Lincoln publicly threatened to execute or force into hard labor one captured rebel for every Union soldier murdered or enslaved while in Confederate custody. Although isolated instances of the mistreatment of black prisoners occurred, Lincoln’s threat deterred Confederates from any systematic persecution. Lib., 2 January 1862; New York Daily Tribune, 29 December 1862; OR, ser. 2, 6:163; Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro, 173–78; Cornish, Sable Arm, 160–61, 168–69. 3. Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts turned to the veteran abolitionist George L. Stearns to undertake an enlistment campaign for two regiments of African Americans, the Fiftyfourth and Fifty-fifth Infantry, to represent his state. As part of his strategy to engage prominent blacks as recruiting agents, Stearns traveled to Rochester, New York, in late February 1863 to persuade Douglass to aid in encouraging enlistments into the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. Douglass immediately agreed, published a call to arms in his Monthly, and toured upstate New York to enlist recruits. By mid-April, Douglass had enrolled a company of more than one hundred men, including his sons Charles and Lewis. Gerrit Smith contributed $700 to pay the expenses of raising these men; Douglass bragged to him that “no other company has been raised for less than twice that sum.” By May 1863, as a result of the recruiting agents’ work and of newspaper advertisements for enlistments, more than one thousand blacks, representing every state in the Union as well as Canada, were enrolled in the regiment. Recruiting efforts continued, and Massachusetts had raised a total of three black regiments by the end of the war. Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 6 March 1863, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University; Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 14 April 1863, Norcross Papers, MHiS; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the United States, 1790–1915 (1918; New York, 1968), 44; Luis F. Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment: The History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863–1865 (1894; Boston, 1995), 8–14, 24; Henry Greenleaf Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew: Governor of Massachusetts, 1861–1865 (New York, 1904), 81–84; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:585–86n; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 204–06; idem, Negro in the Civil War, 8–9; Cornish, Sable Arm, 107–10. 4. Samuel Clarke Pomeroy (1816–91) was born in Southampton, Massachusetts, and educated at Amherst College. He became active in the Free Soil party and moved to Kansas in 1854 to fight the establishment of slavery there. Kansas Republicans elected him to two terms in the U.S. Senate (1861–73), where he was best known as an advocate of subsidies for western development. Unsubstantiated charges of bribing state legislators caused his defeat for reelection. Pomeroy then settled in Washington, D.C., where he and Douglass remained friends. Douglass to Samuel C. Pomeroy, 12 November 1874, Samuel C. Pomeroy to Douglass, 14 June 1883, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 761–62, reel 3, frames 731–32, FD Papers, DLC; Daniel Webster Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (Topeka, Kans., 1886), 241, 457, 521, 570; ACAB, 5:60; NCAB, 12:69–70; DAB, 15:54–55. 5. In his third autobiography, Life and Times, Douglass recalls that it was Secretary of State William H. Seward who had previously recommended Douglass to Lincoln. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:282. 6. Under the direction of George Luther Stearns, Douglass recruited African American males for the Fifty-Fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiments. Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue, 28–29. 7. The Union Army implemented a number of racially discriminatory policies that were not completely reversed until the end of the war. When the first black regiments were raised, the War

Y7870-Douglass.indb 328

9/1/21 4:17 PM

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

329

Department solicitor, William Whiting, ruled that black troops should be paid as laborers—not soldiers—under the terms of the Militia Act of 17 July 1862. The measure provided that blacks be compensated at the rate of $10 per month, from which $3 could be deducted for uniforms. White privates, in comparison, received a $13 wage plus a $3.50 clothing allowance per month. Furthermore, black soldiers were denied the $100 federal bounty for volunteers as well as state aid for their dependents. Black soldiers, most white officers, and many sympathetic Northerners of both races petitioned state and federal officials to change such discriminatory practices. The Army Compensation Bill of 1864 partially eradicated these inequities by stipulating that black soldiers who were free before 19 April 1861 receive equal pay to that of whites, retroactive to their admission into the army. The bill also provided for bounty payments of $100 and relief for dependents of black soldiers. Cornish, Sable Arm, 184–95; James M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the War for the Union (New York, 1965), 196–203. 8. Some Union Army commanders intended to use African American troops primarily as laborers to support white combat units. Uniforms and other equipment, consequently, were often of inferior quality. To add insult to injury, African American recruits, unlike their white counterparts, were charged three dollars a month for uniforms. Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue, 40–43, 49; Cornish, Sable Arm, 184–86. 9. Assistant adjutant generals in the Civil War served as aides to adjutant generals, who themselves served as aides to generals. According to a congressional act made on 3 August 1861 to improve military organization during the war, the department of an adjutant general would consist of nineteen assistant adjutant generals divided in four ranks: one colonel, two lieutenant colonels, four majors, and twelve captains. After being promised an officer’s commission while visiting Lincoln and Stanton in Washington, D.C., on 10 August 1863, Douglass immediately disbanded the Monthly, proclaiming in its final issue, on 16 August 1863, “I am going South to assist Adjutant General Thomas, in the organization of colored troops, who shall win for the millions in bondage the inestimable blessings of liberty and country.” Although Douglass technically never received his commission, Charles W. Foster, a recruiter for the War Department, repeatedly urged Douglass to join Thomas in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Because of strict policies and racial prejudice, only about one hundred African Americans were commissioned by the War Department over the course of the Civil War, but Douglass was never among them. C. W. Foster to Douglass, 13, 21 August 1863, reel 1, frames 834–35, 842–43L, FD Papers, DLC; DM, 5:n.p. (August 1863); Louis Le Grand, The Military Hand-Book, and Soldier’s Manual of Information (New York, 1862), 85; Raphael P. Thian, ed., Legislative History of the General Staff of the Army of the United States (Its Organizations, Duties, Pay, and Allowances) from 1775 to 1901 (Washington, D.C., 1901), 75; Cornish, Sable Arm, 214; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 208. 10. Lorenzo Thomas. 11. Created in 1851 as a shelter for invalid and disabled solders, the Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C., expanded its size and function during the Civil War, becoming the capital’s headquarters for the Special Relief Services. In addition to providing food, lodging, shelter, and medical care for soldiers, it assumed administrative responsibilities on behalf of its residents. Whenever possible, President Lincoln went there to visit with the soldiers. Douglass declined an invitation to have tea with Lincoln in the Soldiers’ Home because he was preparing for a public address that evening in Washington, D.C. Charles J. Stillé, History of the United States Sanitary Commission; Being the General Report of Its Work During the War of the Rebellion (Philadelphia, 1866), 291–95; Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 (New York, 1941), 14, 214; Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital: From Its Foundation through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, 2 vols. (New York, 1914–16), 2:337; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:281. 12. Douglass seems to be recalling incidents during his second visit with Abraham Lincoln, on 19 August 1864 at the White House. The previous month, Horace Greeley had met with Confederate agents in informal peace discussions at Niagara Falls. Lincoln had sent his secretary, John Hay, to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 329

9/1/21 4:17 PM

330

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

join Greeley, along with a letter to be presented to the Confederates. This letter offered—as conditions for peace—the complete restoration of the Union and the abandonment of slavery. The discussions quickly collapsed, and Greeley castigated Lincoln in private letters and newspaper editorials. Lincoln apparently showed Douglass a draft of a public statement he had prepared in response to Greeley’s criticisms and asked for Douglass’s advice about whether to publish the letter. The statement would clarify Lincoln’s position on the matters addressed, but Douglass believed people would misread it as indicating that Lincoln was not fully devoted to emancipation. In light of Douglass’s advice, Lincoln decided against publishing the letter. James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican (New York, 2007), 229–30; James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York, 2008), 231–37. 13. Governor of Connecticut from 1858 to 1866, William Alfred Buckingham (1804–75) grew up on a farm in Lebanon, Connecticut. He did not attend college and worked in a wide variety of occupations in his youth. In 1830, Buckingham became a carpet manufacturer in Norwich and later served four terms as the town’s mayor (1849, 1850, 1856, and 1857). A Whig turned Republican, Buckingham supported the Union effort in the Civil War by energetically raising regiments in his state. He declined renomination as governor in 1866, but accepted a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1869. Samuel G. Buckingham, The Life of William A. Buckingham: The War Governor of Connecticut (Springfield, Mass., 1894); Robert Sobel and John Raimo, Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789–1978, 6 vols. (Westport, Conn., 1978), 1:177; ACAB, 1:438–39; NCAB, 10:339–40; DAB, 3:228–29. 14. Douglass attended Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration and subsequent White House reception in Washington, D.C., on 4 March 1865. This was the third and final time that Douglass and Lincoln met. Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 233; Leech, Reveille in Washington, 370; Christopher N. Breiseth, “Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: Another Debate,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 68:9–26 (February 1975). 15. Salmon P. Chase, the recently installed chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, administered the oath of office to Abraham Lincoln at a public ceremony on the East Front of the Capitol on 4 March 1865. New York Times, 5, 6 March 1865. 16. Andrew Johnson. 17. Douglass slightly misquotes portions of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865). Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 8:332–333. 18. Designed as the principal reception hall of the Executive Mansion, the East Room was not finished and decorated until the administration of Andrew Jackson. Mary Todd Lincoln had overseen its refurbishing with new wallpaper and drapes, but the room was sparsely furnished in order to accommodate state events. Lincoln’s body would lie in state in the East Room only weeks after the public reception following his inauguration. Betty Boles Ellison, The True Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (Jefferson, N.C., 2014), 12; Jason Emerson, Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln (Carbondale, Ill., 2012), 76, 108. 19. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Mary Todd Lincoln (1818–82) married the future president of the United States in 1842. During the Civil War, gossip circulated regarding her extravagance and thoughtlessness, and antiadministration newspapers reported on her alleged willingness to accept gifts and then ask her husband for favors for the donors. In 1861, Mrs. Lincoln naively befriended Henry Wickoff, a New York Herald reporter secretly recording the Lincolns’ family life. When the Herald published part of Lincoln’s first annual message to Congress before its delivery, a congressional investigation found Wickoff guilty of procuring the text; Mrs. Lincoln’s reputation was thenceforth stained by the taint of political indiscretion. Charges of treason soon overshadowed all else. With six siblings and nine stepbrothers and stepsisters, Mrs. Lincoln was, like many natives of the border states, the close relative of men fighting in the Confederate army and a comforter of their wives. She also brought their personal needs to her husband, although the president refused to grant substantive favors in the absence of Union loyalty. In addition to general rumors of transmitting in-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 330

9/1/21 4:17 PM

REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

331

formation to the enemy, Mrs. Lincoln was specifically accused of using her half sister, Martha Todd White, to send information to the Confederates. Both the Lincolns, in fact, had refused Mrs. White’s requests for exemption from the requirements on transporting goods across Union lines, and both refused to see her at the Executive Mansion. The White House secretary Noah Brooks firmly defended Mrs. Lincoln’s loyalty. When the Committee on the Conduct of the War proposed an investigation of the rumors, President Lincoln allegedly appeared before it without announcement and gravely stated his certainty that no such relations with the enemy existed. During and after the war, Douglass unswervingly defended Mrs. Lincoln’s reputation. Ruth Painter Randall, Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage (Boston, 1953); Ishbel Ross, The President’s Wife: Mary Todd Lincoln (New York, 1973); Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, eds., Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 2:404–06. 20. Douglass probably refers to an 1855 law passed by the Illinois legislature titled “An act to reclaim persons who have been decoyed or kidnapped and taken away beyond the boundaries of this state.” This repealed an 1827 law allowing the governor of Illinois to hand over fugitives from other states on demand. The 1855 law allowed the governor to restore the freedom of fugitives captured and deported from the state. John C. Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States, 2 vols. (New York, 1958), 2:134, 136–37; Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981), 96–98, 150–55. 21. Ulysses S. Grant. 22. An allusion to the 1864 poem “A Fable for Strategists,” written by Robert Henry Newell (1836–1901), who wrote satirical letters and poems during the Civil War under the pseudonym Orpheus C. Kerr. Lincoln shared his fondness for Kerr’s humor with many visitors to Washington. Orpheus C. Kerr, The Palace Beautiful, and Other Poems (1864; New York, 1865), 130–40; Benjamin P. Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor: An Analysis,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 3:28–47 (1981). 23. George Brinton McClellan (1826–85) was born in Philadelphia and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1846. He had fought in the Mexican War, served on a commission that toured Europe and the Crimea to study European military systems, and worked as an officer of the Illinois Central Railroad before being placed in command of the Department of the Ohio in May 1861. He commanded the Army of the Potomac from July 1861 until November 1862, when an unsuccessful attempt to march on Richmond, coupled with his reluctance to pursue Lee’s army across the Potomac after the Battle of Antietam, led to his replacement by Ambrose E. Burnside. Nominated as the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1864, McClellan was later appointed chief engineer of the New York City Department of Docks (1870–72). He served as governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881. H[amilton] J. Eckenrode and Bryan Conrad, George B. McClellan: The Man Who Saved the Union (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941); Warren W. Hassler, Jr., General George B. McClellan: Shield of the Union (Baton Rouge, La., 1957); McPherson, Tried by War, 79–80, 91, 97; ACAB, 4:79–84; DAB, 11:581–85. 24. Mary Todd Lincoln gave away four of her husband’s canes following his assassination. These canes went to Douglass, Charles Sumner, Henry Highland Garnet, and William Slade, a messenger for Lincoln at the White House. Ross, President’s Wife, 247; Randall, Mary Lincoln, 364.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 331

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY (1886–87) Douglass Diary, Diary File, reel 1, frame 2, FD Papers, DLC. Other text in Mark G. Emerson, “Scholarly Edition of the Grand Tour Travel Diaries of Frederick Douglass and Helen Pitts Douglass” (M.A. thesis, Indiana University, 2003), 32–131.

Frederick Douglass’s first wife, Anna Murray Douglass, suffered an attack of paralysis in the couple’s Cedar Hill home in Washington, D.C., on 9 July 1882. She died there on 4 August. That same year, Douglass had hired Helen Pitts, the eldest daughter of Gideon and Jane Willis Pitts, a prosperous farm couple from Honeoye, New York, as a clerk in his office as the recorder of deeds. Helen had graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1859 and taught freedmen in Virginia during and after the Civil War. In 1880, she moved to Washington and lived in the home of her uncle Hiram Pitts, Douglass’s next-door neighbor. Helen worked as coeditor of a local suffragist periodical, the Alpha, until coming to work for Douglass. Few persons, including the immediate families, suspected the couple’s subsequent courtship. The wedding ceremony was performed by the Presbyterian minister Francis J. Grimké on 24 January 1884 at his home in Washington, D.C. The interracial marriage received considerable coverage in the press, mostly uncomplimentary. The Douglasses honeymooned briefly in Niagara Falls that summer. After being replaced as recorder after the election of Grover Cleveland to the White House, Douglass was able to fulfill what he described in the second edition of his final autobiography as a long-held desire “to make a brief tour through several countries in Europe and especially to revisit England, Ireland, and Scotland and to meet once more the friends I met in those countries more than forty years before.” The Douglasses departed Boston for Europe on 15  September 1886. The couple first visited England, then France, Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, and Greece, returning home to Washington almost eleven months later. While traveling, Douglass kept a diary in which he recorded reunions with old friends from abolitionist days, observations of the many historical sites he visited, and impressions of the social fabric of the nations he toured. He explained the purpose of this journal in a letter from Naples, Italy, to his son Lewis: “I am keeping a diary and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 332

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

333

shall I live to get home be able to talk to you of my journeys.” Later, Douglass reported on these travels in speeches and in the second edition of his Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, but this diary presents his impressions unfiltered by concerns of how an audience would respond to them. In a letter to his old friend Amy Post, Douglass reflected on the significance of this extended tour: “When I consider my starting point in life, it is marvelous that I have accomplished so much—but I feel that it has all come too late in life. I should have travelled this when I was younger, and when my ambition for achievement was more vigorous.” Douglass to Lewis H. Douglass, 11 February 1887, FD Collection, Moorland-Springarn Research Center, Howard University; Douglass to Amy Post, 10 June 1887, Post Papers, University of Rochester; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3: 408–09; Fought, Women, 230–46, 251–60; Francis J. Grimké, “The Second Marriage of Frederick Douglass,” JNH, 19:324–29 (October 1934); Emerson, “Scholarly Edition of the Grand Tour Travel Diaries,” 1–19.

[Wednesday,] 15 September 1886 “Steamer City of Rome”1 We, Helen2 and I, came on board this steamer yesterday and spent the night in state room 92, and sailed on our long desired and long meditated voyage at six and a half o,clk this morning,3 with little wind and a remarkably Smooth Sea, less ruffled than I ever saw the sea before. I had thought to cross the ocean quietly and without being recognized by any body I ever saw before, but this notion was soon dispelled for I was soon approached by Rev Henry Wayland4 son of the late President Wayland5 and by Mr George Bllelock6 a gentleman I knew nearly forty years ago as a Boy. Both Gentlemen greeted Helen and myself cordially and expressed pleasure at having us for fellow passengers. At breakfast we found ourselves opposite to Mr and Mrs Chandler.7 Mr Chandler had heard me speak on the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln in Rochester8 and had not forgotten the impression. Our voyage will thus evidently not be one of solitude. Several letters came on board and were handed to me after our voyage began and we were well on our way to the gates of the Sea, and unfortunately the Pilot left the Ship too Soon to permit of sending a word of answer or a word of fare well to many dear friends to whom it would have

Y7870-Douglass.indb 333

9/1/21 4:17 PM

334

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

been a pleasure to have sent such a word. We have now been on this noble Ship about 8 hours, and no sign of the dreaded trouble of Sea sickness. Had Two or three short talks with Mr Breelock and Mr Wayland. The latter is a remarkable clever talker, and is a man very free from pretenses but I fear is a little biased in his politics by Mugwampism.9 I like him. We have but few passengers and of them there is a large springling of ladies, most of the latter thus far have spent their time on deck in Steamer chairs with Books peacefully closed on their laps, more as ornaments than for use, while the men walk the deck and smoke, smoke and smoke, looking as solemn as if they were on the way to a funeral. We have not been on this Steamer as I have said more than 8 hours, but have already had two fare meals, and have the promise of two more before the day closes. I have not yet found out who the Captain, but like a true Yankee our Helen has made the acquaintance of the pilot and has seen the Captain Monroe.10 Everything between officers and men seems to go on very smoothly. Commands are calmly given and promptly obeyed. In the cabin where we are now are, a young man is persistently boring our ears by playing on an organ that stands at one end of the dining saloon. The passengers towards each other exhibit the usual reserve at this the beginning of the voyage, with air of indifference about the presence of each other. They will share more interest as the days roll on and half of them shall feel the grip of Sea sickness. The City of Rome11 is said to be the largest except the Great eastern in the world. She behaves beautifully in pleasant weather, but it remains for us to see whether she will gain this credit in a storm. [Thursday,] 16 September [1886] A strong head wind—seven sail in sight during the day. Pleasant greeting by Captain Monroe Mr and Mrs Chandler. They the latter had seen and heard me before meeting me here. The English passengers all agreeable and mind their business and not disturbed by our presence. My friend Dr Henry Wayland urges me to address the passengers. I decline for the present but may do so by and bye. We are four hundred and 19 miles from Sandy brook12 at noon to day. The day has been without marked interest. [Friday,] 17 September [1886] The morning opens beautifully on a smooth sea, and a favorable wind, only one sail in sight at nine o.clk am. Our good ship glides along at the rate of 16 nots.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 334

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

335

Thus far both Helen and I have shown ourselves good sailors, neither of us have had to dispense with a meal, but go promptly down at the sound of the gong. [Saturday,] 18 September [1886] The first sensation a solitary whale spotted on our starboard bow, and caused a rush of passengers to see him or her. In the Evening after dinner my friend Mr Henry Wayland brought me prominently to the attention of my fellow passengers by taking a vote of the passengers inviting to deliver an address. I had hoped to escape this infliction, but it easier in such cases to comply than to refuse so I am booked for an address on Monday. [Sunday,] 19 September [1886] This is Sunday, and one of our fire men13 is dead and is to be buried in the sea to day. Association, prejudice make more solemn to be buried in the sea than on land, but nothing else. Monday, 20 September [1886] Have just been on deck and enjoyed the contrast between the rough cloudy rainy weather of yes. with calm and tranquil out look on the sea this morning. We have past through or by a large school of porphose, some of them apparently playing with our powerful ship by diving under its bow, as if she were a fish like themselves. Since coming on board of the City of Rome I have been reading English Traits by Emerison14 and have been glad to find my own views of the civilization of England supported by one so thoughtful and able as the sage of Concord.15 I am to speak to such the passengers as may be disposed or pleased to hear me this Evening if the good weather holds, and I am dreading it. The arrangement to do so, was entirely unsought and even regretted by me. Yet I have found it impossible to say no to an invitation so polite and pressing. I hardly know what I shall manage to say to such an audience, but something I must say when once on my legs. Tuesday, 21 September [1886] The sea rough but the City of Rome wonderfully firm and steady, dashing the heavy billows from her prow in a manner to commend her to all who go down to the sea in ships and do business on the deep. I never felt in any vessel such a perfect sense of safety on the sea. Everybody seems cheerful in the prospect of a speedy termination of the voyage,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 335

9/1/21 4:17 PM

336

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

notwithstanding the resistance of a heavy head wind and rolling billows, some of the latter frequently sending their spray over the forward deck driving passengers form that part of the ship. We have on board a curious and somewhat entertaining old Sea Captain from New Hampshire16 who has been all around the world and is now bound to Calcutta17 who may well be called the “ancient mariner.”18 It seems to be his amusement to show good naturedly how much he knows and other conceited folk how little they know. Something of a bore and yet I like him. He likes a good listener and finds in Helen and myself an audience that suits him well. We are all eyes and ears and no tongues. We hear his stories and observe his impressive gestures with appropriate admiration and wonder, and he perceiving is greatly encouraged to go on with his narratives, which though prolix are not dull. Wednesday, 22 September [1886] At two o clk, or there about the mountain coast of dear old Ireland, to the delight of the expectant passengers myself included came into view. Pleasant as our voyage had been, much as we admired the ship, short as had been our voyage, we were all delighted at the prospect of standing upon the solid old earth. In four or five hours after descrying land we were safely in the capacious Harbour of Queenstown.19 In one hour after our landing here we were off again to the Irish Sea for Liverpool.20 In that hour we had landed our mail. Many of our passengers received London papers21 and some of us received letters from our friends. I received one from a Mr. Rawlins of Wrexham Wales22 introducing me to his son in Liverpool. [Thursday,] 23 September [1886] Arrived at Liverpool. Everything about the Docks23 much the same as forty years ago except forty years older and by reason of smoke darker, but no sign of decay any where, all strong and solid about the Docks, and the people full of life and activity. In the Evening Helen walked out into the street to see and hear the new sights and sounds of the strange city and were deeply interested in the general movement of the immense throng of carriages, omnibuses, carts carriages and people that passed in front of St. Georges Hall24 an imposing structure. The throng seemed made up of working people. They walked as if hurried along by an irresistible pressure. Boys girls men and women, some in plain clothing and some in scarcely any clothing at all bare footed and bareheaded all hurrying

Y7870-Douglass.indb 336

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

337

along to gether in motly procession. Once in a while a family begging, a woman with a babe in arms and two or three small children at her skirts, she singing in mournful heart broken and heart breaking strains. Yet upon the whole the crowd is cheerful, many voices and loud laughter occasionally rise from the multitude. One sees in this moving mass the immense energy there is in this English nation. I was however struck by the number of short men and women among these working people. They afford few of what is called the typical Englishman. [Saturday,] 24 September [1886]25 Attended the international Exhibition.26 Much interested, especially in the display of fine models of Naval architecture and many other mechanical branches, though the display in no sense equals our Centennial Exposition.27 Sunday, 25 [September 1886]28 [A] quiet stroll over the city, when we saw Liverpool in its Sunday cloths and in its Sunday stillness and repose. It was a hush almost complete, more perfect than even a Washington Sunday. There was a bove us a struggle of sun shine and shadow, but the blue sky had the advantage. In the Evening we attended worship at Pembrook Chapel.29 A fair sermon and good hearty singing by a choir of boys led by a man.30 [Friday,] 1 October [1886] We have now spent a week in Liverpool, have visited the Art Galleries,31 the Free Library32 and the Autumn Exhibition of new paintings.33 In the gallery there are two powerful pictures one description of a struggle for life between wolves and the other of a slavehunt by Blood hounds in America. We have also visited that wonder of Naval architecture the Great Eastern, now used as a show and a low class of Theatricals.34 Helen has a history of the great ship up to this date. Two days ago we visited the famous old Town of Chester35 full of historic interest, reaching back to the Roman invasion. A part of the old Roman wall36 still remains to bear witness to the marvelous power of that people. The Cathaderal37 in this place is one of the finest in England, and we spent several hours in viewing its pulpits alters tablets, its carvings, pictures and its imposing architecture. Religion built no such Temples in our day. The pride of rival sects does pretty fair work in this line, but it cannot equal these structures of the past. The imagination is no where addressed to so powerfully addressed

Y7870-Douglass.indb 337

9/1/21 4:17 PM

338

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

by modern structures as in all the appointments of these old structures. It is noticed that the Church of England is fast returning to Romanism.38 A catholic priest was asked if he did not feel resentment at the fact that this grand old Cathedral had gone into hands of the Church of England?39 He said no they are coming back to us as fast as they can, and this impression is becoming quite general. To day we are making ready to go to St. Neots40 to spend a few days there before going to London.41 We leave Liverpool without regret, and yet we have seen much that has interested us. Wednesday, 20 October 1886 Arrived in Paris,42 and rode to the Hotel Britanique,43 Avenue Victoria, Premaere Aroudessmont.44 [Thursday,] 6 January 1887 Dejun We are now in the old City of Dejun.45 The number of the Inhabitants, 53 thousand.46 Met two persons at table a lady and Gentleman who early opened pleasant conversation with us. A little fromage47 caused the opening. I happened to say to Helen I would like the chees and being over heard it was instantly handed me from that we were on sea and talking about the wondrous in improvements in steam navigation, agreeing in every thing a differing in nothing. Friday, 7 January [1887] Arrived in Lyon.48 The weather was dark and rainy. We first called at the Hotel Univers but not being pleased we moved off bag and baggage to the Hotel le Bordeaux and found here excellent accom[moda]tion[.]49 We spent here Saturday, and Sunday, 8th & 9th Jan. On Saturday morning we proceeded first of all to the American Consolate, for the purpose of ascertaining the cemetery in which Henry Wagoner,50 formerly connected with the consulate was interred. Was received at first by Mr. Bryan51 the consul rather coolly, but after a while his manner changed and became warmer, and he allowed us to see his Books but we gained but little from them. In fact we only learned that Mr Wagoner’s salary ceased in 1878. The consul told us that we might out what we wanted by going to the Hospital Dieu52 where he supposed Mr Wagoner was treated till he died. We went there and spent a long time in searching but found nothing to show that Mr W had been in that Hospital. These enquiries occupied Saturday the 8th.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 338

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

339

Sunday, 9 [January 1887] [W]e went[.] Took the carriage and drove to the country in search of cemetaries, supposing we should find from the Books where our friend was laid. We were taken by a mistake to the Hebrew cemetaire,53 and did not stop long. We supposed he could not be laid in a Catholic ground,54 and hence enquired for a Protestant cemitaire and Drove off to one in wh. Both Catholics and Prots were buried,55 but after diligent search here, no trace of this grave was found, the Books did not show that he was interred here at all. Then we betook ourselves to the other side of Lyons. We had been on the East side of the Rhone, and now we betook ourselves to west side of the Soane, the two rivers are on either side of the city.56 Our luck was no better on the one side than on the other. But from the heights of on the west side, had the weather favored us, which it did not we should have an extensive view of the country about Lyons,57 and some say we might have the Alps. Monday, 10 January [1887] Came to Avignon.58 Took lodgings at Hotel Du Luxomborg59 and was made very comfortable. Avignon is one of the oldest, quaintest, crookedest, and queerest places I ever visited. It is a walled city and the walls are in excellent condition.60 It was once the city of the Popes, the there is here an old Palace of the Popes,61 and a church connected with it in which five Popes were consec.62 The Palace is a vast pile more like a castle to be defended by armies, than the residence of a minister of the Prince of Peace.63 In walking through i[t]s massive walled corrodors and galleries, some of them frescoed with saints and angels, its stately towers, its hall of the consistory,64 and peeping into its dungeons,65 its room of inquisition where people were tortured and doomed to death for rejecting the dogmas of the Romish66 faith, I almost hated the name of Church. What a horrible lie that Romish Church has palmed of upon the people of this and other country pretending that its Pope, is the Vice gerant of God,67 the Creator of the Universe, and how strange it is that millions of sane men have believed this stupendous and most arrogt lie. [Tuesday,] 11 January [1887] Still in Avignon. This has been a great day for Helen and myself. We have not only gone through the Palace of the Popes, but we have visited the fort St. Andre68 and threaded our way through one of the best preserved Feudal Castles, now to be found in Europe. Through structures

Y7870-Douglass.indb 339

9/1/21 4:17 PM

340

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

like these and the Popes Palace we see hear and feel more of the past than by any amount of reading. There is a fascination about Avignon and its vicinity, makes me hate to leave though I must do so tomorrow. It was a great place five hundred years ago, and great in its associations now. I shall probably have occasion to speak of it in detail by & bye.69 [Wednesday,] 12 January [1887] [D]eparted Avignon pour Marseilles.70 Stopt two hours at Varenan,71 so the the ruins of the old Amphitheater a magnificent structure,72 saw the remains of an Roman Theatre,73 a long row of stone coffins74 found near the Town while constructing the Railway[.] [R]ode through the crooked narrow streets of the old town, some of them so narrow that one may shake hands or stab his neighbor without crossing over to do either. The guide book told us A. was remarkable for its beautiful women.75 They must been in their houses. They certainly did not appear in the streets. The town seemed the deadest I have seen in France. [Thursday,] 13 January [1887] Arrived in Marseilles last night too dark to get a view of the blue waters of the Mediteranien. We took a room at the grand Hotel Beauvau.76 On the morning of the 14th Took Helen into a small boat and was rowed out to the old Chateau D’If made famous by the story of Monte Christo by Alex. Dumas.77 [Saturday,] 15 January [1887] Took train for Nice.78 Stopt at Hotel West End.79 Nice is a celibrated winter resort for health,80 and is a most delightful place, both for climate and the splendid view of the blue waters of the Mediteranian. Spent but one day here and pushed on through Mentone81 and several other interesting towns to Genova. Took board for three days, and this brought us to Tuesday, 18th. [Tuesday,] 18 January [1887] Came to the old Town of Pisa.82 Saw the Leaning Tour,83 the Cathedral,84 the chandeler suspended in it, and of which it is said that Gallileo obtained his idea of the motion of the Earth.85 Saw also the Baptistry86 remarkable for its architectural proportion and its wonderful acoustic properties. The effect of this reverberating quality of the place is almost startling and yet very pleasing.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 340

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

341

[Wednesday,] 19 January [1887] [T]he day of days in our tour, for it brought us to Rome.87 We are stopping at the Hotel Du Sud,88 a very comfortable Hotel. It is night and we must curb our curiosity till morning. The ride from Pisa to Rome, is for the most part in sight of the Meditarianion on the one hand and snow capped mountains on the other and yet men were plowing green fields on either side of the road and women were at work in the fields also. All the plowing was done by oxen and they of a very long horned breed. Olive and pine trees, the latter called umbrella pines because of their shape,89 made a pleasing feature of the Landscape. [Thursday,] 20 January [1887] This day has been rich in accomplishment. It was our first morning in the Eternal City90 and had for us an interest which no words at my command can fitly describe. I stood where until recently I never expected to stand, under the Dome of St. Peters, the largest Cathedral in the world,91 and around which clusters a larger interest perhaps than any other so called Christian edifice. In looking at its splender, one could not help being deeply impressed by its gorgeousness and perfection despite of its utter contradiction to the life and lessons of Jesus. He was meek and lowly, but here was little else than pride and pomp. It is well for the world that the age that could rear this wonderful building so perfect in architectural grace has past. Yet in view of what it speaks of architectural skill of man and of his possibilities we may rejoice that this marvelous building was erected and that it will long stand to please the eye of man[.] [Friday,] 21 January [1887] Another bright day, cool and bracing, and the blue sky answered well sterreotyped discriptions. The time was favorable for viewing the vast assemblage of shattered ruins spread out before us in the great Roman Forum, the Forum of Tragen92 and other features of the ancient greatness of Rome. We did not view these alone. Men and women were there perhaps from each quarter of the globe, seated or standing in the sunlight with pencils, pens and note books in their hands noting the fallen columns, broken tablets, over which skillful artificers thought and wrought long before the Babe of Bethlehem was born.93 I have seen nothing more impressive and solemn, nothing that tells so eloquently the story that all who live must die and at last, not only for man, but for all his best endeavors it is dust to dust ashes to ashes.94 Marble, granite in whatever vastness shape

Y7870-Douglass.indb 341

9/1/21 4:17 PM

342

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

hardness or position must yield to the soft touch of time. Yet how grandly and persistently have these old tablets marble blocks resisted, how nobly have they endured to bear testimony to the energy, the ambition and the greatness of the people who two thousand years[.] Sunday, 23 January [1887] Visited a second time the Pincian hill95 and in the bright sunshine of that day took another view of the great city and listened to its thousand bells calling its people to worship. The scenes and sounds of that hour were full of interest and suggestive of thought, carrying the mind back over vast periods of history, and the effect was heightened in the afternoon of that day when we stood upon the Capitolene hill96 and surveyed the stupendous Colossaiem97 in the distance and the vast ruins of this famous hill itself over which have rolled the distructive forces of two thousand years. Monday, 24 [January 1887] We were by special favor to see some of the interior treasures of St. Peters. This privilege was secured to us by Mrs E. Q. Putman,98 and through the friendship for her of an imenent priest. These treasures consisted of costly vestments ormented with gold, silver, rich laces, and all manner of precious stones worn by Popes Cardinals Bishops on great occasions. Then there were gold and silver crosses richly jeweled mitres99 and other brilliant things with which papacy well know how to dazzle the eyes of the credulous and superstitious. The sight of these these things only increased my sense of the hollowness of the vast structure of the Romish Church and my conviction that Science must in the end do for that church what time has done for the vast structures of kingly pride and power, which is broken and mouldering all over Rome. From the rooms in which we saw these costly vestments we are conducted to a room on the opposite side of the great church, in which we were shown two of the veretable Thorns which pierced the brow of Jesus on the day of his crucifixion,100 a casket containing the head of St  Luke,101 the shin bones of Lazerus, the brother of Mary and Martha,102 and a lock of the hair of the Virgin Mother of Jesus.103 These were shown us by a gowned Priest who seemed to believe what he said. He also showed us a piece of the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. In passing about the grand Cathedral we saw sundry celebrations of Mass going on men and women bowing and crossing themselves, and some kissing the toe of the statue of St. Peter,104 which toe has already been nearly kissed away.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 342

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

343

Tuesday, 25 [January 1887] Went to the Vatican[.] Saw among other great pictures a modern one proclaiming the new dogma of the emaculate conception of the Virgin, the Mother of Jesus.105 The announcement of this fresh tax upon the credulity of the faithful in this picture is well calculated to impress favorably the devout Catholic[.] The face of Pope Pius106 was given by the artist a celestial expression surpassing any modern attempts in that direction I have seen. Some of the faces of the Cardinals seemed to be a little doubtful and had been brought to consent to the new dogma under external pressure rather than internal conviction.107 After seeing the wonders of the Vatican went to lunch with the Putnams, at their Hotel. Palazzor Moroni 165 Borgo, Vecchio,108 Roma. We spent here the remainder of the day and spent it very pleasantly. The elder Mrs Putnam, was formerly Miss Caroline Remond,109 sister to the late Charles Lenox Remond.110 Her son Edmund111 married a Miss Elleson of Cheltenham England,112 a very pleasant lady who is now the Mistress of the house. We met here she that I knew forty years and more ago as Miss Sarah Remond,113 and also Maricha Remond.114 A daughter of the late Re John Sargent115 is boarding with the Putnams. It was very delightful to meet this charming circle of Massachusetts people away off here in the City of Rome. Like myself the Remond sisters with exception of Caroline have grown quite old, but in all of them I saw much of the fire of their eloquent Brother Charles. [Wednesday,] 26 January [1887] Called to see Miss Edmonia Lewis116 who had loaned Helen some Books, found her in a large building, near the very top in a very pleasant room with a commanding view. No. 4 Via Venti Settembre,117 Roma. Here she lives, and here she plies her fingers in her art as a sculpture. She seems very cheerful and happy, and successful. She made us obliged to her for kind offers to serve us in any way she could, and certainly seems able to serve us in many ways. She has resided in Rome twenty years and constantly speaking Italian has some what impared her English. Thursday, 27 January [1887] We started for Naples118 and after a pleasant ride of six hours, beginning with rain and ending with sunshine, with the snow clad Appenines,119 delighting our eyes as we rode along with their changing forms, and lofty heights, and the valley through which we passed out spread with well tilled fields, spotted here and there with heads of sheep, and occasional

Y7870-Douglass.indb 343

9/1/21 4:17 PM

344

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

groups of women, in picturesque head gear, hard at work with spud120 and hoe, among the vines and gardens, to increase the charm of the journey, we arrived at Naples. Before entering the city we were startled by a wonderous spectacle one which almost paid us for our voyage across the Sea. It was a vast volume of vapear and smoke converted by brilliant sunbeams into snowy whiteness and grandly floating off over the blue Mediteranian, from the far famed Vessuvious mountain.121 The sight awed and held us in almost breathless interest, and became more imposing and impressive the longer we beheld it. [Friday,] 28 January [1887] Our excursion to day took us to the Bourbon Palace and its beautiful grounds on Capo di Montin,122 a splendid place giving us a splended view of the Bay, Vesuvius, Serento, Capri,123 and the surrounding country. The Palace is a plain stately building without, but very richly furnished and abounds with numerous works of Art, paintings and statuary.124 A picture of the assassination of Julius Ceaser125 was very striking, and one of Michel Angelo, kissing the hand of his dead friend, Vitoria Colonna,126 fixed attention. Besides Helen and myself our party was composed of Miss Gates,127 Miss Lewis,128 Mr and Mrs Hipwell. Miss Gates is an artist and philanthropest, has done a great deal for the colored people. [Saturday,] 29 January [1887] Spent the fore noon in writing. Afternoon went with Helen and Mrs Davis129 of Ind. An amiable lady, to San Martino, a convent of the Capuchin Monks, the largest convent of the kind of the world.130 It is however no longer a living convent. It has been taken possession of by the Government,131 and its fine halls are now a museum full of paintings and many other interesting works of Art.132 The church in this old convent is one of the most costly in Europe. I have seen so much of these religious paintings, that I was less interested in what I found here than in the fine view of the city and harbor. Sunday, 30 [January 1887] Heard a strange sermon at the U. P. Church,133 on the greatness of man. Monday, 31 January [1887] Went to musium134 with Miss Lewis the friend of Miss Gates. A birds eye view of pictures, statuary and many objects of interest, taken from

Y7870-Douglass.indb 344

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

345

the ruins of Pompie and Herculanium.135 The perfection of some of these in form color and utility was remarkable considering their antiquity. In some respects they transcended modern art. The musiem is something to be seen not once but many times in order to comprehend its many attractions[.] Tuesday, 1 February [1887] I contented myself in walking alone a long the Villa Nationale,136 looking at the fishermen on the Bay and the fast horses, which dashed by. In the Evening lectured on John B.137 to a fine audience in the U. P. Ch. presided over by the Rev Mr Evering.138 Wednesday, 2 February [1887] In company with a large and pleasant party headed by Rev J. C. Fletcher.139 We went to Pozzuoli, the Puteoli of the Bible,140 and dined on the Shore of the river Styx.141 The whole excursion was deeply interesting. The ground over which we went was full of Roman remains and the evidence of the wealth and genus of that enterprising and war like people. The landing place of Paul,142 the tomb of Vergil,143 the home of Cicero where Brutus parted with Portia,144 the ruins of Temples145 were shown us with many other objects. It was a day long to be remembered. That which interested me most was the fact that I was looking upon the country seen eighteen hundred years ago by the Prisoner apostle on his way to Rome to answer for his religion.146 It somehow gave me a more vivid impression of the heroism of the man as I looked upon the grand ruins of the religion against which Paul dared to preach. These heathen Temples represent a religion as sincerely believed in as men now believe in the Christian religion, and Paul was an infidel147 to this heathen religion as much as Robert Ingorsol148 is now to the Christian religion. Thursday, 3 [February] 1887 Was a day spent in comparative quiet. We need to rest from the labors of the previous day. Friday, 4 January [1887]149 Another brimful day. In company with Mr Fletcher who knows this region about the Bay of Naples by heart. We went to Pompeii150 distroyed in the year 79, by the ashes and lava of Vesuvius. I was told in Rome that there was little to see in Naples, but it was almost worth the voyage a cross the Atlantic to see the part of Pompeii already unearthed and to think of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 345

9/1/21 4:17 PM

346

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

the two thirds of it still under ground. All that has been said and written of this buried city is exceeded by the city itself. It speaks to us of the age and body of ancient times with a power and vividness which holds us in breathless and thoughtful attention. These Pompians, some of whose forms are exhibited in the musiem151 were wealthy and powerful slave holders, and surrounded themselves with luxuries which surpass in some respects those of modern civilization. The magnificence of their dwellings, the splendor of their temples, the extent of their amphitheatres, the costliness of their decorations in paintings and sculpture, the arrangement of their baths, cold and warm, tell of vast wealth, marvelous thought and skill.152 The vanity of all efforts in this line is enforced with tremendous emphasis as we walk amid these vast ruins and feel that even what we see are only one third of what lie still buried under the ashes of the still smoking mountain we see in the distance. Sunday, 6 February [1887] Attended U. P. Church in the morning. Heard a sermon on Balaam153 by Rev. Mr. Irving,154 rather a memorable discourse. Dined with Mr. Gutheridge155 an English Gentleman. In the Evening listened to Mr Jones156 who preached in Italian at the Methodist Church.157 I was called upon for a few words at the close, which were interpreted by Mr Jones. I congratulated the congregation that they had now the Liberty to worship outside the Romish Church, and said a few words of human Brotherhood. Monday, 7 February [1887] We go to day to Amalfi158 in company with Mr and Mrs Murry159 from Sidney Australia. The ride is said to be one of the most delightful of any of this surpassingly charming Bay of Naples. The Rev J. C. Fletcher is to accompany us. Tuesday, 8 [February 1887] We have found the ride to Amalfi more delightful and more impressive than any description of it written or spoken. The road must have taxed engineering skills to the utmost. They who built it had to fight against sea and land, against heights and depths above and below, and solid rocks in front. The road is an ingineering triumph, and affords one of the finest rides in the world.160 The towns along the road side, with their terraced gardens of lemons and oranges seem rivitted to the bold over hanging rocks to keep them tumbling headlong into the sea. Some of the curves

Y7870-Douglass.indb 346

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

347

in the road in order to over come the steeps and depths take the form of a horse shoe the heels of which come close to each other and making the impression that we were travelling in a circle. The view of the sea from the road is a constant delight to the eye. Little and large vessels dot the whole coast with their white sails & oppose their attractions to the many pleasing sights that invite attention to the mountains along whose base we ride. After reach Amalfi. We had the greatest treat of all, ride upon Donkees, to the Capuchin Convent,161 once the home of the Capuchin Monks. Wednesday, 9 February [1887] We went yesterday to far famed Pestum,162 passing through Selerno,163 a beautifully situated town on the coast, the fine white buildings of which were seen long before we reached it on our way from Amalfi. At Paestum we saw the celebrated Temple of Neptune164 built seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, and here it stands to day, in stately and solemn grandeur, impressive by its loneliness as well as by its enduring perfections. Twenty five hundred years have shaken their hoary locks over its majestic form, and sunshine and storm have honey combed its massive walls and pillars, yet there it stands and is likely to stand a thousand years hence. It has seen Rome rise decline and fall, and a new religion wax & wane, Empires grow strong and crumble, and may see changes immense and innumberable. There is something truly solemn in contemplating this old Temple. To day we are writing letters to America,165 a heavy rain storm darkens the sky of Naples and makes us glad to remain under cover. Spent the Evening at Mr J. C. Fletchers. Thursday, 10 February [1887] [T]he rain continues. Tres Mauvais temp166 and we are still in the house. Friday, 11 February [1887] Wrote letter to Charley,167 Ada,168 and Lewis,169 and told them to direct letters To Care of Mr Edmund Q Putnam: Palazza Moroni: 165 Borgo, Vicchio: Roma. Spent the Evening with Mrs Fletcher170 and her guest Mrs Davis. We decided to day to extend our visit to Egypt and Greece, and if all is well we shall go on board the largest steamer (the Ormuz)171 afloat and shall steam away over the blue waters of the Mediteranian to the Land of the Pharaochs.172 The thought of this trip to Egypt and Greece

Y7870-Douglass.indb 347

9/1/21 4:17 PM

348

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

will probably keep me awake to night. This tour is entirely outside of my calculation when leaving home, but it will be some thing to contemplate when it is done. It is no small thing to see the land of joseph and his brethren,173 and from which Moses led the Children of Abraham out of the house of Bondage.174 Saturday, 12 February [1887] To conseir forty Franks,175 and she refunded twenty franks. [Sunday,] 13 February [1887] On board the steam ship Ormuz, bound for Egypt. This morning at eight o.clock Helen called me to the Bullseye,176 to catch my first view of Strumboli,177 a volcanic mountain conical shaped, abruptly from the sea. There were white clouds about its base, but the morning light rested upon its summit, and made it beautiful. Soon after this there loomed in the distance the mountainous shores of Sicisily, and those of Southern Italy, Messena on the one hand and Corigio on the other, and the straites between them in front of us.178 It was a deeply interesting spectacle, and the morning was well fitted to heighten the effect. I could but congratulate myself, that born as I was a slave marked for a life under the lash in the corn feild that was abroad and free and privileged to see these distant lands so full of historical interest and which those of the most highly favored by fortune are permitted to visit. I find myself much at ease on this steamer. I am known to passengers and officers and all a like, seem to wish to make my voyage pleasant to me. It is now blowing pretty hard and our good ship is tumbling about on the sea, in a manner which makes it hard to write. We did not get a glimpse as we hoped in passing Siscily, of far famed Etna.179 We were told that it was hidden by the clouds. We hope for better luck on our return. Monday, 14 February [1887] If right in my estimate of the length of time I have been in the world, I am now 70 years old.180 Aside from a cold and a little hint of Sea sickness, I am quite well strong and cheerful. This is a trying day for Helen and many other ladies on Board. The wind is strong and the waves run high. Few seem ready for dinner. My case is better than most, for I am able to go at the sound of the Bell. I am a little surprised at the wild behavior of the Mediteranian. I expected better things of her. To night I saw the light on the Island of Creet.181 I suppose there was no light there when Paul sailed

Y7870-Douglass.indb 348

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

349

a long its coast.182 It is strange that starting life where I did, and old as I am that I shd. be plowing this classic sea and on my way to the land of Moses and the Pharoahs, where Joseph and his brothers went for corn and Jos. was treacherously sold by his brothers into slavery. Tuesday, 15 February [1887] The wind has fallen and the sea has gone down[.] Helen is well on her feet again. We hope to be in port Said183 tomorrow morning. Our morning which began bright is now over cast with heavy clouds, and the Baromitre is going down. Many are writing home this morning to be mailed I suppose at Port Said, as most of our Passengers are bound to Australia. Not withstanding English reserve I am not at a loss for all the company I want. I answer reserve with reserve, and approaches with approach. My friends are one of the ship owners Mr Anderson,184 and Mr W. G. and Mrs. Murry, real hearty and sensible people.185 Miss Borden from Fall rivers186 is on board and is going up the Nile. She is a great traveller and is very agreeable. Five months ago this morning on the deck of the City of Rome Helen and I bed fare well to the shores of America, but with expectation of finding our way to Egypt and I dare not now say how much farther South and East we shall go before we turn our faces homeward—such is life! Wendnesday, 16 February 1887 Arrived at Port Said: The queerest of queer places. The enterance to the Suez Canal.187 All nations are here represented, a place to study Ethonology.188 Our ship is just now coming to the wharf, forty or fifty small boats have already surrounded the ship and their inmates are clamouring like wild fowl of every possible note to the passengers to buy their oranges, lemons figs and other fruits. Soon several Scows189 loaded with coal to the waters edge to coal our ship for her further voyage. They are soon boarded by a perfect swarm of Arab laborers, frocked, hooded, or fezed190 barefooted and bare legged to the knee, to bring in baskets on their heads the coal on ship board. Heavens! What a wild clamour, what a confusion of tongues, all going at once and each endeavoring to drown the voice of the other, but the work goes bravely on, and one is astonished at the strength cheerfulness and endurance of these Sable children of the desert. I saw among them several genuine Negroes, and they seemed not a whit behind their fellow workmen either in noise or physical ability. When our coal was in we moved on silently, down the canal towards Ismalia.191 But through what a barren and desolate land do we thread our way? Not a

Y7870-Douglass.indb 349

9/1/21 4:17 PM

350

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

blade of grass, not a tree, not a single dwelling, no sign of human or animal life, except a distant row of Pelicans looking on the plain like a line of foam on the shore of a Sea. On, on we go slowly and noiselessly on a narrow stream of pure blue water, cut through the wide waste of sand, whose limits lie far beyond the range of vision. Night comes: and we anchor till morning since we are not permitted for reasons of safety to proceed in darkness. The stillness of the day is continued in the night and much more impressive by the darkness that has fallen upon the desert. Morning came morning came warm and bright, and we proceed on our way. Our steamer is followed for miles by a little boy screaming for Bacheese.192 No sign is given as to where he came from or where he will go. It looks as if he had risen out of the sand. The passengers through him bread and oranges. He pockets them in his scanty clothing and runs on as if nothing had been given him. The amazing thing was that he never was satisfied with his gains nor tired of his running. Thursday, 17 February [1887] Ismalia We reached this place about 12 miday, too late for the train to Cairo,193 and must remain here till tomorrow. We were taken a shore from the Ormuz by a small steamer, and have taken lodging for the night at the Hotel Des Bains de Mer,194 a small, but good food at three dollars per day. I hardly think we can see in any part of Egypt nay thing more Egyptian in the manners, customs and appearances of the people than we see here. We saw to day a caravan of Camels bearing their burden over the sand. It vindicated the truth of many pictures of this side of Eastern life. We saw several veiled women195 bearing jars of water on their heads just as women probably did in the days of Abraham.196 The market house here is quite worth seeing, even though we shall see larger ones of the same kind when we shall reach Cairo. Ismalia is a new town sprung up on the prospect open by the Suez Canal. The conditions for growth is not favorable. I saw a greek patriarch walking a flowing robe here to day wearing a peculiar cap.197 I find it hard to look with patience upon people who thus parade their religion in their clothes, and who evidently wish to exact homage on account of such pretentions. Friday, 18 February [1887] We quitted Ismalia to day at 12 o.clk for Cairo, and a six hour run brought to our destination. This ride will not soon be forgotten. It was through the Bible famous land of Goshen,198 for the most part a land of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 350

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

351

unequalled fertility of outspread fields of green vegetation and of flourishing and picturesque palms. Here we saw the same kind of a plow used two thousand years ago,199 for the people here like the laws of the Medes and Persians, change not.200 Everything we see reminds us of the days of Moses. I do not know of what color and features the ancient Egyptians were, but the great mass of the people I have yet seen would in America be classed with Mulattoes and Negroes. This would not be a scientific discription, but an American description. I can easily see why the Mohomitan religion201 commends itself to these people, for it does not make color the criterion of fellowship, as some of our so called Christian Nations do.202 All colors are welcomed to the faith of the Prophet. I am stopping at the New Hotel203 so called. Pretentious on the outside, expensive, but not well kept. I got my first glimps of a pyramid to day as we approached Cairo by the train. It was a little disappointing, but I will wait for a nearer view. On our arrival in Cairo, we were met in the street by a grand Holiday [(] Friday is the Mahomites Sunday [)]204 procession, which block the street so completely that we were unable to go on for nearly the half of one hour. Our patience however was rewarded by seeing the Khedeive,205 and having from him a gracious bow, and what is better to see the struggling, jostling noisy and eager mass of his turbined subjects,206 pushing there way between carts, carriages, donkeys and carriages at risk of life and limb. We could not have a better chance of seeing an Egyptian crowd. Though noisy and without form, utter chaotic, it was good natured, each one took the push of his neighbor without offense. The officer that endeavored to clear the way for the Khedeive used a whip instead of Sword or Bayonet. The sound of the whip upon some of the long skirts was sharp and loud, but no body was hurt. Saturday, 19 February [1887] Called upon Mr Cardwell,207 the American Consul General. Was very courteously received by him. Visited two Mosques[.] We were not allowed to enter without putting sandals so that infidel shoes shd not touch their sacred courts.208 We saw several washing their feet209 and afterward kneeling and kissing or touching the floor with their foreheads.210 In one respect these Mosques are to be commended. They have no images or pictures of Saints or God, make no effort to personify Deity.211 Visited the tombs of the Mamelukes,212 and on our way saw various forms of squaler, desease and deformity, all manner of importunate beggary.213 It was truly pitiful to see a people thus groveling in filth and utter wretchedness. We also visited the Bazars,214 where all manner of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 351

9/1/21 4:17 PM

352

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

fabrics are manufactured and sold. Here men were smoking, their long pipes drawing the smoke through water, and selling or rather offering their wares for sale.215 The most painful feature met with in the streets are the hooded and veiled women.216 It is sad to think of that one half of the human family should be thus cramped, kept in ignorance and degraded, having no existence except that of ministering to the pride and lusts of men who own them as slaves are owned,217 and worst is they seem to like to have it so. Sunday, 20 February [1887] Attended and spoke a few words to the Sunday school of the U.P. Church mission.218 It was good to see in Egypt about two hundred of these people assembled to received instruction from Mr and Mrs Harvey, both Americans[.]219 Egypt that gave knowledge to western Europe two thousand years ago, was now sitting at the feet of the west, and receiving instruction from a part of the Western world then unknown! From the heights of her Cidatel220 we see the Libyan hills and the Cheop Pyramids. The view is very imposing. Monday, 21 February [1887] Went to the house of Dr Grant[.]221 [S]aw his museum of Egyptian curiosities. Called on the daughters of Arch Bishop Whately222 who have been here twenty five years teaching school: Excellent women doing excellent work. Tuesday, 22 [February 1887] In company with Mr and Mrs Shankland went to Gizeh223 and climed to the top of Cheops, the highest Pyramid in the Valley of the Nile. Its height is four hundred and seventy feet.224 The ascent is both difficult and dangerous and I would not undertake it again for any consideration. Wednesday, 23 February [1887] Called With Miss Conner on several Egyptian families in the morning and in the afternoon went to Hileopolis225 and saw the famous Ostritch farm,226 and the beautiful obolisque of red granite227 the only visible remains of the once great city of On.228 Thursday, 24 [February 1887] Went the Musium in Cairo, the largest and best assemblage of Egyptian antiquities now extant.229 The Room of the Mummies230 is startling

Y7870-Douglass.indb 352

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

353

when we think we are looking at people who lived and moved in this Valley three thousand years ago. In the Evening we took supper with Mr. & Mrs Harvey Missionaries. After ward prayer meeting Friday, 25 February [1887] Wrote during the fore noon[.] [S]ent one letter to Mrs Crofts231 and one to Rosetta.232 In the afternoon went to see the Howling Dervishers at worship,233 the Coptic Church234 and the Jewish Scynagague,235 and then took a ride on the Shubra Road.236 There was much to remind in the worship of the Howling Dervishers of the Colored Methodist Campmeeting,237 in the South. There were many spectators present, and the worshippers got a good bit of money by their queer performance,238 which by the did not seem insincere. They evidently thought their worship well pleasing to their God. One man spun around like a top forty or fifty times without stopping. I though he would certainly fall to the floor, but he did not but after resting a few minutes proceeded with his whirling till the close of the meeting.239 Another man worked himself up to a perfect frenzy, jumping up & down and at last fell to the floor rigid as one dead.240 During all the worship their beating on large Tamboreens, blowing on a reed instrument, a kind of chant, and momentary interjections of recitations from the Koran.241 The whole performance was sad to behold, sad to think that rational being could be made to believe that such physical contortions could be pleasing to God or secure his favour. Yet how much better is the form of worship adopted by many other denominations, and is it not strange that men should imagine to secure Divine favor by telling God how good & great he is, and how much they love and adore him. God is glorified not by such worship, but by a spirit of obedience to the laws of our being, as established by the Almighty and written in the very constitution of things. Burnt offerings incantations and muscular action, silence reason and degrade manhood. Saturday, 26 February [1887] Went this morning to Mohameden College242 where twelve thousand pupils studying the Coron and preparing to teache its doctrines to the benighted sons of men. I saw about two thousand of them in the court and college building reading their morning lesson. They wore the peculiar dress and Turban243 of the Mahomedan and presented a striking spectacle. If sincerity is any proof of the truth of their creed, they certainly give that proof—but alas! Sincerity is no proof. The most revolting imposture has been defended by equal earnestness and sincerity.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 353

9/1/21 4:17 PM

354

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

The followers of the prophet can pray as loudly and point to as many miracles as the Christian can, they even exceed the Christian in religious attention to the cerimony. We also went to see the Mohamden Bible house,244 where you may see the Coran in all languages. It is a great sight. Two hundred millions of people are said to receive this Sacred Book, the Coran. Sunday, 27 February [1887] Attended a Presbyteran Service conducted in Arabec in the morning, did some promenading in the afternoon[.] Wrote to Charley245 and went to see a great tree called the Banian Tree.246 The peculiarity of this tree is that its branches extend to the ground, take root and spread indefinitely. Monday, 28 February [1887] We rode away over a delightful Road on Donkeys the Ghezireh Palace, and gardens, and grotto.247 It well repaid the trouble. Though for my part the ride on Donkeys among multitudes of people in oriental costume and crowds of camils and Donkeys making a striking of Egyptian life was more interesting than Palace garden or grotto. Tuesday, 1 March 1887 This has been one of the most interesting days we have spent in Egypt. This morning we set out at half past seven on a journey of sixteen miles, three to the Railway Station,248 for Bedrachien and thence six miles on the backs of Donkeys to the site of ancient Memphis249 and the Necropolis of Sakkara.250 The Donkey ride was a hard one, but the results were very satisfactory. We first came to the site of Memphis and there we saw a piece of sculpture which suppose has no equal in the world, a statue of Ramses forty two feet in height,251 and here there fragments of broken architecture and sculpture. But the chief place of interest was several miles away. It was the Necropolis of Sakkara with its pyramids and tombs. The tombs are truly architectural wonders. Wednesday, 2 March [1887] Went to parade & sham battle by British troops stationed in Cairo[.]252 The people of Cairo were not attracted to see the fine show. They are evidently not over pleased with the presence and power of British Soldiers, though in truth, they are probably much better off with them than they would be without them.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 354

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

355

Thursday, 3 March [1887] Went to look at Dahabiyeh253 in company with Miss Agg, and Miss Richardson. We are to go with them in it on an Eight days trip up the Nile. In the afternoon walked with Helen through Bazar. [Friday,] 11 March [1887] Have just returned from a five days trip up the Nile as far as Beni Hassen.254 While there were few points of special interest reached during the trip, the excursion upon the whole owing to the general character and history of the country the peculiar character of the people met with along the shores of the great river, the strange appearance of the towns, the varied scene presented by the barren and desolate sand mountains, assuming all sorts of shapes sometimes resembling vast fortifications and at other reminding us of enormous animals, was one of the interesting and delightful made during my tour abroad. It is not strange that people of Egypt almost deify the Nile.255 Without it there country would become a barren waste. The Nile feeds clothes and shelters them, from it they get water to drink, water to bath, to wash their cloths, from it they get their fish, the mud to build their houses, and the fertilizer to repair the waste of the soil in production. It is to them the source of life and whatever of health and prosperity for which its people have to be thankful. It is great highway over which their products find their way to market, and its bosom night and day is covered with curiously rigged vessels, with wing shaped sails going to and from Cairo. Our trip was made upon a Dahhabezez,256 christened by Miss Richardson and Miss Agg as the Meni.257 Monday, 14 March [1887] Arrived at Alexandria[.]258 Stopt Hotel Bonnard.259 Tuesday, 15 March [1887] Called upon Mr Ewing260 Missionary also upon Judge J. B. Kinsman,261 took a pleasant ride with him in company with Judge Brinkhouse[.]262 [A]fterward lunched with them. Saw Pompeys Pillar,263 and the site of the Alexandrian Library[.]264 Wednesday, 16 March [1887] Took passage on Board the Egyptian Steamer Sanchie for Athens.265 The weather beautiful, the passengers pleasant and we hope for

Y7870-Douglass.indb 355

9/1/21 4:17 PM

356

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

a prosperous voyage. The thought of soon treading the classic shores of Greece is very exhilarating. Saturday, 19 March [1887] Have now been Athens a part of two days. Spent the first afternoon at the Acropolis,266 saw the city from its heights, saw the great Parthenon,267 theatre of Dionysus,268 its reputed to hold thirty thousand, the Adlium269 said to have held six thousand, the Erechtheium,270 the Propylaea.271 There was point out to us from the Acropolis the place of the imprison of Socratees.272 On our way we passed the Temple of Jupiter,273 of which there is now Standing only 15 Corinthian Pillars, looking beautiful even in their ruin. Saturday, [19] March [1887] We have been treated to day to one of the finest views we ever got of any country in the same length of time. We ascended by a zizag path to the top of Lycabettus 919 feet above the level of the sea.274 I could look down upon the famous city and its surroundings, and note there chief features of interest from the school of Plato275 to the waters Salamis.276 It was a scene never to be forgotten. The Plains of Attica277 were spread out at our feet, over the mountain, we could almost see the fields of Marathon,278 off toward the sea we could see dimly the mountains of Sparta.279 In the city of Athens, solemn and grand with its many pillars, stood out the form of the Temple of Thesious280 one of the most perfect and striking of all the fallen architectural ruins left to tell us the wealth pride ambition and power of the ancient people of this famous city. Thursday, 24 March [1887] Tomorrow, we shall leave this classic city for Italy. Stopping again for a brief period at Naples, and thence to Rome. To day I took my last look at the Acropolis, and stood for the first time on Areopogus,281 and heard read Pauls famous address to the Athenians 18 hundred years ago.282 I tried to imagine the State of mind incited[.] Monday, 28 March [1887] A rough voyage of three days and nights brought safely to Naples where we now are. Here we have received tidings of the serious illness of Mrs Gidion Pitts, my wife’s Mother,283 which may lead my wife to give up the remaining part of her European Tour. She today Telegraphed her sister284 the enquiry “Shall I come?[”]

Y7870-Douglass.indb 356

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

357

Tuesday, 29 March [1887] We are awaiting the answer with much anxiety. Wednesday, 30 [March 1887] The answer has come and the news is favorable. Thursday, 31 [March 1887] Visit Pagani285 a town about twenty miles from Naples, and spend the day with Mr and Mrs Taccillo,286 at their Villa situated on the mountain side 800 feet above the level of the Sea from which is a fine view of Vesuvius and the Appenines the high points of which are now covered with snow. Friday, 1 April [1887] Went to Naples. Spend the Evening with Mr and Mrs Fletcher and Mrs Davis. Friday, 15 April [1887] We have now been in Rome (a second time) one week[.] [H]ave witnessed the Easter ceremonies at St. Petro,287 abounding in excellent music, much kneeling, changing of vestments, much posturing, making signs of the cross, and what seemed to my eyes more pantomime, but which to the worshippers I must try to believe was full of devotion. To day a great surprise came to me. I received a call at the Hotel De la Poste288 where I am stopping from a lady of very fine appearance, who introduced herself as Mrs John Biddulph Martin,289 of 17 Hyde Park Gate S. W. She frankly, and I though some what proudly told me that she was formerly Mrs Victoria Woodhull.290 I am not sure that I quite concealed my surprise, but a train of events flashed upon me, the impression of which was difficult to drive from my face and manner. I however soon began to think, what do I know of this lady, that I should think her otherwise than merely holding strange, and erroneous opinions. I do not know that she is not in her life as pure as she seems to be. I treated her politely and respectfully, and she departed apparently not displeased with her call. [Monday,] 18 April [1887] We leave the Hotel De la Poste to Day, and go Mrs Putnam: Palazza Moroni, 165. Borgo Vecchio. Among the interesting calls made upon us during our stay at this Hotel, one of the most interesting was that of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 357

9/1/21 4:17 PM

358

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

Mr Wm. H Hereford, of Manchester England.291 We met yesterday at the U.P. Church292 Senator Fry293 of the U.S. Senate. [Wednesday,] 20 April [1887] Spent most of the day in the halls of Statuary294 in the Vatican, said to be the best colection of such works of Art in the world. Here we see the heads of the Emperors, as rendered by those who saw them, and I suppose they are likenesses some of them taken in their youth, middle age and when they had grown old and hardened in crime or the reverse. [Thursday,] 21 April [1887] Attended the unveiling of a monument to Galilio, on the Pinceo.295 The time selected for the ceremony was well chosen. It was on the day upon which it is supposed that Rome was founded, therefore the anniversary.296 The monument consists of a granite column about ten feet in hight and about 18 inches diametre, on a marble pesdestal, surmounted with a globe, showing lines of latitude and longitude on its serface. There is a belt of bronze around it with a latin inscription and the name of Galileo upon it [.]297 There was neither prayes nor prests imployed in its unveiling, for the monument is an honor to science and not to superstition. Friday, 22 April [1887] Attended Reception of Judge Stallo, the American Minister.298 The occasion every way pleasant. Mr Stallo was more than courteous to all his guests and I thought especially cordial to Mrs Douglass to myself, taking her on his arm to the dining room and requesting m [Sunday,] 8 May 1887 Addresses to be remembered Madame Remond Pintor299 Piazza Barberina,300 No. 6 Rome Caledonia Hotel: Adelphia Terrace. Strand. London.301 Address at Florence,302 Mrs Geoti: No. one. Piazza Sodereni303 Worte to Mrs P.B. Clark: Street.304 May 13. Tuesday, 10 May [1887] Arrived in Florence. My first excursion here was to see the grave of Theodore Parker305 in the Protestant Cemetary.306 I found in the grateful shade of a cedar tree,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 358

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

359

covered with violets and roses, attesting the presence of some friendly hand. The brown head stone has nothing ornamental or costly about it. The inscription has only the name of the great man whose dust sleeps below it, with the date of his bearthe and his death. I could but recall as I looked upon his grave, the many services rendered the cause of human freedom by him, freedom not only from physical chains but the chains of superstition, those which not only galled the limbs and tore the flesh, but those which marred and wounded the human soul. A few feet from the remains of Theodore Parker lie those of Richard Hildreth,307 a nother American who will never be forgotten by those who have read his Book entitled Despotism in America308 and the white slave.309 It is sad to think that one with such talent as Richard Hidreth should have died in absolute poverty in a foreign, but such I am told was the fact. In the same cemitary, where so many Americans have found a last resting place, I found the grave of E. B. Browning.310 I have enquired and sought, but have not found in Florence the home of Miss Ludmulla Assing311 the sister of my friend of many years Miss Ottilea Assing.312 Alas! how soon are the dead forgotten, and how soon we who live must be consigned to the same oblivion. Florence is all alive to day. She is expecting the arrival of her king and queen.313 They are immensely popular not only in Florence all over Italy. The priests hate them, but the people love them. The streets are now densely packed with a multitude eager to look upon royalty! Yet what after is all the pomp and glory of kings! How soon must the strongest and proudest sink below the horizon and mingle with the common dust of the earth. Wednesday, [11 May 1887] We Helen and I went to see Prof Fisk314 in his beautiful home the former residence of Minister Marsh.315 We were cordially received[.] Shown his Library, his study, his grounds, the remarkable points of the environs of Florence, invited to stay to breakfast, and to dine at any time during our stay in Florence. For this last our stay was entirely too short. Florence is, as I intimated full of life. Her streets are crowded with people, her houses are adorned with flags, of all colors and nationalities. Splended equipages,316 with liveried servants are dashing through the streets and dazzling in the sun light. Well dressed men and elegantly dressed ladies, are finding their way through orderly crowds of the common people who seem to feel as much at home and as much at their ease

Y7870-Douglass.indb 359

9/1/21 4:17 PM

360

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

as the princely personages who roll by in their splended carriages. This feature of the scene gladdens my eyes. We shall be here only three or four whole days and I am already grieved to quitt this truly delightful city. Sunday, 15 May [1887] We have now been in Italy since the 10th[.] Five days of sight seeing, and of tumultuous enthusiasm. King Humbert and his wife, I should say the Queen, are here to unveil the splended façade of the Duomo,317 the grand cathedral of Florence. We have seen the Ufizzi Palace318 with its fine pictures and statuary, The church of San Marco,319 the grand Mosoleum of the Medicis and the Tombs built by Michel Angelo.320 Very impressive are the figures. We have seen the Monastery of San Marko, the room of Salvonarola and the place where burnt to death,321 and above all we have seen the streets of Florence crowded with its citizens and the peoples from thee neighboring cities and country, and found them very like the same crowds to be seen in American cities on great occasions only as I think a trifle more good natured though not more quiet in behavior. The Arno322 forms a beautiful feature of Florence as the Seine is to Paris. We leave tomorrow for Venice323 with a feeling that our stay has been all to brief in Florence. [Saturday,] 21 May [1887] We have now spent four days in Venice, and two days in Melan,324 and have passed this day in Lucern.325 The ride from Florence to Venice was delightful. The weather was neither too hot nor too cold, and bright sunshine gave a lustre to the snow crowned Appenines and set them off attractively and imposingly. As to Venice itself I can only say it surpassed all the ideas I had formed of it. It is a city by itself. I had read of its canals, its Gondolas,326 its Rialtos,327 its palaces, and its wonders of art, and its churches, and was prepared to look upon all with admiration, but had after small comprehension of its charms. The Square in front of St Mark that monarch churches,328 flancked by the Doge’s Palace and arcades on the other,329 once seen will never be forgotten, and will always fill the mind with peculiar pleasure. In looking at Venice as it is, with the marks of decay upon it, though still in many respects the most beautiful of cities, but we easily think of what it must have been in the days of its, when it was the city of Merchant Princes, and had control of the rich commerce of all the East, when it was a free Republic.330 I saw its Biblotyc containing

Y7870-Douglass.indb 360

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

361

acres of volumes, and precious manuscripts[.] [A]mong these I saw letters from three great Americans, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamen Franklin.331 On the great canal, I saw the house where Desdemoni resided when wooed by Othelo.332 No where else than in Venice is glass manufactured into more perfect forms of beauty.333 Where climate, sea and sky are so beautiful, it is not strange, that they should suggest beauty to the artificers in all kinds of works. Milan: aside from its splended Cathedral,334 is not remarkable. It is seimply a fine city, with fine Houses, stores, squares, like any other fine city. I have spoken of the ride from Florence to Venice, but that was nothing in comparison with the ride from Milan to Lucern. Delightful surprises, in mountain scenery kept our eyes awake and eager all the way. Now it was towering snow covered mountain tops, overhanging and frowning rocks deep gorges, looking as if opening to swallow up, our on dashing train, and now it was beautiful cascades leaping in dazzling splendor down the dark mountain side, to join some dancing stream that threaded its way through depths below. Their little Swiss cottages tucked up neatly in little spaces, often higher up than thie Eagle is wont build his nest, and where avalanches, and land slides seemed most to threaten. Every possible corner of earth here which gave the faintest promise of reward, seemed carefully tilled. Here at least there are no idlers. Men, women and children all work, and even that born gentleman of leasure the day is seen helping his master to bear his burden. Women in their red head dresses, ornament the field, and at the same do their full share with shovel and hoe. Wherever else, woman is denied her equal right to toil like a man, here at least her equality is fully and fairly recognized. Lucern, where I now am, has a beautiful lake at its feet a powerful stream running through it, firtile fields and gardens on one side, and cloud piercing mountains on the other. It is diffucult to conceive a town situated more beautifully, and I do not wonder that it attracts in summer a large concourse of visitors. [Wednesday,] 25 May [1887] I am again back in Paris at the Hotel Britannique. Wrote to Charley to day.335 Called on the Stantons,336 and upon Mr Tilton,337 the latter not home. Called upon the Lespremonts,338 and learned of the death of the dear old man the head of the house. Bought Ticket par la Ville de Rome pour Helen[.]339

Y7870-Douglass.indb 361

9/1/21 4:17 PM

362

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

[Thursday,] 26 May [1887] A long walk a long La rue de Rivoli.340 Sunday, 29 May [1887] Was much in company with Mr Theodore Stanton[.] [C]alled upon Senator Scheolcher.341 In parting with venerable Senator, he kissed me on both cheeks. [Tuesday,] 31 May [1887] London. Calidian Hotel.342 Walked through the National Picture Gallery.343 Saw there the Picture of a horse the finest I ever saw on canvass.344 Wrote a letter to Mrs Fanny Byse. 6. Rue Beau S Jour, Lausanne, a lady of fine intellect and of liberal religious views.345 My letter was in answer to one from her. In it she had said “The old heaven was a nice place where all kindred spirits were to meet again, but we must make the best of Mother Earth and memory.”346 [Saturday,] 4 June [1887] I have received letters with the following address, one from Mrs Dora Delany. 6. St. Johns Wood Park London347 348 One from Mr Arthur John Naish. 149 Stratford Road Bermingham. 349 One from Mr Chas: H. Allen. 55. New Broad street London. One from Mrs Isabella Mills.350 Northwold Bowden351 Mrs. Bigelow. American Legation London. Sunday, 5 June [1887] Heard Spurgion.352 Dined with Mrs Lucas353 7 Charlotte Street Bedford Square. 1. Built by the Inman Line and launched in 1881, the steamship City of Rome sailed the Atlantic route after being purchased by the Anchor Line. Considered one of the most beautiful ships of the period, the 560-foot-long screw steamer weighed 8,144 tons and was one of the last steamers built for the Inman Line. C[harles] R[ichard] Benstead, Atlantic Ferry (London, 1936), 136, 241; H[ereward] P[hilip] Spratt, Outline of Transatlantic Steam Navigation (London, 1950), 36. 2. Helen Pitts Douglass (1838–1903) was the second wife of Douglass, marrying him in 1884, two years after the death of his first wife, Anna Murray Douglass. Helen, the oldest daughter in a Honeoye, New York, farming family, first met Douglass in the 1840s, while he was on an antislavery speaking tour. Her parents, Gideon and Jane Wells Pitts, were active in the abolitionist movement.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 362

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

363

An 1859 graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Helen taught black children in Norfolk, Virginia, for three years. Health problems forced her to return to Honeoye for three years. After a brief teaching experience in 1878 in Huntington, Indiana, Helen settled in Washington, D.C., landing a job with the Alpha, a radical feminist newspaper. She lived with her uncle, Hiram Pitts, who was one of Douglass’s neighbors. In 1882, Douglass, who was recorder of deeds at the time, hired Helen to work in the recorder’s office. A family friend, Francis J. Grimké, married them on 24 January 1884, catching both families off guard and evoking an adverse reaction. Relations between Helen and Douglass’s children remained civil, but not close, until he died. Thereafter, the children contested his will and fought Helen’s efforts to establish Cedar Hill, the Douglass home, as a memorial to their father. In turn, Helen tried to exhume his body from the family cemetery lot in Rochester, New York, and have it moved to Cedar Hill, with the condition that she could be buried next to him. The marriage forever strained Helen’s relationship with her father and uncle. Her mother and sisters reconciled themselves to the marriage and visited Cedar Hill often. After Douglass’s death, Helen continued her associations with the Mount Holyoke Alumni Association of Washington, the Anthropological Society, and the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children. She delivered lectures on Egypt, the Hittites, and the Southern convict lease system. Defects in Douglass’s will resulted in the sale by auction of Cedar Hill, and Helen bought the property back from the estate with the help of a bank loan. Living frugally, she preserved the home and devised it to the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, which was incorporated by Congress in 1900 through Helen’s efforts. Her place of burial is in the same family lot where Douglass and his first wife are buried, in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. New York Times, 7 March 1895, 1 October 1898; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Ontario County, 378; Maria Diedrich, Love across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 350–51; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 310–11, 319–20; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 298; Julie R. Nelson, “The Best of Intentions: Anna Murray Douglass, Helen Pitts Douglass, and the Challenge of Social Equality,” Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, 12:39–42 (Spring 1995); Georgiana Rose Simpson, “A Tribute to Helen Pitts Douglass,” NHB, 7:131–32 (March 1944); Francis J. Grimké, “The Second Marriage of Frederick Douglass,” JNH, 19:324–29 (July 1934). 3. Scheduled to leave at 6:30 A.M., the City of Rome left New York for Liverpool on Wednesday, 15 September 1886. New York Times, 13, 16 September 1886. 4. Herman Lincoln Wayland (1830–98), inaccurately identified by both Douglasses in their diaries and by Douglass in other references, was a Baptist minister, having graduated from Brown University and the Newton Theological Institute in Massachusetts. After tutoring at the University of Rochester in New York from 1852 to 1854, Wayland served as an army chaplain during the Civil War and as a missionary to black people in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1865, he returned to the academic arena, teaching rhetoric and logic at Kalamazoo College in Michigan and serving as president of Franklin College in Indiana from 1870 to 1872. His final career was in publishing, serving as editor of the National Baptist. He wrote Charles H. Spurgeon: His Faith and Works (Philadelphia, 1892), and, with his brother, A Memoir of the Life and Labors of Francis Wayland, 2 vols. (New York, 1867). New York Times, 16 September 1886; Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, Family Papers File, reel 1, frame 52, FD Papers, DLC; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:265; Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 13 vols. (New York, 1912), 12:280; ACAB, 6:397; NCAB, 10:494. 5. Born in New York City to recent immigrants from England, Francis Wayland (1796–1865) graduated from Union College, studied medicine in New York, and prepared for the ministry at Andover Theological Seminary. After completing his education, Wayland tutored at Union College from 1817 to 1821 and served Boston’s First Baptist Church from 1821 to 1826. After teaching for one year at Union College, he became the president of Brown University, serving in that capacity from 1827 to 1855. Wayland reformed the traditional teaching process through the classroom lectures and textbooks he prepared, which distinguished him in the field of education. After leaving Brown,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 363

9/1/21 4:17 PM

364

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

Wayland served the First Baptist Church in Providence for two years and spent the remainder of his life performing religious work and writing. Henry Warner Bowden, Dictionary of American Religious Biography, 2nd ed. (Westport, Conn., 1993), 585–86; Jackson, New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, 12:279–80; NCAB, 8:22. 6. This person’s name appears eleven times in the Douglasses’ diaries, twice in his and nine times in hers. In four of those instances, once in his and three times in hers, the spelling of the surname is corrected, sometimes more than once. When not corrected, Douglass writes the name as “Breelock,” and she writes it twice as “Brelock” and four times as “Blelock.” Other variations that have been changed appear to be “Blylock,” “Beelock,” and “Bulock.” Douglass indicates that the man’s first name is George and that Douglass knew him forty years ago as a boy. Helen writes that he is of Scottish descent and is traveling with his daughter. Given the confusion concerning the surname and the lack of other information, the identity of this man is uncertain, although one researcher identifies him without documentation or explanation as George Bulloch. One candidate, however, who at least matches the description is George H. Blaloch (c. 1836–?), the manager of a needle factory in Springfield, Massachusetts. Born in New York, Blaloch would have been ten years old in 1846, making him the appropriate age. Moreover, his father was from Scotland, and Blaloch had a daughter, Jean, who was twelve at the time of the trip to Europe. Nonetheless, no conclusive link exists between George H. Blaloch and Douglass. Douglass Diary, Diary File, reel 1, frames 1–2, Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frames 52, 54, 63–66, 69; 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Hampden County, 26; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 325. 7. George W. Chandler (c. 1841–?) of New York was a Methodist minister who was not under appointment at the time. Married to Izora (c. 1848–?) and the father of George F. (c. 1873–?), Chandler began his ministerial career in the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which covered northwestern Pennsylvania and western New York. He served the Methodist Episcopal churches in Towanda, Pennsylvania, from 1874 to 1876, and at Corning, New York, in 1877. From 1878 to 1880, Chandler served the Delaware Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Buffalo, New York. He served the Niagara Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which changed its name to the First Methodist Episcopal Church, in Lockport, New York, from 1881 to 1883. In 1884, Chandler transferred to the Oregon Conference, serving the Taylor Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Portland from 1884 to 1885. When the Chandlers returned to the United States in 1887, he transferred to the New York Central Conference, serving the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Ithaca until 1889, when he left the ministry. New York Times, 12 September 1886; 1880 U.S. Census, New York, Erie County, 116; Methodist Episcopal Church, Genesee Conference, Minutes, Statistics, etc. of Genesee Annual Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, Sixty-fourth Session (Rochester, N.Y., 1877), 22; idem, Minutes, Statistics, etc. of Genesee Annual Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, Sixtyfi fth Session (Geneva, N.Y., 1878), n.p.; idem, Official Journal and Minutes of the Sixty-eighth Session of the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Rochester, N.Y., 1881), 65; idem, Official Journal and Minutes of the Seventy-fourth Session of the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Buffalo, N.Y., 1883), 24; Methodist Episcopal Church, Oregon Conference, Minutes of the Thirty-second Session of the Oregon Annual Conference (Portland, Ore., 1884), 33; Methodist Episcopal Church, Minutes of the Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Fall Congress of 1886 (New York, 1886), 238, 300; Methodist Episcopal Church, Central New York Conference, Twentieth Session, Central New York Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church (Elmira, N.Y., 1887), 58; idem, Twenty-third Annual Session of the Central New York Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church (Ithaca, N.Y., 1890), 91; idem, Twenty-fi fth Annual Session of the Central New York Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Cleveland, 1892), 93; Philip P. Bliss, Memoirs of Philip P. Bliss, ed. D. W. Whittle (New York, 1877), 323. 8. Douglass delivered an impromptu speech on 15 April 1865 in Rochester, New York, at city hall in tribute to President Abraham Lincoln, who had died that morning from wounds inflicted by John Wilkes Booth. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:74.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 364

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

365

9. A mugwump was someone who deserted the Republican party in the presidential election of 1884. Some Republicans questioned the honesty and business integrity of the Republican nominee, James G. Blaine, who had profited financially by granting valuable rights to a railroad company. Many of these reform-minded Republicans liked the honesty of the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, and supported him despite the revelation that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. Cleveland won, becoming the first Democrat to be elected president since the Civil War. Stemming from the Massachusetts word for kingpin, the term “mugwump” also denotes an independent in politics. H. Paul Jeffers, An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (New York, 2000), 57–58, 96–97; Mark Wahlgren Summers, Rum, Romanism and Rebellion: The Making of a President (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 22–24, 179–82. 10. R. D. Monroe was the captain of the City of Rome, a post he held for several years. New York Times, 13 May 1884, 10, 23 September 1886; American Shipmasters’ Association, 1886 Record of American and Foreign Shipping, New York (New York, 1886), 272. 11. Designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel to be the largest vessel ever constructed, the Great Eastern, built by the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, was over five times larger than any other ship built at that time. Constructed on the banks of the Thames at Millwall from 1854 to 1857, the ship cost eight times the original estimate and took three months to launch. The Great Eastern’s tonnage was 18,815 and its length 680 feet—10,771 tons and 120 feet more than the City of Rome. Although it could accommodate four thousand passengers, the Great Eastern was never a commercial success as either a passenger or a cargo vessel, because of its slow speed, and it therefore made few transatlantic voyages. The Great Eastern Steam Ship: A Description of Mr. Scott Russell’s Great Ship, Now Building at Millwall, for the Eastern Steam Navigation Company (London, n.d.), 3–5, 13; Spratt, Transatlantic Steam Navigation, 30–31; Benstead, Atlantic Ferry, 100–105. 12. Sandy Hook is a five-mile peninsula in New Jersey that protects the southern portion of Lower New York Bay, known as Sandy Hook Bay, from the Atlantic Ocean. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2782. 13. A fireman is one who stokes the fire in the furnace of a steam engine. 14. Born in Boston, the son of a Unitarian minister, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) graduated from Harvard, studied divinity, and briefly served a Unitarian church in Boston. Suffering from poor health and distraught by the death of his wife, Emerson traveled to Europe, where he met Thomas Carlyle, establishing a lifelong friendship that included Emerson acting as Carlyle’s literary agent in America. A noted lecturer and author, Emerson, along with other dissident, Harvard-educated Unitarian ministers, founded transcendentalism, a school of thought emphasizing the spiritual world rather than the empirical. After a second trip to Europe, in 1847, Emerson published English Traits, a work critically acclaimed and widely read. ACAB, 2:343–48; NCAB, 3:416–18; ANB (online). 15. In addition to the “American Carlyle,” the “Sage of Concord” was a nickname for Ralph Waldo Emerson, who lived in Concord, Massachusetts. Carl Sifakis, The Dictionary of Historic Nicknames (New York, 1884), 144. 16. Besides R. D. Monroe, the only other known captain aboard the City of Rome was Captain Gerald F. Talbot, a passenger. No records demonstrate any connection between Talbot and New Hampshire, as both Douglasses state, or connect him with the military incidents or maritime mishap related in Helen Pitts Douglass’s diary. New York Times, 16 September 1886; Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frames 62–63, 72. 17. Located in eastern India on the Hugli River, Calcutta was the capital of India until 1912, its chief port, and the second city of the British Empire after London. Ships departed at regular intervals from Liverpool for India. Karl Baedeker, Great Britain: England, Wales, and Scotland, as far as Loch Maree and the Cromarty Firth, Handbook for Travelers (London, 1887), 332; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:499. 18. The title character of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge first published in 1798, is an elderly seaman who brought misfortune to the crew of his ship by killing

Y7870-Douglass.indb 365

9/1/21 4:17 PM

366

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

an albatross, a bird considered a good omen. As the ship lay becalmed at the equator, the crew hung the albatross around the ancient mariner’s neck as a sign of his transgression. After the rest of the crew died, the ancient mariner survived to atone for his sin. One evening, he blessed the water snakes encircling the ship, breaking the spell. The albatross fell from his neck, and the ship, with the help of the dead sailors’ spirits, brought the ancient mariner to his home port, where he had to tell his tale repeatedly in order to teach people love and reverence for all of God’s creatures. Frank N. Magill, ed., Masterpieces of World Literature in Digest Form (New York, 1952), 825–26. 19. Queenstown was the name of a seaport in southeastern Cork County, Ireland. Originally called the Cove of Cork, the town changed its name to Queenstown when Queen Victoria visited in 1849. It became Cobh in 1922. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:683. 20. Located in northwestern England on the Mersey River, Liverpool was the second-largest city in England at the time, as well as its principal port. Chartered by King John in 1207, Liverpool developed slowly until it expanded its waterway into a shipping center at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Initially, the slave trade was its most lucrative industry, but shipping shifted in the nineteenth century to the export of manufactured goods. Baedeker, Great Britain, 323–33; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1758. 21. London had several daily and weekly newspapers at the time, including the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post, the Times, the Standard, the News of the World, the Daily News, the Daily Telegraph, and the Daily Chronicle. Tony Gray, Fleet Street Remembered (London, 1990), 311–12. 22. Only two households with the surname Rawlins were related at the time to Wrexham, in northeastern Wales. One was that of Frank L. Rawlins (c. 1844–?), who lived at Rhosddu in Wrexham in 1886. As of 1881, however, he had not married, making it unlikely that he would have had an adult son living in Liverpool at the time. The other Rawlins, John H. Rawlins (c. 1817–?), lived with his family in Cefn-y-Bedd, just outside Wrexham. Born in Liverpool, John was a paper manufacturer who lived near Wrexham for more than thirty years. Arnold V. Rawlins (c. 1857–?), born in Cefn-y-Bedd and living in Liverpool, was a bookkeeper in the paper trade and most likely John’s son. The younger Rawlins visited the Douglasses in Liverpool on Tuesday, 28 September 1886. No record remains of the letter that Douglass received from the elder Rawlins. 1881 British Census, Denbigh County, 7, Flint County, 7, Lancashire County, 39; Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frame 78; Alfred Neobard Palmer, The History of the Parish Church of Wrexham: Being the Second Part of “A History of the Town and Parish of Wrexham” (Wrexham, Wales, 1886), iii; John George Bartholomew, Gazetteer of the British Isles, 9th ed. (Edinburgh, 1966), 138; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:3492. 23. One of Liverpool’s principal attractions, more than fifty docks lined the Mersey River for six or seven miles. The first enclosed commercial maritime dock was built in 1710, and Liverpool had three of them by the end of the eighteenth century, when no other port had more than one. Increased trade and larger ships, resulting from the use of iron and steel construction and steam power in shipbuilding, required the modification of the existing docks and the addition of more in the nineteenth century. At the time of the Douglasses’ visit, the largest dock was the Alexandra Dock, covering forty-four acres of water; the newest was the Hornby Dock, opened in 1885. Part of the success of Liverpool’s docks was due to their proximity to the town and the railway network that connected Liverpool to other major cities in Great Britain. In the twentieth century, the Liverpool docks declined in use as trade shifted from North America to Europe and as container ships, which the docks could not accommodate, came into widespread use. Douglass saw the docks of Liverpool when he traveled there on his first trip abroad, in 1845. Baedeker, Great Britain, 332, 337–38; Nancy Ritchie-Noakes, Liverpool’s Historic Waterfront: The World’s First Mercantile Dock System (London, 1984), 3–8; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 120; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1758. 24. Built from 1838 to 1854 in the heart of Liverpool immediately opposite the Lime Street Station, St. George’s Hall has a large central unit flanked by two wings, designed to resemble a Greek or Roman temple. Corinthian columns span the east side and the south portico. Pilasters and windows adorn the west façade, and the north end is semicircular. The building housed courtrooms and halls

Y7870-Douglass.indb 366

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

367

for public meetings and concerts. Baedeker, Great Britain, 333–34; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1758. 25. The correct date was Saturday, 25 September 1886. Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frame 75. 26. Opened by Queen Victoria on 11 May 1886, the Liverpool International Exhibition of Navigation, Traveling, Commerce and Manufacture illustrated different modes of travel by land, sea, and air. To demonstrate the gradual development of land travel, the exhibition included a packhorse, stage wagon, Japanese rickshaw, and early and modern locomotives. For sea travel, the display contained Viking ships and early and modern steamships as well as a model lighthouse. Air travel included a hot air balloon and a flying machine exhibited every hour. The exhibition also displayed representations of the manufacture and commerce of the world, a model of an Ashanti palace as found in the Gold Coast of Africa, and an Indian pavilion with a performance and a procession of animals. New York Times, 29 October 1885, 12, 16 May 1886. 27. Costing more than $11 million and covering more than 450 acres of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876 celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Douglass attended the opening of the exposition on 10 May 1876. Over the next six months, almost ten million people viewed the thirty thousand exhibits. One of these exhibits was a bust of Douglass by the sculptor Johnson M. Mundy. The centerpiece of the exhibition was the Machinery Hall, which contained a fourteen-acre array of machines, including the largest steam engine in the world. James D. McCabe, The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition Held in Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of American Independence (1876; Philadelphia, 1975), 157–62, 291–92; Robert C. Post, ed., A Treatise Upon Selected Aspects of the Great International Exhibition Held in Philadelphia on the Occasion of Our Nation’s One-hundredth Birthday, with Some Reference to Another Exhibition Held in Washington Commemorating the Epic Event, and Called in 1876: A Centennial Exhibition (Washington, D.C., 1976), 8–15; Dee Brown, The Year of the Century: 1876 (New York, 1966), 120; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 288. 28. Actually, Sunday, 26 September 1886. 29. Established in 1838 after a dispute over open communion, Pembroke Chapel was a Baptist church embracing a liberal theology. Its church building, with an elaborate organ, and its formal worship services attracted wealthier constituents and set Pembroke Chapel apart from other Baptist churches in Liverpool. The 1880s were marked by petty quarrels among church members and internal dissention over minor issues. The church experienced a rejuvenation beginning in the 1890s as a radical church, espousing pacifism, socialism, labor rights, and agnosticism. In 1924, the Baptist Union intervened to rein the congregation back in to its denominational heritage and finally closed the church in 1931. Ian Sellers, A Salute to Pembroke: The Story of the Rise, Progress, Decline and Fall of a Most Remarkable Dissenting Congregation (n.p., [1960]), 4–5, 12–29, 37–40. 30. From 1880 to 1887, the church was under the leadership of the Reverend Richard Richards. Sellers, Salute to Pembroke, 12–29. 31. The Douglasses visited the Walker Art Gallery to view the permanent exhibition on Monday, 27 September 1886. In 1877, Andrew Barclay Walker, namesake of the building, gave twenty thousand pounds for its construction. Considered the finest art gallery in England outside London, the Walker Art Gallery houses European paintings and sculptures from the fourteenth century through the twentieth century. Located to the north of St. George’s Hall on William Brown Street next to the Picton Reading Room, the gallery contained 360 works in its permanent collection in 1885, including an excellent collection of Italian and Flemish paintings. Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frame 77; Baedeker, Great Britain, 334; National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (London, 1994), 8–13; Kenneth Hudson and Ann Nicholls, The Cambridge Guide to the Museums of Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 1987), 223. 32. Located on William Brown Street, the Liverpool Free Public Museum and William Brown Library opened in 1860. Built as a library with a collection of eighty thousand volumes, the building

Y7870-Douglass.indb 367

9/1/21 4:17 PM

368

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

also houses a natural history collection, including eight thousand stuffed specimens bequeathed to the city by the Earl of Derby in 1851. William Brown, a member of Parliament and the building’s namesake, paid for its erection after the proposal to build it drew criticism. The Douglasses visited the library and museum on the previous day, Thursday, 30 September 1886. Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frame 80; Baedeker, Great Britain, 334; Peter Cowell, Liverpool Public Libraries: A History of Fifty Years (Liverpool, 1903), 29, 38, 70. 33. Since 1871, the Liverpool Town Council had sponsored an Autumn Exhibition, featuring paintings by living artists for sale. The council used its share of the profit from the exhibition to purchase additional works and enhance the museum’s collection. The Douglasses attended the Autumn Exhibition on Thursday, 30 September 1886. Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frame 80; Baedeker, Great Britain, 334; National Museums, Walker Art Gallery, 9–11. 34. After its seagoing life was over, the Great Eastern became a floating billboard that bore advertisements. It then lay derelict until 1885, when it became a showboat featuring theatrical productions; it was broken up in 1888 for scrap metal. The Douglasses visited the Great Eastern on Tuesday, 28 September 1886. Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frame 78; Benstead, Atlantic Ferry, 109; Spratt, Transatlantic Steam Navigation, 31. 35. On Wednesday, 29 September 1886, the Douglasses traveled to Chester, the capital of Cheshire, forty-two miles southeast of Liverpool. Known for its medieval features, Chester was the headquarters of the Twentieth Roman Legion for four centuries, beginning around 40 C.E. The numerous Roman artifacts recovered from the area bear witness to its history as a Roman encampment. Helen Pitts Douglass Diary, reel 1, frame 79; Baedeker, Great Britain, 271–72; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:621. 36. The oldest part of Chester, surrounded by red sandstone walls, dates from the fourteenth century, and not from the Roman period, as Douglass states. Three of the four walls do, however, follow the line of the Roman walls, while the south wall has been moved. Baedeker, Great Britain, 272; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:621. 37. Located near the center of Chester, the cathedral is 355 feet long and 127 feet high. Containing several styles of architecture, from Norman to late Gothic, the façade is red sandstone. The north wall of the nave, the north transept, and the crypt on the side of the west cloister are the oldest parts of the church, dating as far back as 1101. Made from olive, oak, and cedar wood from Palestine, the altar portrays Christ’s Passion with carvings of plants associated with it. The pulpit is a modern addition. Baedeker, Great Britain, 274–76; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:621. 38. In the nineteenth century, the Church of England experienced a growing schism between the High Church tradition, revived by the Oxford Movement of the 1830s, and the evangelical movement. Led by John Henry Newman, the Oxford Movement stressed the historic ties of Anglicanism to the Roman Catholic Church, including an emphasis on ritual and ceremony in worship, the sacraments, and the authority of the clergy. In contrast, the evangelicals placed less importance on sacraments and ceremony and stressed the importance of biblical study as the foundation of faith. Paula Schaefer, The Catholic Regeneration of the Church of England, trans. Ethel Talbot Scheffauer (London, 1935), 59–63, 82, 84–87; John Shelton Reed, Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian AngloCatholicism (Nashville, Tenn., 1996), 8–12, 14–16, 113, 142–47. 39. As a part of the English Reformation, Parliament began passing laws in 1534 that transferred possession of land belonging to the Catholic Church to the Crown. Henry VIII sold much of this property to nobles and gentry, who then gained a stake in the success of the Reformation. Henry used the proceeds to pay for his continued wars in Europe. Norman Jones, The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford, 2002), 70–74; A[rthur] G[eoffrey] Dickens, The English Reformation, 2nd ed. (London, 1989), 181–86. 40. Located on the Ouse River eight miles southwest of Huntingdon, St Neots began as a small market town in the twelfth century. Named for a reputed brother or relative of King Alfred, St Neots is the site of a church built in the fourteenth century. It was also the home of Douglass’s longtime

Y7870-Douglass.indb 368

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

369

friend Julia Griffiths Crofts. Baedeker, Great Britain, 370; Michael Wickes, A History of Huntingdonshire (Chichester, Eng., 1985), 41, 45; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 1982; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2700. 41. Beginning as a first-century Roman fort, London gained prominence in 886 when King Alfred gained control of the city and established its first government. It became England’s capital in the twelfth century and the country’s cultural center during the Renaissance. A fire in 1666 that lasted five days essentially destroyed London, allowing Sir Christopher Wren to play a major role in rebuilding the city. In the nineteenth century, London experienced remarkable growth, ending the century six times larger than it was at the beginning. During the Victorian era, London became the primary city of the British Empire as well as its financial, cultural, and intellectual center. Karl Baedeker, London and Its Environs, including Excursions to Brighton, the Isle of Wight, etc.; Handbook for Travellers, 5th ed. (London, 1885), 58–62; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1772. 42. Firmly established as the capital of France by 987, Paris experienced its first significant growth from 1180 to 1223, under the reign of Philip Augustus, which saw the completion of such structures as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Paris again flourished during the Renaissance, becoming the political, intellectual, and cultural center of France and later one of the most important cities in the world. Beginning in 1789, Paris was the center of the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte (reigned 1804–15) initiated enormous building projects, including the Arc de Triomphe, the Vendôme column, and the Rue de Rivoli. Large-scale public building projects occurred during the Second Empire (1852–70), under Napoleon III, including infrastructure to supply the city with running water and the creation of parks. Karl Baedeker, Paris and Its Environs, with Routes from London to Paris; Handbook for Travellers, 9th ed. (London, 1888), xii–xiv; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2367. 43. Located at 20 Avenue Victoria, the Hôtel Britannique was near the Hôtel de Ville, or town hall, on the right bank of the Seine. Baedeker, Paris, 8, 62. 44. An arrondissement is an administrative district of some large French cities. The premier arrondissement (first arrondissement) of Paris is home to the Louvre, the Tuileries Gardens, and Les Halles marketplace. 45. Famous for its wine production, Dijon is the former capital of Burgundy, where the dukes of Burgundy lived until the death of Charles the Bold in 1477. Karl Baedeker, Italy: Handbook for Travellers: First Part, Northern Italy, Including Leghorn, Florence, Ravenna, the Island of Corsica, and Routes through France, Switzerland and Austria, 7th ed. (Leipzig, Ger., 1886), 3–4; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1834. 46. According to one guidebook, Dijon had a population of 55,400 in 1886. Douglass was probably using an older guidebook. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 3. 47. Cheese, in French. 48. As France’s second-largest metropolitan center, Lyon, traditionally spelled “Lyons” in English in Douglass’s time, was the largest manufacturing center in France at the time, with silk being its most important staple commodity. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 4–5; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1814–15. 49. The Grand Hôtel de l’Univers was on the Cour du Midi, a park with trees, at numbers 27 and 29. The Grand Hôtel de Bordeaux et du Parc was near the main railway station, the Gare de Perrache, a few blocks away. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 4–5. 50. Born a free black man in Hagerstown, Maryland, Henry O. Wagoner, Sr. (c. 1816–1901), worked on several farms in western Maryland, fleeing to Ohio in 1838 out of fear that his Underground Railroad activity had placed him in jeopardy. As he was leaving Baltimore, Wagoner met Douglass, who was in the process of escaping from slavery. In 1839, Wagoner arrived in Galena, Illinois, where he worked as a typesetter and bill collector for a newspaper. From 1843 to 1846, Wagoner taught schoolchildren and worked for a newspaper in Chatham, Canada West. His next domicile was in Chicago, where he ran a milling business. After acting as an army recruiter during the Civil War, Wagoner settled in Denver, Colorado. Douglass sent two of his sons, Lewis and Frederick, to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 369

9/1/21 4:17 PM

370

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

Denver to learn typesetting from Wagoner. In return, Douglass used his influence to secure a job for Wagoner’s son, Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., at the U.S. consulate in Paris, France, in 1873, and the younger Wagoner was later transferred to the consulate at Lyon. When the head position of the Lyon consulate became available in 1877, the younger Wagoner, who had attended Howard Law School, sought the aid of Douglass in being promoted to that position. The younger Wagoner died in 1878 in Lyon, and his father asked Douglass to visit the grave after learning of Douglass’s trip to Europe. Receiving from Wagoner a map of the location of the younger Wagoner’s grave, the Douglasses inadvertently left the map in Paris and did not remember Wagoner’s earlier statement that the grave was in the Cemetery of the Red Cross. An active Republican, Wagoner received appointments as a clerk for the state legislature in 1876 and as the first black deputy sheriff of Arapaho County, Colorado, in 1880. Henry O. Wagoner, Sr., to Douglass, 27 August 1866, 10 December 1873, 23 March 1878, 13 July, 13 October 1885, 19 August 1886, 1 September 1890, 17 August 1893, Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., to Douglass, 2 April 1874, 12 May 1877, and Douglass to Lewis Douglass, 24 January 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 197–98, 700–703, 733–36, reel 3, frames 122–26, 241–43, reel 4, frames 193, 217–19, 380–81, 450–51, reel 5, frames 783–84, reel 32, frames 250–51, FD Papers, DLC; U.S. Department of State, Register of the Department of State, Corrected to December, 1877 (Washington, D.C., 1877), 17; William Loren Katz, Black People Who Made the Old West (New York, 1977), 102–06; Simmons, Men of Mark, 469–72. 51. Appointed 18 June 1886, Edward H. Bryan (1830–88) was the American consul in Lyon, serving until 1888. Born in Missouri, Bryan was a resident of California at the time of his appointment. U.S. Department of State, Register of the Department of State, Corrected to December 1, 1888 (Washington, D.C., 1889), 17. 52. Situated on the banks of the Rhône River, the Hôtel-Dieu dates back to the twelfth century. Long considered a model for other hospitals in France and Europe, the Hôtel-Dieu has a dome that is a landmark in Lyon. Wagoner was not a patient in the Hôtel-Dieu. He was at L’Hôpital de la CroixRousse, being treated for a respiratory infection, when he died. Henry O. Wagoner, Sr., to Douglass, 23 March 1878, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 241–43, FD Papers, DLC; Lyon Commission des Archives de Hospices Civils, Histoire du Grand Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon, des Origines a l’Année 1900 (Lyon, 1924), 200–212; Etienne Dagier, Histoire Chronologique de l’Hôpital General et Grand-Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon, 2 vols. (Lyon, 1830), 1:12–16, 2:268–83. 53. On the east side of the Rhône River in Lyon is the Nouveau Cimetière Israélite. Baedeker, Northern Italy, Plan of Lyon, E, 8. 54. The canon law of the Catholic Church requires that Catholic cemeteries be blessed, and those who are not Catholic cannot be buried in consecrated, or blessed, ground. When the graves of Protestants and Catholics are in the same cemetery and the Protestants outnumber the Catholics, the Church requires the blessing of individual Catholic graves. Catholic University of America, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 18 vols. (San Francisco, 1967), 3:386–87. 55. On the east side of the Rhône River in Lyon is the Nouveau Cimetière de la Guillotière. Baedeker, Northern Italy, Plan of Lyon, G, 8. 56. The Rhône and Saône Rivers run through Lyon and converge near the center of the city. France’s largest river by volume, the 505-mile Rhône begins in Switzerland and empties into the Mediterranean Sea, south of Arles, France. The Saône, one of the principal tributaries of the Rhône, is 268 miles long and runs from near the Swiss border to Lyon. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 5; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2602, 2817. 57. On the west side of the Saône River is the Cimetière de Loyasse and the adjacent Nouveau Cimetière. Next to these cemeteries is the Fourvière hill, noted for its commanding view. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 5, Plan of Lyon, A, 4. 58. Situated on the banks of the Rhône, Avignon, rather than Rome, was the seat of the papacy during what the Italians call the Babylonian Captivity (1309–77) and served as the domicile of several antipopes from 1379 to 1409. Avignon remained under papal control until France annexed it in 1791. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 9; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:205.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 370

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

371

59. Located three-fourths of a mile from the train station, the Hôtel du Luxembourg was on the Rue du Chapeau-Rouge. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 9. 60. Begun during the reign of Pope Clement VI (1342–52), the walls of Avignon are thirteen feet thick and one hundred feet tall. Innocent VI completed the walls in 1360, raising the necessary revenue by imposing taxes. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 10; Thomas Okey, The Story of Avignon (Nendeln, Liechtenstein, 1971), 157–58. 61. Completed mostly during the reign of Benedict XII (1334–42), the Papal Palace consists of chapels, living and dining quarters, libraries, reception halls, courts, and towers. Construction involved enlarging parts of the existing episcopal palace and razing other parts to make way for new structures. Ornamental gardens surrounded the palace, some of them containing exotic wildlife such as lions and peacocks. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 10; Okey, Story of Avignon, 211–30. 62. Seven popes reigned from Avignon for at least part of their papacies—Clement V (1305–14), John XXII (1316–34), Benedict XII (1334–42), Clement VI (1342–52), Innocent VI (1352–62), Urban V (1362–70), and Gregory VI (1370–78). Gregory VI moved the papacy back to Rome in 1378 and died shortly thereafter. More than one person claimed to be pope during the next forty years, a period known as the Western Schism. Two of the antipopes who ruled from Avignon were Clement VII (1378–94) and Benedict XIII (1394–1423), whom the College of Cardinals at Pisa deposed in 1409. Franks J. Coppa, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vatican and Papacy (Westport, Conn., 1999), 360–61; Catholic University, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1:941. 63. Jesus as prophesied in Isa. 9:6. 64. Constructed by Bertrand Galfeur and Pierre de Lunelle and completed in 1341, the Hall of the Consistory is where the pontiff sat enthroned among the cardinals. Adorned with faded frescoes by Simone Memmi of Siena, the chamber measures about 135 feet by 12 feet. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 10; Okey, Story of Avignon, 218–19. 65. Within the massive square Tower of St. John, there is a chamber of torture. A flight of steps hewn from the rocks leads to the dungeon. At the north end of the consistory are the great kitchen, the Tour des Latrines, and several offices. Guides told visitors that the funnel-shaped chimney from the ovens in the kitchen was the vent of the Inquisition torture chamber. John Murray, A Handbook for Travelers on the Riviera, from Marseilles to Pisa, with Outlines of the Routes Thither, and Some Introductory Information on the Climate and the Choice of Winter Stations for Invalids (London, 1892), 7; Okey, Story of Avignon, 219–20. 66. Of or pertaining to the Church of Rome, its ceremonies, beliefs, and teachings; Roman Catholic in spirit and practice. 67. Vicegerent; the pope as representative of God or Christ. 68. Settled by the Benedictines in the sixth century and rebuilt several times, Fort Saint-André occupies a hill near Avignon that is the traditional burial place of St. Césaire, bishop of Arles. Philip the Fair, the king from 1285 to 1314, erected a castle on the site in the fourteenth century, and John the Good (reigned 1319–64) rebuilt the walls and towers. A small Romanesque chapel from the twelfth century adorns the interior, offering a splendid view of Avignon and the Alps. Okey, Story of Avignon, 387–89. 69. Douglass did write a speech about his travels in Europe, including his observations on Avignon. Written in two parts, the speech, delivered on 15 December 1887 in Washington, D.C., first covers the sojourn through Britain and northern France. No evidence exists that Douglass ever delivered the second part of the speech, concerning his travels through southern France (including Avignon), Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:278–79, 311–14. 70. Marseilles, a major Mediterranean port, is a seventy-five-mile train ride from Avignon, which passes through Tarascon and Arles. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 11, 13–14; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1899. 71. Fourteen miles outside Avignon and eight miles before Arles, the train made its only scheduled stop at Tarascon, known for its fourteenth-century Church of St. Martha and its large medieval castle with a drawbridge. Murray, Riviera, 7–8; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:3108.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 371

9/1/21 4:17 PM

372

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

72. The arena at Arles, measuring about five hundred yards in circumference and seating twentysix thousand, is the largest extant Roman amphitheater in France. Once used for combats involving gladiators and wild beasts, the arena was later the site of bloodless bullfights. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 14; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:159–60. 73. The theater at Arles is a Roman structure of traditional design, including a stage with three doors, an orchestra with seating for persons of rank, and tiers of seats for the common people. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 14. 74. On the southeastern side of Arles is a Roman burial ground known as Alyscamps, or ChampsÉlysées, with adjacent sarcophagi. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 15; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:160. 75. One guidebook avers that the beauty of the lower-class women in the area was noteworthy and probably attributable to their Greek ancestors. Murray, Riviera, 9. 76. The Grand Hôtel Beauvau, located at 4 rue Beauvau, faced the sea. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 4. 77. The Château d’If, a fortress and later a prison on the island of If, is a location in The Count of Monte Cristo, a historical romance published in 1844 by Alexander Dumas (1802–70). The principal character, a young sailor named Edmond Dantès, escapes from the Château d’If prison after serving fourteen years for a crime he did not commit. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 18; Magill, Masterpieces of World Literature, 158–60. 78. The largest and one of the best-known resorts on the French Riviera, Nice is a popular tourist destination with a mild climate. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 105; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:2180. 79. The Hôtel West End was a first-class hotel on the Promenade des Anglais, a park laid out by English residents from 1822 to 1824 on land that bordered the bay. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 102, 106. 80. For Europeans, the winter season at Nice began in January, with the start of the horse-racing season at the Hippodrome, and closed at the beginning of April with a regatta. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 105, 108. 81. The trip from Nice to Mentone, a small town formerly belonging to Monaco and annexed by France in 1860, is fifteen miles by train, passing through Monaco and Monte Carlo. The hundredmile trip from Mentone to Genoa passes through the Italian towns of San Remo, Porto Maurizio, Alassio, and Savona, among others. Genoa, or Genova in Italian, was the principal commercial town in Italy at the time, with extensive seaport activity. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 78, 90–102; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:1094, 2:1952. 82. Located six miles from the Mediterranean Sea on the banks of the Arno River, Pisa became one of the most powerful seafaring and commercial cities of the eleventh century and played a prominent role in the Crusades. After reaching the apex of its power in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Pisa succumbed to Florentine control. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 353; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2446. 83. Located on the Piazza del Duomo, the Campanile, or bell tower, is the best-known structure in Pisa, started in 1174 and finished in 1350. The 179-foot-tall structure was nicknamed the Leaning Tower, given its oblique position of straying 13 feet from the perpendicular at the time. The change of the angle in the upper floors indicates an attempt to compensate for the settling of the foundation during the building process. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 356; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2446. 84. Begun after a Pisan victory at sea in 1063 near Palermo, completed in 1118, and consecrated by Pope Gelasius II, Pisa Cathedral is a basilica with a central elliptical dome. The noteworthy edifice is constructed of white marble, with black and colored ornamentation. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 354; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2446. 85. Galileo (1564–1642), born in Pisa, was a student and later a teacher there. Legend holds that by closely observing the swaying of a bronze lamp in the nave of the cathedral, Galileo derived the idea of the isochronism of a pendulum. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 354–55; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2446.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 372

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

373

86. The Baptistery, begun in 1153 and completed in 1278, is made entirely of marble, with Gothic additions from the fourteenth century. Covered with a conical dome, the interior has a distinct echo. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 355; Cohen, Columbian Gazetteer, 3:2446. 87. When the Etruscans invaded the area where Rome stood in the eighth century B.C.E., they probably unified the tiny villages of the area into a city-state. Overthrowing the invaders around 500 B.C.E., the Romans established a republic, which survived for four hundred years. Governed by its Senate and later by its emperors, Rome built an empire, beginning with the Punic Wars and climaxing during the Pax Romana, the two hundred years of peace beginning around 31 B.C.E. With the addition of a second capital at Constantinople and the division of the empire, by Diocletian, into the Eastern Empire and the Western Empire in the third century C.E., Rome fell in importance. At the same time, a new tolerance for Christianity led Rome to become a center of that religion and allowed popes to increase their power over time. During the Middle Ages, the papacy was essentially the only significant institution or feature of Rome. The papacy experienced rejuvenation during the Renaissance as popes built magnificent churches and commissioned an array of artwork. The political power of the papacy began to wane, however, as the unification movement in Italy grew. The Kingdom of Italy, established in 1862, did not include Rome, which remained under the control of Napoleon III. Italian troops captured Rome in 1870 after the fall of Napoleon, and it became the capital of Italy in 1871. In the end, the pope retained political control of the Vatican, which remains a sovereign state. Karl Baedeker, Italy: Handbook for Travelers; Second Part, Central Italy and Rome, 9th ed. (Leipzig, Ger., 1886), 123–32; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2639–40. 88. The Hôtel du Sud was on Via Capo le Case, 56. Baedeker, Central Italy, 106. 89. The umbrella pine, or Sciadopitys, derives its name from the Greek skias or skiados, meaning canopy or umbel, and pitys, Greek for pine or fir tree. An evergreen tree native to East Asia but commonly used as an ornamental elsewhere, the umbrella pine can reach a height of one hundred feet in a natural environment. The umbrella pine has scale-like needles along its stems, as well as whorls of flattened needles around the stems, which resemble an umbrella. Concise Encyclopedia Biology, trans. Thomas A. Scott (New York, 1996), 1171; H. L. Gerth van Wijk, A Dictionary of Plant-Names, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1971), 2:1530; Umberto Quattrocchi, CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names, 4 vols. (Boca Raton, Fla., 2000), 4:2429. 90. This epithet for Rome appears in Ovid and Tibullus and in many official documents of the empire. Elizabeth Knowles, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Oxford, 2000), 344; Adrian Room, ed., Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 15th ed. (New York, 1995), 368. 91. St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican is the largest church in the world, covering, internally, 163,000 square feet; for comparison, Milan Cathedral covers 126,000 square feet, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, 85,700, and St. Paul’s in London, 85,000. The dome of St. Peter’s, designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1563), is 403 feet high. Baedeker, Central Italy, 276–77. 92. Ancient Rome had several forums, or centers for business, worship, judicial proceedings, and public assembly and ceremony. The oldest of these, the Roman Forum, contains the Basilica Julia, the Temple of the Vestal Virgins, and the Triumphal Arch of Septimius Severus, among other structures. Begun by the Emperor Trajan and designed by Apollodorus of Damascus, the Forum of Trajan is the most magnificent of the forums in Rome, measuring 660 feet wide and containing Trajan’s Column, a 147-foot marble statue celebrating Trajan’s victory over the Dacians. Baedeker, Central Italy, 217–27, 235–37. 93. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Matt. 2:1; Luke 2:4–7. 94. In the ecclesiastical service for the burial of the dead, the minister commits the body to the ground with the words “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The phrase derives from the biblical story of Adam’s fall and subsequent punishment from God, in which God tells Adam, “For dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” Book of Common Prayer, 245; Gen. 3:19. 95. Not considered one of the Seven Hills of ancient Rome, the Pincian, or Pincio, north of the Quirinal, rises to a height of 164 feet. A projecting terrace at its apex affords a commanding view of the newer part of the city. Baedeker, Central Italy, 140, 143; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2639.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 373

9/1/21 4:17 PM

374

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

96. The Capitoline, or Capitol, the smallest of the Seven Hills of Rome at 161 feet high, is the most important historically. Divided into three parts, the Capitol has the church and monastery of Santa Maria in Aracoeli on its northern summit and the Palazzo Caffarelli on its southwestern point, with the Piazza of the Capitol lying in the depression in the middle. In ancient times, the Capitol was the site of the most sacred shrine of Rome, the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, built in 509 B.C.E. and plundered in 455 C.E. by the Vandals. Baedeker, Central Italy, 203; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2639. 97. Originally called the Amphitheatrum Flavium, the four-story Colosseum was the largest theater in the world, seating eighty-seven thousand spectators. Completed by the Emperor Titus in 80 C.E., the Colosseum was the site of gladiatorial combats, wild animal fights, and naval battles when flooded for that purpose. The Roman barons used the Colosseum as a fortress in the Middle Ages and later staged bullfights there. The structure fell into disrepair until Pope Benedict XIV (1740–58) consecrated it as a holy site because of the blood of Christian martyrs shed there. About one-third of the structure remains. Baedeker, Central Italy, 230–31. 98. Probably Agnes Elliston Putnam, originally from Sydenham, England, a borough of London. Married on 24 May 1863, she and Edmund Quincy Putnam lived in Rome until her death on 16 April 1901. Other evidence indicates that her name is Gertrude, or that she went by the name Gertrude. There is a letter in Italian, dated 6 May 1887, to Cardinal Lucido Maria Parocchi, the vicar general of the pope, requesting a special favor for Gertrude Putnam and her company. The letter asks that she be granted admission to see the chains that allegedly bound Peter during his imprisonment in Palestine and later in Rome, housed in the Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli, also known as the Basilica Eudossiana. Gertrude Putnam also wrote a letter to Douglass on 16 May 1887, addressing him as “Uncle Frederick.” The letter, signed “Niece Gertrude,” expresses appreciation for meeting Douglass and for his stay with her family in Rome. Anonymous to Cardinal Lucido Maria Parocchi, 6 May 1887, and Gertrude Putnam to Douglass, 16 May 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frame 505, 512–13, FD Papers, DLC; Dorothy Burnett Porter, “The Remonds of Salem, Massachusetts: A Nineteenth-Century Family Revisited,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 95:259, 292 (1986); Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1726, 3:3072. 99. A tall cap, deeply cleft at the tip, usually of white linen or satin, worn by certain church officials as a sign of great dignity. 100. After Pilate sentenced Jesus to death, Roman soldiers made a circlet out of briars and forced it onto Jesus’s head. Because Jesus claimed to be a king, leading to his conviction for treason, the crown was part of the soldiers’ ridicule of Jesus. Matt. 27:29; Mark 15:17–19; John 9:2–4; George Arthur Buttrick, ed., The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (New York, 1962), 1:746. 101. A physician and a colleague of the apostle Paul, Luke is the reputed author of the third gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles. Phil. 1:24; Col. 4:14; 2 Tim. 4:11; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 4:397. 102. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus raised Lazarus of Bethany, the brother of Martha and Mary, from the dead. This is not the same Lazarus as the one in Luke, who was poor in life and rich after death, in contrast to a man who was rich in life and poor after death. John 11:1–44; Luke 16:19–31; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 4:265. 103. Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. 104. A bronze statue of St. Peter sits in the nave of St. Peter’s by the fourth pillar on the right. Bought by Paul V from the monastery of Santo Martino, the fifth-century statue rests on a white marble throne under a canopy. Devotees customarily kissed the right toe of the statue at the time, wearing away most of that toe. Baedeker, Central Italy, 278. 105. The term “Immaculate Conception” designates the dogma that the Virgin Mary was free from original sin from the moment of conception. Unlike the rest of humanity, Mary was never tainted by sin, and thus was suitable to be the mother of Jesus, the Son of God. This dogma became

Y7870-Douglass.indb 374

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

375

an official doctrine of the Catholic Church when Pope Pius IX announced it in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus on 8 December 1854, a day that continues to be a liturgical feast. Catholic University, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 7:378, 381; Richard P. McBrien, ed., The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism (San Francisco, 1995), 655–56. 106. Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (1792–1878) was the archbishop of Imola when the conclave of cardinals elected him to the papacy in 1846. As Pope Pius IX, he refused to surrender political control over any part of the papal territories, to hand over Rome to rebels seeking to establish a secular state, or to support a war of national liberation against Catholic Austria. In 1848, public unrest forced Pius into exile, and the temporal power of the papacy ended in 1849 with the establishment of a republic in Rome. Under his rule, the power of the church waned in such affairs as education and clerical appointments, which became affairs of state. By the end of his reign, the modern state of Italy was free from papal authority. Eric John, ed., The Popes: A Concise Biographical History (New York, 1964), 437–40; Bruno Steimer and Michael G. Parker, eds., Dictionary of Popes and the Papacy, trans. Brian McNeil and Peter Heinigg (New York, 2001), 124–26. 107. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has been controversial for centuries. One argument, made by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century, holds that since sexual intercourse is sinful, even within the confines of marriage, sin has tainted everyone at conception, even Mary. Others, such as Alexander of Hales in the thirteenth century, averred that although everyone needs redemption through Jesus Christ, Mary would not need it, having been conceived without sin. The controversies continued until the time of the papal pronouncement in 1854 embracing the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Raphael M. Huber, The Immaculate Conception in the Western Church (Rome, 1954), 5, 19, 28–29; Adrian Hastings, ed., The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford, 2000), 415. 108. The Borgo Vecchio and the Borgo Nuovo are streets running from Castle St. Angelo to the Vatican. Baedeker, Central Italy, 272. 109. Caroline Remond Putnam (1826–1908) was the youngest child of John and Nancy Lenox Remond, free blacks living in Salem, Massachusetts. Born in Curaçao, John Remond immigrated to the United States in 1798. He became a hairdresser and a lifelong member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Nancy was a caterer and later joined the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, as did Caroline. Frustrated at being unable to attain an education in the public schools, Caroline, along with her two sisters, followed their father’s profession. They ran a stylish hair salon and manufactured wigs, maintaining the largest such operation in that state. Caroline also produced and marketed a tonic to curb hair loss. She married the antislavery supporter Joseph Hall Putnam (1826–59), a Boston schoolteacher and hairdresser. They had two children: Louisa Victoria, who died in childhood three months after her father, and Edmund Quincy. Beginning in 1859, Caroline made several trips abroad, both to travel and, later, to visit her sister Sarah, who had taken up residence abroad. In these travels, Caroline was the victim of racial discrimination on steamships, at hotels, and at the U.S. legation in London. In 1885, Caroline, along with her sister Maritcha, joined Sarah in a self-imposed exile in Europe. Dorothy Sterling, We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 96, 147n, 180; Porter, “Remonds of Salem,” 291–93; Ruth Bogin, “Sarah Parker Remond: Black Abolitionist from Salem,” Essex Institute Historical Collection, 110:120, 148 (1974); DANB, 522. 110. Born a free black in Salem, Massachusetts, Charles Lenox Remond (1810–73) initially followed in the footsteps of his father, John Remond, as a hairdresser. An eloquent and compelling orator, Charles was a frequent speaker for the antislavery cause—the first black man to do so in public—and in 1838 he became an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In the company of the Reverend Ichabod Codding, Charles toured Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island to promote abolition. Chosen a delegate to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, Charles traveled with William Lloyd Garrison and other representatives of the American Anti-Slavery Society, but had to travel in steerage because of his skin color. A sensational speaker at the convention, Charles remained in Great Britain to lecture there and in Ireland for a year and a half after the American

Y7870-Douglass.indb 375

9/1/21 4:17 PM

376

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

delegates returned. Charles came back to the United States in 1841, bearing a noteworthy address from the Irish, with sixty thousand signatures, urging their American countrymen to support the abolitionists. Charles found that the spotlight had shifted while he was abroad to another antislavery orator, Douglass, who had recently accepted a lecturing post with the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Charles and Douglass frequently traveled together on speaking tours, but their relationship soured in 1852 when Douglass did not support Garrison’s view of the Constitution, as Charles did. His health failing, Charles continued to lecture and write against slavery, albeit on a more limited basis. During the Civil War, Charles recruited for a Massachusetts regiment that was the first from the North to send black troops into combat. After the war, Charles served as a light inspector and later as a customhouse clerk until his death. “William Wells Brown on Charles Lenox Remond,” NHB, 10:104, 118–19 (February 1947); Porter, “Remonds of Salem,” 273–81; Wallace, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 40:696–98; DANB, 520–21; NCAB, 2:303; DAB, 8:499–500. 111. Edmund Quincy Putnam was the son of Joseph Hall Putnam and Caroline Remond Putnam. In 1865, he studied medicine in Vienna and later practiced medicine in London. While studying abroad, Putnam was a foreign correspondent for several papers, including the New York Herald Tribune, the Independent, and the National Anti-Slavery Standard. He later lived in Rome with his wife and mother. Porter, “Remonds of Salem,” 292. 112. Located in west-central England in Gloucestershire, Cheltenham has been a vacation and health resort since the discovery of its mineral springs in 1716. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:613. 113. One of the youngest children of John and Nancy Remond, Sarah Parker Remond (1824–94) did not follow her sisters into the profession of hairdressing or the business of catering, their parents’ professions. Sarah encountered prejudice in the public schools she attended as a child, and much of her early education occurred at home. Adhering to her family’s opposition to slavery, Sarah became active in the Salem Anti-Slavery Society as well as the antislavery organizations of Essex County and Massachusetts. Sarah gained notoriety as a victim of racism in 1853 when authorities forcibly ejected her from a Boston theater and later from a Philadelphia exhibition when she attempted to take her assigned seat in the white section of the auditorium. In 1856, Sarah received a lecturing position with the American Anti-Slavery Society, speaking often with her brother Charles in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio. Growing weary of the racism in the United States, Sarah traveled abroad in 1859 and lectured extensively in England, Scotland, and Ireland, at times with Douglass, raising money for the American Anti-Slavery Society and organizing local antislavery chapters. From 1859 to 1861, Sarah realized her dream of a formal education, attending the Bedford College for Ladies in London. After emancipation, Sarah lectured on behalf of the freedmen, raising money and soliciting clothing. After a brief return to the United States in 1866, she went back to Europe, establishing her domicile in Florence, where she studied at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital for two years. She earned a diploma certifying her to practice medicine in 1868, which she did in Florence for several years. In 1877, Sarah married Lazzaro Pintor, a native of Sardinia. She died in London and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Douglass to Amy Post, 25 May 1860, Post Papers, University of Rochester; Parker Pillsbury, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles (Concord, N.H., 1883), 487; Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman and Arthur Crawford Wyman, Elizabeth Buffum Chace, 1806–1899: Her Life and Its Environment, 2 vols. (Boston, 1914), 2:43; Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 96, 147n, 175–80; Sarah Parker Remond, “A Colored Lady Lecturer,” English Woman’s Journal, 7:269–75 (1 June 1861); Porter, “Remonds of Salem,” 281–89; Bogin, “Sarah Parker Remond,” 129–32; NAW, 3:136–37; DANB, 522–23. 114. Along with her sister Cecelia Remond Babcock (1816–1912) and later with her sister Caroline Remond Putnam, Maritcha Juan Remond (c. 1816–95) was one of the operators of the Ladies Hair Work Salon in Salem, Massachusetts. Maritcha never married and took care of the business while Caroline traveled abroad extensively after 1859. In 1885, Maritcha and Caroline elected to live permanently abroad, joining their sister Sarah Parker Remond as European expatriates. Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 96, 147n, 180; Porter, “Remonds of Salem,” 290–92.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 376

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

377

115. Christine K. Sargent was the daughter of John Turner Sargent (1807–77), a Unitarian minister from Boston. The Reverend Sargent was a graduate of Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School. A staunch advocate of a free pulpit, he defended his friend, Theodore Parker, whose views on religion were controversial. A supporter of abolition, temperance, and woman suffrage, Sargent served as an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Christine K. Sargent to Douglass, 11 May 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frames 510–11, FD Papers, DLC; Samuel Cutler, “Rev. John Turner Sargent, A.M.,” in Memorial Biographies of the New-England Historic Genealogical Society, 9 vols. (Boston, 1907), 7:243–44; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 71. 116. The first major black sculptor in America, Mary Edmonia Lewis (c. 1840–c. 1911) was the child of a nomadic Chippewa mother and a black father who was a gentleman servant. Orphaned at five and nicknamed “Wildfire” as a child because of her wandering existence, Lewis eventually attended grade school near Albany, New York, and Oberlin College in Ohio, where she studied art. Leaving Oberlin in 1863, Lewis settled in Boston, where she became acquainted with William Lloyd Garrison and his abolitionist colleagues. After successfully sculpting a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a Boston Civil War hero, and selling over one hundred copies of it, Lewis earned enough money in 1865 to purchase a ticket to Rome, the international capital of sculpture. Once there, she tapped into her heritage for inspiration. She sculpted statues motivated by the Emancipation Proclamation, including The Freed Woman and Her Child (1866) and Forever Free (1867). She also produced works based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha, including Minnehaha (1867) and The Old Arrow Maker and His Daughter (1872). Her best-known work was Hagar (1875), the Egyptian slave rejected by Abraham after she bore his son, representing the alienation of black women in white society. Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions (Boston, 1990), 51–56; Glenn B. Optiz, ed., Dictionary of American Sculptors (Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 1984), 239. 117. The Via Venti Settembre, named for the day the Italians entered Rome in 1870 after ejecting the French occupational troops, connects the Pia Porta, the gate where the Italians chiefly directed their attack, with the Quirinal, one of the Seven Hills of Rome. Baedeker, Central Italy, 132, 140, 164. 118. Founded by Greeks and captured by Romans in the fourth century B.C.E., Naples was a favorite city of the Romans due to its scenic beauty and baths. Naples passed under Byzantine rule in the sixth century C.E. and became an independent duchy in the eighth century. Beginning in the twelfth century, Naples came under the influence of a succession of foreign rulers, including the Normans, Germans, and Spaniards, ultimately becoming the capital of the Kingdom of Naples until annexed into the modern state of Italy in 1860. Karl Baedeker, Italy Handbook for Travellers; Third Part, Southern Italy and Sicily, with Excursions to the Lipari Islands, Malta, Sardinia, Tunis, and Corfu, 9th ed. (Leipzig, Ger., 1887), 31–32; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:2119. 119. Running the length of the Italian peninsula, the Apennine Mountains start in northwestern Italy, where they join the Ligurian Alps. They continue to the Strait of Messina, lying between the peninsula and Sicily, the mountains of which are actually a continuation of the range. The southern portion of the system contains active volcanoes, including Etna and Vesuvius, and that area experiences many earthquakes. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 181; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:132. 120. An implement having the characteristic of a chisel and spade, used for digging, lifting, or cutting. 121. Located on the eastern shore of the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland. The height of Vesuvius, around four thousand feet, changes with each eruption, the first recorded one occurring in 79 C.E. Another cycle of volcanic activity began in 1631, with eruptions recorded eight times in the eighteenth century, nine times in the nineteenth, and three in the twentieth. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 120–24; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:3342. 122. Begun in 1738 by Charles III and finished in 1839 by Ferdinand II, the Reggia di Capodimonte, partly laid out in the English style, was once a residence of the Bourbon kings of the Two

Y7870-Douglass.indb 377

9/1/21 4:17 PM

378

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

Sicilies. The gardens contained a pheasant preserve, used as a breeding ground in the spring. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 44; Nicola Spinosa, ed., The National Museum of Capodimonte, trans. Phillip Sands, Gabriella Granata, and Sara Carcatella (Naples, Italy, 1996), 7–8. 123. Located on the point separating the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Salerno, Sorrento is a small fishing village surrounded by lemon and orange groves and deep ravines. Its climate and proximity to the sea make it a popular summer resort. Capri, an island off the tip of the Sorrento peninsula, is also a tourist destination because of its climate and scenery. There are two small towns on the island, Capri and Anacapri. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 156–57; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:534, 3:2974. 124. The Reggia di Capodimonte houses the royal Museo di Capodimonte, an extensive collection of modern Neapolitan art. The museum also contains the Farnese collection, inherited by Charles VII of Naples and Sicily from his mother. In addition to Renaissance paintings and drawings, the Farnese collection includes some porcelain manufactured locally and a collection of armor formally housed at the Palazzo Reale. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 44–45; Spinosa, National Museum, 7–8; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:2119. 125. Painted between 1793 and 1806, The Death of Caesar, or The Murder of Julius Caesar, is a painting in the Museo di Capodimonte by Vincenzo Camuccini, a Roman painter. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 44, 395; Spinosa, National Museum, 153. 126. Born into a noble family, Vittoria Colonna (1492–1547) married Fernando Francesco d’Avalos, marchese di Pescara, in 1509. Upon his death in 1525, Colonna began composing poems memorializing him. While respected as a poet, Colonna is most famous for her friendship with noteworthy authors of her time, including the poets Jacopo Sannazaro and Ludovico Ariosto, as well as Pietro Bembo, author of one of the earliest Italian grammars. Nonetheless, her most famous association was with Michelangelo, who drew pictures for her and exchanged letters and poems with her. Michelangelo was at Colonna’s side when she died, the scene of which is the subject of a painting by Francesco Jacovacci, completed in 1880 and part of the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. Maud F. Jerrold, Vittoria Colonna, with Some Account of Her Friends and Her Times (New York, 1906), 3, 5–11, 13–14, 29, 98–101, 121, 127–35, 296, 314; Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos (Vienna, 1997), 486. 127. Born in Otego, New York, Adelia Sarah Gates (1825–1912) left home at the age of twentytwo to work in the cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. In her thirties, Gates attended Antioch College in Ohio, but had to drop out because of ill health. In 1867, she traveled to Paris for an exhibition and remained there for most of the rest of her life. When she was fifty, Gates mastered the art of watercolors under the tutelage of Madam Vouga in Geneva, Switzerland. She spent the remainder of her life painting the wildflowers of Italy, Algiers, and other foreign places. In 1880, a family illness forced her to return to the United States, where she painted wildflowers from California to New York. During this stay in the United States, she had become acquainted with the Douglasses by March 1886. Returning to Europe later that year, Gates was with the Douglasses during their first visits to Rome and Naples. Gates’s collection, deposited in the Smithsonian Institution Archives upon her death, includes 502 watercolors of native and exotic plants. Helen Pitts Douglass to Jane Wells Pitts, 25 April 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frame 490, and Adelia D. Gates autograph, 6 March 1886, Addition, 1851–1964, and Undated File, reel 34, frame 144, FD Papers, DLC; New York Times, 26 April 1914; Adela E. Orpen, The Chronicles of the Sid: Or, the Life and Travels of Adelia S. Gates (New York, [1897]), 27, 37, 99–105; Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West (Austin, Tex., 1998), 359. 128. Eleanor Lewis was the niece of Adelia Gates. Upon the death of Gates, Lewis donated her collection of watercolors painted by Gates to the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Lewis was with the Douglasses while they were in Rome, but she is not Edmonia Lewis, the sculptor whom Douglass visited when in Rome. Helen Pitts Douglass to Jennis, 25 April 1887, General Correspondence File,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 378

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

379

reel 4, frames 490–92, FD Papers, DLC; New York Times, 26 April 1914; Kovinick and YoshikiKovinick, Women Artists, 359. 129. Hannah Ellen Brown Davis (1841–98), the widow of Clarkson Davis, resided in Spiceland, Indiana. Married in 1863, the Davises ran the Spiceland Academy, a school established by Quakers, until Clarkson’s death in 1883. Under the couple’s leadership, the Spiceland Academy enjoyed an outstanding reputation as an educational institution. Clarkson Davis was also a popular lecturer and essayist in Indiana, often basing his work on a tour he made through parts of Europe. Douglass Diary, Diary File, reel 1, frame 45, and H. E. Davis to Douglass, 25 December 1889, General Correspondence File, reel 5, frame 624, FD Papers, DLC; Elwood Pleas, Henry County, Past and Present: A Brief History of the County from 1821 to 1871 (New Castle, Ind., 1871), 79, 112; Cline and McHaffie, The People’s Guide: A Business, Political and Religious Dictionary of Henry Co., Ind. (Indianapolis, 1874), 324; History of Henry County, Indiana (Chicago, 1884), 427–28; Rerick Brothers, The County of Henry, Indiana: Topography, History, Art Folio, Including Chronological Chart of General, National, State, and County History ([Richmond, Ind., 1893]), 16–17. 130. Built in 1325 by Duke Charles of Calabria, the monastery of San Martino housed a Carthusian order, not a Capuchin order. The compound consists of a monastery court, a laboratory, cloisters, and a church with three chapels. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 90–91; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:2119. 131. When the Carthusians abandoned the monastery, the Museo Nazionale took control of it to house an overflow of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Neapolitan paintings. The museum also displays china, porcelain, silver, models of Italian fortresses, and other artifacts of the Naples vicinity. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 90–91. 132. Several paintings adorn the church, including depictions of the ascension of Jesus, the Crucifixion, and the twelve apostles by Giovanni Lanfranco; the descent from the cross and Christ washing the feet of the disciples by Massimo Stanzione; Moses and Elias, the twelve apostles, and the communion of the apostles by Jusepe de Ribera (“Lo Spagnoletto”); an unfinished nativity by Guido Reni; and Christ washing the feet of the disciples by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo. While the contents of the museum are noteworthy, San Martino is famous for its picturesque views of Naples and its bay, Mount Vesuvius, and the Apennines from two balconies of its hexagonal belvedere. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 90–91, 395–97. 133. Started in 1871 by the Reverend A. F. Buscarlet, the United Presbyterian Church in Naples served tourists in the winter, but its congregation mainly consisted of foreign residents. By the time Buscarlet left in 1874, the congregation had built a sanctuary, manse, and classrooms for day students, located at 2 Vico Coppella Veccia. The Reverend Gordon Gray led the congregation from 1874 until 1881, when he left to serve the United Presbyterian Church in Rome. Under his leadership, the church acquired more space for its expanding education program. In 1881, the Reverend T. Johnson Irvine, who had been serving in Malta, became the minister of the church and served the congregation for forty years, until his retirement in 1921. Fluent in Italian and an accomplished student of Hebrew and Greek, Irvine was a successful fund-raiser and a noted preacher. With the help of his wife and daughter, the school more than doubled in size during Irvine’s tenure. The church closed in the 1920s when the foreign resident population of Naples dwindled. At the time of the Douglasses’ visit, the United Presbyterian Church held service at 11:00 A.M. and 3:30 P.M. on Sundays, and 3:30 P.M. on Wednesdays. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 26; Albert G. MacKinnon, Beyond the Alps: The Story of the Scottish Church in Italy and Malta (London, [1937]), 123–27. 134. Built in 1576 as a cavalry barracks and later housing the university, the Museo Nazionale, formerly the Real Museo Borbonico and now the National Archaeological Museum, contains the royal collection of antiques and pictures. Included in the collection are Egyptian and Roman antiquities, but most noteworthy are the objects of art from Pompeii and Herculaneum. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 59–84; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:2119.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 379

9/1/21 4:17 PM

380

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

135. Pompeii and Herculaneum were two cities destroyed by Vesuvius when it erupted in 79 C.E. Buried under twenty feet of volcanic ash and lava, the cities remained undisturbed until rediscovered in 1748, when excavations began. The artifacts and built environment are remarkably well preserved and provide valuable examples of Roman art, much of which was moved to the Museo Nazionale at Naples. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 127–31; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1270, 3:2475. 136. Formerly named the Villa Reale and generally referred to as La Villa, the Villa Nazionale contained the most popular promenade in Naples at the time. Laid out in 1780 and expanded over the years, the grounds are in the Italian style, adorned with trees, sculptures, antiquities, fountains, and an aquarium. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 85–86; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:2119. 137. Presumably John Brown. 138. The Reverend T. Johnson Irvine from Naples forwarded his card to Douglass in a letter from J. C. Fletcher. J. C. Fletcher to Douglass, 17 February 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frame 455, FD Papers, DLC. 139. Born in Indianapolis, James Cooley Fletcher (1823–1901) was the son of Calvin and Sarah (Hill) Fletcher. After graduating from Brown University and attending Princeton Theological Seminary, Fletcher became affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. He studied in Europe for a year, where he married Henrietta, the daughter of the Reverend Cesar and Jenny Malan, in Geneva in 1850. Fletcher served as a missionary to Brazil for several years before settling in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where he wrote and lectured for six years. In 1869, Fletcher moved to Portugal, where he worked with the U.S. consulate. From 1873 to 1890, Fletcher resided in Naples as a voluntary missionary for the Waldenses and the Free Church of Scotland. He returned to the United States in his final years, dying in Los Angeles. NCAB, 13:130; DAB, 2:1576. 140. Founded originally by the Greeks and named Dicaerchia, the city of Pozzuoli was on the coast of the north shore of a bay running north from the bay of Naples. When the Romans conquered and recolonized the town in the third century B.C.E., they renamed it Puteoli, and it became the primary station for traffic between the coast of Italy and Egypt and other parts of the East. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 99; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2503. 141. To the west of Pozzuoli is Lake Avernus, a dark and toxic body of water. It is the traditional site of the entrance to the underworld, marked by the River Styx in Roman mythology. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 103–04; Sabine G. Oswalt, Concise Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology (Chicago, 1969), 271. 142. On his trip from Jerusalem to Rome to stand trial, Paul landed in Puteoli and remained there seven days. Acts 28:13–14. 143. On the western edge of Naples is a tomb that is the alleged burial place of Virgil. The sixteen-square-foot chamber is a Roman columbarium with a vaulted ceiling and three windows. Ten niches for urns holding cremains line the wall, in addition to one recess of apparently greater size. Virgil, who wrote the Aeneid and the Georgics while living in Naples, requested to be buried there, and he was interred in Naples after he died in Brindisi in 19 B.C.E. While the accuracy of the claim is historically questionable, local legend favors it as the place of Virgil’s burial. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 88; Peter Levi, Virgil: His Life and Times (London, 1988), 225–26. 144. The Hill of Polipo, on the western edge of Naples, is the site of a villa where Brutus fled after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E. When Brutus left for Greece before the Battle of Philippi, he bade farewell to his wife Portia at this villa. Cicero did visit Brutus at the villa, but did not own it. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 93. 145. One of the first temples excavated at Pozzuoli was the Temple of Serapis, or the Serapeum, in 1750, later thought to be a market and not a temple. Other temples in the vicinity include the Temple of Neptune and the Temple of the Nymphs. All three are partially submerged by the sea. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 100–101. 146. Luke, the reputed author of the biblical book of Acts, reports that because of Jewish hostility to Paul’s message of Christianity, the Romans arrested Paul in Jerusalem. Paul appealed to Caesar,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 380

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

381

and a Roman escort transported Paul to Rome, where he remained for two years under house arrest. Acts 28:16–28, 30. 147. Perhaps an allusion to Paul’s address to the Athenians, wherein he challenges their superstitious and ignorant worship. Acts 17:16–33. 148. Born in Dresden, New York, Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–99) was the son of a Congregational minister who served parishes in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-one, Ingersoll practiced law in Illinois with his brother, Ebon Clark Ingersoll, who later represented Illinois in Congress. From 1867 to 1869, Ingersoll served as the attorney general for Illinois. Best known as the “great agnostic,” Ingersoll used his debating skills to promote agnosticism on the lecture circuit. Ingersoll ended his legal career in New York, where he retired in 1896. Clarence L. Barnhart, ed., The New Century Cyclopedia of Names, 3 vols. (New York, 1954), 2:2119; ACAB, 3:348; NCAB, 9:255–56; DAB, 5:469. 149. Friday, 4 February 1887. 150. When a peasant found some statues and bronze utensils at the site of Pompeii in 1748, the discovery captured the attention of Charles III, who ordered excavations to begin. The first structures uncovered included the amphitheatre, the Temple of Isis, and other structures on the western edge of the town. Excavations continued under the Bourbon kings, who were more concerned with retrieving items of value; hence, the process was unscientific and poorly documented. When the Bourbons lost power in 1860, Giuseppe Fiorelli became the director of excavations at Pompeii for the newly formed Italian state. Dividing Pompeii into nine regions, archaeologists had excavated part or all of seven of the nine at the time and estimated that approximately half of the town had been uncovered by the time of Douglass’s visit. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 128–29; Tim Murray, ed., Encyclopedia of Archaeology: History and Discoveries, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2001), 3:1058–60. 151. From 1861 to 1872, archaeologists uncovered eighty-seven human skeletons, as well as those of three dogs and seven horses, at Pompeii. After the corpses decayed, they left an impression on the encompassing ash, which later hardened. Fiorelli devised a method of removing the bones and filling the cavity with plaster, rendering a detailed cast of the persons and animals in the last moments of their lives. Eight of these human figures and one of a dog are on display at the museum at Pompeii, including one of a man lying on his side, a man lying on his face, a tall elderly woman, and a young girl with a ring on her finger. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 128, 133; Murray, Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 3:1059. 152. Although the names of a few of the owners of the dwellings are known, as in the case of the House of Marcus Lucretius, the houses excavated at Pompeii generally received a name relating to unique items found in them. Hence, the House of the Faun received its name from the bronze statue of a dancing faun in its courtyard, and the House of the Tragic Poet received its name from two representations in one of its rooms, one of a poet reading and another of a theatrical production. Among the temples excavated at the time are those dedicated to Apollo, Mercury, and Jupiter. Pompeii has two theaters: the Great Theatre, seating five thousand, and the adjacent, better-preserved Small Theatre, seating fifteen hundred. In addition, the amphitheatre on the edge of town could accommodate twenty thousand spectators. The baths of Pompeii consist of several rooms for special purposes, including dressing rooms, warm baths, hot-air baths, and cold baths. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 134–36, 138, 144, 146–47, 151–52; Erich Lessing and Antonio Varone, Pompeii (Paris, 1996), 46–49, 52–55, 60–65; Robert Etienne, Pompeii: The Day a City Died (New York, 1992), 95–113. 153. In the Old Testament, Balaam is a diviner summoned by the agents of the king of Moab to curse Israel. Instead, Balaam issued a series of blessings on Israel for a promising future. Other stories hold that God either turned Balaam’s curse into a blessing or that God convinced Balaam to bless Israel by a display of power, namely, a talking she-ass. Balaam was also responsible for the heresy at Peor, leading the Israelites to kill him in battle. Deut. 23:5–6; Num. 22:5–24, 31:8, 16; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1:569–72. 154. The Reverend T. Johnson Irvine.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 381

9/1/21 4:17 PM

382

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

155. Mrs. Gutteridge sent her regards to Douglass in two letters from J. C. Fletcher to Douglass, 27 April, 1 May 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frames 495–97, 500–502, FD Papers, DLC. 156. From 1863 to 1903, the Reverend T. W. S. Jones served the Methodist Church in Naples. With the aid of two Italian ministers, Jones was the first to collect, in 1870, the Italian Methodist hymns for use in Italy and the United States. Reginald Kissack, Methodists in Italy ([London, 1960]), 25. 157. Built in 1874, the Methodist Church in Naples was on a steep slum street called San Anna di Palazzo. Kissack, Methodists in Italy, 10; Baedeker, Southern Italy, 26. 158. Amalfi, a small fishing town on the Gulf of Salerno, was a rival to Pisa, Genoa, and Venice as a maritime power until the Normans sacked it in the twelfth century. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 175–76; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:89. 159. William G. Murray was a member of the commission in Sydney for the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition held in London. Colonial and Indian Exhibition, Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1886 Official Catalogue (London, 1886), xvii. 160. Hewn in the mountainside or supported by large viaducts as it hugs the rocky coast, the road from Sorrento to Amalfi along the coast is one of the most popular tourist routes in Italy. Completed in 1852, the road runs through rugged landscapes and charming scenery. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 174; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:89. 161. Founded in 1212 by Cardinal Pietro Capuano for the Cistercians, the Capuchin monastery in 1583 passed into possession of the Capuchins, a mendicant Franciscan order founded by Matteo di Bassi in 1526 and named for the order’s peculiar capuche, or hood, characterized by a longer point than that of other Franciscans. Situated on a steep rook rising 230 feet from the sea, the monastery contains cloisters, a grotto, and a veranda with superb views. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 176–77. 162. Around the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century B.C.E., the Greeks founded a city on the Gulf of Salerno in southern Italy, which they named Poseidonia in honor of the god of the sea. Rome recolonized the city in 273 B.C.E. and called it Paestum. The site is famous for its well-preserved Doric temples, built by Greek settlers in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 172; Pellegrino Claudio Sestieri, Paestum: The City, the Prehistoric Necropolis in Contaudo Gaudo, the Heraion at the Mouth of the Sele (Rome, 1953), 5–6; John Griffiths Pedley, Paestum: Greeks and Romans in Southern Italy, 2nd ed. (New York, 1990), 11; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2335. 163. Salerno is a port and the principal city on the Gulf of Salerno, as well as the seat of both local government and an archbishop. It is the site of a famous medical school that reached its peak in the twelfth century and closed in 1817. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 169–70; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2722. 164. Of the three ancient Greek temples at Paestum, the largest is the so-called Temple of Neptune, which measures 189 feet long by 84 feet wide. Built around 450 B.C.E., it is the second oldest and best preserved of the three. Archaeologists called it the Temple of Neptune because they erroneously believed it was the oldest and thus had been built in honor of the god for whom the city was named. Subsequent discoveries revealed that the temple replaced the oldest one, and both were dedicated to the worship of Hera Argiva, goddess of fertility. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 172–73; Sestieri, Paestum, 12–14; Pedley, Paestum, 80–88; Oswalt, Greek and Roman Mythology, 199. 165. No record remains of the letters that the Douglasses wrote on this date. 166. In French, “very bad weather.” 167. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, Charles Remond Douglass (1844–1920) was the youngest son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Named for his father’s friend and fellow black antislavery speaker Charles Lenox Remond, Charles attended the public schools in Rochester, New York, and delivered newspapers for his father. He became the first black man from New York to enlist for military service in the Civil War, volunteering for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry. When President

Y7870-Douglass.indb 382

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

383

Lincoln discharged Charles because of poor health in 1864 at the request of the elder Douglass, Charles planned to go to Tennessee and invest in cotton lands. Instead, he married Mary Elizabeth Murphy, called Libbie, in 1866, and served as a clerk in the War Department from 1867 to 1869 and in the Treasury Department from 1869 to 1875. In 1875, he became a clerk at the U.S. consulate in Santo Domingo, but returned to the United States in 1878, when his wife died. He then married Laura Haley and became a real estate developer. No record exists of the letter Douglass wrote to Charles on 11 February 1887. James M. Gregory, Frederick Douglass the Orator (1893; New York, 1971), 203–06; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 103, 222, 230, 239–40, 362, 385. 168. Born in Washington, D.C., Julia Ada Douglass (c. 1873–?) was the fourth child of Charles and Libbie Douglass. When his wife died in 1878, Charles placed his surviving children temporarily in the homes of his brother and father. Julia Ada lived with Douglass. Mary Louise (c. 1875–?) lived with Lewis and Amelia Douglass. Charles Frederick (c. 1868–?) and Joseph Henry (c. 1870–?) lived with Frederick Douglass, Jr., and his wife, Virginia. No record exists of the letter Douglass wrote to Ada on 11 February 1887. 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 97, 143, 165; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 297. 169. Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Lewis Henry Douglass (1840–1908) was the eldest son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass and was eight when his family moved to Rochester. Educated in the Rochester public schools, Lewis helped his father with his newspaper. He enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, holding the rank of sergeant major and taking part in the attack of Fort Wagner in South Carolina in July 1863. After the war, Lewis and his brother Frederick went to Colorado, where Lewis served as secretary for the Red, White, and Blue Mining Company. In 1869, he returned to Washington, D.C, to work in the Government Printing Office. That same year, he married Helen Amelia Loguen, daughter of Bishop J. W. Loguen of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Under the Grant administration, Lewis served as a member of the council of legislation for two years and as a special agent for the post office for two years. Considered the ablest of Douglass’s children, Lewis held the office of assistant marshal for the District of Columbia during the Hayes administration. Thereafter, he went into the real estate business. Although Lewis and Amelia Douglass had no children of their own, they helped raise Charles’s daughter, Mary Louise, after her mother’s death, and later took custody of the son of Frederick Douglass, Jr., Charley Paul, after both of his parents died. Douglass did, in fact, write Lewis a letter from Naples dated 11 February 1887. Douglass to Lewis Douglass, 11 February 1887, FD Collection, Moorland-Springarn Research Center, Howard University; 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 97; Gregory, Frederick Douglass the Orator, 202–03; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 81, 222, 226, 248–49, 258, 271, 365; EAAH, 1:423–24. 170. J. C. Fletcher married his second wife, Frederica Jane Smith, in 1872 at the U.S. consulate in Oporto, Portugal, where he worked. DAB, 3:465–66. 171. Completed in 1886 at Govan in Glasgow, Scotland, the Ormuz was a steel-hulled singlescrew steamship weighing 6,031 tons. Operated by the Orient Steam Navigation Company, the eighteen-knot steamer sailed the route from London to Gibraltar, Naples, Port Said, Suez, Melbourne, and Sydney, accommodating 106 first-class, 170 second-class, and 120 steerage passengers. On 3 February 1887 the ship made its maiden voyage from London. The Ormuz last sailed on 18 August 1911. In 1912, the Compagnie de Navigation Sud-Atlantique purchased the Ormuz and renamed it the Divona, eventually breaking it up in 1922. John M. Maber, North Star to Southern Cross (Lancashire, Eng., 1967), 14, 103–04, 117; Duncan Haws, Merchant Fleets in Profile, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1978), 1:139. 172. Derived from an Egyptian word meaning “Great House,” the term “pharaoh” refers in general to the kings of ancient Egypt. The title gained popularity from its biblical usage, particularly in the story of the Exodus. Room, Brewer’s Dictionary, 822. 173. Joseph was one of the twelve brothers in the Old Testament whose names were given to the twelve tribes of Israel. Jealous of Joseph’s coat of many colors and his status as Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph’s brothers sold him into Egyptian slavery. After experiencing many advances and suffering

Y7870-Douglass.indb 383

9/1/21 4:17 PM

384

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

several reversals, Joseph attained a high office in Pharaoh’s court, enabling him to save his brothers and their families from famine. Gen. 37–50; Pierre Montet, Egypt and the Bible, trans. Leslie R. Keylock (Philadelphia, 1968), 7–15; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 3:976–78. 174. In the book of Exodus, Pharaoh enslaved the children of Israel after they had lived in Egypt for many years. Moses, sent by God to free the Israelites from bondage, warned Pharaoh that God would inflict a series of plagues on the Egyptian people if Pharaoh refused to allow the Israelites to leave. After the final plague killed his eldest son, Pharaoh relented, allowing the Israelites to escape from Egypt in a lengthy, miracle-filled sojourn through the wilderness and on to the Promised Land. Montet, Egypt and the Bible, 16–35; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 4:909–11. 175. From 1795 to 1999, the French franc was a silver coin representing the monetary unit of the decimal system. 176. A circular window. 177. Stromboli, a volcanic island that is part of an island group in the Tyrrhenian Sea to the northeast of Sicily, is the legendary home of Aeolus, the god of the winds, because the direction of the volcano’s smoke allegedly predicts the weather three days in advance. In the Christian tradition, Stromboli is the entrance to purgatory, and returning Crusaders claimed to hear the cries of tortured souls while passing the island. The island has several craters of an active volcano, one of the few that is in a constant state of activity. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 329; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1748. 178. Closely connected with the Italian peninsula geographically and geologically, Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, is a continuation of the Apennine range. The Strait of Messina divides the island from the peninsula. On the Sicilian side of the strait is Messina, the second-largest city on the island and the busiest port in Italy. Reggio, which flanks the strait on the peninsular side, is the capital of the province of the same name. The whirlpools, winds, and currents that hamper navigation in the strait gave rise to a legend that it was the home of Scylla and Charybdis, two monsters who preyed on sailors and sea animals. On the peninsula side, Scylla grabbed men from passing ships with her six heads and twelve claws. Charybdis, a sort of whirlpool, intermittently sucked in the water on the Sicilian side, devouring entire ships. Sailors had to choose between the two when passing through the strait. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 221, 229–31, 319; Oswalt, Greek and Roman Mythology, 262; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1960, 3:2590, 2914–15. 179. On the east coast of Sicily, Mount Etna, or Aetna, is the highest active volcano in Europe at 10,958 feet. It has three distinct zones of vegetation: subtropical, yielding figs, bananas, and citrus, up to 1,600 feet; temperate, containing vineyards and fruit trees, as well as chestnuts, birches, and pines, up to 7,000 feet; and desolate waste, containing lava, ash, and snow, to the top. In mythology, Etna was the place of imprisonment for the monster Typhon and the Giant Enceladus, the mightiest enemies of Zeus, whose fiery tongues emerge from the volcano. Etna is also the site of the workshop of Hephaestus, the god of fire. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 345–47; Oswalt, Greek and Roman Mythology, 117, 129, 293; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:964. 180. Ascertaining the year of his birth was a project that Douglass never abandoned. In fact, the final entry in his diary, dated 18 March 1894, concerns information about this date. The only written record of his birth indicates that Douglass was born in February 1818, the same year he indicates in his first autobiography, but this record is suspect. By the time Douglass wrote his second autobiography, he had changed his mind because of some erroneous information, concluding that he had been born in 1817. In any event, all evidence supports the conclusion that 1818 was the year of his birth. Douglass chose the fourteenth of the month as his date of birth for emotional reasons. The last time Douglass saw his mother, she gave him a heart-shaped ginger cake, and he chose Valentine’s Day to celebrate his birthday. Douglass Diary, Diary File, reel 1, frame 44, Douglass to Benjamin F. Auld, 16 September 1891, and Benjamin F. Auld to Douglass, 27 September 1891, General Correspondence File, reel 6, frames 246–47, 257–58, FD Papers, DLC; Aaron Anthony Ledger B, 1812–1826, folders 95, 165, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 1:13, 2:22, 33, 87, 106; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 31–34.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 384

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

385

181. The largest of the Greek islands, Crete is sixty miles from the Greek mainland and marks the southern edge of the Aegean Sea. One of Europe’s earliest civilizations, the Minoans, inhabited Crete and flourished until 1600 B.C.E. The island was at times occupied by foreign powers including the Romans (67 B.C.E.–395 C.E.), the Byzantines (395–824), the Arabs (824–961), the Venetians (1204–1669), and the Ottoman Turks (1669–1897). Crete united with Greece in 1913. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:750. 182. Paul sailed by Crete on his way from Jerusalem to Rome to stand trial. Acts 27:13. 183. Port Said is a port on the Mediterranean Sea at the mouth of the Suez Canal. Builders of the canal founded the port in 1859 and named it after the viceroy at the time, Said Pasha, who governed from 1854 to 1863. It is a principal fueling station for ships entering the canal. Karl Baedeker, Egypt: Handbook for Travellers; Part First, Lower Egypt, with the Fayum and the Peninsula of Sinai, 2nd ed. (London, 1885), 436–38; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2488. 184. James Anderson (1811–97), born in Peterhead, Scotland, came to London in 1828 and joined the staff of James Thompson and Company, a ship-broking business. In 1842, Anderson became a partner in the business, and the firm hired his nephew, James George Anderson, in 1854. When James George Anderson became a partner in 1863, the name of the business changed to Anderson, Thompson and Company. During this time, the partners expanded their operations to become shipowners in their own right. When the last of the Thompson family retired in 1869, the company became Anderson, Anderson and Company. In association with Frederick Green and Company, the Anderson company established the Orient Steam Navigation Company in 1878, purchasing four steamers to sail regularly from London to Australia. The Ormuz was the newest vessel at the time, joining the Orient Steam Navigation Company fleet in 1887. Maber, North Star, 99–103; Haws, Merchant Fleets in Profile, 1:31–32; Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography, 6 vols. (London, 1965), 4:118. 185. The final destination of the Ormuz was Sydney, Australia, the home of William G. Murray. Colonial and Indian Exhibition, Official Catalogue, xviii; Maber, North Star, 103–04. 186. At the time, more than 125 households headed by people with the surname Borden lived in Fall River, Massachusetts, an industrial city and port of entry on Mount Hope Bay. The lack of specific information and the high number of potential candidates precludes identification. Sampson, Murdock, and Co., The Fall River Directory, 1885 (Boston, 1885), 62–65; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:981. 187. Built from 1859 to 1869, the 110-mile-long Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez. A canal connecting the two bodies of water had existed as early as the nineteenth century B.C.E. Leaders such as Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who reigned from 286 to 247 B.C.E., and Trajan, who ruled from 98 to 117 C.E., restored that canal after it fell into disrepair, but it ceased functioning after the eighteenth century. The British, who originally opposed the construction of the Suez Canal, became its largest shareholder in 1875 by purchasing the holdings of Egyptian khedive Ismâ‘îl Pasha, who ruled from 1863 to 1879. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 427–31; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:3042. 188. While its definition has shifted over time, ethnology is the comparative study of peoples and ethnic groups. First used in the late eighteenth century, the concept of ethnology became common in English with the publication of James Prichard’s Researches into the Physical History of Mankind in 1813. In essence, Prichard attempted to trace the history of tribes or races of humanity in order to compare their development and discern the affinity or diversity of their origins, with the ultimate goal of studying the unity of human beings. With the advent of evolution, the term “ethnology” came to mean classification along racial lines. Extreme ethnology emphasized racial classifications, placing the study in competition with anthropology, and included the theory that the Negro race was permanently inferior to the Caucasian. In the end, anthropology prevailed as the generally accepted name of the discipline, while ethnology, or cultural anthropology, became a subdivision of anthropology. Robert H. Lowie, The History of Ethnological Theory (New York, 1937), 3038; William Stanton, The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America, 1815–59 (Chicago, 1960), 160–62;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 385

9/1/21 4:17 PM

386

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (Middletown, Conn., 1971), 74–75; David Levinson and Melvin Ember, eds., Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, 4 vols. (New York, 1996), 2:429–35; Thomas Barfield, ed., The Dictionary of Anthropology (Oxford, 1997), 157–60. 189. A large flat-bottomed boat with wide square ends, primarily used for carrying bulk material. 190. A fez is a cone-shaped hat with a flat crown and no brim, usually made of red felt and adorned with a tassel, often worn by men in eastern Mediterranean countries. 191. Located in Lake Timsah at the point where the Suez Canal enters it, Isma‘îlîya was a central point of activity during the construction of the canal. Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805–94), the builder of the canal, founded Isma‘îlîya in 1863 to serve as the administrative headquarters for the construction project. Named after the Egyptian khedive at the time, Ismâ‘îl Pasha, Isma‘îlîya declined in prosperity after the canal was completed. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 434; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1397. 192. Derived from Persian, baksheesh, or bakshish, can mean a tip, a gift, alms, bribery, or blackmail, and is often requested to accelerate service. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 16. 193. The Fatimid general Al-Qadimah founded Cairo as the capital of Egypt in 969 C.E. on the Nile River, almost directly across from Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt. Cairo, along with Alexandria, is the administrative and economic center of Egypt, and the first railroad in Africa, built in 1855, linked the two cities. Cairo is the largest city in the Middle East. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 241–244; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:495. 194. The Hôtel des Bains de Mer was a small pension on Lake Timsah. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 434. 195. Many women in the region wore a burqa, or face veil, covering the whole of the face except the eyes. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 246–247. 196. After receiving a promise from God that his descendants would possess the land called Canaan, Abraham fled to Egypt with his wife, Sarah, to escape famine. The pharaoh took Sarah after Abraham lied, saying that she was his sister. After discovering the deception, the pharaoh sent Abraham and Sarah back to Canaan, but allowed them to keep all of their acquired wealth. Gen. 12:1–20; Montet, Egypt and the Bible, 3, 5–6; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1:35. 197. The largest group of European residents in Egypt at the time, the Greeks numbered around thirty-five thousand. Generally, they engaged in banking and trade, and they constituted the aristocracy in Alexandria. In public, at the time, Greek Orthodox clergymen wore a black undercassock, an ankle-length garment with a close-fitting waist and sleeves, under a black overcassock with very wide sleeves. In addition, they wore a kalymauchion, a stovepipe hat of the Byzantine clergy, with a brim on top. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 53; Ken Parry et al., eds., The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity (Oxford, 1999), 277, 400–404. 198. In Genesis, Jacob and his family settled in the land of Goshen in the eastern Nile delta, where they had fled from famine in Canaan. Pharaoh permitted the clan to stay and appointed them to supervise the royal interests in the region. The family prospered there, remaining until the time of the Exodus. Gen. 46:1–34, 47:1–10; Exod. 8:22, 9:26; Montet, Egypt and the Bible, 7, 17; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 2:1076. 199. Unchanged for five thousand years, the Egyptian plow consists of a single pole six feet long, connected by a yoke to an ox or a buffalo at one end with a handle at the other. Attached to the pole is a curved piece of wood shod with a three-prong piece of iron, which penetrates the ground slightly. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 73. 200. Paraphrase of Daniel 6:8: “Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” 201. Named after Mohammed (571–632), the prophet and founder of Islam, “Mohammedanism” was a common way to refer to Islam, and “Mohammedans” referred to the adherents of Islam. Muslims reject the term “Mohammedan” because it implies that they worship Mohammed and not

Y7870-Douglass.indb 386

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

387

Allah—a blasphemous notion in Islam. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 140–41; Ludwig W. Adamec, Historical Dictionary of Islam (Lanham, Md., 2001), 199. 202. Islam teaches that God created humanity in all its diversity, and therefore calls itself a universal religion open to all people. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam does not recognize a particular group as chosen or claim that paradise is available to only a select segment of humanity. Since everyone is descended from Adam and Eve, all people deserve respect for competency and honesty, regardless of race or ethnicity, and no one can claim superiority because of heritage. Islam makes no distinction between people except on the basis of deeds and personal offerings to God and, in turn, to society. Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam (New York, 1971), 6–10; Muhammad Mahmud Said, Islam Condemns Racial Discrimination, trans. Ahmad Kamel, 3rd ed. (Cairo, 1963), 30–34. 203. The New Hotel faced the Place de l’Opéra and Ezbekiyah Place, the central point of the Isma‘îlîyan quarter. Laid out in 1870 and octagonal in shape, Ezbekiyah Place was the site of several consulates, the main theaters and shops, and the principal hotels. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 231, 258. 204. Performed in a congregational mosque, the special Friday midday prayer is mandatory in Islam. The observance, which includes a half-hour exhortation by an imam or other competent leader, usually lasts about an hour. Unlike the Jewish Sabbath, Friday is not a day of rest for Muslims. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 147–48; Cyril Glassé, The New Encyclopedia of Islam, rev. ed. (New York, 2001), 149; Thomas Patrick Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopaedia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion (London, 1885), 131–32. 205. Derived from the Persian name for God, “khedive” was the title accorded the viceroy or ruler of Egypt in 1867 by the Ottoman government, which had ruled Egypt since 1517. The Ottomans initially raised Ismâ‘îl Pasha to the rank of khedive. In 1879, Ismâ‘îl’s son Tewfik replaced him as khedive. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 107–108; Pierre Crabitès, Ismail: The Maligned Khedive (London, 1933), 159–60, 290; Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr., Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt (Boulder, Colo., 2000), 90–91, 207–08. 206. In Arab society, the color of a turban distinguishes the class and sect of its wearer. The descendants of the Prophet wear green, Copts wear blue, and Jews wear yellow. Blue is also the color of turbans of those in mourning and for women of the lower classes. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 246; Glassé, New Encyclopedia of Islam, 459. 207. Appointed by Grover Cleveland in 1885, John Cardwell (1837–93) served as diplomatic agent and consul general for the United States at Cairo until 1889, when Eugene Schuyler replaced him. Born in Georgia and appointed from Houston, Texas, Cardwell had a large interest in cotton. Cardwell’s wife and two daughters accompanied him to Cairo; his salary was the lowest of any foreign government representative there. New York Times, 4 July 1888, 2 July, 23 November 1889; U.S. Department of State, Register . . . 1887, 36. 208. All who enter a mosque, whether Muslim or not, must remove their shoes or place slippers over their shoes. Adamec, Historical Dictionary of Islam, 186. 209. Islamic adherents must perform a ritual ablution preceding prayer, which involves a brief washing of the hands, face, and feet. Each mosque contains a tank of water for this purpose, except where water is unavailable, in which case sand, earth, or unfashioned stone may serve the purpose. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 147; Glassé, New Encyclopedia of Islam, 20, 316. 210. During prayer, which is required five times a day in Islam, adherents perform a cycle of ritual actions, including prostrating themselves and touching the forehead to the ground with both palms on the ground while silently praising Allah with sacred recitations. Glassé, New Encyclopedia of Islam, 398. 211. In general, the making of images in Islam is prohibited, although the exceptions are complex and numerous. Nevertheless, any representation of the face of the Prophet is strictly forbidden, as is the setting of any image in a house of prayer. Glassé, New Encyclopedia of Islam, 212.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 387

9/1/21 4:17 PM

388

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

212. The Mamelukes were a class of slaves who converted to Islam and later rose to power as military leaders in two ruling dynasties. The first, the Bahri (1250–1382), consisted of Turks and Mongols, and the second, the Burji (1382–1517), consisted of Circassians. Civil unrest and military coups marked the rule of the Mamelukes, who lost power when the Ottomans defeated them in 1517. The tombs of the Mamelukes were on the outskirts of Cairo at the time. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 104, 242–43, 327. 213. Mostly blind, beggars were numerous in Cairo at the time, usually invoking the name of Allah to solicit compassion. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 247. 214. A bazaar is an Eastern market made up of rows of shops and stalls selling goods. Located generally along dirty, narrow lanes, the bazaars of Cairo specialized in particular goods such as spices, books, or carpets. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 251–58. 215. Shop owners in bazaars often sat in front of their stores smoking water pipes called nargilehs. The smoker inhaled, drawing the smoke—usually from moistened Persian tobacco—into the lungs. The water pipes consisted of locally manufactured decorated stems, reservoirs, and mouthpieces imported from Europe, mainly from Bohemia. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 24, 27. 216. Not exclusive to Muslim women, wearing a veil and covering the body are a matter of cultural practice rather than a requirement of Islam. While the Qur’an directs women to practice modesty in public, interpretation of this edict varies. For some societies, it dictates that a woman be covered from the neck to the wrists and ankles; for others, it requires being veiled in public. Some, such as Bedouin women, do not wear veils at all. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 147; Glassé, New Encyclopedia of Islam, 468. 217. The treatment of women as chattel is of ancient Arab origin and is not confined to Islamic Arabs. Islam allows a man to have up to four wives and to divorce easily. The role and status of women, however, varies in Islamic cultures, and in some Islamic societies, such as that of the Berbers, women enjoy more freedom. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 146–47; Glassé, New Encyclopedia of Islam, 476–77. 218. Established in 1854 by Thomas McCague, the United Presbyterian Mission in Cairo was that denomination’s second one in the Middle East, the first being in Syria. The mission in Cairo established a school for boys in 1855 and a school for girls in 1860. Also in 1860, the mission purchased its first boat, the Ibis, which the missionaries used to sail on the Nile, reaching remote villages to educate, proselytize, distribute literature, and practice medicine among the Egyptians. Always more financially stable than other missions in the Middle East, the Cairo mission attracted donations from foreign travelers. One such donor, the Maharajah Dhulup Singh, a prince from the Punjab in India and a practicing Christian, could not return to his homeland for political reasons after being educated in England. Wanting to marry a non-European Christian woman, the maharajah met a woman named Bamba at the mission’s school for girls in Cairo. Thereafter, the maharajah made generous contributions to the mission. Andrew Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 1854 to 1896 (Pittsburgh, 1897), 65, 427–32; David Dawson, “Presbyterian Missionaries in the Middle East” (M.A. thesis, Yale University, 1987), 45–47, 57–61. 219. The Reverend William Harvey (1835–1908) and his wife, Henrietta Lee Harvey (1840– 1928), were the only two American missionaries in Cairo at the time. Born in Glasgow, William immigrated to the United States in 1850. In 1862, he graduated from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, and from the Allegheny Seminary three years later, becoming an ordained United Presbyterian minister. The Harveys traveled to Cairo in 1865; before that, Henrietta graduated from Washington Seminary in Pennsylvania and taught black children in the South for a few years. Stationed at Medinet el-Faiyum from 1865 to 1878, the Harveys focused their missionary work primarily on education rather than proselytization. In 1878, the Harveys moved to Cairo, where they remained for the rest of their lives. William’s duties in Cairo included leading two hours of classroom education every day in the mission school, performing pastoral work at the Cairo church, and preaching in English and Arabic. New York Times, 4 July 1888, 21 November 1908, 12 March

Y7870-Douglass.indb 388

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

389

1928; Watson, American Mission in Egypt, 187, 196, 263, 303, 320–21, 339, 368, 387, 425; William Melancthon Glasgow, Cyclopedic Manual of the United Presbyterian Church of North America (Pittsburgh, 1903), 152, 607. 220. Erected in 1166 C.E. with stones taken from the small pyramids at Gizeh and known for its spectacular view, the Citadel, a fortress built to defend Cairo, was the site of several assassinations, rebellions, and coup attempts throughout the Mamelukes’ rule. Among the structures within the Citadel is the Alabaster Mosque, completed in 1857. From a parapet on the southwestern side of the mosque is a view of the pyramids of Giza, the largest of which, 451 feet high, is the Pyramid of Cheops, or Khufu, who reigned from 2589 to 2566 B.C.E. The pyramids of Giza border the edge of the Libyan Desert, a vast area with neither mountains nor valleys. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 62, 264, 344, 355; Rosalie David and Antony E. David, A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (Norman, Okla., 1992), 32–33; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:495. 221. Dr. J. S. Grant Bey was an English physician practicing medicine in Cairo at the time. From 1865 until his death in 1896, he was a leading supporter of the United Presbyterian mission at Cairo, regularly attending the English worship services. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 233; Watson, American Mission in Egypt, 469. 222. Elizabeth Jane Whately (1822–93) was the oldest child of Richard Whately, a professor of logic at Oxford. He became the Anglican archbishop of Dublin in 1831, a post he filled until his death in 1863. After he died, Elizabeth published his biography and correspondence. She then joined her sister Mary (1824–89), who had worked as a missionary in Cairo since 1860, and established a school, the Anglican Mission School at Cairo for European Children, in 1878. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 234; E[lizabeth] Jane Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, D.D., Late Archbishop of Dublin, 2 vols. (London, 1866), 1:45–46, 97–99; idem, The Life of Mary Louisa Whately (London, [1890]), 9, 30; E[mma] R[aymond] Pitman, Missionary Heroines in Eastern Lands: Women’s Work in Mission Fields (New York, [189?]), 129–31, 138; Donald Harman Akenson, A Protestant in Purgatory: Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin (Hamden, Conn., 1981), 208–09, 220–21. 223. Located across the Nile from Cairo on a plateau measuring 4,800 by 3,900 feet, Giza consists of three immense pyramids, the Great Sphinx, a temple of granite, several smaller pyramids, and numerous tombs. The Great Pyramids—one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world—were built under the rule of three monarchs from the Fourth Dynasty, who ruled in the twenty-sixth century B.C.E.: Khufu, or Cheops, who ruled from 2589 to 2566; Khafra, or Chephren, who ruled from 2558 to 2532; and Menkaura, or Mycerinus, who ruled from 2532 to 2504. Carved out of natural rock, the Great Sphinx is a lion with the head of a man, and its name signifies “to guard” or “to watch.” Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 342–44, 355–64; Peter A. Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt (London, 1994), 45, 50, 56; David and David, Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, 32; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:1115. 224. At the time, the height of the Pyramid of Cheops was 451 feet. With its original stone coating, which had not covered the exterior for quite a while, it would have measured around 482 feet. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 355; David and David, Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, 33. 225. Located on the northeastern outskirts of Cairo, Heliopolis (“City of the Sun”) was the traditional center of worship of the god Ra. Heliopolis was the capital of Northern Egypt during the New Empire (1570–1070 B.C.E.). Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 333; Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, 99; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1262. 226. Near Heliopolis was an ostrich farm operated by some Frenchmen. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 335. 227. The sixty-six-foot-high red granite obelisk at Heliopolis is one of the oldest surviving obelisks, dating to the twentieth century B.C.E. Its four sides bear hieroglyphic inscriptions to the glory of the Egyptian ruler who created the obelisk, Usertesen I, or Senusret I, of the Middle Monarchy. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 334–35; Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, 81.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 389

9/1/21 4:17 PM

390

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

228. “On” is the Hebrew name in the Bible for Heliopolis. In Genesis, Pharaoh gives Joseph a wife named Asenath, who is the daughter of Potipherah, the priest of On. She bears two of Joseph’s sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Gen. 41:45, 46:20; Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 333; Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, 10. 229. Unique at that time for having labels stating where each item was found, the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities is the most extensive collection of its kind. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 295. 230. The Salle des Momies Royales contains a collection of funerary items found at Der el-Bahri in 1881, including several coffins and mummies from the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties that date back as far as the sixteenth century B.C.E. One mummy of a priestly scribe is preserved so well that the eyelashes are visible. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 313; Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, 103. 231. When Douglass lectured at Newcastle-on-Tyne during his first trip to Great Britain, in 1845, he attracted the attention of Julia Griffiths (1812–95) and her sister, Eliza, who were active in the British antislavery movement. Griffiths followed Douglass to the United States after he returned in 1847, relocating to Rochester with her sister in 1849. In 1850, Eliza married John Dick, one of Douglass’s coeditors on the North Star, and the couple moved to Toronto. A zealous and aggressive fund-raiser, Griffiths acted as business manager of the publication, saving it from financial ruin and teaching Douglass important editing skills. Her fund-raising activities for the newspaper included soliciting donations, organizing the Rochester Anti-Slavery Fair, and donating the proceeds from the sale of a book she edited, Autographs of Freedom, which contained essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, and others. Initially, she lived with the Douglass family, causing marital discord and giving rise to unsubstantiated rumors that she and Douglass shared more than a professional relationship. In 1853, vicious attacks appearing in other newspapers drove Griffiths from the Douglass home. She returned to England in 1855, where she continued to raise funds for Douglass’s newspaper. She and Douglass remained lifelong correspondents. She married Henry O. Crofts, a Methodist minister in Halifax, in 1859. During the Civil War, she organized and revitalized ladies’ auxiliaries and traveled as an antislavery lecturer. No record remains of the letter Douglass wrote her on this date. Lib., 18 November, 2 December 1853; Clare Midgley, Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (New York, 1992), 125–26, 141; Karen Halbersleben, Women’s Participation in the British Antislavery Movement, 1824–1865 (Lewiston, N.Y., 1993), 106–07, 140, 174, 190–95; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 163–66, 170–71, 182, 203; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 179–84; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 89; Erwin Palmer, “A Partnership in the Abolition Movement,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin, 26:1–17 (Autumn/Winter 1970–71). 232. Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Rosetta Douglass Sprague (1839–1906) was the oldest child of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Until the 1850 integration of Rochester’s public schools, Rosetta studied with private tutors—first with Abigail and Lydia Mott in Albany and then with Phebe Thayer, a Quaker, in Rochester. After attending Oberlin College, Rosetta taught school in Philadelphia and later in Salem, New Jersey. In 1863, she married Nathan Sprague, and the couple lived with the Douglasses until they purchased a house in Rochester in 1867. Finding it difficult to establish himself in the real estate business, Sprague moved his family in 1877 to Washington, D.C., where Douglass had to support Rosetta’s growing family while Sprague struggled with his career. At least two of the Spragues’ children, daughters Annie and Hattie, lived with the Douglasses for a period of time. Rosetta was the most vocal of the Douglass children in her disapproval of his marriage to Helen Pitts after Anna’s death. While a note indicates that Douglass wrote a letter to Rosetta from Cairo, the letter itself, if extant, and the copy of the letter, purportedly with the note, are missing. Note from Rosetta Douglass Sprague, undated, Addition, 1851–1964 and Undated File, reel 34, frame 22, FD Papers, DLC; 1880 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 143; Gregory, Frederick Douglass the Orator, 201–02; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 81, 218–23, 256, 287, 297, 319. 233. Dervishes are adherents of a mystic sect of Islam who attempt to achieve an altered state of consciousness in order to understand Allah better. Some members of the sect, known as the howling or shouting dervishes, attempt to attain this altered state by repeatedly shouting the creed of Islam

Y7870-Douglass.indb 390

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

391

until reaching a frenzied state, sometime resulting in epileptic-like convulsions that include foaming at the mouth. A source of curiosity for tourists, the howling dervishes at the time performed their rituals for the public on Fridays from 2:00 to 3:00 P.M. at the Gâmi‘ Kasr el- ‘Ain, a mosque attached to a hospital of the same name. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 150–52, 239, 317. 234. Located in Old Cairo, the Coptic Church of St. Mary is the site where, according to tradition, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus hid for a month after their flight to Egypt. Coptic Christians, members of an ancient Egyptian sect, rejected the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E. At first treated with tolerance by the Arabs who invaded Egypt, the Copts later encountered persecution from both Muslims and Western Christians. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 42–44, 320. 235. Formerly a church of St. Michael, the synagogue in Old Cairo reputedly possesses a scroll of the Torah written by Ezra. It is also the site where Elijah once appeared and where Moses prayed for an end of the plague of thunder and hail as told in Exodus 9:29. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 323–24. 236. Located just over two miles north of Cairo, the fashionable Shubra Avenue was the popular place at the time for the prominent members of society to take a ride, most often on Friday and Sunday evenings. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 330–31. 237. Usually led by Methodist or Baptist ministers, religious camp meetings, or revivals, often produced emotional reactions from worshippers: fainting, seeing visions, dancing, shouting, jerking, and barking. Often held separately, Southern camp meetings for blacks often manifested more extreme activity, such as convulsive physical reactions similar to seizures. Charles A. Johnson, The Frontier Camp Meeting: Religion’s Harvest Time (1955; Dallas, 1985), 58–62, 112–15; Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., And They Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845 (Knoxville, 1974), 73–75, 86, 89. 238. Custom dictated that tourists who watched the activities of the dervishes paid baksheesh for the performance. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 239. 239. Another set of dervishes, called the dancing or whirling dervishes, attempt to achieve an altered state of mind by twirling rapidly in a circle with outstretched arms and closed eyes. Accompanied by a flute and a tambourine, a singer recites a hymn while the dervishes move silently in a circle, twirling on their left foot and propelling themselves with the right foot. As the tempo of the song picks up, the dervishes twirl at an accelerated pace. The dervishes stop twirling when the music and chanting cease. At the time, the dancing dervishes performed their rituals for the public at the Gami’ ibn Tulun, the oldest mosque in Cairo, on Fridays from 2:00 to 3:00 P.M.—the same time when the howling dervishes performed. Tourists could attend both performances on the same day by leaving one after twenty-five minutes and attending the other for the last part of the performance. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 150–52, 239, 265. 240. Some howling or shouting dervishes fall into convulsions and foam at the mouth, similar to what is seen in an epileptic seizure. They are left to recover alone from these episodes, which are described as painful and unpleasant to watch. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 152, 238. 241. The Qur’an is the holy book of Islam as revealed to Muhammad by Allah through Gabriel. 242. Originally built as a mosque and converted to a university in 975 C.E., the University of al-Azhar provided religious education at the time to 7,700 students from almost all of the Islamic countries in the world. Most students began their three-year education with a study of Arabic grammar, followed by a study of the religious commandments of Islam and of secular law as derived from the Qur’an. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 288–89; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:495. 243. Traditionally, Islamic clergymen and scholars wear a light-colored turban, as opposed to the dark colors worn by non-Muslims. Used for an adherent’s shroud and therefore a reminder of death, the turban is generally seven times the length of a person’s head, or the equivalent of his height. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 246. 244. Founded by the Khedive Ismâ‘îl on 24 March 1870, the library contains, among other volumes, copies of the Qur’an collected from Cairo mosques. The oldest of these dates to the rule of the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 391

9/1/21 4:17 PM

392

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

Bahrite Mamelukes (1260–1382), and other copies are remarkable for their beauty or size. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 269–71. 245. No record exists of the letter Douglass wrote to his son Charles on 27 February 1887. 246. The banian, or banyan, tree is an East Indian tree, the branches of which send out several trunks that grow down to the ground, forming prop roots that allow one tree to cover a large area. 247. Situated on the Nile and completed in 1868, the Palace of Gezireh is the site where distinguished guests stayed for the opening ceremonies for the Suez Canal in 1869. The parklike setting also contains a kiosk, a harem building, greenhouses, and a grotto. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 328–30. 248. On the Ligne de la Haute-Égypte, the railway station at Bûlâk ed-Dakrûr was, at the time, three miles from Cairo on the left bank of the Nile. The train ran from this station to Bedrashên, the stopping point for donkey rides to Memphis. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 371. 249. Menes, the first king of a united Egypt, reputedly founded Memphis at the apex of the Nile delta, making it his capital and building a temple to Ptah, the greatest of all the Egyptian gods and the patron god of Memphis. Subsequent rulers of the Old Kingdom kept the capital at Memphis and built palaces, temples, and other great structures there. Memphis remained the foremost Egyptian city from 3100 to 2258 B.C.E., when the pharaohs of the New Empire moved the capital to Thebes. Almost all the structures at Memphis were eventually lost when later rulers reused the stones for other purposes. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 371–74; David and David, Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, 86; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1948. 250. Near Memphis, the Necropolis of Sakkara was the burial place of choice for pharaohs of the Old Kingdom. The sepulchral structures range in complexity from pyramids to rock-hewn caves. The pyramids, numbering eleven, include the Step Pyramid, which is unique for not being square with the points of the compass. The tombs are two kinds: the mastaba, a mausoleum built on the ground with inwardly sloping walls and a flat roof, and the much simpler rock tombs, excavated from the slopes of the plateau in long rows. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 378–83; Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, 33–34; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1948. 251. Discovered in 1820, the colossal statue of Ramses II lay on its face in a hollow near the ruins of Memphis. Made from fine-grained limestone, the statue was forty-two feet tall before it toppled. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 374–75. 252. In September 1881, a military revolt broke out in Cairo, aiming to reduce foreign influence over the internal affairs of Egypt and to challenge the rule of the khedive. To protect the welfare of Europeans living in Egypt, France and England sent fleets to Alexandria. After the deaths of many Europeans in June 1882, the British sent in an occupational force to quell the unrest and to secure the authority of the khedive. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 108–10. 253. A broad, shallow-draft boat with a sharp bow and sails, used for transporting passengers on the Nile. 254. Beni Hasan, or Bani Hasan, is a village on the east bank of the Nile in east-central Egypt. It is the location of thirty-nine tombs carved out of solid rock during the Twelfth Dynasty. Ornamented with hieroglyphics and colored figures, the grottoes imitate temples in their outward appearance. John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers in Lower and Upper Egypt, Part II, 6th ed. (London, 1880), 408–10; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:254. 255. The mysteries surrounding the source of the Nile and the reason for its annual flooding led the Egyptians to regard the river as a deity. In fact, the river is formed from the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile, which meet near Khartoum, Sudan. Beginning in mid-July, the river floods when torrential spring rains fall in the Abyssinian mountains, swelling the Blue Nile. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 55. 256. Dahabiyeh. 257. Meni, a variation of Menes, was the first king of a unified Upper and Lower Egypt. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 86; David and David, Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, 86. 258. Founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E., Alexandria was the capital under the Ptolemies. Located on the Mediterranean Sea at the western edge of the Nile delta, Alexandria was a

Y7870-Douglass.indb 392

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

393

center of culture and learning, with extensive libraries that attracted Hellenistic and Jewish scholars. After falling to the Romans in 30 B.C.E. and later to the Byzantines, Alexandria continued to be a center of Christian learning until captured by Muslim Arabs in 642 C.E. Alexandria again rose to importance in 1819 when Muhammad Ali developed it as a deepwater port, attracting many foreign residents. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 207–09; Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, 206, 209, 212, 217; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:64. 259. The Hôtel Bonnard was a second-class, moderately priced hotel at 7 rue Champollion in Alexandria. Karl Baedeker, Egypt: Handbook for Travellers; Part First, Lower Egypt and the Peninsula of Sinai, 3rd ed. (London, 1895), 5. 260. Born in Irwin, Pennsylvania, the Reverend Samuel Currie Ewing (1831–1908) graduated in 1856 from Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. He attended the Allegheny Seminary, being ordained in the United Presbyterian Church in 1859. In 1860, Ewing and his wife went to Cairo as missionaries. Encountering a cholera epidemic in 1865, they visited the sick and helped bury the dead until Mrs. Ewing became ill, forcing her to return to the United States in 1866. In February of the following year, he went to England to raise money for the mission and then traveled to the United States, returning to Cairo with his wife in October 1867. In 1872, Ewing moved his ministry from Cairo to Alexandria. He was one of the few foreigners who did not evacuate Alexandria during the massacre of 1882. Glasgow, Cyclopedic Manual, 110, 606; Watson, American Mission in Egypt, 183–84, 190, 196, 261, 263, 280, 303, 339, 348, 367, 387. 261. President Grover Cleveland appointed J. B. Kinsman of Massachusetts and Maine as judge of the court of first instance in Alexandria in 1885, a position he held until 1889. As a result of negotiations between certain Western powers and the Ottoman and Egyptian governments, Egypt had, since 1876, maintained an intricate and blended court system for resolving criminal charges and civil disputes involving foreigners. A system of courts with Egyptian judges was the venue for resolving disputes between Egyptians and for trying Egyptians charged with crimes against Egyptian victims. Consular courts, on the other hand, were used for resolving civil disputes between foreigners of the same nationality. Mixed tribunals of foreign and native judges heard disputes between individuals from different countries and handled criminal matters involving a foreign defendant or victim. Essentially following the Napoleonic Code, these five-member tribunals consisted of three foreigners (appointed by foreign governments) and two natives. There were several courts of first instance, or tribunals of original jurisdiction, and one court of appeals at Alexandria. Kinsman served as judge of the Alexandria trial court until E. E. Farman of Warsaw, New York, replaced him in 1889. New York Times, 4 July 1888, 6 April 1889; U.S. Department of State, Register . . . 1887, 38; idem, Registration of the Department of State, Corrected to March 10, 1892 (Washington, D.C., 1892), 39; Watson, American Mission in Egypt, 463–64. 262. Judge Brinkhouse was not one of the American judges on the international court at the time. The other U.S. judges were Anthony M. Keiley, of Virginia, appointed in 1886 to the court of first instance in Cairo, and Victor C. Barringer, of North Carolina, appointed to the court of appeals in Alexandria in 1874. U.S. Department of State, Register . . . 1887, 38. 263. Pompey’s Column, composed of red granite, stands 88 feet high and honors the Emperor Diocletian, who put down a revolt in Alexandria. The column consists of a pedestal, a shaft, and a Corinthian capital, perhaps surmounted at one time by the statue of a man, as shown in an ancient illustrated plan of Alexandria. The column derives its name from a mistake: Crusaders returning from the Holy Land believed that it marked the burial place of Pompey the Great, who was murdered in Alexandria after being defeated by Caesar at the Battle of Pharsalus. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 218–19. 264. Organized by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the library at Alexandria was a vast collection of scrolls and codices containing copies of works from all over the world, most of them translated into Greek. The library was not a single collection or building, but several repositories under royal patronage. According to legend, Julius Caesar burned the library, intentionally or accidentally, when he was attacked in Alexandria in 48 B.C.E. In reality, parts of the library were destroyed at widely spaced times and for a variety of reasons. Baedeker, Lower Egypt, 98, 211.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 393

9/1/21 4:17 PM

394

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

265. Athens, the capital of Greece, was a city-state that became a democracy in the sixth century B.C.E. It first gave suffrage and other rights to propertied citizens and then to all free men of the city. In the fifth century, Athens reached its zenith, gaining power mainly via its naval forces in the Persian Wars (500–449) and eclipsing Sparta as the most powerful Greek city-state. During the rule of Pericles, 443–429 B.C.E., Athens became an intellectual and cultural center renowned for its eminent philosophers, dramatists, and architects. But the defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War reduced the former’s influence. Athens recovered some of its glory in the fourth century, but Macedonian forces defeated the Athenians in 338. As the power of Athens waned, its past glory influenced other civilizations, including that of the Romans, who sacked Athens in 86 B.C.E. The Visigoths captured Athens from the Romans in 395 C.E., and the city later became part of the Byzantine Empire. In the thirteenth century, Athens was ruled by Burgundian nobles as part of the French feudal system. The House of Aragon and later a Florentine noble ruled Athens in the fourteenth century. The Ottoman Turks captured Athens in 1458 and ruled it for almost four centuries. Athens became the capital of the newly created country of Greece in 1834. Karl Baedeker, Greece: Handbook for Travellers (London, 1889), 36–44; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:86–87. 266. Greek for “high city,” the Acropolis marks the original city of Athens, a fortified citadel rising two hundred feet above the plains of Attica. The base of the Acropolis measures 1,000 feet by 400 feet, and its walls slope inward, making the plateau roughly three-quarters the size of the base. By around 1400 B.C.E., the Acropolis was surrounded by walls and contained several significant buildings. After the Persians destroyed the ancient temples on the Acropolis in 480 and 479, Pericles began building new ones, which included three temples of worship (the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike, and the Erechtheion) and one large gateway (the Propylaea). A modern museum, opened in 1878, also occupies the site. Baedeker, Greece, 55–57, 60, 64, 71, 76; Christopher Wordsworth, Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical (London, 1882), 200; Richard Ridley Farrer, A Tour in Greece, 1880 (London, 1882), 32–33; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:14. 267. Built by Pericles from 447 to 432 B.C.E., the Parthenon is the crowning achievement of Hellenic architecture. Dedicated to Athena Parthenos, the Virgin Athena, the Parthenon is a Doric temple that housed an enormous gold and ivory statue of Athena. The pediments at each end contained sculpted scenes showing the birth of Athena at the eastern end and the contest between Athena and Poseidon for possession of Athens at the western end. Lord Elgin removed many of the eastern sculptures in 1806 for display in the British Museum, where they remain. A frieze on the upper part of the wall and above the porticos formed a continuous band depicting the Panathenaic procession, held every four years in honor of Athena. In the sixth century, the temple became a place of Christian worship and later an Islamic mosque. In 1687, the Turks used the Parthenon as a powder magazine, and a Venetian attack caused an explosion that destroyed significant portions of the building. When the Turks lost control of Athens in 1830, archaeological study and restoration commenced. Baedeker, Greece, 65–71; Wordsworth, Greece, 220–23; Farrer, Tour in Greece, 42–43. 268. Dedicated to the Greek god of wine, fertility, and religious ecstasy, the Theatre of Dionysus stands on the south slope of the Acropolis and could seat seventeen thousand spectators. Its origins date from the sixth century B.C.E., and the structure was altered frequently thereafter. The theater contained the three traditional parts of ancient Greek theaters: the skênê, a scene house that stood behind the orchestra and included, among other uses, doorways used for entrances and exits; the orchestra, where the actors and chorus performed; and the semicircular theatron, built into the side of the hill, where the audience sat. The theater was the site of the first performances of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. Baedeker, Greece, 50–51; Wordsworth, Greece, 220–23; Farrer, Tour in Greece, 42–43. 269. Intended for dramatic performances and not for musical entertainment like most odea, the Odeon or Odeum of Herodes Atticus was a theater at the base of the Acropolis that at one time had a roof. Built by a wealthy Greek in 161 C.E. as a memorial to his Roman wife, the theater accommodated six thousand people and was similar in design to the Theatre of Dionysus. A 532-foot-long

Y7870-Douglass.indb 394

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

395

colonnade, called the Stoa Eumenia, connected the two theaters. Baedeker, Greece, 53–54; Wordsworth, Greece, 224; Farrer, Tour in Greece, 42. 270. Built in a slight depression on the north side of the Acropolis, the Erechtheion contained shrines of Athena Polias, the patron deity of the city. The Erechtheion is an Ionic temple, begun after the Persians destroyed its predecessor in 480 B.C.E. and completed in 407. It marks the traditional site where Athena and Poseidon contended for possession of Athens. The southern portico features caryatids, six statues of young maidens used in lieu of columns to support the roof. Altered over the centuries, the interior of the temple served a number of purposes, including a Christian place of worship and a harem for a Turkish pasha. Baedeker, Greece, 71–74; Wordsworth, Greece, 207–09; Farrer, Tour in Greece, 38–40. 271. The Propylaea, designed by Mnesikles, is the only secular ancient structure on the Acropolis. Begun in 437 B.C.E. and left unfinished because of the Peloponnesian War, the Propylaea is a gateway that serves as the main entrance to the Acropolis. The structure combines the Doric and Ionic orders, with Doric on the east and west façades and Ionic columns lining an arcade between them. Asymmetrical wings flank the north and south ends of the main portion of the Propylaea. Baedeker, Greece, 57–59; Wordsworth, Greece, 200–202; Farrer, Tour in Greece, 34–36. 272. Located on the southwestern outskirts of Athens, the Hill of Philopappos contains three doorways hewn from the rock on the side of the mountain. The site was the alleged prison of Socrates, the Athenian philosopher sentenced to die for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens in the fifth century B.C.E. Consisting of three chambers carved out of the rock, the center chamber remains unfinished. The chamber on the left, measuring 12 by 7.5 feet, has a flat ceiling, and its floor bears the marks of a sarcophagus. The chamber on the right, of equal size, has a sloped ceiling. Baedeker, Greece, 89–90. 273. Begun by the Greek tyrant Peisistratos around 530 B.C.E. but not completed until around 130 C.E. by the Roman emperor Hadrian, the Olympieion, or the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, was the second-largest Greek temple ever constructed, surpassed only by the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Measuring 353.5 feet in length by 134 feet in width, the temple was supported by 104 massive Corinthian columns, 56.5 feet high and 5.5 feet in diameter. Dedicated to the worship of the supreme Greek god, Zeus, or Jupiter in the Roman pantheon, and of Hadrian, the founder of the feast connected with the temple, only seventeen columns remained by 1760, when a Turkish viceroy removed one to use in making plaster for a mosque he was building. One column fell over in a severe storm in 1852, so only fifteen of the columns remain standing. Baedeker, Greece, 46–47; Wordsworth, Greece, 224–25; Farrer, Tour in Greece, 30–31; Oswalt, Greek and Roman Mythology, 302. 274. Mount Lykabettos, or Lykabettus, is a 911-foot-high hill on the northeastern end of Athens, a legendary gift from Athena, placed there to serve as a bulwark for that side of the city. Crowned by the Chapel of St. George at its summit, Lykabettos offers a panoramic view of the area, including Athens and the Acropolis, the surrounding plains of Attica, the city of Piraeus, the islands of Aegina and Salamis, and the Bay of Eleusis. Baedeker, Greece, 101–02; Wordsworth, Greece, 180, 199, 201. 275. Located east of Athens, the Academy is a large plot of land named after an early owner, Akademos, and dedicated to Athena. First used as a gymnasium and later adorned with trees and fountains, the olive groves of the Academy were a popular resort for Plato and other teachers. The term later came to designate places of higher learning. Baedeker, Greece, 103; Wordsworth, Greece, 102. 276. Salamis is an island in the Saronic Gulf west of Athens across from the port city Piraeus. It was off the coast of Salamis that the Greeks won a key battle against the Persians in 480 B.C.E., ensuring Athenian independence. Baedeker, Greece, 108; Wordsworth, Greece, 139–42; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2720. 277. Attica is a peninsula at the eastern end of central Greece. The area contains Athens, the surrounding plains, the mountains Pentelikon and Hymettos, and the towns Piraeus and Eleusis. Theseus was the legendary ruler who combined several townships into one state in Mycenaean times. Baedeker, Greece, 104; Wordsworth, Greece, 131–33; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:192.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 395

9/1/21 4:17 PM

396

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

278. The plain of Marathon, located about twenty miles from Athens, was the site of a battle between the Greeks and the Persians in 490 B.C.E. in which ten thousand Greek soldiers were said, according to tradition, to have defeated a Persian army ten times their size. Marathon also gives its name to the 26.2-mile race to commemorate the soldier who ran to Athens and delivered the news of victory before dying from exhaustion. Baedeker, Greece, 120–21; Wordsworth, Greece, 168–70; Farrer, Tour in Greece, 69; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1882. 279. Located in the southern Peloponnesus, Sparta was a city-state known for its military prowess as early as the eighth century B.C.E. Given wholly to developing its military and defensive capacities, Sparta had become the strongest Greek city-state by the sixth century B.C.E. and the leader of a confederacy of Peloponnesian city-states. After fighting as allies in the Persian Wars, Athens and Sparta later intensified their rivalry, leading to the Peloponnesian War (431–404). After dismembering the Athenian empire, Sparta engaged in wars with Persia, and again with Athens and its ally, Thebes. After suffering defeat in 371, Sparta declined, and was later defeated by Macedon and then Rome. Baedeker, Greece, 270–72; Wordsworth, Greece, 256–57; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2997–98. 280. Though not the most magnificent or the most elaborate of the ancient Greek temples, the Temple of Hephaistos, also known as the Thesion, in the Agora of Athens is the best preserved and one of the most impressive because of its completeness. Dedicated to Hephaistos, the god of fire and metallurgy, and Athena, whose bronze statues stood in the center, the temple contains reliefs depicting the labors of Hercules and the achievements of Theseus, the legendary king of Athens who slew the Minotaur in his youth. The temple owes its state of preservation in large part to the fact that early Christians converted it to a church and maintained it. Baedeker, Greece, 81–84; Wordsworth, Greece, 50–55; Farrer, Tour in Greece, 43–44; Oswalt, Greek and Roman Mythology, 129–30, 281–83. 281. The Areopagus, or Areopagos, is a hill northwest of the Acropolis. It also is the name of the ancient court, consisting of important Athenians, that met there to sit in judgment over matters of life and death. According to tradition, its name derives from Ares, the first defendant put on trial there, for murdering Halirrhotius, the son of Poseidon, after Halirrhotius allegedly violated Ares’s daughter. The Areopagus was also the traditional site where Orestes was acquitted of the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, after she had her husband, Agamemnon, killed. Baedeker, Greece, 54–55; Wordsworth, Greece, 217–18; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:150; Oswalt, Greek and Roman Mythology, 122, 216. 282. The Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill, is the place where the apostle Paul addressed the Athenians in 54 C.E. Acts 17:15–34; Baedeker, Greece, 54–55; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:150. 283. Gideon Pitts (c. 1807–?) and Jane Wells Pitts (1814–92) were the parents of Helen Pitts Douglass. A supporter of abolition and women’s rights, Gideon was a descendant of Captain Peter Pitts, the first settler in Richmond Township, Ontario County, New York. Gideon befriended Douglass in 1846 when the latter gave an address in Richmond. Douglass was a guest in the Honeoye home of the Pitts family, and their friendship continued after Douglass moved his family to Rochester. After Douglass married Helen, Gideon refused to allow Douglass into his home and would visit the District of Columbia only when he knew the Douglasses were out of town. Although she was seriously ill at the time of the Douglasses’ overseas trip, Jane Wells Pitts recovered. She later came to live with the Douglasses at Cedar Hill, where Helen cared for her until her mother’s death. New York Times, 28 January 1884; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Ontario County, 378; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 320, 364; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 298; Nelson, “Best of Intentions,” 41. 284. Known as Jennie, Jane Wells Pitts (1839–94) was the second daughter of Gideon and Jane Wells Pitts. Jennie graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1859, the same year as her sister Helen. From 1863 to 1864, she taught school in Davenport, Iowa, before returning to her parents’ home in Honeoye, New York. She remained loyal to Helen after Helen’s marriage to Douglass. Jennie died in Anacostia. Helen Pitts Douglass to Jane Wells Pitts, 25 April 1887, Douglass to Helen Pitts Douglass, 28 June 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frames 490, 553, FD Papers, DLC; 1870 U.S. Cen-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 396

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

397

sus, New York, Ontario County, 378; Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association, One Hundred Year Biographical Directory of Mount Holyoke College, 1837–1937 (South Hadley, Mass., 1937), 95; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 320; Simpson, “Tribute to Helen Pitts Douglass,” 131. 285. Located twenty-one miles from Naples, Pagani was a town of thirteen thousand inhabitants at the time and offered little of interest to the tourist, aside from the relics of a local saint, a bishop in the eighth century. Baedeker, Southern Italy, 167; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2335. 286. The surname Tuccillo is a variation of Tucci, a common name in Italy. Tuccillo is more frequently found in Campania, and specifically in the Naples area. Emidio de Felice, Cognomi d’Italia: Origine, Etimologia, Storia, Diffusione, e Frequenza di Crica 15 mila Cognomi, 3 vols. (Milan, 1978), 3:81. 287. On Easter Sunday, 10 April 1887, the pope celebrated High Mass in St. Peter’s. A blast of trumpets from the dome accompanied the elevation of the host at approximately 11:00 A.M. After being carried in a procession from the church, the pope imparted the traditional benediction, “Urbi et Orbi,” from the loggia of St. Peter’s around noon. New York Times, 11 April 1887; Baedeker, Central Italy, 114. 288. The Hôtel Posta was opposite the post office on the Piazza di San Silvestro off of Via della Vite. Baedeker, Central Italy, 105, 112. 289. John Biddulph Martin (1841–97), a graduate of Oxford University, where he excelled as an athlete, was a managing partner in Martin’s Bank, the oldest bank in London. In addition to being an author of several pamphlets on financial matters, Martin was a prominent member of British society, serving on the boards of hospitals, charities, and social clubs. He married Victoria Woodhull in October 1883, against the wishes of some members of his family, and the Martins moved to 17 Hyde Park Gate in London in February 1884. Lois Beachy Underhill, The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull (Bridgehampton, N.Y., 1995), 279, 285–86; Mary Gabriel, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 250–52. 290. Born in Homer, Ohio, Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838–1927) practiced spiritual healing as a child with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, in their parents’ traveling medicine show. After marrying Canning Woodhull at the age of fifteen and divorcing him ten years later, Victoria and her sister continued their spiritual practice, moving to New York City in 1868 and attracting the adherence of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad baron. With Vanderbilt’s financial support, the sisters opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street in 1869. Influenced by Victoria’s paramour, Colonel James Harvey Blood; the social revolutionary Stephen Pearl Andrews; and the politician Benjamin Butler, the sisters published a newspaper, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, from 1870 to 1876, printing articles on spiritualism, fashion, sports, and Woodhull’s radical social theories, such as free love and woman suffrage. In her newspaper, Woodhull publicized the affair of the famous minister Henry Ward Beecher with Elizabeth Tilton, the wife of Theodore Tilton. Woodhull also announced in this publication her intention to run for president in the 1872 election, receiving the nomination of the Equal Rights party, with Douglass appearing on the ballot as her running mate. After being the first woman to run for president, Woodhull and her sister moved to England, where both married men of wealth. Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (New York, 1998); Underhill, Woman Who Ran for President; Gabriel, Notorious Victoria. 291. An author and an educator, William Henry Herford (1820–1908) studied at London University in preparation for the Unitarian ministry. Offered a three-year scholarship to study in Germany, Herford postponed his ministerial career and studied in Bonn and Berlin. Accepting a permanent position in a Unitarian church in Lancaster in 1848, Herford opened a school for boys two years later. Though not large, the school was successful until declining enrollment forced Herford to relinquish control to others. After tutoring for eighteen months in Zurich, Herford returned to the ministry in 1863, filling the pulpit of the Free Church in Manchester. A firm believer in education for women and girls, Herford opened a coeducational school for children in Manchester in 1873, later moving it to Lady Barn House, Worthington. Handing over control of the school to one of his daughters in 1886,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 397

9/1/21 4:17 PM

398

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

Herford traveled and wrote, publishing his best work, The School: An Essay towards Humane Education, in 1889. W[illiam] C[harles] R[eginald] Hicks, Lady Barn House and the Work of W. H. Herford (Manchester, Eng., 1936), xiii–xiv, 3–21; George Watson, ed., The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 1969), 3:1730; Sidney Lee, ed., The Dictionary of National Biography, Founded in 1882 by George Smith: Supplement, January 1901–December 1911, 3 vols. (1912; Oxford, 1958), 1:255–56. 292. Founded in 1862, the Scottish Presbyterian Church in Rome faced persecution for violating the papal decree that prohibited Protestant worship within the walls of Rome. When the congregation built a church in 1870, it chose a site just outside the city walls on Via Venti Settembre 7 near Quattro Fontane. The congregation mainly consisted of students, tourists, and professors on sabbatical doing research. In 1886, the church held services at 11:00 A.M. and 3:30 P.M. on Sundays. The Reverend Gordon Gray was the minister from 1881 until his death in 1920. The Douglasses had tea at Gray’s house the day after attending the worship service. Helen Pitts Douglass to Jane Wells Pitts, 25 April 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frame 491, FD Papers, DLC; Baedeker, Central Italy, 113; MacKinnon, Beyond the Alps, 88–95, 100–101. 293. Born in Lewiston, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin College, William Pierce Frye (1830– 1911) studied law and practiced in Rockland, Maine. After being elected a state legislator, the mayor of Lewiston, and state attorney general, Frye served ten years in the U.S. House of Representatives, resigning in 1881 to serve as U.S. senator from Maine, a position he held until his death. A strict Republican, Frye was an expansionist, wanting to acquire territory in the Caribbean and outposts in the Pacific. He served on the peace commission following the Spanish-American War and was instrumental in acquiring the Philippines as part of those negotiations. BDUSC (online); ACAB, 2:558; DAB, 4:51–52. 294. The Hall of Busts in the Vatican contains the likenesses of several Roman leaders, including Hadrian, Nero, and Augustus. Baedeker, Central Italy, 303. 295. Located outside the Villa Medici just to the south of the Pincio, the monument marks the place where Galileo stayed when he visited Rome. Baedeker, Central Italy, 143–44; Wade Rowland, Galileo’s Mistake: The Archaeology of a Myth (Toronto, 2001), 1. 296. According to legend, Romulus founded Rome when he was eighteen years old, on the twenty-first of April. He and his twin brother, Remus, were the sons of Mars and Rhea Silva. After being suckled as infants by a she-wolf, the brothers quarreled over the founding of the city, and Romulus killed Remus. The twenty-first of April is the traditional date for the founding of Rome, later celebrated at Natalis (birthday) Romae. Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfi nch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable, the Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne (New York, [1959?]), 942; Oswalt, Greek and Roman Mythology, 256–59. 297. The inscription states, “It was here that Galileo was kept prisoner by the Holy Office, when he was on trial for having seen that the Earth moves and the sun stands still.” Rowland, Galileo’s Mistake, 1. 298. Born in Seirhausen, Oldenburg, Germany, Johann Bernhard Stallo (1823–1900) immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1839 after his father and grandfather, both schoolmasters, provided him with a solid education, particularly in mathematics and foreign languages. After teaching for two years at a parochial school, Stallo joined the faculty of St. Xavier College for three years and then took a position at St. John’s College in Fordham, New York, teaching chemistry, physics, and mathematics. During this time, he wrote a book on philosophy in an attempt to acquaint Americans with the German approach to that field. In 1848, Stallo returned to Cincinnati to study law and become involved in politics, leading to his appointment to the bench in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas. Stallo’s political support for the Democratic party led President Grover Cleveland to appoint him minister to Italy in 1885. Stallo retired to Florence, Italy, four years later, when the Republicans returned to power. U.S. Department of State, Register . . . 1887, 10; NCAB, 11:259; DAB, 9:496–97; ANB (online).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 398

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

399

299. Sarah Remond Pintor was staying at number 6, Piazza Barberini, while in Rome. Sarah Remond Pintor to Douglass, 8 July 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 5, frames 581–83, FD Papers, DLC. 300. Adorned by a fountain featuring Triton blowing on a conch, sculpted by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, the Piazza Barberini is the termination point of the Via Quattro Fontane, the Via Sistina, and the Via del Tritone. Baedeker, Central Italy, 167. 301. Located at 1–3 Robert Street near Charing Cross, the Caledonian Hotel was one of several quiet family hotels on streets that led from the Thames River to the Strand, one of London’s busiest thoroughfares, with many exclusive shops. Baedeker, London, 9, 133. 302. Florence was a jewel of the Renaissance, ruled for the most part by the Medici family during that time. The city was home to many Renaissance writers and artists, including Dante, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Donatello. From 1865 to 1871, Florence was the capital of the newly formed Kingdom of Italy. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 380–85, 475–77; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:1010–11. 303. Madam Giotti ran a pension in Florence at Piazza Soderini 1, and the Douglasses stayed there while in Florence. Helen Pitts Douglass to Mrs. Putnam, 10 May 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 5, frame 508, FD Papers, DLC; Baedeker, Northern Italy, 375. 304. Helen Priestman Bright Clark (c. 1840–?) was the oldest child of John Bright (1811–89) and the only child of his first wife, Elizabeth Priestman Bright, who died in 1841. A member of Parliament from 1843 until his death, Bright, with Richard Cobden, spearheaded the anti–Corn Law effort to reduce Great Britain’s long-standing tariffs on imported grains when Douglass visited England the first time, and Douglass was a guest in Bright’s home. In 1866, Helen married William Clark, a friend in the shoe business. They lived in Street, a town in central Somerset in southwestern England. She invited Douglass to visit her and her family when he returned to England in 1887, and he stayed with the Clarks from 12 to 14 July 1887. No record remains of the letter Douglass wrote to Clark on 8 May 1887. Helen P. B. Clark to Douglass, 5 May, 6 July, 2 August 1887, 15 June 1894, Douglass to Helen P. B. Clark, 19 July 1894, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frames 502–504, 578–79, 630–31, reel 8, frames 21–23, 41, FD Papers, DLC; Douglass to Helen Pitts Douglass, 12 July 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frames 592R–596, FD Papers, DLC; John Bright, The Diaries of John Bright, with a Foreword by Philip Bright, ed. R[obert] A[lfred] J[ohn] Walling (London, 1930), 212–16; Keith Robbins, John Bright (London, 1979), 27–28, 182; George Macaulay Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (Boston, 1913), 42, 43, 423; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2966, 3033; DNB, 1:145. 305. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Theodore Parker (1810–60) was a Unitarian minister in Massachusetts famous for his liberal theology. Parker questioned the divine nature of Jesus and the inerrancy of the Bible, arguing that the teachings of Jesus and the scriptures were only part of divine truth, which any human was capable of expressing. Because of his religious convictions, Parker was a staunch supporter of reform, especially on the issue of slavery. Parker assisted fugitive slaves and secretly supported John Brown’s insurrection. Poor health led Parker to travel to Europe, and he settled in Florence. Bowden, Dictionary of American Religious Biography, 420–21; ACAB, 4:654–56; NCAB, 2:377. 306. The Protestant cemetery in Florence is at the intersection of the Viale Principe Amedeo and the Viale Principe Eugenio. Baedeker, Northern Italy, Plan of Florence, I, 4. 307. Born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, Richard Hildreth (1807–65) practiced law until 1832, when he became an editor of the Boston Atlas, a daily newspaper promoting Rufus Choate and other young politicians of the Republican party. As editor, Hildreth argued strongly against slavery and the annexation of Texas. He later moved to British Guiana, where he edited publications that supported the abolition of slavery by the British government. While writing regularly for several newspapers and encyclopedias, Hildreth compiled a six-volume History of the United States, his best-known work, published from 1849 to 1856. President Lincoln appointed

Y7870-Douglass.indb 399

9/1/21 4:17 PM

400

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

Hildreth to the American consulate in Trieste, Italy, where he remained until illness caused him to resign. ACAB, 3:200; NCAB, 10:460. 308. Hildreth published Despotism in America, a survey of the political, economic, and social ramifications of slaveholding in America, anonymously in 1840. In 1854, he added a chapter based on two articles he wrote for Theodore Parker’s Massachusetts Quarterly Review, republishing the work as Despotism in America: An Inquiry into the Nature, Results and Legal Basis of the SlaveHolding System in the United States (Boston, 1854). Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of American Literature, Embracing Personal and Critical Notices of Authors from Their Writings, from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; With Portraits, Autographs, and Other Illustrations, ed. M. Laird Simons, 2 vols. (1875; Detroit, 1965), 2:299. 309. Hildreth originally published The Slave, or, Memoirs of Archie Moore, proclaimed as the first antislavery novel, in 1836. Expanded and republished in 1852 as The White Slave: A Story of Life in Virginia, Etc., the novel tells the story of a Virginia slave who is freed by British troops during the War of 1812, settles in England, and becomes a successful merchant. Duyckinck and Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of American Literature, 2:299; James D. Hart, The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 6th ed. (New York, 1995), 290. 310. Born at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, and privately educated, the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) published her first book of poems anonymously in 1826. Other works of poetry followed, as well as a translation of Prometheus Bound, the Greek tragedy by Aeschylus. In 1845, the poet Robert Browning began corresponding with her, expressing his admiration for her poems. A courtship ensued, strongly opposed by her father, and the couple eloped in 1846. They settled in Florence, hoping that the climate would improve Elizabeth’s failing health. After giving birth to a son in 1849, Elizabeth published, in 1850, Sonnets from the Portuguese, dedicated to her husband and considered her best and most popular work. Later works focused on her support for the unification of Italy and her defense of intellectual freedom for women. Her tomb, designed by Sir Frederic Leighton, is a sarcophagus resting on six pedestals. Beverly Taylor, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” in Victorian Women Poets, ed. William B. Thesing (Detroit, 1999), 80–98; Frank N. Magill, ed., Critical Survey of Poetry: English Language Series, 8 vols. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1982), 1:323–33; Scott Wilson, Resting Places: The Burial Sites of Over 7,000 Famous Persons (Jefferson, N.C., 2001), 44. 311. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Ludmilla Assing (1821–80) was the youngest daughter of David Assing, a poet and physician, and Rosa Maria Assing, a poet and translator. After her father’s death in 1842, Ludmilla moved to Berlin to live with her maternal uncle, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, acting as his companion and secretary until his death in 1858. Ludmilla published her uncle’s correspondence with his friend Alexander von Humboldt in 1860 and her uncle’s diaries in 1861; the liberal political views expressed therein enraged the Prussian monarch and royal court. Convicted of treason and defamation and sentenced to two years’ confinement, Ludmilla fled to Italy, settling in Florence in 1862. Successful as a biographer, translator, and editor, Ludmilla built a mansion in Florence. Tragedy and mishap marked her personal life. Her first lover, the Italian revolutionary Piero Cirono, died shortly after they became intimate, and her second paramour turned out to be a married man. In 1873, Ludmilla married Gino Grimelli, who was twenty years her junior, but the marriage ended two months later after he abused her and cheated on her; he took a large part of her fortune in a divorce settlement. Ludmilla’s acquaintances and her sister, Ottilie Assing, with whom she had a close yet volatile relationship, reveled in her humiliation. Ludmilla changed her will to disinherit her sister, leaving her mansion to become a school. She also left the entire collection of family papers, including her uncle’s papers and her sister’s letters to her, to the Royal Library in Berlin. Her sister challenged the will, but to no avail. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 78, 311–13, 323–26, 355, 361–62, 370; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 184–85; Walther Killy and Rudolph Vierhaus, eds., Dictionary of German Biography, 10 vols. to date (Munich, 2001–11), 1:204–05. 312. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Ottilie Assing (1819–84) was the older sister of Ludmilla Assing. While a correspondent for the German newspaper Morgenblatt, Ottilie immigrated to the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 400

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

401

United States in 1852 to avoid political unrest and anti-Semitism in Germany. Living in Hoboken, New Jersey, she taught German and continued as a correspondent for the newspaper. After reading My Bondage and My Freedom, Ottilie introduced herself to Douglass in 1856, and the two became close friends. They shared the same political beliefs and supported the same social reforms, and he valued her education and cultural refinement. After she translated My Bondage and My Freedom into German, Hoffman and Campe of Hamburg published it as Sklaveri und Frieheit in 1860. Beginning in 1857, Ottilie spent her summers at the Douglass home, a practice she continued for twentytwo years, purportedly to work on publications and speeches with Douglass. In turn, he visited her regularly in Hoboken whenever possible. When Ottilie discovered that she had breast cancer in 1884 and that Douglass had married Helen Pitts earlier that year, she committed suicide in Paris, where she was visiting. She left Douglass her assets and directed the executor of her estate to destroy all papers in her possession, a request that her executor honored. Nevertheless, letters from Ottilie to her sister survived, revealing a long-term sexual relationship between Douglass and Ottilie, one that was not hidden but not openly discussed. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 7, 81–83, 147–51, 161–63, 169–71, 203, 206–12, 227–30, 253, 273, 368–70, 379–81; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 184–85, 277, 289, 322. 313. Married to his cousin Margherita Teresa Giovanni of Savoy (1851–1926), King Umberto I (1844–1900) ruled Italy from 1878 to 1900. He became the second king of Italy upon the death of Victor Emmanuel II, his father and his wife’s uncle. Portrayed as a valiant soldier in the war against Austria to unify Italy, Umberto entered into a defense pact in 1882 with Austria-Hungary and Germany, called the Triple Alliance, whose provisions contributed to the outbreak of World War I. Umberto also initiated Italy’s colonial expansion in Africa in the 1890s. An anarchist assassinated Umberto in 1900. Richard Drake, Byzantium for Rome: The Politics of Nostalgia in Umbertian Italy, 1878–1900 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980), xviii, 90, 202–07, 213; Fanny Zampini Salazar, Margherita of Savoy, First Queen of Italy: Her Life and Times (London, 1914), 18, 40–48. 314. A librarian and book collector, Daniel Willard Fiske (1831–1904) attended Cazenovia Seminary and Hamilton College in New York, but left in 1850 to study Scandinavian languages at universities in Denmark and Sweden. In 1852, Fiske became the assistant librarian at the Astor Library in New York City. He also engaged in editing and writing articles for periodicals and newspapers. In 1867, Fiske became the librarian at Cornell University and a professor of North European languages, teaching German, Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. When Fiske’s wealthy wife, a tubercular invalid, died in 1881, a year after their marriage, Fiske successfully challenged her will and inherited a sizeable amount of money. He resigned from Cornell and moved to Florence. He spent the rest of his life traveling in Europe, entertaining friends and visitors to Florence, and collecting rare books on Dante, Petrarch, and Icelandic history and literature. He left his rare book collection to Cornell after his death, along with a $500,000 endowment to maintain it. Horatio S. White, “A Sketch of the Life and Labors of Professor Willard Fiske,” Papers of the Biographical Society of America, 12:69–88 (July–October 1918); ACAB, 2:498–99; NCAB, 25:279–80; ANB (online). 315. Born in Woodstock, Vermont, George Perkins Marsh (1801–82) practiced law until becoming a member of the Vermont legislature in 1835 and serving as a Whig in Congress from 1842 to 1849. After being appointed ambassador to Turkey in 1849 by President Zachary Taylor, Marsh began a long and distinguished career in the diplomatic corps. After serving on a special mission to Greece, Marsh became the first U.S. minister to the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, serving in that post for the rest of his life. As the capital of the expanding kingdom moved from Turin to Florence to Rome, Marsh moved with it. From 1865 to 1871, Marsh lived at the large and elaborate Villa Forini in Florence on the open plain of the Arno. Among his many and diverse areas of expertise, Marsh translated an Icelandic grammar book in 1839, a work that later caught the attention of Daniel Willard Fiske in his study of Scandinavian languages. Fiske introduced himself to Marsh in the 1850s and became a frequent visitor to Marsh’s home. Marsh also gave Fiske access to his library of fifteen thousand volumes. After Marsh died, Fiske rented his villa in Florence. David Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh:

Y7870-Douglass.indb 401

9/1/21 4:17 PM

402

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

Prophet of Conservation (Seattle, 2000); Horatio S. White, Willard Fiske: Life and Correspondence; A Biographical Study (New York, 1925), 12; Halldór Hermannsson, “Willard Fiske and Icelandic Bibliography,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of North America, 12:97–106 (July–October 1918); John E. Findling, Dictionary of American Diplomatic History, 2nd ed. (New York, 1989), 339–40; BDUSC (online). 316. A horse-drawn carriage with servants. 317. Built between 1294 and 1462, Florence Cathedral, or the Duomo, is particularly famous for its massive, 376-foot-high dome, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. The marble façade replaced one removed in 1588, an unfinished façade by Giotto di Bondone. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 406, 474, 477. 318. The Galleria degli Uffizi, located near the Piazza della Signoria, contains art collections started by the Medici family and largely supplemented by the dukes of Lorraine. Noted for the extent and value of its collection, the Uffizi (“Offices”) is particularly famous for its ancient sculptures and Renaissance paintings. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 388–402. 319. Built in 1290 and completely altered in the sixteenth century, San Marco is a church with a flat ceiling, a dome over the choir, and no aisle. It was given a new façade in 1780. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 424. 320. Michelangelo built the New Sacristy of the Basilica di San Lorenzo in 1523 for Pope Clement VII, born Guilio de’ Medici 1494 to 1498, as the Medici mausoleum. Among those buried there are Juliano de’ Medici (1479–1516) and Lorenzo de’ Medici (1492–1519). Michelangelo sculpted the statue of Lorenzo and the statues Dusk and Dawn on the tomb of Lorenzo. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 432–33, 476. 321. Adjacent to the church of the same name, the monastery of San Marco was home to Sylvestrines and, later, Dominicans. The monastery was eventually closed, and the building became a museum. Hieronymus Savonarola (1452–1498), the prior of San Marco and the leader of the theocratic republic of Florence from 1494–1498, was a prisoner in San Marco before being tortured and burned at the stake in the Piazza Della Signoria on 23 May 1498. A fountain with Neptune and Tritons, designed by Bartolomeo Ammanati, marks the site of the burning. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 383, 387, 424, 473; Jonathan W. Zophy, A Short History of Renaissance Europe: Dances over Fire and Water (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1997), 123–25. 322. The Arno River bisects Florence, as the Seine does Paris. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 385; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:163, 1010, 3:2857. 323. Located in northeastern Italy on 118 islands in the Adriatic Sea, Venice rose to world power by conquering Constantinople in 1204 with forces under the command of a doge, or leader, named Enrico Dandolo, who ruled from 1192 to 1205. After defeating its rival Genoa in 1380, Venice became the leading European sea power, and conducted extensive trade in Asia. The republic reached the peak of its power in the fifteenth century, and its influence declined thereafter with both the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 and the discovery of alternative sea routes to Asia. Venice was alternately under Italian and Austrian control in the nineteenth century before being reunited with the rest of Italy in 1866. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 236–38; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1979. 324. The capital of Lombardy, Milan was one of the richest manufacturing centers of Italy at the time (and remains so today), particularly for silk and woolen goods. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 121; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1979. 325. Located on Lake Lucerne in central Switzerland, Lucerne was mainly a summer resort town at the time. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 29; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1798. 326. A light flat-bottomed boat used on the Venetian canals, with a cabin toward the middle and rising to a sharp point at both ends, usually propelled by one person with a single oar. 327. Situated on the Canal Grande and named for the island that is the historic center of Venice, the Rialto Bridge joins eastern and western Venice. Begun in 1588 and completed in 1591, the Rialto remained the only bridge across the Canal Grande until 1854. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 263; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:3331.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 402

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

403

328. The Piazza San Marco is the center of activity for Venice, with the Basilica di San Marco as its focal point. Named for the author of the gospel and the patron saint of Venice, the cathedral is the traditional resting place of the evangelist; the Venetians removed his body in 828 from its reputed tomb in Alexandria, where he died a martyr around 68 C.E. Built in the tenth century and remodeled several times, the basilica is ornamented in Byzantine and Eastern styles, reflecting the contact that Venice had with Asia. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 240–42; Ettore Vio, ed., St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, trans. Huw Evans (London, 1999), 9, 18; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:3331. 329. Bordering the Basilica di San Marco on the square to the east is the Doge’s Palace. Originally built in 800 and destroyed several times by fire, the palace was the residence of the Venetian leaders until the end of the eighteenth century. Colonnades of 107 columns decorate the western and southern sides of the palace. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 245–46; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:3331. 330. The last doge to rule Venice was Lodovico Manin from 1788 to 1797, when Napoleon forced him to abdicate. Thereafter, control of the city passed back and forth between the French and the Austrians. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 237. 331. Established in 1818 and located on the Campo dei Frari, the Archivio di Stato, or State Archives, at Venice contains a letter written in 1784 from John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. In that year, Congress appointed the three men to head a commission to negotiate treaties of commerce with European powers. At the time, Franklin served as ambassador to France; the next year, Jefferson and Adams served as ambassadors to France and Great Britain, respectively. Written to Chevalier Delfino, the Venetian ambassador, the letter suggests the two republics sign a treaty. Carl Russel Fish, Guide to the Materials for American History in Roman and Other Italian Archives (Washington, D.C., 1911), 237, 241; Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Jared Sparks, 10 vols. (Boston, 1840), 10:102–03; K[laus] G. Saur, World Guide to Libraries, 12th ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1995), 1:229. 332. Located on the right side of the Canal Grande, beginning from the Piazetta, the Palazzo Contarini Fasan is the traditional home of Desdemona, the heroine of Shakespeare’s Othello. The focal point of the fourteenth-century building is its three balconies decorated with wheel traceries; small pilasters adorned with waving scrolls stand between the turning wheels. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 260; Edoardo Arslan, Gothic Architecture in Venice, trans. Anne Engel (New York, 1972), 323–33. 333. Venice has been famed for its glassware since the thirteenth century, and was particularly noted from the late fifteenth century. The Venetians recovered the secret of decolorizing glass by using manganese, a practice that had been lost with the fall of the Roman Empire. Extremely flexible, the transparent, crystal-like glass could be blown very thin and shaped into intricate patterns. It was also possible to engrave the colorless glass with a diamond point or make it into brilliant mirrors. By meting out severe penalties to glassmakers who disclosed the process, the Venetians maintained their dominance in glassware production until the sixteenth century, when defecting workers made the techniques common knowledge. While Venetian glass remained the best in the seventeenth century, imitations emerged in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and England. In the eighteenth century, Bohemian glass replaced Venetian glass in prestige, although the reproduction of the seventeenthcentury masterworks continues. Alan Macfarlane and Gerry Martin, Glass: A World History (Chicago, 2002), 23–24; Phoebe Phillips, ed., The Encyclopedia of Glass (New York, 1981), 58–80; Mark Pickvet, The Encyclopedia of Glass (Atglen, Pa., 2001), 218–19. 334. Built from 1386 to 1813, the white marble Milan Cathedral is one of the largest churches in Europe. Nearly 2,000 marble stones and 135 spires ornament the roof of the cathedral, which is surmounted by a dome rising to 215 feet. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 122–24; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1979. 335. No record exists of the letter Douglass wrote his son Charles on 25 May 1887. 336. Born in Seneca Falls, New York, the author and journalist Theodore Stanton (1851–1925) was the son of Henry Brewster Stanton, a journalist and prominent lecturer in the antislavery movement, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an author and founder of the woman suffrage movement. After

Y7870-Douglass.indb 403

9/1/21 4:17 PM

404

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

graduating from Cornell University, Stanton served as the Berlin correspondent for the New York Tribune for several years. In 1884, he wrote The Woman Question in Europe, and in 1910 he wrote The Life of Rosa Bonheur. In addition to translating François le Goff’s The Life of Louis Adolphe Thiers, Stanton was a contributor to several periodicals while living abroad. Married to Marguerite Berry of Paris, he lived at 5 Avenue de l’Opéra in Paris. New York Times, 2 March 1925; Hamilton Traub, ed., The American Literary Yearbook (Henning, Minn., 1919), 193; ACAB, 5:649–50; NCAB, 11:503. 337. Theodore Tilton (1835–1907), journalist, poet, and public lecturer, was born in New York City, where he attended the Free Academy (today the City University of New York). As a reporter for the New York Observer, he made the acquaintance of the Reverends Henry Ward Beecher and George B. Cheever. Both men were instrumental in his becoming managing editor of the New York Independent, a popular religious journal, in 1856. In the early 1860s, Tilton tried to recruit Douglass to be a regular contributor to the Independent, and the two became friends. Tilton succeeded Beecher as editor of the Independent in 1862, continuing in that position until 1871. After the Civil War, he became a popular speaker on the topics of Radical Reconstruction and women’s rights. His public career never recovered, however, from the notoriety he attracted in 1874 as the result of an unsuccessful lawsuit charging Beecher with committing adultery with his wife. Subsequent journalistic efforts failed, and Tilton left the United States in 1883 for Europe. He settled in Paris, where he wrote essays and poetry to support himself. When Douglass visited Paris in 1886, Tilton served as his guide. On Douglass’s death, Tilton published Sonnets to the Memory of Frederick Douglass (Paris, 1895). Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 22 November 1860, 2 September 1867, 2 December 1869, FD Papers, NRU; Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 2 September 1867, FD Papers, New-York Historical Society; Theodore Tilton to Douglass, 30 April, 22 October 1862, 20 April 1869, 5 September 1882, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 718–19, 745–47, reel 2, frames 464–66, and reel 3, frames 627–31, FD Papers, DLC; Chicago Open Court, 28 April 1887; New York Times, 26 May 1907; New York Independent, 10 December 1908; Robert Shaplen, Free Love and Heavenly Sinners: The Story of the Great Henry Ward Beecher Scandal (New York, 1954), 199–214, 253–55, 271; ACAB, 6:120; NCAB, 8:100; DAB, 2:129–35. 338. L. Espremont was a civil engineer who lived at 9 Boulevard de Sébastopol in Paris, where the street intersects with the Rue de Rivoli, one block from the Seine. J. C. Fletcher to Douglass, 17 February 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frame 456, FD Papers, DLC; Cartes Taride, Plan-Guide de Paris: Repertoire des Rues, Metros, Autobus (Paris, [1968]), 306. 339. Helen Pitts Douglass sailed on the City of Rome from Liverpool to New York on 10 June 1887 to be with her ailing mother in Honeoye, New York. Douglass accompanied his wife to Liverpool to see her board the ship. Douglass to Amy Post, 10 June 1887, Post Family Papers, NRU. 340. Constructed from 1802 to 1865, the Rue de Rivoli was one of the finest streets in Paris at the time. Named for Napoleon’s victory over the Austrians in 1797 at Rivoli, Italy, the street runs parallel to the Seine from the Place de la Concorde east alongside the Tuileries Gardens and the Louvre. Baedeker, Paris, 58; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2624. 341. Born in Paris to a wealthy merchant, Victor Schoelcher (1804–93) studied journalism at the Collège Louis-le-Grand and became a political activist, opposing the government of Louis Philippe. Beginning in 1826, Schoelcher bitterly fought slavery and spent his own money to establish philanthropic societies to aid blacks. After studying slavery in the United States, Cuba, the West Indies, and other places, Schoelcher became the undersecretary of the navy in 1848. In this post, Schoelcher persuaded the provisional government to issue a decree that abolished slavery in French possessions. Elected to the legislature in 1848, Schoelcher immigrated to London when Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took power. Returning to France in 1870, Schoelcher was again a member of the legislature in 1871, becoming a senator for life in 1875. In addition to being a journalist, politician, and philanthropist, Schoelcher was an accomplished musician and wrote an important biography of George Frederic Handel. Percy A. Scholes, The Oxford Companion to Music, ed. John Owen Ward, 10th ed. (London, 1970), 928; ACAB, 5:423.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 404

9/1/21 4:17 PM

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

405

342. The Caledonian Hotel in London. 343. Located opposite the west entrance of the South Kensington Museum, the National Portrait Gallery contains valuable original portraits and busts of famous Britons, including busts of Thomas Moore, George Stephenson, and Thomas Carlyle, and portraits of Richard III, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Henry VIII. Baedeker, London, 273–74. 344. Because Douglass mentions seeing a painting of a horse, which was not likely part of the collection of portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, he perhaps visited the National Gallery instead, located in Trafalgar Square. Established by Parliament in 1824, the National Gallery housed around one thousand works at the time, representing British, Flemish, Dutch, Italian, German, and French artists. The collection includes works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Rubens. Baedeker, London, 139–65. 345. Born in London, Fanny Lee Byse (c. 1849–?) lived in Lausanne, a well-known resort city in western Switzerland on Lake Geneva. A sculptor specializing in portrait busts, Byse, at the age of forty-four, studied under Jules Salmson, director of the School of Industrial Arts in Geneva. In 1901, her work was exhibited at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français in Paris, and over the next decade, her works entered the collections of the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists, both in London. In 1903, Byse published a book, Milton on the Continent; A Key to L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, with Several Illustrations, a Historical Chart, and an Original Portrait of Galileo, in which she analyzed the accuracy of Milton’s descriptions of the setting for those two poems. Byse was an adherent of the church of humanity, also called the religion of humanity, founded by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857). According to Comte, the two aims of religion are the regulation of the individual and the unification of all individuals. In Comte’s philosophy, also called positivism, humanity as a whole is loved for its perfectibility, and humanity is the positivist God. Byse met Douglass when he was in Paris, and she sent him a religion of humanity prayer book and several pages of quotations from Comte. Douglass in turn gave Byse a photograph of himself. Fanny Byse to Douglass, [May 1887?], 26 February, 26 March 1888, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frames 726–30, 761–62, reel 8, frames 628–30, FD Papers, DLC; Andrew Wernick, Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity: The Post-Theistic Program of French Social Theory (Cambridge, 2001), 1–14; Chris Petteys, Dictionary of Women Artists: An International Dictionary of Women Artists Born before 1900 (Boston, 1985), 113; E[mmanuel] Bénézit, Dictionnaire Critique et Documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 14 vols. (Paris, 1999), 3:68; J[ane] Johnson and A. Greutzner, comp., The Dictionary of British Artists, 1880–1940 (Woodbridge, Eng., 1976), 91; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1698. 346. With minor changes in punctuation, Douglass quotes from an undated letter, probably written in May 1887. Fanny Byse to Douglass, [May 1887?], General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 628–30, FD Papers, DLC. 347. Located in the City of Westminster near Regents Park, St. John’s Wood Park is a two-blocklong street that runs from the intersection of Adelaide and Avenue roads to Queen’s Grove. No record remains of the letter to Douglass from Dora Delany. Geographers’ Map Company, Ltd., Geographers’ London Atlas, 5th ed. (Sevenoaks, Eng., 1964), 58. 348. An antislavery worker and a member of the Society of Friends, Arthur John Naish (1816– 89) was an iron founder in Birmingham, England, a manufacturing city in central England equidistant from England’s major ports: Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, and London. Naish was the son of William Naish, a haberdasher in London who published numerous pamphlets for the antislavery movement and sold them in his shop. The elder Naish also published George Fox and His Friends: As Leaders in the Peace Cause in 1859. With Paul Bevan, Arthur John Naish founded the Bevan-Naish library of Quaker writings, consisting of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century publications. Currently housed at Woodbroke College Library in Birmingham, the collection contains three thousand books and two thousand pamphlets. Naish and Douglass met when Douglass was in England the first time. Arthur John Naish did write a letter to Douglass dated 9 December 1886,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 405

9/1/21 4:17 PM

406

EUROPEAN/AFRICAN TRAVEL DIARY

possibly the one Douglass received in June 1887. Arthur John Naish to Douglass, 9 December 1886, 9 June 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frames 434–35, 526–27, FD Papers, DLC; B[arry] C[ambray] Bloomfield, ed., A Directory of the Rare Book and Special Collections in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, 2nd ed. (London, 1997), 570; Ellen M. Codlin, ed., The Alsib Directory of Information Sources in the United Kingdom, 6th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1990), 1:959; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:359; John Foster Kirk, A Supplement to Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, 2 vols. (1891; Detroit, 1965), 2:1163. 349. From 1879 to 1898, Charles Harris Allen served as the secretary for the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which had its office at 55 New Broad Street, located one block south of the Broad Street Station between Bloomfield and Old Broad streets. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Allen served as honorary secretary of the society until his resignation from that post in 1902. Douglass wrote to Allen on 3 June 1887, thanking him for the letters Allen forwarded and stating that he would be happy to receive a call from Allen, who lived at 17 Well Walk in Hampstead. No record remains of the letter Allen wrote to Douglass. Douglass to Charles H. Allen, 3 June 1887, AntiSlavery Society Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford University; “Resignations,” Anti-Slavery Reporter, 22:31 (January–February 1902); B. W. Gardiner and Son, Royal Blue Book: Fashionable Directory, and Parliamentary Guide ([London], 1890), 505; John Bartholomew and Son, Reference Atlas of Greater London, 8th ed. (Edinburgh, 1948), 65. 350. Isabella Mills (c. 1813–?) was the daughter of Thomas and Ann Jennings, who lived on Brown Street in Cork, Ireland, with their eight children. Their daughters Jane, Helen, Charlotte, and Isabel were active members of the Cork Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and collected donations for the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar. When Douglass traveled abroad in 1845, he stayed with the Jennings family when in Cork. After he returned to the United States, Isabel, who was the secretary of the society, supported Douglass’s newspaper through donations to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Bazaar. She married Robert Mills, who ran a bookbinding business. No record remains of the letter that Mills wrote to Douglass before July 1887. Douglass to Isabel Jennings, 30 July, 22 September 1846, Isabel Mills to Douglass, 21, 31 July 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 617, 632–33, reel 4, frames 612–14, 625–27, FD Papers, DLC; Jane Jennings et al. to Maria Weston Chapman, 1 December 1841, Isabel Jennings to Maria Weston Chapman, n.d., in Clare Taylor, British and American Abolitionists: An Episode in Transatlantic Understanding (Chicago, 1974), 158, 243–44; 1881 British Census, Surrey County, 2; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:70–71, ser. 2, 1:167; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 119; Patricia J. Ferreira, “Frederick Douglass in Ireland: The Dublin Edition of His Narrative,” New Hibernia Review, 5:53–67 (Spring 2001); Ellen M. Oldham, “Irish Support of the Abolitionist Movement,” Boston Public Library Quarterly, 10:175–87 (October 1958). 351. Bowdon is a town on the southwestern side of Greater Manchester, England. Another person listed in Douglass’s diary, Mrs. John Mills, also had the address Northwold, Bowdon, England. Douglass Diary, Diary File, reel 1, frame 43, FD Papers, DLC; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:415. 352. Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–92) was a Baptist minister serving the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. Calvinistic in his theology, Spurgeon entered the ministry at eighteen and became the pastor of the New Park Street Church in London in 1854. Almost immediately, the congregation outgrew its sanctuary, forcing the church first to enlarge its chapel and then to build a new church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, in 1860. A gifted orator, and at twenty-two the most popular preacher of his day, Spurgeon was an evangelical known as the last of the Puritans. His legacy at the Metropolitan Tabernacle included founding a seminary and an orphanage; he also started two hundred new churches. On 5 June 1887, Spurgeon delivered a morning sermon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, titled “The Death of Moses” and based on Deuteronomy 5:6: “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons Preached and Revised by C. H. Spurgeon, during the Year 1857 (Pasadena, Tex., 1974), 313–24; Ernest W. Bacon, Spurgeon: Heir of the Puritans (London, 1967),

Y7870-Douglass.indb 406

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

407

23–26, 35–38, 63–64, 90–92, 97–102; John Charles Carlile, C. H. Spurgeon: An Interpretive Biography (London, 1933), 64–69, 132–35, 169–72; Jackson, New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, 11:57–58. 353. Margaret Bright Lucas (1818–90) was the younger sister of John Bright. In 1839, she married John Lucas (1811–65), despite her father’s objection that Lucas, though a Friend, did not conform his dress to the manner of the Friends. A journalist and politician, John Lucas was active in public education reform, emancipation efforts, and, like John Bright, the Anti–Corn Law League. Margaret Lucas helped him in his causes. After he died, she was an active advocate for the temperance movement and women’s political enfranchisement. She lived at 7 Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, London. Margaret B. Lucas to Douglass, 6 August 1888, General Correspondence File, reel 5, frames 8–9, FD Papers, DLC; Robbins, John Bright, 24; Trevelyan, Life of John Bright, 22; DNB, 1:798.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS (1887) Chicago Inter Ocean, 13 February 1887.

This essay by Douglass, published in the Chicago Inter Ocean, chronicles the two months he spent in Paris in 1887 while honeymooning with his second wife, Helen Pitts. Although Douglass’s revised 1892 edition of his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, included two chapters describing his European travels, the Parisian stay is accorded only a few sentences of description. The Inter Ocean essay, therefore, serves as a valuable supplement to the autobiographical account of Douglass’s European tour. The Daily Inter-Ocean was founded in 1872 as a strongly partisan Republican vehicle. In 1875, William Penn Nixon, formerly the Inter Ocean’s business manager, became its new editor in chief. Under Nixon’s direction, the Inter Ocean became known for its political integrity and excellent foreign news reporting. Ida B. Wells, the first female African American correspondent paid to work for a white newspaper, joined its staff in 1894. The first published correspondence between Douglass and the Inter Ocean appears to have been in June 1875, when he wrote a letter describing recent changes in the governance of Howard University. Although the following was the only special correspondence directly from Douglass to the Inter Ocean during his European sojourn, Theodore Stanton supplied the paper with later updates on Douglass’s travels by publishing excerpts of letters or describing his movements throughout Europe. Chicago Inter Ocean, 25 June 1875, 25 December 1880, 20 March 1887,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 407

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

407

23–26, 35–38, 63–64, 90–92, 97–102; John Charles Carlile, C. H. Spurgeon: An Interpretive Biography (London, 1933), 64–69, 132–35, 169–72; Jackson, New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, 11:57–58. 353. Margaret Bright Lucas (1818–90) was the younger sister of John Bright. In 1839, she married John Lucas (1811–65), despite her father’s objection that Lucas, though a Friend, did not conform his dress to the manner of the Friends. A journalist and politician, John Lucas was active in public education reform, emancipation efforts, and, like John Bright, the Anti–Corn Law League. Margaret Lucas helped him in his causes. After he died, she was an active advocate for the temperance movement and women’s political enfranchisement. She lived at 7 Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, London. Margaret B. Lucas to Douglass, 6 August 1888, General Correspondence File, reel 5, frames 8–9, FD Papers, DLC; Robbins, John Bright, 24; Trevelyan, Life of John Bright, 22; DNB, 1:798.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS (1887) Chicago Inter Ocean, 13 February 1887.

This essay by Douglass, published in the Chicago Inter Ocean, chronicles the two months he spent in Paris in 1887 while honeymooning with his second wife, Helen Pitts. Although Douglass’s revised 1892 edition of his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, included two chapters describing his European travels, the Parisian stay is accorded only a few sentences of description. The Inter Ocean essay, therefore, serves as a valuable supplement to the autobiographical account of Douglass’s European tour. The Daily Inter-Ocean was founded in 1872 as a strongly partisan Republican vehicle. In 1875, William Penn Nixon, formerly the Inter Ocean’s business manager, became its new editor in chief. Under Nixon’s direction, the Inter Ocean became known for its political integrity and excellent foreign news reporting. Ida B. Wells, the first female African American correspondent paid to work for a white newspaper, joined its staff in 1894. The first published correspondence between Douglass and the Inter Ocean appears to have been in June 1875, when he wrote a letter describing recent changes in the governance of Howard University. Although the following was the only special correspondence directly from Douglass to the Inter Ocean during his European sojourn, Theodore Stanton supplied the paper with later updates on Douglass’s travels by publishing excerpts of letters or describing his movements throughout Europe. Chicago Inter Ocean, 25 June 1875, 25 December 1880, 20 March 1887,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 407

9/1/21 4:17 PM

408

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

17 April 1887, 19 September 1893; Douglass to Theodore Stanton, 13 January 1887, Theodore Stanton Papers, Rutgers University Library; William H. Busbey, “The Chicago Inter Ocean,” in Discovery and Conquests of the North-West, with the History of Chicago, ed. Rufus Blanchard, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1900), 2:237–40.

Special Correspondence of The Inter Ocean. PARIS, Jan. 28.

No person with ordinary sensibility and powers of observation can visit the city of Paris, and remain here more than two months, as I have now done, in daily contact with its people and its varied institutions of art, learning, industry, and government, without receiving a vivid impression of its individuality, and without forming some opinion of its relation to European civilization. Of course the color and features of such impressions and opinions will greatly depend upon the prepossessions of the visitor himself, for the object may be one thing and the ideal of those who see it quite another; and an observer is apt to describe his conceptions rather than the object. A firm believer in despotic government, loyal and true to the Emperor of all the Russians,1 will see Paris in a very different light from that of an American who can proudly boast of a hundred successful years of the republican form of government, and who ardently wishes success to that of the French. the votary of despotism can think of Paris only as a seething cauldron of revolution and anarchy, threatening disorganization and dismal terror to all within its reach; while the American, with memories of Lafayette,2 and sympathies springing from the recollection of old inter-nation friendship, will view the French Republic as hopefully threading its way through the vicissitudes of infantile ailments toward a robust and manly freedom. In what I have to say I can hardly be classed with those who entertain extreme predilections of any kind. My visit to this great city is the realization of a desire and purpose long entertained and long postponed. Many years ago, while in England, I made some efforts to this end; but owing to an attempt made upon the life of the Emperor Napoleon III,3 the strictness with which the passport system was, in consequence, enforced, and my inability to procure a passport, that effort was defeated. At this distance of time, it may seem strange

Y7870-Douglass.indb 408

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

409

that I could not then obtain a passport as an American citizen, but such was the fact. My application to Mr. G. M. Dallas,4 then Minister to England, for such a document was instantly refused, on the alleged ground that I was not an American citizen. Time and events have put an end to this objection, and this happy fact leaves me with no disposition to think bitterly of the injustice then done, or to magnify the hardships then imposed. I am here to-day with nothing in my antecedents, partialities or aversions to warp my impressions or bias my opinions. Though by the grace of my country and its amended constitution, I am now an American citizen, and have enjoyed this distinction for some years, yet this great privilege has not been coupled with conditions calculated to b[l]ind me to American imperfections, or to prevent me from seeing in a true light the institutions of countries other than my own. In speaking of Paris, I shall, in some sense, be speaking of France and of the French Republic, for, though it may not be exactly that Paris is France, it certainly is true that Paris largely controls the destinies of France. I have no hesitation in saying that, from all I have seen and heard during my visit, after making every allowance for malign and conflicting forces, after getting over the first shock of the Sabbath customs and manners of the people; their open shops, their buying and selling, their gay excursions, the carrying on of week-day work as vigorously on Sunday as on Monday5—which might strike many Americans with amazement and make them wonder that some chosen curse, “red with uncommon wrath,”6 does not descend upon the city and blot it out forever—I have a strong belief in a happy future both for Paris and for the Republic of France. this belief is supported partly by reasoning from general principles, and partly upon the facts as they appear to daily observation. Neither cities nor governments can long exist in contravention of that “righteousness that exalteth a nation.”7 Society does not rest upon lies. The basis of a great commonwealth must be moral integrity. Falsehood, treachery, selfishness and deceit destroy wherever they prevail. The very existence of a people who have maintained their nationality from age to age, living together, loving and trusting each other, and all mutually co-operating for the common good, is evidence that virtue among them preponderates over vice.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 409

9/1/21 4:17 PM

410

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

With all its faults, Paris to-day stands not less strong, compact and hopeful than at any time in its history. I do not find here that absence of confidence between man and man, that ennui and weakness arising from sensuality and other vices, usually ascribed to this people, and which is the sure precursor of the downfall of cities and empires. I notice much drinking, yet little drunkenness; much loud talk, but no street broils. In these respects and others, Paris seems to me, both socially and politically, in a hopeful condition. This superb city is now, as it has long been, the chief continental center of European civilization, and I seen nothing in its present character likely to cost it the loss of this proud eminence. for the purpose of observation and study of the situation, I have been somewhat fortunate in my location. I have lived very near the heart of the great city, midway between its old and its new sections; between its blouses and its broad[-]cloth; between labor and capital; with the Hotel de Ville8 on one side and the Louvre9 on the other; with the Palais de Justice10 and Notre Dame11 to the right, and the Grand Market12 and Saint Eustache13 on the left. No two sections of any city are in stronger contrast than the old and the new parts of Paris. This appears not only in the differing condition of the inhabitants of each district respectively, but in the architecture, the streets and the general appearance of things. Old Paris is where the workmen generally live, and it is a perfect network of narrow streets, somber courts, repulsive alleys, lofty and dingy dwellings, crowded with occupants from foundation to roof.14 Winding his way through the sinuosities of this densely populated section, an American, accustomed to wide streets, broad sidewalks, large rooms and abundant sunshine, will shudder at the thoughts of a populace huddled together in such dark, threatening and dangerous proximity. But this feeling is much relieved by the appearance of the people themselves. They certainly look healthy, well clothed, well fed, and are exceedingly cheerful. A proverb says: “Idleness is the devil’s workshop.”15 his satanic majesty may have many such shops in this quarter, for aught I know. I have not penetrated very far into the uninviting obscurities of this shadowy section; nevertheless, upon the surface not many such dens are visible. The French people seem to be as busy as bees in a hive. Industry—active, earnest, and persistent—is the rule. A striking feature of this industry is found in the fact that persons of all ages and both sexes, gray-haired

Y7870-Douglass.indb 410

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

411

men and gray-haired women, wrinkled not only by age but by toil, are seen in Paris in a larger proportion than elsewhere, all alike engaged in some industrial avocation. Woman, in the humbler walks of life, seems in France a more general helpmeet than in the United States. Many French women are surprisingly hale and strong. In Paris, woman is everywhere a toiler, as much as a man. If a burden is to be borne, she is there to share the burden. If a handcart is to be drawn, she is harnessed with a man, and supplies her full share of the strength to draw the vehicle.16 This union of men and women in the struggle for honest livelihood has a moral as well as material significance. It not only accounts for the fact that this people usually have cash on hand, but it is the cause of results still more important and precious, for out of this mutuality and interdependence in bearing the burdens of life, spring honorable social and domestic relations. Even among the humblest and poorest classes in Paris the family is an institution of ideal sacredness. It may be true that the French have no name for home, but it is not true that the real thing that constitutes home does not exist in France. A French home is a real home—a prized home. This union of effort of which I have spoken tells of husband and wife, of parent and child, of love and affection. It tells of willing sacrifice of individual ease for the improvement of the conditions of existence for all. No people who thus love one another, and who thus labor together, can justly be regarded as given over to destruction. But industry is not the only strong point in the lives of these Parisians. There is here a wholesome spirit of wise economy, from which we in America might well take a lesson. Nothing here that can be made valuable or useful to man is permitted to go to waste. There is economy in the use of time, space, and everything else. Many boys and girls wear wooden shoes.17 Rags, bones, candle-ends, bits of meat, fragments of paper, are all saved and turned to account in one way or another. There is especial economy and care in the use of fuel. Looking over the city from the towers of Notre-Dame, I observed many chimneys, but little smoke. In passing the dwellings of almost any locality at night you will see many windows, but little light. we hear of fewer lamp explosions in Paris, for a single candle is used where we would have three or four lamps. Great fires seldom occur. There are ten fires in New

Y7870-Douglass.indb 411

9/1/21 4:17 PM

412

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

York to one in Paris.18 I have heard no fire bells, and have seen but one fire engine during the two months that I have spent here. All labor is here held in honor—all useful callings are respectable. Every one accords the right of way to him who bears the burden. No one seems ashamed of his avocation. I notice that the porter, the bootblack, the coachman, the street cleaner, even the rag-picker, each wears the badge of his calling bravely. The maid servant, the shop-girl, the needle-woman, wears each her cap or bonnet, or goes uncapped and unbonneted with equal unconcern as to what the crowd may say or think. And well she may, for however cheap or coarse may be her apparel, she seldom fails to make a neat and tidy appearance. As to the possible permanency of the republic, I accept the statement of my old friend and colaborer in the anti-slavery cause, Mr. Theodore Tilton. He has resided here several years, quietly pursuing his literary studies, and is a close observer. He is as bright and witty as ever, and deeply interested in the republic of France. He tells me that the “To be, or not to be”19 of the republic depend upon the continuance of peace; that every day of peace is an additional guarantee of the stability of the republic. The Arc-de-Triomphe20 overlooks the new part of the city, and from it may be viewed a scene of almost unequaled magnificence and splendor. The streets are clean, broad, far-reaching, and regular. They are lined on either side with houses of seven stories and of approved architecture and great elegance.21 The occupants of these almost palatial residences live in luxury and ease. Many of them are “carriage people” and ride through the grand boulevards and the Champs-Elysees in a style to invite the envy of those who toil for bread. The rich confine themselves to their own quarter, spend their money in their own shops and cafes, attend their own theaters, operas, and other places of amusement, and constitute themselves a separate class with a little contact, commerce, or apparent sympathy with the inhabitants of the opposite section of the city. This relation of the two cities of Paris toward each other, in some degree unavoidable, might exist almost any where else with less danger than here. Events of the recent past do not demonstrate much reverence for class distinctions, or for the sacredness of property; and proof is at hand that liberty without fraternity, where the people are conscious of their power, is dangerous. But it is easy to speculate and philosophize about contingencies and possibilities growing out of the wide divergence of classes and the dis-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 412

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

413

parity of conditions. To-day, at least, Paris seems happy, peaceful, and prosperous. Her greatness is evidently not the result of her fortunate situation, or of any sudden triumph of arms or achievement in diplomacy. She has lived for nearly a score of years under the deep shadow of a terrible disaster, and has borne her share in leveling a mountain of debt imposed by a foreign conqueror. she has at her door no broad sea or splendid ha[r]bor upon which rich navies may ride, but is essentially an inland city. The marvel is that a city of such dimensions and magnificence, with two millions of inhabitants, should have arisen here. Plainly enough the secret of her greatness must be sought from within, and not from without. It is due to the genius of her people, their industry, their economy, their public spirit, their patriotism, and their integrity. Under all forms of their government these qualities have been conspicuous. In no other great center of Western Europe has more been done to gratify the esthetic taste of a population than in Paris. In addition to her picture galleries, like the Louvre, the largest building in Europe, with its miles of corridors and acres of pictures, the Luxembourg22 and other places dedicated to art, which attract art students from all quarters of the globe, there are opportunities offered here for the acquisition of knowledge, for the cultivation of intellect, and for the refinement of taste. The college of France23 opens wide its doors and welcomes the public to listen to lectures by its most learned and gifted professors “without money and without price.”24 Paris can boast that her school of medicine is the most celebrated in the world. The Bibliotheque Nationale25 has three millions of volumes, the accumulation of centuries, a grand storehouse of knowledge to which citizen and foreigner are admitted, and where they are provided with every necessary for reading and study. Since the war with Germany26 there has been developed an interest in the education of the masses beyond anything of the sort prior to the war. Paris teems with schools, and its people have become in larger measure than ever a reading people. France has fully realized the truth that an uneducated nation, however brave and patriotic, is at an immense disadvantage in comparison with one that is educated. She has learned wisdom from all nations, and has honored the United States by sending one of her sons, M. Paul Passy,27 to inspect our educational system. His report on the subject shows him to have been a

Y7870-Douglass.indb 413

9/1/21 4:17 PM

414

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

close observer and a diligent student. He seems to have been much impressed with some of the features of our system, and he warmly commends them. Notwithstanding it is usual to represent Paris as a godless city, given over to the works of darkness, there is here a large degree of religious activity; and since no religion in this day can make any impression without inculcating sound morality, this activity tends to the conservation of Parisian society.28 There is no question that romanism has lost ground in France since the inauguration of the Republic; that the common people have become indifferent and the learned skeptical; but the Roman Catholic Church is still both a religious and political force. No doubt that a sense of its diminished power acts as a strong motive for increased exertion. Its priests, in their long black gowns, and its sisters of charity with their peculiar costumes, are everywhere seen. Numerous processions of school children are met with in the streets, under the immediate guardianship of priests or nuns, whose ever-continued watchfulness can not be without its influence upon the rising generation. The soil of France has not been favorable to Protestantism since St. Bartholomew;29 but I am assured that under the auspices of the McAll Mission30 alone, there are now in Paris five hundred places of Protestant worship, attended chiefly by the working people. Nor is this religious activity confined to this particular mission. There are here other Protestant influences. Bible classes and Sunday schools, Young Men’s Christian Associations,31 with various devices for spreading religious ideas, flourish to such a degree here that there is no more propriety in denouncing Paris as a godless city than in thus stigmatizing London, Liverpool, or New York. eminent among the divines are Pere Hyacinth32 and M. De Pressense.33 As an eloquent preacher, the Pere has no equal in Paris, and though he is not sufficiently Protestant to attract to himself a large measure of Protestant sympathy, and though he is of course regarded by the Roman Catholics as a schismatic, yet he succeeds, from Sunday to Sunday, in drawing crowds of earnest listeners to his little church in the rue d’Arras. I am attracted to him by the fact that he has at least broken away from a part of the spiritual fetters that bound him, and that he dares to follow his convictions though they lead him through the thorny paths of poverty and persecution. At present, however, he is as

Y7870-Douglass.indb 414

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

415

a “voice crying in the wilderness,”34 yet confident that he will be heard and felt both at home and abroad. He is certainly one of the most interesting men I have met in Paris. I have seen but little of the statesmen of the French Republic. It is not an easy matter to obtain admission to the French Senate or the Corps Legislatif. It will, I think, be much easier to do so when the Republic is a little further removed from the tunes of the Empire. At present, spectators are admitted only by ticket, and as the galleries are small, tickets are few. I have, however, had the good fortune to witness the proceedings of the Senate once, and those of the Corps Legislatif35 twice. For a part of this privilege I was indebted to the kindness of mr. theodore stanton,36 who, as a son of Henry B. and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, has inherited in a large measure the high qualities of his gifted parents. He has resided here during the last ten years, and is eminent as a journalist and a literary man. I was greatly impressed by the dignity, the decorum, and the intellectual appearance of the French Senate. In this respect it much resembles the American. The only marked difference is in the style of dress. Every French Senator, I noticed, was attired in the evening costume of a dress party. The Corps Legislatif differs from the French Senate in about the same proportion as the House of Representatives differs from the American Senate. On the occasion of the recent change of Ministry, through the intervention of M. Frederic Passy,37 an eminent member of the Assembly, I obtained a seat in the gallery of M. Floquet,38 its President. I could hardly have had a better opportunity of observing the stormy side of French character. The scene was about as wild and tempestuous as that in our House of Representatives when James G. Blaine39 debated with Hill, of Georgia,40 the question of the exclusion of Jefferson Davis from amnesty.41 president floquet, a calm, dignified man, with a large, intellectual head, had often to ring his bell to still the tempest, to restore order, and to hold the body to its work. At times it was like the sounding of gongs to keep the bees from swarming. But his temper was excellent, and his management admirable. Looking down upon the Senators as they filed into the Chamber, I observed a grave and venerable man, somewhat bent with age, but with firm and resolute step, proceed to his seat. “That Senator,” said my friend,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 415

9/1/21 4:17 PM

416

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

Mr. Stanton, “is M. Schoelcher,42 the William Lloyd Garrison of France, for he brought forward the measure emancipating the slaves of the French Colonies, in 1848.” At once, perhaps like Polonius43 in the play, I thought I saw a personal resemblance. The head is long and almost entirely bald; the features clean cut, tranquil, and benignant, like those of the American emancipator. On my expressing a desire to be introduced to him Mr. Stanton, through a member of the Senate, procured me an interview with M. Schoelcher in the Senate reception room.44 Almost the first thing he said to me was: “How are the colored people now treated in the States? I have heard that they are not even allowed to ride in the street cars of New York, and other large cities.” I very promptly and gladly assured him that this barbarism was no longer practiced in the Northern States, and that the old prejudice growing out of slavery, though still rife in the old slave States, is gradually disappearing before the progress of higher civilization. Soon after meeting M. Schoelcher in the Senate I had the pleasure and privilege of an interview with him at his house. It was during his breakfast hour; and it was an interview that I shall never forget. His elegant apartments, especially his library, proclaimed the philanthropic history of the man. He was literally surrounded by broken fetters and other cast-off paraphernalia of the slave system. He told me that immediately after the republic of ’48 was formed he went to M. Arago45 and said, “Now is the time to emancipate the slaves of our colonies,” but that statesman met the proposition with the argument that such a measure could not be entertained; that it would produce insurrection and bloodshed in the colonies. “I told him,” said M. Schoelcher, “that, on the contrary, failure to emancipate now would cause the slaves to rise in insurrection, and if emancipation were not decreed I would myself advise the slaves to rise.” Fortunately, no such advice was given, and no insurrection took place, for at the end of the conversation M. Arago committed the whole subject to the hands of M. Schoelcher, and the result was the memorable degree emancipating all the slaves of the french colonies. During breakfast the door-bell rang, and a card was handed to M. Schoelcher. It was evidently some one who wished to see him, and I thought him about to decline admitting his visitor. He said to his servant:

Y7870-Douglass.indb 416

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

417

“Do I know him?” On receiving a negative reply he hesitated for a moment and then asked: “Is he a colored man?” Upon learning that he was he ordered him shown at once into the library. This circumstance bespoke the character of this man. An ordinary visitor would have probably found him too much engaged at that hour to gain admission to his presence, but a man of the injured race, to whose cause he had shown a profound devotion, he was unwilling to turn away. M. Schoelcher is now 82 years old, and is not only active in the Senate but is doing much literary work. He is writing a biography of ToussaintLouverture,46 and I hope he will live to complete it. I have promised to do my best to secure its republication in the United States for the benefit of the class to which the brave and heroic Toussaint belonged, for no colored man can be great and good without thereby helping his whole race. M. Schoelcher is a free thinker. Pere hyacinthe says of him that “he is a man who does not believe in God, but one who makes other men believe in Him.” i have had many attentions shown me by American residents in Paris, and I am happy to bear testimony to the kindness and cordiality of any countrymen abroad. Strange to say, to none have I been more indebted to kind offices than to Professor Thomas Yeatman,47 formerly a slave-holder from the State of Missouri. We met each other from opposite extremes of experience, and he seemed desirous to atone for what[-]ever of wrong there had been in his past relation to the slaves of America by kind offices to me as a stranger in a strange land. Upon the whole, I came to Paris with large expectations; I have viewed its wonders with satisfaction, and I leave it with regret, but with a hope of returning in the spring and seeing it under sunnier skies. FREDERICK DOUG LASS. 1. After the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II, Alexander III (1845–94) assumed the Russian throne. Although his reign was characterized by peace with the empire’s neighbors, it came at the expense of the Russian people. Rooting out the Nihilists responsible for his father’s assassination led to the imposition of increasingly repressive measures. The “Autocrat of All the Russias,” as every tsar was known, relied on absolute power. Alexander III adhered to the Slavophile belief in autocracy, Orthodoxy, and unification of all Slavic peoples under Russian rule. During his travels in the region, George Curzon, a future British secretary of state for foreign affairs, noted that “ ‘Russia for the Russians’ has been adopted as the motto, not of a radical faction, but of an irresponsible autocracy, and is preached, not by wild demagogues, but by an all-powerful despot.” Western observers of the subjects of the Russian Empire emphasized the fatalism of the Russians living under tsarist rule. Past

Y7870-Douglass.indb 417

9/1/21 4:17 PM

418

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

experience, they remarked, had convinced peasants that only an autocratic ruler could protect them from the enemies of the Russian state. London Spectator, 26 November 1887; Charles Lowe, Alexander III of Russia (London, 1895), 178–84; George N. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian Question (London, 1889), 24. 2. The French nobleman Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), served as a troop commander and liaison between American and French troops in the Revolutionary War. ACAB, 3:586–90; DAB, 10:535–39. 3. Born Louis-Napoleon, Napoleon III (1808–73) was the nephew of Napoleon I and the son of Napoleon I’s brother, Louis, King of Holland, and Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of Napoleon I’s first wife, Josephine. After the deaths of his older brother and of the only son of Napoleon I, he came to think of himself as the heir to the Napoleonic regime. He was elected president of the Second Republic of France in December 1848 but declared himself emperor in December 1852. His reign was marked by a volatile relationship with Britain, in part because of an assassination attempt on his life in Paris on 14 January 1858. Dr. Simon Bernard, a French exile living in London, orchestrated the attempt, in which Felice Orsini, along with two other Italians and an anonymous Spaniard, threw explosive bombs at the imperial coach on the rue Le Peletier. Napoleon III was deposed in 1870 after leading his country to defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. He died in exile in England. Roman Golicz, “Napoleon III, Lord Palmerston and the Entente Cordiale,” History Today, 50:10–17 (December 2000); Roger Price, “Napoleon III,” History Review, 45:14–18 (March 2003). 4. George Mifflin Dallas (1792–1864), a Philadelphia-born lawyer and Democratic politician, served as U.S. vice president (1845–49) under James Polk. Other political offices that Dallas held during his public career included U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1829–31), U.S. senator (1831–33), Pennsylvania attorney general (1833–35), and U.S. minister to Russia (1837–39). Dallas held the post of envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James during James Buchanan’s presidency. No record has been located of Douglass’s approach to him for a passport on his second visit to the British Isles, during the winter and spring of 1860. George Mifflin Dallas to Guy M. Bryan, 25 July 1851, in New York Daily Times, 13 October 1851; New York Daily Times, 31 May 1852; John M. Belohlavek, George Mifflin Dallas: Jacksonian Patrician (University Park, Pa., 1977), 138–43; NCAB, 6:268; DAB, 5:38–39; BDUSC (online). 5. The French labor legislation of 1892 required that workers have one day of rest a week, but this applied principally to factory workers, and broad exceptions were made for small enterprises. Loss of labor time during the week was often made up on Sundays, particularly by men. Labor activists continually fought to make Sunday an officially recognized day of rest, but it was not until 1906 that France passed legislation requiring Sunday rest for most industries—again with exceptions for certain types of labor. “International Labor Legislation and the Society of Nations,” Bulletin of Labor Statistics, 254:88–89 (May 1919). 6. Joseph Addison, Cato, act 1, sc. 1, line 25. 7. Prov. 14:34. 8. The Hôtel de Ville, the seat of Parisian local government, has stood in the Place de Grève (now called the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville) since 1357. This building, often the site of public executions, was repeatedly the center of revolution in Paris. It was here that the Paris Assembly authorized the creation of a citizens’ militia to protect the city against Louis XVI’s troops, and it was here that Robespierre was arrested and shot himself in the jaw in a botched suicide attempt in 1794. In 1830, the Place de Grève and the Hôtel saw rioting that brought down Charles X and established his cousin Louis-Philippe as constitutional monarch. In 1848, Louis-Philippe would face the same fate. In 1870, Napoleon III’s defeat once again brought republicans and revolutionaries to the Hôtel de Ville. Citywide elections ushered in a left-wing government, the Paris Commune. On 24 May 1871, the Communards burned their former seat of government as they retreated, leaving behind them a mere shell of a building. Reconstruction efforts, which restored the building to its original appearance, took over a decade to complete. Hilaire Belloc, Paris: Its Monuments and History (Philadelphia, 1898), 455–60;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 418

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

419

Richard D. E. Burton, Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, 1789–1945 (Ithaca, N.Y., 2001), 90–117. 9. Before serving as the most famous art museum in France, the Louvre was a fortress, built in the twelfth century by Philip II. The medieval castle was gradually torn down in favor of a Renaissance palace, construction of which was begun in 1546, though the remains of the original building are visible in the crypt. The palace served as the Paris residence of French kings. The beginnings of the Louvre art collections date from around this time, including Francis I’s acquisition of the Mona Lisa. When Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence, the Louvre was abandoned, and from 1678 to 1793 it remained empty and unfinished. Leaders of the French Revolution converted the building into a public museum in 1793, making public the private royal collections, which were increased by confiscations from private collections. It was not until 1854, when Napoleon III ordered the completion of the building and its connection to the Tuileries, that construction was finally completed. The Palais des Tuileries was burned down by Communards in 1871, and the ensuing Republican government dismantled its remnants. H. Sutherland Edwards, Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, 2 vols. (London, 1893), 1:199–201. 10. The Palais de Justice, formerly known as the Palais de la Cité, is situated on the Boulevard du Palais on the Île de la Cité, one of the two remaining natural islands in the Seine in central Paris. This site was the historic home of the kings of France until the Louvre was built. The building served as the location of Parliament and the treasury until the French Revolution, when it housed the revolutionary tribunal. Marie Antoinette was tried there in 1793, after which the palace continued to function as a prison; since 1800, it has been the headquarters of the French judicial system. Although pieces of the palace date from the fourteenth century, a fi re in the eighteenth century destroyed most of the original building. Alfred Fierro, Historical Dictionary of Paris, trans. Jon Woronoff (Lanham, Md., 1998), 128. 11. Construction of Notre-Dame Cathedral began in 1160, possibly on the site of an old temple to Jupiter, and lasted a century. The church is an important example of early Gothic architecture. The elaborate sculptures adorning the façade and the gates were destroyed by revolutionaries in 1793, who renamed the cathedral the Temple of Reason. It later served as the site of Napoleon Bonaparte’s coronation as emperor by the pope in 1804. The building was saved from ruin in the nineteenth century by Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, whose renovations took twenty years to complete. Edwards, Old and New Paris, 1:14–21; Fierro, Historical Dictionary of Paris, 122. 12. Les Halles, the central fresh-food market of Paris, originated in the twelfth century and was eventually walled off from the surrounding area. Several covered halls were built, giving Les Halles its name. The covered and uncovered markets, redeveloped in the sixteenth century into a series of covered and open-air halls, were torn down in 1847 to make way for ten glass and iron pavilions designed by Victor Baltard. These structures were condemned in 1963. Today, Les Halles is a covered shopping mall and transportation nexus. Fierro, Historical Dictionary of Paris, 89–90. 13. The Church of Saint-Eustache was built on the site of a small church that dated to 1210. The cornerstone for the new building was laid in 1532, but lack of funds delayed its completion until 1640. Although it was intended by Francis I to be built in the Renaissance style, it includes late Gothic and classical details as well. Saint-Eustache was modeled after Notre-Dame Cathedral and is nearly as large. Fierro, Historical Dictionary of Paris, 153. 14. Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s renovation of Paris under Napoleon III created a housing crisis for the city’s working class, since the demolition of old working-class neighborhoods was not accompanied by the construction of new affordable housing. While these drastic changes pushed many workers into the suburbs (often in unsanitary tenements), those who remained in the center of the city found themselves in tight quarters, paying increasingly exorbitant rents. Landlords subdivided their properties into smaller and smaller rooms to accommodate the demand, including rooms that did not allow an adult to stand upright and interior rooms with no access to fresh air or light. Much of this housing was located on the narrow, winding streets of pre-Haussmann Paris, making for a

Y7870-Douglass.indb 419

9/1/21 4:17 PM

420

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

dire situation. Ann-Louise Shapiro, “Paris,” in Housing the Workers, 1850–1914: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Martin J. Daunton (London, 1990), 34; W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability among the French Working Class, 1789–1914 (London, 1996), 37–38. 15. Prov. 16:27–29. 16. Women in rural France had always played a significant role in the agricultural economy, not only by raising children and tending to household tasks, but also by working in the fields and in associated trades like spinning and weaving. As France industrialized, though, the nature of women’s labor began to change. In nonagricultural fields, women represented 34 percent of the workforce in 1881 and 36 percent in 1901. (The wives of peasant farmers were first counted in 1906.) In 1901, approximately 2.7 million women were employed in agriculture and 2.4 million in industry. Unmarried women formed much of the female workforce, but married women also worked in industry and domestic service, with nearly a third identifying as “self-employed” workers. James F. McMillan, France and Women, 1789–1914: Gender, Society and Politics (New York, 2000), 67–68, 160–62. 17. French wooden shoes, called sabots, were common footwear among peasants and city dwellers, regardless of class. Sabots ranged from crudely made blocks of wood to elaborately decorated creations in a variety of colors, incorporating embroidered leather uppers or high heels. Emile Saillens, Facts about France: Brief Answers to Recurring Questions (Paris, 1918), 227–28. 18. It is possible that there were fewer fires in Paris than in New York, but there is considerable variability in the statistics collected from the time. The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society indicates that in 1890, Paris reported a total of 2,775 fires, with approximately 1,500 chimney fires and 219 false alarms. This compares with 3,546 in London, which included 991 false alarms. The Annual Cyclopedia of Insurance in the United States reported 4,011 fires in New York City in 1892, but Mulhall’s Dictionary of Statistics in the mid-1880s reported the number as 1,783, did not report on statistics for Paris, and numbered London’s fires at 1,991. What is clear is that New York’s leaders held French firemen in high regard and looked to Paris as early as 1853 as a model of how to combat fires. The military discipline of the Brigade des sapeurs-pompiers des Paris (the Paris Fire Brigade), which was established in 1831, was particularly admired. J. Watts de Peyster, brigadier general of the New York State Troops, foreshadowed Douglass’s comments about the lack of fires in Paris when he remarked that during three monthlong visits in 1834, 1851, and 1852, he had neither seen nor heard about any fires or fire alarms. “Fires in Paris,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 55:142–45 (March 1892); J. Watts de Peyster, “Report on the Organization of the French and Florentine Fire Departments,” Senate of the State of New-York Seventy-Sixth Session 1853, 3 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 1853), 3:110–134; Michael G. Mulhall, Mulhall’s Dictionary of Statistics (London, 1884), 199; Michael G. Mulhall, Dictionary of Statistics (London, 1886), 199; H. R. Hayden, ed., The Annual Cyclopedia of Insurance in the United States 1892–3 (New York, 1893), 88–89. 19. Hamlet, sc. 8, line 1594. 20. The Arc de Triomphe is the triumphal arch built at the Place de l’Étoile in the center of Paris. Napoleon I ordered the construction of the monument in 1806, which was designed by Jean Chalgrin to honor the Grand Army. Slow construction delayed completion of the monument until 1836. The arch is approximately 164 feet high and 148 feet wide. The Place de l’Étoile (“Star Square”) originally marked the convergence of seven streets; Baron Haussmann added five more streets, creating a twelve-point star. Fierro, Historical Dictionary of Paris, 74. 21. Although Haussmann destroyed much of the working-class housing available in Paris, his reconstruction of the city created broad avenues of uniform architecture, which improved the flow of traffic and air, and the availability of sunlight, for significant parts of Paris. The seven-story apartment building was the basic unit of the new Paris. The coherence of the new classical-style façades gave the streets a visual unity that their architects felt befit a modern city. Construction proceeded on a large scale, not merely in the number of buildings, but also in the broadness and length of the new rectilinear streets. Anthony Sutcliffe, “Paris as the Hub of French Industrialisation: Building a European Capital under the Second Empire, 1852–70,” in Paris: An Architectural History (London, 1993), 83–104.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 420

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

421

22. The Musée de Luxembourg held an art collection that began with Marie de’ Medici’s collection of twenty-four Rubens paintings and was later enlarged by the acquisition of other Old Masters. The original collections were transferred to the Louvre, but the Luxembourg retained its status as a gallery, becoming a museum for contemporary French art in 1818. The gallery found a new home on the grounds of the Luxembourg Palace in 1886 and was relocated from its east wing. The History of Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day, 3 vols. (Paris, 1825), 2:41–47; Maria Hornor Lansdale, Paris: Its Sites, Monuments and History (Philadelphia, 1898), 524. 23. In 1530, the Collège de France was founded in the Place Marcelin-Berthelot by François I, who wished to disseminate knowledge in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. An institution in the humanist tradition, the college was intended as an alternative to the Sorbonne (located across the street), which rejected the innovations of the time. Its current buildings were constructed in the 1770s and 1780s and were renovated and expanded in the 1830s and 1840s. Fierro, Historical Dictionary of Paris, 60. 24. Isa. 55:1. 25. The Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library) began as the king’s library, established by Charles V in 1368. Its collection was dispersed after Charles’s death, but the royal library was reestablished by François I in 1544 in the Château de Fontainebleau, partly as the result of a decree that required every publisher to submit one copy of each printed work to the king. The collection moved to the Rue de Richelieu under Louis XIV, and librarians began to catalogue its contents in 1684. By 1692, the library was open to the public in a limited way, and in 1789 the National Assembly’s transfer of ecclesiastical libraries to state control began the transformation of libraries in France. After Louis XVI was deposed, the Assembly nationalized the Bibliothèque du Roi, renaming it the Bibliothèque nationale. It became an imperial library under Napoleon and returned to its status as the Bibliothèque du Roi during the restoration. It once again became the Bibliothèque nationale in 1870. In 1894, the library was said to house nearly two million “numbers,” comprising at least 2,600,000 volumes. J. N. Larned, “France: The Bibliotheque Nationale,” History for Ready Reference from the Best Historians, Biographers, and Specialists, 3 vols. (Springfield, Mass., 1894), 3:2010–11; Paul M. Priebe, “From Bibliothèque du Roi to Bibliothèque Nationale: The Creation of a State Library, 1789–1793,” Journal of Library History, 17:389–408 (Fall 1982); Fierro, Historical Dictionary of Paris, 122. 26. The Franco-Prussian War developed from political maneuvering surrounding the vacant Spanish throne. Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen withdrew his candidacy after French protests but refused demands that he reject future offers. A redacted version of a telegram describing the incident was leaked, misrepresenting it as a dismissal of French concerns. Believing that France would win against Prussian forces, Napoleon III declared war on 19 July 1870. The war united the German states under Prussia, and the German military quickly dominated French forces. Napoleon III was captured at Sedan on 2 September, and the Second Empire fell, leaving the new Third Republic to fight the German forces. Small successes failed to stem the tide, and the Germans laid siege to Paris. The government negotiated an armistice to take effect on 28 January. France surrendered Alsace-Lorraine and agreed to a large indemnity, but radicalized troops of the Paris National Guard rejected the terms of the peace, seizing Paris and establishing the Paris Commune on 18 March. The Versailles government sent troops against the Communards two months later, resulting in the collapse of the Commune and the destruction of the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries, and other historical landmarks. Patrick H. Hutton, ed., Historical Dictionary of the Third French Republic, 1870–1940, 2 vols. (New York, 1986), 1:218–21, 1:395–99. 27. Paul Passy (1859–1940) was the son of Frédéric Passy, the famous economist and joint winner of the first Nobel Peace Prize. The younger Passy studied four languages at home, but was not formally educated until he attended university. He quickly became interested in linguistics and pursued a doctorate in phonetics. Passy took a position as professor of phonetics at the École des Hautes Études, a chair created specifically for him. Passy created the “fonetic titcerz asociecon” (later the International Phonetic Association, or IPA) for teachers of English, with the explicit goal of improving teaching methodologies for languages. It became one of the most important influences in phonetics

Y7870-Douglass.indb 421

9/1/21 4:17 PM

422

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

up through the start of World War I. In 1883, Passy traveled to the United States to inspect the American system of primary school education on behalf of the French Ministry of Education. He published his report in 1885. Paul Passy, L’Instruction Primaire aux États-Unis: Rapport Présenté au Ministre de l’Instruction Publique (Paris, 1885), 1–2; Beverly Collins and Inger M. Mees, The Real Professor Higgins: The Life and Career of Daniel Jones (Berlin, 1999), 21–24. 28. The historically close connection between the Roman Catholic Church and the French monarchy meant that any change in government had profound consequences for the church. The association of Catholicism with the mechanisms of power inclined Republicans to anticlericalism. For the church, Republicanism had meant terror and persecution since the French Revolution. The crisis came to a head with the rise of the Third Republic, which slowly began to disentangle church and state. Secularization, particularly in the realm of education, was the result. The combination of individual and societal secularization in France characterized the nineteenth century, with a dramatic increase in anticlerical thinking by the end of the century. In the 1880s, the secular reconstruction of the French education system emphasized civic duty, which became the primary moral lesson taught in schools. For the lower classes, which were less affected by education, physical separation from their religious roots detached workers from religious practice. Anticlericalism was especially popular among the working class. J. V. Ducattillon, “The Church in the Third Republic,” Review of Politics, 6:75–77 (January 1944); Brian Sudlow, Catholic Literature and Secularisation in France and England, 1880–1914 (New York, 2011), 21–31. 29. Douglass refers to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 23 and 24 August in 1572, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of French Huguenots. The marriage of King Charles IX’s sister, Marguerite of Valois, to the Protestant leader Henry of Navarre looked to pave the way for greater tolerance of Protestantism in France. Large numbers of Huguenots (French Calvinists) flocked to Paris for the festivities, during which prominent Huguenot admiral Gaspard II de Coligny was wounded in an assassination attempt. The royal family visited the wounded Coligny and promised continued toleration of Protestants in France. On 24 August, however, royal troops executed Coligny and other prominent Huguenots. Catholic Parisians quickly began hunting down Protestants (or those suspected of being Protestant) and brutally murdered thousands of people. Henry of Navarre and a relative were held prisoner and forced to convert to Catholicism. The violence spread to the countryside, where more Protestants were slaughtered. The massacre decimated the Protestant leadership of France and ensured that Protestants remained a small fraction of French society for centuries to come. James R. Smither, “The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and Images of Kingship in France: 1572–1574,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 22:27–46, 29–30 (Spring 1991). 30. Robert Whitaker McAll (1821–93), the son of a Methodist minister, was born in Cornwall, England. Called early in life to ministry, he served as pastor to a variety of churches. In 1871, armed only with some French tracts, McAll and his wife set sail for France with the goal of aiding the French workers hard hit by both the Franco-Prussian War and the defeat of the Paris Commune. Although McAll spoke almost no French, the Parisian workers were receptive to his Protestant message, which his supporters characterized as “warm and sincere and bright” without “superstition or a trace of empty form or meaningless ceremonial.” The nondenominational and evangelical message of the Mission for the Workers of Paris, or the McAll Mission, as it was popularly known, focused on sympathy for the suffering of the working class and a theologically simple Christianity that centered on a loving God. McAll also emphasized the importance of reading the Bible and encouraged individuals to join an evangelical church of their choosing. Helen Collins, “Robert Whitaker McAll—A Character Sketch,” Altruistic Review, 1:243–48 (December 1893); Louise S. Houghton, What France Thinks of the McAll Mission (Philadelphia, 1889), 5–15. 31. The first French branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in Paris in 1852. In 1855, nearly 100 representatives of the YMCA met in Paris, representing nine countries, but it was not until the 1880s that the YMCA truly began to grow in the city. Franklin Gaylord and Thomas Cree traveled to Paris in 1887 to further develop the organization, and by the early

Y7870-Douglass.indb 422

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

423

1890s the Paris YMCA had purchased a building in order to be able to offer more services. In 1899 and 1901, reports from L. P. Twyeffort indicated the growing pains of the organization: the transient population it served in Paris made it difficult to gauge impact, though it found anecdotal evidence of youth spreading ideas introduced by the YMCA to their home communities. The organization faced an uphill battle, according to Twyeffort, since most of the young men it served were at least nominally Catholic, and the Roman Catholic Church continued to oppose the YMCA’s work. Thomas Yeatman, “The Moral Condition of Paris and France,” Pulpit Treasury, 8:512–14 (December 1886); Year Book of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America for the Year 1899 (New York, 1899), 66; Jubilee Year Book of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America for the Year 1901 (New York, 1901), 9, 95–7; Kenneth Scott Latourette, World Service: A History of the Foreign Work and World Service of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of the United States and Canada (New York, 1957), 22–3, 34–5. 32. Born in Orleans, France, Charles Loyson (1827–1912) took the name Hyacinthe before entering the Carmelite order of monks. He was a capable preacher and teacher, but doctrinal conflicts over papal infallibility and related issues led to his excommunication. After his marriage in 1872, he briefly joined the Old Catholic Church in Geneva as a curate. Hyacinthe left that group in 1874 and went to Paris, where, in 1879, he founded the Gallican Church. Vergilius Ferm, ed., An Encyclopedia of Religion (New York, 1945), 454; Joseph Thomas, Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography and Mythology (Philadelphia, 1870), 1139. 33. Born to the Protestant theologian Edmond de Pressensé, Francis Dehaut de Pressensé (1853– 1914) served as a secretary at the French consulate in Constantinople and later in Washington, D.C. He resigned in favor of a cabinet post for the Minister of Public Instruction, but later left state service to pursue journalism. A respected foreign affairs analyst for Le Temps for nearly twenty years, he was drawn into the politics of the Dreyfus Affair as a staunch Dreyfusard and became a socialist in response to Dreyfus’s convictions. Moving from Le Temps to L’Aurore, he continued his career in journalism while serving as deputy for Lyon in 1902. Pressensé was known for his oratorical skill in the Chamber of Deputies, which he used to support the cause of the Armenians and to advocate for the separation of church and state. He served as the president of the League of the Rights of Man beginning in 1903. David S. Bell, Douglas Johnson, and Peter Morris, eds., Biographical Dictionary of French Political Leaders since 1870 (New York, 1990), 353–54. 34. Isa. 40:3. 35. “Corps Legislatif” is the generic French term for a governing body. In this case, it refers to the Chamber of Deputies—the lower house of Parliament—which was established by the Constitution of 1875 as a replacement for the National Assembly. The Chamber provided representation of the French people through universal suffrage and averaged around 600 members, though that figure changed based on census results. Deputies served unstaggered four-year terms. The body’s function was primarily legislative, though it also exerted control over the cabinet. The Senate—the upper house of Parliament—was the conservative counterpoint to the radical potential of the Chamber of Deputies. Senate membership was fixed at 300: 75 Senators served life terms, while the other 225 served nine-year terms, with staggered elections every three years. An 1884 revision to the constitution abolished the position of senator for life, allowing those already elected to serve out their terms. In practice, the Senate’s primary function was to amend legislation from the Chamber, though it did have the right to introduce legislation of its own. Hutton, Third French Republic, 1:176–77, 2:925–27. 36. Born in Seneca Falls, New York, the author and journalist Theodore Stanton (1851–1925) was the son of Henry Brewster Stanton, a journalist and prominent lecturer in the antislavery movement, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an author and founder of the woman suffrage movement. After graduating from Cornell University, Stanton served for several years as the Berlin correspondent of the New York Tribune. In 1884, he wrote The Woman Question in Europe, and in 1910, he wrote The Life of Rosa Bonheur. In addition to translating François le Goff’s The Life of Louis Adolphe Thiers, Stanton was a contributor to several periodicals while living abroad. Married to Marguerite Berry

Y7870-Douglass.indb 423

9/1/21 4:17 PM

424

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

of Paris, he lived at 5 Avenue de l’Opéra in Paris. New York Times, 2 March 1925; Traub, American Literary Yearbook, 193; ACAB, 5:649–50; NCAB, 11:503. 37. Frédéric Passy (1821–1912), joint recipient of the first Nobel Prize with Henry Durant, founder of the Red Cross, in 1901, was an economist and a member of the French Chamber of Deputies who created the Ligue Internationale et Permanente de la Paix (LIPP; International and Permanent Peace League) in 1867. Born in Paris to a veteran of Waterloo, Felix Passy, Frédéric Passy studied law and practiced for a short time before turning to accounting and then economics. Passy’s pacifism was rooted in economics, not religion, and LIPP was ecumenical. Unlike most religiously based pacifistic movements of the time, LIPP focused on the practicalities of achieving peace. Passy believed that war for expansion and conquest wasted vital resources and was an avoidable, “artificial” disaster. The Franco-Prussian War was a powerful test of Passy’s ideology and his approach of appealing to world leaders, which proved unsuccessful in ending the conflict. In 1891, he renamed his league the Société Française pour l’Arbitrage entre Nations (French Society for Arbitration between Nations), reflecting a shift toward the creation of political bodies to arbitrate international disputes. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1881 and won reelection once before being defeated in 1889. The peace movement experienced tremendous growth thanks to Passy’s work. Michael Clinton, “Frédéric Passy: Patriotic Pacifist,” Journal of Historical Biography, 2:33–62 (Autumn 2007). 38. Born to a Republican family in the south of France, Charles Thomas Floquet (1828–96) participated in the 1848 Revolution while a student. In his career as a lawyer and journalist, Floquet was a leading opponent of Napoleon III. He was appointed assistant to the mayor of Paris and was elected in 1871 as deputy for the city, a position he resigned during the Paris Commune. In his attempts to mediate the conflict, he was arrested by both sides. Floquet returned to the Chamber of Deputies in 1876 as part of the extreme left wing and served as president of the Chamber in 1885–88 and 1889–93, with a brief stint as prime minister in between (1888–89). He clashed with the populist antiparliamentarian Georges Boulanger to the point that they fought a duel, in which Floquet injured Boulanger. While in office, Floquet survived Boulanger’s popularity and threats of a coup, ultimately changing the electoral laws that had enabled Boulanger’s electoral success. Floquet lost his seat in the Chamber of Deputies in 1893 but was elected senator the following year. Bell, Johnson, and Morris, Biographical Dictionary of French Political Leaders, 154. 39. Born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, James Gillespie Blaine (1830–93) graduated from Washington College near his hometown in 1847. After studying law and teaching, Blaine moved to Maine, where he worked for newspapers in Kennebec and Portland in the mid-1860s. An early adherent of the Republican party, he held office in the state legislature (1858–62), the U.S. House of Representatives (1863–75), and the U.S. Senate (1875–81). Relatively conservative on the issues of military Reconstruction, Blaine was a leader of the anti-Grant “Half-Breed” faction of the Republican party and lost bitterly contested battles for the presidential nomination in 1876 and 1880. He served Garfield as secretary of state but departed the cabinet when Chester Arthur became president. Blaine finally captured the nomination for president in 1884, but lost a close election to Grover Cleveland in which Democrats charged him with accepting financial favors while serving as a congressman. Blaine concluded his long public career as Benjamin Harrison’s secretary of state (1889–93). David Saville Muzzey, James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other Days (New York, 1934); Charles Edward Russell, Blaine of Maine: His Life and Times (New York, 1931); ACAB, 1:275–80; NCAB, 1:137–39; DAB, 2:322–29. 40. Benjamin Harvey Hill. 41. The Democrat Samuel J. Randall introduced a bill to the House of Representatives on 10 January 1876 that would grant amnesty to Confederates who had not already been pardoned. James G. Blaine added an amendment to the bill excluding Jefferson Davis. Blaine’s first speech accused Davis of gross mistreatment of Union prisoners of war at Andersonville Prison and demanded that Davis not be rewarded for his crimes. Hill’s response was conciliatory, but he worked diligently to debunk the testimony on which Blaine had based his accusations. The federal government had rejected

Y7870-Douglass.indb 424

9/1/21 4:17 PM

FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN PARIS

425

several Confederate attempts to exchange prisoners or allow for the treatment of sick and injured prisoners. Hill ended his speech with the assertion that with the Confederacy gone, the South would remain and would never again attempt to secede. Blaine launched a personal attack on Hill, falsely accusing him of introducing a bill in the Confederate Congress to punish with death any white officers who commanded African Americans against the Confederate States. The resolution came to a vote without the exclusion of Jefferson Davis and received 184 votes in favor, 97 against—not the two-thirds majority required by the Fourteenth Amendment. A. Merton Coulter, “Amnesty for All Except Jefferson Davis: The Hill-Blaine Debate of 1876,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 56:453–71, 477–79 (Winter 1972). 42. Born in Paris to a wealthy merchant, Victor Schoelcher (1804–93) studied journalism at the Collège Louis-le-Grand and became a political activist, opposing the government of Louis Philippe. Beginning in 1826, Schoelcher bitterly fought slavery and spent his money to establish philanthropic societies to aid blacks. After studying slavery in the United States, Cuba, and the West Indies, Schoelcher became the French undersecretary of the navy in 1848. In this post, Schoelcher persuaded the provisional government to issue a decree that abolished slavery in French possessions. Elected to the legislature in 1848, Schoelcher immigrated to London when Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took power and did not return to France until 1870. He was again a member of the legislature in 1871, becoming a senator for life in 1875. In addition to being a journalist, politician, and philanthropist, Schoelcher was an accomplished musician and wrote a biography of George Frederic Handel. Scholes, Oxford Companion to Music, 928; ACAB, 5:423. 43. Polonius was the chief adviser to Hamlet’s stepfather and the father of Laertes and Ophelia. Hamlet refers to Polonius as a modern Jephthah, a biblical judge whose foolish promises forced him to sacrifice his daughter. Polonius’s scheming and spying ultimately lead to his being stabbed by Hamlet through a curtain. Judges 11–12; William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (London, 1955), 86–87; Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare: The Tragedies; A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964), 44–70. 44. Theodore Stanton maintained that he introduced Schoelcher and Douglass during the latter’s trip to Paris. Stanton quotes extensively from his correspondence with both men, including a letter from Douglass that recounts the meeting much as it appears in the text above. In addition to depicting the warm friendship between Schoelcher and Douglass, the article discusses Schoelcher’s desire for Douglass to write the introduction to the English translation of his book on Toussaint L’Ouverture— an honor Douglass initially declined because of his new appointment in Haiti. Douglass did write the introduction, but the English version of the Toussaint biography was never published. Douglass’s sketch of the Haitian leader was published posthumously in the New York Independent and is reproduced later in this volume. Theodore Stanton, “Recollections of Victor Schoelcher,” Open Court, 8:4151–53 (July 1894); New York Independent, 60:945–49 (23 April 1903). 45. Dominique François Jean Arago (1786–1853) was born in a small village in southern France and studied artillery at the École Polytechnique. Shortly after taking the position of secretarylibrarian at the Bureau of Longitudes (housed in the Paris Observatory), he began to record astronomical observations, for which he later became famous. At the age of twenty-three, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences for his work on triangulating the Paris meridian. Besides being a well-known scientist, Arago played an important role during the Revolution of 1848 as minister of the navy and colonies and minister of war. Arago signed decrees creating a ten-hour workday, abolishing corporal punishment in the navy, and easing restrictions on the naturalization of foreigners. Victor Schoelcher approached Arago, urging the abolition of slavery. This resulted in the decree of 4 March 1848, which created a provisional ministry to oversee the manumission of slaves. Arago was elected to the Constituent Assembly and the Executive Commission. Protests led to a change in the constitution and the dissolution of the Commission. Disillusioned, Arago retreated to the Paris Observatory to focus on his scientific research. James Lequeux, François Arago: A 19th Century French Humanist and Pioneer in Astrophysics (Cham, Switz., 2008), 24–32, 45–51.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 425

9/1/21 4:17 PM

426

DEAR JOE

46. Victor Schoelcher, Vie de Toussaint-Louverture (Paris, 1889). 47. Professor Thomas Yeatman (d. 1890) was the American editor of Galignani’s Messenger and a member of the Paris Council of the Association of the Mission Homes for Young English and American Women. He was the son of Thomas Yeatman, Sr. (1787–1833), a merchant, iron manufacturer, and banker, and brother of James Erwin Yeatman (1818–1901). The family lived in Bedford County, Tennessee, until the 1840s, when the brothers moved to St. Louis to open an iron house. The family owned slaves who worked in their business, though James Yeatman supported the Union during the Civil War and spent part of his later years involved in charities for freed slaves. Yeatman, “Moral Condition of Paris and France,” 512–14; “Some Real History in ‘The Crisis,’ ” American Illustrated Methodist Magazine, 4:3–6 (September 1901); J. Thomas Scharf, History of Saint Louis City and County, from the Earliest Periods to the Present Day, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1883), 1:552–53; Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 2:29–30.

DEAR JOE (1887) Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 19, frames 647–49, FD Papers, DLC.

Of all his grandchildren, Douglass perhaps displayed the greatest intimacy toward Joseph Henry Douglass, the oldest child of his son Charles. Douglass had financially assisted Joseph in obtaining advanced training in violin, an instrument that Douglass enjoyed playing, at the New England Conservatory. A large body of correspondence between the two has survived. In response to one letter that Douglass likely received while traveling through Europe with his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, he composed a poem, dated 5 April 1887, imparting grandfatherly advice to the eighteen-year-old Joseph and suggesting that he be more tolerant of his younger siblings. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York, 2018), 700–701; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 306. Dear Joe:1 I am truly glad you told You are now eighteen years old. And are also happy, none to know. You are beginning large to grow. And I can only say, no Now I am so far away. Continue on your plan,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 426

9/1/21 4:17 PM

426

DEAR JOE

46. Victor Schoelcher, Vie de Toussaint-Louverture (Paris, 1889). 47. Professor Thomas Yeatman (d. 1890) was the American editor of Galignani’s Messenger and a member of the Paris Council of the Association of the Mission Homes for Young English and American Women. He was the son of Thomas Yeatman, Sr. (1787–1833), a merchant, iron manufacturer, and banker, and brother of James Erwin Yeatman (1818–1901). The family lived in Bedford County, Tennessee, until the 1840s, when the brothers moved to St. Louis to open an iron house. The family owned slaves who worked in their business, though James Yeatman supported the Union during the Civil War and spent part of his later years involved in charities for freed slaves. Yeatman, “Moral Condition of Paris and France,” 512–14; “Some Real History in ‘The Crisis,’ ” American Illustrated Methodist Magazine, 4:3–6 (September 1901); J. Thomas Scharf, History of Saint Louis City and County, from the Earliest Periods to the Present Day, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1883), 1:552–53; Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 2:29–30.

DEAR JOE (1887) Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 19, frames 647–49, FD Papers, DLC.

Of all his grandchildren, Douglass perhaps displayed the greatest intimacy toward Joseph Henry Douglass, the oldest child of his son Charles. Douglass had financially assisted Joseph in obtaining advanced training in violin, an instrument that Douglass enjoyed playing, at the New England Conservatory. A large body of correspondence between the two has survived. In response to one letter that Douglass likely received while traveling through Europe with his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, he composed a poem, dated 5 April 1887, imparting grandfatherly advice to the eighteen-year-old Joseph and suggesting that he be more tolerant of his younger siblings. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York, 2018), 700–701; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 306. Dear Joe:1 I am truly glad you told You are now eighteen years old. And are also happy, none to know. You are beginning large to grow. And I can only say, no Now I am so far away. Continue on your plan,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 426

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DEAR JOE

427

And you will surely be a man Some day. Then rosin2 well your bow Go steady and go slow. Do not be too fast Hold out to the last. You will certainly then, Master well your violin And stand approved of men Some day. I note what you said, Of Haley3 and Charley Fred.4 Though in distant lands I rove I hold them both in love, They are a credit to me As well as unto thee, And their success I hope to see Some day. I like what you say of Haley. He bears himself so gailey Though he laughs and talks much daily And like some older boys Makes Has less thought than noise, And produces Makes less than he distroys He too will be a man, Some day. But my dearest, dearest son, Why did you leave out so, While your pen went too & from fro And gave me not to know, & Not And not one word bestow on your tall sister Ada5 Who will She’ll be a noble woman, Some day. But I will not be so bold, As to undertake to scold Or prate my [?] esteem above, [?] your own cherished of love, For your [?] kind hearted sister.6

Y7870-Douglass.indb 427

9/1/21 4:17 PM

428

DEAR JOE

If you missed her in your letter I know you will do better Some day. When little Eddy died,7 She stood by his side, And did her best to save The little fellow. She was patient and was kind, Sparing neither body nor mind, And she will have her reward Some day. But Joe, my son and friend, This rhyme must have an end For I did not at first intend Or think it possible well to send, Of lines of mine, so Many. If you think them dry or cold, You need not now be told That grand pa is growing old, And cannot now unfold, Those thoughts of heated mold, As you will do, I hope, Some day. My kindest and best love to your Mother,8 Father, Aday, Frederick Charles and Haley. Tell them all I hope to see them, some day AFFECTIONATELY YOUR GRAND PA FREDK. DOUG LASS PAGANI 9 APRIL 5, 1887 1. Joseph Henry Douglass (1869–1935), the second child born to Charles R. and Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass, was the only one of their six children to survive into adulthood. He received his education largely in the Washington, D.C., public school system. A gifted musician, Douglass was given private violin lessons as a child and went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston from 1889 to 1891. Afterward, he spent a year studying violin in London, followed by an additional period of study at the New York Conservatory of Music. He made his professional debut as a concert violinist at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in August 1893 as part of the entertainment arranged to mark the occasion of the fair’s controversial “Colored People’s Day.” Over the next forty years, Douglass routinely toured the United States; in later years, however, his opportunities were limited because of segregation in the South. At the height

Y7870-Douglass.indb 428

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DEAR JOE

429

of his career, he was described in the black press as the “most talented violinist of the race,” and performed for Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft. For much of this period, he taught violin in the music department at Howard University, gave private lessons, and conducted theater orchestras in Washington, D.C. From 1911 through 1914, he managed the Music School Settlement for Colored People in New York City. Also in 1914, he became the first African American musician to record demos for a record company, but none of his recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company were released, and none are known to have survived. In 1907 he married Fannie May Howard, an accomplished pianist who often accompanied her husband’s concerts. The couple had two children: Frederick, who was known as Frederick Douglass III in the family, and Blanche Elizabeth, who died in childhood. Douglass died at his home in Washington, D.C., in 1935. Washington Evening Star, 9 December 1935; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 700, 735; Fought, Women, 266, 276, 283, 310; Tim Brooks, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919 (Chicago, 2005), 504; Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History (1971; New York, 1997), 283–84; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 306. 2. Rosin is a naturally sticky substance produced by pine trees. Musicians traditionally carried cakes of it in small velvet bags. In the nineteenth century, it was used on both the fine horsehair bows and the animal-gut strings of all stringed instruments in order to create the friction needed to produce their characteristic sound. John Dilworth, “The Violin and Bow—Origins and Development,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Violin, ed. Robin Stowell (1992; New York, 2002), 27–31. 3. The only child of Charles R. Douglass and his second wife, Laura Antoinette Haley, Haley George Douglass (1881–1954) was born in Canandaigua, New York, but spent most of his life in Washington, D.C. Douglass’s early education took place in the Washington, D.C., public school system, but he completed his secondary education at Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1901. He then attended Harvard University, where he studied history and excelled in football, track, and rowing. After graduating from Harvard in 1905, he was briefly enrolled at Howard University as a medical student, but he dropped out to pursue a teaching career at Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, the classical academic high school for black students in Washington, D.C. At Dunbar, Douglass taught history as well as courses in the natural sciences. He coached the school’s football and track teams and organized the Washington Tennis Association, which promoted tennis tournaments for black players on the East Coast. In 1919 he married Evelyn Virginia Dulany, with whom he had two children: Joseph H. and Jean Douglass. For many years, Douglass was involved in the development of the Highland Beach community in Maryland, where he owned much of the beachfront property and served as mayor several times over a span of twenty-five years. In 1952, not long after his wife’s death, he retired from teaching at Dunbar High School and spent the last two years of his life collecting research material in hope of writing a biography of his famous grandfather. Douglass was a member of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church and the NAACP. Washington Evening Star, 26 January 1954; William M. Brewer, “Haley George Douglass,” NHB, 7:146, 162 (April 1954); Fought, Women, 266, 276, 310. 4. Charles Frederick Douglass (1867–87) was the oldest child of Charles R. and Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass. Referred to as both “Charley Fred” and “Frederick Charles” by Douglass in this poem, he was born while his parents were living in Rochester, New York. Charles F. Douglass, who shared an interest in photography with his famous grandfather, died of typhoid fever on 2 November in Washington, D.C., just four months after his brother Joseph’s birthday. He was twenty years old. Celeste-Marie Bernier and Andrew Taylor, If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection: A 200 Year Anniversary (Edinburgh, 2018), 35, 38, 489; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 678; Fought, Women, 266, 310. 5. Julia Ada Douglass (1873–87) was the fourth child and second daughter born to Charles R. and Libbie Murphy Douglass. She was born in Washington, D.C., where she died, age fourteen, of typhoid fever, just one day after the disease claimed her brother, Charles Frederick. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37, 38, 489; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 678; Fought, Women, 266, 310.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 429

9/1/21 4:17 PM

430

HENRY WARD BEECHER

6. Douglass could be referring to either Julia Ada Douglass or her younger sister, Mary “Mattie” Louise Douglass (1874–90). Like her sister Julia Ada, Mary Louise Douglass was born and died in Washington, D.C. Her death at age fifteen, on 7 March 1890, left her brother Joseph Douglass as the only surviving child of their parents’ marriage. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37, 38; Fought, Women, 223, 266, 310. 7. Edward Arthur Douglass (1877–79) was the youngest of the six children born to Charles R. and Libbie Murphy Douglass. A sickly child from birth, “Eddy” was left by his father in his grandparents’ care following Libbie’s death in September 1878. Edward Arthur Douglass died at Cedar Hill in March 1879, age fourteen months. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37; Fought, Women, 223, 310. 8. A native of Canandaigua, New York, Laura Antoinette Haley (1854–1928) was Charles R. Douglass’s second wife and Joseph H. Douglass’s stepmother. Her father, Alfred Haley, was a mixedrace self-emancipated former slave from Virginia who ran a successful dry-cleaning business in Canandaigua for many years. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a free black who spent her entire life in Ontario County, New York. Educated in the local public schools, Laura A. Haley worked as a hairdresser in Canandaigua after graduating from high school. In December 1880, she married Charles R. Douglass, and the following November she gave birth to their only child, Haley George Douglass. By 1882 the family was living in Washington, D.C., where Charles R. Douglass had accepted an appointment as a clerk in the pension office. Laura A. Haley Douglass spent the remainder of her life in Washington, D.C., dying there in January 1928, seven years after the death of her husband. 1865 New York State Census, Ontario County, 37; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Ontario County, 59A; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 245B; 1910 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 7A; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 38; Fought, Women, 310, 358–59n34. 9. A town in the Campania region of southern Italy. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1410.

HENRY WARD BEECHER (1887) Lyman Abbott, ed., Henry Ward Beecher: A Sketch of His Career: With Analysis of his Power as a Preacher, Lecturer, Orator, and Journalist, and Incidents and Reminiscences of His Life (New York, 1887), 362–63.

Douglass’s sketch of the well-known minister and reformer Henry Ward Beecher first appeared in a volume compiled by the Congregational theologian and author Lyman Abbott to commemorate Beecher’s seventieth birthday. It is unclear, however, exactly when the short piece was composed. Abbott notes in his preface that he had been asked by Beecher’s assistant, the Reverend Samuel Byram Halliday, to help him prepare the volume at least a year and a half before its publication, and that Halliday had begun to collect the contents of Part II, which included Douglass’s work, along with similar efforts by twenty-eight other eminent contemporaries of Beecher, “some years ago.” This sketch by Douglass was reprinted in a revised edition of the work, which appeared in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 430

9/1/21 4:17 PM

430

HENRY WARD BEECHER

6. Douglass could be referring to either Julia Ada Douglass or her younger sister, Mary “Mattie” Louise Douglass (1874–90). Like her sister Julia Ada, Mary Louise Douglass was born and died in Washington, D.C. Her death at age fifteen, on 7 March 1890, left her brother Joseph Douglass as the only surviving child of their parents’ marriage. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37, 38; Fought, Women, 223, 266, 310. 7. Edward Arthur Douglass (1877–79) was the youngest of the six children born to Charles R. and Libbie Murphy Douglass. A sickly child from birth, “Eddy” was left by his father in his grandparents’ care following Libbie’s death in September 1878. Edward Arthur Douglass died at Cedar Hill in March 1879, age fourteen months. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37; Fought, Women, 223, 310. 8. A native of Canandaigua, New York, Laura Antoinette Haley (1854–1928) was Charles R. Douglass’s second wife and Joseph H. Douglass’s stepmother. Her father, Alfred Haley, was a mixedrace self-emancipated former slave from Virginia who ran a successful dry-cleaning business in Canandaigua for many years. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a free black who spent her entire life in Ontario County, New York. Educated in the local public schools, Laura A. Haley worked as a hairdresser in Canandaigua after graduating from high school. In December 1880, she married Charles R. Douglass, and the following November she gave birth to their only child, Haley George Douglass. By 1882 the family was living in Washington, D.C., where Charles R. Douglass had accepted an appointment as a clerk in the pension office. Laura A. Haley Douglass spent the remainder of her life in Washington, D.C., dying there in January 1928, seven years after the death of her husband. 1865 New York State Census, Ontario County, 37; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Ontario County, 59A; 1900 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 245B; 1910 U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 7A; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 38; Fought, Women, 310, 358–59n34. 9. A town in the Campania region of southern Italy. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1410.

HENRY WARD BEECHER (1887) Lyman Abbott, ed., Henry Ward Beecher: A Sketch of His Career: With Analysis of his Power as a Preacher, Lecturer, Orator, and Journalist, and Incidents and Reminiscences of His Life (New York, 1887), 362–63.

Douglass’s sketch of the well-known minister and reformer Henry Ward Beecher first appeared in a volume compiled by the Congregational theologian and author Lyman Abbott to commemorate Beecher’s seventieth birthday. It is unclear, however, exactly when the short piece was composed. Abbott notes in his preface that he had been asked by Beecher’s assistant, the Reverend Samuel Byram Halliday, to help him prepare the volume at least a year and a half before its publication, and that Halliday had begun to collect the contents of Part II, which included Douglass’s work, along with similar efforts by twenty-eight other eminent contemporaries of Beecher, “some years ago.” This sketch by Douglass was reprinted in a revised edition of the work, which appeared in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 430

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HENRY WARD BEECHER

431

1887, following Beecher’s death. Lyman Abbott and S. B. Halliday, Henry Ward Beecher: A Sketch of His Career: With Analysis of his Power as a Preacher, Lecturer, Orator, and Journalist, and Incidents and Reminiscences of His Life (Hartford, Conn., 1887), 362–63.

No just man will deny to Henry Ward Beecher the possession of great qualities, and no generous man will wish to do so. History will accord to him a high place among the laborers in every good word and work of his day and generation.1 He can never be numbered with the laggards in Church or State. Without awaiting the friendly pressure of popular sentiment, self-moved and self-sustained, he has dared to espouse the right side of every great question of the age. Against ignorance, superstition, and bigotry, he has long been a mighty power in the land. His tender heart and broad humanity has made him the friend of the poor, the weak, and the persecuted everywhere and of every race and color. As a colored man and one who has felt the lash and sting of slavery, I cannot forget the powerful words of this man in the cause of justice and liberty, and in righteous denunciation of slavery.2 Standing in his own place outside the abolition ranks, he probably did more to generate anti-slavery sentiment than he could have done by taking his stand inside those ranks. Through his influence and example the doors of Plymouth Church3 were open, when not but a grand moral courage could have kept them so. It was in that church alone, in the darkest moment of the anti-slavery movement, when an enraged nation madly clamored for the blood of John Brown, that Wendell Phillips could be permitted to throw the shining shield of his eloquence over the bleeding head of the grand old hero and martyr.4 But the world knows of the good works of this man: how he welcomed and succored the panting fugitive from slavery;5 how he denounced and stamped upon the Fugitive Slave Bill;6 how he denounced the border ruffian invasion of Kansas;7 how in the face of mobs and violence he defended and protected free speech; how he stood by the Union and liberty against a slaveholding rebellion; how by his eminent tact and marvelous eloquence he turned the tide of British sentiment in favor of the integrity of his country,8 and defeated the machinations of traitors and rebels, are things all to familiar to be repeated here. I remember an incident which early opened to me the heart of Henry Ward Beecher. He had come to Rochester, N. Y., to deliver an address before the Literary Societies of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 431

9/1/21 4:17 PM

432

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Rochester University.9 While there he did me the honor to call upon me. During his stay my little daughter, long since dead,10 came into the room and laid her little hand lovingly on my knee. Mr. Beecher noticed the child. I said to him, How could any man with a human heart take that child from my arms and sell her on the auction-block? I never shall forget his look at the moment. He begged me not to mention it. The thought made him sick, as if he were looking upon a tender sister being bled. I willingly give this leaf, for I wish the good that men do to live after them.11 1. The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher died 8 March 1887, a few days after suffering a stroke. Debbie Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (New York, 2006), 465–69. 2. Beecher expressed his antislavery sentiments most loudly from his pulpit and through published pamphlets. While he was sympathetic to organized antislavery activities, he stood outside those ranks. From his pulpit at Plymouth Church, Beecher conducted mock “auctions” to raise funds to purchase and emancipate slaves put up for sale in Southern cities. Beginning with an outspoken critique of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Beecher published multiple articles and sermons arguing against slavery and the political slave power. During the Kansas crisis, he announced plans to send cartons of Bibles and rifles, known as “Beecher’s Bibles,” to aid the antislavery free state movement. Lyman Abbott, Henry Ward Beecher (Boston, 1904), 160–62; William C. Beecher and Samuel Scoville, Jr., A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (New York, 1888), 240–43; Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 6. 3. Plymouth Church, Brooklyn’s second Congregational Church, stood at 57 Orange Street, where Beecher preached his first sermon in 1847. When a fire destroyed the building in 1849, it was rebuilt to his specifications. It held more than 2,000 for worship services, which was necessary to accommodate the large crowds that Beecher’s sermons attracted. The church hosted abolitionist meetings, including lectures by Wendell Phillips, when many New York and Brooklyn churches refused to open their pulpits to the radicals. After Phillips’s 1856 lecture at Plymouth Church, Beecher drew angry reactions from the local white community. Craig Steven Wilder, A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (New York, 2000), 87; Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 237. 4. Addressing a large gathering at Plymouth Church on 1 November 1859, Phillips praised John Brown as a hero and true revolutionary in the tradition of the 1848 European revolutions. In a speech titled “Lessons for the Hour,” Phillips claimed that Brown had more right to hang Virginia governor Henry Wise than Wise had to hang him. Newspaper reports indicate he received a positive reception from the Brooklyn audience. New York Times, 2 November 1859; Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 310. 5. Beecher’s Plymouth Church reportedly served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Post– Civil War accounts hold that Beecher collaborated with Brooklyn’s free African American community, New York conductor Sydney Howard Gay, and others to assist the escape of “dozens” of fugitive slaves. Don Papson and Tom Calarco, Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City (New York, 2015), 212; Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 6. 6. Beecher editorialized in the New York Independent against congressional adoption of the Compromise of 1850, specifically refuting the arguments of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster that the Constitution sanctioned stringent measures by the federal government and Northern states to assist the recapture of runaway slaves. Beecher stated, “Not even the Constitution shall make me unjust. . . . I put constitution against constitution—God’s against man’s. Where they differ, my reply to all

Y7870-Douglass.indb 432

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

433

questioners, but especially all timid Christian scruples, is in the language of Peter: ‘Whether it be right in the sight of God to harken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.’ ” Beecher vehemently denounced the law in sermons and in print, including a three-column exposé that appeared in the New York Independent on 21 February 1850. There he declared, “On this matter our feelings are so strong that we confess a liability to intemperance of expression.” Henry Ward Beecher, Patriotic Addresses in America and England, 1850–1885 (New York, 1888), 173; Abbott, Henry Ward Beecher, 167–71, 181–86; Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 468; Beecher and Scoville, Henry Ward Beecher, 237. 7. In speeches and editorials, Beecher opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, calling the measure “the death-struggle of slavery for expansion, seeing that she must have more room to breathe or suffocate.” Two years later, in a pamphlet titled Defence of Kansas, he declared, “A battle is to be fought” to ensure the victory of free-state advocates. Along with several others, Beecher raised large sums of money to provide arms and ammunition to free-state fighters. Money collected at Plymouth Church purchased at least two dozen rifles sent to Kansas marked as “Bibles.” Henry Ward Beecher, Defence of Kansas (Washington, D.C., 1856), 1; Abbott, Henry Ward Beecher, 202–04, 206–12; Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence, Kans., 2004), 77, 135. 8. Traveling to Britain in the fall of 1863, Beecher gave a series of orations aimed at convincing the British public and government to fully support the Union war effort. Speaking to large crowds in Manchester, Liverpool, London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, he likely helped sway British opinion against recognizing the Confederacy. Beecher, Patriotic Addresses, 421–34; Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 6. 9. Beecher delivered an address titled “Character” at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall on 8 July 1851 as a part of Rochester University’s first commencement celebration. At the time, Annie Douglass was just over two years old. “History of the University of Rochester,” Rochester Campus, 4:50 (February 1877). 10. Annie Douglass (1849–60) was the fifth and youngest child of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. She was born in Rochester on 22 March 1849. Following a lengthy illness, she died at home in Rochester on 13 March 1860, nine days before her eleventh birthday. At the time of her death, Douglass was staying with friends in Scotland. Since November 1859, he had been on a lecture tour of Great Britain, which had been extended in the wake of ongoing concerns over his safety, should he return to the United States, following the Harpers Ferry incident. Annie’s death, however, prompted Douglass to set aside those concerns, cancel any plans he might have had to remain abroad, and return home. By mid-April 1859, he was back in Rochester, New York. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:xxx–xxxii; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:377; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 161, 207–08. 11. Perhaps an allusion to Julius Caesar, sc. 9, lines 1162–63. “The evil that men do lives after them, / The good is oft interred with their bones.”

THE GREAT AGITATION (1889) Cosmopolitan, 7:365–82 (August 1889).

Founded in New York City by Paul Schlicht in 1886, Cosmopolitan magazine has a long history of transformation. It started as a family literary magazine and then shifted its focus to political and social issues. It dealt in muckraking in the early twentieth century

Y7870-Douglass.indb 433

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

433

questioners, but especially all timid Christian scruples, is in the language of Peter: ‘Whether it be right in the sight of God to harken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.’ ” Beecher vehemently denounced the law in sermons and in print, including a three-column exposé that appeared in the New York Independent on 21 February 1850. There he declared, “On this matter our feelings are so strong that we confess a liability to intemperance of expression.” Henry Ward Beecher, Patriotic Addresses in America and England, 1850–1885 (New York, 1888), 173; Abbott, Henry Ward Beecher, 167–71, 181–86; Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 468; Beecher and Scoville, Henry Ward Beecher, 237. 7. In speeches and editorials, Beecher opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, calling the measure “the death-struggle of slavery for expansion, seeing that she must have more room to breathe or suffocate.” Two years later, in a pamphlet titled Defence of Kansas, he declared, “A battle is to be fought” to ensure the victory of free-state advocates. Along with several others, Beecher raised large sums of money to provide arms and ammunition to free-state fighters. Money collected at Plymouth Church purchased at least two dozen rifles sent to Kansas marked as “Bibles.” Henry Ward Beecher, Defence of Kansas (Washington, D.C., 1856), 1; Abbott, Henry Ward Beecher, 202–04, 206–12; Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence, Kans., 2004), 77, 135. 8. Traveling to Britain in the fall of 1863, Beecher gave a series of orations aimed at convincing the British public and government to fully support the Union war effort. Speaking to large crowds in Manchester, Liverpool, London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, he likely helped sway British opinion against recognizing the Confederacy. Beecher, Patriotic Addresses, 421–34; Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 6. 9. Beecher delivered an address titled “Character” at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall on 8 July 1851 as a part of Rochester University’s first commencement celebration. At the time, Annie Douglass was just over two years old. “History of the University of Rochester,” Rochester Campus, 4:50 (February 1877). 10. Annie Douglass (1849–60) was the fifth and youngest child of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. She was born in Rochester on 22 March 1849. Following a lengthy illness, she died at home in Rochester on 13 March 1860, nine days before her eleventh birthday. At the time of her death, Douglass was staying with friends in Scotland. Since November 1859, he had been on a lecture tour of Great Britain, which had been extended in the wake of ongoing concerns over his safety, should he return to the United States, following the Harpers Ferry incident. Annie’s death, however, prompted Douglass to set aside those concerns, cancel any plans he might have had to remain abroad, and return home. By mid-April 1859, he was back in Rochester, New York. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:xxx–xxxii; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:377; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 161, 207–08. 11. Perhaps an allusion to Julius Caesar, sc. 9, lines 1162–63. “The evil that men do lives after them, / The good is oft interred with their bones.”

THE GREAT AGITATION (1889) Cosmopolitan, 7:365–82 (August 1889).

Founded in New York City by Paul Schlicht in 1886, Cosmopolitan magazine has a long history of transformation. It started as a family literary magazine and then shifted its focus to political and social issues. It dealt in muckraking in the early twentieth century

Y7870-Douglass.indb 433

9/1/21 4:17 PM

434

THE GREAT AGITATION

before being fully transformed into a women’s magazine in the 1960s. In 1888, the magazine nearly folded, and the editorial helm was shared between multiple people. John Brisben Walker purchased the magazine in December 1888 and increased the magazine’s offerings in fiction and politics, adding color illustrations and serials. One such early series of articles, entitled “The Great Agitation,” sought to examine the abolitionist movement leading up to the Civil War. An advertisement for the upcoming series stated, “The articles will be by surviving leaders of the abolition and pro-slavery causes and by those intimately associated with the contest on both sides. The series will form a complete history of that momentous struggle.” Running from April to August 1889, the five articles were “Southern Abolitionists” by Moncure D. Conway, “Benjamin Lundy, The First Abolitionist” by Frank B. Sanborn, “The Anti-Slavery Societies” by Oliver Johnson, “Recollections of the Antislavery Struggle” by Julia Ward Howe, and the following article by Douglass, entitled “Reminiscences.” For reasons unknown, articles from proslavery authors were omitted from the final series. Douglass’s article, published in the August issue, was the final installment, wherein he recounted the moment he became aware of the term “abolition” and his involvement with the movement following his escape from slavery. Several months prior, Douglass had been appointed U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Haiti by President Benjamin Harrison, and likely wrote this essay before leaving D.C. to assume his post in Port-au-Prince. Cosmopolitan, 6:583–89, 7:52–58, 174–84, 278–86; Davenport (Iowa) Morning Democrat, 24 March 1889; James Landers, The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine (Columbia, Mo., 2010).

One of the many limitations that narrow the mental vision of men is defective memory. A few intervening years, with their ever-changing scenes, leave to most of us only a vague and confused impression of what has gone before. Events which rocked the nation and stirred the public mind to its utmost depths are soon allowed to drop into oblivion. Perhaps no people more than ourselves exhibit this apparent infirmity of memory. Our life is more like the rapids of Niagara than like the river. We are not as the Bourbon, who neither learns nor forgets.1 We do both. Caring little

Y7870-Douglass.indb 434

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

435

for the dead past, we live in the present, and yet the past is our wisest and best instructor. In its dim and shadowy outlines we may, if we will, discern in some measure those elements of wisdom which should guide the present and secure the welfare of the future. We are now only a few years removed from one of the most interesting, instructive, and stupendous moral and political conflicts that ever engaged the thoughts and stirred the hearts of men. It was the struggle of a great nation to rid itself of a system of barbarism, which hindered its progress and rendered national unity impossible. This struggle was the antislavery movement. It came, in the language of Scripture, not to send peace, but a sword,2 and yet only its success could bring permanent peace to the nation. It divided families, churches, parties, and States, and finally rent asunder the nation at the center, and filled the land with hostile armies. It plowed its way through a million of lives, and piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold. Though it ended only a quarter of a century ago, few of the present active generation have clear views of the nature of that immense struggle, and understand the secret of its power. My own knowledge of it is not as complete as it might have been had I lived always in the North. Its origin found me one among the millions it came to liberate. It was not until near the close of its first decade that I became an active worker in it. My recollection of it, however, dates back, in a somewhat shadowy way, to 1829, and this was before the organization of the American Antislavery Society.3 The name most heard then in connection with it was that of Benjamin Lundy,4 a most earnest and self-sacrificing advocate of emancipation. At this time, in respect of slavery, the nation was asleep, and desired to sleep on, and was not in the best humor at being awakened. I resided at this time in Baltimore, and was employed in the ship-yard of Harrison & Auld;5 and it was here, among the ship-carpenters, calkers, and riggers, that I first heard the word—abolition. It was then a very big word to me. I did not know its meaning, but there was something in the tone in which it was spoken that awakened my curiosity. An old volume of Walker’s Dictionary6 unlocked to me what it meant, and still I did not know exactly to what it was being applied. This, however, was not long in dawning upon me. There was something in the bitter contempt and hate with which Abolitionists and negroes were spoken of together that led me to think that the thing to be abolished was none other than negro slavery. I was further confirmed in this impression by a handbill picked up in the street, headed in large letters, “The Bobolitionists!” denouncing negroes and ridiculing Abolitionists.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 435

9/1/21 4:17 PM

436

THE GREAT AGITATION

A little further on came the insurrection of Nat Turner, in Southampton, Va.—a circumstance which stirred the whole State with alarm.7 It was denounced as the fruit of abolitionism. The excitement and fury of the slave-holders knew no bounds. Even in Maryland, men talked of going down to Southampton and shooting negroes indiscriminately, without regard to their guilt or innocence. Though I was but a boy at the time, I often heard myself referred to, and cursed, as one who would probably be another Nat Turner. Old Tom Lanman,8 one of our ship-carpenters, used to boast that he had killed three negroes, and to reproach the other carpenters that they had not done as much as himself for their country. At a later date, having learned to read, in spite of the efforts made to prevent me, I saw by the papers that one John Quincy Adams9 was offering petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. It was all out now. I saw through the whole of it. Though I had been taught, by the slave-holding catechism, to believe that God had made me slave, and the white man my master, and that it was a sin for me to be dissatisfied with my condition, my faith upon these points was neither clear nor strong. I did not believe a bit of it. I do not remember when I did not look upon my slavery as a grievous wrong, and when I did not believe that it could not continue forever. In 1838, not being disposed to wait for the fulfillment of my hope for the final end of slavery, I “moved away” from Baltimore, Md., to New Bedford, Mass.,10 and here I received my first personal knowledge of the people and proceedings I had heard so bitterly denounced by the slaveholders of Maryland. Here, also, I discovered some of the obstacles that confronted the movement in which these people were engaged. For even in the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts, now the foremost antislavery State in the Union, abolitionism met with violent opposition. Fortunately for me, I was not long, after reaching New Bedford, in witnessing a genuine abolition meeting, with all the conditions and concomitants characteristic of such meetings at that time in the Northern States generally. It was held in an old, dilapidated deserted church, at the corner of William and Purchase Streets,11 for at that time nothing better in the way of a building could be procured for such a meeting. Nor was the place entirely unsuitable, in view of the treatment it received at the hands of the mob on this occasion; for, very much to the alarm and consternation of the audience assembled, it was the target for brickbats, stones, unsavory eggs, and other missiles. These were called “proslavery arguments,” and expressed the sentiments of the mass of the people of New Bedford at that

Y7870-Douglass.indb 436

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

437

day. It is, however, true to say that these mobocratic demonstrations did not represent the sentiment of what are called the better class of citizens. While most of that class were opposed to abolitionism, they were also opposed to any violation of the right of speech and the right of peaceable assembly. Of this class were the Roaches,12 Rodmans,13 Robinsons,14 and Congdons,15 and through their efforts many meetings were thereafter held, and peaceably held, by the Abolitionists. It is interesting to notice what one or two men can do in forwarding a righteous cause in the face of a hostile community. The man in this town who illustrated this power most prominently was Mr. John Bailey,16 a quiet Quaker, one of the most amiable of men, yet one of the most aggressive in the maintenance of his principles. At his invitation, other abolition meetings were speedily held in the same place, and were addressed by gentlemen distinguished for their eloquence. Among them were Henry C. Wright,17 Stephen S. Foster,18 James N. Buffun,19 Edwin Thompson,20 Nathaniel Whiting,21 Edmund Quincy,22 Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury,23 and others. The only one of these early abolition speakers now remaining is the venerable Parker Pillsbury, nearly eighty years old, and still a man of wonderful vigor and activity. It was at one of these meetings that I saw and heard for the first time the late William Lloyd Garrison, then, as now, admitted the leader of the antislavery movement. It may have been due to my having been a slave, and my intense hatred of slavery, but no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments and such hopes as did those of William Lloyd Garrison. I saw in a glance that in him the hour and the man were harmoniously met. His trumpet gave no uncertain sound.24 He carried his heart in his face. There was no contradiction between the speech and the man. His power was not in a fine flow of dazzling rhetoric, but in his character, his convictions, and his high moral purpose. Though comparatively young at the time I first heard him, his head was bald, and his appearance venerable. Ten years of leadership in a persecuted cause had left their tracery in all his features. In some parts of the country he was an outlaw, and would have been shot on sight. Two States had offered large rewards for his head.25 He had felt the damp walls of two prisons. With a halter about his neck, in the streets of Boston, he had heard the mad mob cry, “Hang him!” “Hang him!” 26 Yet there he stood, erect, self-poised, serene, neither bewailing his hardships nor glorying in his triumphs. A man must have experienced the life of a slave to fully understand the feeling with which I was inspired by my first meeting with white men

Y7870-Douglass.indb 437

9/1/21 4:17 PM

438

THE GREAT AGITATION

and women who had thoroughly espoused the cause of the enslaved negro. My feeling was one of surprise as well as of joy and hope. Until coming North, I had never deemed it possible for white people to sympathize with the slave as against the slave-holder, and it was a marvel to me that the Abolitionists not only sympathized with the negro, but remembered him in bonds as being bound with him.27 The revelation was an unspeakably happy one—a sort of new heaven and new earth.28 I saw in it the certain downfall of slavery. The history of this great struggle is instructive in many ways. It not only illustrates the wisdom and potency of moral agitation as a means of removing great evils and promoting reform, but also the tremendous price that must be paid for every inch in the march of human progress, and it would seem that the more obvious the truth asserted, the more bitter is the opposition to its demands. Nothing, for instance, could be plainer and more obvious to commonsense than the right of a man to his own body; and yet, for affirming and advocating this self-evident truth, men and woman were subjected to the bitterest persecution. One of the earliest and most powerful publications in favor of emancipation was the appeal by Mrs. Lydia Maria Child.29 At the time of writing it she was the most popular woman writer in the United States. Her books were read with pleasure in every State of the Union. But after this appeal she was even deprived of the privilege of the Boston Athenaeum, which had before honored her with the freedom of the institution.30 For teaching colored girls to read, Miss Crandall had been imprisoned in Connecticut.31 For the same offense, Myrtilla Miner was threatened with a mob in Washington,32 and a school-house was destroyed by a mob in New Hampshire.33 In New York, Chatham Street Chapel was assailed,34 and the store of Arthur Tappan threatened by the mob.35 Neither the press nor the pulpit offered resistance to this mob violence, and the governments of towns and cities appeared little concerned to keep the peace. One of the remarkable things in respect of this agitation was the length of time that it held the public mind. Men generally tire of hearing the same arguments, however elegantly stated, and men sometimes tire of stating them; yet the Abolitionists kept up what Daniel Webster was pleased to call their “rub-a-dub-dub,”36 with unflagging zeal, during more than thirty years. Outside of the tariff, which subject has turned up periodically with every election since Adams37 and Jackson,38 the speeches, resolutions, and addresses of no class during the last fifty years require a larger space in

Y7870-Douglass.indb 438

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

439

the public libraries than those of the Abolitionists. Their books begin with Mrs. Child’s “Appeal,” and end with Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”39 They begin with a woman and end with a woman, and to woman the cause was most largely indebted during all the struggle. But the Abolitionists had something more than their energy, zeal, and persistence to keep their cause before the people. Their whole movement illustrated the fact that “nothing can be done against the truth, but for the truth.”40 All along, the bad cause destroyed itself. The efforts to shield the slave system and make it respectable only increased its odiousness, multiplied its enemies, and hastened its destruction. It was a sorry day for slavery when it attempted to rifle the mails;41 to abolish freedom of speech, the liberty of the press, the right of the people to assemble, the right of petition; to censure John Quincy Adams,42 and to expel Joshua R. Giddings from Congress,43—for these measures only added fuel to the flame of abolitionism. Mr. Giddings subjected himself to the bitter reproaches of the slave-holders, by exposing the blood-hound character of the Florida war, which was notoriously undertaken because the slaves of Georgia found more humanity in the breasts of the Seminole savages in Florida than in those of their Christian masters in Georgia, and preferred to run to the one than to stay with the other.44 Everything helped us. The destruction of the antislavery press of James G. Birney,45 at Cincinnati;46 the shameless demand made by our government upon England for compensation for the slaves of the brig Creole, who had nobly gained their freedom on the high seas, and were allowed to land in a British port;47 the successive attempts to filibuster and capture Central America and the island of Cuba, for the extension of slavery;48 the expulsion of Hon. Samuel Hoar of Massachusetts from Charleston, S. C.;49 the annexation of Texas for the purpose of strengthening and perpetuating slavery; the hateful and disgraceful war with Mexico; the effort to revive the foreign slave-trade;50 the enactment of the inhuman fugitive slave bill; the repeal of the Missouri Compromise;51 the cold, merciless, and shocking decision of Chief-Justice Taney52 in the Dred Scott case; the persistent attempt under President Buchanan53 to force slavery into Kansas by border-ruffian warfare;54 the haughty manners and barbarous behavior of Southern members of Congress; the murderous assault upon Senator Sumner,55 by Preston Brooks of South Carolina; the branding of the hand of Jonathan Walker for assisting a slave to escape;56 the imprisonment of Mrs. Douglass in Norfolk, Va., for teaching colored children to read;57 the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, at Alton, Ill.;58 the burning of Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia;59 the hunting of slaves

Y7870-Douglass.indb 439

9/1/21 4:17 PM

440

THE GREAT AGITATION

in Boston,60 Christiana,61 and Syracuse;62 the hanging of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry,—were so many links in the chain of events that finally roused the loyal nation to the point of resistance to the aggressive spirit of slavery; and hence the war, which, through Providence, brought emancipation to millions, who, it appears, could not have been freed by any other means. Bad and indefensible upon moral grounds as was the system of slavery, it never lacked defenders. The money value of the slaves of the United States was reckoned by Henry Clay, in 1839, at twelve hundred millions of dollars.63 This was enough to buy the support of parties, presses, pulpits, politicians, and preachers. No cause was ever so good that it escaped assault, and none was ever so bad that it did not find earnest defenders. The arguments in support of slavery were generally presented with a show of interest in the welfare of the slave, rather than in that of the master. All along the earlier agitation of the question, we had everywhere to hear the following objections: “The slaves are better off in slavery.” “They are contented and happy.” “They could not take care of themselves.” “They have kind masters.” “They would not be free if they could.” “They are too lazy to work for themselves.” “They would all come North and take work out of the hands of the white men.” “They are better off here than they were in Africa.” “You can never educate them.” “They now have the gospel preached to them.” “They never can be improved.” “They need masters to care for them.” “They made no progress in Africa.” “They are not like white people.” “They are of an inferior race.” “You are meddling with what does not concern you.” “You had better mind your own business.” “You are only making the condition of the negro worse by your agitation.” “You should leave the negro where your fathers left him.” “You have put back the cause fifty years.” “You will never put down slavery in God’s world.” “If God wanted slavery abolished, he would have done it long ago.” “You are wise above what is written.” “What have we to do with slavery?” “The people of the South inherited slavery.” “The negroes are property.” “You would not give up your property.” “What would you do with the negroes if you had them?” “What better is the North than the South?” “The North once held slaves!” “Would you marry a negro?” “I hate slavery as much as you do, but I would send the negro to Africa where he belongs.” “Would you turn them all loose?” “The Bible sanctions slavery.” “The Saviour said nothing against slavery.” “Onesimus the runaway was sent back to his master.”64 “Washington65 was a slaveholder.” “England forced slavery upon us.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 440

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

441

Nothing in the history of public debate can surpass the vehemence and bitterness with which the Abolitionists were plied, upon every hand, with these and similar now stale sentences. Looking back to the discussion, one is amazed at the calmness and patience of the Abolitionists in answering the absurd, contradictory, and trivial objections with which they were opposed. They would spend hours and write books to refute the Bible argument for slavery. Now nobody cares to argue the question whether the Bible sustains slavery or not. When there are no slave-holders to hunt down slaves, there are no eminent doctors of divinity to write pamphlets and preach sermons in favor of the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Bill. Paul’s sending Onesimus back to Philemon lost its significance with the abolition of slavery. Many illustrations could be given of the cool impudence with which the holders of slaves asserted their right of property in their brother men. One among many instances of this kind happened to me in the office of the New York Tribune, forty-five years ago. Horace Greeley introduced me to General Rusk, a senator from Texas.66 In the politest tones imaginable that statesmen proceeded to argue that my right to myself was an error, and that I was still the property of my Southern master. It was hard to suppress my indignation long enough to refute his arguments, which stood simply on the ground of superiority, and the right of the superior man to own the inferior. Perhaps it was my vanity, but I saw nothing in the mental or physical ability of Mr. Rusk to make him a fit owner of anybody’s body but his own. One of the chief obstacles to the abolition movement was the low estimate formed and entertained of the negro as a man. In this respect he was about as badly off at the North as at the South. Fifty years ago Massachusetts to him was something like what Georgia is to him to-day. He was not permitted in the same railway car, in the same steamboat cabin, or on the same deck, with white persons. When I traveled in public conveyances my color usually secured me the luxury of a whole seat. There were instances, however, when this advantage was denied me. On the New York Central Railway, between Geneva and Rochester, I had comfortably gathered up myself at night, in a whole seat, for a nap. Failing to observe my color, a white gentleman approached and asked to share the seat with me. I besought him not to sit down, and told him I was a negro. He answered that he didn’t care what the devil I was; he wanted to sit down. Drawing aside to make room for him, I said, “Well, my friend, if you can stand it, I can;” and I had with him a very pleasant ride and conversation the whole length

Y7870-Douglass.indb 441

9/1/21 4:17 PM

442

THE GREAT AGITATION

of the journey.67 In a street-car in Philadelphia the conductor ordered me out; and Mrs. Amy Post, a white lady sitting beside me, said, “No: he shall not go out!” “Does he belong to you?” asked the conductor. “He does,” replied the lady. “All right,” said the conductor, and I held my place.68 Thus I could ride in a street-car, in the City of Brotherly Love,69 as a piece of property, but not as a person; as a slave, but not as a free man. This was the absurd homage paid at the North to slavery at the South. No matter how well-dressed, intelligent, and cultivated a man or woman might be; no matter how white they might be—if suspected of being related to the African race, they were promptly subjected to this contemptible proscription on all public conveyances. Entering a crowded car on the road from Boston to New Bedford, and seeing but one vacant seat, I politely asked the gentleman occupying one end of it if the seat was vacant. He did not deign to answer, but, with much show of indignation, rose and sauntered off to the rear end of the car, preferring to stand rather than to ride in the same seat with me. A little farther on, however, “a change came o’er the spirit of his dream.” Honorable John Henry Clifford,70 at one time governor of Massachusetts, and one of the finest-looking gentlemen I ever met, came to my seat and held with me a very friendly conversation. His example at once cured the resentment of my offended fellow-passenger, who, upon opportunity, returned to his seat, and made himself quite agreeable during the remainder of the way. His prejudice was simply cowardice. He was afraid of the frowns of others. On the other hand, I have sometimes met persons who, in their zeal to express contempt for this prejudice, have “overstepped the modesty of nature.” A white man, not unknown to me, once took my arm, in New York, saying he was not ashamed to walk with me in Broadway. It seemed never to occur to him that for any reason I might be ashamed to walk with him. Sometimes other men, like my Broadway friend, took pains to remind me that they would rather be in my company than in that of a low, ignorant white man. It is needless to say that I did not feel flattered by the well-intended comparison. On the Eastern Railroad, running from Boston to Portland,71 I was several times beaten and dragged from the cars by conductors and brakemen, for attempting to ride with other people. A vigorous testimony was uttered by the Abolitionists against this senseless and cruel prejudice. The singular thing was that any negro, as already illustrated, no matter how black, could ride in the same car or cabin with his master and mistress, as a slave, but on no condition could he so ride as a freeman and a gentleman. As a slave, his bondage made him free.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 442

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

443

As a freeman, his freedom made him a slave, and compelled him to ride in a miserable box on the railroad, and on the forward deck, with horses, sheep, and swine, upon the steamboat. On one of the Boston and Stonington steamers, I was refused a cabin passage, and compelled to walk the deck all night, or stow myself away with deck freight. Wendell Phillips was along, and nobly refused to go into the cabin because I was excluded, accepting the rough passage of the deck with myself,72 as did Professor James Monroe, now of Oberlin, Ohio,73 on another and similar occasion. The Abolitionists of Oakland built a huge shed, in which was held one of our one hundred conventions.74 The roughest handling we received anywhere was in the State of Indiana.75 Many of its inhabitants were from Virginia and North Carolina, and they felt that in loyalty to their native States they must suppress the antislavery agitation. So we were met everywhere with opposition and often with mobs. In Pendleton, now a leading antislavery town in Indiana, we were attacked and driven off by the fiercest and most determined mob that anywhere confronted us during our five months’ campaign. In this mob, our friend and co-worker, Micajah White,76 who kindly piloted us through the country, was severely bruised and beaten, and had two of his teeth knocked out. William A. White,77 one of our speakers, was felled with a heavy bludgeon. I also was knocked nearly senseless, and had my right hand broken. I believe all who held these conventions, except Professor Monroe, of Oberlin, and myself, have passed away. Yet they all, with the exception of the noble young William A. White (who left wealth, ease, and fine prospects, to serve our cause), lived to see the public mind enlightened, the antislavery sentiment take the form of arms, emancipation proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln, the slaves made free, the country redeemed, and its possible future thereby made cloudless. 1. This description of the European family whose members ruled over several nations was popularly attributed to French statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord in the nineteenth century, but its origin cannot be confirmed. Craufurd Tate Ramage, Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian Authors, 2d ed. (Liverpool, Eng., 1875), 386. 2. Matt. 10:34. 3. The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded on 4 December 1833 at a convention in Philadelphia. EAA, 1:32–33. 4. The child of New Jersey Quakers, Benjamin Lundy (1789–1839) was trained in the saddler’s trade. After living for a time in western Virginia, Lundy moved to Ohio, where he joined Charles Osbsorn in the publication of a pioneering antislavery newspaper, the Philanthropist. In 1821, he began his own paper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, which he published first in Greenville, Tennessee, then in Baltimore, and finally in Washington, D.C. In Baltimore, Lundy’s associate editor, from September 1829 to March 1830, was the then-young and unknown William Lloyd Garrison. In

Y7870-Douglass.indb 443

9/1/21 4:17 PM

444

THE GREAT AGITATION

the early 1830s, Lundy championed black colonization in Texas, which he visited three times. He later supplied valuable eyewitness information about conditions in Texas to congressmen who were battling against its annexation as a slave state. From 1836 to 1838, he edited the Philadelphia National Enquirer, an organ of the Pennsylvania State Anti-Slavery Society. In the last years of his life, Lundy moved to Illinois and revived publication of the Genius. Merton L. Dillon, Benjamin Lundy and the Struggle for Negro Freedom (Urbana, Ill., 1966); ACAB, 4; NCAB, 2:20; DAB, 11:506–07. 5. In 1828, Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live with the family of Hugh Auld, the brother-inlaw of his mistress, Lucretia Anthony Auld. Douglass worked as an errand boy and general assistant for the small firm at Fells Point that Auld ran in partnership with George L. Harrison. The firm mainly refitted old shallow-draft merchant ships. Peter Burchard, Frederick Douglass: For the Great Family of Man (New York, 2003), 36. 6. The British educator and lexicographer John Walker (1732–1807) compiled a number of books on the principles of rhetoric and pronunciation. His masterwork was A Dictionary of the English Language, Answering at Once the Purposes of Rhyming, Spelling, and Pronouncing, which was first published in 1791 and reproduced in editions throughout the nineteenth century. Douglass possibly consulted an adapted edition that Noah Webster published. The latter defines an abolitionist succinctly as “One who is desirous to abolish any thing.” Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language; Exhibiting the Origin, Orthography, Pronunciation, and Defi nitions of Words (New York, 1830), 3. 7. Nat Turner’s rebellion took place in the early morning of 22 August 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia. Nat Turner (1800–31), a literate and intelligent slave living at the home of Joseph Travis, led the slave uprising. The rebellion began at the Travis home with the murders of Sally Travis, Joseph Travis, and Putnam Moore, the child who had inherited the ownership of Nat Turner. The uprising lasted until the early hours of Sunday, 23 August. According to best estimates, sixty to eighty slaves from the region took up arms to join the fight for freedom. Turner, who had long harbored antislavery sentiments, was motivated to act by religious visions and the perceived supernatural significance of natural phenomena, beginning with a solar eclipse on 12 February 1831. Approximately fifty-five to sixty whites died in the rebellion in Southampton County. They were all targeted victims of the rebellion, including women and children. The rebellion was eventually put down by the local militia, although Turner evaded capture until he was found hiding in the woods less than two miles from the Travis home on 30 October. He was executed by hanging on 11 November 1831. Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion (1975; New York, 1990); Scot French, The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory (Boston, 2004), 2–3, 79–80; James T. Baker, Nat Turner: Cry Freedom in America (Fort Worth, Tex., 1998), 21–41; ACAB, 6:187; DAB, 19:69–70; ANB (online). 8. Thomas H. W. Lambdin (c. 1807–?) had labored at a number of trades by 1850, which included work as a ship carpenter, schoolteacher, town bailiff for St. Michaels (1848), and miller (1850). By 1850, he was married with five young children, and his real estate was valued at one thousand dollars. In a rebuttal to Douglass’s negative characterization, a Maryland friend described Lambdin as “too good-natured and harmless to injure any person but himself.” A. C. C. Thompson, “To the Public—Falsehood Refuted,” reprinted in NASS, 25 November 1845 and in Lib., 12 December 1845; Oswald Tilghman, comp., History of Talbot County, Maryland, 1661–1861, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1915), 2:395. 9. The eldest son of John Adams, John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) served as the American ambassador to the Netherlands, Berlin, Russia, and England during the early years of the republic. He also held office as U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1803–08), secretary of state in James Monroe’s cabinet (1817–25), and president of the United States (1825–29). From 1831 until his death, Adams sat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he opposed slavery and its extension and fought the gag rule on abolitionist petitions. In late 1831, he made his first antislavery speech on the floor of Congress when he introduced fifteen petitions from Pennsylvania Quakers praying for the abolition

Y7870-Douglass.indb 444

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

445

of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Adams also defended a band of captured Africans before the Supreme Court in the Amistad case of 1841. Despite his association with the abolitionist cause, Adams said that he personally favored ending only the slave trade. Samuel F. Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York, 1956); Leonard L. Richards, The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams (New York, 1986); Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life (New York, 1997). 10. Douglass successfully fled slavery in Baltimore, Maryland, on 3 September 1838, briefly seeking refuge first in New York City and soon thereafter in New Bedford, Massachusetts. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 71–74. 11. Liberty Hall, as it would later be known, was built by the First Congregationalist Church in New Bedford. In 1795, the church was founded by William Rotch, Jr., but Liberty Hall was not built until the early nineteenth century. When the church moved into a larger building in the 1820s, the old building was sold, at which point it became known as Liberty Hall. Many famous abolitionists gave lectures there, including William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Ward Beecher. The former church bell was used to warn fugitive slaves about the arrival of slave catchers. Liberty Hall was destroyed in a fire on 18 October 1854. Zephaniah Pease, ed., History of New Bedford (New York, 1918), 192. 12. William Rotch, Sr. (1734–1828), was a whaling merchant in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He and his son, William Rotch, Jr. (1759–1850), were well-known abolitionists. Rotch Sr. periodically bought slaves’ indentures to help them pay for their freedom. Rotch Jr. was one of the founding members of the Providence Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, for the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race. Along with this, he was responsible for obtaining information on incidents of cruelty inflicted on slaves and crews on New England ships. Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 35–36; DAB, 8:186–87. 13. This wealthy New Bedford Quaker family was closely allied with the city’s Rotch family through ties of marriage and business. Orphaned in Newport, Rhode Island, Samuel Rodman, Sr. (1753–1835), was apprenticed there to a whaling and mercantile firm that also engaged in the slave trade. He married Elizabeth Rotch (1785–1856), the daughter of the wealthy merchant and whaler William Rotch, Sr. Rodman took over Rotch’s Nantucket whaling business and relocated it to New Bedford in 1798. Though a critic of slavery, Rodman was condescending in his attitudes toward New Bedford’s blacks. Elizabeth Rodman lent her social prominence to the antislavery activities of New Bedford women, such as signing a petition requesting Congress to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Their son, Samuel Rodman, Jr. (1792–1876), was devoted to the temperance and antislavery causes. In 1831, the younger Rodman hosted such early abolitionists as Benjamin Lundy and Arnold Buffum when they lectured in New Bedford. He ran the family whaling firm and owned a cotton mill in Fall River. He left the abolitionist ranks after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, when he sided with Daniel Webster on the need to obey congressional legislation as the price of union. Jones, Genealogy of the Rodman Family, 39–41, 70–71; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 6, 20–21, 36, 44, 123, 220–21, 284–85. 14. Douglass probably refers to Andrew Robeson (1787–1862), who had married into the wealthy Rodman family and relocated to New Bedford, where he prospered in the whaling and textile industries. In 1825, the city’s Quaker meeting denied him membership for unspecified reasons. Robeson was vice president of the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society in the 1830s, and he later became a staunch Garrisonian abolitionist and active Underground Railroad conductor. Osborne, Account of Andrew Robeson, 144–45; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 13, 22, 124, 158, 172, 181, 240, 281. 15. James B. Congdon (1802–73) was the first cashier of New Bedford’s Merchants Bank, founded in 1825. Often elected a city selectman, he held the post of city treasurer during the Civil War. Active in the Underground Railroad, Congdon helped recruit black volunteers for Union regiments. Crapo, New-Bedford Directory [1836], 26; Earl F. Mulderink, III, New Bedford’s Civil War (New York, 2012), 36, 96, 102, 262.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 445

9/1/21 4:17 PM

446

THE GREAT AGITATION

16. John Bailey (1788–1883) was a watchmaker, jeweler, Quaker, and longtime abolitionist in the New Bedford area. In 1843, he served as vice president of the Bristol County Anti-Slavery Society, and in the 1850s he served as vice president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In 1854, Bailey and other New Bedford abolitionists launched two antislavery newspapers, the Pathfi nder and the People’s Press. Lib., 16 June 1843; Ellis, New Bedford and Its Vicinity, 527–28; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:274–75. 17. The abolitionist and pacifist Henry Clarke Wright (1797–1870) was one of Garrison’s close associates. Raised in central New York, Wright served an apprenticeship as a hatmaker before studying at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1835, he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and served as one of Theodore Dwight Weld’s “seventy agents” until 1837, when the executive board of the American Anti-Slavery Society removed him because of his extreme opinions. About the same time, he gave up lecturing for the American Peace Society, which was also discomfited by his radicalism, and in 1838 he helped found the New England Non-Resistance Society. Nonresistance, the foundation of Wright’s reform philosophy, proclaimed the sovereignty of individual conscience and opposed all forms of coercion, violence, and the dominion of man over man. In practice, Wright condoned violent resistance to slavery, though he personally eschewed violence. From 1842 to 1847, he traveled in Europe, lecturing on nonresistance and abolitionism. His avowal of anti-Sabbatarian views in Scotland and his accusations (later retracted) that Free Churchmen were “drunkards” made Douglass chary of him. Douglass wrote, “Friend Wright has created against himself prejudices which I as an abolitionist do not feel myself called upon to withstand.” Wright later turned to spiritualism and helped organize the Universal Peace Union in 1867. He died in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Douglass to Richard D. Webb, 10 November 1845, Anti-Slavery Collection, Boston Public Library; Henry C. Wright to Douglass, 12 December 1846, in Lib., 29 January 1847; Henry C. Wright, Human Life: Illustrated in My Individual Experience as a Child, a Youth, and a Man (Boston, 1849); Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States: From the Colonial Era to the First World War (Princeton, N.J., 1968), 516–18, 532–600, 926–27; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 18–22, 60–61, 89–90, 159, 222–29, 234–38, 262, 278–82; ACAB, 6:623; NCAB, 2:232. 18. Born in Canterbury, New Hampshire, the radical abolitionist Stephen Symonds Foster (1809–81) studied at Dartmouth College. In 1837, a year before his graduation, he helped organize the New Hampshire Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society. Foster briefly attended Union Theological Seminary in New York, but by 1839 he had repudiated the ministry. He developed his criticisms of American churches most fully in The Brotherhood of Thieves; or, A True Picture of the American Church Clergy (1843). His practice of interrupting a church service to speak out against complicity with slavery frequently provoked violent reaction. Foster and his wife, Abby Kelley, whom he married in 1845, were agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society for nearly twenty years, but their relationship with the Garrisonians was at best one of strained cooperation. Although Foster believed that the Constitution was a proslavery document, he periodically dabbled in politics. In 1843–44, he endorsed the Liberty party. In the late 1850s, having altered his view of the nature of the Constitution, Foster sought to establish a disunion party “whose avowed aim . . . [would] be the overthrow of the government . . . & whose will . . . [would] be expressed through the ballot box.” In 1855, he argued in favor of slave rebellion in his Revolution the Only Remedy for Slavery. A proponent of distributing land to the freedmen, Foster was disappointed with federal Reconstruction policies. He devoted the last years of his life to agitating on behalf of temperance and women’s rights. Pillsbury, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, 123–55; Lillie B. Chace Wyman, “Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists,” New England Magazine, 27:536–50 (January 1903); Parker Pillsbury, “Stephen Symonds Foster,” Granite Monthly, 5:369–75 (August 1882); Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, Bound with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Antislavery Movement (Westport, Conn., 1972), 191–217; Louis Filler, “Parker Pillsbury: An Anti-Slavery Apostle,” NEQ, 19:315–37 (September 1946); ACAB, 2:514–15; NCAB, 2:328–29; DAB, 6:558–59. 19. James Needham Buffum (1807–87), born of Quaker parents in North Berwick, Maine, spent most of his life in Lynn, Massachusetts, where he amassed considerable wealth as a carpenter, house

Y7870-Douglass.indb 446

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

447

contractor, real estate speculator, and financier. Dissatisfied with Quaker passivity on reform issues, Buffum was an early convert to Garrisonianism and participated in the campaign to desegregate New England’s public transportation during the early 1840s. From 1845 through 1847, Buffum accompanied Douglass on a lecture tour of Great Britain. He served as treasurer of the Essex County AntiSlavery Society and vice president of a Fourierist organization called the Friends of Social Reform. During Reconstruction, he was director of Charles Stearns’s Laborers’ Homestead and Southern Emigration Society, which bought land in Virginia for resale to freedmen. Chosen a presidential elector in 1868, Buffum served as mayor of Lynn from 1869 to 1875, and in 1873 he was elected to the Massachusetts legislature. Clarence W. Hobbs, Lynn and Surroundings (Lynn, Mass., 1886), 141–42; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 3:324–25, 4:358; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:138n; Carleton Mabee, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War (London, 1970), 114, 119–21, 125, 210–11, 221, 225, 250, 342. 20. Edwin Thompson (1809–88) was a prominent antislavery lecturer. Born to a Quaker family in Lynn, Massachusetts, Thompson was exposed early to antislavery ideals and became an early temperance supporter. Ordained as a minister in the Universalist denomination in 1841, Thomson is best remembered for encouraging Frederick Douglass to begin his career as an antislavery lecturer. Thompson spent his life advocating for abolition and temperance until his death in Walpole, Massachusetts. Richard Eddy, ed., The Universalist Register (Boston, 1892), 91–92. 21. Nathaniel H. Whiting (c. 1806–?) was a shoemaker from Marshfield, Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Elected to the Massachusetts senate, Whiting advocated the establishment of the State Metropolitan Police. During the Hundred Conventions tour in the summer of 1843, Whiting, John Orvis, and John O. Wattles were scheduled to meet Douglass, Charles Remond, and John A. Collins in Syracuse. Whiting, Orvis, and Wattles were members of the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, led by John A. Collins, which pushed for reform of the entire economic system. Whiting also joined the utopian community in Skaneateles, New York, which Collins established to demonstrate that their theories of social reform could be put into practice. Whiting, however, left the Skaneateles commune in the winter of 1843, returning to his home in Marshfield. He remained active in the abolitionist cause into the 1850s. 1850 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Plymouth County, 159; Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Nineteenth Annual Report: Presented to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (Boston, 1851), 61; Lib., 16 June 1843; Lysander Salmon Richards, History of Marshfield, 2 vols. (Plymouth, Mass., 1901–05), 2:176; Thomas D. Hamm, God’s Government Begun: The Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, 1842–1846 (Bloomington, Ind., 1995), 88–90, 147–49. 22. The son of Josiah Quincy, a Boston Federalist leader and president of Harvard University, Edmund Quincy (1807–77) joined the abolitionists in response to the murder of Elijah Lovejoy in 1837. A close associate of William Lloyd Garrison, Quincy was the corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1844 to 1853. He served on many other abolitionist committees, contributed frequently to Garrisonian publications, and often edited the Liberator during Garrison’s absences. NS, 21 January 1848; Massachusetts Historical Society, Edmund Quincy and John Lothrop Motley, 6; NCAB, 6:93–94; DAB, 15:306–07. 23. An outspoken abolitionist orator, editor, and author, Parker Pillsbury (1809–98) was born in Massachusetts but later moved to Henniker, New Hampshire, where he farmed and worked as a wagoner until 1835. The local Congregational church encouraged him to pursue the ministry. Pillsbury graduated from New Hampshire’s Gilmanton Theological Seminary in 1838 and studied for an additional year at Andover before accepting a pulpit in Loudon, New Hampshire. Converted to abolitionism at Andover, Pillsbury incurred the displeasure of his congregation with sharp attacks on churches’ complicity with slavery. After his license to preach was revoked in 1840, he became a lecturing agent for the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and American antislavery societies for over two decades. He edited the Concord (N.H.) Herald of Freedom in 1840, 1845, and 1846 as well as the National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1866. A loyal Garrisonian, Pillsbury was sometimes even more demanding than Garrison himself regarding the necessity for purifying abolitionism of all tendencies toward expediency. He lectured widely, often in the company of Stephen S. Foster, and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 447

9/1/21 4:17 PM

448

THE GREAT AGITATION

earned a reputation for his successful use of nonresistance in dealing with hostile crowds. Although he served on the executive committee of the New Hampshire Non-Resistance Society, he was among the strongest defenders of John Brown after the Harpers Ferry raid. During the Civil War, Pillsbury criticized Union war aims, especially before issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, and in 1865 he broke with Garrison over the necessity for continued activity by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Pillsbury helped to draft the constitution of the feminist American Equal Rights Association in 1865, served as vice president of the New Hampshire Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1868 and 1869 he edited a weekly newspaper, Revolution, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Pillsbury completed his abolition memoirs, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, in 1883. Stacey M. Robertson, Parker Pillsbury: Radical Abolitionist, Male Feminist (Ithaca, N.Y., 2000); James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 59–60, 100–102, 305–07; Mabee, Black Freedom, 112, 221–23, 329; Filler, “Parker Pillsbury,” 315–37; DAB, 14:608–09. 24. A paraphrase of Cor. 14:8. 25. Garrison was no stranger to bounties when, in late 1835, an anonymous Marylander informed him of a $20,000 reward for his head offered by six unidentified Mississippians. On 30 November 1831, the Georgia legislature resolved to grant a $5,000 reward to persons responsible for his arrest and trial in that state. Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:247–49, 517; Walter M. Merrill, Against Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 53–54. 26. William Lloyd Garrison was imprisoned twice. First in Baltimore in 1830, when he was brought to court for calling Francis Todd, the owner of a ship that took part in the slave trade, a highway robber and a murderer in the Baltimore antislavery newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation. Todd took him to court on charges of printing libel, and the jury found Garrison guilty. Ordered to pay a $100 fine or go to jail, Garrison chose jail and spent six months in prison. The second time he was imprisoned was for his own protection. Garrison was attending an antislavery meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society in October 1835. An angry mob pursuing the visiting British antislavery activist George Thompson surrounded the hall. After letting the women depart, the mob searched for Thompson but settled on Garrison in his absence. The mob paraded Garrison through the streets of Boston with a rope tied about him. Mayor Harrison Gray Otis sent men to rescue Garrison and offered to protect him by putting him in prison if he agreed to plead guilty to disturbing the peace. Garrison agreed and spent the night in jail. Nick Fauchald, William Lloyd Garrison: Abolitionist and Journalist (Minneapolis, Minn., 2005), 45–47, 65–69; Leonard L. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York, 1970), 64; Merrill, Against Wind and Tide, 99–109. 27. A paraphrase of Heb. 13:3. 28. Douglass adapts the phrase “new heaven and new earth” from Isaiah 65:17, 66:22, 2 Peter 3:13, and Revelation 21:1. 29. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Lydia Maria Francis Child (1802–80) published the first of many novels, Hobomok, at age twenty-two. From 1826 to 1834, she edited the bimonthly Juvenile Miscellany, the first periodical for children published in the United States. She married David Lee Child (1794–1874) in 1828, and in 1831 both were drawn into the abolitionist movement by William Lloyd Garrison. Her Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833) was the first of a dozen antislavery books and pamphlets she wrote, which caused the popularity of her literary writings to decline drastically. A longtime officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Child edited its official newspaper, the New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, from 1841 to 1843. In addition to abolition, she supported most of the other humanitarian causes of the time with her never-idle pen. William S. Osborne, Lydia Maria Child (Boston, 1980); Milton Meltzer, Tongue of Flame: The Life of Lydia Maria Child (New York, 1965); ACAB, 1:603–04; NAW, 1:330–33. 30. The Boston Athenaeum is a well-known library that was founded in 1807 as a gentlemen’s reading room by members of a literary group known as the Anthology Society. From 1834 to 1860,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 448

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

449

the Athenaeum hosted the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, a group made up mostly of Unitarian women. Over the years, the society attempted to invite foreign abolitionists to speak to public assemblies at the Athenaeum, but these efforts were met by mob action. For example, George Thompson, a prominent British abolitionist, was scheduled to speak in 1835, but he was driven off by an upperclass mob. While Boston was a center of the abolitionist movement, it was also home to many people who made their fortunes from Southern cotton and were resistant to anything that would disrupt their businesses, including support for abolition. The society eventually dissolved because of infighting in 1860, but not before it accomplished much of note. The library still stands and currently houses over 500,000 volumes as well as a large art collection. Katherine Wolff, Culture Club: The Curious History of the Boston Athenaeum (Amherst, Mass., 2009), xi, 20–22, 111–12; The Boston Athenaeum (online). 31. Prudence Crandall (1803–90) was a prominent abolitionist from Connecticut. Raised as a Quaker, Crandall taught at a girls’ school in Canterbury, Connecticut. In 1831, she and her sister Almira purchased the Canterbury Female Boarding School. Although she was nervous about the reaction of the community, Crandall admitted a young African American girl named Sarah Harris in the fall of 1832. The backlash was immediate. When Crandall refused to dismiss Sarah Harris, the parents of the white students removed their daughters from the school. In response, Crandall ceased teaching white girls and started teaching only blacks. She advertised in William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator, and by April 1833 she had twenty students. The local community strenuously objected to the presence of a school for black children in the town. The school faced boycotts by local businesses; more dangerous were the mobs that destroyed school property, poisoned its well, and finally burned down the school. Crandall was thrown in jail, and a law was passed that prohibited schools from admitting black students from outside the state. Crandall was forced to close the Canterbury school on 10 September 1834 out of fear for her own safety and that of her students. She later married a Baptist preacher named Calvin Philleo and moved to several states before ending up in Kansas. While Crandall lived a private life after her school was shut down, she is well remembered as an early advocate of equal rights for blacks. Donald E. Williams, Jr., Prudence Crandall’s Legacy: The Fight for Equality in the 1830s, Dred Scott, and Brown v. Board of Education (Middletown, Conn., 2014), 29–31, 71–135; Suzanne Jurmain, The Forbidden Schoolhouse (New York, 2005), 11–14. 32. Myrtilla Miner (1815–64) was an abolitionist and teacher of African American girls. Born in New York, Miner was a well-educated woman who worked hard to overcome severe physical ailments, including a weak spine, to become an accomplished educator. Initially teaching in New York, she accepted a position at the Newton Female Institute in Whitesville, Mississippi, in 1847. While there, she was exposed to the horrors of slavery, since the school was near several large plantations. Miner first attempted to teach slaves during their limited free time, but was informed that this was illegal in Mississippi. She then resolved to form a school for young black girls in a location where it was permitted. When her Mississippi job ended, she founded the Normal School for Colored Girls in Washington, D.C. Local whites were upset at the presence of such a school, however, and she and her students were repeatedly threatened. Miner’s home was set on fi re, windows were shattered, and at one point an angry mob blocked access to the school. The school had to be relocated multiple times, and in 1857, Miner, in ill health, stepped down as its head. Alison Stewart, First Class (Chicago, 2013), 9–29; Patricia Ameson, Communicative Engagement and Social Liberation (Lanham, Md., 2014), 106–13. 33. The Noyes Academy was an interracial school established by abolitionists in Canaan, New Hampshire, in March 1835. The original student body consisted of seventeen black and twenty-eight white students. There is little information on the school’s day-to-day activities, but its purpose was to provide black and white students with a formal education equivalent to that offered by other colleges at the time. Unfortunately, on 10 August 1835, a mob of three hundred white citizens gathered and, using oxen, tore the building off of its foundation, dragged it to a swamp, and burned the debris. None of the students or faculty members were physically harmed; some, including Alexander Crummell and Henry Highland Garnet, would go on to become prominent leaders in the black community.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 449

9/1/21 4:17 PM

450

THE GREAT AGITATION

Moses, Alexander Crummell, 20–21; Hamilton Child, Gazetteer of Grafton County (Syracuse, N.Y., 1886), 233–34. 34. In Lower Manhattan on the north side of Chatham Street on Park Row between Pearl and Duane Streets, the Chatham Street Chapel was built by the architect George Conklin and opened as the Chatham Garden Theater on 17 May 1824. The theater, which had suffered under a string of owners and poor management, was eventually rented to Lewis Tappan and William Green, who invited the radical abolitionist minister Charles Grandison Finney to use the space as a church. Converted to the Free Presbyterian Chatham Street Chapel, it became a popular spot for musical revivals as well as weekly sermons. On 4 July 1834 an antislavery gathering was halted by rioters. During a reading of the Declaration of the Sentiments of Anti-Slavery Society, many in the crowd began to hiss and boo. As David Paul Brown attempted to speak, shouts of “Treason! Treason! Hurrah for the Union!” came from the crowd. To avoid violence, the meeting was dispersed. A previous attempted mobbing took place in October 1833, when about 1,500 people stood outside Clinton Hall, where Garrison and Arthur Tappan were scheduled to speak. Because of the large size of the crowd of potential rioters, the meeting secretly moved to Chatham Street Chapel. By the time the mob discovered the new location, the abolitionists had completed their meeting. The enraged rioters seized an African American man, labeled him “Arthur Tappan,” and proceeded to humiliate him by forcing him to preside over a mock meeting. Thomas Alston Brown, A History of the New York Stage: From the First Performance in 1732 to 1902, 3 vols. (New York, 1903), 1:84–90; Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, 2 vols. (Hartford, Conn., 1864–1866), 2:126; Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing,” 28–30. 35. During a heated week of antiabolitionist rioting and an attack on Tappan’s home in July 1834, a group of armed men, along with Tappan, were stationed at his store to protect it from a potential mob. On the night of 10 July, the expected mob descended and broke nearly every window. Fearing the protectors within, however, it eventually dispersed. The following day, Tappan and his supporters  barricaded the windows and doors to protect the store from further violence. Tappan, Life of Arthur Tappan, 211. 36. In a speech to the Senate on 17 July 1850, Daniel Webster discussed the prejudice among Massachusetts citizens regarding the kidnapping of fugitive slaves, describing it as “an exaggerated sense of the actual evil of the reclamation of fugitive slaves” that had been created by agitation from abolitionists. He stated further, “No drum-head, in the longest day’s march, was ever more incessantly beaten and smitten, than public sentiment in the North has been, every month, and day, and hour, by the din, and roll, and rub-a-dub of Abolition writers and Abolition lecturers. That is which has created the prejudice.” Webster, Writings and Speeches, 10:165. 37. John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson competed in a four-way contest for the presidency in 1824, with William Crawford and Henry Clay as the other candidates. Clay had successfully gotten Congress to pass a new tariff act that year that raised import taxes on items such as wool and cotton textiles, and certain agricultural and iron products, to protect American manufacturers that competed against cheaper British-made goods. The tariff issue did not figure significantly in that election. After no candidate achieved a majority in the Electoral College, Adams won through a decision of the House of Representatives. Adams and Jackson faced off in a bitter rematch in the 1828 election. In the interim, Congress passed another tariff act in 1828, commonly dubbed the “Tariff of Abominations” by its critics. In an effort to kill the measure, Southern congressmen had added provisions to raise rates on some imported raw materials desired by Northern manufacturers. The measure passed, nonetheless, to Southerners’ chagrin. Though worried about both the political and economic consequences of the bill, Adams signed it into law. Jackson skillfully managed to work both sides in the argument about the tariff and easily won the presidency. The Tariff of Abominations later caused one of the major controversies of Jackson’s administration when South Carolina attempted to nullify its enforcement in that state. As Douglass contended, the tariff issue featured in nearly every subsequent presidential contest, with Whigs and, later, Republicans supporting some degree of protectionism

Y7870-Douglass.indb 450

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

451

through tariffs, and with most Democrats opposing that policy. Lynn Hudson Parsons, The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828 (New York, 2009), 85–86, 154–58, 192–93; F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 8th rev. ed. (New York, 1964), 68–154. 38. Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), seventh president of the United States, was a famed soldier, duelist, and slaveholder from Tennessee. After serving with the Continental Army during the American Revolution, he studied law and was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1787. Seeking fortune in the West, he migrated to Tennessee, where he worked as a public prosecutor and attorney before entering politics. Jackson served as a Democratic-Republican in the House of Representatives (1795– 96) and in the Senate (1798–99, 1823–24, 1825–26). A western land speculator, he also engaged in commercial trade and used his growing wealth to build an imposing mansion he named the Hermitage. During the War of 1812, as a major general in the Tennessee militia, Jackson and his men pushed the Creek Indians from the state’s border. At the Battle of New Orleans, he gained national fame by stopping the British from taking the city. Jackson sought the presidency in 1824, and although he won the popular vote, he did not win a majority of electoral votes. When the House of Representatives voted John Quincy Adams the victor, Jackson charged that Speaker Henry Clay had made a “corrupt bargain” with Adams. With supporters rallied behind him as the representative of the “common man,” Jackson easily won the presidency in 1828 and 1832. By the end of his second term, a new political party, the Democrats, had emerged among his supporters. His opponents formed the Whig party, so named because many derisively called him King Andrew. Jackson’s presidency is associated with the rise of the “spoils system,” rewarding loyal supporters with political patronage. Among his controversial acts as president were his veto of the Second Bank of the United States, his signing of the Indian Removal Act, and his staunch defense of federal power during the 1832–33 Nullification Crisis, when South Carolina threatened to leave the Union over the Tariff of Abominations. Jackson retired to the Hermitage in 1837 but remained a major influence in the Democratic party. Robert Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson (New York, 2011); DAB, 9:526–34; ANB (online). 39. Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811–96) was the daughter of the outspoken New England Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher. Stowe, who began writing early in life, pioneered the use of slang and regional dialect in her works. She began writing the first installments of what was to become Uncle Tom’s Cabin in March 1851. The fictionalized account of slavery and the Underground Railroad was initially serialized in the Washington National Era from June 1851 through April 1852. Appearing in book form the next year, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly quickly achieved international success. About three hundred thousand copies were sold in America during the first year, and English sales ultimately exceeded one and a half million. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the first American novel to sell more than a million copies. Its success generated further interest in the antislavery movement in the North even as it deepened alienation in the South. Many blacks and abolitionists qualified their praise for the book on account of their disapproval of Stowe’s advocacy of colonization. Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York, 1941), 283–98; Claire Parfait, The Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852–2002 (Aldershot, Eng., 2007), 67–89, 203–06; Caskey, Chariot of Fire, 3–33, 169–207; Stuart C. Henry, Unvanquished Puritan: A Portrait of Lyman Beecher (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1973), 291; Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (New York, 1994). 40. 2 Cor. 13:8. 41. In July 1835, reports circulated in Charleston, South Carolina, of a large quantity of Northern antislavery literature arriving in the Southern states via U.S. mail. Following a public meeting, it was decided that the mail in question should be burned, and a mob proceeded to the post office to seize and “rifle through the mail.” Following this, the Charleston postmaster wrote to Postmaster General Amos Kendall, who sanctioned the actions of the mob. Kendall later proposed a bill to Congress that would outlaw the circulation of any literature discussing slavery. He also manipulated the regulations regarding mail operations in order to favor western newspapers, which generally supported Andrew

Y7870-Douglass.indb 451

9/1/21 4:17 PM

452

THE GREAT AGITATION

Jackson and the proslavery ideology. Donald B. Cole, A Jackson Man: Amos Kendall and the Rise of American Democracy (Baton Rouge, La., 2004), 200–201. 42. On 7 February 1842, the House of Representatives voted 106–93 regarding a motion to censure Adams for “antislavery agitation.” This attempt at censure was a result of Adams presenting a petition from Georgia citizens who demanded that he be removed as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, fully knowing that he would be allowed the floor to defend himself. Adams used the opportunity to lambaste proslavery Southern states during a time when the House had enacted a gag rule against debating slavery. Nagel, John Quincy Adams, 385. 43. In 1842, Giddings received congressional censure for his actions during negotiations with Great Britain over a slave revolt aboard the ship Creole. Giddings proposed nine resolutions to the House of Representatives on 21 March that, in essence, claimed that slavery was confined to jurisdictions that recognized its legality. Thus, once a ship carrying slaves left slave territory, those on board would no longer be bound by territorial jurisdiction. These resolutions incensed Southerners, who got the House to censure Giddings for presenting them. Following the successful censure vote, Giddings resigned, only to be overwhelmingly reelected by his northern Ohio constituents. W. Sherman Savage, “The Origins of the Giddings Resolutions,” Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly, 47:20–39 (1938); BDUSC (online). 44. During the period of the House of Representatives’ prohibitive gag rule on debates regarding slavery, Giddings chose to test the rule by discussing slavery within a parallel context. On 9 February 1841, using the Seminole Wars as his subject for a speech entitled “The Florida War,” Giddings argued that that war’s sole purpose was to sustain slavery. Joshua R. Giddings, Speeches in Congress (Boston, 1853), 1–30. 45. The son of a wealthy Kentucky slave owner, James Gillespie Birney (1792–1857) moved to Alabama in 1818. There he helped shape the antislavery features of the state’s new constitution and served one term in the state legislature. Birney was a leading colonizationist and advocate of gradual emancipation from the mid-1820s until 1834, when he publicly endorsed immediate emancipation and freed his six slaves. He published the antislavery newspaper the Philanthropist, first in Kentucky and then in Ohio. Birney served as executive secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in the late 1830s and as the Liberty party’s presidential candidate in 1840 and 1844. Betty Fladeland, James Gillespie Birney: Slaveholder to Abolitionist (1955; New York, 1969); NCAB, 2:312–13; DAB, 2:291–94. 46. On 1 January 1836, Birney began to publish his antislavery newspaper the Philanthropist in Cincinnati, Ohio, amid protests from Cincinnatians who supported slavery. On 22 January, 500–600 opponents of Birney came together and held an antiabolition meeting at the local courthouse. But they were unsuccessful in censoring Birney’s abolitionist press. Racial tensions were high in July 1836 in Cincinnati; whites were concerned that free blacks and fugitive slaves were taking jobs that would have otherwise been theirs. A race riot erupted on 5 July during an Independence Day celebration by African Americans, which was also attended by Birney. On 12 July 1836, a mob descended on the press where the Philanthropist was printed. They disassembled and removed the press and destroyed the following day’s issue of the paper. Undeterred, Birney continued to print his abolitionist newspaper. A second attack came on 30 July, when the press was dragged from the building and dumped into the Ohio River. The mob proceeded to Birney’s home, but he was out of town on a lecture trip. The rioters continued to attack the local African American community throughout July. Birney was not frightened by the multiple attacks on his press and continued to publish the Philanthropist until 1843. New Richmond (Ohio) Philanthropist, 29 January 1836; Fladeland, James Gillespie Birney, 130–33, 136–43; Middleton, Black Laws, 108. 47. British authorities in the Bahamas freed all the slaves aboard the American brig Creole, including those who had participated in the bloody revolt that had captured control of the ship from its white crew. Slaveholders called on the U.S. government to demand indemnification from the British for their lost property. Secretary of State Daniel Webster presented these claims, but he did not insist

Y7870-Douglass.indb 452

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

453

that they be addressed in the final negotiations. They were thus omitted from the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which dealt mainly with disputes about the U.S.-Canada boundary. After years of further discussion, the 1853 Treaty of Claims between the two nations called for a commission to study the matter, resulting in compensation of $110,330. EAA, 102–14. 48. Douglass refers to the attempts of the Venezuela native Narciso Lopez (c. 1798–1851) and his successor, John Quitman (1790–1858) from Mississippi, to invade Cuba in 1850–51 and 1853–55, respectively, as well as to the repeated efforts by the Tennessean William Walker (1824–60) to conquer Nicaragua from 1855 to 1860. Although these filibustering endeavors were a violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act of 1818, they were supported by proslavery expansionists. As Douglass put it in a speech on 22 May 1856, proslavery expansionists viewed the campaigns as a necessary step “towards the extension of Slavery over South America, the conquest of Cuba, and the final absorption of all the Caribbean.” Douglass Papers, ser 1, 3:117–18; Charles H. Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980), 42, 88, 175, 454–55; Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002), 27–29, 32, 47–48, 180, 256; ANB, 18:48–49. 49. Samuel Hoar (1778–1856) was a Concord lawyer and former Whig congressman (1835–37) who had opposed the recognition of the Texas Republic and supported the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1844, he was sent by the Massachusetts legislature to Charleston, South Carolina, to initiate a lawsuit against the latter state to end its practice of incarcerating free black seamen on ships entering its ports. He encountered threats of mob violence and a call by the South Carolina legislature for the state’s governor to forcibly expel him. Hoar fled South Carolina after eight days there. Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston, 1872–770), 1:576–86; NCAB, 22:454–55. 50. For numerous economic and political reasons, Southerners renewed the effort to revive the foreign slave trade in the 1850s. Proponents of revival argued that with the price of cotton suffering and the price of enslaved labored increasing, reopening the slave trade would alleviate the economic troubles of the South. It was believed that the price of slaves would fall, allowing for the easier acquisition of labor, increased productivity, and enhanced profits. Furthermore, an increase in the number of slaves would give Southern states more congressional representation, thanks to the Three-Fifths Compromise. Leonidas W. Spratt, editor of the Charleston Standard, began calling for the reopening of the slave trade in the pages of that newspaper beginning in 1853. In 1856, South Carolina governor James Adams unsuccessfully proposed that the state legislature reject the federal act that suppressed the African slave trade. Southern opponents of the proposed reopening agreed that although an increase in the number of slaves would reduce their price, such a move would hurt the overall wealth of slaveholders. They further felt it would be detrimental to nonslaveholding whites by creating more competition for them in the labor market. Slaveholders in the Upper South who sold their slaves farther south feared that slaves’ value would decrease so much that they would eventually be forced to abolish slavery because of its economic unviability. Opponents also based their objections to reopening the slave trade on racist assumptions about Africans. In an address to Congress in December 1859, for example, President James Buchanan warned that “the introduction of wild, heathen, and ignorant barbarians among the sober, orderly, and quiet slaves, whose ancestors have been on the soil for several generations . . . might tend to barbarize, demoralize, and exasperate the whole mass, and produce the most deplorable circumstances.” Divisions among Southerners ultimately meant that attempts to reopen the slave trade were not successful. Harper’s Weekly, 7 January 1860; Barton J. Berstein, “Southern Politics and Attempts to Reopen the African Slave Trade,” JNH, 51:16–35 (January 1966). 51. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. 52. Roger B. Taney. 53. The fifteenth U.S. president, James Buchanan (1791–1868), was born in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Dickinson College, he practiced law before beginning a political career

Y7870-Douglass.indb 453

9/1/21 4:17 PM

454

THE GREAT AGITATION

in 1820. At first a Federalist, he later joined the young Democratic party that formed around Andrew Jackson and rose to hold many elected and appointed offices, including terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. He served as U.S. ambassador to Russia and then Great Britain, and was secretary of state under President James K. Polk. After several unsuccessful attempts, Buchanan won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1856 as well as the subsequent three-way election. As Douglass charges, Buchanan worked very hard to bring the Kansas Territory into the Union as a slave state, even at the expense of dividing his own party, when Illinois senator Stephen Douglas and his followers balked at accepting the Lecompton Constitution. Buchanan’s poor handling of other sectional issues during his term contributed to the secession of eleven Southern states and the start of the Civil War under his successor, Abraham Lincoln. Philip S. Klein, President James Buchanan: A Biography (University Park, Pa., 1962); Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (Lawrence, Kans., 1975). 54. The injection of the slavery issue into the process of organizing a territorial government for Kansas only intensified the friction commonly found on the frontier when people competed for possession of newly opened lands. Encouraged by Senator David R. Atchison and other proslavery leaders, Missouri speculators, settlers, and frontiersmen who considered neighboring Kansas rightfully theirs formed secret organizations in the summer of 1854 to “assist in removing any and all emigrants” who came to Kansas under the auspices of free-state immigrant-aid societies. Shortly before the November 1854 election of a congressional delegate, Atchison, fearful that the proslavery side would lose, reminded Missourians that “when you reside within one day’s journey of the Territory, and when your peace, your quiet, and your property, depend upon your action, you can without an exertion send five hundred of your young men who will vote in favor of your institutions.” On Election Day, over 1,700 Missourians crossed the border to vote, many of them well armed and only a few making any effort to prove residency. Their action ensured victory for the proslavery candidate, even though the majority of bona fide settlers reportedly opposed him. Large numbers of Missourians again crossed the border to vote in the March 1855 election for the territorial legislature. Through intimidation, force, and illegal ballot counting, the proslavery men carried the election. Free Soilers protested the fraud, but Governor Andrew H. Reeder, in the presence of armed slavery men, validated the election certificates of most proslavery candidates. Returning east to warn the Pierce administration of potential violence, Reeder later condemned “the armed force from beyond her borders” that had “invaded, conquered, and subjugated” Kansas. Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, 8 vols. (New York, 1947–71), 2:306–11, 384–90; Potter, Impending Crisis, 199–204. 55. Charles Sumner. 56. Jonathan Walker (1799–1878) was a Northern abolitionist, honored in antislavery circles for his efforts to aid slaves in Florida to escape. A seaman, carpenter, and mechanic, Walker grew up on Cape Cod, converted to abolitionism in the 1830s, and lived with his family in Pensacola, Florida, for five or six years before returning to Massachusetts. While on a business trip to Pensacola in the summer of 1844, he agreed to use his boat to transport some slaves to the Bahamas. The party was intercepted on the Florida Gulf Coast by two Southern dredging boats. Walker was returned to Pensacola, where he was convicted of slave stealing, fined about $165, and branded on the palm of his right hand with the initials “SS” (slave stealer). He spent eleven months in jail before Northern abolitionists secured his release by paying his fines and jail fees. Walker died in Muskegon, Michigan. Jonathan Walker, Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker at Pensacola, Florida, for Aiding Slaves to Escape from Bondage (Boston, 1845); Filler, Crusade against Slavery, 164; ACAB, 6:329. 57. Douglass alludes to the arrest and imprisonment for one month of Margaret Crittendon Douglass (1822–?), an impoverished white woman, for the crime of educating free blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1854. Douglass had defended herself in court and later wrote a memoir of her experiences. Margaret Crittendon Douglass, Educational Laws of Virginia: The Personal Narrative of Mrs. Margaret Douglass: A Southern Woman, Who Was Imprisoned for One Month in the Common Jail Of Norfolk (Boston, 1854); Philip S. Foner and Josephine F. Pacheco, Three Who Dared: Pru-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 454

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

455

dence Crandall, Margaret Douglass, Myrtilla Miner—Champions of Antebellum Black Education (Westport, Conn., 1984), 57–95. 58. Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802–37) was killed in Alton, Illinois, on 7 November 1837 while defending his press from an antiabolitionist mob. The son of a Maine Presbyterian minister and a graduate of Waterville (now Colby) College, Lovejoy moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1827, to teach school and edit a Whig newspaper. After returning to the East to study at the Princeton Theological Seminary, Lovejoy began a Presbyterian newspaper in St. Louis that endorsed gradual emancipation. Local hostility drove Lovejoy to relocate his journalistic operation to Alton, where he endorsed the immediate abolitionism espoused by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Town leaders, fearful of their community gaining the reputation as an abolitionist center, organized mob violence to silence Lovejoy and his press. Abolitionists enshrined Lovejoy as a martyr. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing,” 100–11; David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828–1861: Toward Civil War (New York, 1998), 35; DAB, 11:434–36. 59. One of the most destructive acts of antiabolition violence resulted in the burning of Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hall during the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women on 17 May 1838. A mob of as many as fifteen thousand forced open the doors and set the building afire, resulting in $48,000 in insurance claims. Carol Faulkner, Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Philadelphia, 2011), 79; Grimsted, American Mobbing, 35–36. 60. Douglass alludes to some of the most controversial incidents in the history of the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. Boston had been convulsed by a series of captures, rescues, and renditions of runaway slaves shortly after the law’s passage. Frederick Wilkins, an escaped slave from Virginia popularly called Shadrach, was working as a waiter in a Boston restaurant when he was arrested by a U.S. deputy marshal on 15 February 1851. A mob rescued Shadrach from the courtroom of slave law commissioner George Ticknor Curtis and helped him reach safety in Canada. On 3 April 1851, an escaped slave named Thomas M. Sims was apprehended in Boston. Found to be a runaway by Curtis, Sims was escorted by 300 soldiers onto a navy brig to be returned to his Georgia master. In late spring 1854, a fugitive named Anthony Burns was arrested and ordered returned to a Virginia master. After abolitionists unsuccessfully attempted to rescue Burns, killing one guard, 1,500 volunteer militiamen and military detachments from Rhode Island and New Hampshire were deployed to ensure his departure from Boston aboard a revenue cutter. Marion Gleason McDougall and Albert Bushnell Hart, Fugitive Slaves, 1619–1865 (1891; New York, [1967]), 47–48; Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, The Fugitive Law and Anthony Burns: A Problem in Law Enforcement (Philadelphia, 1975); Campbell, Slave Catchers, 31, 106, 117–21, 148–54; Samuel Shapiro, “The Rendition of Anthony Burns,” JNH, 44:34–51 (January 1959); DANB, 80–81. 61. On 11 September 1851, the Maryland planter Edward Gorsuch, accompanied by a party of neighbors, attempted to recover two of his runaway slaves in Christiana, Pennsylvania. The fugitives had found refuge in the home of William Parker (1822–?), who had escaped slavery in 1839. Parker refused to turn over the fugitives to Gorsuch, and the predominantly black community rallied against the slave catchers. A fight broke out, during which Gorsuch was killed and the other whites were driven off. Parker and several other black participants in the affair fled to Canada, where they settled permanently. Douglass assisted Parker during his secret passage through Rochester. Thirtysix blacks and five whites were eventually indicted for treason, but none was successfully prosecuted. William Parker, “The Freedman’s Story,” Atlantic Monthly, 17:152–66 (February 1866), 17:276–95 (March 1866); Jonathan Katz, Resistance at Christiana: The Fugitive Slave Rebellion, Christiana, Pennsylvania, September 11, 1851—A Documentary Account (New York, 1974), 18–21, 27, 74–80, 92–103, 169–70, 234–35, 260–61, 279; Campbell, Slave Catchers, 99–101, 151–54. 62. Douglass alludes to the famous “Jerry Rescue” made at Syracuse on 1 October 1851. William Henry, a runaway from Missouri residing in Syracuse and commonly known as Jerry, was arrested and brought before the local fugitive slave commissioner. Abolitionists attending a Liberty party convention rescued Jerry from his captors and spirited him off to Canada. Although several of the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 455

9/1/21 4:17 PM

456

THE GREAT AGITATION

rescuers—including Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May, and Charles A. Wheaton—were indicted, only one was found guilty, and the rest of the cases were dropped. Abolitionists considered the Jerry Rescue a great victory and commemorated its anniversary with public speeches and festivals until the Civil War. Earl E. Sperry, The Jerry Rescue: October 1, 1851 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1924); Campbell, Slave Catchers, 101, 154–57; Gara, Liberty Line, 42, 111–12, 128, 132. 63. In a speech given on 7 February 1839, Henry Clay, remarking on the problems associated with abolition, estimated that the capital invested in slavery was $1,200 million dollars. Clay suggested that abolitionists raise enough capital to compensate Southerners for the proposed loss of their property in case slavery was abolished. Holly Springs (Miss.) Southern Banner, 2 March 1839. 64. Philem. 10:19. 65. George Washington. 66. Thomas Jefferson Rusk (1803–57) was born in Pendleton, South Carolina, to an Irish immigrant stonemason. With the advice and encouragement of John C. Calhoun, he studied law, and in 1825 he moved to Clarksville, Georgia, where he established a successful law practice. His involvement in a gold-mining swindle led to his subsequent resettlement in Nacogdoches, Texas. A delegate to the 1836 convention that declared Texas independence, he was then elected the new republic’s secretary of war. Shortly thereafter, he took over for the wounded General Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto and retained command of the army until October 1836, when he resumed the position of secretary of war. A member of the second Congress of the Republic, he was also elected major general of the militia and executed an aggressive Indian removal campaign in East Texas. In 1838, he was elected chief justice of the state supreme court. Rusk was president of the 1845 convention that confirmed the annexation of Texas to the United States and was subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. He was president pro tempore of that body in 1857, the year of his death by suicide. Douglass recounted being introduced to Rusk in an 1872 address delivered in South Carolina. He stated that Horace Greeley had introduced him to Rusk twenty-five years prior. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:320; Mary Whatley Clarke, Thomas J. Rusk: Soldier, Statesman, Jurist (Austin, Tex., 1971); Cleburne Huston, Towering Texan: A Biography of Thomas J. Rusk (Waco, Tex., 1971); Lois Foster Blount, “A Brief Study of Thomas J. Rusk Based on His Letters to His Brother, David, 1835–1856,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 34:181–202 (January 1931); BDAC, 1641–42; ACAB, 5:351; NCAB, 3:113; DAB, 16:236–37. 67. Douglass recounted this incident similarly in Life and Times. The New York Central Railroad was established by the New York Central Consolidation Act of 2 April 1853, which merged ten of the state’s railroad branches into one corporate entity. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:362–63; Frank Walker Stevens, The Beginnings of the New York Central Railroad: A History (New York, 1926), 387–91. 68. This second incident of discrimination was reported by Douglass in Life and Times. Amy Post (1802–89) was born Amy Kirby in Jericho, New York. In 1828, she married Isaac Post, a druggist and the husband of her deceased sister. The Posts became involved with Garrisonian abolitionism and the Underground Railroad after they moved to Rochester in 1835. Amy also acted as a vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1850s and 1860s. Douglass first met the couple when he stayed at their home during a lecture tour in 1842, and their friendship influenced his choice of Rochester as the base for his newspaper the North Star. In addition to abolitionism, Amy Post participated in a broad range of reforms, including the women’s movement, which began at the convention that she helped organize in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 116–17, 119–20, 140, 143, 184, 230–31; Blake McKelvey, “Civic Medals Awarded Posthumously,” Rochester History, 22:10 (April 1960). 69. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 70. John Henry Clifford (1809–76) was a lawyer in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass mentions working as Clifford’s hired servant during his first winter of freedom. Although Douglass disagreed with Clifford’s political conservatism, the two remained friendly throughout their lives. Clifford served in the Massachusetts legislature and as the state at-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 456

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE GREAT AGITATION

457

torney general. He retired from politics and law in 1867 to become the president of the Boston & Providence Railroad. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:232–33, 397n; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 146, 175; NCAB, 1:657; DAB, 4:215–16. 71. The Eastern Railroad extended from East Boston through the Massachusetts towns of Lynn, Salem, and Newburyport, connecting with the Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth Railroad at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1842, the line merged with the larger Boston and Maine Railroad. George Pierce Baker, The Formation of the New England Railroad Systems: A Study of Railroad Combination in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), 147–49. 72. Douglass previously wrote of the support of Wendell Phillips and Professor James Monroe when faced with discrimination and forced segregation aboard railroads and steamers. In Life and Times, he wrote that Phillips “would never go into a first-class car while I was forced into what was called the Jim Crow car,” and that Monroe was known to “pull his coat about him and crawl upon the cotton bales between the decks and pass the night with me, without a murmur.” Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:173–74. 73. James Monroe (1821–98), a Connecticut Quaker, appeared with Douglass as one of the featured speakers at the tenth annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City on 9 May 1843. In 1839, Monroe had abandoned plans to attend college in order to lecture for the American Anti-Slavery Society. After three years he resumed his education, fi rst attending Yale and then transferring to Oberlin. He began teaching at Oberlin while still an undergraduate and earned a theology degree from the institution in 1849. Monroe’s continued activism on behalf of African Americans led to a political career. He served in the Ohio legislature (1856–62), acted as a diplomat to Brazil during the Civil War, and won a seat in Congress during Reconstruction. NASS, 18 May 1843; Lib., 19 May 1843; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:422–23n; Catherine Rokicky, “A Life of Public Service: James Monroe of Oberlin, 1821–1898” (unpublished paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Oberlin Historical and Improvement Organization, 25 April 2001). 74. As part of a Garrisonian lecturing campaign known as the “One Hundred Conventions,” Douglass traveled extensively in the summer of 1843. On 4 September, he spoke in Oakland, Ohio, at the annual meeting of the Garrisonian Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society, which had been launched the previous year. Anticipating that the group would be banned from using the local Quaker meetinghouse, the Indiana abolitionist Abraham Brooke had constructed a large shed, dubbed “Liberty Hall,” on his farm to host the convention. Hamm, God’s Government Begun, 70–76; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:416–19, 422. 75. A mob attacked Douglass in Pendleton, Madison County, Indiana, on the morning of 16 September 1843. The previous day, Douglass, William A. White, and George Bradburn had spoken at Pendleton’s Baptist Church, despite rumors and threats from an excited “mob of thirty or more people,” many of whom were “very much intoxicated.” The next morning, with law-and-order resolutions posted prominently throughout the town, Douglass and his colleagues addressed an outdoor meeting on the wooded banks of nearby Fall Creek, where local Quakers had set up makeshift seats and stands. Menacing hecklers set upon the abolitionist trio, demolishing the speaker platform and attacking its occupants. The mob then focused its wrath on Douglass, pursuing and severely beating him. The bleeding and unconscious Douglass was taken to the farm of Mr. and Mrs. Neal Hardy, a Quaker couple, who treated Douglass’s broken right hand and other injuries. Because the bones were not properly set, the hand never regained its “natural strength and dexterity.” NASS, 18 September, 19 October 1843; Lib., 13 October 1843; Mary Howitt, “Memoir of Frederick Douglass,” People’s Journal, 2:302–05 (November 1846); Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad, 187–88; Samuel Harden, comp., History of Madison County, Indiana: From 1820 to 1874 (Markville, Ind., 1874), 203–05; John L. Forkner and Byron H. Dyson, eds., Historical Sketches and Reminiscences of Madison County (Anderson, Ind., 1897), 749–53; J. J. Netterville, Centennial History of Madison County, Indiana, 2 vols. (Anderson, Ind., 1925), 1:321–22; Lloyd Lewis, “Quaker Memories of Frederick Douglass,” Negro Digest, 5:37–41 (September 1974).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 457

9/1/21 4:17 PM

458

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

76. Micajah C. White (1819–89) was born in North Carolina to Isaac White and Louisa Bunden. The White family settled in Indiana in 1827 and became founding members of the Spiceland Quaker Meeting. White was active in the Indiana abolitionist movement and participated in the Underground Railroad. He was the nephew of Catharine White, the wife of Levi Coffin, an important leader of the Underground Railroad in Indiana and Ohio. The only known account of Micajah’s involvement with the Underground Railroad was an event that took place in 1850. A fugitive slave woman was hidden from slave hunters in a tavern owned and operated by Micajah’s mother, Louisa. After dressing the woman in her clothing, she escorted her to Micajah’s home, where the fugitive was later further assisted to freedom. According to contemporary accounts of the 1843 Pendleton mob, Micajah’s two front teeth were knocked out by a thrown brickbat. St. Paul (Minn.) Globe, 31 March 1889; Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, 229; Hamm, God’s Government Begun, 132; “Underground Railroad Sites: Hamilton County,” Historic Preservation & Archeology, Department of Natural Resources, Indiana (online). 77. Born into a prominent family in Watertown, Massachusetts, William Abijah White (1818–56) graduated from Harvard University in 1838 and then studied law. He abandoned a legal career to advocate such reforms as abolition and temperance. In 1843, Douglass, club in hand, charged the platform at Pendleton, Indiana, when a mob assaulted his speaking companion, White, and lacerated his scalp. On behalf of the temperance cause, White owned and edited the New Englander, the Excelsior, and the Washingtonian. In 1854, White migrated to Wisconsin, where he became an ardent Republican party leader. Lib., 5 June 1857; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 3:101; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:422n.

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT (1890) New York Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper, 29 November 1890. Other texts in Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 16, frames 448–70, FD Papers, DLC.

Condemning the Republicans for passing unpopular tariff increases and expanding federal government spending, the Democrats regained firm control of the House of Representatives and made gains in the Senate in the 1890 election. Democrats gained 86 seats in the House and led the chamber with 238 members, compared to only 86 Republicans. Democrats also increased their Senate members by 4, holding 39 seats to 47 Republicans. Douglass’s loyalty to the Republican party was unwavering, even while he disagreed with the party’s declining commitment to racial equality in the later part of the nineteenth century. In Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper, a pro-Republican newspaper started in 1855, Douglass appears to straddle the line between Republican loyalty and criticism. Jeffrey A. Jenkins and Charles Stewart III, Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government (Princeton, N.J., 2013), 275–79; Louis L.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 458

9/1/21 4:17 PM

458

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

76. Micajah C. White (1819–89) was born in North Carolina to Isaac White and Louisa Bunden. The White family settled in Indiana in 1827 and became founding members of the Spiceland Quaker Meeting. White was active in the Indiana abolitionist movement and participated in the Underground Railroad. He was the nephew of Catharine White, the wife of Levi Coffin, an important leader of the Underground Railroad in Indiana and Ohio. The only known account of Micajah’s involvement with the Underground Railroad was an event that took place in 1850. A fugitive slave woman was hidden from slave hunters in a tavern owned and operated by Micajah’s mother, Louisa. After dressing the woman in her clothing, she escorted her to Micajah’s home, where the fugitive was later further assisted to freedom. According to contemporary accounts of the 1843 Pendleton mob, Micajah’s two front teeth were knocked out by a thrown brickbat. St. Paul (Minn.) Globe, 31 March 1889; Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, 229; Hamm, God’s Government Begun, 132; “Underground Railroad Sites: Hamilton County,” Historic Preservation & Archeology, Department of Natural Resources, Indiana (online). 77. Born into a prominent family in Watertown, Massachusetts, William Abijah White (1818–56) graduated from Harvard University in 1838 and then studied law. He abandoned a legal career to advocate such reforms as abolition and temperance. In 1843, Douglass, club in hand, charged the platform at Pendleton, Indiana, when a mob assaulted his speaking companion, White, and lacerated his scalp. On behalf of the temperance cause, White owned and edited the New Englander, the Excelsior, and the Washingtonian. In 1854, White migrated to Wisconsin, where he became an ardent Republican party leader. Lib., 5 June 1857; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 3:101; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:422n.

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT (1890) New York Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper, 29 November 1890. Other texts in Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 16, frames 448–70, FD Papers, DLC.

Condemning the Republicans for passing unpopular tariff increases and expanding federal government spending, the Democrats regained firm control of the House of Representatives and made gains in the Senate in the 1890 election. Democrats gained 86 seats in the House and led the chamber with 238 members, compared to only 86 Republicans. Democrats also increased their Senate members by 4, holding 39 seats to 47 Republicans. Douglass’s loyalty to the Republican party was unwavering, even while he disagreed with the party’s declining commitment to racial equality in the later part of the nineteenth century. In Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper, a pro-Republican newspaper started in 1855, Douglass appears to straddle the line between Republican loyalty and criticism. Jeffrey A. Jenkins and Charles Stewart III, Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government (Princeton, N.J., 2013), 275–79; Louis L.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 458

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

459

Gould, America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1914 (New York, 2013), 4–6.

The defeat experienced by the Republican party and the victory gained by the Democratic party in the late Congressional election, giving to the latter the absolute control of the Fifty-second Congress, are, considering the character, composition, and antecedents of these respective organizations, and what each has heretofore stood for in the public mind, proper subjects for thought and study by men of all shades of political opinion. Ordinarily the failure or success of one party to elect its candidates to office, Congressional or otherwise, has but little interest or significance for any except the victorious or defeated candidates themselves. Happily for the peace and orderly proceeding of the country, the rule of the majority, honestly obtained and properly made known under the regulations prescribed by law, is readily accepted and acquiesced in by good men of all parties; for all understand that this is a fundamental condition of the continued existence of free institutions. Sectional factions may rise and sectional factions may fall, but woe to the land when the nation as a whole shall turn its back upon this majority principle, and when the American people can no longer confide in the purity of the ballot-box and cease to yield ready obedience to the legitimate decisions of the majority. It is not the present purpose, however, to discuss here the general question of majority rule or the philosophy of our free institutions, but to consider and learn, if we may, such lessons of wisdom as the late election may be fitted to teach. The first thought suggested by it is the moral and political independence of the people. No more striking example of this is to be found in the political history of the country than is furnished by this late election. It speaks to us of the instability of party power, and the inability of party machinery to control the people’s choice. The lesson that it is fitted to teach is that parties are the servants of the people, and that the people are free to admonish, rebuke, or dismiss them at pleasure, whenever, in their judgment, they may have become unworthy or inefficient. The present election may not be taken as a final dismissal of the Republican party, but as a sharp reprimand and warning to which it will do well to take heed, lest it shall be followed by a further chastisement and a deeper humiliation than that already inflicted. The Republican party is recognized as an old servant, and has been in many respects a very useful one, but it is now

Y7870-Douglass.indb 459

9/1/21 4:17 PM

460

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

reminded that old servants are apt to be filled with an undue sense of their importance, and to think that their masters have a greater need of them than they have of their masters. It therefore may be well for the Republican party, now and then, to have some such striking example of the power and independence of the people as was manifested in the late election, to keep it in the line of its duty. The severity of the chastisement in this instance is magnified when we consider the high place held in the confidence and affection of the people by the party rebuked. None had ever had a better chance of receiving continued approval and retention in power. It had embraced the opportunity afforded by the nation’s hour of peril to prevent the dismemberment of the country, to abolish slavery, and to wash out in blood the foulest stain that ever disgraced the nation. Its illustrious record is known by every school-boy, and its patriotism is a part of the nation’s history. Yet here, with a suddenness almost unexampled, it is hurled from power and its place given to a party hitherto supposed to represent entirely opposite views and opinions. There has been no such sudden and emphatic transference of political power from one party to another since that of fifty years ago. Like the Republican party now, the Democratic party had then been the favorite for many years. General Jackson1 had invested its name with his own heroic qualities, and for a time it seemed invincible; but the prestige of Jackson could not save the party under Mr. Van Buren,2 and it went down under a storm of popular enthusiasm. This was, however, due not so much to hostility to Mr. Van Buren as to admiration for his rival. Men supported General Harrison,3 therefore, without a why or a wherefore. The political campaign that bore him to power was one of “brass bands,” “hard cider,” “log cabins,” “coon skins,” and song-singing. It was a period of sights and sounds, when men’s eyes and ears and appetites were appealed to rather than their brains. Women in those days were seldom seen at political meetings. As the country grows older its elections become more thoughtful and decorous. The merits of men and of parties are more closely investigated and more severely judged. It has therefore become increasingly important that parties be led by conscientious men, by men of noble sentiments and sound convictions. The American people have never had any permanent use for mere tricksters and pretenders, and less now than ever. Candidates and parties are expected to live up to their professions, and not to say one thing in their platforms and do the opposite thing, or nothing at all, when they get into power. Various causes have been assigned for the startling

Y7870-Douglass.indb 460

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

461

and overwhelming defeat of the Republican party, and more is said of this defeat than of the Democratic victory. Following this tendency in the discussion, and attaching more importance to what has been lost than to what has been won, the remarks here offered will more concern the friends of the Republican party than those of the Democratic party. In accounting for the defeat, many causes are assigned. It is said that the tariff caused it; that the failure to enforce the civil service laws4 caused it; that partiality for wealthy corporations caused it; that the ruling of Speaker Reed5 caused it; that it was brought about by the disposition of the people to change their rulers, and that these causes, it is contended, are, together with the coldness and indifference born of the disappointment felt by office-seekers who failed to get office under the new Administration, amply sufficient to explain the defeat in question. Admitting that there is truth in these explanations, they do not appear to tell the whole truth, nor indeed the most important truth. Neither of the reasons given, nor all of them combined, are quite sufficient to explain why there has been this great falling away from the Republican party. While it cannot be doubted that the anti-protection and free-trade idea has made much progress during the last few years, and that it exerted some influence in the late election,6 it cannot be made to explain this crushing defeat of the Republican party, for the Democrats have made their most remarkable gains in States hitherto most favorably disposed towards protection. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, both by interest and tradition, are strong protection States. Then, as to civil service! Who would change his vote from the Republican party to the Democratic party in the honest purpose of purifying the civil service or of rescuing it from party rule?7 The motto of that party is, “To the victor belong the spoils!”8 and it has practiced what it preached.9 When did the Democratic party exhibit more respect for the civil-service laws than did the Republican party? As to the ruling of Speaker Reed, judging from his triumphant election and his power on the stump, where he was everywhere accorded ovations, he brought more votes to the party than were driven from it. His ruling brought strength rather than weakness to the Republican party. But it is said that the Republican respect for the moneyed institutions of the country brought on this disaster, and in answer it may well enough be shown that the Democratic party is not less wanting in respect for such institutions than their opponents. Contempt for riches is not a vice or a virtue of either party. The prosperity of the country is alike the object of both parties. Some weight may be given to the argument based upon

Y7870-Douglass.indb 461

9/1/21 4:17 PM

462

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

the natural disposition of the people to change their rulers simply for the sake of change, but this can operate powerfully only where there is no grand principle involved in an election on which the people are divided, and when one party is thought to be as good as the other, or when the differences between them are so slight that it matters very little which shall prevail. In determining the cause of failure or success of a party regard must be had, not only to the external obstacles it has to encounter, but to its internal power of resistance. Weakness within is added to strength to what opposes without. Soundness at the center is essential to soundness at the circumference. The measure of the one is the measure of the other. A party, like an army, must have some one grand, vital, animating, and allabsorbing object or idea, some central principle of its life to which all other considerations are subordinate, and to this it must be true and steadfast in every emergency if it would hold its members firmly in its ranks. Its cohesive power resides in its integrity, zeal, and consistency. It cannot afford to play fast and loose, or in any way compromise with opponents by seeking some middle ground of similarity and diminishing the distance between it and the opposing party. Like the church in Revelations, it must be either hot or cold.10 If it is neither the one nor the other it will be repudiated by earnest men on both sides. The Republican party started into being with justice, liberty and humanity as its vital and animating spirit. The conscience of the country clustered about it and made it. It included all men, of whatever race or color, within its beneficent range and excluded none. In this spirit it stood for the Union against secession and rebellion. In this spirit, at the close of the war, it stood for reconstruction of the States and the unification of the nation on the basis of equal rights for all of the nation, and it was never stronger than when maintaining this central idea. It is said that the Lodge bill11 and the Blair Educational bill12 were the cause of the stampede from the party in the late election. On the contrary, it would be much easier to show that the timid and halting support given to those great measures by the party in power was the cause of its defeat. The American people love and admire a manly adherence to principle; a brave avowal of the logical conclusions from just premises, rather than a timid and shrinking apology for them. The Republican party appears to best advantage in a square fight. The spirit that made the negro a voter should have supported the Lodge bill, intended to protect the negro in the exercise of the franchise, and the same spirit should have animated the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 462

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

463

party in support of the still more important Blair Educational bill. Splitting hairs about the Constitution and local self-government never looked well in the mouth of anybody, much less in the mouths of Republicans. They found Constitutional warrant for saving the Union and reconstructing the States on a basis of justice, liberty, and equal rights, against all clamor of that kind, and they might have found equal support in the Constitution for the Lodge bill and the Education bill. Even a bad cause, when honestly and openly supported, stands some chance of gaining respect. How much more a good cause. Mr. Calhoun, standing up for the right to enslave, buy, sell, and whip negroes, commanded a certain measure of respect for himself, if not for his opinions.13 He was at least consistent! He was none of your milk-and-water, lukewarm, neither-hot-nor-cold men, trying to win support by conceding away his premises and denying the logical conclusions from them. The Republican party has never fully recovered from the disastrous attitude it assumed fourteen years ago under the well-intended leadership of President Rutherford B. Hayes. By the policy then adopted, justice was sacrificed to peace, honor to expediency, and courage to cowardice. Its Southern friends were deserted and its Southern enemies courted, inviting disgust and indignation in the one, contempt and ridicule in the other, yet utterly failing in securing the conciliation sought. Since then earnest men in the party have endeavored to recover the high ground lost by this damning departure from political rectitude and party fidelity. The earnest exposure by Senator William E. Chandler14 of the fraud and violence by which the elective franchise has been overthrown and the Constitution violated fell upon the ear of the party without producing any sensible effect. The fair elections bill, so ably advocated by Mr[.] Cabot Lodge,15 and the Educational bill, earnestly and persistently pressed by Senator Blair, both measures in the line of the objects professedly sought by the Republican party, failed of successful support, and both were set aside in furtherance of a purely economical measure. These are the things which weakened the hold which the Republican party once had on the conscience of the country, and invited the punishment which has now fallen upon it. Had the speakers in the last Republican canvass been able to point to the adoption of the Blair Educational bill and the Lodge bill in fulfillment of the solemn pledges of the platform adopted at Chicago,16 the result in the late election might have been different. The success of the Republican party does not depend mainly upon its economical theories. Its strength lies in another direction. Its appeal is to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 463

9/1/21 4:17 PM

464

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

the conscience of the nation, and its success is to be sought and found in firm adhesion and fidelity to the humane and progressive ideas of liberty and humanity which called it into being. It cannot cope with the Democratic party by descending to the Democratic level. It must not abandon its Southern friends to conciliate its Southern enemies, or hope to rise to power over the bridge of broken promises and repudiated pledges. Over the gateway of its platform it promised to purify the ballot-box, and the question that history will put to it will be: “Why did you not do it?” FREDERICK DOUG LASS 1. Andrew Jackson. 2. Martin Van Buren (1782–1862), eighth president of the United States, began his career as a lawyer in New York. Van Buren represented Columbia County in the New York senate in 1812, developing a political rivalry with DeWitt Clinton. In 1815, he was appointed state attorney general, but in 1819, Clinton supporters ousted him for his opposition to funding the Erie Canal. Van Buren challenged his rivals by building a Democratic-Republican organization known as the Bucktails. During Clinton’s second term as governor, the Bucktails gained control of the state legislature and appointed Van Buren to the U.S. Senate in 1821. With designs on national politics, Van Buren campaigned on behalf of Andrew Jackson in 1828. Elected governor of New York that same year, Van Buren resigned when Jackson appointed him U.S. attorney general in 1829. In this post, Van Buren developed an intense rivalry with Vice President John C. Calhoun. In 1832, Van Buren became Jackson’s running mate for vice president as a reward for his loyalty and political skill. He then gained Jackson’s support to succeed him in the Oval Office in 1836. Although Van Buren tried to continue Jackson’s policies, he lost popularity following the Panic of 1837, when his enemies blamed him for the country’s economic woes. Failing to be reelected, Van Buren retired to New York in 1841. In 1848, his opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories gained in the Mexican War returned him to politics as the Free Soil party candidate for president; he received 10 percent of the vote. In the 1850s, once more a Democrat, he endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and gave uneasy support to the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Cole, Martin Van Buren; ANB (online). 3. William Henry Harrison (1773–1841), the son of a Virginia planter, gained national prominence as a military leader in the Northwest Territory in the decades after the American Revolution. After resigning his commission in 1798, Harrison embarked on a successful political career in the Old Northwest, first as secretary of the Northwest Territory, then as the territory’s representative to Congress, and finally as governor of Indiana and superintendent of Indian Affairs. Harrison favored the introduction of slavery into Indiana and called a special convention to consider the possibility in 1802. Territorial disputes with Native Americans drew Harrison back into the military, and he attracted national attention after his defeat of the western confederacy led by Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe Creek in 1811. During the War of 1812, as a brigadier general in charge of the Indiana and Illinois frontier, Harrison won a decisive victory against the British and their Native American allies, for which he was awarded a congressional gold medal. Between 1816 and 1828, Harrison served in Congress and the Ohio state senate. Following a failed bid to become John Quincy Adams’s vice presidential running mate in 1828, Harrison accepted an appointment as ambassador to Colombia, a post he held until 1830. In 1840, Harrison ran for president as a Whig, with John Tyler as his running mate, spawning the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too.” His status as a war hero and an Indian fighter fueled his “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” campaign, in which he was portrayed as a hero of the common man. Harrison, however, died of pneumonia on 4 April 1841, after serving only one month as president. Norma Lois Peterson, The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler (Lawrence, Kans., 1989), 17–43; DAB, 8:348–51; ANB (online).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 464

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

465

4. In 1883, Congress enacted the Pendleton Civil Service Act to check the abuses of the patronage system in government employment. The problem nevertheless persisted and caused defections from Republican to Democratic party ranks in the North throughout the 1880s. Benjamin Harrison pledged to follow a merit system in his appointments, but found he still had to placate his supporters’ claims for office. The heavily partisan appointment policy conducted by Harrison’s post office department created a public scandal that assisted Democrats in regaining control of Congress in the 1890 election. Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter, The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison (Lawrence, Kans., 1987), 32–36, 39–41; Anne Chieko Moore, Benjamin Harrison: Centennial President (New York, 2006), 83, 86. 5. Thomas Bracket Reed (1839–1902), a Republican congressman from Maine, twice held the speakership of the House of Representatives, 1889–91 and 1895–99. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1860, he studied law, and in 1865 he was admitted to the bar. Reed served as state legislator (1868–70), attorney general for Maine (1870–72), and city solicitor for Portland (1874–77). He was elected as a Republican to the Forty-fifth Congress and served eleven terms before his resignation on 4 September 1899. Under his leadership, the power of the Speaker was greatly increased through the introduction of a modified parliamentary procedure known as Reed’s Rules, leading some to call him “czar.” The restructuring of procedural rules limited debate and allowed the enactment of Republican-supported measures, including the McKinley tariff, which passed in May 1890. Under Reed’s leadership, the House passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and increased federal spending to over $988 million, earning the body the nickname the “Billion Dollar Congress.” Reed’s leadership was widely blamed for the Democratic takeover of the House in 1890. When Republicans regained the House in 1896, Reed was restored as Speaker. He opposed the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii. He retired from Congress in 1899, practicing law in New York until his death. Samuel W. McCall, The Life of Thomas Bracket Reed (Boston, 1914); Randall Strahan, “Thomas Brackett Reed and the Rise of Party Government,” in Roger H. Davidson, Susan Webb Hammond, and Raymond W. Smock, eds., Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership over Two Centuries (Boulder, Colo., 1998), 48–57; DAB, 15:456–59; ANB (online). 6. Advocates of free trade gained a strong voice among voters and politicians in the Southern and Western states in the elections of 1888 and 1890. The rapidly growing industrialization goals in these areas made it increasingly difficult for Republicans to pass off tariff protection as a measure in the nation’s best interests. Democrats urged national support for tariff reduction, and in the South they aimed to suppress African American Republican votes in order to force the free-trade agenda. In 1888, House Ways and Means Committee chair Roger Q. Mills of Texas introduced a tariff reduction measure, the Mills Tariff Bill, which passed the House on a partisan vote, virtually eliminating the remaining Democratic support for protection. The bill failed to pass the Senate, but the issue dominated the 1888 presidential election, in which the Democrat Grover Cleveland defeated the longtime tariff advocate Benjamin Harrison. What the Mills Bill Is: A Comparative Table Showing the Rate of Duty Now Paid, with an Estimate of the Rate to be Collected under the Proposed Bill (New York, 1888), 3; Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 220–22. 7. Concern over the spoils system split the Republican party for several successive congressional terms beginning with the 1884 election. Reform-minded Republicans rejected the candidacy of James G. Blaine and instead supported the Democrat Grover Cleveland, whom they viewed as more committed to civil service reform. Many Massachusetts Republicans joined the ranks of so-called Mugwumps and voted for Cleveland and then later formally changed parties. Factions allied with the Democrats—such as the Greenback party, which urged a move to non-gold-backed paper currency— created fusion governments in several states, including Massachusetts. In the 1890 election, Massachusetts elected the Democrat William Russell as governor and sent seven Democratic congressmen to Washington, gaining five seats for the party overall. Daniel Klinghard, The Nationalization of American Political Parties, 1880–1896 (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 85–87; Lisa Disch, The Tyranny of the Two-Party System (New York, 2002), 41.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 465

9/1/21 4:17 PM

466

THE CAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT

8. During Senate debate on 21 January 1832 over the confirmation of President Van Buren’s nominee for ambassador to Great Britain, New York senator William L. Marcy declared that the politicians of the United States “see nothing wrong in the rule, that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.” Gales and Seaton’s Register of Debates in Congress, 22d Cong., 1st sess., 1325. 9. Love’s Labour’s Lost, sc. 1, line 834. 10. Douglass paraphrases Rev. 3:15–16: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” 11. The Federal Elections Bill, also known as the Lodge Force Bill of 1890, was penned by Massachusetts congressman Henry Cabot Lodge. It proposed appointing federal supervisors to oversee congressional elections and was primarily aimed at protecting African American suffrage in Southern states. Election supervisors’ duties would include inspecting voter registration lists, overseeing the registration and voting processes, and certifying vote counts. Although supported by President Benjamin Harrison, the highly partisan measure suffered defeat by filibuster in the Democraticcontrolled Senate. New York Times, 7 July 1890; Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 237–41. 12. In 1881, Republican senator Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire proposed a measure to secure federal support for public education, which had long been dependent on local or state funding. As part of a plan to distribute support in proportion to state illiteracy rates, the bill would have funneled two-thirds of the proposed amount to Southern states, where literacy rates lagged behind those in the North or West. Despite initial bipartisan support, Southern whites raised objections after then-senator Benjamin Harrison amended the measure to guarantee that common schools would be provided to all children, regardless of race. The bill passed the Senate on 7 April 1884, but Speaker John G. Carlisle of Kentucky blocked its introduction in the House. Although the Senate passed the bill twice more, in 1886 and 1888, it never reached a vote in the House, and the measure failed to become law. New York Times, 25 September 1889; Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 198–200. 13. A longtime defender of slavery, Calhoun argued throughout his political career that the institution provided a positive benefit and offered “the best guarantee for equality among the whites.” He also consistently maintained that Congress held no power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. In his final speech before the Senate, on 4 March 1850, delivered less than a month before his death, Calhoun argued that the exclusion of slavery from the territories gained through the Mexican War had prompted a national crisis. John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union (Baton Rouge, La., 1988), 85, 204; H. Lee Cheek, John C. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches (Washington, D.C., 2003), 685–93. 14. The Republican politician William E. Chandler of New Hampshire was an outspoken opponent of abandoning Reconstruction. As a newspaper publisher in the 1870s and 1880s, he penned a series of letters exposing electoral violence in the South and publicly criticized Rutherford B. Hayes’s Southern policy. Douglass and other abolitionists lauded his actions, with William Lloyd Garrison offering a written endorsement when Chandler reproduced the letters in pamphlet form. Chandler was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1887 and served until 1901. William E. Chandler, Letters of Mr. William E. Chandler Relative to the So-called Southern Policy of President Hayes (Washington, D.C., 1878), 3–6; ANB (online). 15. Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts wrote the Federal Elections Bill of 1890, or the Lodge Force Bill, and lobbied unsuccessfully for its passage in the House of Representatives. Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 237–41. 16. Douglass refers to the platform adopted at the 1888 Republican National Convention, held 19–25 June in Chicago. Republicans did not clearly endorse the Blair Education Bill in their platform but instead offered a platitude: “The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us a free Nation; therefore, the State or Nation, or both combined, should support free institutions of learning sufficient to afford every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good common school education.” On the matter of protecting the African American franchise, the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 466

9/1/21 4:17 PM

TO JOE DOUGLASS FROM GRANDPA

467

platform was more forthright, demanding “effective legislation to secure the integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority” and charging that “the present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot by a criminal nullification of the Constitution and laws of the United States.” “Republican Party Platform of 1888,” 19 June 1888, The American Presidency Project (online).

TO JOE DOUGLASS FROM GRANDPA (1891) Douglass to Rosetta Sprague Douglass, 18 May 1891, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 201–02, FD Papers, DLC.

Another of Douglass’s surviving manuscript poems in the possession of the Library of Congress was incorporated in a letter he wrote to his daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague, dated 18 May 1891, while he was stationed in Port-au-Prince as the U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Haiti. After explaining that he would be returning to his Cedar Hill home later than expected for a summer’s leave to escape the Caribbean’s summer heat, Douglass expressed warm regard for several of his grandchildren, who were becoming young adults. He related to Rosetta that he regularly received letters from his grandson Joseph Henry Douglass, recounting his growing skill as violinist. Douglass devoted a full page of his four-page letter to reproducing the poem below, which, he told Rosetta, he had recently sent to Joseph.

To Joe. Douglass from grandpa. I think of you every day my boy, Though time is precious you know, But I cannot forget my lofty joy, When under the spell of your bow. The violin, in your hands my boy, Is a thing of life and love, Its strains so free from Earth’s alloy Transports my soul above. Improve your holy gift my boy All tempting ease dispise. The happy hours you thus imploy

Y7870-Douglass.indb 467

9/1/21 4:17 PM

TO JOE DOUGLASS FROM GRANDPA

467

platform was more forthright, demanding “effective legislation to secure the integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority” and charging that “the present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot by a criminal nullification of the Constitution and laws of the United States.” “Republican Party Platform of 1888,” 19 June 1888, The American Presidency Project (online).

TO JOE DOUGLASS FROM GRANDPA (1891) Douglass to Rosetta Sprague Douglass, 18 May 1891, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 201–02, FD Papers, DLC.

Another of Douglass’s surviving manuscript poems in the possession of the Library of Congress was incorporated in a letter he wrote to his daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague, dated 18 May 1891, while he was stationed in Port-au-Prince as the U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Haiti. After explaining that he would be returning to his Cedar Hill home later than expected for a summer’s leave to escape the Caribbean’s summer heat, Douglass expressed warm regard for several of his grandchildren, who were becoming young adults. He related to Rosetta that he regularly received letters from his grandson Joseph Henry Douglass, recounting his growing skill as violinist. Douglass devoted a full page of his four-page letter to reproducing the poem below, which, he told Rosetta, he had recently sent to Joseph.

To Joe. Douglass from grandpa. I think of you every day my boy, Though time is precious you know, But I cannot forget my lofty joy, When under the spell of your bow. The violin, in your hands my boy, Is a thing of life and love, Its strains so free from Earth’s alloy Transports my soul above. Improve your holy gift my boy All tempting ease dispise. The happy hours you thus imploy

Y7870-Douglass.indb 467

9/1/21 4:17 PM

468

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

May help your race to rise. You live not for yourself my boy We are all included, one. Be not thou then a merry toy There’s noble work to be done. Let perfection be your aim Joe High hopes are on you flung Let no man sweeter draw the bow, On violin sweeter strung.

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: INSIDE HISTORY OF THE NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I. (1891) North American Review, 153:337–45 (September 1891). Other text in Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:441–48.

Douglass campaigned heavily for the victorious Republican presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison in 1888. As a reward for those services to the party, he applied twice in 1889 for his old position as recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia. Instead, Harrison gave Douglass the post of minister resident and consul general to Haiti, a nation just emerging from a revolution in which its dictator was overthrown. As part of his new role, Douglass was given the diplomatic task of acquiring Môle-St.-Nicolas in that country, a strategically valuable site for a deepwater naval port. This assignment proved to be racked with political backdoor dealing and shady diplomacy. In a probable slight to Douglass by the Harrison administration, Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi was sent to accompany Douglass as a negotiator. The presence of U.S. military officers reconnoitering the Môle, along with imperialistic barbs from the American press, aroused fresh Haitian nationalism, which made its government reluctant to make any concession. Rising interpersonal tensions between Douglass and Gherardi complicated the negotiation process. Any last chances for acquiring the Môle evaporated when the Haitians refused to be cowed by a huge fleet of U.S. ships assembled by Gherardi in the harbor of Port-au-Prince. With negotiations stalled, Douglass

Y7870-Douglass.indb 468

9/1/21 4:17 PM

468

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

May help your race to rise. You live not for yourself my boy We are all included, one. Be not thou then a merry toy There’s noble work to be done. Let perfection be your aim Joe High hopes are on you flung Let no man sweeter draw the bow, On violin sweeter strung.

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: INSIDE HISTORY OF THE NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I. (1891) North American Review, 153:337–45 (September 1891). Other text in Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:441–48.

Douglass campaigned heavily for the victorious Republican presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison in 1888. As a reward for those services to the party, he applied twice in 1889 for his old position as recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia. Instead, Harrison gave Douglass the post of minister resident and consul general to Haiti, a nation just emerging from a revolution in which its dictator was overthrown. As part of his new role, Douglass was given the diplomatic task of acquiring Môle-St.-Nicolas in that country, a strategically valuable site for a deepwater naval port. This assignment proved to be racked with political backdoor dealing and shady diplomacy. In a probable slight to Douglass by the Harrison administration, Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi was sent to accompany Douglass as a negotiator. The presence of U.S. military officers reconnoitering the Môle, along with imperialistic barbs from the American press, aroused fresh Haitian nationalism, which made its government reluctant to make any concession. Rising interpersonal tensions between Douglass and Gherardi complicated the negotiation process. Any last chances for acquiring the Môle evaporated when the Haitians refused to be cowed by a huge fleet of U.S. ships assembled by Gherardi in the harbor of Port-au-Prince. With negotiations stalled, Douglass

Y7870-Douglass.indb 468

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

469

took a leave of absence and returned to the United States, resigning from his post soon after. Blamed in the press for the failure to obtain the lease for the Môle, Douglass prepared two essays for the North American Review to defend his performance. Myra Himelhoch, “Frederick Douglass and Haiti’s Môle St. Nicolas,” JNH, 56:161–80 (July 1971); Merline Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy in the Caribbean,” Journal of Black Studies, 13:457–75 (June 1983); Louis Martin Sears, “Frederick Douglass and the Mission to Haiti, 1889–1891,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 21:222–38 (May 1941).

I propose to make a plain statement regarding my connection with the late negotiations with the government of Haïti for a United States naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas.1 Such a statement seems required, not only as a personal vindication from undeserved censure, but as due to the truth of history. Recognizing my duty to be silent while the question of the Môle was pending, I refrained from making any formal reply to the many misstatements and misrepresentations which have burdened the public press unchallenged during the last six months. I have, however, long intended to correct some of the grosser errors contained in these misrepresentations, should the time ever come when I could do so without exposing myself to the charge of undue sensitiveness and without detriment to the public interest. That time has now come, and there is no ground of sentiment, reason, or propriety for a longer silence, especially since, through no fault of mine, the secrets of the negotiations in question have already been paraded before the public, apparently with no other purpose than to make me responsible for their failure. There are many reasons why I would be gladly excused from appearing before the public in the attitude of self-defense. But while there are times when such defense is a privilege to be exercised or omitted at the pleasure of the party assailed, there are other times and circumstances when it becomes a duty which cannot be omitted without the imputation of cowardice or of conscious guilt. This is especially true in a case where the charges vitally affect one’s standing with the people and government of one’s country. In such a case a man must defend himself, if only to demonstrate his fitness to defend anything else. In discharging this duty I shall acknowledge no favoritism to men in high places, no restraint but candor, and no limitation but truth. It is easy to whip a man when his hands are

Y7870-Douglass.indb 469

9/1/21 4:17 PM

470

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

tied. It required little courage for these men of war to assail me while I was in office and known to be forbidden by its rules to write or to speak in my own defense. They had everything their own way. Perhaps it was thought that I lacked the spirit or the ability to reply. On no other ground of assurance could there have been such loose and reckless disregard of easily ascertained facts to contradict them. It is also obvious that the respectability of the public journals, rather than the credibility of the writers themselves, was relied upon to give effect to their statements. Had they disclosed their names and their true addresses, the public could have easily divined a motive which would have rendered unnecessary any word of mine in self-defense. It would have become evident in that case that there was a premeditated attempt to make me a scapegoat to bear off the sins of others. It may be noted, too, that prompt advantage has been taken of the fact that falsehood is not easily exposed when it has had an early start in advance of truth. As mindful of some things as they were, however, they forgot that innocence needs no defense until it is accused. The charge is, that I have been the means of defeating the acquisition of an important United States naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas. It is said, in general terms, that I wasted the whole of my first year in Haïti2 in needless parley and delay, and finally reduced the chances of getting the Môle to such a narrow margin as to make it necessary for our government to appoint Rear-Admiral Gherardi3 as a special commissioner to Haïti to take the whole matter of negotiation for the Môle out of my hands. One of the charitable apologies they are pleased to make for my failure is my color; and the implication is that a white man would have succeeded where I failed. This color argument is not new. It besieged the White House before I was appointed Minister Resident and Consul-General to Haïti. At once and all along the line, the contention was then raised that no man with African blood in his veins should be sent as minister to the Black Republic.4 White men professed to speak in the interest of black Haïti; and I could have applauded their alacrity in upholding her dignity if I could have respected their sincerity. They thought it monstrous to compel black Haïti to receive a minister as black as herself. They did not see that it would be shockingly inconsistent for Haïti to object to a black minister while she herself is black. Prejudice sets all logic at defiance. It takes no account of reason or consistency. One of the duties of minister in a foreign land is to cultivate good social as well as civil relations with the people and government to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 470

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

471

which he is sent. Would an American white man, imbued with our national sentiments, be more likely than an American colored man to cultivate such relations? Would his American contempt for the colored race at home fit him to win the respect and good-will of colored people abroad? Or would he play the hypocrite and pretend to love negroes in Haïti when he is known to hate negroes in the United States,—aye, so bitterly that he hates to see them occupy even the comparatively humble position of Consul-General to Haïti? Would not the contempt and disgust of Haïti repel such a sham? Haïti is no stranger to Americans or to American prejudice. Our white fellow-countrymen have taken little pains to conceal their sentiments. This objection to my color and this demand for a white man to succeed me spring from the very feeling which Haïti herself contradicts and detests. I defy any man to prove, by any word or act of the Haïtian Government, that I was less respected at the capital of Haïti than was any white minister or consul. This clamor for a white minister for Haïti is based upon the idea that a white man is held in higher esteem by her than is a black man, and that he could get more out of her than can one of her own color. It is not so, and the whole free history of Haïti proves it not to be so. Even if it were true that a white man could, by reason of his alleged superiority, gain something extra from the servility of Haïti, it would be the height of meanness for a great nation like the United States to take advantage of such servility on the part of a weak nation. The American people are too great to be small, and they should ask nothing of Haïti on grounds less just and reasonable than those upon which they would ask anything of France or England. Is the weakness of a nation a reason for our robbing it? Are we to take advantage, not only of its weakness, but of its fears? Are we to wring from it by dread of our power what we cannot obtain by appeals to its justice and reason? If this is the policy of this great nation, I own that my assailants were right when they said that I was not the man to represent the United States in Haïti. I am charged with sympathy for Haïti. I am not ashamed of that charge; but no man can say with truth that my sympathy with Haïti stood between me and any honorable duty that I owed to the United States or to any citizen of the United States. The attempt has been made to prove me indifferent to the acquisition of a naval station in Haïti, and unable to grasp the importance to American commerce and to American influence of such a station in the Caribbean Sea. The fact is, that when some of these writers were in their

Y7870-Douglass.indb 471

9/1/21 4:17 PM

472

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

petticoats, I had comprehended the value of such an acquisition, both in respect to American commerce and to American influence. The policy of obtaining such a station is not new. I supported Gen. Grant’s5 ideas on this subject against the powerful opposition of my honored and revered friend Charles Sumner, more than twenty years ago, and proclaimed it on a hundred platforms and to thousands of my fellow-citizens. I said then that it was a shame to American statesmanship that, while almost every other great nation in the world had secured a foothold and had power in the Caribbean Sea, where it could anchor in its own bays and moor in its own harbors, we, who stood at the very gate of that sea, had there no anchoring ground anywhere. I was for the acquisition of Samana,6 and of Santo Domingo herself, if she wished to come to us. While slavery existed, I was opposed to all schemes for the extension of American power and influence. But since its abolition, I have gone with him who goes farthest for such extension. But the pivotal and fundamental charge made by my accusers is that I wasted a whole year in fruitless negotiations for a coaling-station at the Môle St. Nicolas, and allowed favorable opportunities for obtaining it to pass unimproved, so that it was necessary at last for the United States Government to take the matter out of my hands, and send a special commissioner to Haïti, in the person of Rear-Admiral Gherardi, to negotiate for the Môle. A statement more false than this never dropped from lip or pen. I here and now declare, without hesitation or qualification or fear of contradiction, that there is not one word of truth in this charge. If I do not in this state the truth, I may be easily contradicted and put to open shame. I therefore affirm that at no time during the first year of my residence in Haïti was I charged with the duty or invested with any authority by the President of the United States, or by the Secretary of State,7 to negotiate with Haïti for a United States naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas, or anywhere else in that country. Where no duty was imposed, no duty was neglected. It is not for a diplomat to run before he is sent, especially in matters involving large consequences like those implied in extending our power into a neighboring country. Here, then, let me present the plain facts in the case. They, better than anything else I can say, vindicate my conduct in connection with this question. On the 26th of January, 1891, Rear-Admiral Gherardi, having arrived at Port au Prince,8 sent one of his under-officers on shore to the United States Legation,9 to invite me on board of his flagship, the Philadelphia.10

Y7870-Douglass.indb 472

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

473

I complied with the invitation, although I knew that, in strict politeness, it would have been more appropriate for Admiral Gherardi himself to come to me. I felt disinclined, however, to stand upon ceremony or to endeavor to correct the manners of an American admiral. Having long since decided to my own satisfaction that no expression of American prejudice or slight on account of my color could diminish my self-respect or disturb my equanimity, I went on board as requested, and there for the first time learned that I was to have some connection with negotiations for a United States coaling-station at the Môle St. Nicolas; and this information was imparted to me by Rear-Admiral Gherardi. He told me in his peculiarly emphatic manner that he had been duly appointed a United States special commissioner; that his mission was to obtain a naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas; and that it was the wish of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Tracy,11 and also of the President of the United States, that I should earnestly co-operate with him in accomplishing this object. He further made me acquainted with the dignity of his position, and I was not slow in recognizing it. In reality, some time before the arrival of Admiral Gherardi on this diplomatic scene, I was made acquainted with the fact of his appointment. There was at Port au Prince an individual, of whom we shall hear more elsewhere, acting as agent of a distinguished firm in New York, who appeared to be more fully initiated into the secrets of the State Department at Washington than I was, and who knew, or said he knew, all about the appointment of Admiral Gherardi, whose arrival he diligently heralded in advance, and carefully made public in all the political and business circles to which he had access. He stated that I was discredited at Washington, had, in fact, been suspended and recalled, and that Admiral Gherardi had been duly commissioned to take my place. This news was sudden and far from flattering. It is unnecessary to say that it placed me in an unenviable position, both before the community of Port au Prince and before the government of Haïti. It had, however, the advantage, so far as I was able to believe anything so anomalous, of preparing me for the advent of my successor, and of softening the shock of my fall from my high estate. My connection with this negotiation, as all may see, was very humble, secondary and subordinate. The glory of success or the shame of defeat was to belong to the new minister. I was made subject to the commissioner. This was not quite so bad as the New York agent had prepared me to expect but it was not what I thought I deserved and what my position as minister called for at the hands of my government. Strangely enough, all my instructions concerning the Môle came to me through my newly

Y7870-Douglass.indb 473

9/1/21 4:17 PM

474

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

constituted superior. He was fresh from the face of our Secretary of State, knew his most secret intentions and the wants and wishes of the government, and I, naturally enough, received the law from his lips. The situation suggested the resignation of my office as due to my honor; but reflection soon convinced me that such a course would subject me to a misconstruction more hurtful than any which, in the circumstances, could justly arise from remaining at my post. The government had decided that a special commissioner was needed in Haïti. No charges were brought against me, and it was not for me to set up my wisdom or my resentment as a safer rule of action than that prescribed by the wisdom of my government. Besides, I did not propose to be pushed out of office in this way. I therefore resolved to co-operate with the special commissioner in good faith and in all earnestness, and did so to the best of my ability. It was first necessary, in furtherance of the mission of Admiral Gherardi, to obtain for him as early as possible an interview with Mr. Firmin, the Haïtian Minister of Foreign Affairs,12 and with His Excellency Florvil Hyppolite, the President of Haïti.13 This, by reason of my position as minister and my good relations with the government of Haïti, I accomplished only two days after the arrival of the admiral. Not even my accusers can charge me with tardiness in obeying in this, or in anything else, the orders of my superior. In acting under him I put aside the fact of the awkward position in which the officious agent had placed me, and the still more galling fact that the instructions I received had not reached me from the State Department in the usual and appropriate way, as also the fact that I had been in some degree subjected to the authority of an officer who had not, like myself, been duly appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate of the United States, and yet one whose name and bearing proclaimed him practically the man having full command. Neither did I allow anything like a feeling of offended dignity to diminish my zeal and alacrity in carrying out his instructions. I consoled myself with the thought that I was acting like a good soldier, promptly and faithfully executing the orders of my superior, and obeying the will of my government. Our first conference with President Hyppolite and his foreign secretary was held at the palace at Port au Prince on the 28th of January, 1891.14 At this conference, which was, in fact, the real beginning of the negotiations for the Môle St. Nicolas, the wishes of our government were made known to the government of Haïti by Rear-Admiral Gherardi; and I must do him the justice to say that he stated the case with force and ability. If anything was omitted or insisted upon calculated to defeat the object in view, this

Y7870-Douglass.indb 474

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

475

defect must be looked for in the admiral’s address, for he was the principal speaker, as he was also the principal negotiator. Admiral Gherardi based our claim for this concession upon the ground of services rendered by the United States to the Hyppolite revolution. He claimed it also on the ground of promises made to our government by Hyppolite and Firmin through their agents while the revolution was in progress, and affirmed that but for the support of our government the revolution would have failed. I supplemented his remarks, not in opposition to his views, but with the intention of impressing the government of Haïti with the idea that the concession asked for was in the line of good neighborhood and advanced civilization, and in every way consistent with the autonomy of Haïti; urging that the concession would be a source of strength rather than of weakness to the Haïtian Government; that national isolation was a policy of the past; that the necessity for it in Haïti, for which there was an apology at the commencement of her existence, no longer exists; that her relation to the world and that of the world to her are not what they were when her independence was achieved; that her true policy now is to touch the world at all points that make for civilization and commerce; and that, instead of asking in alarm what will happen if a naval station be conceded to the United States, it should ask, ‘What will happen if such a naval station be not conceded?’ I insisted that there was far more danger to be apprehended to the stability of the existing government from allowing the rumor to float in the air that it was about to sell out the country, than by granting the lease of the Môle and letting the country know precisely what had been done and the reasons in the premises for the same; that a fact accomplished carries with it a power to promote acquiescence; and I besought them to meet the question with courage. In replying to us, Mr. Firmin demanded to know on which of the two grounds we based our claim for the possession of this naval station. If it were demanded, he said, upon any pledge made by President Hyppolite and himself, he denied the existence of any such promise or pledge, and insisted that, while the offer of certain advantages had been made to our government, the government at Washington had not at the time accepted them. The letter in proof of the different view was, he said, only a copy of the original letter, and the original letter was never accepted by the American Government. This position of Mr. Firmin’s was resisted by Admiral Gherardi, who contended with much force that, while there was no formal agreement

Y7870-Douglass.indb 475

9/1/21 4:17 PM

476

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

consummated between the two governments, Haïti was nevertheless bound, since the assistance for which she asked had made Hyppolite President of Haïti. Without intending to break the force of the admiral’s contention at this point, I plainly saw the indefensible attitude in which he was placing the government of the United States in representing our government as interfering by its navy with the affairs of a neighboring country, covertly assisting in putting down one government and setting up another; and I therefore adhered to the grounds upon which I based our demand for a coaling-station at the Môle. I spoke in the interest and honor of the United States. It did not strike me that what was claimed by Admiral Gherardi to have been done—though I did not say as much—is the work for which the United States navy is armed, equipped, manned and supported by the American people. It was alleged that, though our government did not authorize Rear-Admiral Gherardi to overthrow Légitime15 and to set up Hyppolite as President of Haïti, it gave him the wink, and left him to assume the responsibility. I did not accept this as a foundation upon which I could base my diplomacy. If this was a blunder on my part, it was a blunder of which I am not ashamed, and it was committed in the interest of my country. At the close of this conference we were asked by Mr. Firmin to put into writing our request for the Môle, and the terms upon which we asked its concession. What followed will be told hereafter. FREDERICK DOUG LASS. 1. During the revolution, two generals, the French pawn Légitime and American protégé Hyppolite, vied for presidential succession; Légitime captured the presidency. The United States, under the imperialistic foreign policy of President Benjamin Harrison and Secretary of State James G. Blaine, saw a chance to compete with France for naval bases in the West Indies. The United States provided material aid to Hyppolite, and the general soon overthrew Légitime’s forces. As recompense, Harrison expected Hyppolite to lease Môle-St.-Nicolas, a strategic point in the Caribbean. (“Môle” means “breakwater” in French.) In 1889, Frederick Douglass, the new minister resident and consul general to Haiti, and co-negotiator Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi were instructed to acquire a lease on the Môle. In Haiti, Douglass was greeted affably by Hyppolite, who promised full cooperation, but circumstances soon turned against Douglass. The presence of U.S. officers reconnoitering the Môle, along with imperialist editorials in the American press, aroused Haitian nationalistic opposition to the transfer. The arrival of a huge U.S. fleet at Port-au-Prince proved to be the breaking point, and Haiti declined to lease the Môle. Sears, “Douglass and the Mission to Haiti,” 222–38; Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 161–80. 2. Douglass campaigned heavily for Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Seeking a reward, Douglass applied twice in 1889 for his former position as recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia. Instead, Harrison gave Douglass the post of minister resident and consul general to Haiti. In the company of his wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, Douglass took up residence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in October 1889.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 476

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

477

Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 161–80; Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy,” 457–75; Sears, “Douglass and the Mission to Haiti,” 222–38. 3. Bancroft Gherardi (1832–1903) was born in Jackson, Louisiana, to an Italian immigrant father and the sister of the historian and politician George Bancroft. He received a commission in the U.S. Navy in 1846, when his uncle was secretary of the navy. After five years of service, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1852. Following several assignments during the Civil War and thereafter, he rose to the rank of rear admiral and commanded the North Atlantic Squadron (1889–92). During the Haitian civil war of 1888–89, Gherardi advised the United States not to recognize the legitimacy of the blockade against ports controlled by Louis M. F. Hyppolite. At this time, Gherardi held many discussions with Hyppolite and his principal advisers and came to believe that in gratitude for U.S. policy toward the blockade, important concessions would be granted. In January 1891, the Harrison administration appointed Gherardi special commissioner to cooperate with Douglass in negotiating a treaty for the lease of Môle-St.-Nicolas as a naval coaling station. The State Department’s failure to provide Gherardi with the proper credentials, however, allowed the Haitians to extend the negotiations. Robert Debs Heinl and Nancy Gordon Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1971 (Boston, 1978), 309–10, 312–20; Logan, Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 413–14, 423–25, 439–52; EAAH, 2:106–07; ACAB, 2:633–34; DAB, 7:232. 4. Douglass’s appointment as minister to Haiti was not well received in the American press. Supportive editors in the black press protested that the position was beneath a man of Douglass’s stature. Black editors who disapproved of Douglass’s personal life or political choices argued that a younger man should have been selected for the post. The Northern press also criticized his mission to Haiti, claiming that the Haitian people would prefer to deal with a white man. Especially unkind to Douglass in this regard was the African American newspaperman T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the New York Age, who criticized the minister for supporting an interventionist agenda in Haiti. The mainstream press, including the New York Times, blamed Douglass for the failure to acquire a naval station at Môle-St.-Nicolas. During Douglass’s tenure as minister, the press often criticized him for appearing too sympathetic to the people of Haiti. His assertion that newspaper attacks were being fueled by the U.S. Navy had some credence. In an especially scathing attack on his ministry, the Times noted, “It is the general belief about the Navy Department that the diplomatic career of Frederick Douglass at Port au Prince is rapidly drawing to a close.” New York Times, 25 March, 4 June 1891; Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 164–65, 169–70. 5. Ulysses S. Grant. 6. Samaná Bay is located on the northeastern edge of the Dominican Republic near the Mona Passage, which joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Its deep harbor made it attractive as a potential naval base. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2731. 7. James G. Blaine served as secretary of state under Benjamin Harrison from 5 March 1889 until his resignation on 4 June 1892. DAB, 2:322–29. 8. Admiral Gherardi arrived in Port-au-Prince on 25 January 1891 and met with Douglass almost immediately. Although it cannot be confirmed that the meeting took place on 26 January, as Douglass recalls, this is most likely the correct date, given the time of Gherardi’s arrival and the haste he made in arranging the meeting with Douglass. Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 174. 9. The U.S. legation in Haiti was established in 1862 with the appointment of Benjamin F. Whidden as the first U.S. commissioner and consul general. Smaller than a modern embassy, a legation was often designated to facilitate international relations and house U.S. diplomatic officers in a small country. When diplomatic relations were firmly established between the United States and Haiti following the Civil War, the legation in Port-au-Prince generally accommodated the minister and several consular agents. During Douglass’s tenure in Haiti, the legation consisted of a small office facility with a public room for greeting visitors and a private room that served as his official office. Norma Brown, ed., A Black Diplomat in Haiti: The Diplomatic Correspondence of U.S. Minister Frederick

Y7870-Douglass.indb 477

9/1/21 4:17 PM

478

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART I

Douglass from Haiti, 1889–1891, 2 vols. (Salisbury, N.C., 1977), 1:10–18; James A. Padgett, “Diplomats to Haiti and Their Diplomacy,” JNH, 25:270–77 (July 1940). 10. The cruiser Philadelphia was built by William Cramp and Sons in Philadelphia in 1888 and launched 7 September 1889. The Philadelphia was the flagship of Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi during his command of the North Atlantic Squadron and during the negotiations for leasing Môle-St.Nicolas. The cruiser was removed from service and sold at public auction in 1927. James L. Mooney, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1959–81), 5:282–83. 11. Benjamin Franklin Tracy (1830–1915) was Benjamin Harrison’s secretary of the navy. During Reconstruction, Tracy served as a federal attorney for the Eastern District of New York and earned a seat on the New York Court of Appeals in 1881. Building on Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theory put forward in The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), Tracy convinced Harrison and Congress that a strong, technically advanced navy was necessary for the United States to defend itself against the great imperial nations of Europe and Asia. During Tracy’s four years as navy secretary, nineteen new state-of-the-art steel warships were commissioned. Of utmost importance to Tracy’s expansionist policy was the acquisition of naval bases around the world. One of Tracy’s prime targets for acquisition was Haiti’s deepwater harbor at Môle-St.-Nicolas, which was to be used as a refueling station for steamships. B. Franklin Cooling, Benjamin Franklin Tracy: Father of the Modern American Fighting Navy (Hamden, Conn., 1973); EAAH, 3:243–44; ANB, 21:791–94. 12. The Haitian statesman and author Anténor Joseph Firmin (1850–1911) was born in CapHaitien in northern Haiti. Firmin studied law and became the inspector of schools in Cap-Haitien. In 1881, he married Rosa Salnave, daughter of the former Haitian president Sylvain Salnave. Two years later, the Haitian government sent Firmin to France on a diplomatic assignment. In Paris, he was admitted to the Anthropological Society. His research led to the 1885 publication of perhaps the first systematic work of anthropology by a black scholar, The Equality of the Human Races, a direct response to the racist anthropological works of the nineteenth century, particularly the comte de Gobineau’s four-volume Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853–55). Firmin not only rejected Gobineau’s racial classifications as nonscientific and absurd, but also questioned the biological premise of race. Firmin’s work denied the notion of “pure races” and celebrated the inherent values of racial mixtures. He returned to Haiti in the midst of the civil war of 1888. Firmin served under Hyppolite as minister of finance, commerce, and foreign relations. In 1891, he played a key role in negotiations with U.S. minister to Haiti Frederick Douglass and Admiral Bancroft Gherardi to establish a U.S. naval base in Haiti’s deepwater harbor at Môle-St.-Nicolas. Firmin opposed leasing the Môle to the United States, arguing that if the Haitian government unconditionally surrendered sovereign territory to any foreign power, nationalist sentiment would grip the population and incite rebellion. He is now recognized as having played a critical role in keeping Môle-St.-Nicolas under Haitian control. Firmin was appointed minister to France in 1900, and two years later he returned to Haiti as the leader of an insurrection that was defeated by governmental forces at Port-au-Prince. After leading a second failed insurrection in 1910, Firmin died in nearby St. Thomas. EAAH, 2:19. 13. Louis Modestin Florvil Hyppolite (1827–96), son of a former Haitian minister, served in the Haitian military under two administrations before participating in a successful insurrection against President Etienne Félicité (Lysius) Salomon in 1888. After the assassination of the leading rebel, Séidé Télémaque, a bloody civil war erupted. Hyppolite commanded the northern forces of the nation against François-Denis Légitime, who held the loyalty of the south and the capital. Hyppolite eventually won this contest and was sworn in as president of Haiti on 17 October 1889. An able leader and diplomat, Hyppolite ruled Haiti for seven years by sharing de facto power with several regional warlords. He is remembered for his improvements to the nation’s public works. Hyppolite died while preparing to suppress a rebellion in the nation’s south. Robert I. Rotberg, Haiti: The Politics of Squalor (Boston, 1971), 96, 98–99; Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 244, 301–20; Roland I. Perusse, Historical Dictionary of Haiti (Metuchen, N.J., 1977), 54; EAAH, 2:135–38.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 478

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

479

14. Douglass’s recollection is correct. The formal opening of negotiations for Môle-St.-Nicolas began on the afternoon of 28 January 1891 at the presidential palace. Present at the three-hour conference were Douglass, Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, Lieutenant Huse (Gherardi’s interpreter), Prime Minister Antenor Joseph Firmin, and President Hyppolite. Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 174. 15. François-Denis Légitime (1842–1935) was the agricultural minister in the cabinet of the Haitian president Louis Félicité (Lysius) Salomon. When the latter was overthrown in August 1888, Légitime attempted to succeed him. The supporters of Louis M. F. Hyppolite disputed the legitimacy of Légitime’s election on 16 December 1888 as the fourteenth president of Haiti. At the start of the ensuing eight-month civil war, Légitime held control of only the capital and a portion of southern Haiti. The loyalty of the nation’s navy to Légitime, however, allowed him to declare a blockade of ports commanded by Hyppolite. His regime won recognition from the major European powers as the country’s legitimate government. Thanks in part to the U.S. refusal to recognize Légitime’s government or its blockade, Hyppolite’s strength grew. By the time President Benjamin Harrison finally recognized the authority of Légitime’s rule in June 1889, he controlled only the immediate area around Port-au-Prince. On 22 August 1889, Légitime conceded defeat and sailed into exile. He lived in Paris for a time but returned to Haiti in 1896, remaining there until his death. Jacques-Nicolas Léger, Haiti: Her History and Her Detractors (1907; Westport, Conn., 1970), 241–44; Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 229–301, 303–09; Logan, Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 397–99, 426–47.

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: INSIDE HISTORY OF THE NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II. (1891) North American Review, 153:451–59 (October 1891). Other text in Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:448–57.

The following is the second installment of Douglass’s two-part article defending his role in the failed U.S. negotiations with Haiti for the lease of a naval station at Môle-St.-Nicolas in 1891. Also in this article, Douglass gives the reasons for his response to a demand by the New York–based Clyde Steamship Company for additional reimbursement for supplies shipped to the rebel forces of Louis Modestin Florvil Hyppolite, the victor in the recent Haitian civil war. Again, Douglass justified his performance as a diplomat, in response to vehement criticism in the U.S. press. The following year, Douglass reproduced both articles in their entirety in the expanded second edition of his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York Times, 25 February, 25 March, 9 April 1891; New York Daily Tribune, 14 April, 26  August 1891; Joan Dayan, “A Few Stories about Haiti, or, Stigma Revisited,” Research in African Literatures, 35:169–72

Y7870-Douglass.indb 479

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

479

14. Douglass’s recollection is correct. The formal opening of negotiations for Môle-St.-Nicolas began on the afternoon of 28 January 1891 at the presidential palace. Present at the three-hour conference were Douglass, Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, Lieutenant Huse (Gherardi’s interpreter), Prime Minister Antenor Joseph Firmin, and President Hyppolite. Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 174. 15. François-Denis Légitime (1842–1935) was the agricultural minister in the cabinet of the Haitian president Louis Félicité (Lysius) Salomon. When the latter was overthrown in August 1888, Légitime attempted to succeed him. The supporters of Louis M. F. Hyppolite disputed the legitimacy of Légitime’s election on 16 December 1888 as the fourteenth president of Haiti. At the start of the ensuing eight-month civil war, Légitime held control of only the capital and a portion of southern Haiti. The loyalty of the nation’s navy to Légitime, however, allowed him to declare a blockade of ports commanded by Hyppolite. His regime won recognition from the major European powers as the country’s legitimate government. Thanks in part to the U.S. refusal to recognize Légitime’s government or its blockade, Hyppolite’s strength grew. By the time President Benjamin Harrison finally recognized the authority of Légitime’s rule in June 1889, he controlled only the immediate area around Port-au-Prince. On 22 August 1889, Légitime conceded defeat and sailed into exile. He lived in Paris for a time but returned to Haiti in 1896, remaining there until his death. Jacques-Nicolas Léger, Haiti: Her History and Her Detractors (1907; Westport, Conn., 1970), 241–44; Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 229–301, 303–09; Logan, Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 397–99, 426–47.

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: INSIDE HISTORY OF THE NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II. (1891) North American Review, 153:451–59 (October 1891). Other text in Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:448–57.

The following is the second installment of Douglass’s two-part article defending his role in the failed U.S. negotiations with Haiti for the lease of a naval station at Môle-St.-Nicolas in 1891. Also in this article, Douglass gives the reasons for his response to a demand by the New York–based Clyde Steamship Company for additional reimbursement for supplies shipped to the rebel forces of Louis Modestin Florvil Hyppolite, the victor in the recent Haitian civil war. Again, Douglass justified his performance as a diplomat, in response to vehement criticism in the U.S. press. The following year, Douglass reproduced both articles in their entirety in the expanded second edition of his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York Times, 25 February, 25 March, 9 April 1891; New York Daily Tribune, 14 April, 26  August 1891; Joan Dayan, “A Few Stories about Haiti, or, Stigma Revisited,” Research in African Literatures, 35:169–72

Y7870-Douglass.indb 479

9/1/21 4:17 PM

480

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

(Summer 2004); Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy,” 469; EAAH, 1:307–08. AT a meeting subsequent to the one already described,1 application for a United States naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas was made in due form to Mr. Firmin,2 the Haïtian Minister of Foreign Affairs. At his request, as already stated, this application was presented to him in writing. It was prepared on board the Philadelphia, the flagship of Rear-Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, and bore his signature alone. I neither signed it nor was asked to sign it, although it met my entire approval. I make this statement not in the way of complaint or grievance, but simply to show what, at the time, was my part, and what was not my part, in this important negotiation, the failure of which has unjustly been laid to my charge. Had the Môle been acquired, in response to this paper, the credit of success, according to the record, would have properly belonged to the gallant admiral in whose name it was demanded; for in it I had neither part nor lot. At this point, curiously enough, and unfortunately for the negotiations, the Haïtian Minister, who is an able man and well skilled in the technicalities of diplomacy, asked to see the commission of Admiral Gherardi and to read his letter of instructions. When these were presented to Mr. Firmin, he, after carefully reading them, pronounced them insufficient, and held that by them the government of the United States would not be bound by any convention which Haïti might make with the admiral. This position of Mr. Firmin’s was earnestly and stoutly opposed by Admiral Gherardi, who insisted that his instructions were full, complete, and amply sufficient. Unfortunately, however, he did not leave the matter in controversy without intimating that he thought that Mr. Firmin might be insincere in raising such an objection, and that he was urging it simply with a view to cause unnecessary delay. This was more like the blunt admiral than the discreet diplomat. Such an imputation was obviously out of place, and not likely to smooth the way to a successful proceeding; quite the reverse. Mr. Firmin insisted that his ground was well and honestly taken. Here, therefore, the negotiation was brought to a sudden halt, and the question for us then was, What shall be done next? Three ways were open to us: first, to continue to insist upon the completeness of the authority of Admiral Gherardi; second, to abandon the scheme of a naval station altogether; third, to apply to the government at Washington for the required

Y7870-Douglass.indb 480

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

481

letter of credence. It was my opinion that it was hardly worth while to continue to insist upon the sufficiency of the admiral’s papers, since it seemed useless to contend about mere technicalities; more especially as we were now in telegraphic connection with the United States, and could in the course of a few days easily obtain the proper and required papers. Besides, I held that a prompt compliance with the demand of the Haïtian Government for a perfect letter of credence would be not only the easiest way out of the difficulty, but the wisest policy by which to accomplish the end we sought, since such compliance on our part with even what might be fairly considered an unreasonable demand would make refusal by Haïti to grant the Môle all the more difficult. I did not understand Admiral Gherardi to combat this opinion of mine, for he at once acted upon it, and caused an officer from his flagship to go with me to my house and prepare a telegram to be sent to Washington for the required letter of credence. To this telegram he, two days thereafter, received answer that such a letter would be immediately sent by a Clyde steamer3 to Gonaïves,4 and thither the admiral went to receive his expected letter. But, from some unexplained cause, no such letter came by the Clyde steamer at the time appointed, and two months intervened before the desired credentials arrived. This unexpected delay proved to be very mischievous and unfavorable to our getting the Môle, since it gave rise among the Haïtian people to much speculation and many disquieting rumors prejudicial to the project. It was said that Admiral Gherardi had left Port au Prince in anger, and had gone to take possession of the Môle without further parley; that the American flag was already floating over our new naval station; that the United States wanted the Môle as an entering wedge to obtaining possession of the whole island; with much else of like inflammatory nature. Although there was no truth in all this, it had the unhappy effect among the masses of stirring up suspicion and angry feelings towards the United States, and of making it more difficult than it might otherwise have been for the government of Haïti to grant the required concession. Finally, after this long interval of waiting, during which the flagship of Admiral Gherardi was reported at different points, sometimes at Gonaïves, sometimes at the Môle, and sometimes at Kingston, Jamaica,5 the desired letter of credence arrived.6 The next day I was again summoned on board the Philadelphia, and there was shown me a paper, signed by the President of the United States and by the Secretary of State, authorizing myself, as Minister Resident to Haïti, and Rear-Admiral Gherardi,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 481

9/1/21 4:17 PM

482

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

as special commissioner, to negotiate with such persons as Haïti might appoint, for the purpose of concluding a convention by which we should obtain a lease of the Môle St. Nicolas as a United States naval station. It may be here remarked that the letter of credence signed by President Harrison and by the Secretary of State differed in two respects from the former and rejected letter under which we had previously acted. First, it charged me, equally with Admiral Gherardi, with the duty of negotiation; and secondly, it was an application for a naval station pure and simple, without limitation and without conditions. Before presenting to Haïti this new letter, which had the advantage of being free from the conditions specified in the old one, the question arose between the admiral and myself as to whether or not we should begin our new negotiations, under our new commission, separate and entirely apart from all that had been attempted under the instructions contained in the old letter. On this point I differed from the admiral. I took the position that we should ignore the past altogether, and proceed according to the instructions of the new letter alone, unencumbered by any terms or limitations contained in the old letter. I felt sure that there were features in the conditions of the old letter which would be met by the representatives of Haïti with strong objections. But the admiral and his able lieutenant insisted that the present letter did not exclude the conditions of the old one, but was, in its nature, only supplementary to them, and hence that this was simply a continuation of what had gone before. It was therefore decided to proceed with the negotiations on the basis of both the old and the new letter. Under the former letter of instructions, our terms were precise and explicit; under the latter we were left largely to our own discretion: we were simply to secure from the government of Haïti a lease of the Môle St. Nicolas for a naval station. The result is known. Haïti refused to grant the lease, and alleged that to do so was impossible under the hard terms imposed in the previous letter of instructions. I do not know that our government would have accepted a naval station from Haïti upon any other or less stringent terms or conditions than those exacted in our first letter of instructions; but I do know that the main grounds alleged by Haïti for its refusal were the conditions set forth in this first letter of instructions, one of which is expressed as follows: “That so long as the United States may be the lessee of the Môle St. Nicolas, the government of Haïti will not lease or otherwise dispose of any port or harbor or other territory in its dominions, or grant any special privileges or rights of use therein, to any other power, state or

Y7870-Douglass.indb 482

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

483

government.” This was not only a comprehensive limitation of the power of Haïti over her own territory, but a denial to all others of that which we claim for ourselves. But no one cause fully explains our failure to get a naval station at the Môle. One fundamental element in our non-success was found, not in any aversion to the United States or in any indifference on my part, as has often been charged, but in the government of Haïti itself. It was evidently timid. With every disposition to oblige us, it had not the courage to defy the well-known, deeply rooted, and easily excited prejudices and traditions of the Haïtian people. Nothing is more repugnant to the thoughts and feelings of the masses of that country than the alienation of a single rood7 of their territory to a foreign power. This sentiment originated, very naturally, in the circumstances in which Haïti began her national existence.8 The whole Christian world was at that time against her. The Caribbean Sea was studded with communities hostile to her. They were slave-holding. She, by her bravery and her blood, was free. Her existence was, therefore, a menace to them, and theirs was a menace to her. France, England, Spain, Portugal and Holland, as well as the United States, were wedded to the slave system, which Haïti had, by arms, thrown off; and hence she was regarded as an outcast, and was outlawed by the Christian world. Though time and events have gone far to change this relation of hers to the outside world, the sentiment that originated in the beginning of her existence continues on both sides until this day. It was this that stood like a wall of granite against our success. Other causes co-operated, but this was the principal cause. Of course our peculiar and intense prejudice against the colored race was not forgotten. Our contrast to other nations, in this respect, is often dwelt upon in Haïti to our disadvantage. In no part of Europe will a Haïtian be insulted because of his color, and Haïtians well know that this is not the case in the United States. Another influence unfavorable to our obtaining the coveted naval station at the Môle was the tone of the New York press on the subject. It more than hinted that, once in possession of the Môle, the United States would control the destiny of Haïti.9 Torn and rent by revolution as she has been and still is, Haïti yet has a large share of national pride, and scorns the idea that she needs or will submit to the rule of a foreign power. Some of her citizens would doubtless be glad of American rule, but the overwhelming majority would burn their towns and freely shed their blood over their ashes to prevent such a consummation.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 483

9/1/21 4:17 PM

484

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

Not the least, perhaps, among the collateral causes of our non-success was the minatory attitude assumed by us while conducting the negotiation. What wisdom was there in confronting Haïti at such a moment with a squadron of large ships of war with a hundred canon and two thousand men? This was done, and it was naturally construed into a hint to Haïti that if we could not, by appeals to reason and friendly feeling, obtain what we wanted, we could obtain it by a show of force. We appeared before the Haïtians, and before the world, with the pen in one hand and the sword in the other. This was not a friendly and considerate attitude for a great government like ours to assume when asking a concession from a small and weak nation like Haïti. It was ill timed and out of all proportion to the demands of the occasion. It was also done under a total misapprehension of the character of the people with whom we had to deal. We should have known that, whatever else the Haïtian people may be, they are not cowards, and hence are not easily scared. In the face of all these obvious and effective causes of failure, is it not strange that our intelligent editors and our nautical newspaper writers could not have found for the American Government and people a more rational cause for the failure of the negotiations for the Môle St. Nicolas than that of my color, indifference, and incompetency to deal with a question of such a magnitude? Were I disposed to exchange the position of accused for that of accuser, I could find ample material to sustain me in that position. Other persons did much to create conditions unfavorable to our success, but I leave to their friends the employment of such personal assaults. On the theory that I was the cause of this failure, we must assume that Haïti was willing to grant the Môle; that the timidity of the Haïtian Government was all right; that the American prejudice was all right; that the seven ships of war in the harbor of Port au Prince were all right; that Rear-Admiral Gherardi was all right, and that I alone was all wrong; and, moreover, that but for me the Môle St. Nicolas, like an over-ripe apple shaken by the wind, would have dropped softly into our national basket. I will not enlarge upon this absurd assumption, but will leave the bare statement of it to the intelligent reader, that it may perish by its flagrant contradiction of well-known facts and by its own absurdity. I come now to another cause of complaint against me, scarcely less serious in the minds of those who now assail me than the charge of having defeated the lease of the Môle St. Nicolas; namely, the failure of what is publicly known as the Clyde contract. Soon after my arrival in Haïti I

Y7870-Douglass.indb 484

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

485

was put in communication with an individual calling himself the agent of the highly respectable mercantile firm of William P. Clyde & Co. of New York.10 He was endeavoring to obtain a subsidy of a half million dollars from the government of Haïti to enable this firm to ply a line of steamers between New York and Haïti. From the first this agent assumed toward me a dictatorial attitude. He claimed to be a native of South Carolina, and it was impossible for him to conceal his contempt for the people whose good will it was his duty to seek. Between this agent and the United States Government I found myself somewhat in the position of a servant between two masters; either one of them, separately and apart, might be served acceptably; but to serve both satisfactorily at the same time and place might be a difficult task, if not an impossible one. There were times when I was compelled to prefer the requirements of the one to the ardent wishes of the other, and I thought as between this agent and the United States, I chose to serve the latter. The trouble between us came about in this way: Mr. Firmin, the Haïtian Minister of Foreign Affairs, had objected to granting the Clyde concession on the ground that, if it were granted and this heavy drain were made upon the treasury of his country, Mr. Douglass stood ready to present and to press upon Haïti the payment of the claims of many other American citizens, and that this would greatly embarrass the newly organized government of President Hyppolite. In view of this objection, the zealous agent in question came to me and proposed that I should go to Mr. Firmin, in my quality of Minister Resident and Consul-General of the United States, and assure him that, if he would only grant the Clyde concession, I, on my part, would withhold and refrain from pressing the claims of other American citizens. The proposition shocked me. It sounded like the words of Satan on the mountain, and I thought it time to call a halt. I was in favor of the Clyde contract, but I could not see what I had said or done to make it possible for any man to make to me a proposal so plainly dishonest and scandalous. I refused to do any such thing. Here was my first offense, and it at once stamped me as an unprofitable servant. It did not seem to occur to this agent that he had made to me a shameful, dishonest and shocking proposition. Blinded by zeal or by an influence still more misleading, he seemed to see in it only an innocent proposal. He thereafter looked upon me as an unworthy ally, and duly reported me as such to his master and to other influential persons. He could not understand my conduct as proceeding from other or better motives than that of over-affection for the Haïtians.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 485

9/1/21 4:17 PM

486

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

In his eyes I was, from that time, more a Haïtian than an American, and I soon saw myself so characterized in American journals. The refusal to compromise and postpone the just claims of other American citizens for that of his master’s contract was not, however, my only offense. On obtaining a leave of absence from my post, in July, 1890, I, of course, as was my duty, called upon President Hyppolite before my departure, for the purpose of paying to him my respects. This agent at once sought me and desired me to make use of this visit of mere ceremony as an occasion to press anew the Clyde contract upon the attention of the President. This I could not properly do, especially as I had on previous occasions repeatedly urged its consideration upon him. The President already knew well enough my sense of the importance to Haïti of this measure, not only as a means of enlarging her commerce and of promoting her civilization, but also as a guaranty of the stability of her government. Nevertheless, my refusal to urge in so unbecoming a manner a demand already repeatedly urged upon the attention of the Haïtian Government was made use of by this agent to my injury, both at the State Department and with Mr. Clyde’s firm. I was reported at Washington and to various persons in high places as unfriendly to this concession. When at last it appeared to the agent that the government of Haïti was, as he thought, stubbornly blind to its own interests, and that it would not grant the contract in question, he called at the United States Legation and expressed to me his disappointment and disgust at the delay of Haïti in accepting his scheme. He said he did not believe that the government really intended to do anything for his firm; that he himself had spent much time and money in promoting the concession; and as he did not think that Mr. Clyde ought to be made to pay for the time thus lost and the expense incurred by the delay and dallying of the Haïtian Government, he should therefore demand his pay of Haïti. This determination struck me as very odd, and I jocosely11 replied,— “Then, sir, as they will not allow you to put a hot poker down their backs, you mean to make them pay for heating it!” This rejoinder was my final destruction in the esteem of this zealous advocate. He saw at once that he could not count upon my assistance in making this new demand. I was both surprised by his proposal and amused by it, and wondered that he could think it possible that he could get this pay. It seemed to me that Haïti would scout the idea at once. She had not sent for him. She had not asked him to stay. He was there for purposes of his own and not for any purpose of hers. I could not see why

Y7870-Douglass.indb 486

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

487

Haïti should pay him for coming, going or staying. But this gentleman knew better than I the generous character of the people with whom he had to deal, and he followed them up till they actually paid him five thousand dollars in gold. But compliance with his demand proved a woful mistake on the part of Haïti, and, in fact, nonsense. This man, after getting his money, went away, but he did not stay away. He was soon back again to press his scheme with renewed vigor. His demands were now to be complied with or he would make, not Rome, but Haïti, howl. To him it was nothing that Haïti was already wasted by repeated revolutions; nothing that she was already staggering under the weight of a heavy national debt; nothing that she herself ought to be the best judge of her ability to pour out a half million of dollars in this new and, to her, doubtful enterprise; nothing that she had heard his arguments in its favor a hundred times over; nothing that in her judgment she had far more pressing needs for her money than the proposed investment in this steamship subsidy, as recommended by him; nothing that she had told him plainly that she was afraid to add to her pecuniary burdens this new and onerous one; and nothing that she had just paid him five thousand dollars in gold to get rid of his importunities. Now, while I was in favor of Haïti’s granting the subsidy asked for in the name of Clyde & Co., and thought that it would be in many ways a good thing for Haïti to have the proposed line of steamers for which a subsidy was asked, I had, and I now have, nothing but disgust for the method by which this scheme was pressed upon Haïti. I must say in conclusion that, while, as already intimated, it does not appear certain that Haïti would have leased us the Môle on any conditions whatever, it is certain that the application for it was ill timed in more respects than one. It was especially unfortunate for us that the Clyde concession was applied for in advance of our application for a lease of the Môle. Whatever else may be said of the Haïtians, this is true of them: they are quick to detect a fault and to distinguish a trick from an honest proceeding. To them the preference given to the interests of an individual firm over those of the United States seemed to wear a sinister aspect. In the opinion of many intelligent persons in Haïti, had a lease of the Môle been asked for in advance of the concession to Mr. Clyde, the application for it might have been successful. This, however, is not my opinion. I do not now think that any earthly power outside of absolute force could have gotten for us a naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas. Still, to all appearances, the conditions of success were more favorable before than after the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 487

9/1/21 4:17 PM

488

HAITI AND THE UNITED STATES: MÔLE ST. NICOLAS. PART II

Clyde contract was urged upon Haïti. Prior to this, the country, weary of war, was at peace. Ambitious leaders had not begun openly to conspire. The government under Hyppolite was newly organized. Confidence in its stability was unimpaired. It was, naturally enough, reaching out its hand to us for friendly recognition. Our good offices during the war were fresh in its memory. France, England and Germany were not ready to give it recognition.12 In fact, all the conditions conspired to influence Haïti to listen to our request for a coaling-station at the Môle St. Nicolas. But instead of a proposition for a coaling-station at the Môle St. Nicolas, there was presented one for a subsidy to an individual steamship company. All must see that the effect of this was calculated to weaken our higher claim and to place us at a disadvantage before Haïti and before all the world. And now, since the American people have been made thoroughly acquainted with one view of this question, I know of no interest which will suffer and no just obligation which will be impaired by the presentation of such facts as I have here submitted to the public judgment. If in this my course is thought to be unusual, it should be remembered that the course pursued towards me by the press has been unusual, and that they who had no censure for the latter should have none for the former. FREDERICK DOUG LASS. 1. The meeting at the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince on 28 January 1891 between U.S. and Haitian representatives, regarding lease negotiations for Môle-St.-Nicolas. Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 174. 2. Anténor Joseph Firmin. 3. One of the ships owned by the Clyde Steamship Line, based in New York and operated by William P. Clyde. Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy,” 457–75. 4. The port town of Gonaïves is on the west coast of Haiti. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:1131. 5. The capital city of Jamaica, Kingston was settled following the destruction of Port Royal, a former haven for buccaneers and thieves, by an earthquake in 1692. Growth was rapid, and by 1703, Kingston was declared the chief seat of trade and the head port on the island. In 1872, it became the nation’s capital. Today, Kingston is the largest English-speaking city in the Americas south of Miami. Brian Rajewski, ed., Cities of the World: A Compilation of Current Information, 4 vols. (London, 1999), 2:309; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1567. 6. In his dispatch to Secretary of State James G. Blaine on 18 February 1891, Douglass reported the incident in which the Haitian foreign minister demanded additional credentials for Admiral Bancroft Gherardi before negotiating with him. After nearly two months’ delay, a letter from President Benjamin Harrison, dated 9 April, arrived in Haiti around 18 April 1891. The letter of credence authorized Gherardi to negotiate for the naval station. Brown, Black Diplomat in Haiti, 2:71–75, 100–104. 7. A medieval term measuring a plot of land, or a roodland. 8. Coming under French rule in 1697, Haiti prospered thanks to forestry and sugar-related industries. The abolition of slavery in France, following the French Revolution in 1789, inspired Haiti’s half million black slaves to revolt. In a series of violent uprisings led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, a for-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 488

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS. OPINION OF HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS

489

mer slave turned general in the French army, slaves killed white planters and razed estates. By 1801, L’Ouverture controlled the entire island, and he abolished slavery through a new constitution. In retaliation, the French emperor Napoleon sent seventy warships and 25,000 men to Haiti to suppress the uprising. Although Toussaint L’Ouverture was captured and eventually died in a French prison, his successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, continued the struggle. In 1803, the French army, decimated by disease, surrendered. Haiti declared its independence on 1 January 1804. Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 1–6; Timothy L. Gall, ed., Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, 5 vols. (Detroit, 2004), 3:250–51. 9. Douglass was well aware of the hawkish stance of major New York City newspapers regarding the possible U.S. acquisition of Môle-St.-Nicolas. The New York Times was the most explicit, asserting that U.S. control of the Môle was akin to dominance of the Haitian nation. The 25 February 1891 issue of the Times stated that Haitian president Hyppolite’s refusal to cede the Môle was rooted in fear of losing power. Other New York papers only occasionally dedicated column space to the negotiations. In a 14 August article, the New York Tribune, like the Times, painted President Hyppolite as a scoundrel hell-bent on preserving his powerful position. Like the Times, the Tribune implied that the ceding of the Môle to the United States would essentially render Hyppolite’s government powerless and put Haiti under U.S. control. New York Times, 25 February, 25 March, 9 April 1891; New York Tribune, 14 April, 26 August 1891. 10. Douglass alludes to the New York–based shipping company headed by the magnate William P. Clyde. Founded in 1844 by Clyde’s father, Thomas Clyde, the enterprise became the largest coastal steamship company in the United States. Expansion into rail lines in the United States and Panama increased the company’s holdings in transportation, and in the late 1880s, Clyde viewed Haiti as the next logical extension of operations. Clyde sought Douglass’s support in promoting the company’s interests in Haiti, most specifically through the Clyde concession. The Clyde agent who contacted Douglass to help the company procure a concession was Captain E. C. Reed of South Carolina. Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy,” 469; EAAH, 1:307–08. 11. Jokingly. 12. European countries were not quick to officially recognize the postrevolutionary government of Haiti. As the historically dominant foreign power in Haitian affairs, France was not easily convinced to accept the presidency of Florvil Hyppolite. When a struggle for power ensued in 1888, ending in the ousting of the existing president, Lysius Salomon, France gave aid to Hyppolite’s challenger, the military leader François Légitime. Great Britain also provided silent support for Légitime. Fearing the port at Môle-St.-Nicolas would fall into French hands under a Légitime presidency, the United States cooperated with Hyppolite, in hope that a U.S. naval station could be placed in this strategic location. After Hyppolite was confirmed as president of Haiti, ties between the Caribbean nation and European powers were mended. By November 1889, Haiti had dispatched ministers plenipotentiary to France, Germany, Great Britain, and Spain. Brown, Black Diplomat in Haiti, 1:29–32; Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 161–62.

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS, AND ITS EDITORS: OPINION OF HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1891) I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors (Springfield, Mass., 1891), 448–50.

In 1891, the black educator Irvine Garland Penn published The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors to promote the welfare of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 489

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS. OPINION OF HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS

489

mer slave turned general in the French army, slaves killed white planters and razed estates. By 1801, L’Ouverture controlled the entire island, and he abolished slavery through a new constitution. In retaliation, the French emperor Napoleon sent seventy warships and 25,000 men to Haiti to suppress the uprising. Although Toussaint L’Ouverture was captured and eventually died in a French prison, his successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, continued the struggle. In 1803, the French army, decimated by disease, surrendered. Haiti declared its independence on 1 January 1804. Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 1–6; Timothy L. Gall, ed., Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, 5 vols. (Detroit, 2004), 3:250–51. 9. Douglass was well aware of the hawkish stance of major New York City newspapers regarding the possible U.S. acquisition of Môle-St.-Nicolas. The New York Times was the most explicit, asserting that U.S. control of the Môle was akin to dominance of the Haitian nation. The 25 February 1891 issue of the Times stated that Haitian president Hyppolite’s refusal to cede the Môle was rooted in fear of losing power. Other New York papers only occasionally dedicated column space to the negotiations. In a 14 August article, the New York Tribune, like the Times, painted President Hyppolite as a scoundrel hell-bent on preserving his powerful position. Like the Times, the Tribune implied that the ceding of the Môle to the United States would essentially render Hyppolite’s government powerless and put Haiti under U.S. control. New York Times, 25 February, 25 March, 9 April 1891; New York Tribune, 14 April, 26 August 1891. 10. Douglass alludes to the New York–based shipping company headed by the magnate William P. Clyde. Founded in 1844 by Clyde’s father, Thomas Clyde, the enterprise became the largest coastal steamship company in the United States. Expansion into rail lines in the United States and Panama increased the company’s holdings in transportation, and in the late 1880s, Clyde viewed Haiti as the next logical extension of operations. Clyde sought Douglass’s support in promoting the company’s interests in Haiti, most specifically through the Clyde concession. The Clyde agent who contacted Douglass to help the company procure a concession was Captain E. C. Reed of South Carolina. Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy,” 469; EAAH, 1:307–08. 11. Jokingly. 12. European countries were not quick to officially recognize the postrevolutionary government of Haiti. As the historically dominant foreign power in Haitian affairs, France was not easily convinced to accept the presidency of Florvil Hyppolite. When a struggle for power ensued in 1888, ending in the ousting of the existing president, Lysius Salomon, France gave aid to Hyppolite’s challenger, the military leader François Légitime. Great Britain also provided silent support for Légitime. Fearing the port at Môle-St.-Nicolas would fall into French hands under a Légitime presidency, the United States cooperated with Hyppolite, in hope that a U.S. naval station could be placed in this strategic location. After Hyppolite was confirmed as president of Haiti, ties between the Caribbean nation and European powers were mended. By November 1889, Haiti had dispatched ministers plenipotentiary to France, Germany, Great Britain, and Spain. Brown, Black Diplomat in Haiti, 1:29–32; Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 161–62.

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS, AND ITS EDITORS: OPINION OF HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1891) I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors (Springfield, Mass., 1891), 448–50.

In 1891, the black educator Irvine Garland Penn published The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors to promote the welfare of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 489

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS. OPINION OF HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS

490

African American journalism. The book’s first part contained short histories of newspapers and magazines edited by African Americans, beginning with Freedom’s Journal and continuing to those still in print in the 1880s. The second part included biographical sketches of editors and correspondents of African American newspapers active at the time of publication. A chapter in that part, entitled “Opinions of Eminent Men on the AfroAmerican Press,” included the responses of eighteen men, including John Mercer Langston, Booker T. Washington, P. B. S. Pinchback, and Douglass, to a short list of questions posed by Penn: “[1.] Do you think the Press in the hands of the negro has been a success? [2.] In your judgment, what achievements have been the result of the work of the Afro-American editor? [3.] Do you think the Press has the proper support on the part of the AfroAmerican? If not, to what do you attribute the cause? [4.] What future course do you think the Press might take in promoting good among our people?” Douglass’s answers to Penn, included in the book, appear below. Penn’s work was a modest success and would see numerous printings. Penn, Afro-American Press, i–iii, 7–8, 14, 428–77; Joanne K. Harrison and Grant Harrison, The Life and Times of Irvine Garland Penn (n.p., 2000), 15–55, 231.

1st. Yes, but only as a beginning. 2d. It has been demonstrated, in large measure, the mental and literary possibilities of the colored race. 3d. I do not think that the Press has been properly supported, and I find the cause in the fact that the reading public, among colored people, as among all other people, will spend its money for what seems to them best and cheapest. Colored papers, from their antecedents and surroundings, cost more, and give their readers less, than papers and publications by white men. 4th. I think that the course to be pursued by the colored Press is to say less about race and claims to race recognition, and more about the principles of justice, liberty, and patriotism. It should say more of what we ought to do for ourselves, and less about what the Government ought to do for us; more in the interest of morality and economy, and less in the interest of office-getting; more in commending the faithful and inflexible men who stand up for our rights, and less for the celebration of balls, parties,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 490

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS. REVIEW

491

and brilliant entertainments; more in respect to the duty of the Government to protect and defend the colored man’s rights in the South, and less in puffing individual men for office; less of arrogant assumption for the colored man, and more of appreciation of his disadvantages, in comparison with those of other varieties of men whose opportunities have been broader and better than his.

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS, AND ITS EDITORS: REVIEW (1891) Miscellany File, reel 16, frames 445–47, FD Papers, DLC.

The Willey & Co. Publishers and its successor, the Ayer Company Publishers, released several printings of Irvine Garland Penn’s The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors. Many of the later printings included an unnumbered appendix with supplementary sketches of African American editors and periodicals omitted from the original work. The appendix also featured endorsements of the book from the contemporary press and prominent African Americans. It is believed that Douglass prepared a review of The Afro-American Press for that appendix, to be included in an edition that was either never issued or has not survived. The text reproduced below is one of two typescript versions with handwritten corrections; it is found among Douglass’s collected papers in the Library of Congress. The relationship between Douglass and Penn would continue: both men contributed chapters to the 1893 pamphlet The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition. Harrison and Harrison, Life and Times of Irvine Garland Penn, 45–47.

The Afro-American Press; a volume of five hundred and fifty pages; edited by I. Garland Penn,1 of Lynchburg, Va., and published in Springfield, Mass. by Willey and Co. This is a book by a colored author is one of which much could and should be said did your space permit me to speak of it at length and according to its merits. Under the circumstances I can scarcely do more than characterize it, and this I may do by calling it the most valuable record

Y7870-Douglass.indb 491

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS. REVIEW

491

and brilliant entertainments; more in respect to the duty of the Government to protect and defend the colored man’s rights in the South, and less in puffing individual men for office; less of arrogant assumption for the colored man, and more of appreciation of his disadvantages, in comparison with those of other varieties of men whose opportunities have been broader and better than his.

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS, AND ITS EDITORS: REVIEW (1891) Miscellany File, reel 16, frames 445–47, FD Papers, DLC.

The Willey & Co. Publishers and its successor, the Ayer Company Publishers, released several printings of Irvine Garland Penn’s The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors. Many of the later printings included an unnumbered appendix with supplementary sketches of African American editors and periodicals omitted from the original work. The appendix also featured endorsements of the book from the contemporary press and prominent African Americans. It is believed that Douglass prepared a review of The Afro-American Press for that appendix, to be included in an edition that was either never issued or has not survived. The text reproduced below is one of two typescript versions with handwritten corrections; it is found among Douglass’s collected papers in the Library of Congress. The relationship between Douglass and Penn would continue: both men contributed chapters to the 1893 pamphlet The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition. Harrison and Harrison, Life and Times of Irvine Garland Penn, 45–47.

The Afro-American Press; a volume of five hundred and fifty pages; edited by I. Garland Penn,1 of Lynchburg, Va., and published in Springfield, Mass. by Willey and Co. This is a book by a colored author is one of which much could and should be said did your space permit me to speak of it at length and according to its merits. Under the circumstances I can scarcely do more than characterize it, and this I may do by calling it the most valuable record

Y7870-Douglass.indb 491

9/1/21 4:17 PM

492

THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS. REVIEW

that has yet come to my knowledge, of the intellectual toils, trials and triumphs of aspiring colored men in the United States. When we consider that, during two centuries, the colored people of this country were doomed to ignorance and illiteracy, the record presented in this volume seems almost incredible. No one, fifty years ago, could have imagined the possibility of such intellectual energy and activity as is set forth by the author of this book. The eager and persistent efforts of these people to avail themselves of the power of the printing press is a matter of amazement. The gates of knowledge were scarcely ajar when in they rushed pell mell, almost trampling upon each other in the race to reach its most exalted benefits. Their struggle for knowledge is quite equalled by their disposition to employ it in the manner best calculated to advance the race in all the elements of a high civilization. Mr. Penn, by his diligence, intelligence, persistency and industry, has made the colored people of the United States his debtors for a large service. He has rescued from oblivion some of the noblest examples of worth which otherwise might have been lost. These examples are of great value as a means of stimulating and encouraging our people in putting forth their best endeavors. As a class we have had the lesson of our incapacity pounded into us so often and so long that we need to have it contradicted, as it is contradicted, in the most striking and multitudinous array of facts presented in this volume by I. Garland Penn. This book produced by him is a whole encyclopedia on the subject of which it treats. It shows that, whatever else may be said of the colored race in the United States, they are guilty of no mental indifference, inactivity, or moral stagnation. They have been in the past what they are in the present, up and doing. Though the history of the colored press conforms to the rule that many are called and few are chosen; that in the field of journalism few succeed and many fail; there is quite enough of success to vindicate the laudable ambition and ability of the colored race in the use of this powerful instrumentality. While commending this book, as I heartily do, as one which should be in the hands of every colored boy and girl in the country, it is due to the author to say that his work would perhaps have been a little more complete and much more useful had he dealt less in indiscriminate praise. All his geese are swans! The idea of the comparative excellence of the various news paper enterprises which he chronicles is not made as prominent in this book as it strikes me that it should be. There is no good, better, best, in the whole array. All are superlatively excellent. In the same view mole

Y7870-Douglass.indb 492

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

493

hills become mountains and to an inch is given the importance of a mile. Our men are not only learned, but profoundly learned. Every thing is on a grand scale. A journal that is started in an obscure village and lives seven weeks, has as much space and importance given to it as one which has battled for existence for a dozen years and at last achieved a well won success. Notwithstanding however, this exalting of mediocrity to eminence and the magnifying of small things into great, I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Penn’s volume is the best contribution yet made to the infant literature of the colored people in this country, and we cannot but hope that Mr.Penn will continue in the field of authorship and make us still further indebted to him for the products of his evident talents, care, and marvellous industry. 1. Irvine Garland Penn (1867–1930) was born in Amherst County, Virginia. In 1873, he and his family moved to Lynchburg, and in 1886, he graduated high school while working as an editor of the Lynchburg Virginia Laborer. One year later, he began teaching in Lynchburg’s public schools; shortly thereafter, he became Lynchburg’s principal. Penn later moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and became a lecturer, businessman, and trustee of many African American colleges. A noted Republican, Penn also served as an officer of the Cincinnati Board of Education for Negroes and as an activist for the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. Richmond Planet, 9 March 1895; Harrison and Harrison, Life and Times of Irvine Garland Penn.

SLAVERY (1891) Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. (American reprint), 22:906–10 (1891; Philadelphia, 1894); Subject File, reel 12, frames 634–37, FD Papers, DLC; Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 20, frames 1–23, FD Papers, DLC.

Published by the Scottish firm A. & C. Black, the famous ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (known as the “scholar’s edition”) was issued in twenty-four volumes between 1875 and 1888. At that time, the United States was not party to any international copyright agreements, so American publishers were free to reprint works published outside the United States under their own names and to copyright those works in the United States. In the case of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, at least a dozen pirated reprints are known to have been published in the United States between 1875 and 1905. Several of these

Y7870-Douglass.indb 493

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

493

hills become mountains and to an inch is given the importance of a mile. Our men are not only learned, but profoundly learned. Every thing is on a grand scale. A journal that is started in an obscure village and lives seven weeks, has as much space and importance given to it as one which has battled for existence for a dozen years and at last achieved a well won success. Notwithstanding however, this exalting of mediocrity to eminence and the magnifying of small things into great, I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Penn’s volume is the best contribution yet made to the infant literature of the colored people in this country, and we cannot but hope that Mr.Penn will continue in the field of authorship and make us still further indebted to him for the products of his evident talents, care, and marvellous industry. 1. Irvine Garland Penn (1867–1930) was born in Amherst County, Virginia. In 1873, he and his family moved to Lynchburg, and in 1886, he graduated high school while working as an editor of the Lynchburg Virginia Laborer. One year later, he began teaching in Lynchburg’s public schools; shortly thereafter, he became Lynchburg’s principal. Penn later moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and became a lecturer, businessman, and trustee of many African American colleges. A noted Republican, Penn also served as an officer of the Cincinnati Board of Education for Negroes and as an activist for the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. Richmond Planet, 9 March 1895; Harrison and Harrison, Life and Times of Irvine Garland Penn.

SLAVERY (1891) Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. (American reprint), 22:906–10 (1891; Philadelphia, 1894); Subject File, reel 12, frames 634–37, FD Papers, DLC; Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 20, frames 1–23, FD Papers, DLC.

Published by the Scottish firm A. & C. Black, the famous ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (known as the “scholar’s edition”) was issued in twenty-four volumes between 1875 and 1888. At that time, the United States was not party to any international copyright agreements, so American publishers were free to reprint works published outside the United States under their own names and to copyright those works in the United States. In the case of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, at least a dozen pirated reprints are known to have been published in the United States between 1875 and 1905. Several of these

Y7870-Douglass.indb 493

9/1/21 4:17 PM

494

SLAVERY

unauthorized editions expanded upon the content of the original work by adding appendices of new material particularly designed to appeal to the interests of American readers. Douglass’s article on slavery (or more accurately, slavery in the United States) was written for just such a purpose. Determining the first edition in which it appeared, though, has remained a challenge. Correspondence from the Philadelphia-based publishing house J. M. Stoddart Company indicates that Douglass received seventy-five dollars for his article, “Slavery,” in late November 1885, and that the piece had been solicited by the editor Day Otis Kellogg. But since the final pirated Stoddart edition of the encyclopedia was released in 1883, it seems likely that “Slavery” was included in the Kellogg-edited, Stoddart-authorized Roger Sherman reprint of the ninth edition, which was published over several years in the late 1880s. In 1891, Kellogg included Douglass’s “Slavery” in the (equally) unauthorized Maxwell Sommerville reprint of the twenty-four-volume Stoddart edition, to which he added the Hubbard Brothers’ four-volume supplement and an index volume. A second edition of this twenty-nine-volume reprint was reissued in 1894. Given this convoluted history, there is a certain irony to Douglass’s willingness to contribute to these unauthorized American reprints of a classic British work, particularly since in 1885 he had publicly endorsed the effort to establish an international copyright law. Indeed, Douglass’s “Need for an International Copyright” is among the works included in this volume. J. M. Stoddart to Douglass, 23 November 1885, General Correspondence File, reel 4, frame 247, FD Papers, DLC; Paul Kruse, “Piracy and the Britannia: Unauthorized Reprintings of the Ninth Edition,” Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 33:313–28 (October 1963).

SLAVERY, American.—Without any statute law authorizing it slavery early became a part of the political economy of all the EnglishAmerican colonies. The African slave traffic, introduced into Europe by Portugal1 and neither extensive nor very lucrative, was readily transferred to the American Continent on its discovery by Columbus2 who was himself implicated in the trade. His era first made physical difference the basis of chattel slavery, and by the law of custom sanctioned by the courts

Y7870-Douglass.indb 494

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

495

negroes became an article of merchandise and their barter an object of monopoly. At the suggestion of Las Casas, a Catholic priest, Charles V. granted a royal license for the importation of negroes into the West Indies to take place of the Indians then rapidly perishing under the hardships of bondage.3 The French and Dutch also engaged in the traffic, but the bulk of the trade was subsequently transferred to England. The Royal African Co. chartered by Elizabeth4 was a source of supply to the Colonies for twentyfour years. Queen Anne herself was a stockholder in a company under engagement to furnish in thirty-three years 144,000 negroes, known in trade as “Indian pieces,” and Charles II. and James II. were members of the last of the four companies chartered in the time of the Stuarts.5 England had therefore been engaged in the importation of slaves for half a century previous to the landing of the Pilgrims in New England, and before the Mayflower came to Plymouth Rock6 twenty negroes were landed and sold from a Dutch vessel at Jamestown, Va., where was planted the seed which afterwards developed into the system of American slavery.7 The first reference to slavery by statute is in the “Body of Liberties” of Massachusetts in 1641.8 In 1643 the Articles of Confederation of the New England colonies provide for the division of persons taken in war, “if it please God to bless their endeavors,”9 and in 1690 the commissioners of Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut agreed with Leisler of New York, to divide among the officers and soldiers all captives “according to the customme of war.”10 The New England colonies, owing to their climate and the character of their early settlers, made comparatively limited use of slave labor, but they participated in the slave trade. As settlements extended southward and the cultivation of cotton, rice and sugar was entered upon, the more Southern became more interested than the Northern colonies in the continuance of the slave trade. Besides a grant of 75 acres of land for each slave held in New Jersey, the Royal African Company was ordered by Queen Anne to furnish both New York and New Jersey with slaves.11 Slavery was imported into North Carolina by settlers from Virginia carrying their effects with them.12 South Carolina was settled by planters from Barbadoes, whence slaves were brought by one of its earliest governors, Sir John Yeamans.13 Georgia, founded by Oglethorpe a member of the British Parliament as an asylum for all persecuted Protestants, was the only one of the thirteen colonies in which slavery was from the first prohibited by statue and declared contrary to English and Colonial law. But its inhabitants early hired slaves from South Carolina,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 495

9/1/21 4:17 PM

496

SLAVERY

then bought them, and in 1743 Georgia became a slave colony.14 It has been asserted that the prohibition of slavery in Georgia was due to the moral sentiment of Oglethorpe, but according to Bancroft15 “home interest” dictated this policy. The colony required protection from the Spanish on the south and the Indians on the west, and this was best secured by a cordon of whites exclusively.16 Although the South received the greater number of slaves brought into the colonies, its zeal for the traffic was equaled, if not surpassed, by the merchants of Boston, Salem, Newburyport, Bristol, Newport and New York.17 It is estimated that 300,000 slaves were imported into the colonies previous to 1776.18 The first importation of New England was by Massachusetts in the year 1637 from Providence Isle one of the Bahamas in the Salem ship “Desire,” and is important as being not a private but colonial enterprise. Letters from London to the authorities in that island mention “cannibal negroes” from New England, and in 1639 the Company of Providence Island, fearing the negroes might become too numerous to be managed, proposed selling them to New England and Virginia.19 The ships of Massachusetts, carrying produce to Madeira and the Canaries, touched upon the coast of Guinea, received negroes and returning sold the greater part in the West Indies.20 Indians, seized by the colonists in their wars were exported and exchanged for negroes who were more docile, and less liable to collusion with the natives.21 Until nearly the close of the 17th century the number of slaves increased slowly throughout the colonies. In Virginia in 1671 they numbered one-twentieth of the population, and but two or three cargoes of negroes arrived in seven years. For Massachusetts the number is given in 1676 as 200, brought from Guinea and Madagascar. In 1680 Gov. Bradstreet reported to the Lords of the Committee for Trade and Foreign Plantations that but one small cargo had arrived for fifty years, and that from Madagascar. A few had been brought from the West Indies and a few born in the colony. Five hundred and fifty were reported in 1708 to the Board of Trade. There were 2000 in 1720, in 1776, 5249, and 6001 in 1790, when the first census was taken. By the same census the north returned 40,370 slaves and south 657,527.22 Previous attempts to throw off the incubus had been thwarted by the instructions of the home Government to the colonial governors.23 But national independence found usage turned to law and slavery an established institution. The system was the same north and south, though somewhat modified by circumstances. Religious narrowness in Massachusetts regarded the Indians only as “Amale-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 496

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

497

kites,”24 or, as Roger Williams described the Pequots, “a miserable droue of Adam’s degenerate seede,” and both Indians and negroes as “heathen,” given to them “for an inheritance.”25 In Virginia the aristocratic element secured its supremacy by controlling the legislature. The moral sentiment in Massachusetts and the social sentiment in Virginia both wrought the same result. That the slave should be held in law a chattel personal and that the issue should follow the condition of the mother were the fundamental principles upon which slavery rested in the United States. The common law “partus sequitur patrem,” though obtaining in Maryland for a brief time, was reversed for obvious reasons.26 In establishing the condition of a slave before the Courts the general principle that in claiming the service of another the onus probandi was laid upon the plaintiff, was controlled by the antecedent presumption of slavery, and the burden of proof fell upon the negro.27 Color, even to “visible admixture,” except in North Carolina, was held presumptive evidence of slavery. In North Carolina the presumption was confined to unmixed blacks, and in Louisiana a residence of twenty years as free was proof of freedom.28 The slave could be a party to no legal contract. He could, however, either under bond of his master or upon recognizance with security for cost and damages, sue in the courts as a claimant for freedom on the ground of trespass and false imprisonment. In Mississippi the claimant for freedom could sue as a poor person; in Maryland the attorney for plaintiff was responsible for costs if the suit failed; and in South Carolina and Georgia, if judgment was rendered to the defendant, the court could inflict upon the ward of the plaintiff corporeal punishment not extending to life or limb.29 A slave could not possess property, nor receive it by devise, descent or purchase, though in Maryland devise from the owner to his slave was adjudged ground for freedom by implication.30 Slaves were subject to mortgage, generally as personal property, but in Louisiana they were also considered real estate. In various States, while by statute declared real estate, they were liable to attachment as chattels for the payment of debts.31 The contracts of slaves were invalid, and between them and their masters were not binding, even when they had performed their part of the contract. But as agent of the master, they could bind the principal.32 They were also liable for the debts of deceased master, and if manumitted by will were retained for debt if the personal property of the testator was otherwise insufficient for the purpose; neither was a master bound in law to free his slave even though partial payment had been made on the same.33

Y7870-Douglass.indb 497

9/1/21 4:17 PM

498

SLAVERY

Slaves were prohibited from buying or selling on their own account and masters fined for granting such license. In some States it was lawful for any person to seize and take their merchandise from them. The penalty against being at large or hiring out for themselves was apprehension and sale. The liability of masters for the acts of their slaves extended only to those done under their authority, except in trespass committed for their benefit, but an indictment for assault and battery upon a slave could not be sustained unless attended by loss of service, but being under the protection of his master the latter could maintain an action of trespass.34 The incapacity of slaves for legal contracts precluded the existence of legal marriage. They could commit neither adultery nor polygamy, and such marriage as was practiced could be annulled at the master’s pleasure. But emancipation gave to a previous marriage the same civil effect as to that of free persons.35 The manumission of slaves was executed by deed, will and contract, and was held to rest on benevolence sanctioned by the State. The deed of manumission, if in writing and attested and proven in court by witnesses, was obligatory, otherwise it rested on intention, but neither in court of law or equity was a promise of freedom operative or parol evidence admissible. In Virginia slaves emancipated were made liable for the previous debts of the owner; in Alabama removal from the State, and in Tennessee from the country, was a condition of emancipation. In some States slaves were emancipated only by special acts of legislature, and in Georgia emancipation in any manner otherwise rendered the slave liable to be apprehended and sold to the highest bidder.36 The early laws of Virginia gave the master absolute power over the life of his slave, but laws of partial protection obtained later in all the slaveholding States, though these lost most of their force from the incapacity of any colored person to bear witness in any case whatever against a white person, and whipping, cropping the ears and death were the penalties against all colored people for striking a white person.37 A slave running away was liable to be shot on the spot, and fines of from $10 to $700 with imprisonment at hard labor from six months to ten years were imposed upon any person harboring or concealing negroes belonging to another or suffering the same to be done, and if colored, “to receive not exceeding thirty-nine lashes” besides.38 The education of slaves was prohibited by statutes or decisions in all the slaveholding States, fines and imprisonment being the penalties, as was any meeting together for purposes of either instruction or worship, the penalty in the later case being from twenty to twenty-nine lashes.39

Y7870-Douglass.indb 498

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

499

The abstract question of freedom was necessarily forced upon the colonists in their revolutionary struggle, by the taunts of those who flung back to them the contradiction of their practice and their Declaration of Independence.40 The sentiment of liberty was strongest just where slaves were fewest. Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas furnished but half as many soldiers for the war as New England. The discovery also that slaves were constantly seeking the protection of the enemy, and that their great number in the South obstructed success in every way, helped to bring about a change of sentiment in the North.41 The “service suits” and “freedom suits” instituted by slaves to secure wages and freedom from the age of twenty-one years had already indicated the growing tendency. In Connecticut, in 1703, a verdict of damages was awarded by the court in one of these suits, and in 1766 a similar verdict was granted by the Superior Court of Salem, Massachusetts.42 The attempt to procure legislative action in the latter State failed in 1767 and again in 1778, but in 1780 a Constitution prepared by John Adams and accompanied by a Bill of Rights declaring “all men are born equally free and independent,” was adopted.43 As Adams was throughout his life in favor of gradual abolition, it seems doubtful if he intended it for the purpose of immediate emancipation, and that it was not so considered is evident from the fact that slaves were still held, and advertisements of negroes for sale continued in the newspapers, one of which in 1781 recommended a slave as “having no notion of freedom.”44 However the Superior Judicial Court declared slavery had been abolished by the Bill of Rights.45 A similar decision abolished slavery in New Hampshire, and the first article in the Bill of Rights of Vermont excluded it in 1777 before she was admitted as a State.46 Gradual emancipation was provided by law in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Rhode Island in the preamble and Pennsylvania in the act, recalled their own preservation to freedom and the duty incumbent on them of making others free. Nevertheless ten years after there were 952 slaves in Rhode Island, and in Pennsylvania 3737.47 The slavery of New York, where old Dutch records show it existing in 1626, exceeded that of Massachusetts in severity, and the civil degradation of the slave was augmented by acts of Assembly of 1702, 1712, and 1730. The first abatement of rigor was an act freeing all slaves who had served in the army for three years, and in 1786 all reverting to the State by confiscation. Though in 1799 an act of gradual emancipation was passed, in 1827 when a succeeding act took effect nearly 10,000 persons were set free.48

Y7870-Douglass.indb 499

9/1/21 4:17 PM

500

SLAVERY

In 1688 the Quakers of Germantown, Pennsylvania, sent from their monthly to their quarterly meeting a remonstrance against slavery.49 In 1673, however, Richard Baxter had declared against certain features of it,50 and in 1680 the Rev. Morgan Godwyn of the Church of England asserted the right of the slave to religious instruction and Christian Baptism.51 These two men had probably many silent sympathizers with their views, but it is remarkable that neither of them ventured to call in question the principle, nor denied to the master a right to the earnings of his slave. After the Quakers of Germantown the earliest and most distinct denunciation of slavery was by George Keith in 1693; but even he was only a gradual emancipationist.52 In 1700 Judge Samuel Sewell of Massachusetts attacked slavery in a brief tract entitled “The Selling of Joseph.”53 It was afterward reprinted by Benjamin Lay,54 an eccentric member of the Society of Friends, and followed by tracts in 1718 from William Burling, a Quaker of Long Island, in 1729 from Ralph Sandiford, a merchant of Philadelphia, and by a sermon published in 1733 by Elihu Coleman a Quaker of Nantucket.55 In 1754 the monthly meeting of Friends in Nantucket and in 1775 the yearly meeting in Philadelphia testified against holding slaves for life. The same meetings took still higher ground in 1774 and 1776. This religious denomination was the earliest to organize opposition to slavery in the American colonies, requiring their members to emancipate their slaves. Among the disseminators of their freedom-loving sentiments John Woolman and Anthony Benezet were especially active from 1746 to 1767.56 Other churches and ministers soon took up the cause with considerable zeal. In 1770 Dr. Samuel Hopkins, a Congregational minister in Newport, Rhode Island, sternly denounced the system and traffic, and demanded their discontinuance without delay.57 Opposition to slavery visibly broadened as the movement for Independence gained strength among the statesmen of America. Contending for liberty for themselves, they began to feel the inconsistency of denying it to others. Not only the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational denominations assumed an anti-slavery attitude,58 but eminent men outside of the churches, such as James Otis,59 Benjamin Rush,60 John Jay,61 Edmund Randolph,62 Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry,63 Benjamin Franklin64 and a long list of others gave their voices and votes against the system. The provincial conventions also of Virginia and North Carolina passed resolutions that they would neither import nor purchase slaves.65 In 1774 the Colonial Congress in its Articles of Association accepted by all the colonies declared “We will neither import nor purchase any

Y7870-Douglass.indb 500

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

501

slave imported, nor will we hold intercourse with those provinces that do not agree with the same.”66 In his Notes on Virginia Mr. Jefferson embodied the prevailing sentiment of Revolutionary times, saying “The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave is rising from the dust; the way, I hope, preparing for total emancipation.”67 From 1776 to 1789 the literature of the country abounded in sentiments similar to those thus expressed. The Federal Constitution of 1789 was framed in the confident expectation of the speedy extinction of slavery, nor is there in it the words master, slave, nor slaveholder. If slaves are referred to at all they are spoken of as persons and not as property. Mr. Madison, who perhaps had more to do with the formation of the Federal Government than any other man, declared in the Convention that drafted the Constitution, that he thought it wrong to admit that there could be property in man, and according to the Madison papers “On motion of Mr. Randolph the word, ‘servitude’ was struck out, and ‘service’ unanimously inserted.—the former being thought to express the condition of slaves and the latter the obligation of free persons.”68 But the Georgia and South Carolina members refusing to accede to the Constitution should the slave trade be abolished prior to 1808, the Convention yielded to their demand, and thus the way was left open for a fatal reaction from the spirit generated before and during the Revolution.69 That spirit made itself manifest in numerous petitions to Congress. In 1783 and 1790 the Quakers appealed to that body for the suppression of the slave trade and in the latter year there was submitted a like memorial said to have been framed by Franklin. These were followed by petitions from the abolition societies of Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Virginia; by others against the kidnapping and re-enslavement of free persons of color; and by others still desiring the rescinding of the Fugitive Act of 1793 and the suppression of the traffic in bondmen between the Middle and Southern States.70 In 1820 the slave States demanded the admission of Missouri into the Federal Union as one of their own number and were successful. The agitation arising therefrom was settled by the dedication to freedom of all the territory acquired by the Louisiana purchase north of 36o 30´ latitude; and although the compromise did not legalize slavery in territory south of this line, the representatives and people of the slave states were apparently satisfied. The result was a temporary removal of the discussion of slavery from politics, but the period of silence was not of long duration.71 As early as 1828 David Walker, a colored man from Massachusetts, issued a stirring pamphlet against slavery,72 and Benjamin Lundy began the publication of the Genius of Liberty in Baltimore. These at once

Y7870-Douglass.indb 501

9/1/21 4:17 PM

502

SLAVERY

revived the dreaded agitation. Mr. Lundy was joined by William Lloyd Garrison, who for his ability and earnestness was soon recognized as the leader of the modern abolition movement, of which the distinctive feature was its demand for immediate abolition.73 Its growth was very rapid. Town, county, state, and national anti-slavery societies sprang into existence as if by divine impulse. Tracts, pamphlets, newspapers and essays on this subject literally teemed from the press in all the Northern States. One petition sent to Congress in 1835 was signed by 3600 persons, and in the same year the abolition societies numbered no fewer than 350. Ten years later they had increased to nearly 2000 with a membership of nearly 200,000.74 They represented intelligence, morality and culture, and kept before the people the duty of immediate abolition. Among the most important of these organizations were the New England, New York and American Anti-Slavery Societies.75 They numbered among their leaders such men as Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Elizur Wright, Jr.,76 Isaac T. Hopper,77 William Lloyd Garrison, Beriah Green,78 William Goodell,79 Alvin Stewart,80 Gerritt Smith, John G. Whittier,81 Judge Jay,82 Samuel Fesseden,83 Joshua Leavitt84 and Samuel J. May.85 Important auxiliaries were the women’s societies,86 with their eminent members, such as Lydia Maria Child, Lucretia Mott,87 Maria Weston Chapman,88 Abby Kelly,89 Sarah and Angelina Grimke,90 two sisters, bred slave-holders who had been compelled by conscience to liberate their slaves and devote their lives to the advocacy of emancipation. From its New York office the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1838 circulated 646,000 documents, and in 1839 more than 724,000.91 Mr. Garrison and his paper, The Liberator, were especially obnoxious to the South, and though a reward of $5000 for his arrest and conviction was offered by the Legislature of Georgia, he continued to make it one of the strongest agencies of the abolition cause.92 Among the events which powerfully affected the growth of anti-slavery sentiment in this country was the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies in 1834.93 England, a monarchy, was held up as a higher example of justice and liberty than America the Republic. As with all other reforms, abolition was assisted by the extravagance of its opponents. The mobbing of meetings in behalf of freedom in 183594 and for several years thereafter; the destruction at Cincinnati of James G. Birney’s printing press in 1836;95 the murder of Lovejoy in 1837 at Alton, Illinois, while defending his printing press;96 the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838; the hunting down of fugitive slaves at the North; the imprisonment of Fairbank, Torrey, Chaplin, Thompson, Work, and Burr, for assisting slaves to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 502

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

503

escape; the branding of Walker on the hand for the same offence;97 the imprisonment of colored seamen in Southern ports; the violence offered to Northern men at the South for expressing their anti-slavery opinions; the imprisonment in Connecticut of Prudence Crandall for teaching colored children; the breaking up of a colored school at Canaan, New Hampshire;98 the violence and brutality offered to the venerable John Quincy Adams for defending the right of petition in the Representative House of Congress;99 and the striking down of Charles Sumner on the floor of the United States Senate;100 all served to intensify the anti-slavery feeling in the Northern States. No cause ever had more powerful advocates. They were men who would have gained attention in a cause where the right was less evident than in this. Among the earliest of these were Theodore D. Weld,101 Henry B. Stanton,102 Charles C. Burleigh,103 Ichabod Codding,104 Charles Remond,105 William L. Chaplin, Myron Holly106 and Gerritt Smith, and Parker Pillsbury and Stephen S. Foster, than whom none were abler. The murder of Lovejoy stirred the soul of Wendell Phillips and gave the slave the benefit of his matchless eloquence.107 The fugitive slave law and its enforcement in Boston in 1850 brought Theodore Parker with his learning and power into anti-slavery prominence.108 Able writers, such as Richard Hildreth,109 Doctor Channing,110 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edmund Quincy, David Lee Child,111 Lydia Maria Child, Gamaliel Bailey,112 William Goodell, Oliver Johnson113 and others, employed their pens with zeal and industry in the same cause. Perhaps the most effective of all the literary efforts was that of Mrs. Stowe114 in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The power of poetry and song were not withheld. Whittier,115 Pierpont116 and Lowell117 gave to the cause the soul-stirring fruits of their genius, while the hearts of thousands were touched as the Hutchinson family sang the wrongs of the slave.118 Fugitive slaves fresh from bondage told their story and added emphatic illustration to argument. Ten years of such agitation widened the chasm between the North and the South. Churches were rent asunder at Mason and Dixon’s line.119 All political activity became engulfed in the slave question (see Republican Party, vol. xx. pp. 905–907). The domination of this cause was marked upon the floor of Congress by the most outspoken intentions of the leaders of the South and by the most humiliating subserviency of the North. Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina threatened “if driven to it, we will take care of ourselves!”120 Henry Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee, declared “Congress had no power over

Y7870-Douglass.indb 503

9/1/21 4:17 PM

504

SLAVERY

slavery but to protect it,”121 and Calhoun, who more than any other man embodied the determination of the South, in discussing a bill forbidding the circulation of anti-slavery documents in the South, declared the South would never abandon the principle involved, but would resort to “State interposition as the rightful remedy; that the laws of the slave-holding States were paramount to the laws of General Government.”122 Changes of industrial conditions, and still more influentially repeated acquisitions of fertile territory on the Southern borders of the United States augmented the slave power, and encouraged its confident demands for new concessions, which finally resulted in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the attempt to force slavery into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.123 It demanded as fresh guarantees that all books, pamphlets and papers exposing the evils of slavery should be excluded from the mails; that negroes should not be employed on our naval vessels except as servants; that they should not be allowed to carry the mail bags; that the right to petition should be denied to slaves and abolitionists; that the discussion of slavery should be prohibited by law; that colored people should be denied the right of citizenship; that emancipation should be forbidden by law; that slaveholders should be permitted to carry their slaves into free States and hold them there; that stringent laws should be enacted by the National Congress for the recapture of fugitives from bondage; that freedom of debate upon the floor of Congress should be suppressed; that new slave States should be admitted into the Union as a counterpoise to the increasing power of the free States; that the extension of slavery was essential to its existence; that property in slaves should be recognized in all the territories of the United States, whether with or against the consent of the people of those territories; and finally, that the election to the Presidency of any man opposed to the extension of slavery should be cause for the dissolution of the Union.124 That such was the well defined policy of the South is amply proven by the debates in Congress from 1833 to 1863 inclusive. Secession upon the election of Abraham Lincoln and the resolution to maintain it by arms were its logical results.125 The abolition of slavery on the ground of moral as well as military necessity was equally the logical result of the development of anti-slavery ideas and of the war. The effects of emancipation thus far have been beneficial to the slave, the master and the section where slavery existed. It has opened to the South civilizing forces which could not otherwise have reached it in a century. That cotton and sugar could not be produced except by slave labor,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 504

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

505

that the negro would not work except under the lash, that he could not be trusted with liberty, that he could not take care of himself, that he would starve in freedom, and that the South would be ruined by the change, have all been happily answered. More cotton and other valuable products have followed emancipation than ever preceded it, and never was the South more prosperous.126 Her material prosperity is more than matched by her moral improvement. That the negro will work is shown by the fact that he is now paying taxes on $91,000,000 worth of property, and that he values education is proven by the fact that there were (1885) in the South 19,222 colored schools, including public, high and normal schools and colleges, with an enrollment of 1,053,963 pupils.127 (F.D.) 1. Although enslaved Africans had lived in Europe since antiquity, it was the Portuguese who established the first large-scale African slave trade of the modern era. The introduction of enslaved Africans to Europe began with the first exploration of the coast of what is now Senegal, when several individuals were captured, brought to Portugal, and sold as slaves. The first recorded expedition designed specifically for the purpose of enslaving Africans was launched by the Portuguese in 1444. Within a few years, the Portuguese were trading directly with native leaders for slaves, taking advantage of the existing domestic slave trade in Africa. By 1500, the Portuguese had been importing African slaves to the Iberian Peninsula for over half a century. Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (New York, 1997), 25–28, 48–67; Lawrence A. Clayton, Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas (Malden, Mass., 2011), 136. 2. The Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus (c. 1451–1506) made four voyages from Europe to America in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Although he was not the first European to set foot on American soil, his voyages helped solidify the link between the Old and New Worlds, marking “the beginning of European exploration and settlement of the American continents.” Columbus finally succeeded in securing financial backing for his voyages from Spain’s monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and set sail on 3 August 1492. Hoping to find a westward route to Asia, Columbus instead landed on an island in the Bahamas on 12 October. Over the course of his four voyages to the New World, Columbus explored the islands San Salvador, Hispaniola, and Trinidad, all of which he named, as well as present-day Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. While it is now generally accepted that the Vikings had established a settlement in North America at least five hundred years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean, this was not widely known in Douglass’s lifetime. During the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, Columbus was regarded as the “discoverer of America”—a land viewed as having been largely inhabited by heathens, cannibals, and savages who could only benefit from the civilizing influences of Christian Europe. Eric Badertscher, Christopher Columbus (Toledo, Ohio, 2009); Peter Charles Hoffer, The Brave New World: A History of Early America (Baltimore, 2006), 70–73; Stephen J. Summerhill and John Alexander Williams, Sinking Columbus: Contested History, Cultural Politics, and Mythmaking during the Quincentenary (Gainesville, Fla., 2000), 1–10, 18–25, 193–94; David Henige, In Search of Columbus: The Sources for the First Voyage (Tucson, Ariz., 1991), 1–8. 3. It is true that sometime between 1515 and 1517, Bartolomé de Las Casas suggested to Charles  V’s councilors that a special license be issued to allow the importation of slaves directly from Africa to the Spanish colonies in the West Indies. It appears that he did so almost exclusively out of a desire to find an alternative labor source for those colonies in order to preserve the rapidly

Y7870-Douglass.indb 505

9/1/21 4:17 PM

506

SLAVERY

dwindling native population, which was being decimated by slavery. But even before Las Casas’s involvement, the emperor had already granted a license to a group of Italian merchants based in Seville, giving them the right to export 4,000 enslaved Africans directly from Africa to the West Indies. Las Casas would eventually denounce both the African slave trade and the enslavement of Africans just as vehemently as he had once denounced the enslavement of the Amerindians. Clayton, Bartolomé de Las Casas, 136–37, 419–21. 4. Although the Royal African Company was not chartered until 1672, under Charles II, the earliest English efforts to officially engage in the African slave trade can be traced to the sixteenth century. In 1588, the government of Elizabeth I organized the trade into a regulated joint-stock company charted under the name the Senegal Adventurers and modeled on the East India, Hudson Bay, and Muscovy companies. In the 1560s, the queen personally invested in at least two private slaving expeditions to Africa. William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2013), 22–23; Junius P. Rodriguez, ed., The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1997), 2:557. 5. Charles II, his brother the Duke of York (later James II), and nine other members of the Stuart family were shareholders in the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa, which was founded in 1660 and later folded into the Royal African Company when it was chartered, in 1672. Both the king and the Duke of York received shares in the new company, and the duke became one of its largest investors, playing an active role in its management and serving as its first governor. In an effort to maintain a favorable relationship with the Crown, the company gave shares to both William III (in 1689) and Queen Anne (in 1714). James Anderson Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of the Arts (New York, 2004), 15–16; Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt, 138. 6. The Pilgrims were a small group of English Separatists who originally came from Scrooby, England. Known among themselves as “Saints” (the term “Pilgrim” was not applied to the colonists who sailed on the Mayflower until the eighteenth century), the Separatists left the Church of England and formed their own church in the mid-sixteenth century. In 1608, the congregation at Scrooby joined a growing number of their coreligionists in the Netherlands, first in Amsterdam and later in Leiden. Within a decade, however, a segment of the Scrooby congregation obtained permission from the Virginia Company to establish a colony in North America. With the financial backing of the Company of Merchant Adventurers, two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell, carrying 120 colonists (40 of whom were Saints), left Southampton, England, on 15 August 1620. When the Speedwell proved unseaworthy, both ships were forced to return to England. On 15 September, the Mayflower left Plymouth carrying 102 colonists, 41 of whom were Saints. After being driven far off course, the colonists reached what is now Massachusetts in early November, where they established the Plymouth Bay Colony in December 1620. The colony survived until 1691, when it became part of the Colony of Massachusetts. Nick Bunker, Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their New World: A History (New York, 2010), 37; Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York, 2006), 23–24; John Powell, Encyclopedia of North American Immigration (New York, 2005), 187; Knight, Pop Culture Places, 3:723–28. 7. A Dutch ship sold around twenty African captives in Jamestown on 20 August 1619. The exact status of this transaction is unclear, but most scholars believe that at least some of these Africans were sold as indentured servants rather than slaves. In either case, it is the first recorded evidence of an African presence in the original thirteen English colonies in North America. Junius P. Rodriguez, ed., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2007), 1:2; Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), 153–57. 8. The first definition recorded in British North America of who might be enslaved and under what circumstances appeared in Massachusetts’s Body of Liberties (1641) under the title “Liberties of Foreigners and Strangers.” The statute allowed for the enslavement of “lawful captives taken in just wars,” as well as “strangers . . . sold to us,” and while the former clause referred primarily to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 506

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

507

Native Americans, the latter is generally viewed as including Africans as well. Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865 (New York, 2010), 424; A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process, The Colonial Period (1978; New York, 1980), 61–62. 9. Article 4 of the Articles of Confederation between the Plantations under the Government of Massachusetts, the Plantations under the Government of New Plymouth, the Plantations under the Government of Connecticut, and the Government of New Haven (1643) states in part that “according to the different charge of each jurisdiction and plantation the whole advantage of the war (if it please God so to bless their endeavors) whether it be in lands, goods, or persons, shall be proportionally divided among the said Confederates.” Yale Law School, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy (online). 10. On 31 July 1690, representatives from New York and the New England colonies, meeting in Albany, New York, agreed to launch the expedition of Albany against the French in Canada. In addition to New York’s lieutenant governor, Jacob Leisler, agreeing to accept Massachusetts’s John Winthrop as the expedition’s military commander, the articles of alliance included a clause stating that “all plunder and captives (if it so happen) shall be divided amongst the officers and soldiers according to the custom of war.” Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, ed., The Documentary History of the State of New York, 4 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 1849), 2:279–80. 11. In 1702, Queen Anne’s government instructed Lord Cornbury (Edward Hyde), cousin of the queen and first royal governor of New York and New Jersey, to “give all due encouragement and invitations to merchants and others who shall bring trade into our said provinces . . . in particular the Royal African Company of England . . . [so] that the said provinces may have a constant and sufficient supply of merchantable negroes at moderate rates.” Charles A. Stansfield, Jr., A Geography of New Jersey: The City in the Garden (1983; New Brunswick, N.J., 2004), 129; Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, Slavery in America (2000; New York, 2007), 64. 12. Although a few slaves were brought to what is now North Carolina as part of both a failed Spanish settlement in 1526, and in the first attempt to plant an English settlement on Roanoke Island in 1586, the earliest documented evidence of permanent slavery in (North) Carolina does not appear until a group of perhaps no more than four slave-owning families from Virginia established plantations there in 1663. By 1700, around 400 enslaved Africans lived in settlements scattered across the Albemarle Sound region. It was only in the 1730s, after the lower Cape Fear region of North Carolina began to be settled by South Carolinians, that slavery became a significant factor in North Carolina. Milton Ready, The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina (Columbia, S.C., 2005), 69; Lindley S. Butler and Alan D. Watson, eds., The North Carolina Experience: An Interpretive and Documentary History (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 195. 13. Charles II granted a charter establishing the colony of Carolina in January 1663. In 1670, after several failed attempts to attract settlers (including targeted efforts to lure settlers to the new colony from Virginia and New England), a group of Barbadians, led by John Vassall, established the colony’s first permanent settlement, Charles Town (Charleston), at the mouth of the Ashley and Cooper rivers. Within a year, a second wave of colonists from Barbados had joined them, including Sir John Yeamans (1611–74). Although scholars now believe that the first enslaved Africans were probably brought into the colony sometime in the 1660s, slaves are known to have been part of Vassall’s settlement. Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia, S.C., 1998), 38–40, 63; Robert M. Weir, “ ‘Shaftesbury’s Darling’: British Settlement in the Carolinas at the Close of Seventeenth Century,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1, The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Nicholas Canny (Oxford, 1998), 389. 14. James Oglethorpe (1696–1785) and the other original twenty-one trustees of Georgia envisioned the colony, established in 1732, as a refuge for poor but worthy English workers. Anticipating that the colony would become a major producer of luxury items such as silk and wine—which, in their view, required neither extensive landholdings nor slave labor—the trustees initially limited

Y7870-Douglass.indb 507

9/1/21 4:17 PM

508

SLAVERY

most settlers to a single grant of fifty acres and made clear their desire that slavery not be introduced in Georgia. Both decisions were made in an effort to ensure that the colony would develop along more egalitarian lines than those characterizing the stratified plantation-based societies in the British West Indies, South Carolina, and Virginia. Even so, slavery played a role in the founding of Georgia: hired slaves from South Carolina helped clear the land for the colony’s first settlement. Subsequently, residents of South Carolina objected to the ban on slavery, arguing that it prevented them from expanding their landholdings into the new colony. In response, and largely at Oglethorpe’s insistence, the House of Commons passed legislation banning slavery in Georgia in 1735. But within a few years, Georgia’s settlers were actively campaigning to have the ban lifted. By the mid-1740s, enforcement of the ban had grown quite lax, with slaves being imported into Georgia more or less openly. In 1750, with only two years before their charter expired, the trustees bowed to the settlers’ demands and asked Parliament to lift the ban on slavery. As a result, on 1 January 1751, slavery became legal in Georgia. Edwin L. Jackson, “James Oglethorpe,” New Georgia Encyclopedia (online); Betty Wood, “Slavery in Colonial Georgia,” New Georgia Encyclopedia (online). 15. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, George Bancroft (1800–91) was educated first at Phillips Exeter Academy and then at Harvard University. In 1818, he sailed to Europe to study at the Georgia Augusta University in Gottingen (Hanover), Germany. Returning to the United States in 1822, Bancroft received an appointment as a Greek instructor at Harvard. In 1824, he cofounded the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, modeled on the German gymnasium. In 1827, Bancroft published the first volume of his History of the United States, which was quickly hailed as both a literary and scholarly triumph. Bancroft moved to Boston, where he was appointed collector of the Port. In 1840, the second volume of his History was published. After campaigning for James Knox Polk in 1844, he was appointed to Polk’s cabinet as secretary of the navy; he played a key role in the acquisition of California and the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy. Polk then appointed Bancroft ambassador to Great Britain, where he served for the next three years. Returning to the United States in 1849, he concentrated on completing the still-unfinished History of the United States. Bancroft returned to public life in 1867 and accepted an appointment from Andrew Johnson as U.S. minister to Prussia, a position he continued to hold under Ulysses S. Grant. Returning to the United States in 1874, he moved to Washington, D.C., and published the tenth and final volume of the now-mammoth History of the United States. In recognition of his stature in the field, he was elected president of the American Historical Association in 1885. DAB, 1:564–71; ANB (online). 16. Bancroft’s view of Georgia’s ban on slavery, namely, that it was primarily motivated by a belief that an all-white settlement would provide the most security against Spanish incursion from Florida, is considered by most modern scholars to be only partially correct. While it is true that Spain’s policy of offering freedom to slaves in exchange for military service was considered highly dangerous to Georgia’s long-term survival, it is equally true that the trustees were opposed to slavery for social and economic reasons. Georgia’s founders hoped to avoid the development of a slave-based plantation-style economy and instead intended that a more egalitarian, slave-free society be established. Wood, “Slavery in Colonial Georgia.” 17. Modern scholars now estimate that Massachusetts played a smaller role in the slave trade than was once believed. And while it is true that merchants in many towns, including Salem and Newburyport, participated in the Atlantic slave trade, records indicate that the total number of ships bound for Africa from Boston between 1730 and 1775 averaged 5–10 a year. New York City entered the slave trade in the late seventeenth century, and it is now estimated that between 1715 and 1774, New York ships made at least 151 slaving voyages to Africa. It was Rhode Island, however—particularly the ports of Newport and Bristol—that commanded the greatest share of the colonial slave trade. Between 1709 and 1807, at least 934 ships from Rhode Island were known to have transported over 100,000 men, women, and children from Africa to be sold as slaves, mostly to planters in the West Indies. Even so, it was only after independence that the United States emerged as one of the leading participants in the Atlantic slave trade, becoming the third-largest transporter of Africans

Y7870-Douglass.indb 508

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

509

into the Western Hemisphere by 1803. David Richardson, “Slavery, Trade, and Economic Growth in Eighteenth-Century New England,” in Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, ed. Barbara L. Solow (New York, 1991), 245–47; James A. Rawley and Stephen D. Behrendt, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History, rev. ed. (1981; Lincoln, Neb., 2005), 278–79, 289–91, 296–99, 302–06, 305– 09, 332–33; Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wisc., 1969), 116–126, 127–162. 18. It is impossible to confirm Douglass’s figure. In fact, estimates of the total number of slaves exported to any portion of the Western Hemisphere vary wildly. In general, however, most scholars believe that the total number of enslaved Africans forced to migrate to the New World, from the sixteenth century through the nineteenth century, ranged from 9.5 million to 11.5 million. Out of that total, it is estimated that Britain’s original mainland colonies and the United States imported around 340,000 slaves directly from Africa between 1701 and 1808. Rawley and Behrendt, Transatlantic Slave Trade, 4, 15–17, 277; Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, 87; Rodriguez, Encyclopedia of World Slavery, 2:676. 19. John Winthrop’s account of the voyage of the Desire from Salem confirms that Massachusetts’s official involvement in the slave trade began in 1638–39. Operating under the auspices of the colonial authorities, Captain William Pierce transported 17 captive Pequots to the West Indies, where he was instructed to sell them, since it was feared that keeping them as slaves in Massachusetts would be far too dangerous. Arriving on Providence Island, a Puritan colony in the Caribbean, Pierce exchanged the captives for a cargo of salt, tobacco, cotton, and African slaves. Nathaniel Butler, the governor of Providence Island, issued a warning in 1639 or 1640 that the African slave population could become too numerous to manage, but there is little evidence to support the claim that the colonists ever seriously considered ridding themselves of their slaves by selling them in New England or Virginia. In fact, when the Spanish overran the colony in 1641, the captured African slaves outnumbered the captured English settlers 381 to 350. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630–1641: The Other Puritan Colony (1993; New York, 1995), 170–78; Ronald Bailey, “ ‘Those Valuable People, the Africans’: The Economic Impact of the Slave(ry) Trade on Textile Industrialization in New England,” in The Meaning of Slavery in the North, eds. David Roediger and Martin H. Blatt (New York, 1998), 7. 20. Massachusetts was the first British colony in North America to traffic in slaves. Initially, the primary source of slaves was the West Indies rather than Africa. Barbados, in particular, continued to sell slaves to Massachusetts traders well into the eighteenth century. The first recorded sale of Africans from Guinea, who were carried by Massachusetts ships to the West Indies, dates to 1644, when a consortium of Boston traders sent a group of ships carrying pipe staves to the Canaries. After selling its cargo, one of those ships picked up a cargo of slaves in the Cape Verde Islands and sailed to Barbados. The slaves were exchanged for a cargo of wine, sugar, salt, and tobacco, which was then sold in Boston. This is generally considered the earliest documented example of New England’s infamous triangular (slave) trade. Rawley and Behrendt, Transatlantic Slave Trade, 297–98. 21. Although not as well documented as the African slave trade, an Amerindian slave trade operated sporadically in British North America for almost a century. Scholars now estimate that 30,000– 50,000 Amerindians were captured—either directly by the British or, more frequently, sold to them by other Native Americans—enslaved, and then exported, primarily to the West Indies by 1715. The majority of Native Americans sold into slavery appear to have belonged to tribes allied with the French or the Spanish. While some evidence supports Douglass’s assertion that Amerindian slaves were exchanged for African slaves, who were perceived as being more docile, most records indicate that the primary motivating factor for exporting captive Native Americans was fear of their potential collusion with local tribes and the security risk that threat represented to the colonists. Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1715 (New Haven, Conn., 2002), 127–28, 299–300; Roxann Wheeler, “Colonial Exchanges: Visualizing Racial Ideology and Labour in Britain and the West Indies,” in An Economy of Colour: Visual Culture and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 509

9/1/21 4:17 PM

510

SLAVERY

the Atlantic World, 1660–1830, ed. Geoff Quilley and Kay Dian Kriz (Manchester, Eng., 2003), 51–52; Rawley and Behrendt, Transatlantic Slave Trade, 266. 22. In a report written in 1671, Virginia governor Sir William Berkeley estimated that there were 2,000 black slaves and 6,000 white indentured servants in the colony, out of a total population of roughly 40,000. Berkeley also claimed that over the past seven years, no more than two or three cargoes of slaves had been sold in Virginia. Scholars now estimate that there were roughly 200 slaves in Massachusetts by 1676, 400 by 1708, and at least 2,000 by 1720. In 1776, the total number of African Americans living in Massachusetts was just over 5,000. According to the 1790 Census, no slaves lived in Massachusetts, and the 5,369 African Americans residing there were free. Douglass’s figures for the total number of slaves in the United States at the time of the first census are just slightly off: it recorded 657,538 slaves in the South and 40,086 in the North. William Waller Hening, The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619, 13 vols. (New York, 1819–23), 2:215; U.S. Department of Commerce and Bureau of the Census, Negro Population 1790–1915 (1918; New York, 1968), 55; Samuel Sewell, The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial, ed. Sidney Kaplan (Northampton, Mass., 1969), 29; Alton Hornsby, Jr., ed., Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2010), 1:387; Rodriguez, Slavery in the United States, 1:6; EAAH, 2:493. 23. As early as 1664, the British government had instructed colonial governors to both encourage and invite British merchants, particularly those engaged in the slave trade, to ply their trade in colonial North America. As a result, efforts on the part of colonial legislatures to suspend or slow down the importation of slaves, through the enactment of high tariffs or custom duties, were routinely thwarted by the authorities. For example, attempts by the House of Burgesses in Virginia to impede (though not eliminate) the importation of slaves by imposing high import duties in 1731, 1732, 1759, 1761, and 1772 were overruled by Parliament. Likewise, South Carolina’s effort to ban the slave trade in 1760 was rejected by the British government. Marilyn C. Baseler, “Asylum for Mankind”: America, 1607–1800 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1998), 75–77; Rodriguez, Slavery in the United States, 1:14–20. 24. Douglass claims that New Englanders held a dim view of Native Americans because of their identification with the biblical Amalekites, a tribe that so offended God that all traces of its existence were wiped out, according to the book of Exodus. Evidence of this view can be found throughout the private papers and published documents of seventeenth-century Puritans. Cotton Mather’s famous exhortation to his fellow New Englanders to destroy their Native American opponents just as the Israelites had destroyed the Amalekites, written during King William’s War (1688–97), is a typical example of such writings. Douglass is also correct in his assessment of Massachusetts Puritans’ tendency to equate both Africans and Native Americans with heathens, strangers, and foreigners, groups whose enslavement could be justified by using scripture—particularly a passage from Leviticus that charged the Israelites with taking such people “as an inheritance for [their] children.” Exod. 17:8–13, Lev. 25:39–46; John Corrigan, “New Israel, New Amalek: Biblical Exhortations to Religious Violence,” in From Jeremiad to Jihad: Religion, Violence, and America, ed. John D. Carlson and Jonathan H. Ebal (Berkeley, Calif., 2012), 111–16; Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 424. 25. Douglass’s criticism of Roger Williams (1603–83), a Baptist minister and founder of Rhode Island, fails to acknowledge the complexity of his views, at least in regard to Native Americans. While it is true that Williams referred to the Pequots as a “miserable droue of Adam’s degenerate seede,” he did so in a letter to John Winthrop during the Pequot War (1634–38) while taking a lead role in negotiating an alliance with the Narragansetts. The colonists in Rhode Island, as well as Williams himself, would maintain harmonious relations with the tribe for almost forty years. In his A Key into the Language of America (1643) and other writings, Williams stated his view that “nature [knew] no difference between Europeans and Americans in blood” and that Native Americans were “by birth as good” as the English, who might very well find that Heaven was “open to Indians wild, but shut” to them. Though Williams referred to Native Americans as heathens, he maintained that the word applied to anyone not “truly converted” to Christianity. He argued that just as many Britons as

Y7870-Douglass.indb 510

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

511

Native Americans fell into that same category, and that England was just as much a heathen nation as any of the nations (or tribes) found in the Americas. John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (New York, 2012), 158–59, 286–87; James P. Byrd, Jr., The Challenges of Roger Williams: Religious Liberty, Violent Persecution, and the Bible (Macon, Ga., 2002), 14–16. 26. The legal principle of partus sequitur ventrem, “progeny follows the womb,” was used in twelve of the original thirteen colonies to establish legal status for all children at birth. Put simply, a child born to a free mother was free, and a child born to a slave mother was a slave. In Maryland, however, the opposite principle, partus sequitur patrem, was followed, and each child’s legal status followed the condition of the father. This remained the case until 1712, when the assembly passed legislation designed to bring Maryland’s laws into conformity with those of the other colonies. Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 29–30; Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South (New York, 1982), 203. 27. In slave states, the general rule of thumb was that any person whose skin color indicated African descent was automatically presumed to be a slave and therefore someone’s property. Furthermore, the burden of proof (onus probandi) for showing otherwise was placed on either the presumed slave or anyone else who treated such a person like a free black. In the free states, the opposite view held true, and all people, even those of visibly African heritage, were presumed to be free in the eyes of the law. Mary R. Bullard, Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island: Society, Politics, Agriculture, and Mixed-Race Unions in a Coastal Georgia Planter Community (1986; Athens, Ga., 1995), 93–94; William Mack, ed., Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure, 40 vols. (New York, 1901–12), 36:470–71. 28. While it is true that colonial North Carolina’s courts presumed that mixed-race individuals were free, thus placing the burden of proof for showing otherwise on slave owners, an 1802 case (Gobu v. Gobu) reversed that long-standing precedent. Instead, the court ruled that the burden of proof fell upon the presumed slave, who was just as likely to be descended from a black slave woman as from a free white woman. If physical features suggesting white parentage were clearly evident, the presumption was that the person was free unless the putative slave owner could prove otherwise. In the Virginia case Hudgins v. Wrights (1806), Judge George Wythe found that “as a general position . . . whenever one person claims to hold another in slavery, the onus probandi (burden of proof) lies on the claimant,” but his decision was overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, which found that Wythe’s ruling infringed too much upon the property rights of white Virginians. Writing for the majority, Justice St. George Tucker declared that in the future, racial appearance was to determine who bore the burden of proof in all such cases. Often citing both Gobu v. Gobu and Hudgins v. Wrights as precedent, the supreme courts of Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana issued similar rulings in the following years. Louisiana’s 1825 Civil Code (Article 3510) also included a unique clause holding that any slave owner who allowed a slave to live free for ten years within Louisiana, or twenty years outside its borders, could not recover possession of the slave. George M. Stroud, Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America (New York, 1856), 126; Howard Bodenhorn, The Color Factor: The Economics of African-American Well-Being in the Nineteenth-Century South (New York, 2015), 27; Eva Sheppard Wolf, Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (Baton Rouge, La., 2006), 150; Frank W. Sweet, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule (Palm Coast, Fla., 2005), 163–64; Judith Kelleher Schafer, Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, La., 1994), 234. 29. Slaves were prohibited from being parties to contracts, including contracts with their owners that would allow them to purchase their freedom, in every jurisdiction in the United States. In those states where slaves were legally permitted to challenge their enslavement through “freedom suits,” the two most common charges levied against slave owners were false imprisonment and trespass. But stiff penalties could fall on anyone, including a slave or whoever aided a slave in making such a claim,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 511

9/1/21 4:17 PM

512

SLAVERY

should the case fail. In Mississippi and Virginia, whites who provided support for a slave who had lost a freedom suit could be fined $100 (payable to the slave owner), and in Maryland a 1796 statute authorized the courts to order attorneys who failed to win their client’s freedom to pay “all legal costs” unless the court found that the case had been based on probable cause. In both South Carolina (1740) and Georgia (1770), laws were enacted allowing corporal punishment—short of risking life and limb—to be inflicted on slaves who failed to gain their freedom. Douglass appears mistaken in his assertion that slaves were allowed to sue for their freedom as “poor persons” in Mississippi, although that was the case in Missouri (1824) and Arkansas (1837). The Revised Code of the Laws of Mississippi (Natchez, Miss., 1824), 387; The Revised Code of the Statute Laws of the State of Mississippi (Jackson, Miss., 1857), 236–37; Stroud, Laws Relating to Slavery, 76–77; F. Michael Higginbotham, Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post Racial America (New York, 2013), 53; Andrew Fede, Roadblocks to Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in the United States South (New Orleans, La., 2011), 145, 147; Edlie L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel (New York, 2009), 164; Henry W. Farnham, Chapters in the History of Social Legislation in the United States to 1860, ed. Clive Day (1938; Clark, N.J., 2007), 207. 30. In all the slave states, slaves had no property rights, and any real or personal property they might acquire, in point of law, belonged to their owners. In Maryland, however, a gift, bequest, or devise of real or personal property made to a slave by anyone other than his or her owner was deemed void by the State Supreme Court, while such a gift, bequest, or devise made by the slave’s owner was instead held to entitle the slave to his or her freedom. Stroud, Laws Relating to Slavery, 74–80. 31. Douglass is correct in noting that in many states, slaves could be both the subject of a mortgage and seized as chattels for the payment of debt, but the situation was often more complicated. Between 1798 and 1852 in Kentucky, for example, slaves were defined as chattels specifically because state law gave priority to the sale of real estate to settle debts, while in Virginia between 1705 and 1795, slaves were routinely defined as real estate for the opposite reason, since the seizure of chattels rather than land was the preferred method of securing the payment of debt. The same held true in Arkansas in the 1840s. In 1690, South Carolina defined slaves as real estate until the English government refused to allow such a designation. In Louisiana, slaves were most often defined as “immoveables,” but also, on occasion, as real estate. Overall, it is estimated that one-third of all the jurisdictions in the slave-owning states applied the rules of real estate to slaves. Jenny Bourne Wahl, The Bondsman’s Burden: An Economic Analysis of the Common Law of Southern Slavery (New York, 1998), 260n3; Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996), 64, 121–31; Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 1976), 50. 32. Across the slave-owning South, slaves were uniformly prohibited from being party to any legal contract, including contracts with their owners. As a result, slaves had no legal recourse when it came to enforcing such contracts, should their owners fail to adhere to the terms of a contract upon its completion. Following a precedent established in Roman law, slaves were prohibited from being parties to contracts in their own right; they could act as either their owner’s or their employer’s agent and thus legally bind them, upon their affirmation, to the terms of a contract. The most famous precedent for this principle in U.S. law was established by a South Carolina case, Chastain v. Bowman, in 1833. Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery: In the United States of America (1858; New Bedford, Mass., 2009), 241, 261; Eugene Wambaugh, A Selection of Cases on Agency (Cambridge, Mass., 1896), 3–4; Tamar Frankel, Fiduciary Law (New York, 2011), 91. 33. Douglass’s claim is essentially correct—slaves manumitted in a will could be denied their freedom if their deceased owner’s estate lacked the necessary assets to pay his or her debts, without including the slaves. But state law across the slave-owning South allowed courts a certain amount of flexibility in implementing this policy. In states such as Maryland, the courts permitted slaves to be granted their freedom if the estate’s assets were, through whatever means, found to be sufficient to settle any debts before the close of probate without having to sell the slaves. In Virginia, courts had

Y7870-Douglass.indb 512

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

513

the option of allowing the executor of such an estate to rent out the “freed” slaves until their deceased owner’s debt was cleared, after which the court would set them free. In Kentucky, courts would sometimes sanction the temporary sale of slaves, with the understanding that they would be granted their freedom once their late owner’s debts had been settled. Cobb, Law of Negro Slavery, 299–301; Mack, Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure, 18:602; Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (1986; New York, 2014), 221. 34. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Southern jurisprudence struggled with the question of how much, if at all, a master was liable for the actions of his or her slaves. At times, as in North and South Carolina, for example, efforts were made to draw an analogy between slave owners whose slaves had caused damage to property or personal injury, and the owners of cattle or “vicious” animals that had caused similar damage or injury. This line of argument had largely been abandoned by the mid-nineteenth century after courts in Tennessee (Wright v. Weatherly) and Missouri (Ewing v. Thompson) found that slaves were not animals, but were instead “intelligent and moral agent[s]” liable for their own actions. For the most part, Southern states generally chose to follow a “master-servant” analogy when determining the extent of an owner’s liability, based on precedents found in English common law. As a result, Southern courts usually maintained that masters could be held liable only for those criminal acts committed by their slaves at their request or command. Even so, a slave owner’s liability was most often limited to paying damages (payment that in some cases might be the slave in question) or paying the legal costs for the successful prosecution of their slaves. By the mid-nineteenth century, it had also become increasingly common in states such as Virginia and Kentucky for the courts to hold slave owners liable for providing legal representation for their accused slaves when brought to trial. Cobb, Law of Negro Slavery, 272–73; Alfred L. Brophy, “The Market, Utility, and Slavery in Southern Legal Thought,” in Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, eds. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (Philadelphia, 2016), 265; Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 353–68. 35. As Douglass indicates, because slaves lacked contractual capacity in every slave-owning jurisdiction in the United States, they were precluded from being parties to any form of legal marriage. There were two notable exceptions to this rule. In 1809, the New York General Assembly legalized slave marriages, and Tennessee granted slaves a limited right to marry before the Civil War. Still, Douglass’s analysis of the ramifications of the general situation, such as slaves therefore being unable to commit adultery or engage in polygamy, is correct. He is less accurate, however, in his assertion that emancipation alone gave preexisting slave marriages the same legal status as any other marriage in the United States. In some states, such as Louisiana, a form of nonbinding church-sanctioned “moral” marriages had been allowed between slaves with the consent of their owners. Such preexisting slave unions were easily granted full legal status by some state legislatures shortly after emancipation. In other states, it took longer. In both South Carolina and Kentucky, the courts did not recognize the validity of preexisting slave marriages until the passage of special legislation in 1865 and early 1866. For other states, such preexisting unions were not given full and equal legal status until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Cobb, Law of Negro Slavery, 242–43; Laura F. Edwards, “The Politics of Marriage and Households in North Carolina during Reconstruction,” in Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights, ed. Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Bryant Simon (Princeton, N.J., 2000), 11–14; Darlene Goring, “The History of Slave Marriage in the United States,” John Marshall Law Review, 39:306–307, 314–18, 323 (Winter 2006). 36. Fundamentally, every Southern court regarded manumission as a gift that every master (or mistress) had both the power and authority to bestow on their slaves. Legally, manumission was uniformly defined as the act by which an owner voluntarily renounced the right to a slave’s service, thus granting the slave his or her freedom. Southern courts were scrupulous in determining ownership in order to make certain that everyone with vested property rights in a slave to be freed were consulted. Furthermore, every Southern state maintained that the ability of slave owners to free their property could be limited only by explicit laws enacted from considerations of public policy. The

Y7870-Douglass.indb 513

9/1/21 4:17 PM

514

SLAVERY

most common example of such a “consideration,” which might be invoked to block an owner’s right to free a slave, was a slave’s age and state of health, since the elderly, the very young, and the sick and the feeble might become a burden on society once set free. As Douglass correctly points out, virtually every slaveholding state expanded on what constituted “considerations of public policy” to include items such as requiring a freed slave to leave the state upon emancipation, or the passage of a special legislative act to finalize manumission. As Douglass often states, it must be noted that because of the nationally held assumption of a slave’s inability to legally be party to any contract, verbal or written, the “gift” of manumission was limited almost entirely to direct and intentional acts of owners, which could be recorded by deed or in last wills and testaments. Cobb, Law of Negro Slavery, 278–84, 287–95; Fede, Roadblocks to Freedom, 35–86; Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 371–404. 37. The distinguished jurist George M. Stroud claimed in his authoritative A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America (1827) that nearly all the British American colonies had originally granted masters absolute power over their slaves, but that by the late eighteenth century, all slave states had instituted legislation granting slaves some level of protection from cruel and arbitrary abuse. Stroud demonstrated that such laws were effectively meaningless, since no slave state allowed blacks, whether enslaved or free, to bear witness against whites in a court of law. Stroud also provided clear evidence that “the penal codes of the slaveholding states bear much more severely upon slaves than upon white persons.” For instance, all slave states assigned the death penalty far more often to slaves than to whites, and corporal punishment, including dismemberment, was routinely applied to slaves for an array of offenses, but very seldom to whites. Stroud, Laws Relating to Slavery, 20–28, 69–95. 38. It is not clear which specific state statutes are being referenced here, but contemporary sources available to Douglass provide dozens of examples of fugitive slave laws with similar punishments. Stroud, Laws Relating to Slavery, 70, 72; William Goodell, The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice: Its Distinctive Features Shown by Its Statutes, Judicial Decisions, and Illustrative Facts (1853; New York, 1968), 225–38. 39. Although there was a pervasive belief in the South that African American literacy would undermine slavery, state antiliteracy laws directed toward African Americans were neither universal nor uniform. The historian Heather Andrea Williams found laws prohibiting the education of slaves in Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina, as well as statutes that forbade educating any person of color, whether slave or free, in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, and Virginia. She identified no such laws in Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee, or Texas. Notably, many Southern towns and cities passed ordinances against educating slaves within their boundaries. The fear of African Americans, whether slave, free, or mixed, gathering together to plot violent rebellion was universal among white Southerners, yet legislation regulating “negro assemblage” varied widely in construction and enforcement throughout the slave states. Although it is unclear which particular state statute is being referred to here, contemporary sources offer multiple examples of African American anti-assembly laws with similar punishments. Williams, SelfTaught, 203–13, 216; Stroud, Laws Relating to Slavery, 58–63, 71, 72; Goodell, American Slave Code, 319–25. 40. The most famous of these taunts came from the English essayist Samuel Johnson: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” This scathing remark was part of a long address in which Johnson systematically attacked American arguments for defying George III and Parliament. Samuel Johnson, “Taxation No Tyranny; An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress,” The Works of Samuel Johnson (Troy, N.Y., 1913), 14:93–144. 41. The assertion that New England provided twice as many soldiers as the South did in the War of Independence is dubious. While New England provided more troops for the Continental Army than either the mid-Atlantic or Southern regions, all states failed spectacularly to meet their troop quotas, which were determined by population and set by the Continental Congress in an effort to keep Washington’s army viable. Most American troops in all regions served for varying lengths of time,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 514

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

515

usually repeatedly, in state militia units that were organized and disbanded almost at random. Troop mobilization varied so widely by time, place, and circumstance during the eight-year conflict that Douglass’s statement is unwarranted. That said, the densely entrenched nature of slavery in the South did make the war there much more complex and desperate. Conflicts among free whites over taxation and military service were fought along class lines produced by slavery. More importantly, thousands of enslaved blacks fled to the British lines in hope of acquiring freedom, thereby creating widespread economic and social disorder. When the defeated British finally left America in 1783, they evacuated more than ten thousand African Americans, both slaves and freemen, mostly from the South. Historians generally believe that the vociferous public discussion regarding personal rights and liberties that occurred during the Revolutionary War era was the primary impetus behind abolition in the Northern states over the course of the following generation. The impact of wartime events in the American South on Northern attitudes toward slavery is less clear, but they almost certainly made a negative impression. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979), 62–69, 136–37, 267–70, 320–27; Robert K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, D.C., 1983), 93, 111–12, 119, 127, 146–47, 157, 168; Michael A. McDonnell, “Fit For Common Service? Class, Race and Recruitment in Revolutionary Virginia,” in War and Society in the American Revolution: Mobilization and Home Fronts, ed. John Resch and Walter Sargent (DeKalb, Ill., 2007), 103–31; Ian Barnes and Charles Royster, The Historical Atlas of the American Revolution (New York, 2000), 162. 42. In a 1703 service suit, a court in Connecticut awarded a slave named Abda £12 in damages for his “unjust holding and detaining for the space of one year.” The decision effectively freed Abda. The following year, the General Court overturned the decision, stripped Abda of his freedom, and returned him to his former master. In Slew v. Whipple (1766), however, the Massachusetts Superior Court overruled a lower court’s decision and awarded another slave, Jenny Slew, both her freedom and £4 in damages against her former owner, John Whipple, Jr. George Henry Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York, 1866), 112–14; Farnham, History of Social Legislation, 66. 43. In 1767, a bill calling for the end of slavery in Massachusetts was introduced in the legislature, but it was tabled before reaching a vote. A bill authorizing an import duty on slaves was passed instead, but the council vetoed it. Among the many objections raised against the proposed (first) state constitution, which was rejected in 1778, was its failure to ban slavery and, further, the fear that it could be interpreted as permitting—even if not endorsing—the continued existence of slavery in Massachusetts. In 1780, Massachusetts adopted its first constitution, which did not include a ban on slavery. But it did include a bill of rights, penned by John Adams, which declared that “all men” were “born equally free and independent.” The constitution went into effect on 25 October 1780, and at least some citizens seem to have regarded that as the day when slavery ended in Massachusetts. Proceedings of the Essex Institute (Salem, Mass., 1866), 4:vii; Moore, Slavery in Massachusetts, 126–28, 186–95, 200–207. 44. John Adams’s views on slavery were somewhat less clear-cut than Douglass implies. Although Adams personally viewed slavery as “inhuman, cruel, and infamous,” he argued that ending slavery would need to be handled with prudence in order to avoid alienating the South and sparking a possible civil war. He sidetracked a bill in the Massachusetts legislature that would have initiated a program of gradual emancipation in 1777, and he purposely avoided any mention of ending slavery in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. Scholars estimate that 1,500–2,000 slaves were advertised for sale in Boston’s leading newspapers (the News-Letter and the Gazette) between 1704 and 1781. David McCullough, John Adams (New York, 2001), 133; John Patrick Diggins, John Adams (New York, 2003), 146; Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 93–94; Robert E. Desrochers, Jr., “Slave-for-Sale Advertisements and Slavery in Massachusetts, 1704–1781,” William and Mary Quarterly, 5:623–24 (July 2002). 45. Although Douglass follows the generally held belief that the constitution’s bill of rights effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts in 1780, modern scholars argue that this was not the case.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 515

9/1/21 4:17 PM

516

SLAVERY

A series of lawsuits known collectively as the Quock Walker cases (1780–1783) are now widely accepted as having legally ended slavery in Massachusetts. While it remains unclear whether all the remaining slaves in Massachusetts were freed in 1783 as a result of the final Quock Walker case (Commonwealth v. Jennison), it is certain that no slaves were recorded as living there in the first federal census, in 1790. John W. Johnston, ed., Historic U.S. Court Cases: An Encyclopedia, 2d ed., 3  vols. (New York, 2001), 1:583–86; Junius P. Rodriguez, ed., Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn., 2007), 1:128–30. 46. Contrary to Douglass’s statement, slavery did not formally end in New Hampshire until 1857, when the state legislature passed an act to that effect. Indeed, the last remaining slave in New Hampshire was recorded in the 1840 Census. As for Vermont, it is true that the 1777 Constitution forbade slavery, and in 1786, the state adopted a law prohibiting the sale or transportation of blacks out of the state, but it was not until 1791 that Vermont’s constitution contained an absolute ban on slavery and freed any remaining slaves in the state. Stillman Rogers, It Happened in New Hampshire: Remarkable Events That Shaped History (2004; Guilford, Conn., 2012), 45–47; Michelle Arnosky Sherburne, Slavery and the Underground Railroad in New Hampshire (Charleston, S.C., 2016), i–ii; EAAH, 2:437, 3:273. 47. Connecticut passed a gradual emancipation bill in 1784 that called for all slaves born after 1 March of that year to be freed at age twenty-five. Before then, they would belong to their mother’s master. The last slaves in Connecticut were freed by statute in 1848. In Rhode Island, however, the Emancipation Act of 1784 freed all children born to an enslaved mother after 1 March 1784, stipulating that they would remain under the control of their mother’s owners until they turned twenty-one. By 1840, only five slaves remained in Rhode Island. Gradual emancipation was not introduced in New Jersey until 4 July 1804. Slaves born before that date remained slaves for life, while males born after it would be freed at age twenty-five and females at age twenty-one. Eighteen slaves were living in New Jersey as late as 1860, and slavery was not legally abolished there until passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (1865). Finally, in Pennsylvania, the legislature passed a gradual emancipation act in 1780 that freed at age twenty-eight any slave born after that date. There were still slaves in Pennsylvania as late as 1840. Although Douglass does not specify the year he is referring to, it seems most likely that the figures he quotes were taken from the 1790 Census. If so, his numbers are slightly off, since the census reported 3,707 slaves living in Pennsylvania and 958 in Rhode Island. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the United States, 56–57; EAAH, 1:329–30, 2:438–41, 446–50, 505–08. 48. The earliest records of slaves in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (New York) date back to the 1620s. In 1702, the New York General Assembly passed the first “Act for Regulating Slaves,” which was significantly expanded in 1712, following a slave revolt. In 1730, the General Assembly passed an even more restrictive slave code, claiming that “many mischiefs [had] been occasioned by the too great liberty [hitherto] allowed to Negro and other slaves.” New York passed a gradual emancipation act in 1799, which decreed that all slaves born before 4 July 1799 would be slaves for life, while all male slaves born after that date would be freed at age twenty-eight and female slaves at age twenty-five. In 1817, however, the General Assembly passed an act that freed all the remaining slaves in New York, regardless of age, in 1827. In 1820, there were 10,088 slaves in the state. Serena R. Zabin, ed., The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741: Daniel Horsemanden’s Journal of the Proceedings (Boston, 2004), 17–18; Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the United States, 56–57; EAAH, 2:446–50. 49. In what is believed to be the first public antislavery protest in British North America, four members of a Quaker meeting in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1688 denounced human bondage as incompatible with their denomination’s principles. When they took their protest to the denomination’s Yearly Meeting at Burlington, it was dismissed as “so General a Relation to many other parts.” Nonetheless, the arguments of the Germantown petition were an indication of early antislavery sentiments among Quakers. Davis, Slavery in Western Culture, 308–09; EAA, 1:301–02.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 516

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

517

50. The British Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–91) strove to find a middle ground in seventeenthcentury theological disputes. Baxter argued with both the Calvinists and the leaders of the Church of England, under James II, over the terms of atonement. In his writings, he harshly condemned the inhumanity of the slave trade and the mistreatment of enslaved Africans transported to the Caribbean. While Baxter conceded that slavery was a legitimate outcome of war, he called on masters to guide their slaves to a Christian life and praised rulers who authorized the emancipation of slaves upon baptism. Davis, Slavery in Western Culture, 204, 338, 380; DNB, 1:1349–57. 51. In the late seventeenth century, the Anglican clergyman Morgan Godwyn urged the Church of England to sponsor missionary work among the slaves in The Negro’s and the Indian’s Advocate, Suing for Their Admission Into the Church. Douglass may have had this work in mind when discussing the baptism of black slaves. But when listing the objections raised by opponents of such evangelization measures, Godwyn does not include the charge that it was sinful to baptize blacks. He does mention the belief that free blacks and black slaves were not fully human and therefore had no souls and could not benefit from religious instruction. Godwyn argued that neither the African slaves’ “Complexion nor Bondage, Descent nor Country” precluded Christian instruction, and that “Negroes (both Slaves and others) have naturally an equal Right with other Men, to the Exercise and Privilege of Religion; of which ’tis most unjust in any part to deprive them.” Godwyn, who spent some time in Virginia and Barbados, denounced the commercial spirit of slave traders and planters, even though he upheld the legality of slavery. Morgan Godwyn, The Negro’s and Indian’s Advocate, Suing for Their Admission into the Church (London, 1680), preface, 9, 38; Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (1808; London, 2005), 1:46; Lorenzo Johnston Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620–1776 (1942; Bowie, Md., 1998), 257–59; Davis, Slavery in Western Culture, 204–06, 339–40. 52. Scottish-born George Keith (1638–1716) converted to Quakerism in the 1660s and settled in Pennsylvania in 1689. He called on fellow Quakers to return to their original rigorous scriptural orthodoxy and to abjure the excesses of materialism. Keith’s “inner light” movement divided many Pennsylvania meetings and caused authorities to ban him from preaching. Before returning to Britain in 1693, Keith wrote the first published antislavery tract in colonial America. His “Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes” urged Quakers to purchase slaves with the intent of emancipating them and to educate young African Americans. Davis, Slavery in Western Culture, 309–11; EAA, 2:393–94. 53. Samuel Sewall (1652–1730), a wealthy merchant and lawyer from Newbury, Massachusetts, published the early antislavery tract, “The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial,” in 1700. Sewall defended the humanity of Africans and used biblical arguments to denounce the buying and selling of human beings. Sewall advocated replacing the system of enslaving Africans with the employment of white indentured servants. Davis, Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 320–24, 342–48. 54. Benjamin Lay (1681–1759) frequently disrupted Philadelphia Quaker meetings by his virulent denunciation of slaveholding and other signs of worldly behavior by Quakers. Davis, Slavery in Western Culture, 320–24, 342–48; EAA, 2:710–11. 55. An antislavery tract by William Burling (1678–1743) that has not survived provoked debate on Long Island until its author was silenced by Quaker discipline. After converting to Quakerism, Ralph Sandiford migrated from Liverpool to the American colonies, where he witnessed slavery firsthand. Later settling in Philadelphia, he lobbied the Yearly Meeting there to condemn slaveholding, and Benjamin Franklin published his antislavery tract A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times in 1729. The Nantucket carpenter Elihu Coleman published A Testimony Against That Antichristian Practice of Making Slaves of Men in 1733. It combined arguments from the Bible and natural law and won approval from his Quaker meeting. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery, 23–25, 32; Davis, Slavery in Western Culture, 306, 312–13, 316–19, 320–21, 324–25; EAA, 1:87–89. 56. Douglass seems to be relying on William Goodell’s Slavery and Anti-Slavery (1852) for specific details about early Quaker antislavery pronouncements. In the early seventeenth century,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 517

9/1/21 4:17 PM

518

SLAVERY

American Quaker meetings ruled against members participating in the Atlantic slave trade. Yearly Meetings began to issue stronger pronouncements against slave-owning members in the 1750s and 1760s, culminating with actions to expel recalcitrant members shortly after the end of the Revolution. Among the leading Quaker antislavery voices were Anthony Benezet (1713–84) and John Woolman (1720–72). A child of French Huguenot refugees, Benezet settled in Philadelphia and joined the Quakers in the 1730s. He wrote powerful tracts against the slave trade and professed the equality of all races. A New Jersey tailor and merchant, Woolman traveled in the American South and personally witnessed slavery. He lobbied fellow Quakers, in the colonies and Britain, to cut all ties to that immoral institution. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery; A History of the Great Struggle in Both Hemispheres; With a View of the Slavery Question in the United States (New York, 1852), 35–41; Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761 (New Haven, Conn., 2012), 106–13, 141–42; Davis, Slavery in Western Culture, 305–06, 330–32, 483–93; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1975), 215–21; EAA, 1:87–89, 2:550. 57. A protégé of Jonathan Edwards, the Congregational minister Samuel Hopkins (1721–1803) became the leading figure of the New Divinity theological movement among American Calvinists. Hopkins became active in denouncing slavery soon after accepting a pulpit in Newport, Rhode Island, one of the centers of the Atlantic slave trade. A supporter of the American Revolution, he compared British tyranny to the despotism endured by slaves. Hopkins strongly encouraged the training of black ministers to evangelize Africa. Davis, Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 217, 293–99; EAA, 1:341–42. 58. Douglass correctly characterizes a brief period of antislavery activism that occurred in many American denominations during and following the American Revolution. The Methodist Episcopal Church began as an independent denomination just after the Revolution, when its original discipline, in 1789, condemned the “buying and selling of men, women, and children, with an intention to enslave them.” The Presbyterian General Assembly of 1818 declared that the denomination considered “the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human race by another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature, as utterly inconsistent with the law of God.” The Congregational and Baptist churches lacked centralized governing structures or the machinery to enforce denomination-wide disciplines regarding slaveholding. The predominately Northern Congregationalists attracted few slaveholders, and many, but not all, of its ministers and churches condemned slavery in the years immediately after the Revolution. The Baptist position regarding slaveholding was even less uniform. While many local Baptist associations, even in the South, made antislavery pronouncements in the Revolutionary War era, the powerful influences of slaveholding members and the traditional Baptist reluctance to mix religion with civil affairs had quieted most antislavery voices by the 1830s. McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 25–26. 59. James Otis (1725–83) was born in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard College in 1743, Otis studied law in Boston, where he was admitted to the bar in 1748. Making use of family political connections, Otis secured appointment as deputy advocate general of the vice admiralty court in 1757. In 1760, he resigned from this lucrative position in order to represent a group of Boston merchants who were suing the British-appointed customs commissioner, in the hope that his use of writs of assistance (general search warrants, which allowed his office to search anywhere, in pursuit of evidence of illicit trade) would be declared illegal. Two months later, Otis was elected to the Massachusetts General Court, where he would serve until 1769. In 1762, he published the first of his major political tracts, A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives, in which he argued that a colonial legislature, in its relationship to a governor, was the equivalent to the relationship between the king and Parliament. In The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764), Otis made the case that “the act of taxing, except over those who are represented,” in effect denied them “one of their most essential rights as freemen.” He also argued that slaves had a right to be free and that slavery was an evil that would, if allowed to continue, reduce Europe

Y7870-Douglass.indb 518

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

519

and North America to the “ignorance and barbarity of the Dark Ages.” Finally, in A Vindication of the British Colonies (1765), Otis openly mocked the idea that members of Parliament could “virtually” represent the colonists, who could not vote for them. As a whole, Otis’s political writings lay the groundwork for much of the political theory that was used to justify and explain the American Revolution. His career, however, was cut short due to mental illness, and after 1770 he played no further role in the revolutionary movement. Rodriguez, Slavery in the United States, 1:19; ANB (online); DAB, 14:101–05. 60. Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) was born in Byberry, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1760. Settling in Philadelphia, he practiced medicine and later taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Rush supported the patriot cause of the Revolution and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was active in most of the Revolutionary War era’s reform and philanthropic movements, including the antislavery cause. From 1797 to 1813, he was treasurer of the U.S. Mint. ACAB, 5:349–50; NCAB, 16:227–31. 61. John Jay (1745–1829) graduated from King’s College (Columbia) in 1764 and began practicing law in New York City. A delegate to the Continental Congress and later American minister to Spain, he joined John Adams and Benjamin Franklin in negotiating the Treaty of Paris (1783), and from 1784 to 1790 he served as secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation government. Together with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, he authored The Federalist Papers, which advocated adoption of the Constitution. Jay served as first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1789 to 1794. In later years, he went to England and negotiated a controversial treaty that attempted to resolve outstanding grievances between the two countries. Jay’s last term in public office was as governor of New York (1795–1801). Although a slaveholder, in 1777, Jay supported a clause to the New York state constitution to abolish slavery in the state. He was a prominent member of the New York Manumission Society. Frank Monaghan, John Jay: Defender of Liberty (Indianapolis, Ind., 1935); Davis, Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 170–78. 62. Edmund Randolph (1753–1813) was born into one of Virginia’s leading families. His father, grandfather, and uncle (Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses and the first president of the Continental Congress, Peyton Randolph) all served as King’s Attorney in Virginia. Upon graduating from the College of William and Mary, he read law with his father, and at the age of twenty-one he was admitted to the bar. Randolph joined the Continental Army in 1775. The following year, he became a delegate to the convention that drafted both Virginia’s Declaration of Rights and its first constitution, and later that year he was appointed Virginia’s first attorney general. In 1779 and again in 1781, Randolph served as a delegate to the Continental Congress. In 1786, he was elected governor of Virginia. While governor, he was chosen to lead Virginia’s delegation to the Constitutional Convention. There he introduced the “Virginia Plan,” which would have allowed all states to include slaves in the population figures used to determine how many representatives would be allocated to each state in the national legislature. Randolph’s plan was superseded by the notorious Three-Fifths Clause in the Constitution. After resigning the governorship in 1788, Randolph joined Washington’s cabinet as the nation’s first attorney general. He served in that capacity until 1793, when he took over as secretary of state following Thomas Jefferson’s resignation. Accused—falsely, according to most recent scholars—of both passing on sensitive information to the French ambassador and soliciting bribes, Randolph resigned and returned to Virginia, where he reentered private practice as a lawyer. Randolph’s final appearance on the national stage was as Aaron Burr’s defense attorney during his treason trial in 1807. David O. Stewart, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution (New York, 2007), 121–22; George William Van Cleve, “Founding a Slave-holder’s Union, 1770–1797,” in Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation, ed. John Craig Hammond and Matthew Mason (Charlottesville, Va., 2011), 126; ANB (online); DAB, 15:353–55. 63. Like that of his contemporary Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry’s correspondence contains occasional criticism of the institution of slavery. After the Revolution, however, Henry feared that

Y7870-Douglass.indb 519

9/1/21 4:17 PM

520

SLAVERY

Northern abolitionists would persuade Congress to enact policies forcing masters to emancipate their slaves. This concern was a major factor in Henry’s opposition to the ratification of the Constitution. Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Patriot in the Making (Philadelphia, 1957), 227, 240, 292– 302, 311; Thomas S. Kidd, Patrick Henry: First among Patriots (New York, 2011), 93–94, 203–04; Donald L. Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820 (New York, 1971), 80, 238–39, 245, 383. 64. One of the most widely respected leaders of the American Revolution, the Philadelphian Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) accomplished a remarkable number of achievements in his long life. Douglass points to one of these: Franklin was president from 1787 to his death of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race, better known as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. He led that society in petitioning Congress and the states to abolish the slave trade. Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1938), 479, 774–75; Richard Newman and James Mueller, eds., Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia: Emancipation and the Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love (Baton Rouge, La., 2011), 120–26; Thomas Fleming, ed., Benjamin Franklin: A Biography in His Own Words (New York, 1972), 399–400. 65. Virginia’s First (Revolutionary) Convention met from 1 August through 6 August 1774 at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg. The convention was organized in response to the royal governor’s dissolution of the House of Burgesses, which Lord Dunmore had ordered in retaliation for the Burgesses’ call for a day of prayer to show solidarity with Boston, Massachusetts, following Parliament’s passage of the Boston Port Act. As reported by the Virginia Gazette on 11 August 1774, one of the resolutions passed during the First Convention called for the cessation of both the import and sale of slaves “by any person after the [first] day of November next, either from Africa, the West Indies or any other place.” A similar resolution was passed during the First Provincial Congress of North Carolina, which met from 25 August through 27 August 1774 in New Bern. J. N. Brenaman, A History of Virginia Conventions (Richmond, Va., 1902), 12–14; David Lee Russell, The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies (Jefferson, N.C., 2000), 47; William S. Powell, ed., Encyclopedia of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), 917–18. 66. Although Douglass misquotes it, one of the Articles of Association adopted during the First Continental Congress, which met in Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia from 5 September to 6 October 1774, did place a ban on the purchase and sale of all imported slaves. It also provided assurances that none of the signatories would interact with any colony found to be in violation of the ban. The Articles were adopted and signed by delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies (Georgia failed to send a delegation) and went into effect on 1 December 1774. Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (New York, 2001), 16; Richard R. Beeman, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774–1776 (New York, 2013), 157–59; Robinson, Slavery in American Politics, 79. 67. Douglass slightly misquotes a portion of Query 18 in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia: “The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation[.]” Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, 12 vols. (New York, 1904), 4:84. 68. Douglass paraphrases William Goodell’s characterization of deliberations at the Constitutional Convention. An ally of Gerrit Smith, Goodell was searching for all available evidence that the Constitution did not recognize the legality of slavery. Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 84; Staughton Lynd, Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 2009), 156–57, 173–77; EAA, 2:715–16. 69. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, ten states had already banned the international slave trade. Many delegates in Philadelphia, such as Rufus King of New York and Luther Martin of Maryland, called for a similar prohibition to be placed in the new constitution. John Rutledge, Pierce Butler, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, with the implicit support of Georgia’s

Y7870-Douglass.indb 520

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

521

delegates, vocally opposed their plans. The Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth argued for compromise out of fear of the two Deep South states not joining the new union. A special committee devised a compromise: Congress was granted the power to ban the slave trade, but not before at least twenty years had passed; that is, in 1808. Legislation to that effect was passed by Congress in 1807 and was implemented the following year. Robinson, Slavery in American Politics, 211–12, 222–23, 298. 70. Douglass accurately describes antislavery activism in the years immediately following the American Revolution. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends had petitioned Congress to ban the slave trade because it was “abhorrent to common humanity and common honesty.” Societies working for the gradual elimination of slavery were founded in numerous states during and after the Revolution. Benjamin Franklin, as first president of what was popularly known as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, signed a petition to Congress in 1790, calling for the abolition of the slave trade. That society and similar gradual-abolitionist organizations, located from New England to the Upper South, regularly petitioned Congress for antislavery actions, sparking bitter complaints from South Carolina and Georgia congressmen. A congressional report produced in 1790 promised that no action would ever be taken against Southern slavery and caused later petitions to be rejected summarily. Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002), 21, 42, 47, 57–58; Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 95–108; Robinson, Slavery in American Politics, 302. 71. The Missouri Crisis of 1819–20 resulted from an apprehension among Southerners that they would be denied the ability to move their slaves from the exhausted plantation lands in the East to new fertile territory in the West. Many Southerners also worried that stopping the expansion of slavery would tip the balance of political power in favor of the free North. They thus demanded that Missouri be admitted as a slave state and that no restrictions be placed on the admission of future slave states created from the Louisiana Purchase territory. After much negotiation, the Missouri Compromise allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, balanced by Maine as a free state. A decree dividing the remaining territory along the latitude of Missouri’s southern border, 36°30´, eased Southern concerns about the future extension of slavery. It prohibited slavery north of that line, but made possible the admission of future slave states below. The compromise held until the annexation of additional territory sparked a new round of debate and controversy over slavery’s extension. Robert P. Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2009), 2–6; Robert P. Forbes, “The Missouri Controversy and Sectionalism,” in Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism: From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson, ed. Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon (Athens, Ohio, 2008), 75–78. 72. Probably born in Wilmington, North Carolina, to a free black mother, David Walker (1796– 1830) lived for a time in Charleston, South Carolina, before settling in Boston in 1825. He is best known as the author of Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, a radical pamphlet that called on slaves to resist enslavement with violence. Walker was also active in a number of organizations and movements linked to racial uplift. In 1827, along with other African American leaders in the Boston community, Walker organized resources and support for the Freedom’s Journal, the first black-edited newspaper. In 1828, he was active in the Massachusetts General Colored Association, an organization dedicated to promoting the interests of blacks regionally and nationally. In December 1828, he delivered a powerful antislavery speech before the group, calling on African Americans to form a movement against slavery. The first edition of Walker’s Appeal was published at Boston in the fall of 1829. The publication page indicates that it was written 29 September 1829. Peter P. Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (University Park, Pa., 2000), 75–76, 116; EAAH, 3:312–13. 73. Benjamin Lundy purchased the pioneer antislavery newspaper the Emancipator from Elihu Embree and renamed it the Genius of Universal Emancipation. Lundy published the Genius first in Greenville, Tennessee, then in Baltimore, and finally in Washington, D.C. Lundy’s associate editor

Y7870-Douglass.indb 521

9/1/21 4:17 PM

522

SLAVERY

while in Baltimore was the then-young and unknown William Lloyd Garrison. Dillon, Benjamin Lundy, 127–39. 74. During the Twenty-fourth Congress, which convened on 7 December 1835, abolitionists bombarded the House of Representatives with 175 antislavery petitions signed by 34,000 people. Some of the ones calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia were “monster petitions” signed by thousands of men and women. The formation of abolitionist societies was also on the rise at the time. According to the annual report of the American Anti-Slavery Society at its May 1836 meeting, there were 527 affiliated antislavery societies in the United States. A number of sources report the rapid growth of antislavery societies between 1835 and 1845, and it is likely that Douglass’s figure of 2,000 societies with as many as 200,000 members is accurate. Third Annual Report of the American Anti-Slavery Society (New York, 1836), 99; Susan Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women’s Political Identity (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003), 69; Omar H. Ali, In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third-Party Movements in the United States (Athens, Ohio, 2008), 22. 75. The New England Anti-Slavery Society, organized by William Lloyd Garrison, held its founding meeting on 1 January 1832 in the basement of an African American Baptist church on Belknap Street in Boston. It was the fi rst substantial organization to call for the immediate abolition of slavery. In October of the following year, the brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, William Goodell, Elizur Wright, Joshua Leavitt, and Peter Williams, Jr., founded the New York Anti-Slavery Society. Movement leaders realized the value of a national organization dedicated to immediate abolition and black rights. To that end, sixty-three delegates gathered on 3 December 1833 at Philadelphia’s Adelphi Hall, home to a black benevolent society. The ideology behind the American Anti-Slavery Society belonged to Garrison, but New York delegates Arthur Tappan and Elizur Wright were elected president and secretary, respectively. Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, Conn., 2016), 224–26; EAA, 1:32–33, 2:494–96. 76. Elizur Wright, Jr. (1804–85), abolitionist and actuary, was born in South Canaan, Connecticut, and grew up in Tallmadge, Ohio, in the Western Reserve. In 1826, he graduated from Yale College, where he conducted his first temperance campaign, among fellow members of Phi Beta Kappa. While professor of mathematics and natural philosophy (1829–33) at the newly founded Western Reserve College, Wright strongly disapproved of the government’s policy of Indian removal and developed a strong antipathy to African colonization. In 1833, he challenged the American Colonization Society agent Robert S. Finley to a series of debates in New York, Boston, and New Haven. Later that year, he resigned his professorship after college officials remonstrated against his abolitionist activities. When Wright moved to New York, he became secretary of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, and in December 1833 he participated in the organization of the American Anti-Slavery Society, served as its corresponding secretary, and edited its Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine (1835–37). Convinced of the need for antislavery political action, Wright broke with Garrison in 1839, and for a year he edited the Massachusetts Abolitionist. During his subsequent career as editor of both the Boston Weekly Chronotype (1846–50) and the Free Soil Boston Weekly Commonwealth (1850–52), Wright continued to speak out on antislavery and temperance. In the late 1850s, he directed his attention to life insurance reform. His campaign to force life insurance companies to keep adequate reserves resulted in both regulatory action by Massachusetts (1858) and his appointment as state commissioner of insurance (1858–66). David Charles French, “The Conversion of an American Radical: Elizur Wright, Jr. and the Abolitionist Commitment” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1970); Philip G. Wright and Elizabeth Q. Wright, Elizur Wright: The Father of Life Insurance (Chicago, 1937); ACAB, 6:621–22; NCAB, 2:317–18; DAB, 20:548–49. 77. Isaac Tatem Hopper (1771–1852) was a New York bookseller and, with Lydia Maria Child, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard from 1841 to 1845. His involvement with abolitionism began before 1800, when, while living in Pennsylvania, he aided fugitive slaves in their escape. He belonged to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society until his relocation to New York in 1829, whereupon

Y7870-Douglass.indb 522

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

523

he became active in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass first met Hopper in the “Tombs” jail in New York City, where Hopper was incarcerated for helping a fugitive escape to Boston. Hopper had become a Quaker in 1793, but the sect disowned him in 1841 for his abolitionist activities. Lib., 14 May 1852; NASS, 21 May 1852; Child, Isaac T. Hopper; ANB, 11:202–03; NCAB, 2:330. 78. The Congregational minister and abolitionist Beriah Green (1795–1874) became active in antislavery agitation during his tenure as professor of sacred literature at Western Reserve College (1830–33). He presided at the organization of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in December 1833, and was president (1833–43) of the Oneida Institute, a racially integrated manual-labor school near Whitesboro, New York. A founding member of the Liberty party, Green held back from the Free Soil fusion of 1848, fearing a dilution of antislavery principles. In 1843, he left the Whitesboro Presbyterian Church to serve as pastor of the abolitionist Congregational Church in Whitesboro until 1867. Beriah Green, Sermons and Discourses with Brief Biographical Hints (New York, 1860), 165–67, 231–41; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 3:211; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 98n, 107; NCAB, 2:326; DAB, 7:539–40. 79. William Goodell (1792–1878), a New York abolitionist and newspaper editor, helped form both the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Liberty party. As a writer and editor, Goodell contributed to a number of reform and antislavery publications, including the Genius of Temperance, the Emancipator, the Friend of Man, the American Jubilee, the Radical Abolitionist, and Principia. Goodell’s abolitionist ideals did not always fall in line with the Garrisonians’. In regard to religion, Goodell agreed wholeheartedly that established churches condoned slavery, and in response went so far as to establish his own nonsectarian church in Honeoye, New York, on the principles of temperance and antislavery. In contrast, Goodell broke with the Garrisonians on the issue of politics. He helped found the Liberty party, looking to use political means in the fight against slavery. Sorin, New York Abolitionists, 57–62; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 46–48, 180–83; DAB, 7:384–85. 80. Alvan Stewart (1790–1849) was a lawyer and abolitionist born in Granville, New York. In 1834, he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and began establishing abolitionist organizations in New York. The following year, the New York State Anti-Slavery Society was founded, with Stewart as president. Stewart also helped form the Liberty party, in 1840, and served as its gubernatorial candidate in 1842 and 1844. Along with Lysander Spooner, Stewart pioneered the abolitionist argument that slavery was not protected by the U.S. Constitution. Wiecek, Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism, 154, 205, 218, 254–57, 265–66; Sorin, New York Abolitionists, 47–52; ACAB, 5:683; NCAB, 2:331–32; DAB, 18:5–6. 81. Born to Quaker parents, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) tended his family’s farm near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in his youth. Inspired by the poets Robert Burns and John Milton, Whittier published his first poem, “The Exile’s Departure,” in William Lloyd Garrison’s Newburyport Free Press in 1826. Garrison encouraged Whittier’s father to allow his son to attend the Haverhill Academy in Boston for a year. Again with Garrison’s help, Whittier secured his first editorial position in 1829, at a political weekly, the American Manufacturer, in Boston. There he became acquainted with the abolition movement and was one of the founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Whittier was elected to a term in the Massachusetts state legislature in 1835, and two years later friends published the first collection of his poems, Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States. Whittier worked as a corresponding editor for the antislavery journal the Washington National Era, which published many of his antislavery poems, until he cofounded the Atlantic Monthly in 1857. Roland H. Woodwell, John Greenleaf Whittier: A Biography (Haverhill, Mass., 1985); DNB, 20:173–75; ANB, 23:320–21. 82. William Jay. 83. Samuel Fessenden (1784–1869), not Fesseden, was an attorney, politician, and abolitionist from Maine. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1806 and then read law and was admitted to the bar in 1809. He practiced law in the general court of Massachusetts and represented his district in the Massachusetts senate for one term, 1818–19. An early member of the Liberty party and later

Y7870-Douglass.indb 523

9/1/21 4:17 PM

524

SLAVERY

the Free Soil and Republican parties, Fessenden tried but failed in election bids for Congress and for Maine’s governorship. He was one of the founders of the Maine Anti-Slavery Society and served as president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1836. In 1850, Fessenden sat as a member of the Chaplin Fund Committee, formed in Boston to defray the legal fees of William L. Chaplin, an abolitionist who was jailed in Maryland and Washington, D.C., for aiding fugitive slaves. Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of William Pitt Fessenden: United States Senator from Maine 1854–1864; Secretary of the Treasury 1864–1865; United States Senator from Maine 1865–1869, Volume 1 (Boston, 1907), 34–37; Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 405; ACAB 2:443–44. 84. Joshua Leavitt (1794–1873), a Liberty party spokesman and Congregational minister, expressed his commitment to antislavery, temperance, and free trade while serving as editor of the Sailor’s Magazine (1828), the New York Evangelist (1831–37), the Emancipator (1837–c. 1847), and the New York Independent (1848–73). He helped found the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, became the first secretary of the American Temperance Society, and, in 1847, organized the Cheap Postage Society of Boston. New York Independent, 23, 30 January, 6, 13 February 1873. 85. Samuel Joseph May (1797–1871) mixed abolitionism with other humanitarian concerns during his long career as a Unitarian clergyman. Boston-born and Harvard-educated, May studied theology at Cambridge and was ordained in 1822. In the course of his forty-year ministry, he championed temperance, women’s rights, pacifism, universal education, and abolitionism. Originally a supporter of African colonization, May joined the abolitionist ranks in 1830, supported Prudence Crandall’s efforts to establish a school for black youths in 1833, and enjoyed a long tenure as an agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. During the 1840s and 1850s, he aided many fugitive slaves in reaching Canada and helped rescue Jerry McHenry from slave catchers in Syracuse, New York, in 1851. After the Civil War, he worked with black colleagues, including Jermain W. Loguen and Douglass, to fight racial segregation in New York schools. Donald Yacovone, Samuel Joseph May and the Dilemmas of the Liberal Persuasion, 1797–1871 (Philadelphia, 1991); Pease and Pease, Bound with Them in Chains, 276–307; NCAB, 2:313; DAB, 12:447–48. 86. Eager to participate in the abolition movement, women formed dozens of antislavery societies in the early antebellum era. Many were auxiliaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) or to state or regional organizations. In February 1832, African American women formed the first female antislavery society in the United States, the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society in Salem, Massachusetts. The formation of auxiliary societies, including female-led organizations, was an important strategy of the AASS for spreading the abolition movement throughout the North. Women’s societies made significant contributions to the cause by raising funds for abolitionist publications, distributing abolitionist literature, and organizing petition drives; these activities represented some of the earliest means of female political participation. While some organizations such as the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society were initially open to whites only, others, including the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, welcomed women of both races. Gay Gibson Cima, Performing AntiSlavery: Activist Women on Antebellum Stages (Cambridge, Mass., 2014), 17–18; Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 27–28. 87. Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880) was a highly respected minister in the Hicksite wing of the Society of Friends. She became a tireless abolitionist and made many lecturing tours on behalf of emancipation. James Mott, whom she married in 1811, was one of the founders of the American AntiSlavery Society and presided over the first women’s rights convention, which Lucretia organized with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Indeed, starting with the Seneca Falls gathering, Mott attended almost every national women’s rights convention that took place during her lifetime. After the Civil War, she was elected president of the American Equal Rights Association and tried in vain to heal the rift in the woman suffrage movement that occurred in 1869. Margaret Hope Bacon, Valiant Friend: The Life of Lucretia Mott (New York, 1980); NAW, 2:592–95; ACAB, 4:441; DAB, 13:288–89.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 524

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

525

88. Maria Weston Chapman (1806–85), known as “Garrison’s lieutenant,” was a forceful writer and editor of several antislavery periodicals. As a daughter of wealthy Bostonians, Chapman was educated alongside her sisters in Europe and briefly supervised one of the nation’s first female high schools. After marrying the merchant Henry Grafton Chapman in 1830, she became active in the abolitionist movement. When her husband died in 1842, abolition became the consuming work of her life. Chapman was a driving force in both the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Although she shunned public speaking, she served on committees and organized bazaars and other fund-raising events for the Garrisonians. She edited the annual report of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and assisted in editing the Liberator and the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Clare Taylor, Women in the Antislavery Movement: The Weston Sisters (New York, 1995); Catherine Clinton, “Maria Weston Chapman,” in Portraits of American Women, ed. G. J. Barker-Benfield and Catherine Clinton (New York, 1991), 1:147–67; Pease and Pease, Bound with Them in Chains, 28–59; NAW, 1:324–25; DAB, 4:19. 89. Abigail Kelley Foster (1811–87) was born in Pelham, in western Massachusetts, the seventh daughter of Wing Kelley, a farmer, and Diana Daniels, his second wife. Kelley was heavily influenced by her Quaker upbringing, but she later broke from the church because it failed to endorse militant abolitionist tactics. Though her early schooling was rudimentary, Kelley saved and borrowed money in order to attend the New England Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island. At age nineteen, she returned home and began teaching in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she became an abolitionist through her association with the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1838, Kelley spoke at Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia as it was being attacked by an angry mob of protesters. In the same year, she joined the New England Anti-Slavery Society, previously a male-only organization. She began a career as a lecturer, at both women’s and men’s gatherings, especially in conservative Connecticut. Kelley married Stephen Symonds Foster, another radical abolitionist, on 21 December 1845. Traveling together on the reform circuit, they were among the most prominent antislavery lecturers in the 1840s and 1850s. Dorothy Sterling, Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Slavery (New York, 1991); DAB, 6:542–43; EAAH, 2:39–40. 90. Angelina Grimké (1805–79) was born in Charleston, South Carolina, into a prominent slaveholding family. Deeply attached to her older sister, Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873), Angelina joined her in becoming a Quaker, and they moved to Philadelphia. The Grimkés entered the abolitionist ranks in 1835, and the following year Angelina wrote the widely discussed pamphlet Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. Both sisters became the subject of considerable controversy when they began delivering antislavery addresses before mixed female and male audiences. In May 1838, Angelina Grimké married Theodore L. Weld, another abolitionist lecturer, and within a few years the Welds, together with Sarah Grimké, settled on a New Jersey farm. From 1848 to 1862, the three operated a boarding school and only rarely participated in antislavery activity. In 1864, they moved to the Boston area and continued teaching, although Angelina’s ill health soon led to her almost complete retirement from public life. Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, The Emancipation of Angelina Grimké (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1974); Gerda Lerner, The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels against Slavery (Boston, 1967); DAB, 7:634–35; NAW, 2:97–99. 91. While attending the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in May 1838, William Lloyd Garrison wrote to Isaac Knapp, who acted as publisher of the Liberator in Garrison’s absence, that between May 1837 and May 1838, the New York office of the organization printed 646,000 abolitionist books, pamphlets, and tracts. This is the only known source from the time for this statistic. William Lloyd Garrison to Isaac Knapp, Lib., 11 May 1838. 92. Garrison’s Liberator published a weekly section called the “Refuge of Oppression,” which reprinted egregious proslavery ideology or incidents of cruelty to slaves found in Southern newspapers and firsthand accounts of the horrors of slavery. In November 1831, less than a year after the weekly began publication, the Georgia legislature offered a $5,000 reward for the capture of the Liberator’s editor, publisher, or agents. Garrison’s newspaper continued to draw the ire of Southern

Y7870-Douglass.indb 525

9/1/21 4:17 PM

526

SLAVERY

critics throughout its thirty-four-year run. The last issue appeared 29 December 1865. James E. Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 (New York, 1998), 211–13; Thomas, Liberator, 127–28, 436; DAB, 7:168–72. 93. Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. It became effective 1 August 1834, emancipating slaves in the British West Indies. The former slaves were placed into indentured apprenticeships, with many remaining bound to their former owners until the system was finally overturned in 1838. American abolitionists annually celebrated 1 August as West Indian Emancipation Day. Claudius K. Fergus, Revolutionary Emancipation: Slavery and Abolition in the British West Indies (Baton Rouge, La., 2014), 183–87; EAA, 1:117–27. 94. Mob violence in reaction to the abolition movement struck numerous cities beginning around 1834. The most intense mobbing occurred from July through October 1835. The antebellum era witnessed seventy-three mob attacks on abolitionists in the North, forty-six of which occurred between 1834 and 1838. Another nineteen antiabolition mob actions occurred in the South. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing,” 3–19; Grimsted, American Mobbing, x, 12–13, 41. 95. A month of unrest and riots struck Cincinnati during the summer of 1836, when mobs twice destroyed the printing press of James G. Birney, the founding editor of the Cincinnati-based Philanthropist and future Liberty party presidential candidate. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing,” 93–100; Grimsted, American Mobbing, 37. 96. Elijah Parish Lovejoy. 97. Even before passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, some Southern masters sent slave catchers to the North to reclaim their fugitive property. These costly expeditions rarely succeeded, so defenders of slavery looked with special disdain on Northerners who helped slaves escape. Aiding fugitive slaves could cost abolitionists their own freedom. In July 1841, the abolitionists George Thompson (?–1893), James E. Burr (1814–59), and Alanson Work (c. 1790–?) were caught trying to liberate slaves in Marion County, Missouri. Convicted of grand larceny, they were sentenced to twelve years of hard labor. The radical abolitionist Charles T. Torrey (1813–46) became a martyr to the antislavery cause when he died in the Maryland Penitentiary in May 1846 while serving a sixyear sentence for assisting slaves in their escape. William L. Chaplin (1796–1871), a radical political abolitionist best known for his failed attempt to smuggle more than seventy slaves out of Washington, D.C., aboard the schooner Pearl, was arrested in August 1850 when he tried to drive two slaves to freedom in a carriage. For his work in aiding slaves to cross the Ohio River, the abolitionist and minister Calvin Fairbank (1816–98) was captured in Indiana in November 1852 and transported to Louisville, Kentucky. Found guilty, he was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Fairbank served twelve years, receiving a pardon in 1864. Southerners especially worried that working and living together at sea would lead free white and black seamen to empathize with the enslaved and aid their escape. Excessive restrictions were placed on their movements, and severe punishments were meted out for aiding escapees. Jonathan Walker, a sailor, steered a schooner holding seven slaves to freedom in Florida in 1844 before he was caught. In addition to a lengthy jail sentence, authorities branded a double s in the palm of his hand, signifying his status as a “slave stealer.” In Southern ports, free African American sailors were regularly jailed during port calls as early as 1822. Any person believed to be sympathetic to antislavery ideals also faced suspicion, and threats of violence were common. Calvin Fairbank, During Slavery Times (Chicago, 1890), 165–66; Stanley Harrold, The Abolitionists and the South, 1831–1861 (Lexington, Ky., 1995), 37–38; John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York, 1999), 159–60; Stanley Harrold, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828–1865 (Baton Rouge, La., 2003), 64, 156–57; Snodgrass, Underground Railroad, 2:530, 557. 98. Born into a Rhode Island Quaker family, Prudence Crandall (1803–90) operated a school for girls in Canterbury, Connecticut, from 1831. In April 1833, she enrolled African American girls alongside whites, raising the ire of the local white community. Town leaders supported a new state black law that made it illegal for a school to enroll African American girls from a state outside Con-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 526

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

527

necticut. Crandall was arrested and tried under this law. The first trial ended in a hung jury, but she was convicted on the second try. A higher court reversed her conviction on a technicality, but the community continued to harass Crandall and her students. The school closed in late 1834. Residents of Canaan, New Hampshire, reacted similarly to the opening of an integrated school. Opened with the help of Crandall’s friends and William Lloyd Garrison, the Noyes Academy began enrolling female students of both races in 1834. After much vocal opposition and threats from whites in the community, in 1835 a mob attacked the school building and used oxen to physically move it, though they did not fully destroy the building. It remained in operation until 1839. Williams, Prudence Crandall’s Legacy, 90–98, 202, 226–27; Joel Spring, Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States (New York, 2016), 49. 99. The former president and Massachusetts congressman John Quincy Adams led the opposition to the so-called gag rule, which stifled the reading of antislavery petitions in the House of Representatives between 1836 and 1840. His outspoken manner on the subject raised the ire of Southern members of Congress, and according to the Ohio congressman Joshua R. Giddings, Adams received a number of threatening letters. Joshua R. Giddings to Flavel Sutliff, 26 January 1839, Sutliff Family Papers, Sutliff Museum, Warren, Ohio; Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr., Reclaiming the Petition Clause: Seditious Libel, “Offensive” Protest, and the Right to Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances (New Haven, Conn., 2012), 120. 100. Northerners were appalled at the beating that Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner suffered at the hands of South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks. Occurring on the floor of the Senate on 22 May 1856, Brooks’s action widened the divide between Northerners and Southerners. The imprisonment of Prudence Crandall and the threats to former president Adams caused some Northerners to be more sympathetic to the abolitionist cause, but it was the rapidly escalating and shocking events of the 1850s, including the attack on Sumner, that most swayed public opinion in opposition to slavery. T. Lloyd Benson, The Caning of Senator Sumner (Belmont, Calif., 2004), 7–9; William H. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Volume II, Secessionists Triumphant (New York, 2007), 79–84. 101. Theodore Dwight Weld (1803–95), an influential evangelical abolitionist, was born in Hampton, Connecticut, to a Congregational minister. After his family moved to western New York, he came under the influence of Charles Grandison Finney and Charles Stuart. An arresting speaker, Weld combined temperance, revivalism, and antislavery in his lectures of the early 1830s. In 1834, while a student at Lane Theological Seminary, he organized a series of debates on slavery that so involved some students in controversial antislavery activities that the school banned all discussion of the issue. In protest, eighty students asked to be expelled; many of them entered Oberlin College, which Weld later visited as a lecturer. In 1838, Weld married the noted abolitionist Angelina Grimké. A throat ailment curtailed his speaking engagements in the 1830s and early 1840s, but he remained active as an organizer of antislavery petition campaigns to Congress. Before the Civil War, he operated the integrated and coeducational Eagleswood School in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. A prolific pamphleteer, he wrote The Bible against Slavery (New York, 1838), American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1939), and Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States (London, 1841). Benjamin P. Thomas, Theodore Weld: Crusader for Freedom (New Brunswick, N.J., 1950); Robert H. Abzug, Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform (New York, 1980). 102. Henry Brewster Stanton (1805–87), probably best remembered as the husband of the feminist advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton, became an abolitionist while a student at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati and was among the forty “Lane Rebels” who, inspired by Theodore Weld, withdrew in 1834 when the school’s trustees prohibited antislavery efforts. After this departure, Stanton joined the recent antislavery convert James G. Birney on a lecture tour in the Northeast. He served as a general agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, canvassing Rhode Island in 1835 to organize antislavery affiliates, and by 1837 he was a member of the national society’s executive committee. Between 1837 and 1840, Stanton increasingly challenged the Garrisonian doctrine of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 527

9/1/21 4:17 PM

528

SLAVERY

nonresistance, insisting that abolitionists had a moral duty to use political means to achieve antislavery reforms. Unlike many of his “new organization” colleagues, with whom he agreed on antislavery politics, Stanton seems to have been inclined to endorse female abolitionists’ right to hold office, lecture, and participate fully in the antislavery movement. By 1847, when he and his family had moved from Boston, where he had practiced law, to Seneca Falls, New York, Stanton had become a leading member of the Liberty party. At the first national convention of the Free Soil party, in Buffalo in August 1848, Stanton urged Liberty men to fuse with other antislavery dissidents and helped write the new party’s platform. In 1849 and 1851, he was elected to the New York legislature. In 1852, much to Douglass’s dismay, Stanton—convinced of the futility of third-party movements—endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, Franklin Pierce. In 1855, he helped organize the Republican party in New York and supported it until Grant’s administration, when he became a Democrat. A prolific writer, Stanton published articles in abolitionist journals, political and religious papers, and Horace Greeley’s Tribune. After the Civil War he contributed regularly to the New York Sun. FDP, 17 June 1852; Henry B. Stanton, Random Recollections (Johnstown, N.Y., 1885), 26, 34, 52; Aileen Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics (New York, 1967), 68n, 120–24; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 156–59; Frederick J. Blue, The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848–1854 (Urbana, Ill., 1973), 74–78, 180; Sorin, New York Abolitionists, 63–67; NCAB, 2:331; DAB, 17:524–25. 103. Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810–78) was born in Plainfield, Connecticut, and received his early schooling at Plainfield Academy. He had begun to study the law when his published attack on the Connecticut “Black Law” attracted the attention of the abolitionist Samuel J. May. Through May, Burleigh was offered the editorship of the Unionist, a new antislavery paper financed by Arthur Tappan. Burleigh was instrumental in protecting William Lloyd Garrison from a mob in Boston in October 1835, and shortly thereafter he became a regular contributor to the Liberator. In the late 1830s, Burleigh became one of the editors of the Pennsylvania Freeman, later the organ of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Active in a number of reform movements, Burleigh plunged into the anti-Sabbatarian campaign after he was arrested in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1847, for selling antislavery literature on a Sunday. In 1845, he published a pamphlet, Thoughts on the Death Penalty, condemning capital punishment. He participated in the woman suffrage conventions at Cleveland and New York in 1854 and the American Equal Rights Association meeting in 1867. In the 1870s, he joined his brother, William Henry, in the campaign for temperance reform. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, 6 vols. (Rochester, 1881–1922), 1:148–51; C. B. Galbreath, “Anti-Slavery Movement in Columbiana County,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 30:389–91 (October 1921); ACAB, 1:455; DAB, 3:284–85. 104. Ichabod Codding (1810–66), an abolitionist and Congregational minister, was born in Bristol, New York, and educated at Middlebury College. He became a full-time lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1836, traveling across New York and New England. By 1843, Codding had moved to the Midwest, where he became active in the Liberty party. Ordained as a Congregational minister in 1846, he served a number of churches in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin. In the 1850s, he was strongly opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska bill and supported the Republican party. West Eau Claire (Wisc.) Argus, 4 July 1866; Hannah Maria Preston Codding, Ichabod Codding (Madison, Wisc., 1898), 3–28. 105. Charles Lenox Remond. 106. Myron Holley (1779–1841), one of the founders of the Liberty party, was born in Salisbury, Connecticut. After practicing law briefly in his native state, he moved to Canandaigua, New York, where he operated a bookstore, served as county clerk, and was elected to the New York General Assembly. An early supporter of the Erie Canal, Holley was appointed treasurer of the canal commission in 1816 and successfully supervised the project until 1824, when he resigned after the discovery of a deficiency in his accounts. Although later found blameless of any crime, he reimbursed the state from his own funds. A leading Anti-Mason, Holley attended that party’s 1830 national

Y7870-Douglass.indb 528

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

529

convention in Philadelphia and authored its Address . . . to the People of the United States. Between 1831 and 1835, he edited two party organs, the Lyons (N.Y.) Countryman and the Hartford (Conn.) Free Elector. After relocating to Rochester, New York, Holley delivered his first antislavery speech in February 1838 and served as an antislavery lecturer the following winter. In June 1839, he began publishing the Rochester Freeman. Disenchanted with both the Whigs and Democrats, Holley urged the organization of a separate antislavery party, winning support for that position at county and state abolitionist conventions in 1839. At the national antislavery convention held in Albany in April 1840, he introduced the resolution calling for the nomination of a slate of antislavery candidates for national office. Holley actively campaigned for James G. Birney, the presidential nominee of the new Liberty party. [Elizur Wright, Jr.], Myron Holley: What He Did for Liberty and True Religion (Boston, 1882); Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 54–58, 61, 66–71; Alice Hatcher Henderson, “The History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1963), 234–43, 296–31; ACAB, 3; DAB, 9:150–51. 107. Wendell Phillips considered Elijah Lovejoy’s murder a major turning point in his own life as an abolitionist. He later recalled, “The gun which was aimed at the breast of Lovejoy brought me to my feet. I can never forget the agony of that moment.” He denounced Lovejoy’s death at a public commemoration of the event held at Faneuil Hall on 7 December 1837. Stewart, Wendell Phillips, 58–60. 108. Theodore Parker became an outspoken opponent of slavery and activist for the abolition cause following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. By 1855, he was considered the law’s leading opponent among Boston-area reformers. Dean Grodzins, American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003), 11, 53, 336–38. 109. Richard Hildreth published one of the earliest antislavery novels, The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore, in 1836. Four years later, he followed with Despotism in America, a nonfiction work that denounced the economic viability of slavery. His best-known publication was his History of the United States, which was released in six volumes between 1849 and 1852. ANB (online). 110. William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), an eminent Unitarian clergyman, was born in Newport, Rhode Island, and educated at Harvard. Upon graduation in 1798, Channing tutored children of the David Meade Randolph family of Richmond, Virginia, for eighteen months. He became a regent at Harvard in 1802 and, after ordination the following year, obtained a pastorate at Boston’s Federal Street Church, where he preached until his death. Channing was the spokesman for Unitarianism in its early years, an influential literary critic, and a noted commentator on social and moral issues. A temperance and peace advocate, Channing held moderate antislavery views that were attacked by both militant abolitionists and supporters of slavery. His willingness to express his views from the pulpit especially exposed him to criticism by proslavery forces. Lawrence Lader, The Bold Brahmins: New England’s War against Slavery: 1831–1863 (New York, 1961), 82–83; DAB, 4:4–7. 111. Born in West Boylston, Massachusetts, David Lee Child (1794–1874) graduated from Harvard University in 1817. He fought for the Spanish against invading Napoleonic armies as a volunteer. He married Lydia Maria Child in 1828 and launched a dual career as a lawyer and antislavery journalist. William Lloyd Garrison recruited the couple to the infant immediate-abolitionist movement in 1831. ACAB, 1:603–04. 112. Gamaliel Bailey (1808–59) graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and worked as a doctor, teacher, sailor, and journalist before a debate at Lane Theological Seminary in 1834 stirred his interest in slavery. In 1835, he served as secretary of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. The following year, he joined James G. Birney in editing the antislavery Cincinnati Philanthropist, becoming the paper’s sole editor in 1838. For most of the following two decades, Bailey continued to edit publications opposing slavery or its extension. Under his management (1847–59), the National Era, based in Washington, D.C., grew to a weekly circulation of over 25,000 and was a leading newspaper of the Free Soil movement. Bailey’s journalistic career was punctuated by mob attacks on his press in 1836, 1840, 1843, and 1848, but in each case, he persisted. “A Pioneer Editor,” Atlantic Monthly, 17:743–51 (June 1866); Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings, 41, 66, 69, 96, 152–54, 169; Sewell,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 529

9/1/21 4:17 PM

530

SLAVERY

Ballots for Freedom, 45–46, 73–76, 83, 90–93, 152–54; Filler, Crusade against Slavery, 78, 150, 194–95; DAB, 1:496–97. 113. Oliver Johnson (1809–99), an abolitionist and journalist, was born and educated in Vermont, where he apprenticed as a printer in the office of the Montpelier-based Vermont Watchman. An early convert to immediate abolition, Johnson printed his first weekly newspaper, the Christian Soldier (1831), on William Lloyd Garrison’s press in Boston. Along with Garrison, he became a founding member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832, and between 1837 and 1839 he acted as a general agent for the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society. In the 1840s, he worked as Horace Greeley’s assistant at the New York Tribune, and in 1849 he moved to Salem, Ohio, to take up the editorship of the Anti-Slavery Bugle, the organ of the Western Anti-Slavery Society. Leaving the Bugle in 1851, Johnson edited the Pennsylvania Freeman for two years, after which he moved to New York to assist Sydney Howard Gay with the National Anti-Slavery Standard. He succeeded Gay as editor and steered the weekly through both the secession crisis and Civil War. Following the war, he supported Garrison’s move to dissolve the American Anti-Slavery Society. Steven M. Raffo, A Biography of Oliver Johnson, Abolitionist and Reformer, 1809–1889 (Lewiston, N.Y., 2002); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 2:xxv–xxvi; ANB, 12:107; DAB, 5:756; NCAB, 2:319. 114. Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe. 115. John Greenleaf Whittier. 116. John Pierpont (1785–1866) was a poet and the activist Unitarian minister of Boston’s Hollis Street Church from 1819 to 1845. Douglass quoted Pierpont’s work in many speeches and writings and published this poem, composed in 1839, in the first issue of the North Star. He misquoted a line from “The Fugitive Slave’s Apostrophe to the North Star” in a lecture to the New Lyceum in Manchester, New Hampshire, on 24 January 1854. Pierpont, along with Douglass and many luminaries of the abolitionist movement, appeared at the well-publicized fourteenth-anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society on 9 May 1848 at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City. NS, 3 December 1847; New York Daily Tribune, 9 May 1848; NASS, 11 May 1848; John Pierpont, The Anti-Slavery Poems of John Pierpont (Boston, 1843), 29–33; DAB, 14:586–87. 117. The renowned poet James Russell Lowell (1819–91) converted to abolitionism after his marriage to Maria White in 1844. By early 1845, he had become an editorial writer for the Pennsylvania Freeman and contributed articles to the National Anti-Slavery Standard. In 1848, he became corresponding editor for the Standard, a duty he shared with Edmund Quincy. Lowell also served on the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society and vice president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. The death of his wife in 1853, however, curtailed much of his abolitionist activism. Martin Duberman, James Russell Lowell (Boston, 1966); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:343n. 118. Although Jesse and Polly Hutchinson had no fewer than thirteen children, the family name was primarily identified with the musical quartet composed of Judson (Adoniram Judson Joseph, 1817–59), John (John Wallace, 1821–1908), Asa (1823–84), and Abby (Abigail Jemima, 1829–92). This group traveled with Douglass to England aboard the Cambria in 1845, occasionally performing at meetings where Douglass spoke. One of the Hutchinson brothers, Jesse, was the first to be identified publicly with the earliest antislavery agitation. Judson, John, and Asa Hutchinson joined the abolitionists only after meeting Frederick Douglass, who lived near their store in Lynn, Massachusetts. John Wallace Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), ed. Charles E. Mann, 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 1:6, 40, 70–71, 142–46, 187–89; Carol Brink, Harps in the Wind: The Story of the Singing Hutchinsons (New York, 1947); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:158n. 119. Disputes between Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia were resolved when the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon marked the precise borders between these colonies in 1763–67. Cummings, Mason and Dixon Line. 120. Representative John Rutledge, Jr., of South Carolina uttered these words during a House debate over the danger of abolitionism during the Sixth Congress in 1799. He suggested that the best de-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 530

9/1/21 4:17 PM

SLAVERY

531

fense against the abolitionist threat was the creation of a separate Southern nation. Merton L. Dillon, Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their Allies, 1619–1865 (Baton Rouge, La., 1990), 50–51. 121. In 1799, Henry Lee made this assertion in reaction to a petition submitted by African Americans to Congress that called for revision to the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law and the end to slavery and the slave trade. Lee recommended the petition be returned to the men, since Congress had no ability to end slavery, only to protect it. Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston, 1872–77), 1:72–73. 122. Former vice president and states’-rights advocate John C. Calhoun opposed Andrew Jackson’s 1835 proposal to place federal restrictions, including censorship, on the mailing and distribution of abolitionist literature in the Southern states. He argued that the measure usurped the right of states to control such activities. Supporting South Carolina’s attempt to nullify a federal tariff in 1832–33, Calhoun championed the notion of interposition, or the right of a U.S. state to oppose apparent unconstitutional acts by the federal government. Douglass draws this material and the first part of the quotation from Henry Wilson’s book detailing the events of the antebellum era. Wilson, Slave Power in America, 1:341; William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Volume I, Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (New York, 2007), 445, 451. 123. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in Congress in January 1854. It infuriated Northerners because it eliminated the long-standing prohibition on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory above the 36°30´ parallel. The bill effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Almost immediately after its passage, a flood of proslavery settlers moved into the territory, bringing their slaves with them. So-called border ruffians intimidated antislavery-leaning voters and instigated a virtual civil war, known as “Bloody Kansas.” The proslavery forces overrepresented the strength of slavery supporters among the settlement’s populace. Northerners and Southerners soon created rival territorial governments, and significant violence marred the territory for more than two years. Proslavery Southerners and some Northern Democrats, including President Buchanan, supported the Lecompton Constitution, which would have brought Kansas into the Union as a slave state. Growing Northern opposition, including from Douglas, forced a territorial referendum on the Lecompton Constitution, which saw voters reject it. Kansas was admitted as a free state in 1861. Holt, Fate of Their Country, 99–104, 116–17; Potter, Impending Crisis, 313–15. 124. The sectional debate intensified following the acquisition of California and the southwestern territory at the end of the war with Mexico. As a part of the Compromise of 1850, slaveholders demanded a new and more stringent fugitive slave law, and they renewed their demands for a number of restrictions and guarantees to protect slavery. Many abolitionists and Northern politicians feared a Southern-led conspiracy to make slavery national. The 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford denied citizenship to African Americans and ensured slaveholders’ ability to move slaves into the territories. Proslavery Southerners in Congress tried to limit free-speech rights by prohibiting discussion of slavery, sought to stop slaves and African Americans from serving freely in the navy or acting as mail carriers, and renewed calls for federal censorship of the mails in order to prevent antislavery material from reaching the South. With the collapse of the Whig party amid the chaos of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill debate, Southern congressmen came to fear the growing Northern opposition to slavery extension as represented particularly in the emerging Republican party. Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York, 1978), 49–59, 86–98, 148–69, 201–03; Paul Finkelman, ed., Slavery and the Law (Lanham, Md., 1997), 169–72. 125. Eleven southern states seceded from the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln. Seven passed ordinances of secession before the new president took office. South Carolina led the exodus on 20 December 1860, followed by Mississippi (9 January 1861), Florida (10 January), Alabama (11 January), Georgia (19 January), Louisiana (26 January), and Texas (1 February). Following Lincoln’s inauguration, Virginia seceded (17 April), followed by Arkansas (6 May), North Carolina (20 May), and Tennessee (8 June). Freehling, Secessionists Triumphant, 385–86, 422, 446, 467.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 531

9/1/21 4:17 PM

UNSOLICITED OPINIONS OF ANTI-CASTE

532

126. Cotton production not only survived the end of slavery, but in many areas of the South, it exceeded pre–Civil War era outputs. By 1870, U.S. cotton production passed its previous high mark, from 1860, and American growers in 1880 exported more cotton than they did before the Civil War. Under the sharecropping system, production in 1891 was double the 1860 amount. The nation supplied a majority of the cotton needed in Great Britain, France, and Germany. Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014), 292. 127. In an 1886 report, the American Missionary Association stated that African Americans across the South were assessed on $91 million in taxable property for the year 1885. Statistics for the number of African American schools and students in 1885 came from a report created by the Federal Security Agency. American Missionary, 40:101 (December 1886); Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1885–’86 (Washington, D.C., 1886), 77.

UNSOLICITED OPINIONS OF ANTI-CASTE: OPINIONS OF COLOURED AMERICANS (1892) (Somerset, Eng.) Anti-Caste, 5: n.p. (February–March 1892). Another text in Subject File, reel 9, frame 531, FD Papers, DLC.

Founded in 1888 by the British Quaker activist Catherine Impey, the periodical Anti-Caste functioned as the organ of the Society for the Recognition of the Brotherhood of Man. In 1893, it was suspended in place of a new periodical, Fraternity. Personality quarrels inside the society caused Impey to sever ties with the organization and resume publication of Anti-Caste in March 1895. As Impey told Douglass in an 1883 letter, she had been “awakened” to the problem of racial prejudice during a visit to the United States to attend a temperance convention in Boston. Impey met Douglass in 1887 during his last visit to Great Britain. She used Anti-Caste to campaign against British imperialism and racism worldwide and championed like-minded activists such as Ida B. Wells. In 1890–91, Douglass was one of thirtyfive overseas subscribers to Anti-Caste. Impey published an excerpted portion of an endorsement of her magazine by Douglass in a section of Anti-Caste’s February–March 1892 issue, entitled “UNSOLICITED OPINIONS OF ‘ANTI-CASTE.’” In 1895, the April–May issue carried an engraving and a biographical sketch of the recently deceased Douglass. Catherine Impey to Douglass, 15 February 1883, 5 July 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 689–97, reel 4, frames 576–78, FD Papers, DLC; Caroline Bressey, Empire, Race and the Politics of Anti-Caste (London, 2013), 27, 29, 44, 66, 90–91, 110, 183–99, 209–12.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 532

9/1/21 4:17 PM

UNSOLICITED OPINIONS OF ANTI-CASTE

532

126. Cotton production not only survived the end of slavery, but in many areas of the South, it exceeded pre–Civil War era outputs. By 1870, U.S. cotton production passed its previous high mark, from 1860, and American growers in 1880 exported more cotton than they did before the Civil War. Under the sharecropping system, production in 1891 was double the 1860 amount. The nation supplied a majority of the cotton needed in Great Britain, France, and Germany. Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014), 292. 127. In an 1886 report, the American Missionary Association stated that African Americans across the South were assessed on $91 million in taxable property for the year 1885. Statistics for the number of African American schools and students in 1885 came from a report created by the Federal Security Agency. American Missionary, 40:101 (December 1886); Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1885–’86 (Washington, D.C., 1886), 77.

UNSOLICITED OPINIONS OF ANTI-CASTE: OPINIONS OF COLOURED AMERICANS (1892) (Somerset, Eng.) Anti-Caste, 5: n.p. (February–March 1892). Another text in Subject File, reel 9, frame 531, FD Papers, DLC.

Founded in 1888 by the British Quaker activist Catherine Impey, the periodical Anti-Caste functioned as the organ of the Society for the Recognition of the Brotherhood of Man. In 1893, it was suspended in place of a new periodical, Fraternity. Personality quarrels inside the society caused Impey to sever ties with the organization and resume publication of Anti-Caste in March 1895. As Impey told Douglass in an 1883 letter, she had been “awakened” to the problem of racial prejudice during a visit to the United States to attend a temperance convention in Boston. Impey met Douglass in 1887 during his last visit to Great Britain. She used Anti-Caste to campaign against British imperialism and racism worldwide and championed like-minded activists such as Ida B. Wells. In 1890–91, Douglass was one of thirtyfive overseas subscribers to Anti-Caste. Impey published an excerpted portion of an endorsement of her magazine by Douglass in a section of Anti-Caste’s February–March 1892 issue, entitled “UNSOLICITED OPINIONS OF ‘ANTI-CASTE.’” In 1895, the April–May issue carried an engraving and a biographical sketch of the recently deceased Douglass. Catherine Impey to Douglass, 15 February 1883, 5 July 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 689–97, reel 4, frames 576–78, FD Papers, DLC; Caroline Bressey, Empire, Race and the Politics of Anti-Caste (London, 2013), 27, 29, 44, 66, 90–91, 110, 183–99, 209–12.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 532

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

533

Hon. Frederick Douglass, U.S. Minister to Haiti. “I receive AntiCaste regularly. There is a world wide need of your little witness against pride and prejudice . . . , Anything that you can do to expose this foul spirit [of caste] and enlighten the moral sentiment of your countrymen on this subject excites our gratitude and increases our hopes of a better future. I rejoice that at least one soul in this broad world is willing to make a life warfare against this dark spirit. . . . I am not without hope that your little journal, so faithful and true to the spirit of Universal Brotherhood, will yet raise up for itself many friends and supporters.”

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS (1892) New York Independent, 21 April 1892. Other texts in Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 16, frames 518–29, reel 19, frames 390–400, FD Papers, DLC.

Frederick Douglass campaigned for Benjamin Harrison in the 1892 presidential election. He toured the South, encouraged blacks to vote for Harrison, and passionately argued for the inclusion of an antilynching plank in the Republican party platform. Douglass attended the 1892 Republican National Convention as a delegate and was devastated by Grover Cleveland’s ultimate victory, claiming that the return of the Democratic party to power would strengthen the intolerance and hatred of Southern whites toward blacks. A frequent contributor to the Independent, Douglass wrote the following article supporting the reelection of Benjamin Harrison in 1892, particularly because he backed two bills that would improve voting rights and education for African Americans. While the Independent began as a Congregational publication in 1848, by the 1890s it had seen significant shifts in editorial practice. Theodore Tilton, the journal’s editor from 1856 to 1871, befriended Douglass during the 1860s during his successful effort to recruit Douglass as a regular contributor. During Tilton’s tenure as editor, the Independent began to include more works of literature and politics alongside religious pieces. Following Tilton’s departure, editorial duties were taken over by Henry C. Bowen. Desiring to return the journal to a more religious focus, Bowen often clashed with those who felt it should continue to be more politically oriented. Following Bowen’s death in 1896, the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 533

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

533

Hon. Frederick Douglass, U.S. Minister to Haiti. “I receive AntiCaste regularly. There is a world wide need of your little witness against pride and prejudice . . . , Anything that you can do to expose this foul spirit [of caste] and enlighten the moral sentiment of your countrymen on this subject excites our gratitude and increases our hopes of a better future. I rejoice that at least one soul in this broad world is willing to make a life warfare against this dark spirit. . . . I am not without hope that your little journal, so faithful and true to the spirit of Universal Brotherhood, will yet raise up for itself many friends and supporters.”

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS (1892) New York Independent, 21 April 1892. Other texts in Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 16, frames 518–29, reel 19, frames 390–400, FD Papers, DLC.

Frederick Douglass campaigned for Benjamin Harrison in the 1892 presidential election. He toured the South, encouraged blacks to vote for Harrison, and passionately argued for the inclusion of an antilynching plank in the Republican party platform. Douglass attended the 1892 Republican National Convention as a delegate and was devastated by Grover Cleveland’s ultimate victory, claiming that the return of the Democratic party to power would strengthen the intolerance and hatred of Southern whites toward blacks. A frequent contributor to the Independent, Douglass wrote the following article supporting the reelection of Benjamin Harrison in 1892, particularly because he backed two bills that would improve voting rights and education for African Americans. While the Independent began as a Congregational publication in 1848, by the 1890s it had seen significant shifts in editorial practice. Theodore Tilton, the journal’s editor from 1856 to 1871, befriended Douglass during the 1860s during his successful effort to recruit Douglass as a regular contributor. During Tilton’s tenure as editor, the Independent began to include more works of literature and politics alongside religious pieces. Following Tilton’s departure, editorial duties were taken over by Henry C. Bowen. Desiring to return the journal to a more religious focus, Bowen often clashed with those who felt it should continue to be more politically oriented. Following Bowen’s death in 1896, the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 533

9/1/21 4:17 PM

534

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

Independent’s new editor, William Hayes Ward, shifted its focus, paying less attention to religious affairs and concentrating more on politics, literature, and illustrations. Connie Miller, Sr., Frederick Douglass: American Hero (Bloomington, Ind., 2008), 359; Bobby Lovett, The African-American History of Nashville Tennessee, 1780–1930 (Fayetteville, Ark., 1999), 95–96; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 359, 364; Mott, History of American Magazines, 367–77.

To no class or condition of people in the United States is the nomination and election of a just, wise and able Republican President more important and imperatively indispensable than to the newly made citizens of this Republic. Coming into the body politic against the fierce resentment of the men who once enslaved them; being compelled by circumstances over which they have no control to remain in the presence of those inimical to them; living under the blighting shadow of a popular prejudice which is kept alive by a fancied necessity; encountering difficulties in the race of life met with by no other class of Americans; holding their freedom and citizenship against systematic and unrelenting persecution; passing through the inevitable hardships of a transitional condition—at the head of the Government they need the fostering care of a strong man, one who is in perfect sympathy with that new order of American freedom and justice, the order which has clothed them with citizenship and the elective franchise. With them the choice of a President involves in some measure the question of liberty and slavery, happiness and misery, peace and war, life and death: for they are now the helpless victims of a system of lawless violence and bloodshed unsurpassed in horrors by any crimes perpetrated in the darkest corners of the earth. True, the election of a wise and strong man for the Presidency may not entirely stay the hand of violence and put an end to its stupendous horrors; for such crimes will be committed until the spirit of slavery is wholly banished from the South, and for this, time and events must do their part. But it makes a vast difference whether the rulers of the nation are in sympathy with the criminals or with the class against whom crimes are committed. There are powers other than swords and bayonets, and among these is the firmly settled judgment of the nation in favor of justice to the Negro citizen expressed in the national choice of a President. The persistent election of such rulers cannot but, in the end, be followed by peace and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 534

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

535

good order in the South. That section of the country is great, but the whole country itself is greater. Let it be once understood, North and South and everywhere else, that, in its march from slavery and barbarism to liberty and enlightenment, the nation at large will take no step backward and that the Negro who helped to save the country from dismemberment and ruin will permanently have the sympathy and support of the Government and that his just constitutional rights as a citizen of a common country will be protected, and even the barbarous South will in time become ashamed of its barbarism and be dragged into line with this new order of American liberty. It may be charged that I view the Presidential question simply in its relations and bearings touching the colored citizens. In the name of justice and of a merciful God, how can I view it otherwise? What is there paramount to this view? Where under the whole heavens does human blood utter such a piercing cry from the ground as in the States of the late rebellion? Scenes are transpiring in that section which haunt me night and day, and fill the souls of men with bitterest anguish. What to me or to them are questions of silver and gold, of tariffs and currency,1 while our people are torn from their little cabins, snatched from jails by furious mobs, with no chance to establish their innocence of crimes imputed to them—shot down, stabbed, hanged and burned to death without judge or jury? While these hell-black atrocities shall continue, no man with a drop of colored blood in his veins should allow himself to think of any other politics than those relating to his people. I am free to say that my choice of a candidate for Presidency is dictated by my desire to arrest these outrages just now so rampant and flagrant in the South. My choice may seem to be illogical, since it is none other than President Benjamin Harrison in whose presence these outrages have been perpetrated with impunity. It is, however, easily shown that the fault has not been his. No man in public life hates fraud and abhors bloodshed more than does President Harrison, and had he been supported as he should have been by Congress, murder and rapine would not now be running riot in the Southern States. As much as any other man likely to receive the nomination, Mr. Harrison is in favor of law and force for the protection of the colored man from this lawless violence. There are other good men not less fit for the place than Benjamin Harrison, but none more likely, if any so likely, to be elected should any one them be nominated. I named Mr. Harrison for the Presidency more than six months ago, and have seen no reason in the events that have since transpired to change my views.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 535

9/1/21 4:17 PM

536

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

In commending him for the place, I lay no stress upon what might be considered a graceful and proper tribute to a faithful public servant. Tho he has richly deserved such a tribute at the hands of his party, I leave that ground to others. They may well enough demand for him such an expression of national confidence and approval as a renomination and re-election would imply. It would simply be fulfilling the injunction of “honor to whom honor.”2 But as a colored man, identified with the dearest interest of colored men and believing that their cause will be best served by the continuance of General Harrison in the Presidential chair, I earnestly urge his renomination. I stand for him, because I know him and have studied his character and have found him to be humane, wise and strong. It is not enough that the man at the head of this nation shall be a good man, he must be a strong man as well. It was the strength as well as the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln and General Grant3 that made them successful Presidents. No man in the country could forget for a moment who was President in the case of either. The same is true of President Benjamin Harrison. He has never allowed the helm of the Ship of State to slip from his fingers. By those who knew him as a private citizen and as a member of the bar of his State, and especially as a member of the United States Senate, where he held an equal place with the ablest Senators of the nation, his election to the Presidency was easily viewed with confidence and expectation that his administration would be a success. That confidence has not been falsified and that expectation has not been disappointed. But to those who did not know him, the success of his Administration has been a great and gratifying surprise. During the three years of his Presidency, questions of vast moment have confronted him, requiring for their solution the highest wisdom, ability and statesmanship; and he has proved himself equal to every occasion. Tho deprived the most of his time of the assistance of the eminent head of the State Department, who has been much disabled by ill-health, no question of home or foreign policy has been allowed to suffer. The archives of the nation furnish no papers on foreign affairs abler than those that bear the stamp of Benjamin Harrison. He has had to deal with Italy,4 Chile5 and England,6 and his wise, firm and dignified course has wrung from reluctant opponents highest commendation. Neither the honor of our country nor the good relation that should subsist between these nations and ourselves has been sacrificed. When the arrow struck the heart of the tyrant in Switzerland, tho the archer was unseen behind the rocks, it was

Y7870-Douglass.indb 536

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

537

known from the accuracy of the aim that his name was William Tell;7 so as we read the voluminous and able discussion in these papers on international questions, we know that the hand and brain that produced them were none other than those of Benjamin Harrison. I am not only for Mr. Harrison for what he has done, but I am for him for what he has left undone. He has never stooped in any wise to the devices of the demagog. He has never flattered the old rebel classes by his presence or by his praise. He has had no compliments for the men who fought to destroy the Union. He has never courted political support by paltering in a double sense, or by openly sacrificing his principles. He has never thought to compassionate the murderers of the Negro by whining about the so-called difficult race problem with which they have to struggle. His trumpet has never given an uncertain sound; he has simply insisted upon justice, fair play and obedience to constitutional obligations as the solution of the race question. It is always important to know just what a man stands for in this world, and where to look for him in any important emergency which may arise; the latter can be easily and always known when the former is known. Just this is one strong reason for urging the nomination of General Benjamin Harrison. We know precisely what he stands for; and we also know that, having carefully selected his ground, we may expect to find him where we have heretofore found him in every emergency. He has been weighed and measured, tried and tested, and has suffered loss at no point. Individuals of his party have flinched and failed us in trying hours, but General Harrison never. He was true to us on the Blair Educational bill,8 so much needed; he was true to us on the stigmatized Force bill;9 and he has been true to us in recognizing our right to be represented in the offices and emoluments of the Government. Of course in this latter course he has not escaped complaints; for it is impossible for a President of any party to satisfy all the demands of this kind that will be made upon him; but no man has gone further or done more in recognition of the claims of colored men to office than has General Harrison. He has, upon the whole, given larger, higher and better positions to colored men than we were ever given them before.10 I am not among those who profess to be indifferent to the possession of office by colored men. In a country like ours no class or condition of men can afford to be entirely ignored and excluded from a share in the administration of the Government. They need it for themselves and for the standing of their class. But important as this is, it is incomparably more

Y7870-Douglass.indb 537

9/1/21 4:17 PM

538

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

important in our case that means be provided for the protection of liberty and person, and for the promotion of general education. In favor of these fundamental interests, no man is stronger, more reliable or more earnest than President Benjamin Harrison. In the Republican platform, adopted at Chicago, it is affirmed “that the supreme and sovereign right of every lawful citizen, rich or poor, native or foreign born, white or black, is to cast one free ballot in public elections, and to have that ballot duly counted. . . . It is further asserted that the free and honest popular ballot and the just and equal representation of all the people is the foundation of our Republican Government, and demands effective legislation to secure the integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority.”11 Upon this platform President Harrison was elected, and no man can say that he has ever deserted it. If Republicans in Congress have failed to stand by it and enact proper legislation to carry out this grand object, the fault has not been Benjamin Harrison’s. Unhappily for us there have been found in this case, as in many others, just enough of half-hearted men, wearing the livery of Republicanism, to serve the purpose Democracy and to defeat the honest purpose of an honest President. But for these, both the Blair Educational bill and the Lodge Force bill would now be on the national statute book. I have been asked how I could reconcile my advocacy of the nomination and election of General Harrison with what I have had to say about the negotiations for a United States coaling station at the Mole St. Nicolas.12 At this point I have no difficulty whatever. The high opinion I have formed of General Harrison is, in a measure, due to his friendship for Haiti and to the advice he gave me in connection with my mission to that country. I have found in him no trace of the vulgar prejudice so rampant against Haiti and against colored people everywhere. He sent me to that country to represent the best sentiments of the loyal and liberty-loving part of Americans and the noblest qualities of human nature. The spirit of his humane advice was worthy of his lofty character. He charged me to do all I could for the peace and welfare of Haiti, so far as that was consistent with my duty to the United States; and he especially urged me to persuade her to value and preserve her institutions and thus to remove all ground for the reproaches now hurled at her and through her example at the colored people in the United States. He instructed me as any man would who was too generous to profit by the misfortunes of others, too proud to stoop to meanness, too honest to practice duplicity, too strong to menace the weak,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 538

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

539

too great to be small in any respect. No! There is nothing whatever in my relations with General Harrison to make it difficult or inconsistent for me to advocate with all my heart his renomination and re-election to the Presidency of the United States. WASHINGTON, D.C. 1. The debate over whether to use gold or silver to back U.S. currency was a contentious subject in the 1892 presidential campaign. The Republicans were strongly in favor of the gold standard, while the Democrats, who held heated debates on the subject, refused to include a free-silver plank in the party’s platform and nominated Grover Cleveland, who also supported the gold standard. Many Midwestern farmers, who often strongly supported the coining of silver and the subsequent rise in inflation, in the hope it would reduce their debts, left both parties and formed the Populist party. While the Populists advanced numerous platform positions, the most prominent one was strong support of free silver. Although it did not win the election, this new third party garnered over 1,000,000 votes and would strongly influence the Democratic platform in the 1896 election. George Harmon Knoles, The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1892 (Stanford, Calif., 1942), 86–87; Mark Carnes, ed., The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections (New York, 2001), 73. 2. The phrase “honor to honor” paraphrases a line from the book of Romans, which states: “Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.” Rom. 13:7. 3. Ulysses S. Grant. 4. While there were minor disputes with Italy about the exporting of American meat, the most important diplomatic incident between the two countries during the Harrison administration was the lynching of eleven Italians in New Orleans. A local police chief, David Hennessey, was apparently murdered by the Mafia, and the killers were acquitted. Jurors on the case were thought to have been intimidated, and a mob gathered to enforce a guilty verdict, hanging the defendants as well as some other Italians and Italian Americans suspected of having Mafia ties. Italy objected strenuously and demanded that the U.S. government bring the guilty parties to justice. The Harrison administration, which had encouraged the governor of Louisiana to pursue the matter, told Italy that because of the separation of powers, the federal government could do little to prosecute the case. Italy angrily recalled its ambassador, Harrison quickly responded in kind, and the possibility of war was discussed. Harrison believed, however, that the Italian government was merely trying to save face at home to distract its people from other domestic problems, although he did authorize the paying of an indemnity to Italy. The situation eventually cooled, and both countries returned their ambassadors. Charles Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison (New York, 2005), 126–127; Waldo Messaros, Life of General Benjamin Harrison: A Full Account of His Ancestry, Boyhood, Early Struggles, Marriage, and Recent Political Triumphs (Boston, Mass., 1892), 64–67. 5. In October 1891, a group of American sailors from the U.S.S. Baltimore on shore leave in Valparaiso, Chile, were attacked by a local mob. Two Americans were killed, and over a dozen were wounded. While the Chileans claimed the melee had been the result of a bar fight that got out of hand, the officers of the Baltimore, after conducting their own investigation, found evidence indicating that the local police had taken part in the assault. The American government immediately condemned Chile’s action, and Harrison sent a diplomatic letter to Chile demanding an apology. The situation became further inflamed when the Chileans dismissed the incident entirely, insultingly insinuating that the U.S. government was overreacting, and refused to apologize for the incident. In response, President Harrison went before Congress, decried the loss of American servicemen, and met with Democratic congressmen, who assured the president of their full support in the matter. Harrison then demanded reparations, and the navy began to prepare for war. This proved unnecessary when the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 539

9/1/21 4:17 PM

540

PRESIDENT HARRISON AND OUR COLORED CITIZENS

Chilean government capitulated to Harrison’s demands, agreed to all his terms, and issued an abject apology. Harrison swiftly accepted, thus ending the matter. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison, 126–29; Moore, Benjamin Harrison, 131–33. 6. In 1890, a dispute arose between the United States and Canada about the rights to seal fishing in the Bering Sea. The United States, which leased the area around the Pribilof Islands in Alaska to the North American Commercial Company, had passed laws preventing pelagic, or open-sea, seal fishing. Ignoring these rules, Canadian poachers harvested seals, including female seals and their pups, on the ocean, which threatened the existence of the species. President Harrison demanded that Great Britain pressure Canada to end the illegal poaching. Meanwhile, the United States proceeded to capture Canadian seal ships, which Great Britain strongly protested. While both sides blustered at each other, Harrison and the British government agreed to submit the issue to arbitration. The Bering Sea Arbitration limited the area in which pelagic sealing was allowed to take place, but penalized the United States for holding onto Canadian seal ships and required the United States to pay an indemnity to them. While the demands of neither side were met in full, Harrison successfully diffused the situation and prevented the outbreak of hostilities. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison, 129–131; Bruce Adelson, Benjamin Harrison (Minneapolis, Minn., 2007), 86; Messaros, Life of General Benjamin Harrison, 443–52. 7. William Tell was the legendary hero of the Swiss struggle against Austrian domination during the early fourteenth century. According to tradition, Tell organized resistance to the Austrian occupation of the canton of Uri and fought with gallantry in the great Swiss victory over the Habsburg duke Leopold I at the Battle of Morgarten in 1315. Literary accounts of Tell date back to fifteenthcentury Swiss ballads. Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell (1804) and Gioachino Rossini’s opera Guillaume Tell (1829) portray Tell as a romantic symbol of love, liberty, and country. Modern historians’ attempts to substantiate the existence of a real William Tell have proved inconclusive. William Martin, Switzerland from Roman Times to the Present (London, 1971), 27–35; James Bunting, Switzerland, including Liechtenstein (New York, 1973), 20–23. 8. The Blair Education Bill, proposed by Republican senator Henry Blair of New Hampshire, would have provided educational grants to states and apportioned them based on literacy rates. The bill was specifically intended to help African Americans, since their illiteracy rates were as high as 70 percent in the 1880s. President Harrison supported the bill, and as a senator he had argued that there was much work to be done to help educate the former slaves. Although it was initially proposed in 1882, the bill was defeated three times, and despite the president’s support, it failed to pass the Senate in 1891. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison, 91–92; Robert Smith, Encyclopedia of African American Politics (New York, 2003), 47–48. 9. In 1890, the Lodge (or Force) Bill was an attempt by congressional Republicans, led by Representative Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, to secure black voting rights in the South. It stated that if at least five hundred voters petitioned a federal judge, the federal government could take over all aspects of voting in congressional elections, from conducting voter registration to supervising the vote itself and counting the votes. The intent of this bill was to prevent the South from disenfranchising black voters. President Harrison strongly supported the bill, arguing that the nation’s cemeteries were full of courageous black soldiers who had given their lives to defend the United States and that it was the government’s duty to protect the voting rights of blacks in free elections. The bill was defeated in the Senate. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison, 89–91; Janet Steele, The Sun Shines for All: Journalism and Ideology in the Life of Charles A. Dana (New York, 1993), 143. 10. Benjamin Harrison appointed blacks to a number of government positions during his presidency. In addition to Frederick Douglass, he appointed eleven blacks to the office of postmaster in South Carolina, Florida, and Mississippi. He also appointed Charles Clarkson as the assistant postmaster general of the United States and Wright Cuney as collector of customs in Galveston, Texas. Philip Rubio, There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010), 23; Ralph Crowder, John Edward

Y7870-Douglass.indb 540

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

541

Bruce: Politician, Journalist, and Self-Trained Historian of the African Diaspora (New York, 2004), 69; Douglas Hales, A Southern Family in White and Black: The Cuneys of Texas (College Station, Tex., 2003), 78. 11. The 1892 Republican National Party platform declared: “We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot in all public elections, and that such ballot shall be counted and returned as cast; that such laws shall be enacted and enforced as will secure to every citizen, be he rich or poor, native or foreign-born, white or black, this sovereign right, guaranteed by the Constitution.” The Republican platform further affirmed “that the free and honest popular ballot and the just and equal representations of all the people . . . is the foundation of our Republican Government and demands effective legislation to secure the integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority.” Republican National Committee, Republican Campaign Text-book for 1892, 21. 12. Douglass campaigned vigorously for Benjamin Harrison in 1888. As a reward, Harrison gave Douglass the post of minister resident and consul general to Haiti. Harrison assigned him the diplomatic task of acquiring Môle-St.-Nicolas, but the negotiations proved to be racked with backdoor political dealings and shady diplomacy. In 1889, Frederick Douglass and Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi began negotiations to acquire a lease on the Môle. The presence of U.S. naval officers reconnoitering the Môle, along with imperial barbs from the American press, aroused fresh Haitian nationalism, which led its government to refuse to yield to U.S. diplomatic pressure. In addition, tensions between Douglass and Gherardi made the negotiation even more difficult. Any last chances for acquiring the Môle evaporated when a huge fleet of U.S. ships assembled at Port-au-Prince, leading Haiti to decline to lease the Môle. Douglass resigned his mission as of 30 July 1891, and through numerous newspaper interviews, he exculpated himself of any blame for the mission’s failure. Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 161–80; Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy,” 457–75; Sears, “Douglass and the Mission to Haiti,” 222–38.

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH (1892) North American Review, 155:17–24 (July 1892).

The historian Edward Ayers notes that “lynching was a way for white people to reconcile weak governments with a demand for an impossibly high level of racial mastery, a way to terrorize blacks into acquiescence by brutally killing those who intentionally or accidentally stepped over some invisible and shifting line of permissible behavior.” Lynchings of African Americans were at an all-time high in the 1880s and 1890s, reaching a peak of more than two a week in 1892. Consequently, in May 1892 the North American Review invited Douglass to address this outbreak of mob lynchings. Writing on behalf of the Review’s editor, Lloyd Bryce, W. B. Franklin recounted the news of the violent lynching and burning alive of Ed Coy to Douglass and suggested that he use the story in his piece: “What a key note you could sound by

Y7870-Douglass.indb 541

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

541

Bruce: Politician, Journalist, and Self-Trained Historian of the African Diaspora (New York, 2004), 69; Douglas Hales, A Southern Family in White and Black: The Cuneys of Texas (College Station, Tex., 2003), 78. 11. The 1892 Republican National Party platform declared: “We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot in all public elections, and that such ballot shall be counted and returned as cast; that such laws shall be enacted and enforced as will secure to every citizen, be he rich or poor, native or foreign-born, white or black, this sovereign right, guaranteed by the Constitution.” The Republican platform further affirmed “that the free and honest popular ballot and the just and equal representations of all the people . . . is the foundation of our Republican Government and demands effective legislation to secure the integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority.” Republican National Committee, Republican Campaign Text-book for 1892, 21. 12. Douglass campaigned vigorously for Benjamin Harrison in 1888. As a reward, Harrison gave Douglass the post of minister resident and consul general to Haiti. Harrison assigned him the diplomatic task of acquiring Môle-St.-Nicolas, but the negotiations proved to be racked with backdoor political dealings and shady diplomacy. In 1889, Frederick Douglass and Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi began negotiations to acquire a lease on the Môle. The presence of U.S. naval officers reconnoitering the Môle, along with imperial barbs from the American press, aroused fresh Haitian nationalism, which led its government to refuse to yield to U.S. diplomatic pressure. In addition, tensions between Douglass and Gherardi made the negotiation even more difficult. Any last chances for acquiring the Môle evaporated when a huge fleet of U.S. ships assembled at Port-au-Prince, leading Haiti to decline to lease the Môle. Douglass resigned his mission as of 30 July 1891, and through numerous newspaper interviews, he exculpated himself of any blame for the mission’s failure. Himelhoch, “Douglass and Môle St. Nicolas,” 161–80; Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy,” 457–75; Sears, “Douglass and the Mission to Haiti,” 222–38.

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH (1892) North American Review, 155:17–24 (July 1892).

The historian Edward Ayers notes that “lynching was a way for white people to reconcile weak governments with a demand for an impossibly high level of racial mastery, a way to terrorize blacks into acquiescence by brutally killing those who intentionally or accidentally stepped over some invisible and shifting line of permissible behavior.” Lynchings of African Americans were at an all-time high in the 1880s and 1890s, reaching a peak of more than two a week in 1892. Consequently, in May 1892 the North American Review invited Douglass to address this outbreak of mob lynchings. Writing on behalf of the Review’s editor, Lloyd Bryce, W. B. Franklin recounted the news of the violent lynching and burning alive of Ed Coy to Douglass and suggested that he use the story in his piece: “What a key note you could sound by

Y7870-Douglass.indb 541

9/1/21 4:17 PM

542

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

beginning your article with it.” Douglass submitted the following article to the Review, to which he was a frequent contributor. W. B. Franklin to Douglass, 12 May 1892, General Correspondence File, reel 6, frames 506–09, FD Papers, DLC; Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (New York, 1992), 155–59.

The frequent and increasing resort to lynch law in our Southern States,1 in dealing with alleged offences by negroes, marked as it is by features of cruelty which might well shock the sensibility of the most benighted savage, will not fail to attract the attention and animadversion of visitors to the World’s Columbian Exposition.2 Think of an American woman, in this year of grace 1892, mingling with a howling mob, and with her own hand applying the torch to the fagots around the body of a negro condemned to death without a trial, and without judge or jury, as was done only a few weeks ago in the so-called civilized State of Arkansas.3 When all lawful remedies for the prevention of crime have been employed and have failed; when criminals administer the law in the interest of crime; when the government has become a foul and damning conspiracy against the welfare of society; when men guilty of the most infamous crimes are permitted to escape with impunity; when there is no longer any reasonable ground upon which to base a hope of reformation, there is at least an apology for the application of lynch law; but, even in this extremity, it must be regarded as an effort to neutralize one poison by the employment of another. Certain it is that in no tolerable condition of society can lynch law be excused or defended. Its presence is either an evidence of governmental depravity, or of a demoralized state of society. It is generally in the hands of the worst class of men in the community, and is enacted under the most degrading and blinding influences. To break down the doors of jails, wrench off the iron bars of the cells, and in the dark hours of midnight drag out alleged criminals, and to shoot, hang, or burn them to death, requires preparation imparted by copious draughts of whiskey, which leave the actors without inclination or ability to judge of the guilt or innocence of the victims of their wrath. The consensus of opinion in the early days of California permitted a vigilance committee, composed of respectable men, to hang a lot of thieves, thugs, gamblers and cut-throats;4 but it may now be fairly doubted

Y7870-Douglass.indb 542

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

543

whether even this example has not been an injury rather than a benefit to society, since it has been made the excuse for other uprisings of the people where there was no such justification as existed in California. But, granting that there may be instances where a sudden and spontaneous uprising of the populace may properly set aside the ordinary processes of the law for the punishment of crime and the preservation of society, it must still be admitted that there is, in the nature of the act itself, the essence of a crime more far-reaching, dangerous, and deadly than the crime it is intended to punish. Lynch law violates all of those merciful maxims of law and order which experience has shown to be wise and necessary for the protection of liberty, the security of the citizen, and the maintenance of justice for the whole people. It violates the principle which requires, for the conviction of crime, that a man shall be confronted in open court by his accusers.5 It violates the principle that it is better that ten guilty men shall escape than that one innocent man shall be punished.6 It violates the rule that presumes innocence until guilt is proven.7 It compels the accused to prove his innocence and denies him a reasonable doubt in his favor.8 It simply constitutes itself not a court of trial, but a court of execution. It comes to its work in a storm of passion and thirsting for human blood, ready to shoot, stab, or burn its victim, who is denied a word of entreaty or explanation. Like the gods of the heathen these mobs have eyes, but see not, ears, but hear not, and they rush to their work of death as pitilessly as the tiger rushes upon his prey.9 Some of us are old enough to remember the storm of displeasure that came up from all the regions of slavery against William H. Seward for the utterance of an idea of a higher law than the law of slavery.10 Then the South stood up stoutly for the authority and binding force of the regularlyenacted laws, including even the infamous Fugitive Slave Law.11 It took to itself credit for being the conservative element in our government, but to-day it is the bold defender of the usurpations of the mob, and its territory, in many parts, has become the theatre of lawless violence against a defenceless people. In the arguments in its defence, however, there is quite observable a slight degree of respect for the opinion of mankind and a disposition to conciliate that opinion. The crime which these usurpers of courts, laws, and juries, profess to punish is the most revolting and shocking of any this side of murder. This they know is their best excuse, and it appeals at once and promptly to a prejudice which prevails at the North as well as the South. Hence we have for any act of lawless violence the same excuse, an outrage by a negro upon some white woman. It is a notable

Y7870-Douglass.indb 543

9/1/21 4:17 PM

544

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

fact, also, that it is not with them the immorality or the enormity of the crime itself that arouses popular wrath, but the emphasis is put upon the race and color of the parties to it. Here, and not there, is the ground of indignation and abhorrence. The appeal is not to the moral sense, but to the well-known hatred of one class towards another. It is an appeal that not only stops the ears and darkens the minds of Southern men, but it palliates the crime of lawless violence in the eyes of Northern men. The device is used with skill and effect, and the question of guilt or innocence becomes unimportant in the fierce tumult of popular passion. For two hundred years or more, white men have in the South committed this offence against black women, and the fact has excited little attention, even at the North, except among abolitionists; which circumstance demonstrates that the horror now excited is not for the crime itself, but that it is based upon the reversal of colors in the participants. Yet this apology, rightly considered, utterly fails to palliate the crime of lynch law. For if the charge against the negro is true, with the evidence of his guilt overwhelming, as is usually asserted, there could be no rational doubt of his certain punishment by the ordinary processes of the law. Thus the very argument in defence of the mob proves the criminality of the mob. If in any case there could be shown an element of doubt of the certain lawful conviction and punishment of the accused, there might be admitted some excuse for this lawless method of administering justice. But for no such doubt is there any contention. No decent white man in the South will pretend that in that region there could be impannelled a jury, black, white, or mixed, which would in case of proof of the deed allow a guilty negro to escape condign punishment. Whatever may be said of their weakness when required to hold a white man or a rich man, the meshes of the law are certainly always strong enough to hold and punish a poor man or a negro. In this case there is neither color to blind, money to corrupt, nor powerful friends to influence court or jury against the claims of justice. All the presumptions of law and society are against the negro. In the days of slavery he was presumed to be a slave, even if free, and his word was never taken against that of a white man. To be accused was to be condemned, and the same spirit prevails to-day. This state of opinion at the South not only assures by law the punishment of black men, but enables white men to escape punishment by assuming the color of the negro in order to commit crime. It is often asserted that all negroes look alike, and it is only necessary to bring one of the class into the presence of an accuser to have him at once identified as the criminal.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 544

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

545

In apologizing for lynch law, Bishop Fitzgerald, of the Methodist Church South, says that the crime alleged against the negro makes him an outlaw, and he goes on to complain of the North that it does not more fully sympathize with the South in its efforts to protect the purity of Southern women.12 The answer to the first proposition of the learned and pious Bishop is that no man is an outlaw unless declared to be such by some competent authority. It is not left to a lawless mob to determine whether a man is inside or outside the protection of the law. It is not for a dozen men or for a hundred men, constituting themselves a mob, to say whether or not Bishop Fitzgerald is an outlaw. We have courts, juries and governors to determine that question, and it is a shame to the South that it holds in its bosom a Bishop of the Church of Christ who could thus apologize for the subversion of all law. As to the sympathy of the North, there never was a time when it was more fully with the Southern people than now. The distressing circumstances in this revival of lynch law in different parts of the South is, that it shows that prejudice and hatred have increased in bitterness with the increasing interval between the time of slavery and now. I have been frequently asked to explain this phase of our national problem. I explain it on the same principle by which resistance to the course of a ship is created and increased in proportion to her speed. The resistance met by the negro is to me evidence that he is making progress. The Jew is hated in Russia, because he is thrifty. The Chinaman is hated in California because he is industrious and successful. The negro meets no resistance when on a downward course. It is only when he rises in wealth, intelligence, and manly character that he brings upon himself the heavy hand of persecution.13 The men lynched at Memphis were murdered because they were prosperous. They were doing a business which a white firm desired to do,—hence the mob and hence the murder.14 When the negro is degraded and ignorant he conforms to a popular standard of what a negro should be. When he shakes off his rags and wretchedness and presumes to be a man, and a man among men, he contradicts this popular standard and becomes an offence to his surroundings. He can, at the South, ride in a first-class car as a servant, as an appendage to a white man, but is not allowed to ride in his quality of manhood alone. So extreme is the bitterness of this prejudice that several States have passed laws making it a crime for a conductor to allow a colored man, however respectable, to ride in the same car with white men unless in the manner above stated.15 To the question, What is to be the solution of this race hatred and persecution? I have two answers, one of hope and one of fear. There may

Y7870-Douglass.indb 545

9/1/21 4:17 PM

546

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

come at the South satiety even in the appetite for blood. When a wall is raised to a height inconsistent with the law of gravitation, it will fall. The South is not all a wilderness. There are good men and good women there who will sooner or later make themselves heard and felt. No people can long endure the shame and disgrace of lynch law. The South, which has been compelled to keep step with the music of the Union, will also be compelled to keep step with the music of the nineteenth century, which is preeminently a century of enlightenment and progress. The grand moral forces of this century no barbarism can withstand. They met serfdom in Russia, and it fell before them. They will meet our barbarism against color, and it will fall before them. I am the more encouraged in this belief because, in various parts of the North, and especially in the State of Massachusetts, where fifty years ago there existed the same proscription which at the present time prevails in the South, all men are now treated as equals before the law and are accorded the same civil rights. I, however, freely confess that the present prospect has for me a gloomy side. When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.16 It is evident to my mind that the negro will not always rest a passive subject to the violence and bloodshed by which he is now pursued. If neither law nor public sentiment shall come to his relief, he will devise methods of his own. It should be remembered that the negro is a man, and that in point of intelligence he is not what he was a hundred years ago. Whatever may be said of his failure to acquire wealth, it cannot be denied that he has made decided progress in the acquisition of knowledge; and he is a poor student of the natural history of civilization who does not see that the mental energies of this race, newly awakened and set in motion, must continue to advance. Character, with its moral influence; knowledge, with its power; and wealth, with its respectability, are possible to it as well as to other races of men. In arguing upon what will be the action of the negro in case he continues to be the victim of lynch law I accept the statement often made in his disparagement, that he is an imitative being; that he will do what he sees other men do. He has already shown this facility, and he illustrates it all the way from the prize ring to the pulpit; from the plow to the professor’s chair. The voice of nature, not less than the Book of books, teaches us that oppression can make even a wise man mad, and in such case the responsibility for madness will not rest upon the man but upon the oppression to which he is subjected. How can the South hope to teach the negro the sacredness of human life while it cheapens it and profanes it by the atrocities of mob law? The

Y7870-Douglass.indb 546

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

547

stream cannot rise higher than its source. The morality of the negro will reach no higher point than the morality and religion that surround him. He reads of what is being done in the world in resentment of oppression and needs no teacher to make him understand what he reads. In warning the South that it may place too much reliance upon the cowardice of the negro, I am not advocating violence by the negro, but pointing out the dangerous tendency of his constant persecution. The negro was not a coward at Bunker Hill;17 he was not a coward in Haiti;18 he was not a coward in the late war for the Union; he was not a coward at Harper’s Ferry, with John Brown;19 and care should be taken against goading him to acts of desperation by continuing to punish him for heinous crimes of which he is not legally convicted. I do not deny that the negro may, in some instances, be guilty of the peculiar crime so often imputed to him. There are bad men among them, as there are bad men among all other varieties of the human family, but I contend that there is a good reason to question these lynch-law reports on this point. The crime imputed to the negro is one most easily imputed and most difficult to disprove, and yet it is one that the negro is least likely to commit. It is a crime for the commission of which opportunity is required, and no more convenient one was ever offered to any class of persons than was possessed by the negroes of the South during the War of the Rebellion. There were then left in their custody and in their power the wives and the daughters, the mothers and the sisters of the rebels, and during all that period no instance can be cited of an outrage committed by a negro upon the person of any white woman. The crime is a new one for the negro, so new that a doubt may be reasonably entertained that he has learned it to any such extent as his accusers would have us believe. A nation is not born in a day. It is said that the leopard cannot change his spots nor the Ethiopian his skin,20 and it may be as truly said that the character of a people, established by long years of consistent life and testimony, cannot be very suddenly reversed. It is improbable that this peaceful and inoffensive class has suddenly and all at once become changed into a class of the most daring and repulsive criminals. Now, where rests the responsibility for the lynch law prevalent in the South? It is evident that it is not entirely with the ignorant mob. The men who break open jails and with bloody hands destroy human life are not alone responsible. These are not the men who make public sentiment. They are simply the hangmen, not the court, judge, or jury. They simply

Y7870-Douglass.indb 547

9/1/21 4:17 PM

548

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

obey the public sentiment of the South, the sentiment created by wealth and respectability, by the press and the pulpit. A change in public sentiment can be easily effected by these forces whenever they shall elect to make the effort. Let the press and the pulpit of the South unite their power against the cruelty, disgrace and shame that is settling like a mantle of fire upon these lynch-law States, and lynch law itself will soon cease to exist. Nor is the South alone responsible for this burning shame and menace to our free institutions. Wherever contempt of race prevails, whether against African, Indian, or Mongolian, countenance and support are given to the present peculiar treatment of the negro in the South. The finger of scorn at the North is correlated to the dagger of the assassin at the South. The sin against the negro is both sectional and national, and until the voice of the North shall be heard in emphatic condemnation and withering reproach against these continued ruthless mob-law murderers, it will remain equally involved with the South in this common crime. FREDERICK DOUG LASS. 1. The term “lynching,” according to the historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage, “is applied to various forms of summary punishment inflicted by self-appointed groups without regard to established legal procedures.” The term’s origins are contested, but it likely derived from the actions of Charles Lynch of Bedford County, Virginia, who led militiamen in seizing and punishing British Loyalists during the American Revolution. Government was minimal, and law enforcement weak, during the early years of the Republic; thus the application of “Lynch’s Law”—generally encompassing nonlethal punishments such as tar and feathering, beatings, or floggings to anyone who egregiously transgressed local community standards—was generally viewed as appropriate and just throughout the nation. As the nineteenth century progressed, lynching declined in the North as stronger and more comprehensive systems of criminal justice developed in an increasingly urban society. In contrast, the practice of lynching became more common, more lethal, and more racially charged in the South, since it was a primary means enforcing white supremacy after the Civil War. Although most Southern lynchings were conducted at night by small details of men who seized and hanged or shot their victims, probably more than one-third were massive daytime public spectacles in which victims were ritualistically tortured in front of hundreds or even thousands of onlookers before being burned alive. The gruesome nature of the ritual lynchings that characterized the period from 1880 to 1920 is impossible to exaggerate; body parts of victims were commonly cut off and distributed as souvenirs, and graphic photos juxtaposing mutilated corpses with gleeful onlookers were routinely sold as postcard mementos. James Allen et al., Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, N.M., 2000); Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (New York, 2002), 21–23, 53–108; Paul Finkelman, ed., Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, 3 vols. (New York, 2001), 2:238–39; EAAH, 2:307–14. 2. The World’s Columbian Exposition—perhaps better known as the World’s Fair—was held in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America. Many of the leading cities in the United States had competed to host the exposition. Chicago was chosen partly because it was a major railroad center, but also because it pledged to raise $10,000,000. Continuing in the tradition of the Philadelphia Centennial (1876), the exposition encompassed a vast gardened layout with numerous separate buildings, rather than a single great hall,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 548

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

549

along Chicago’s south lakefront area. The chief planners were the Chicago architects Daniel H. Burnham and John W. Root; Charles B. Atwood served as designer in chief, and Frederick Law Olmsted was in charge of landscaping. The exposition marked the debut of the Ferris wheel, invented by the Pittsburgh engineer G. W. G. Ferris. Attendees were also dazzled by another new wonder, electricity, presented there for the first time in America. Douglass attended the fair as a representative of Haiti, but became angry because African American participation in the festivities was limited. EAAH, 3:370–72. 3. On 20 February 1892, Ed Coy, a thirty-two-year-old mulatto native of Texas, was burned at the stake in the streets of Texarkana, Arkansas, for allegedly raping the wife of Henry Jewell, a local white farmer. After binding Coy and dousing him with kerosene, the lynch mob compelled Mrs. Jewell, apparently reluctantly, to apply the torch that immolated him. This act was not only staunchly defended in the South but also, ominously, generally accepted throughout the nation at large. Albion Tourgeé, a former Union Army officer and Radical Republican politician in North Carolina, was particularly outraged by the event and denounced it repeatedly in his weekly column for the Chicago Inter Ocean, “A Bystander’s Notes,” which was syndicated in Republican and African American newspapers across the country. In his 24 September 1892 column, Turgee claimed that several agents had investigated the incident independently and discovered facts that repudiated the official story: that Coy and Mrs. Jewell had publicly engaged in an adulterous affair throughout the previous year; that she had been coerced by locals to charge him with rape; and that Coy’s last words were an appeal to Jewell not to kill her lover. The African American journalist Ida B. Wells featured the details of the incident—with some inaccuracies—in her first exposé of widespread racial lynching, Southern Horrors, published with an introduction by Douglass in late 1892. New York Times, 21 February 1892; Chicago Inter Ocean, 12 March, 24 September 1892; Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, in Southern Horrors, and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892–1900, ed. Jacqueline Jones Royster (Boston, 1997), 57; Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, 73. 4. Douglass seems to be referring to the two embodiments of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, which was widely credited with successfully bringing order to the city in the early 1850s. Consisting of thousands of citizens from all walks of life and headed by the city’s leading merchants, the committee constituted itself for three-month periods in both 1851 and 1856 when its members concluded that elected officials had proved incompetent at capturing and prosecuting criminals. Governed by a written constitution, the committee exercised all the law enforcement powers of a municipal government: patrolling the streets, boarding and inspecting ships, deporting unwanted immigrants, and capturing, holding, interrogating, trying, and punishing alleged offenders. Four men were executed during each of the committee’s incarnations. Despite having thousands of armed and trained militiamen at its disposal, the committee voluntarily disbanded on both occasions, although in 1856 its members largely migrated en masse to the Republican party. This may explain Douglass’s reluctance to criticize it harshly here. Historians calculate that while as many as 380 vigilante groups operated in California between 1848 and 1902, few were as orderly and restrained as San Francisco’s. Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850–1900 (1994; Berkeley, Calif., 2001), 86–127; David A. Johnson, “Vigilance and the Law: The Moral Authority of Popular Justice in the Far West,” American Quarterly, 33:558–86 (Winter 1981). 5. Douglass refers to the Confrontation Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, which states, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” Douglass directly quotes M. I. Townsend, who said this at the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1867 and 1868. Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York Held in 1867 and 1868 in the City of Albany, vol. 5, reported by Edward F. Underhill (Albany, 1868), 3323. 6. The English jurist William Blackstone (1723–80) stated in book 4, chapter 27 of his celebrated Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s, that “it is better that ten

Y7870-Douglass.indb 549

9/1/21 4:17 PM

550

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer.” Known as “Blackstone’s formulation,” this maxim had been embraced throughout the English-speaking world by the early nineteenth century. In truth, its original source was an even earlier English jurist, John Fortescue (c. 1394–c. 1480), who insisted in chapter 27 of his De laudibus legum Angliæ (Commendation of the Laws of England), written around 1470, that “one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned, and suffer capitally.” William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, in One Volume, ed. William Hardcastle Browne (New York, 1892), 713; John Fortescue, Sir John Fortescue’s Commendation of the Laws of England: The Translation into English of “De laudibus legum Angliæ,” trans. Francis Gregor (London, 1917), 45. 7. Modern legal scholarship finds this maxim in the laws in almost every civilization, especially Rome. It appears to have entered American law formally in 1895 with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Coffi n vs. United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895). Kenneth Pennington, “Innocent until Proven Guilty: The History of a Legal Maxim,” Jurist, 63:106–24 (2003). 8. Douglass refers to the legal concept of “reasonable doubt,” or a standard of proof that must be surpassed in order to convict the accused in a modern criminal proceeding. During a criminal trial, the prosecutor must provide evidence that proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant is guilty, or else the jury should declare the defendant not guilty. A reasonable doubt exists when a juror cannot say with moral certainty that a person is guilty. The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for conviction is a logical extension of the presumption of innocence until guilt is proved. The concept of reasonable doubt has its roots in medieval jurisprudence, when its purpose was not to protect defendants from hasty convictions, but rather to make convictions easier by assuring jurors in highly religious societies that their souls were safe if they voted to condemn the accused. The concept’s shift to its modern meaning developed as Enlightenment principles increasingly infused British and American legal thought at the turn of the nineteenth century. James Q. Whitman, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial (New Haven, Conn., 2008). 9. Douglass draws on biblical allusions in this summary sentence to highlight the irrational and barbaric nature of lynching. Nearly identical passages in Psalm 115 and Psalm 135 equally satirize and condemn pagan religion, characterized by the worship of man-made idols. Ps. 115:4–8, 135:15–18. 10. Douglass refers to the famous “Higher Law” speech delivered by Senator William H. Seward of New York on 11 March 1850. The speech expressed Seward’s opposition to Senator Henry Clay’s proposals to resolve, through compromise, several slavery-related issues that were exacerbating sectional tensions in Congress. Central to the compromise was the admission of California as a free state in return for the admission of the New Mexico Territory on the basis of popular sovereignty, as well as the enactment of a more stringent federal fugitive slave law. Seward declared Clay’s proposal “radically wrong and essentially vicious,” since it helped propagate the evil of slavery. Seward acknowledged that the writers of the Constitution had recognized the legitimacy of slavery, but he insisted that this was meant to serve only as a temporary compromise, since most of them believed that slavery would die out under the pressures of “moral, social, and political causes.” More provocatively, Seward insisted that slavery was fated to expire under “a higher law than the Constitution,” meaning natural law, established by God, through which all men were created equally free. For the next decade, the speech was routinely denounced in vociferous terms by Southerners and Northern Democrats alike. Typical was the response of the influential United States Magazine and Democratic Review, which charged that placing moral or religious convictions above the Constitution made it a “dead letter,” invited legal and political chaos, and would lead to national disunion. Although Seward’s “Higher Law” speech accurately reflected the sentiment of millions of Americans concerning slavery, it permanently—though inaccurately—branded him as a radical and likely cost him the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., appendix (1850), 260–69; (New York) United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 27:1 (July

Y7870-Douglass.indb 550

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

551

1850); Potter, Impending Crisis, 102, 425; James M. McPherson, Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York, 1982), 66–67, 119. 11. Douglass seems to be referring to the incessant charges by Southern spokesmen throughout the antebellum era that Northerners would enforce neither the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 nor the more stringent law that replaced it in 1850. In truth, Northern compliance was irregular, varying widely not only by state and year, but also by particular location and political context. Although white Northerners were ambivalent about slave renditions, most were alarmed over the kidnapping of free black citizens in their midst, seeing such acts as violations of public safety, state sovereignty, and the principles of a free society. As a result, most Northern states passed some form of personal liberty laws, which allowed the use of writs of habeas corpus to bring African Americans accused of being fugitive slaves before state or local courts to determine their legal status. African Americans and their white allies skillfully used such laws to thwart attempts to return slaves to their masters. Slaveholders were enraged by any and all interference in their attempts to recapture runaway slaves, seeing it as an unconstitutional infringement on their property rights. In response, a coalition of Southern and conservative Northern congressmen enacted a new and more severe Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, which was designed to eliminate Northern obstruction and accentuate slaveholders’ property rights. Federal commissioners had the authority to issue arrest warrants and appoint deputies to execute them; deputies had the power to demand the aid of bystanders; slaveholders could present evidence before a court of commissioners, while arrested blacks could neither give evidence nor appeal the court’s decision; and commissioners received larger fees if they decided in favor of a slaveholding claimant rather than an accused African American. Although the law was initially accepted as the price of national tranquility, Northerners increasingly interpreted it as the aggression of slaveholders upon their civil rights. By the late 1850s, the law was generally a dead letter throughout the region, and even stronger personal liberty laws were passed in the upper North. For Southerners, the weak enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, which demonstrated Northern resistance to recognition of their property rights in slaves, was a key reason behind secession in 1860 and 1861. Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., 31 January 1850, 270–71; Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780–1861 (Baltimore, 1974), ix–xii, 133–35, 168, 219–22; James L. Huston, Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003), 191–94, 227, 232; Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010), 10, 53–158. 12. In May 1892, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, consisting largely of Northern white and Southern black congregations, passed a resolution calling on both the federal government and appropriate state governments to take action to end the lynching of “colored people” in the South. In response, Bishop O. P. (Oscar Penn) Fitzgerald of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, publicly condemned the resolution for being unjust and hypocritical. Douglass did not directly quote Fitzgerald, instead cutting through his sophistry and paraphrasing his defense of the lynching of African Americans for mere allegations of raping white women. In mid-June, Fitzgerald responded to a harsh editorial in the Independent by insisting that he had “never spoken or written a word in favor of mobs or lynching,” had taken “especial care to exonerate the great body of the colored people of the South of any complicity or sympathy with the crime of which [he] had spoken,” and had “been all [his] life a sincere and consistent friend of the colored people,” such that “this they know, and they will be slow to believe the contrary.” Fitzgerald’s reputation as an opponent of lynching and a friend of African American education had many defenders, both black and white. Tragically, Fitzgerald embodied the self-destructive spirit that possessed most Southern clergymen of his generation: their refusal to denounce slavery, secession, and white supremacy largely eviscerated their sincere efforts to produce spiritual, racial, and national reconciliation. New York Independent, 2, 23 June 1892; Chicago Inter Ocean, 4, 5 June 1892; New Orleans Southwest Christian Advocate, 9, 23, 30 June 1892; Chicago Christian Advocate, 30 June 1892; New York Observer and Chronicle, 10 August 1911; Catalogue of the Central Tennessee College, Nashville, Tenn., 1883–84 (Nashville, 1884), 3, 5.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 551

9/1/21 4:17 PM

552

LYNCH LAW IN THE SOUTH

13. The purpose of this statement is to introduce Douglass’s larger argument that lynching was the response of resentful whites to the growing ambitions, attainments, and assertiveness of African Americans. Both the argument and the supporting statement had merit. The oppression of Jews by the government of Imperial Russia had a long history, yet it received renewed interest in western Europe and the United States when as many as twenty thousand Jews were expelled from Moscow in the spring of 1891. Harold Frederic, London correspondent for the New York Times, conducted an investigative trip through Russia that summer and reported his fi ndings in a long series of articles entitled “An Indictment of Russia,” which was published that fall. Frederic’s view, which influenced many prominent Americans and Britons—likely including Douglass—was that Russian anti-Semitic violence was largely due to Jewish economic achievement, despite severely discriminatory legal restrictions. Likewise, the claim that the willingness of single Chinese laborers to work hard and live frugally for low wages made them a threat to American white workers and their families was a staple argument of the California labor movement, which pushed for enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. New York Times, 14 September, 21 December 1891; Harold Frederic, The New Exodus: A Study of Israel in Russia (New York, 1892); Rosanne Currarino, The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age (Urbana, Ill., 2011), 36–59. 14. On 9 March 1892, three black residents in Memphis, Tennessee—Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart—were removed from their jail cells by an armed white mob, taken outside the city, and executed. When found, their bullet-riddled bodies were nearly unrecognizable. This act was the culmination of several days of escalating violence between the three men, co-owners of the People’s Grocery, and a white man named W. R. Barnett, who owned a competing grocery in the same neighborhood. When a grand jury produced no indictments for the murders, African Americans began leaving Memphis for Kansas and the Oklahoma Territory, and by the end of the summer as many as two thousand had left. The lynching also provoked the Memphis schoolteacher Ida B. Wells, a close friend of the Moss family, to research and write articles for a local black newspaper; those efforts led to her career as an antilynching crusader. The central thesis of her work was that lynching was seldom a spontaneous public response by whites to outrageous criminal behavior by blacks; rather, it was an intentional strategy to terrorize blacks in order to maintain white supremacy throughout all aspects of society. Threatened with death if she remained in Memphis, Wells accepted a job with the New York Age in the early summer of 1892, where her work came to the attention of Douglass. New York Times, 10, 11, 24, 30 March 1892; Indianapolis Freeman, 2 June 1892; Wells, Southern Horrors, 1–4, 64–65; Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, 61–65. 15. Nine Southern states enacted railroad segregation laws between 1887 and 1891; Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina did so in the late 1890s. Overwhelmingly, these laws restricted African Americans’ access to first-class cars, where railroads generally seated white women to shield them from second-class cars, normally filled with rough men and their inevitable cursing, smoking, and tobacco spitting. Although most of these laws demanded that railroad companies adhere to a “separate but equal” standard, a principle that had been developing gradually in lower-level federal courts for two decades, the concept of “equal” was always allowed a generous interpretation. By 1900, African Americans bearing first-class tickets on Southern railroads were seated either in designated sections of second-class cars or in noticeably inferior all-black cars. Notably, only months after Douglass wrote this article, Homer A. Plessy was convicted of violating Louisiana’s 1890 railroad segregation law, despite being seven-eighths white. When Plessy’s appeal reached the Supreme Court in 1896, it decided against him 8–1, declaring that the statute’s “separate but equal” principle was fully aligned with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause as well as with nearly all federal legal precedents for a generation. The majority opinion insisted that the Fourteenth Amendment had never been construed to create “social equality.” This view held sway until the mid-twentieth century. Ayers, Promise of the New South, 136–46; Stephen J. Riegel, “The Persistent Career of Jim Crow: Lower Federal Courts and the ‘Separate but Equal’ Doctrine, 1865–1896,” American Journal of Legal History, 28:17–40 (January 1984).

Y7870-Douglass.indb 552

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PROTECTION DEMANDED

553

16. Hos. 8:7. 17. A number of blacks fought on the American side at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Among them were Peter Salem, Salem Poor, and Barzillai Lew. William Cooper Nell, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: To Which Is Added a Brief Survey of the Condition and Prospects of Colored Americans (Boston, 1855), 21; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 10–11. 18. The Revolution of Santo Domingo began in August 1791 as a slave uprising in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, later called Haiti, and resulted in the creation of the first black-led republic in the Western Hemisphere. Hinks and McKivigan, Antislavery and Abolition, 1:315–16. 19. Five blacks were members of John Brown’s party that attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in November 1859. All fought bravely, but only one, Osborne P. Anderson, survived. Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York, 1974), 72–82. 20. Jer. 13:23.

PROTECTION DEMANDED (1892) New York Herald, 21 August 1892.

In an article entitled “Slaughter in the South,” Timothy Thomas Fortune condemned the idea of “home rule” in the Southern United States, where local governments defied constitutional amendments protecting black rights without federal repercussions. He also discussed black lynching, claiming that the number of black deaths was rising at an alarming rate and noting that many believed the practice was “no more of a crime than to shoot a rabbit.” In the article, Fortune argued that the system of home rule was “a menace to the national peace, predicated upon a contradiction of the constitution and the spirit of republican institutions.” He ended the article with a call for the federal government to enforce the Reconstruction amendments, which he characterized as “the just fruit of a bloody and costly war.” Douglass saw the article before publication and wrote a response agreeing with Fortune’s sentiments regarding home rule, though he went beyond that issue to discuss the upcoming election between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. Douglass argued that the election should turn solely on the protection of African Americans and other minority groups, and that voters should not base their decisions on economic issues. The concurrent essays received ample criticism in Southern newspapers, with one referring to Fortune and Douglass as “negro fanatics” and another stating that “the negro feels

Y7870-Douglass.indb 553

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PROTECTION DEMANDED

553

16. Hos. 8:7. 17. A number of blacks fought on the American side at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Among them were Peter Salem, Salem Poor, and Barzillai Lew. William Cooper Nell, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: To Which Is Added a Brief Survey of the Condition and Prospects of Colored Americans (Boston, 1855), 21; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 10–11. 18. The Revolution of Santo Domingo began in August 1791 as a slave uprising in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, later called Haiti, and resulted in the creation of the first black-led republic in the Western Hemisphere. Hinks and McKivigan, Antislavery and Abolition, 1:315–16. 19. Five blacks were members of John Brown’s party that attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in November 1859. All fought bravely, but only one, Osborne P. Anderson, survived. Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York, 1974), 72–82. 20. Jer. 13:23.

PROTECTION DEMANDED (1892) New York Herald, 21 August 1892.

In an article entitled “Slaughter in the South,” Timothy Thomas Fortune condemned the idea of “home rule” in the Southern United States, where local governments defied constitutional amendments protecting black rights without federal repercussions. He also discussed black lynching, claiming that the number of black deaths was rising at an alarming rate and noting that many believed the practice was “no more of a crime than to shoot a rabbit.” In the article, Fortune argued that the system of home rule was “a menace to the national peace, predicated upon a contradiction of the constitution and the spirit of republican institutions.” He ended the article with a call for the federal government to enforce the Reconstruction amendments, which he characterized as “the just fruit of a bloody and costly war.” Douglass saw the article before publication and wrote a response agreeing with Fortune’s sentiments regarding home rule, though he went beyond that issue to discuss the upcoming election between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. Douglass argued that the election should turn solely on the protection of African Americans and other minority groups, and that voters should not base their decisions on economic issues. The concurrent essays received ample criticism in Southern newspapers, with one referring to Fortune and Douglass as “negro fanatics” and another stating that “the negro feels

Y7870-Douglass.indb 553

9/1/21 4:17 PM

554

PROTECTION DEMANDED

himself incapable of self-government and instructively craves that which has been the lot of the race through all historical time, the strong rule of a master, whether that of a private owner or that of a despot king.” New York Herald, 21 August 1892; Wilmington (N.C.) Messenger, 26 August 1892; Asheville (N.C.) CitizenTimes, 31 August 1892; Staunton (Va.) Spectator, 31 August 1892. I have read the article by Mr. T. Thos. Fortune1 on “Southern Home Rule”2 and am free to confess that it is one of the ablest and best contributions to current literature upon the subject that it treats. It cannot fail to prove of the deepest interest, not only to the white and colored people of the North but of the South as well. I am firm in the conviction that it will produce a decided impression upon thinking people everywhere, North and South, East and East and West. It is thoroughly comprehensive in its treatment and will strike the true patriots of the country with no little alarm at the conditions that seem to surround us. The nation should find a remedy for all this outrage and wrong. Unless it does this, it cannot be regarded otherwise than as a foul curse upon the age in which we live—a sham, a delusion and a snare. It is hardly necessary for me to make any extended argument upon the matter. The argument is already here. The situation itself is full of argument. It is like Mr. Lincoln’s favorite method. He did not attempt to argue the question. He simply made a statement of facts, and they in themselves constituted a sufficient argument.3 The bare statement of our wrongs is really the best argument that can be made. They exist. There is no denial of them nor any palliation. BLAMES BLAINE. In the treatment of this great question we have all been fools, and the Republican party has been the biggest fool of all during a period covering sixteen years. They have given their best club to the Democracy, which it has persistently used upon our heads without mercy. They have pursued a course of folly and have adopted a policy of fire. It was the same during the war that threatened to tear asunder the Union. Mr. Lincoln fought the war with only one hand. He ought to have used both. His white hand was used in front, while his black hand was tied behind him.4 The Republican party has not been able to advance far from this policy even unto this day.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 554

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PROTECTION DEMANDED

555

Were it not that I want James G. Blaine to help us in this fight I might go even in directing attention to this grievous and inexcusable error. James G. Blaine I regard as the marplot5 of his party. In his studied attention to economic questions he has succeeded in diverting from us the natural flow of Republican aid and comfort. He has continually kept us in the back ground as a result of his influence upon the party.6 The most effectual weapon that we have is the Negro. I want to see this club used in the contest against the Democratic party, which is the real sponsor for all the ills that we are made to suffer. I want the Negro question kept uppermost in the public mind. There is a disposition now to relegate it to the rear, as there was in 1884 when the Blaine idea dominated the Republican party. You will remember that in that campaign they undertook to tie the tongue of that noble and brave woman, Anna Dickinson,7 one of the best and purest souls that this world has ever had in it, and one of the truest at all times to us. They undertook to do the same thing with me. They did not try to define the limits of my argument, but I could feel their purpose and desire in the drift of their discussion.8 A DICTATORSHIP PREDICTED. I hope that we shall be able to stay in the Republican party, but it must be true to us. The Negro is to-day the soul of the Republican party. He is its life, its energy, that mighty force that gave impulse to its birth and existence. He is with it now, although he has been made to suffer, to some extent, from that policy of exclusion that has been practiced toward the Chinese. I abhor this attitude of selfishness, but the Chinaman is coming in the face of great difficulties. I believe that this is to be ultimately a composite nation.9 There is nothing else in store for us. It is almost certain to come. I am inclined to think that there eventually will come in this country a dictatorship. There is a growing demand for a strong government that will be able to protect all of its citizens—rich and poor, white and black—alike. I am working with the Republican party because I believe that it is the best instrument to secure this condition of justice to all. In fact there is nothing better for us. The election of Cleveland eight years ago10 turned loose arrogance and assumption everywhere. The country was growing gradually worse and more intolerant in its hearing of all questions relating to the Negro. Any part that I take in the discussion during this campaign will be founded not on hard money,11 the tariff,12 the McKinley bill,13 nor any

Y7870-Douglass.indb 555

9/1/21 4:17 PM

556

PROTECTION DEMANDED

other kind of bill. I don’t see anything for us to do but to make sentiment favorable to the race, and let us make it aggressively. 1. Timothy Thomas Fortune (1856–1928) was born into slavery in Florida. After the Civil War, he attended several schools set up for African Americans, including Stanton High School for Negroes, in Jacksonville. Fortune studied law and journalism at Howard University, dropping out after a year to pursue a career in journalism. Fortune first worked for the People’s Advocate in Washington, D.C., and later became the editor and owner of several prominent New York newspapers, including the Globe, the Freeman, and the Age. He is best known for his work on the Age, which became one of the most prominent voices decrying the post–Civil War mistreatment of blacks, especially in regard to disenfranchisement and lynching. Fortune was especially well known for advocating the use of physical force by African Americans to defend themselves in light of the government’s unwillingness to protect black rights. In spite of Fortune’s early prominence, his fame and influence declined later in life because of his erratic behavior and his association with Booker T. Washington. Even so, near the end of his life he was able to salvage some of his former popularity while serving as the editor of the Negro World, which became the most widely distributed black newspaper in the 1920s. T. Thomas Fortune, After War Times: An African American Childhood in Reconstruction-Era Florida, ed. Daniel R. Weinfeld (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2014), 61–68; Rummel, African-American Social Leaders and Activists, 77–78; John Hope Franklin and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Champaign, Ill., 1982), 19–37. 2. Fortune’s article entitled “Slaughter in the South” was published in the New York Herald on 21 August 1892. 3. Throughout his public career, Lincoln tended to favor the use of logic and simplicity over passionate language in his speeches and writings. Lincoln’s particular style of writing and method of speaking have been well documented, with speeches like the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural numbering among the most moving. As a lawyer, he was known to possess “strong common sense and clear understanding of the principles of the common law,” which often allowed him to win the court’s favor. Lincoln sought to convince by reason rather than attempt to twist the judgment by “specious argument,” and he tried to avoid using language that would compel others to act impulsively. Lincoln’s 1860 address at Cooper Union in New York City demonstrated his ability to offer facts as a method of argument as he presented the idea that the majority of the founding generation believed in restricting the spread of slavery. The historian Harold Holzer claims that Lincoln had made this argument in past speeches, but not until Cooper Union did he “prove the case so methodically, support it with so many facts, or present it with such sober diligence.” John T. Richards, Abraham Lincoln, the Lawyer-Statesman (Boston, 1916), 35, 88, 109, 190–91; Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President (2004; New York, 2005), 119, 128–19. 4. Douglass is correct that Lincoln and the Union Army rejected offers of military service from African Americans before the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863. In public speeches in 1862, Douglass frequently employed the same analogy of Lincoln attempting to fight the Confederate with only one hand while not employing that of the black man. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:482–83. 5. A person who ruins a plan by meddling. 6. James G. Blaine was more focused on economic protectionism than on African American civil rights. As the Republican candidate for president in 1884, he had endorsed the Republican platform, and while this included a statement in favor of legislation to secure black civil rights, it was not a subject he was passionate about. Before, during, and after his presidential campaign, Blaine spent most of his efforts pursuing tariff and currency concerns rather than securing civil rights. While he was not the only Republican with these views, as the presidential candidate in 1884 and secretary of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 556

9/1/21 4:17 PM

PROTECTION DEMANDED

557

state under Harrison, he can be seen as a prime example of this turning away from the racial policies of earlier Republican leaders. Republican National Committee, The Republican Campaign Textbook for 1884 (New York, 1884), 172; Alexander Tsesis, ed., The Promises of Liberty: The History and Contemporary Relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment (New York, 2010), 13–14. 7. Philadelphia-born, Quaker-educated Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932) began her career as a workingwoman, employed first as a copyist, then as a schoolteacher, and finally in the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. At the age of eighteen, she first appeared on lecture platforms as a feminist and antislavery crusader. After she lost her job at the mint in December 1861 for accusing General George B. McClellan of treason, she became a full-time lecturer. Throughout the Civil War, Dickinson delivered Republican campaign speeches in New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and on 16 January 1864 she spoke before a distinguished audience of statesmen and military officials, including President Lincoln, in the hall of the House of Representatives. At the end of the war, she joined the lyceum lecture circuit, speaking on behalf of Radical Republican Reconstruction measures and women’s rights. In the early 1870s, Dickinson’s popularity as an orator waned, and she shifted her energies from lecturing to stage acting. Douglass appears in err about Dickinson’s activities in 1884. After delivering some nonpolitical lectures early that year, she retired temporarily from public life. In 1888, however, she was engaged by the Republican National Committee to lecture on behalf of its presidential candidate, Benjamin Harrison, in the Midwest, New York, and New Jersey. Newspaper reports indicate that she said little about the party’s protectionist platform and instead concentrated on advocating civil rights and labor rights. A dispute with the party over the full payment of promised fees led to a series of highly publicized legal cases that damaged Dickinson’s reputation. J. Matthew Gallman, America’s Joan of Arc: The Life of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (New York, 2006); Giraud Chester, Embattled Maiden: The Life of Anna Dickinson (New York, 1951); NCAB, 3:109; DAB, 21:244–45; NAW, 1:475–76. 8. Douglass had campaigned for the Republican party on the stump in October 1884 in numerous speeches in Indiana and Ohio. The following April, in an address in Washington, D.C., on the twenty-third anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, Douglass took the opportunity to comment on the defeat of the Republican presidential candidate, James G. Blaine. He declared, “The trouble was that the Republican party in the late campaign forgot for the moment its high mission as the party of great moral ideas, and sought victory on grounds far below its ordinary level. It made national pelf more important and prominent than national purity. It made the body more important than the soul; national prosperity more important than national justice. . . . It was painfully evident that the Republican party, during the late canvass, had little or nothing to say against the outrages committed upon the newly enfranchised people of the south.” In the revised 1892 edition of his final autobiography, Life and Times, Douglass blamed Blaine for his defeat in the 1884 presidential election. In particular, Douglass faulted Blaine for not having done more to protect the voting rights of Southern blacks. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:xx, 178–79, ser. 2, 3:395. 9. Douglass delivered a speech entitled “Our Composite Nationality” in Boston, Massachusetts, on the evening of 7 December 1869. During the winter of 1869–70, Douglass delivered this speech in other places on the lyceum circuit. For example, he spoke at Parmely’s Hall in Peoria, Illinois, on 7 February 1870, as well as at Farwell Hall in Chicago, Illinois, two days later. While devoting a majority of the speech to defending equal rights for Chinese immigrants, Douglass also claimed that if Americans would embrace the “already composite population,” then the country would have the potential to be “the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen.” Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:240–59, 598–99. 10. The twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States, Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) was born in Caldwell, New Jersey. As a young adult, he settled in Buffalo, New York, where he practiced law. His political career began when he was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881. In 1884, Cleveland sought the Democratic nomination for the presidency. His disdain for partisan politics won him the support of Democratic reformers and Republican Mugwumps, who favored civil

Y7870-Douglass.indb 557

9/1/21 4:17 PM

558

PROTECTION DEMANDED

service reform. Cleveland narrowly defeated James G. Blaine of Maine, receiving only 48.5 percent of the vote but carrying key states. Cleveland’s first term focused on civil service reform and attacking the tariff. Just before his inauguration, he wrote to Douglass suggesting he consider resigning as recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. But Douglass remained in the post for most of 1885. Although he did not agree with Cleveland’s politics, Douglass respected the president’s willingness to treat African Americans as social equals, once remarking, “Whatever else he may be, he is not a snob; and he is not a coward.” Cleveland lost his 1888 bid for reelection to the Republican Benjamin Harrison. He returned to win the Democratic nomination in 1892 and went on to solidly defeat his old rival, Benjamin Harrison. After leaving the presidency, Cleveland spent his final years as a trustee of Princeton University, where he died in 1908. Douglass to F. W. Bird, 6 April 1886, Francis William Bird Papers, Harvard University, Houghton Library, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 112, FD Papers, DLC, reprinted in New York Times, 2 May 1886, also quoted in Frederic May Holland, Frederick Douglass; The Colored Orator (New York, 1891), 356–57; Jeffers, Honest President; Welch, Presidencies of Grover Cleveland; ANB, 14:60–64. 11. Economic problems and rising debts in rural areas led to a push for softer money in some parts of the country. Supporters of both silver and unbacked paper money hoped that with their use, inflation would rise, leading to a reduction in the value of debts. Both major parties in 1892 were led by hard-money proponents. The Republicans were longtime supporters of a strong gold standard for U.S. currency, and the Democrats chose Grover Cleveland, a Democrat who supported hard money and was in favor of reducing the money supply. This would cause deflation and benefit creditors. Because of this, soft-money proponents were instrumental in forming the Populist party, which greatly influenced the election. The Populist candidate, James Weaver, won 22 electoral votes and 8.5 percent of the popular vote. The success of soft-money proponents would strongly influence the Democratic party in the next presidential election. Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896 (Chicago, Ill., 1971), 158–160; Robert Nesbit, The History of Wisconsin, vol. 3, Urbanization and Industrialization, 1873–1893 (Madison, Wisc., 1985), 622; Ronald Seavoy, An Economic History of the United States: From 1607 to the Present (London, 2006), 209. 12. Tariffs, the duties collected on imported goods, were one of the most politically divisive issues in the United States during the nineteenth century. During the 1892 presidential contest, the tariff question remained at the forefront of public debate as Grover Cleveland and President Benjamin Harrison battled for the executive office. The Republicans, in favor of a high protective tariff, were perceived by many as friends of monopolies and the upper class, while Democrats’ platform promoted tariff reform and denounced “Republican protection as a fraud; a robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few.” Cleveland easily defeated Harrison, securing 277 electoral votes and 46 percent of the popular vote, reflecting the backlash against the 1890 tariff and the Republicans who supported it. William M. Springer, Tariff Reform: The Paramount Issue; Speeches and Writings on the Questions Involved in the Presidential Contest of 1892 (New York, 1892), 7, 318, 382, 385; Taussig, Tariff History of the United States, 284–86; Moore, Benjamin Harrison, 146. 13. Republicans had run on a pro-tariff platform in the 1888 election, and they interpreted their victory as a demonstration of the public’s support of this policy. In 1890, after much debate, the McKinley Tariff was passed, which turned out to be a major strategic blunder for the Republican party. While it exempted sugar, the new tariff raised import duties to 49.5 percent on many everyday objects, including tin and wool, which proved detrimental to American consumers. Prices for many goods skyrocketed, greatly displeasing the electorate. The McKinley Tariff is seen as a direct cause of the Republicans’ loss in the 1890 midterm elections and as a primary reason for their defeat in the presidential election of 1892. Joanne Reitano, The Tariff Question in the Gilded Age: The Great Debate of 1888 (University Park, Pa., 1994), 130–32.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 558

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN (1892) A.M.E. Church Review, 9:114–26 (October 1892). Other texts in the Boston Zion’s Herald, 28 September 1892; Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 16, frames 471–97, reel 20, frames 243, 271, FD Papers, DLC.

Invited to contribute to the A.M.E. Church Review by its editor, Bishop Levi Jenkins Coppin, Douglass addressed the African American voter during the presidential election between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland in 1892. Douglass argued that attempts were being made by the Democratic party and select African American leaders to woo African American voters. Coppin assured Douglass that “a number of well-known writers” had been solicited to comment on the upcoming election in the Review and that he intended to make Douglass’s contribution “the initial article.” Copies of this issue were apparently distributed before the Review’s official October publication date, since the Zion’s Herald, a Boston-based Methodist weekly, published Douglass’s essay in its 28 September issue. Levi Jenkins Coppin to Douglass, 15 July, 18 August 1892, General Correspondence File, reel 6, frames 585L, 616L, FD Papers, DLC.

The Negro is now in the fierce blast of another Presidential campaign. He is in it both as an agent and an object to be benefited or injured by its result. No question of finance or tariff can wisely be allowed to exclude him or his cause. Never since his part in the late war, and in the reconstruction of the Southern States, have his character and conduct been more in question and more closely scanned than in the present tripartite canvass. His intelligence and integrity will, in this election, be put to a severer test than any heretofore applied to him. It will be well if he shall come out of it, as I hope and believe he will, like pure gold, and without the smell of fire upon him. It was to his honor at the late National Republican Convention, that his character and conduct gave the lie to his traducers.1 He was neither bought, sold nor seduced. So may it be with him in the present campaign. All Presidential elections are important. Their influence is broad and far-reaching. They may not result in the enactment of a single law, or change a single word in the Statute Book, and yet may essentially affect the great law of public sentiment and change it for good or for evil.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 559

9/1/21 4:17 PM

560

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

Precisely in this respect is the importance of the present election. The need of the hour, for the Negro, is not so much a written law (though this is important) as the unwritten law of public sentiment. To whomsoever else, therefore, the pending election may seem of slight importance, a mere game of chance and simply a race for victory and spoils, it cannot be so regarded by any intelligent Negro. To him it has a solemn significance and is a matter of life and death. If for him other times have been critical, the present is more so than were any in the past. This is especially true in the Southern States. He is there subjected to a lawless, vengeful reign of terror, more wanton and cruel and relentless, if possible, than any in the days of his bondage. The freedom and citizenship which he gained by his valor and good behavior during the war for the Union and during the reconstruction period, and which were secured to him by the justice and wisdom of the Republican party, are to-day openly in question. The problem with which he is confronted is, whether he shall be an alien in the land of his birth or shall continue to hold unimpaired and undiminished the rights guaranteed to him by the United States Constitution. In view of the great issues involved and of the dangers impending, it is sad to think that in this campaign any Negro may so act as to endanger the lives and liberties of his brothers in the South, and to also injure in the North the good name of his race. Such would certainly be the case should any support be given by him to the Democratic party2—the party which has always endeavored to degrade his race—and should he refuse to support the Republican party—the party which has always endeavored to improve the conditions of his existence. No such danger could have been apprehended at any period during the earlier years of our freedom. The path of duty was then illumed and made plain by the fresh glow of freedom and by the gratitude of warm hearts to those who had secured our deliverance from slavery. Now that path seems to have become, to some of our number, dark, sinuous and bewildering. It can no longer be doubted that a few Negroes at the North have gone wrong and are trying to induce others to follow in the same way. Ambitious aspirants have arisen among them, giving them sophistry for argument, fiction for fact, and loud pretensions of love for the race without credence, have succeeded in seducing some from principle and misleading them. These mischief-makers and marplots3 have gone about this work in a very crafty manner. They have first endeavored to make out a case against the Republican party, representing that it has done nothing for the Negro from principle, and that even if it has we owe it nothing; that if there ever

Y7870-Douglass.indb 560

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

561

existed an obligation, either of honor or gratitude, that obligation was canceled years ago. In this satanic work they have shown a cunning equally satanic. They have taken advantage of one of the most despicable vices to which human nature is susceptible. Knowing how easy it is to turn the hearts of debtors against creditors, and that lenders often lose their friends as well as their money, they have preached deliverance to the one and poured bitter contempt upon the other. They have demanded absolute perfection in the Republican party, but have piled sophistries mountain high to hide the crimes of the Democratic party. They have strained at a Republican gnat and swallowed whole processions of Democratic camels.4 These men have argued mainly in favor of the following propositions: First.—It is the duty of the Negro to divide his vote between the two great political parties. Second.—The Negro should form an independent race and color party. Third.—The Negro should support the candidates of the Democratic party. These propositions have been advocated at different times, according to circumstances. Though three modes of action are here proposed, they are one in purpose and effect, and that purpose is to draw the Negro vote away from the Republican party. To this end various arguments and appeals have been made. Some of these will doubtless prove hurtful in certain sections, unless they are well and conclusively refuted. In several States of the North the Negro vote is potential, and may, in a close contest between the two great parties, turn the scale either in favor of the one or the other. This is especially the case in New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio.5 Knowing this, several Afro-American papers have, of late, sprung up in these quarters, seeking and gaining Democratic support. There is in this world much that is strange, but nothing stranger or more incomprehensible than this attitude of the colored man. The strangeness is not, however, all on one side. The black man, as a Democrat, is not a more strange object than is a white Democrat who is brazenly seeking to win Negro votes at the North, where their votes are needed, while his Democratic brothers are shooting and hanging Negroes at the South, where their votes are not needed. In view of this we might ask, as in another campaign Daniel Webster did, “Is there no shame in men?”6 A dozen years ago nothing would have surprised and shocked a white Democrat more than to have met with a Negro pretending to be a Democrat. Such a pretender would have been scouted as an arrant hypocrite or as a

Y7870-Douglass.indb 561

9/1/21 4:17 PM

562

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

confounded fool. But what has been thought impossible has happened. There has been found a Negro calling himself a Democrat, and some white Democrats have been found to recognize him. At least this is his boast. Like all apostates he endeavors to magnify the faults of the party which he has deserted, and cover up the faults of the party he has adopted. The smile of a white Democrat is to him, at present, more than all that the Republican party ever did for him or for his race. In his blindness he does not see that it is his treason and not his manhood that attracts the Democratic smiles. He is welcomed for what he can do, not for what he is or whishes to be. Seeing the use to which he can for the time be put, he is familiarly patted on the back with the gloved hand of the party which, in its heart, calls him a black devil. Against the black apostates from the Republican party I might here use denunciation and ridicule only, but I will not. I will try to have patience even where patience seems to have lost its virtue. I will try to assume what it is almost impossible to assume, that the men who play such a part as here described, are just as honest in their convictions as I am in mine, and try to believe that they desire the freedom, happiness and progress of the colored race as much as I do. Hence I will argue with them and endeavor by sober reason to convert them to my view of truth and duty. I think that I can, by fair argument, show them the unsoundness of their three propositions and the unwisdom of their hasty withdrawal from the Republican party. Of course, if there are among them those who are mere “tricksters,” disappointed office-seekers, who make their own personal interests the criterion of their political action—men of no moral or political convictions, and who are ready to sell their race for personal gain—I say, if this be so, I can only leave them to other hands than mine. They are beyond the pale of reason and sound argument, and it is a waste of time and effort to undertake to reason with them. I assume, therefore, that I am addressing a few honest men, open to the influence of right feeling and sound reasoning. First of all then, let us consider the proposition for dividing the Negro vote between the two great political parties. The first objection to this is that it seems to assume as true that which is to me entirely and flagrantly untrue. This untruth is that the two parties are equally worthy of our cooperation and support. But granting, for argument’s sake, the soundness of this assumption, it does not, by any means, follow that it would, in the present condition of parties, be wise, fair or honorable to divide our votes equally between the two great political parties. Constituted as they are at the North, the Democratic party is in numbers about equal to the Re-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 562

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

563

publican party.7 Therefore, to take one-half of the colored vote from the Republican party, would be to give the Democratic party an immediate and unfair advantage over the Republican party. Thus the sound of fairness and impartiality, which is relied upon to recommend the proposition to divide our vote equally between the two great political parties, is a deceptive sound, and has in it no fairness whatever. It means the defeat of the Republican party and the victory of the Democratic party. Can it be that any sane man does not see that this would be unfair, even if one party were as good as the other; for it would be practically preferring the success of the one to the success of the other. Again, I think that no one will question that what the colored people most need, and what is really indispensable to their well-being in this country, is the possession of an effective political force which will enable them to command respect for their rights as men and secure protection to them from persecution, outrage and murder. This is more to us than the honors and emoluments of office. Now if I can demonstrate, by unanswerable logic, that a division of our vote between the two great parties would not give us such a force, but, on the contrary, that it would deprive us of such a force, every honest Negro citizen will say with me, “Down with this idea of division, and let us stand by the Republican party, now as in the past!” The first argument against this division is this: It is inconsistent. Moral and political power is alike weakened when illogical, and it is manifestly inconsistent to desert the Republican party, whose antecedents have all been in our favor, and to join and support a party whose antecedents have all been against us. We are in no condition to afford the world such a glaring example of political blindness and inconsequent action. But further, the fundamental and all-commanding objection to such a division of our vote as is proposed, is this: It would absolutely destroy the Negro as a political force in the Nation, a force which every sensible Negro must deem to be not only important but indispensable to his safety and well-being. Such a division would convert what is now an effective moral and political force into a nonentity—a thing divested of every attribute of power and for which nobody would have any reason to care one way or the other. Two railroad trains, with equal momentum and power, meeting on the same track, come to a standstill. Two bodies of equal weight, put into opposite scales, determine nothing as to the weight of either. The beam will turn neither way. What is true in physics is equally true in politics. Equal numbers, when opposed in election, elect nobody. Hence those who ask

Y7870-Douglass.indb 563

9/1/21 4:17 PM

564

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

the Negro to divide his vote, simply ask him to cast away his most potent weapon against popular injustice and wrong. In other words, we are simply invited to a state of political stagnation and death. We should have no power to create a motive in either party one way or the other, and should be simply a race of political nonentities. But it may be said by these advocates of division, that they do not insist upon an equal division. While they may willingly admit that the result would be precisely as I have stated in the case supposed, they may deny that such would be the case if only some of our votes were given to the Democratic party. The answer to this is: That if the Democratic party is entitled to any, so far as we are concerned, it is entitled to all. Besides, as already stated, the parties are now so equally balanced as to numbers that any diversion from the Republican party gives victory to the Democratic party. It is committing the folly of attempting to ride two horses going in opposite directions, and as the result, falling from both. The greatest teacher that mankind has ever known has taught us the folly of endeavoring to serve two masters.8 The black vote, to be respected, must obviously be governed by principle, and to be one thing or the other, or amount to nothing. There must be no halfness about it. We now have that vantage ground of consistency in acting with the Republican party. We are identified with its principles, history and objects. When we attempt to become both Democrat and Republican we simply become neither. It is better to be a part of a great whole than the whole of a great part. Manifestly we should in no case place ourselves politically in such an equivocal position as that proposed. The trumpet should with us give no uncertain sound.9 If there is reason for us to be Republican, let us be that. If, on the other hand, there is reason to be Democratic, let us be that. Any other straddling attitude here is not only unwise and weak, but fatal. It is argued, however, that the fact that we now, as a class, belong to the Republican party, makes us hated and persecuted by the Democratic party, and hence the conclusion is reached that if we shall divide our vote with the Democratic party we shall be allowed by that party to live in peace. Well, what is this peace? It is, to use a familiar illustration, the peace between the lamb and the lion.10 What is it but the peace between the white man as the master and the Negro as the slave? Is it reasonable to suppose that the Democratic party will change its attitude toward us when it shall have us completely in its power? Can we safely debase our manhood by joining a party that hates us, and yet hope to have our manhood respected by that party? But we join the party to gain its good-will.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 564

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

565

Are we foolish enough to think that an old bird like the Democratic party can be caught by a snare thus laid in its sight? We have heard of people marrying to get rid of each other, but who ever heard of a people uniting with a political party in order to get rid of its hatred and persecution? But, alas! nothing seems to be thought too degrading and unmanly for our poor, long-enslaved people. Have we, indeed, become so accustomed to servitude as to bow and cringe to the party of oppression and to kiss the hand that smites us? Do we wish men to think of us as a people divested of every honorable sentiment and instinct of common manhood? I hope not. Look at the cause of Ireland! The Tory party of England hate and persecute the Irish,11 but no Irishman with a drop of pure Irish blood in his veins has ever yet been so base and foolish as to advise the Irish voters to divide their support between the Tory party and the Liberal party,12 as a means of conciliating the former. But not only is the proposition to divide our vote, bad, but the argument in support of it is worse. We are asked to do a mean and scandalous thing and to add to the odium so freely heaped upon our race. We are asked to desert our friends as a means of conciliating our enemies. We are asked to divide our vote between Democratic outrage and intimidation on the one hand, and Republican effort to protect us on the wrong, between kindness and cruelty, between progress and reaction, civilization and barbarism. I defy any one to put a different face or complexion upon this absurd proposition of division. Let us now examine the next proposition commended to us by some of our beloved brethren, and I think it will be seen that it is not more tenable than the one already shown to be unsound and mischievous. This proposition proposes the formation of a Negro party—a party based on race and color. It is asserted that we need an independent race party. The argument in support of this scheme or mode of political action is very plausible and taking with would-be colored leaders in politics. It savors, too, of race independence. The men who preach this doctrine assume to love the race, more than all others; they never tire of telling how much they love the race. But let that pass. Now, if this race party is to be purely a Negro party, acting within party lines and limitations, seeking to accomplish something by itself alone—which is the only honest principle upon which a party can act—then plainly enough it can effect nothing, because of its permanent inferiority in numbers. It would necessarily be a party without growth, and, consisting of but one to ten of the American people, it could never hope to be a majority party. If we could expect any part of the white people to join our Negro party, we should be grievously

Y7870-Douglass.indb 565

9/1/21 4:17 PM

566

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

disappointed. Not even the leveling principle of Christianity has yet induced white people to join a Negro church, and it is quite unreasonable to suppose that politics would be a stronger motive for such union than religion. Acting alone then, as a race party pure and simple, it would be at once and forever a helpless minority, incapable of accomplishing any political end whatever. But it is said that we could cast our influence with either one or the other of the great political parties. Well, let us see how this would work. The first thing that would happen would be this: It would make your Negro party a marketable, political commodity. It would place the colored vote on the auction block, to be traded off by its leaders to the highest bidder. It would be subject to barter and sale for a few offices bestowed, and be used to turn the scale one way or the other for other parties. O! but they say, it would be an independent political party. We are tired of being dependent upon white men’s parties. We want to be the slaves of no man’s party, etc. This is high talk, indeed, but it is very empty talk as well. Those who indulge in it, and at the same time talk of forming a purely Negro party, contradict themselves without perceiving the contradiction. They forget that if they form such a party and expect it to hold together at all, they must be bound in honor to each other and be dependent upon the party and keep within party lines. Do they not know that the very moment they attempt to act independently of party dictation, as the rule of the majority is called, their party will utterly fall to pieces? Granting this, what becomes of this promised and boasted independence? What better is it to be bound to a race and color party, and to be dependent upon it, than to be bound to and dependent upon a party without race and color? The fact is, there is no living in civilized human society without being dependent upon somebody. In politics, as elsewhere, to be effective and accomplish anything desirable in this world, we must be dependent upon some party. The wisdom or the folly of such dependence will always depend upon the character of the party in which we trust and upon which we depend, whether that party shall be a race and color party, or not. We have some examples of independence in human experience which are very instructive, but not very encouraging to the hopes of those who set up for themselves. We had one in the person of the man who left his father’s house, but was soon so hungry that he would feign have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.13 A separate race and color party would be about as wild an experiment as that of the prodigal son. No other people have attempted it. The Irishman in this country is wisely content to defend

Y7870-Douglass.indb 566

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

567

his rights in the Democratic party, and the German is equally willing to defend his beer inside of the old parties. Neither of them think of organizing a race party. They wisely sink their various nationalities in a common American citizenship. Have we the vanity to suppose that our people are wiser than either the Irishman or the German? But a stronger and more tangible objection to this “race and color party” idea than the one just mentioned, is found in the fact that it contradicts in the most offensive manner possible the fundamental and indispensable principles by which this country is and should be governed. The rule of a fairly constituted majority is the fundamental and accepted condition of law and order in this republic. Anything that contradicts and subverts the just operation of this principle, whether it shall be fraud or violence, will not be tolerated long by the sober, thoughtful and patriotic citizens of this country. Now the policy of a separate “race and color party,” consisting of one-tenth of the American people, to be so manipulated by its leaders as to give this or that party the control of the government, would subvert the essential idea of the government itself, and would be only a political nuisance and an intolerable usurpation of power by a minority over a majority. It would invite the contempt and hatred of everybody outside of itself. In the nature of things such a minority party would be in the hands of a few Negro bosses who, as I have said, would be likely, regardless of honor, to trade it off with this or that party for a few offices here and there to be given to themselves or to their friends. This would be deemed, and rightly so, as a most detestable form of Negro supremacy and domination, and would soon justify the worst things that have been said and done against us by the Southern white people. But what else would happen? Plainly enough this would happen: We should finally find ourselves between the two parties, as between the upper and nether millstone, and in due time would be ground to powder. Such an unprincipled subversion of the honest rule of a fairly constituted majority, made upon fair discussion and honest voting, would, if persisted in, furnish a proper motive in each of the other parties to divest us entirely of the political franchise. The very suggestion of such a policy for the colored people of this country is an insult to their intelligence and honesty. By no class of white people could such a scheme succeed, and it is folly to suppose that the colored people, hated as they are, would be permitted to play such a dishonorable game successfully. It would defeat the just operation of the fundamental law of the republic. Such a party, thus operated, would be looked upon in politics as a pirate is looked upon

Y7870-Douglass.indb 567

9/1/21 4:17 PM

568

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

on the high sea. It would be regarded as an enemy to all honest parties and to all honest partisanship. The issues of public policy between the two parties would be of no account in this “race and color party.” Thus the independence which it professes is shown to be a sham. The real effect, if not the purpose, is to put this race party up for sale. I hope the Negro will think that he has been on the auction block long enough, and that he will spurn with indignation the very suggestion of being now made a mere thing of political barter and sale between the two great political parties. But the second proposition commended to the Negro voter by certain enterprising leaders with small following, is the one which proposes that we shall give our votes straight and entire to the candidates of the Democratic party. This proposition has at least the merit of frankness and simplicity. There is nothing occult or equivocal in its method or aim. We are boldly, not to say shamelessly, asked and advised to abandon the Republican party and to go over bag and baggage to the Democratic party. The idea of forming an independent “race and color party,” by which we were for a time entertained, and the other idea, that of dividing our vote equally between the two great political parties, as commended to us—which were never really anything more than mere apologies for apostacy—they are now pushed aside for the bolder proposition to join the Democratic party outright. Practically this was the end sought in all former modes proposed. This proposition takes the mask entirely off and gives us plainly the face of the enemy in all its ugliness. We are asked to vote with the Democratic party. Strangely enough, we are not asked to support that party because it has at any time in its history supported our claims to justice and fair treatment. No one has been brazen enough to make such a claim for that party. Nor is it asked on the ground of any promise it now makes us for better treatment in the future. Any such pretension would be obviously a piece of rascality too unsophisticated and palpable to accomplish anything. The main argument in defense of this proposition is that the Democratic party is our open and consistent enemy and has always been our enemy, but that we will make it our friend when we vote it into power. This reasoning is the foundation of all the efforts to withdraw the colored vote from the Republican party and turn it over to the Democratic party. I state the argument fairly. At the risk of repeating in some measure what has before been expressed, I continue. It is acknowledged that the Democratic party hates us because of our loyal and uniform support of the Republican party, and hence, in order to gain the friendship of the Democratic party,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 568

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

569

we must abandon the Republican party and go over to the Democratic party. In other words, we are called upon to sell our friends in order to buy our enemies; to bore one hole for the purpose of stopping another. If anything could savor more of folly and villainy than does this, I have yet to see it stated. Honor is here asked to bow and bend to baseness, and truth to succumb to falsehood. When was any people on this globe asked to commit a more dishonorable act than this, or a more foolish one? Yet men openly advise it. They speak it in their little Cleveland Clubs and write it in their little subsidized Afro-American papers,14 and do so apparently unconscious of shame. Now, supposing that we could by this base sacrifice of honor and principle, gain the friendship of the Democratic party (which we obviously cannot do), it would be at a cost of something more valuable than such friendship, or than the friendship of any party. When a man has lost his honor, he has lost his soul, and there is no real self left to value anything or to be valued for anything, by anybody or by any party. The outward form is there, but the man is gone. Besides, there is no evidence that the desired end would be gained by any such base surrender. The Democratic party is no fool! It now hates the Negro as a citizen, and, after such a venal surrender, would hold him in ten-fold derision. But the Negro does not claim even now to be a Democrat on principle. He, as we have seen, is a Democrat only to gain favor or to avert disfavor. This is the sole motive and excuse for his apostacy. When he presents himself for admission to the party, I can readily fancy that he may be met by a white Democrat with some such welcome as this: “Well, Negro, you have come here, not as a Democrat, but simply with a view to gain the friendship of the Democrats. You have said so. You are willing to take our name and march under our banner, and to seem to be what you know you are not, simply to gain our good-will and to avert our well-known hatred of you. You have said as much as this at various times and on many occasions. You are not a Democrat, and only pretend to be such for a purpose.” And you say, “Yes” to all this. “May I then ask why you deserted the Republican party, and why you did not seek its good-will in the same way by which you are now seeking our good-will? You say that it proved false to you. Indeed! And have we ever proved true to you? You say that by voting for our party you will reform us. Did your voting for the Republican Party reform that party? You say that in that party you were treated like slaves; that you did the voting and that the white men took the offices. May I ask if you expect a different result with us? If you do you will be

Y7870-Douglass.indb 569

9/1/21 4:17 PM

570

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

very much mistaken. Is it not more reasonable to expect that like causes will produce like results?” “Yes, I suppose so.” “So, then, you are deserting a party which has endured all manner of abuse for defending your rights in order to join one which has consistently and persistently stamped out such rights.” In such a dialogue what answer could a black Democrat make? He could give none which would not make him appear like an idiot or a knave. For there is no way for an intelligent black man to get into the Democratic party that does not dishonor his head or heart, or both. But he insists that he will try the experiment, and that if he fails he will retrace his steps. Vain hope! So thought Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas and Horace Greeley.15 So thought some of our civil-service reformers, and so have thought all others who have sought by a sacrifice of associates and the abandonment of principle to conciliate the spirit of slavery that dominates the Democratic party. Each, by the act, lost prestige and power. Each failed to gain the confidence and support of the party he espoused, or to regain what was lost in the party deserted. But our black Democrat tells us that the way to break up the solid Democratic vote of the South is to break up the solid Republican vote of the North. This would, of course, put Democrats in possession of the State governments at the North, and thus make the whole Union solidly Democratic. For this is the logical conclusion of their argument. Could human folly and absurdity go further? Is it not manifest that what the Democrats have already done where they have the power, that they will do the same wherever they can get the power? They have put down the Negro wherever they have had the power to do so. In the solid South they have condemned our wives and daughters to ride in filthy railroad cars. They have with bayonets driven our brothers from the ballot-box. They have adopted a system of land renting and scrip paying that brings the former slave in debt at the end of each year, no matter how hard he may have worked or how sparingly he may have lived, and have thus reduced him to a condition only a small remove from his former slavery.16 They have organized a system of convict labor and of laws with the infernal purpose to reduce the Negro, on the smallest pretext, to forced labor in fields and on highways, and to a condition worse than slavery in mines.17 They have erected the whippingpost where before it was abolished,18 and employed the blood-hound anew to hunt down the Negro and to tear his flesh. They have thronged the highways of the South with chain-gangs of Negroes. They have changed laws and constitutions so as to defeat the just operation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.19 All this and more has

Y7870-Douglass.indb 570

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

571

been done and is now being done by the Democratic party. It is being done openly, defiantly and with declared purpose to divest the Negro entirely of civil and political rights. And yet we are asked by colored men—by those who profess to be, par excellence, lovers of the Negro race—to vote for this Democratic party. They tell us that Mr. Cleveland is a good man. What if he is? He is harnessed to a wicked party and must go where his party drives him. He may be strong, but his party is stronger. He is in the traces, and his party holds the whip and reins. Mr. Cleveland tried, when President, to be a civil-service reformer, but his party determined otherwise, and he changed his course accordingly.20 But it is said that the Democratic party at the North is not like that at the South. Where is the evidence of its difference? Where has this party, through its papers or through its county, State or national conventions, reproved the fraudulent, barbarous and blood-thirsty outrages upon the Negro of the South. The two differ from each other only as the head of a snake differs from the tail. To all intents and purposes the Democratic party, wherever found, is one and the same. Every Negro driven from the ballot-box, every Negro slain, every Negro stabbed, shot, lynched or burnt at the South, has met his fate at the hands of Democrats, and with the silent consent of the Democratic party at the North. On every Southern breeze a furious howl is heard against the Force Bill,21 cunningly so called, to make it odious in the eyes of tender-hearted men. Whence this cry against a righteous law? It is from the Democratic party North and South. Its members are tormented as demons of old. Should Harrison be elected, they say the Republicans will pass an election bill, and it will be a Force Bill, and to this they are opposed. They are opposed to all force except the force of the mob, and when it is employed to intimidate, hang and shoot Negroes who vote the Republican ticket. Plainly enough, and in view of all the circumstances now existing, the triumph of the Democratic party in the approaching election would be hailed as a national approval of the whole brood of infernal crimes by which the South has been kept solidly Democratic during the last dozen years; and yet I, a colored man, and one who has tasted the bitter cup of slavery, am asked to vote the Democratic ticket. I cannot do it. I was once young but am now old; I hope to die as I have lived—true to my convictions of what is fittest and best for my race—and am determined that the beginning of my life shall oppose no contradiction to its end. If my reason shall continue to serve, and the help of the Almighty shall be vouchsafed to me, no power on earth shall persuade or compel

Y7870-Douglass.indb 571

9/1/21 4:17 PM

572

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

me to give my voice or my vote to invest the Democratic party with the powers of this National Government. 1. President Benjamin Harrison won renomination on the first ballot at the Republican party’s national convention in Minneapolis in June 1892. Harrison had thwarted challenges from his former secretary of state, James G. Blaine, and Ohio congressman William McKinley. African American delegates from the South made up a large portion of the bloc that successfully backed Harrison. Douglass attended the convention as a spectator and delivered a speech endorsing Harrison. New York Times, 10 June 1892; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, xxvii, 5:486–89. 2. Some African Americans supported the Democratic party in 1892. While most blacks either voted for the Republican party or supported the new Populist party, Democrats, while hostile to black rights, were able to secure a few black votes through a variety of means. Some blacks were convinced to vote Democratic by promises of attaining racial peace with whites, and others were bribed with offers of pardons, cash, and jobs. African Americans were also subjected to voter intimidation tactics ranging from threats to violence. Jack Bloom, Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), 42–43. 3. A person who ruins a plan by meddling. 4. A paraphrase of Matt. 23:24. 5. Douglass maintained that in a close presidential election, the African American populations of Indiana, Massachusetts, and Ohio could affect enough electoral votes to sway the election. In the end, however, the black vote did not affect the outcome: Ohio and Massachusetts went for Harrison, while Cleveland carried Indiana. Even if Harrison had won Indiana, he still would have lost the presidency. The black vote was almost exclusively Republican, but in a tight election with an almost even split between white voters, African Americans might have been able to swing the election to Harrison if their votes in the Southern states had been protected. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Compendium of the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, D.C., 1897), 5; Richard L. Forstall, ed., Compilation of States and Counties of the United States, 1790–1990 (Washington, D.C., 1996), 3; Deskins, Walton, and Puckett, Presidential Elections, 251–53. 6. Douglass quotes an address by Daniel Webster to a Pennsylvania Whig party convention held at Valley Forge on 3 October 1844. Webster, Writings and Speeches, 3:285. 7. It is difficult to verify this statement, specifically in regard to the Northern states, since voting totals varied in each election. In a general sense, though, Douglass’s claim is fair, since the Democratic and Republican candidates were separated by 3 percentage points or fewer in all presidential elections from 1876 to 1892. Michael A. Genovese, Encyclopedia of the American Presidency (New York, 2004), 556–57. 8. Matt. 6:24 or Luke 16:13. 9. A paraphrase of 1 Cor. 14:8. 10. Douglass alludes to Isa. 11:6: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” 11. The Tories made up one of the two main British political parties from the later seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The name “Tory” comes from the Irish word Toraidhe, meaning “bandit,” “cattle thief,” “bogtrotter,” or “outlaw.” The Tories originally supported the notion of God-ordained kingly authority, or divine right. They had a deep attachment to the Anglican Church and believed Crown and church to be the chief preservatives of the British political, religious, and social order. The Tories’ aims in Parliament changed in response to issues and personalities. But Tory values, emphasizing the church and the sanctity of governmental authority, remained a constant in British politics. These values played a prominent role in the debates on the American colonies and in the “conservative reaction” toward the end of the eighteenth century. In the late nineteenth century,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 572

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

573

the modern Tories, by then officially the Conservative party, generally resisted any loosening of British control over Ireland. That position may have contributed to the party’s defeat in the British general election in August 1892. Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 923; Gardiner and Wenborn, Columbia Companion to British History, 747–48. 12. The British Liberal party government, led by William E. Gladstone, introduced legislation in 1886 that would have created a parliament for Ireland with authority over a designated list of domestic issues. The bill was defeated when a large block of “Liberal Unionist” members of Parliament defected and voted with Conservatives against it. The defeat forced Gladstone’s government from power, but his Liberals, with Irish allies, again won a parliamentary majority in July 1892. A second home-rule bill passed the following year in the House of Commons but was rejected by the House of Lords. Irish parliamentarians, led by Charles Stewart Parnell, almost unanimously lent their support to the home rule campaign. Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 (New York, 2003), 66–84; Karl S. Bottingheimer, Ireland and the Irish: A Short History (New York, 1982), 202–07; D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London, 1982), 192–223. 13. Douglass adapts the parable of the Prodigal Son as told in Luke 15:11–32. 14. While it does not appear that the Democratic party actively recruited blacks as Cleveland supporters, it is possible that Douglass refers to newspaper editors such as T. Thomas Fortune. Fortune, a well-known African American journalist, considered himself a progressive Democrat and counseled blacks to vote for Grover Cleveland. In addition, the Democrats funded and encouraged the creation of Cleveland Clubs during the 1884, 1888, and 1892 presidential elections, and it is possible that some of these clubs reached out to black voters locally. Fredrickson, Black Liberation, 31–34; Grover Cleveland, The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland, ed. George Frederick Parker (Rahway, N.J., 1892), 287–90. 15. Douglass perhaps alludes to Webster’s plea to Northerners of all parties to support the Compromise of 1850. In 1857, Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois broke with President James Buchanan, a fellow Democrat, and opposed the ratification of the Lecompton Constitution and the admission of Kansas as a slave state. In 1872, the Liberal Republican Horace Greeley had merged his movement with the Democratic party in an unsuccessful effort to replace Ulysses S. Grant in the White House and change the direction of Reconstruction. Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism (Boston, 1973), 190–92; Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1973), 563–624; Van Deusen, Horace Greeley, 400–420. 16. At the end of the Civil War, the South’s cotton-based economy was in shambles. Planters still owned large tracts of land, but could not coerce the newly emancipated African American slaves, commonly called freedmen, into work gangs to cultivate them. The freedmen had no resources necessary to live independently, although they were eager to work to support themselves. Few Southern banks survived the war; thus, capital was scarce throughout the region. The sharecropping system developed in response to this crisis. Planters divided their plantations into thirty- to fifty-acre farms and rented them to poor landless farmers—black and white—for a share of the crop. A new system of credit, the crop lien, arose in conjunction with sharecropping. A local merchant would extend a line of credit to the cropper in return for a lien on the anticipated crop as well as any personal or real property he might own. Thus, the cropper could purchase food and supplies—usually at exorbitant prices—on credit throughout the year, and at the end of the season, accounts would be settled against the returns from the crop. The economic historians Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch concluded that debt peonage, whereby the farmer ended the season still in debt to the merchant, was the exception rather than the rule in the postbellum South. Nevertheless, they clearly demonstrated that sharecropping and crop liens were used insidiously by white elites to keep the incomes of tenant farmers sufficiently low to prevent their escape to self-sufficiency. Ransom and Sutch deny that the complex economic institutions of sharecropping and crop liens were created primarily to serve racist ends, yet acknowledge that “racist attitudes precluded more satisfactory solutions” to the South’s postwar woes. Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences

Y7870-Douglass.indb 573

9/1/21 4:17 PM

574

THE NEGRO IN THE PRESENT CAMPAIGN

of Emancipation, 2nd ed. (New York, 2001), 81–125, 163–64; Gerald D. Jaynes, Branches without Roots: Genesis of the Black Working Class in the American South, 1862–1882 (New York, 1986), 24–54. 17. Many modern scholars agree with Douglass that the system of convict labor that emerged after Reconstruction was an attempt to restore much of the racial control exerted under slavery. The war disrupted the rudimentary penal systems of most Southern states. Rather than create a modern replacement, many states turned to the leasing of convict labor to local businesses as a cost-effective substitute. The practice was riddled with corruption and subjected African American prisoners to widespread abuse. Southern law enforcement practices caused much higher arrest and conviction rates for accused African Americans, who in turn became a cheap labor source for the region’s planters and, occasionally, industrialists. Joel Williamson, A Rage for Order: Black/White Relations in the American South since Emancipation (New York, 1986), 57–61; EAAH, 1:352–53. 18. While notorious as an instrument of slave discipline, the whipping post, or pillory, had a long history as a means of punishing minor legal offenses across the nation. During Reconstruction, many Southern states eliminated public whippings as an unwelcome reminder of slavery practices. In the 1880s, however, states again began to make offenses such as larceny, theft, and wife beating subject to public whipping. Southern white conservatives championed the reinstitution of the whipping post as a means of heading off violent attacks by Klan-like vigilante groups on assertive African Americans. Douglass is correct that by the 1890s, the whipping post had again become a symbol of a white-imposed racial order in the South. Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (Urbana, Ill., 2004), 108–11; Richard Zuczek, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn., 2006), 1:134–35. 19. Following the 1883 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court vitiating the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the federal government could do little under the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent Southern state and local governments from mandating the segregation of public facilities. While the specifics varied from state to state, separation of the races became the practice in streetcars, railroads, passenger ships, hotels, restaurants, theaters, amusement parks, and most other accommodations. The campaign to erode the voting rights that African Americans had won through the Fifteenth Amendment began in Tennessee in 1889 and was quickly copied by most Southern states. Revised state constitutions established literacy qualifications and residential requirements, and legislative statutes imposed poll taxes—all measures designed to prevent black voting. Williamson, Rage for Order, 156, 160, 166–67, 171–78; EAAH, 1:179. 20. As president, Cleveland responded to clamors by the Democratic party to reduce political appointments and enhance civil service reform. Cleveland aimed to end the spoils system by enforcing the 1883 Pendleton Act, the purpose of which was to reform the civil service and ensure uniformity in federal appointments. Although Cleveland did remove some of Harrison’s political appointees, including Douglass, he was also accused of using the civil service system to place his own political appointments under the classification system, thereby guaranteeing their retention once he left office. Welch, Presidencies of Grover Cleveland, 59–62; Ari Hoogenboom, “The Pendleton Act and the Civil Service,” AHR, 64:301–18 (January 1959). 21. Democrats believed that if Benjamin Harrison were reelected, he would immediately strive to enact a new Force Bill, which, they argued, was unconstitutional. The Force Bill would have given the federal government the right to control all aspects of the election process, from registering new voters to counting votes, thereby removing this power from state control. This would have amounted to an attempt to protect black voting rights in an increasingly hostile South. Democratic National Committee, The Campaign Textbook of the Democratic Party for the Presidential Election of 1892 (New York, 1892), 127–65.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 574

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DOUGLASS ON THE LATE ELECTION (1892) Frederick Douglass, “Douglass on the Late Election” (n.p., 1892). Other texts in the New York Press, 8 January 1893, and in Subject File, reel 12, frame 483L, reel 16, frames, 494–95, 498–99, 573–76, FD Papers, DLC.

Douglass received so many letters and press inquiries regarding his reaction to the defeat of President Benjamin Harrison by Grover Cleveland in the 1892 presidential election that he wrote and distributed a printed circular with his views. Many newspapers reprinted the circular in whole or in part and commented on it editorially. Topeka (Kans.) Call, 1 January 1893.

CEDAR HILL,1 Anacostia, D. C., Nov. 10, 1892.

You ask me what I think will be the effect of the accession of the Democratic party to power.2 In answer I will first tell you what I think will not be the effect. I do not think the country will go to ruin by the exchange. My opinion is that those who have apprehended a violent change for the worse, both in the general condition of the country and in that of the colored people North and South, will find themselves agreeably surprised by the little difference which this change of administration will make. There will, I think, be made by the new administration, no disastrous assault upon the enterprise, industry and welfare of the country. I expect no marked and visible difference to become apparent in the condition of the colored people North or South. Of course the Democratic party will endeavor to overhaul the tariff, and in some cases changes will be made. Duties will be taken from some articles and deftly placed upon others and enough will at least be done to make a show of an effort at tariff reform, but the principle of protection will neither be ignored nor abandoned.3 It will be found by the Democratic leaders in Congress, that free trade is an idea more easily managed on the stump than in Congress. On the stump they can have every thing their own way. They can fire the hearts of the crowd by telling the working man that he is taxed to support monopolies to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and all that; but when they are confronted by the various interests of the country which must be wisely dealt with, and when they must meet in debate able statesmen of the opposing party, they will find that free trade looks better and pays better on

Y7870-Douglass.indb 575

9/1/21 4:17 PM

576

DOUGLASS ON THE LATE ELECTION

the stump than in Congress, where the subject must be dealt with seriously and practically, and with a view to far-reaching permanent results. Nor do I anticipate any serious disturbances of our present currency. If the tax on the State banks shall be taken off, as is promised in the Democratic platform,4 I have no doubt that conditions will be imposed and measures will be devised which will give us a currency not less sound and convenient than the excellent currency we now possess. The leaders of the Democratic party may not be saints, but they are not fools, and they need not, therefore, be expected to invite their own destruction. They will be too wise to be in a hurry to fulfill the dire predictions of the opposing party. Both in regard to the tariff and the currency their policy will doubtless be to move slowly and with great caution. It will be their aim to contradict the gloomy view of their opponents, and it may be depended on, therefore, not to afflict the people with anything like the wretched currency that flooded the country before the war and reconstruction. They have done many foolish things and may do many more. Some things have occurred of late to open their eyes. They will not soon forget that the people are astir. The lesson taught by the election which has brought their success, is that mere party, as such, has upon the masses a weaker hold than at any time during the last thirty years. No man can now be depended upon, under the lash and sting of party whips, to vote for a candidate whose character and policy he does not approve. As to the effect of the election of Grover Cleveland upon the condition of the colored people of the South, I am free to say that I have my fears as well as my hopes. It is hard to tell what will happen. One thing I may with safety say, it is this: It will be very hard to make the condition of the negro in the South much worse than it is now and has been during the present administration. Of course the natural effect of the restoration of the Democratic party to power would seem to encourage the white people of the South to greater harshness in their treatment of the negro, and this is likely to happen. They will feel that the old slave power is again safely and securely in the national saddle. This sort of thing may induce a more haughty contempt for human rights and for the constitution and laws as well as for justice, humanity and even for a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. But I think this feeling in the present case will not be of long duration. A little reflection, I hope, will convince them that the election of Mr. Cleveland does not mean as much for them, as upon first blush it may to them seem. They will learn that the victory was not a national approval of the outrages committed by them on the negro. They will learn that

Y7870-Douglass.indb 576

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DOUGLASS ON THE LATE ELECTION

577

lynch law and murder were not endorsed by this election. They will learn that their victory was not won as against any policy of the Republican party in favor of the rights of the negro. The success of the Democratic party in this election is due solely to questions of the material interests of the country. It was the good fortune of that party to to get the Republican party on a Democratic level. The Southern question so-called has nothing to do with this defeat or victory. Had the negro been an element in this campaign the result might have been different. But he was not. The Republican party made no issue with the Democratic party for him. Indeed, it gave the Democratic party the advantage of allowing it to make all it could out of any fancied issue it might conjure up from its inner consciousness. Its speakers were permitted to abuse and misrepresent the Lodge Bill and the Educational Bill to their hearts content. They could thunder against negro ascendency and negro supremacy as much as they liked without meeting with any obstacle or contradiction. No effort was made to refute their slanders or to correct their misrepresentations. No effort was made to defend the policy of a fair vote and an honest count. No effort was made to expose the inequality in the power of the white vote of the North with that of the South. The Southern Democrats will see this later on, and will consider its significance and learn that their victory was not gained but given. The advice of the Hon. James G. Blaine was scrupulously followed during alt the canvass,5 and to him the thanks of the Southern Democracy are once more due for effective service. In his plan of campaign all thought to humanity was eliminated. There was not in it a single moral idea to touch the conscience, not a humane sentiment to touch the heart of the nation. All was as cold and selfish as dollars and dimes could make it. There was nothing in his plan to be said against the solid South; nothing to be said of the terrible outrages to make it solid; nothing to be said against ballot-box frauds; nothing about the lawless, cruel and scandalous treatment of the negro. To use popular slang, the negro “was not in it.”6 In fact, if the Republican party had all at once become weary of the burden of government, and had wished to hand it over to the custody of the Democratic party, they could not have adopted any method more effective and certain to accomplish their desire than the plan of campaign recommended by Mr. Blaine, and accepted by their party managers. One element of my hope and my belief is that this Democratic victory will not bring increased rigor in the treatment of the negro in the South, is that Southern Democrats will themselves wisely comprehend

Y7870-Douglass.indb 577

9/1/21 4:17 PM

578

DOUGLASS ON THE LATE ELECTION

the causes that gave them the victory. They will see that this was not a fair test of the higher sentiment of the North; that it was the play of Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark left out.7 It will also see that this campaign on the part of Republicans is not likely to be imitated in the future, and that they must prepare to meet a different state of facts and a spirit less easily vanquished when another national canvass shall take place. It cannot presume from the neglect to employ it, that the moral sentiment of the great North and West has taken its everlasting flight; that all the hatred of fraud and lawless violence has vanished simply because that hatred did not assert itself in the recent campaign. It will understand that its victory is exceptional and that it must be prepared for a more stringent trial. It cannot afford, therefore, in the interval, to pursue a course of fraud and lawless violence toward the brother in black, tending as it would, to revive and strengthen the sentiment, the absence of which gave it victory in the late contest. But my belief is that this Democratic victory will be less harmful to the colored people of the South than has been predicted, is not altogether dependent upon the selfish worldly wisdom of political parties. While I am a Republican and still have abounding faith in the future of that party; while I know that all that we have gained as people, has been gained through the instrumentality of that party, and therefore deplore its defeat, I am convinced that as in the Bull Run disaster during the war,8 it will prove a blessing in disguise. Had our defeat been a moral defeat; had any principle of justice and humanity been voted down in the case, I should have been less hopeful. I am willing to make another admission which may sound strangely as coming from me, and that is: I believe that the President-elect will see and act upon the wisdom of justice, peace and good will, alike to the white and colored people in the South. I am sure that he will give no support or encouragement to lawless violence anywhere. I say this because I know the man, and that he stands high above the meanness that would strike down any because they are weak, unpopular and defenceless. Mr. Cleveland was never more influential with this party than he will be during his coming administration, and I believe he will be able to cause a halt in the application of the lynch law all along the line. Responsibility is here hand and hand with power. The people who commit outrages upon the negro are not Republicans, but Democrats, and therefore friends of the President-elect. Hence, I am not without hope that they will listen to him when he warns them against the effects their crimes are likely to produce,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 578

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DOUGLASS ON THE LATE ELECTION

579

I believe he will do this not merely from party considerations, but from his own humane sentiments and his manly sense of justice. Among the compensations to be found in this Democratic victory is, that it was not brought about by the prominence of Republican zeal in efforts to advance the cause of colored citizens. No such charge can now be made. The call upon the party to ignore that cause was implicitly obeyed by the leading speakers on the Republican side. The Democratic boast of having achieved a moral victory is the veriest absurdity, since morals had nothing whatever to do with the contest. In conclusion, I do not believe as some persons have asserted, that this defeat is to be “the be-all and the end-all”9 of the Republican party. The Republican party has in it the best sentiments of human nature and the ablest statesmen of the country, and there is, therefore, no more reason why it should disband now than when Mr. Blaine was defeated by Mr. Cleveland. It has behind it a history of great men, great deeds, great patriots, and great achievements. No party could have behind it a grander record. It has only to resume its old time character of being the bold and earnest defender of the rights of man, and be known in this vocation, not less than in its concern for the rights of corporations and associated wealth to be again strong with the workingmen of the country. Let it again place on its banner, “One country, one citizenship, one liberty, one law, for all people without regard to race, color or previous condition,”10 and its power will soon become as great as in its palmiest days. FREDERICK DOUG LASS. 1. Cedar Hill was a twenty-one-room Victorian mansion built on the heights of Anacostia in the southeastern corner of the District of Columbia, overlooking both the capital city and the Maryland countryside. The house, situated on 15 acres of land, was built by John Van Hook, one of the organizers of the Uniontown development. Uniontown was a community of 700 lots on 240 acres purchased by Van Hook and a partner in the early 1850s for $19,000. Under Van Hook, Uniontown was a restricted community, which banned pigs, the Irish, and African Americans. After Van Hook’s bankruptcy, Douglass borrowed $6,000 from a former abolitionist, Robert Purvis, and purchased the estate in 1878. Renamed Cedar Hill by Douglass, the estate remained his home for the rest of his life. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 605; Fought, Women, 221; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 89–109. 2. Former president Grover Cleveland was elected to his second term on 9 November 1892, defeating the Republican incumbent, Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland won 46 percent of the popular vote, while Harrison received 43 percent. Third-party candidates, including the Populist James B. Weaver, won 11 percent of the total votes cast. In the Electoral College, Cleveland was awarded 277 electors, almost twice the number won by Harrison. In the Senate, Democrats emerged with a slight, 43–40 majority, with 5 seats going to third-party candidates. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats gained a decisive majority, 220–121, over the Republicans, with 13 going to thirdparty candidates. As a result, the Democrats gained control of both the executive and the legislative branches of the government for the first time since 1858. New York Times, 9, 10 November 1892;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 579

9/1/21 4:17 PM

580

DOUGLASS ON THE LATE ELECTION

Richard White, The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 (New York, 2017), 752–56; Jeffers, Honest President, 251. 3. In the election of 1892, Republicans maintained their support of the unpopular McKinley Tariff, which put high duties on all imports classified as being “in competition with the products of American labor” and admitted all “articles which cannot be produced in the United States, except luxuries . . . free of duty.” Republicans maintained that they were simply adhering to an age-old “American doctrine of protection,” while the Democrats called for the repeal of the McKinley Tariff, describing it as the “culminating atrocity of class legislation” and seeing it as proof that “Republican protection [was] a fraud [and] a robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few.” As later became apparent, Cleveland believed that duties simply needed to be reduced on articles deemed “necessities of life,” rather than eliminated altogether. Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy (Chicago, 2017), 287–289, 305. 4. In their party platform, the Democrats called for the repeal of the “10 per cent [federal] tax on State Bank issues,” which they characterized as “prohibitory.” The tax was initially imposed to deter individual states from creating and circulating their own currency. 1892 Democratic Party Platform, The American Presidency Project (online). 5. In February 1892, Secretary of State James G. Blaine made public his decision not to challenge the sitting president, Benjamin Harrison, for the Republican nomination in the upcoming presidential election. But his resignation from office just days before the start of the Republican National Convention in June led some delegates and party leaders to question whether Blaine had changed his mind. When Harrison received more than enough votes on the first ballot to win the nomination, this question was quickly rendered moot. In the months that followed, ill health prevented Blaine from playing an active role in the campaign, and aside from a single speech he delivered in New York City, his most notable contribution was an article, “The Presidential Election of 1892,” published in the North American Review. In it, Blaine argued that the only substantive policy differences between the two parties were over the “Tariff, Reciprocity, the [10 percent] tax on State Banks, and [possibly] the Force Bill.” Blaine suggested that if both parties were to limit their discussion to those few issues, it would “not only simplify the contest and be a welcome relief to the candidates, but would also greatly help at arriving at the truth, which [was after all] the ultimate object of popular discussion and popular election.” Willis Fletcher Johnson, Life of James G. Blaine: “The Plumed Knight” (Philadelphia, 1893), 540–45; James G. Blaine, “The Presidential Election of 1892,” NAR, 155:513–25 (November 1892); Socolofsky and Spetter, Presidency of Benjamin Harrison, 88, 196–99; White, Republic for Which It Stands, 752. 6. Douglass appears to be adapting the common saying that someone’s “heart was not in it,” as well as responding to the Democrat’s “unofficial” slogan “No Force Bill! No Negro Domination in the South!” (first articulated by Charles Dana in the Sun), in order to better emphasize what he viewed as the failure of the Republican party to address systemic social ills and the civil rights violations, particularly egregious in the African American community, that were confronting the nation in 1892. Daniel Czitrom, New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Scandal That Launched the Progressive Era (New York, 2016), 97; Eli Ginzberg and Alfred S. Eichner, Troublesome Presence: Democracy and Black Americans (1964; New Brunswick, N.J., 1993), 196; David Domke, “Strategic Elites, the Press, and Race Relations,” Journal of Communication, 50:125 (Winter 2000). 7. The saying dates to 1775, when an article in the British Morning Post asserted that just before a performance of Hamlet somewhere in the provinces, an announcement was made informing the audience that even though the actor playing the title role was not in attendance, the play would go on as scheduled, but without the character of the “Prince of Denmark.” John Ayto, ed., Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms (1999; New York, 2009), 161. 8. Known in the South as the First Battle of Manassas, the First Battle of Bull Run took place in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the town of Manassas and about twenty-five miles southwest of Washington, D.C., on 21 July 1861. The battle, the first major engagement of the Civil

Y7870-Douglass.indb 580

9/1/21 4:17 PM

NO ROYAL ROAD TO PROGRESS FOR THE NEGRO

581

War, stretched over a fourteen-mile front, part of which was bordered by a stream called Bull Run. It pitted almost 55,000 Union troops under the command of General Irwin McDowell against a combined Confederate force of 29,000 men—9,000 of whom had been rushed into place by the very railroad that Union forces hoped to capture—under General Joseph Johnston. The battle was notable for at least two events: the Union suffered a major defeat, which turned from an organized retreat into a chaotic flight back to Washington, D.C., and Colonel (later General) Thomas Jackson earned his famous sobriquet of “Stonewall” by holding his men in line against hours of repeated Union assaults. The outcome of the First Battle of Bull Run shocked both the Union and the Confederacy, demonstrated the potential vulnerability of Washington, D.C., and ensured that the war would not end quickly with a single decisive Union victory, as many had predicted. Spencer C. Tucker, ed., American Civil War: The Defi nitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection, 6 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2013), 1:225–57; Eggenberger, Encyclopedia of Battles, 64–66. 9. Macbeth, sc. 7, line 401. 10. Writing in the aftermath of Harrison’s defeat, Douglass appears to be paraphrasing both his own words and the text of the Fifteenth Amendment, combining them into a new campaign slogan specifically designed to remind his fellow Republicans what their party once stood for and what it must stand for in the future. Douglass’s words stand in stark contrast to the actual Republican campaign slogans of the 1892 election: “Harrison and Protection” and “Protection—Reciprocity— Honest Money.” John R. McKivigan and Heather L. Kaufman, eds., In the Words of Frederick Douglass: Quotations from Liberty’s Champion (Ithaca, N.Y., 2012), 112; George Harmon Knoles, “The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1892,” History, Science, and Political Science, 5:56 (1942); Presidential Campaigns & Elections: An American History Reference Source (online).

NO ROYAL ROAD TO PROGRESS FOR THE NEGRO (1892) Indianapolis (Ind.) Freeman, 24 December 1892. Other text in Miscellany File, reel 39, frames 357–58, FD Papers, DLC.

Invited to write for the Christmas edition of the Indianapolis Freeman, Douglass compared the plight of African Americans to that of biblical Hebrews and encouraged readers to study the book of Proverbs to improve their condition. Launched by Edward E. Cooper on 14 July 1888, the Indianapolis Freeman was the first illustrated black newspaper and was known as the “Harper’s Weekly of the Colored Race.” It began as a six-column, four-page newspaper and soon expanded to eight pages. The newspaper targeted a national audience, and its many national correspondents sent in cartoons and political news about their communities. Unusually for an African American newspaper of that era, Freeman editorials generally supported the Democratic party. In 1892, Cooper sold the Freeman to George L. Knox, who shifted its political support to the Republican party and, like Douglass,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 581

9/1/21 4:17 PM

NO ROYAL ROAD TO PROGRESS FOR THE NEGRO

581

War, stretched over a fourteen-mile front, part of which was bordered by a stream called Bull Run. It pitted almost 55,000 Union troops under the command of General Irwin McDowell against a combined Confederate force of 29,000 men—9,000 of whom had been rushed into place by the very railroad that Union forces hoped to capture—under General Joseph Johnston. The battle was notable for at least two events: the Union suffered a major defeat, which turned from an organized retreat into a chaotic flight back to Washington, D.C., and Colonel (later General) Thomas Jackson earned his famous sobriquet of “Stonewall” by holding his men in line against hours of repeated Union assaults. The outcome of the First Battle of Bull Run shocked both the Union and the Confederacy, demonstrated the potential vulnerability of Washington, D.C., and ensured that the war would not end quickly with a single decisive Union victory, as many had predicted. Spencer C. Tucker, ed., American Civil War: The Defi nitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection, 6 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2013), 1:225–57; Eggenberger, Encyclopedia of Battles, 64–66. 9. Macbeth, sc. 7, line 401. 10. Writing in the aftermath of Harrison’s defeat, Douglass appears to be paraphrasing both his own words and the text of the Fifteenth Amendment, combining them into a new campaign slogan specifically designed to remind his fellow Republicans what their party once stood for and what it must stand for in the future. Douglass’s words stand in stark contrast to the actual Republican campaign slogans of the 1892 election: “Harrison and Protection” and “Protection—Reciprocity— Honest Money.” John R. McKivigan and Heather L. Kaufman, eds., In the Words of Frederick Douglass: Quotations from Liberty’s Champion (Ithaca, N.Y., 2012), 112; George Harmon Knoles, “The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1892,” History, Science, and Political Science, 5:56 (1942); Presidential Campaigns & Elections: An American History Reference Source (online).

NO ROYAL ROAD TO PROGRESS FOR THE NEGRO (1892) Indianapolis (Ind.) Freeman, 24 December 1892. Other text in Miscellany File, reel 39, frames 357–58, FD Papers, DLC.

Invited to write for the Christmas edition of the Indianapolis Freeman, Douglass compared the plight of African Americans to that of biblical Hebrews and encouraged readers to study the book of Proverbs to improve their condition. Launched by Edward E. Cooper on 14 July 1888, the Indianapolis Freeman was the first illustrated black newspaper and was known as the “Harper’s Weekly of the Colored Race.” It began as a six-column, four-page newspaper and soon expanded to eight pages. The newspaper targeted a national audience, and its many national correspondents sent in cartoons and political news about their communities. Unusually for an African American newspaper of that era, Freeman editorials generally supported the Democratic party. In 1892, Cooper sold the Freeman to George L. Knox, who shifted its political support to the Republican party and, like Douglass,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 581

9/1/21 4:17 PM

582

NO ROYAL ROAD TO PROGRESS FOR THE NEGRO

endorsed Benjamin Harrison’s unsuccessful reelection campaign. Awakened to religion at the age of thirteen, Douglass often used religious references, metaphors, and allusions in his speeches and writings. His piece for the Freeman eschewed politics for those more spiritual themes. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:70–71; Sachsman, Rushing, and Morris, Seeking a Voice, 131–32, 138; David J. Bodenhamer et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis (Bloomington, Ind., 1994), 781.

Therefore Get Wisdom: and with all Thy Getting, get Understanding— Proverbs.1 The “Freeman” wants for its Christmas number a word from me, one which shall be along the line of race advancement, and that word, though feeble shall not be withheld. Every reader must know that it is a difficult thing for any man at this stage of its discussion, to say anything original or striking upon any side the question of Negro progress, whether reference be had to what has been achieved, or to what remains to be achieved. The whole field, as to the means to be adopted and the course to be pursued to better the condition of the Negro, has been my thought during a long life, and I have nothing better to offer now than I had fifty years ago, and perhaps I may say without vanity, that there is, as I think, nothing better to be offered. For the Negro, there is no royal road to success. Like all other men he must travel the old road, even though he must do so with weary limbs and bleeding feet. Now that our people have become readers, I would commend not only the columns of the able and many sided “Freeman” to their earnest attention, but also the Book of Proverbs, from which my text is taken. No where else can better advice for a career of usefulness and success be found than in this one Book of Solomon’s wisdom.2 These Proverbs are as well adapted to us and our condition now as they were to the Hebrew children and their times. In the condition of these people and our own there are many obvious points of resemblance. They were carried away from their own country into captivity; so were we. They were compelled to toil under harsh, exacting and cruel taskmasters; so were we. They were enslaved by a people of a different race from themselves; so were we. They were hated most by those whom they had served best; so were we. They were dreaded by their oppressors because of their increase in number; so were we. They were prescribed and set apart for the finger of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 582

9/1/21 4:17 PM

NO ROYAL ROAD TO PROGRESS FOR THE NEGRO

583

scorn of all other people; so were we. They were defrauded of their earnings; so were we. They were denied employment at useful and lucrative trades; so were we. They were made an offence for their race and features; so were we. They were deemed unfit for civil and social rights; so were we. They were victims of blows and insults; so were we. They were often subjected to stripes; so were we. They were on all sides compelled to submit to the assaults of pride, force and fraud; so were we. They sometimes shed bitter tears over their hard lot; so have we. But these sturdy Hebrews never lost heart or hope, and to-day, in point of prosperity and civil condition they are the marvel of the world, making kings and princesses their dependents, and deciding the question of peace and war among nations. They have studied and practiced the wisdom of Solomon; so should we. They have succeeded in largely conquering the adverse conditions that surrounded them; so should we. The wise man has told them to get wisdom,3 and to get understanding; to learn of the ant to be industrious and prudent,4 and the same lesson should be learned by us if we would rise to a level with our surroundings. The hardships imposed, the straits to which they were subjected, called into exercise their heroic qualities. They developed hope from desperation, and manly courage from the power of the enemy they had to contend with and conquer; so should we. I fear, my friends, that you have already become tired of my exhorting you to virtue, industry, self denial and the getting of property, as I have done so long and often as the best means of making the best of both worlds; of this world and the world to come; but what better can I do; or what better can our people do than to take such homely advice? Think of it. Is not our poverty our calamity? Can we ever be other than a despised people while we are uniformly poor and destitute? It may be as you have often heard from the pulpit hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven;5 but is it not equally hard for a poor man to fit himself and his destitute children so as to enter that kingdom? I am for making the best of both worlds; and I am for making the best of this first, and for the further reason that I am better acquainted with this world than with any other. There is no wisdom in wearing rags on earth in the hope of wearing robes in heaven. A man who does not improve the opportunities which this world affords him to make himself perfect in all the attributes of true manhood, has given no assurance of any such improvement in any other world. It cannot be supposed that we may despise the gifts of God in this world and yet enjoy and improve them in the world to come. With these few hints, I say, go! my friends, to that grand old store house, the Book of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 583

9/1/21 4:17 PM

584

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

Proverbs. Study its lessons, practice its wisdom, teach it to your children, and your condition will be better than it now is, when the next Christmas number of the “Freeman” shall be laid upon your table. If, in giving this counsel, you shall think that I have presumed too much upon my own wisdom and too little upon yours, pardon it, as coming from one who has grown gray in your service. ANACOSTIA, WASHINGTON, D.C. 1. A paraphrase of Prov. 4:7. 2. The writings traditionally attributed to Solomon, more commonly known as Solomon’s Wisdoms, are located in the book of Proverbs. Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 5:513–20. 3. Prov. 4:5–7. 4. Douglass alludes to Aesop’s fable “The Grasshopper and the Ants.” Aesop’s Fables (Hertfordshire, Eng., 1994), 120. 5. Douglass quotes Jesus’s adage that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven. Matt. 19:24, Mark 10:25.

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION (1893) Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated, 3:300 (March 1893).

The World’s Columbian Exposition was held in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America. Douglass served as commissioner of the official Haitian pavilion at the Exposition—an appointment made by the Haitian president Florvil Hyppolite, and one that Douglass described as a crowning honor to his long career in public life. Douglass hoped that the Haitian pavilion, which featured exhibits highlighting the country and its people, would celebrate the black people of not only the Caribbean but the United States as well. On the contrary, African American participation in the festivities was limited, which was a great disappointment to Douglass and other black leaders. Published from February 1891 to March 1894, the World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated was a serial publication that contained information and illustrations about the fair and its construction, events, exhibits, and visitors. Douglass wrote of his disappointment regarding the lack of African American involvement with the fair,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 584

9/1/21 4:17 PM

584

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

Proverbs. Study its lessons, practice its wisdom, teach it to your children, and your condition will be better than it now is, when the next Christmas number of the “Freeman” shall be laid upon your table. If, in giving this counsel, you shall think that I have presumed too much upon my own wisdom and too little upon yours, pardon it, as coming from one who has grown gray in your service. ANACOSTIA, WASHINGTON, D.C. 1. A paraphrase of Prov. 4:7. 2. The writings traditionally attributed to Solomon, more commonly known as Solomon’s Wisdoms, are located in the book of Proverbs. Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 5:513–20. 3. Prov. 4:5–7. 4. Douglass alludes to Aesop’s fable “The Grasshopper and the Ants.” Aesop’s Fables (Hertfordshire, Eng., 1994), 120. 5. Douglass quotes Jesus’s adage that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven. Matt. 19:24, Mark 10:25.

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION (1893) Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated, 3:300 (March 1893).

The World’s Columbian Exposition was held in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America. Douglass served as commissioner of the official Haitian pavilion at the Exposition—an appointment made by the Haitian president Florvil Hyppolite, and one that Douglass described as a crowning honor to his long career in public life. Douglass hoped that the Haitian pavilion, which featured exhibits highlighting the country and its people, would celebrate the black people of not only the Caribbean but the United States as well. On the contrary, African American participation in the festivities was limited, which was a great disappointment to Douglass and other black leaders. Published from February 1891 to March 1894, the World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated was a serial publication that contained information and illustrations about the fair and its construction, events, exhibits, and visitors. Douglass wrote of his disappointment regarding the lack of African American involvement with the fair,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 584

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

585

not only in the Illustrated article, but also in the introduction to a well-known pamphlet compiled by the civil rights leader Ida B. Wells, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893). In an effort to appease the black leaders’ protest, the white organizers of the fair created a Colored American Day, held on 25 August 1893, to celebrate the achievements of African Americans. While others, such as Wells, objected to the further segregation of blacks at the fair, Douglass spoke to a crowd of thousands at the Haitian pavilion on the designated day. Christopher Robert Reed, All the World Is Here: The Black Presence at White City (Bloomington, Ind., 2000), 30–35; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:457, 1028.

In my quality as one of the commissioners of Hayti to the World’s Columbian Exposition,1 it was my good fortune to witness the splendid pageant and impressive ceremonies by which it was inaugurated. I was a part of that almost endless procession, composed of all classes and conditions, on foot, on bicycles, on horses and in carriages, which on that occasion moved through the streets of Chicago toward the Exposition grounds. I saw the interested and delighted spectators who thronged the sidewalks of those streets, crowded the windows, doors and porticos of the decorated dwellings and public buildings. I heard their shouts of applause as men of distinction and individual dignitaries were recognized in the procession. I saw one hundred thousand people assembled in the hall of Manufactures and Liberal Arts.2 I heard that strange and weird hum and buzz of the one hundred thousand voices blended into one sound, like the roar of many waters. I observed the profound and miraculous hush which fell upon that vast human ocean at the first call to order. I saw the speakers rise, gesticulate and resume their seats, unable to be heard. Occasionally faint notes of the concord of sweet sounds from five thousand trained singers, reached and delighted my ear, but my impression at the time was that the occasion was too great for oratory, too great for music or poetry. It was more eloquent than speech, more impressive than music and more lofty and world embracing than poetry. No where else than in these grounds can be seen such a profusion of the wonders and perfections of architecture or behold a scene of human works more suggestive of sublime and glorious ideas. The American republic has seen few days more memorable than the one in which the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 585

9/1/21 4:17 PM

586

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

American Continent was celebrated in Chicago. If I am charged with some enthusiasm on this subject I may be permitted to say that it is not new born. I was a member of the committee in Washington, organized in advance of all other movements, for the purpose of promoting the appropriate celebration of the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of America, by Christopher Columbus.3 That committee held its meetings in Williard’s hotel.4 Each member of it paid his one hundred dollars toward its expenses. It is true that we wanted the celebration to take place in Washington. We had grounds marked out for the necessary buildings of the Exposition. But to us the place was of less importance than the occasion. In contemplating the inauguration ceremonies, glorious as they were, there was one thing that dimmed their glory. The occasion itself was world embracing in its idea. It spoke of human brotherhood, human welfare and human progress. It naturally implied a welcome to every possible variety of mankind. Yet, I saw, or thought I saw, an intentional slight to that part of the American population with which I am identified. Although there are eight millions of men of African descent in this country,5 not one of them seems to have been worthy of a place on the platform of these inaugural ceremonies. I would gladly think that this omission was not the result of a purpose to humiliate the people of color in the eyes of the assembled representatives of the world, and yet I have no doubt that the people from abroad who knew that we had a population of eight millions of the African race must have wondered why one black face was not seen on that august occasion. If their exclusion was an intentional humiliation of the race the occasion was not well selected for that purpose. The spirit of the Exhibition was in direct contradiction to such a purpose. The celebration of the discovery of this continent was too great to be small. If, on the other hand, it was intended to conciliate any spirit of slavery which might still exist in one section of our country, it was an ill-advised concession; a fruitless act of obeisance to an anachronism and a mere superstition of the past. It should have been remembered that no such exposition as the World’s Columbian Exposition could, while slavery existed, have taken place in our country, with the sanction of the nation, and it would have been a marked and grateful recognition of our national evolution from the barbarism of slavery and of our new enlargement of the borders of American liberty, and also a visible fact in harmony with the grand idea of this Columbian Exposition, if some typical representative of Americans of African descent had been seen honorably participating in the glories

Y7870-Douglass.indb 586

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

587

of this Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of America. That I was there was not due to the magnanimity of my own government toward a native American, but to the respect due the government of Hayti. If the Columbian Exposition has any significance it ought to signalize and symbolize the march of civilization from the discovery of the continent four hundred years ago, until now. For this purpose there is to be brought together and exhib[i]ted the latest and best discoveries and inventions of our continent and of the civilized world. When it shall be asked by what means these have been produced, one word alone will suffice as the answer, and that word is—labor. Without it there could be neither art, science, discovery nor invention. All the wonders and triumphs of human genius which will be witnessed at this World’s Fair will simply be the superstructure of which labor is the foundation. Among the first needs felt by the settlers of our country was that of labor, and the question of how to supply it was all-commanding. The colonists wanted sturdy hands to fell the forests; to dig out the stumps; to drain the bogs; to destroy noxious growths; to make the wilderness and solitary places blossom as the rose, and for this they needed labor. They turned their eyes to the sunny shores of Africa. I will not stop here to describe that shameful slave trade, now branded as piracy, then resorted to by our Christian nation to supply this necessity. It is enough to say that every one of the original states of our union, save one, were slave states.6 The leisure that exempted the Washingtons,7 the Jeffersons8 and Madisons9 from physical toil and enabled them to give their study to the constructive principles of our republic, was bought by enforced African labor. It was the African and the man of African descent that made Virginia the mother of American presidents.10 He “watered her soil with his tears, enriched it with his blood, tilled it with his hard hands and stalwart strength,”11 and thus created the wealth that founded her schools and colleges. It was his labor that gave our nation her financial credit in foreign countries. If cotton was ever king,12 it was the toil of the African that made it king. He was with our country in its infancy, in its poverty, in its troubles, in its peace and in its wars, always loyal and helpful and the sentiment can not be magnanimous which excludes him now from sharing in the glories of her World’s Columbian Exposition. The presence of one of this race in a prominent position would speak more for the moral civilization of the American republic than all the domes, towers and turrets of the magnificent buildings that adorn the Exposition grounds.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 587

9/1/21 4:17 PM

588

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

1. The Haitian president Florvil Hyppolite appointed Douglass to serve as that country’s commissioner at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1892–93. Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, 6 June 1893; Alice Mulcahey Fleming, Frederick Douglass: From Slave to Statesman (New York, 2004), 96; Barnes, Douglass, 133; Edlie Wong, “In the Shadow of Haiti: The Negro Seamen Act, Counter-Revolutionary St. Domingue, and Black Emigration,” in The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States, ed. Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Michael Drexler (Philadelphia, 2016), 188. 2. Douglass refers to the portion of the World’s Columbian Exposition Dedicatory Ceremonies held in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building on 21 October 1892. The building, which covered more than thirty acres, held over 125,000 people that day as part of the ceremony. Some of the dignitaries in attendance included governors of states and territories, representatives from foreign governments, and members of the U.S. Supreme Court, the cabinet, Congress, and the diplomatic corps. Douglass, as a commissioner from Haiti, would have been seated either to the left or right of the main platform, which was erected on the east side of the building. Dedicatory and Opening Ceremonies of the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893), 133–34, 303; Norm Bolotin and Christine Laing, The World’s Columbian Exposition: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 (1992; Chicago, 2002), 52–53. 3. While many took credit for the idea of holding a world’s fair in a U.S. city, the first formal proposal for such an event was introduced in June 1888. This plan, originating in Washington, D.C., proposed a bill submitted to Congress with the lengthy title “A Bill to Provide for a Permanent Exposition of the Three Americas at the National Capital in Honor of the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of America.” Supporters of this movement formed a board of promotion and began to discuss levels of interest in participation with Central and South American diplomats. Although, as Douglass suggests, Washington, D.C., claimed it should host the Columbian World’s Fair because it was the first city to make an official proposal, three other cities emerged as possible host sites: St. Louis, New York, and Chicago. After each city submitted presentations to Congress in January 1890, Chicago was chosen as the host city the following month. During 1888 and well into 1889, Douglass resided in Washington, D.C., following his resignation as recorder of deeds in March 1886 and his completion of a European tour that ran from the fall of 1886 through 1887. Douglass then served as minister to Haiti, sailing to the country in October 1889 and returning in July 1891. Douglass was most likely to have served on a board or committee promoting Washington, D.C., as the host city for a world’s fair between the time the initial bill was submitted to Congress, in June 1888, and the date he set sail for Haiti, in October 1889. Portage (Wisc.) State Register, 8 December 1888; Atchison (Kans.) Champion, 19 December 1889; The Official Directory of the World’s Columbian Exposition, May 1st to October 30th, 1893 (Chicago, 1893), 25; Bolotin and Laing, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1–2. 4. Willard’s Hotel was located at Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street, two blocks from the White House. This property was known as Tennison’s from 1818 to 1842, before being renamed Fuller’s City Hotel. In 1850, Henry Willard and his brother Edwin purchased and renovated the property, renaming it Willard’s Hotel. The hotel emerged as a popular meeting place for politicians, diplomats, and other dignitaries throughout the nineteenth century. Elaine Denby, Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion (London, 1998), 221; John D. Wright, The Language of the Civil War (Westport, Conn., 2001), 325; Jeanne Fogle, A Neighborhood Guide to Washington, D.C.’s Hidden History (Charleston, S.C., 2009), 27–28. 5. According to the 1890 U.S. Census, the total population of African Americans in the nation was 7,470,040. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Report on Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, D.C., 1895), 397. 6. Douglass most likely refers to Georgia, the only one of the original thirteen British colonies in North America that prohibited slavery when it was fi rst established. The governing group of trustees decided to outlaw slavery in Georgia not as an abolitionist measure but rather as a means to achieve certain objectives for the colony’s future. The trustees hoped that Georgia would serve as a home for

Y7870-Douglass.indb 588

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INAUGURATION OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

589

“Britain’s dispossessed and discontented,” as well as a military buffer between Spanish Florida, and would have an economy based on the production of silk and wine. As early at 1738, settlers in the colony petitioned the trustees for the right to own slaves. After initially rejecting these petitions, the trustees finally gave their approval and lifted the ban on slavery in Georgia in 1750. It is noteworthy that while proposals to abolish slavery were considered in many Northern states, Vermont was the first state to enter the Union without slavery, having abolished the institution in its state constitution. Vermont became the fourteenth state, in March 1791. Phinizy Spalding, “Life in Georgia under the Trustees,” in A History of Georgia, ed. Kenneth Coleman (1977; Athens, Ga., 1991), 36; Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730–1775 (1984; Athens, Ga., 2007), 1–5, 11–12; Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (1988; London, 1989), 117–18. 7. George Washington (1732–99), the first president of the United States (1789–97), owned or held claim to over three hundred slaves at the time of his death. His will provided that “upon the decease of my wife it is my . . . desire that all slaves whom I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom.” Fritz Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Columbia, Mo., 1997), 209–12; Freeman, Washington, 7:41. 8. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), a planter and statesman from Virginia, was the third president of the United States (1801–09) and author of the Declaration of Independence. Born into a slaveholding family, Jefferson inherited about 50 slaves following the death of his father in 1757. He then acquired 135 from the division of the estate of his father-in-law, John Wayles, in 1774, which made him the second-largest slaveholder in Albemarle County. Like many other slaveholders before the invention of the cotton gin, Jefferson believed that slavery would eventually die out because of economic forces, and that slave owners would be forced to free their slaves. Jefferson argued that free blacks and whites could not coexist peacefully, and that the best way to remove this potential conflict was colonization or migration. Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason; R. B. Bernstein, Thomas Jefferson (2003; New York, 2005), 1, 13, 33–34; Lucia Stanton, “Those Who Labor for my Happiness”: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (Charlottesville, 2012), 10; Nicholas E. Magnis, “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery: An Analysis of His Racist Thinking as Revealed by His Writings and Political Behavior,” Journal of Black Studies, 29:491–509 (March 1999); DAB, 10:17–35. 9. James Madison (1751–1836), fourth president of the United States (1809–17), fought against including in the Constitution any recognition of man as “taxable property” and protested the compromise that allowed the continuation of the African slave trade in the United States until 1808. Yet Madison benefited from slave labor his entire life. By the 1780s, his father, James Madison, Sr., was the largest slaveholder in Orange County, Virginia, and Madison himself owned sixteen slaves by 1787. Following his father’s death in 1801, Madison inherited Montpelier, the family home, and distributed the slaves among family members. At the time, the slave population at Montpelier stood at about one hundred, but that figure dwindled over the years as Madison was forced to sell land and slaves to satisfy mounting debts. At the time of his death, in 1836, Madison owned thirty-eight slaves. Jeff Broadwater, James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation (Chapel Hill, 2012), 187–88; Matthew T. Mellon, Early American Views on Negro Slavery, from the Letters and Papers of the Founders of the Republic (1934; New York, 1969), 125–27; Paul Douglas Newman, “James Madison’s Journey to an ‘Honorable and Useful Profession,’ 1751–1780,” in A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe, ed. Stuart Leibiger (Malden, Mass., 2013), 22–23. 10. Virginia acquired this sobriquet because so many of the nation’s early presidents were natives of that state: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Zachary Taylor. Shankle, State Names, Flags, Seals, 152. 11. Douglass used similar wording in speeches throughout the decades of his public career. On 18 September 1851, during his speech at the Liberty party’s national convention in Buffalo, New York, he argued that blacks had a right to stay in the United States, claiming, “We have watered your soil with our tears; nourished it with our blood, tilled it with our hard hands.” In February 1862, Douglass used a similar phrase during a speech at the Emancipation League meeting in Boston:

Y7870-Douglass.indb 589

9/1/21 4:17 PM

590

HOW TO SECURE EQUAL RIGHTS (1893)

“They have watered the soil with their tears and enriched it with their blood, and tilled it with their hard hands during two centuries.” Another example comes from his speech given in Louisville, Kentucky, on 25 September 1883, in which he argued that blacks had a right to call America their home: “Having watered your soil with our tears, enriched it with our blood, performed its roughest labor in time of peace.” While this particular expression was common in many of Douglass’s speeches, no antecedent can be located. Frederick Douglass, “The Free Negro’s Place Is in America,” in Frederick Douglass; Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago, 1999), 177; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:505, 4:87. 12. While the term “king cotton” was widely used in antebellum America, it was most likely first publicly suggested by David Christy in his 1855 book Cotton Is King. In the book, he discusses how even after condemnation from antislavery and religious leaders, slavery was flourishing in the South. He claimed that even though such figures criticized slaveholders, “they made no scruples of using products of Slave labor,” which left them “without any moral power over the consciences of others.” He argued that even after thirty years of antislavery agitation, most Americans in the 1850s accepted the products of slavery, which meant that “cotton is king, and his enemies are vanquished.” The idea of “king cotton” was perpetuated by South Carolina senator James H. Hammond in his 4 March 1858 speech, delivered in the Senate. Arguing for the South’s social and economic strength, he defiantly declared, “You dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares make war on it. Cotton is King.” David Christy, Cotton Is King: or the Culture of Cotton, and Its Relation to Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce (Cincinnati, 1855), 10–11; Congressional Globe, 35th Cong., 1st sess., 961; Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), 346; Mason I. Lowance, ed., A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America, 1776–1865 (Princeton, N.J., 2003), 141–42.

HOW TO SECURE EQUAL RIGHTS (1893) Cleveland Gazette, 18 March 1893; Baltimore Afro-American, 29 April 1893.

Beginning in the 1880s, there was international interest in hosting a world’s fair to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s first expedition. It wasn’t until 1890, though, when Congress endorsed the enterprise and accepted Chicago’s bid to host the fair—officially christened the World’s Columbian Exposition, but also known as the Chicago World’s Fair and the “White City”—that planning began in earnest. The 208-member Board of National Commissioners, composed of leading (male) citizens representing every state and territory of the United States, was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison to organize the exposition, which was scheduled to run from 1 May through 30 October 1893. At the same time, the separate Board of Lady Managers was also appointed. Much to the outrage and disappointment of blacks across the country, not a single African American was ap-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 590

9/1/21 4:17 PM

590

HOW TO SECURE EQUAL RIGHTS (1893)

“They have watered the soil with their tears and enriched it with their blood, and tilled it with their hard hands during two centuries.” Another example comes from his speech given in Louisville, Kentucky, on 25 September 1883, in which he argued that blacks had a right to call America their home: “Having watered your soil with our tears, enriched it with our blood, performed its roughest labor in time of peace.” While this particular expression was common in many of Douglass’s speeches, no antecedent can be located. Frederick Douglass, “The Free Negro’s Place Is in America,” in Frederick Douglass; Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago, 1999), 177; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:505, 4:87. 12. While the term “king cotton” was widely used in antebellum America, it was most likely first publicly suggested by David Christy in his 1855 book Cotton Is King. In the book, he discusses how even after condemnation from antislavery and religious leaders, slavery was flourishing in the South. He claimed that even though such figures criticized slaveholders, “they made no scruples of using products of Slave labor,” which left them “without any moral power over the consciences of others.” He argued that even after thirty years of antislavery agitation, most Americans in the 1850s accepted the products of slavery, which meant that “cotton is king, and his enemies are vanquished.” The idea of “king cotton” was perpetuated by South Carolina senator James H. Hammond in his 4 March 1858 speech, delivered in the Senate. Arguing for the South’s social and economic strength, he defiantly declared, “You dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares make war on it. Cotton is King.” David Christy, Cotton Is King: or the Culture of Cotton, and Its Relation to Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce (Cincinnati, 1855), 10–11; Congressional Globe, 35th Cong., 1st sess., 961; Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), 346; Mason I. Lowance, ed., A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America, 1776–1865 (Princeton, N.J., 2003), 141–42.

HOW TO SECURE EQUAL RIGHTS (1893) Cleveland Gazette, 18 March 1893; Baltimore Afro-American, 29 April 1893.

Beginning in the 1880s, there was international interest in hosting a world’s fair to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s first expedition. It wasn’t until 1890, though, when Congress endorsed the enterprise and accepted Chicago’s bid to host the fair—officially christened the World’s Columbian Exposition, but also known as the Chicago World’s Fair and the “White City”—that planning began in earnest. The 208-member Board of National Commissioners, composed of leading (male) citizens representing every state and territory of the United States, was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison to organize the exposition, which was scheduled to run from 1 May through 30 October 1893. At the same time, the separate Board of Lady Managers was also appointed. Much to the outrage and disappointment of blacks across the country, not a single African American was ap-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 590

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HOW TO SECURE EQUAL RIGHTS (1893)

591

pointed to either of those bodies. Over the next three years, while invitations to participate in the exhibition were extended around the world, African Americans’ requests for permission to exhibit were repeatedly denied. This refusal was particularly galling to black leaders such as Douglass, who viewed the exposition as an ideal platform to highlight and celebrate the achievements of African Americans since the abolition of slavery. Douglass eventually abandoned all hope of the fair’s organizers allowing African Americans any form of meaningful participation in the exposition. In March 1893, he joined the antilynching crusader Ida B. Wells in issuing a call in the national black press for donations to fund the publication of a pamphlet that would both acknowledge the achievements of African Americans and explain their exclusion from the exposition. The appeal by Douglass and Wells set off a debate among African Americans about their role in the exposition. Representative of the support given to the proposal was an editorial in the Topeka Call that declared the forthcoming pamphlet an effective rebuttal to “the lying and malicious reports circulated to the detriment of the Negro.” The Call’s editor encouraged his readers to “send something to Hon. Frederick Douglass to aid in this noble work.” Topeka (Kans.) Call, 2 April 1893; Anna R. Paddon and Sally Turner, “African Americans and the World’s Columbian Exposition,” Illinois Historical Journal, 88:19–36 (Spring 1995).

To the Friends of Equal Rights: Whereas, The 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is soon to be celebrated in Chicago by the World’s Columbian Exposition. Whereas, The absence of colored citizens from participating therein1 will be construed to their disadvantage by the representatives of the civilized world there assembled, Therefore, the undersigned, in obedience to a request that we take under consideration the matter of setting ourselves right before the world, recommend: 1st. That a carefully prepared pamphlet, setting forth the past and present condition of our people and their relation to American civilization, be printed in English, French, German and Spanish.2

Y7870-Douglass.indb 591

9/1/21 4:17 PM

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

592

2nd. That this pamphlet be distributed free during all the months of the World’s Columbian exposition. For this purpose, liberal contributions are solicited from all who approve the objects herein set forth. As no one has been authorized to hold this money or appointed to do this printing, we ask the race newspapers, that approve the plan, to name both. We also ask these mouthpieces of the race to keep this address standing in their columns and open a subscription list for the same. This money, until the people otherwise decree, will be forwarded to Frederick Douglass, Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D. C., until May 1st. Respectfully submitted, FREDERICK DOUG LASS, IDA B. WELLS. 1. African Americans were not asked to participate in the planning of the exposition, and all exhibits proposed by black groups and individuals had to be approved by all-white screening committees, which routinely rejected them out of hand. In addition, the selection committees approved numerous exhibits designed to display what the exposition organizers characterized as depictions of “primitive peoples,” but which African Americans regarded as blatantly demeaning and stereotypical portrayals of African Americans as uneducated savages. Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irving Garland Penn, and Ferdinand L. Barnett, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, ed. Robert W. Rydell (1893; Urbana, Ill., 1999), xiii–xv. 2. In addition to writing the pamphlet’s introduction, Douglass contributed $50 toward its publication. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 733–34.

THE REASON WHY THE COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION: INTRODUCTION (1893) Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Barnett, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American Contribution to Columbian Literature (Chicago, 1893), 2–12. Other texts in Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 16, frames 500–501, 583–635, reel 21, frame 15, FD Papers, DLC.

The fund-raising undertaken by Douglass and Ida B. Wells brought in enough money to pay for the publication of twenty thousand copies of The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American Contribution to Columbian Literature. Rushed into print in late August 1893 and distributed for free, it was designed for an in-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 592

9/1/21 4:17 PM

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

592

2nd. That this pamphlet be distributed free during all the months of the World’s Columbian exposition. For this purpose, liberal contributions are solicited from all who approve the objects herein set forth. As no one has been authorized to hold this money or appointed to do this printing, we ask the race newspapers, that approve the plan, to name both. We also ask these mouthpieces of the race to keep this address standing in their columns and open a subscription list for the same. This money, until the people otherwise decree, will be forwarded to Frederick Douglass, Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D. C., until May 1st. Respectfully submitted, FREDERICK DOUG LASS, IDA B. WELLS. 1. African Americans were not asked to participate in the planning of the exposition, and all exhibits proposed by black groups and individuals had to be approved by all-white screening committees, which routinely rejected them out of hand. In addition, the selection committees approved numerous exhibits designed to display what the exposition organizers characterized as depictions of “primitive peoples,” but which African Americans regarded as blatantly demeaning and stereotypical portrayals of African Americans as uneducated savages. Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irving Garland Penn, and Ferdinand L. Barnett, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, ed. Robert W. Rydell (1893; Urbana, Ill., 1999), xiii–xv. 2. In addition to writing the pamphlet’s introduction, Douglass contributed $50 toward its publication. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 733–34.

THE REASON WHY THE COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION: INTRODUCTION (1893) Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Barnett, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American Contribution to Columbian Literature (Chicago, 1893), 2–12. Other texts in Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 16, frames 500–501, 583–635, reel 21, frame 15, FD Papers, DLC.

The fund-raising undertaken by Douglass and Ida B. Wells brought in enough money to pay for the publication of twenty thousand copies of The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American Contribution to Columbian Literature. Rushed into print in late August 1893 and distributed for free, it was designed for an in-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 592

9/1/21 4:17 PM

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

593

ternational audience, with translations in English, French, German, and Spanish. The pamphlet included not only the following introduction, but also pieces by Ida B. Wells, her future husband Ferdinand L. Barnett, and I. Garland Penn. The pamphlet was largely ignored by the white press and received, at best, a mixed response in the African American community, so it is unclear how much impact it had on the twenty million people who visited the World’s Columbian Exposition. Yet it remains a forceful indictment of the increasing racism faced by African Americans at the end of the nineteenth century. Rudwick and Meier, “Black Man,” 354–61 (1965); Paddon and Turner, “African Americans and the World’s Columbian Exposition”; “World’s Columbian Exposition,” Encyclopedia of Chicago (online).

The colored people of America are not indifferent to the good opinion of the world, and we have made every effort to improve our first years of freedom and citizenship. We earnestly desired to show some results of our first thirty years of acknowledged manhood and womanhood. Wherein we have failed, it has been not our fault, but our misfortune, and it is sincerely hoped that this brief story, not only of our successes, but of trials and failures, our hopes and disappointments will relieve us of the charge of indifference and indolence. We have deemed it only a duty to ourselves, to make plain what might otherwise be misunderstood and misconstrued concerning us. To do this we must begin with slavery. The duty undertaken is far from a welcome one. It involves the necessity of plain speaking of wrongs and outrages endured, and of rights withheld, and withheld in flagrant contradiction to boasted American Republican liberty and civilization. It is always more agreeable to speak well of one’s country and its institutions than to speak otherwise; to tell of their good qualities rather than of their evil ones. There are many good things concerning our country and countrymen of which we would be glad to tell in this pamphlet, if we could do so, and at the same time tell the truth. We would like for instance to tell our visitors that the moral progress of the American people has kept even pace with their enterprise and their material civilization; that practice by the ruling class has gone on hand in hand with American professions; that two hundred and sixty years of progress and enlightenment have banished barbarism and race hate from the United States;1 that the old things of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 593

9/1/21 4:17 PM

594

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

slavery have entirely passed away, and that all things pertaining to the colored people have become new; that American liberty is now the undisputed possession of all the American people; that American law is now the shield alike of black and white; that the spirit of slavery and class domination has no longer any lurking place in any part of this country; that the statement of human rights contained in its glorious Declaration of Independence, including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not an empty boast nor a mere rhetorical flourish, but a soberly and honestly accepted truth, to be carried out in good faith; that the American Church and clergy, as a whole, stand for the sentiment of universal human brotherhood and that its Christianity is without partiality and without hypocrisy; that the souls of Negroes are held to be as precious in the sight of God, as are the souls of white men: that duty to the heathen at home is as fully recognized and as sacredly discharged as is duty to the heathen abroad; that no man on account of his color, race or condition, is deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; that mobs are not allowed to supercede courts of law or usurp the place of government; that here Negroes are not tortured, shot, hanged or burned to death, merely on suspicion of crime and without ever seeing a judge, a jury or advocate; that the American Government is in reality a Government of the people, by the people and for the people,2 and for all the people; that the National Government is not a rope of sand,3 but has both the power and the disposition to protect the lives and liberties of American citizens of whatever color, at home, not less than abroad; that it will send its men-of-war to chastise the murder of its citizens in New Orleans or in any other part of the south, as readily as for the same purpose it will send them to Chili, Hayti, or San Domingo;4 that our national sovereignty, in its rights to protect the lives of American citizens is ample and superior to any right or power possessed by the individual states; that the people of the United States are a nation in fact as well as in name; that in time of peace as in time of war, allegiance to the nation is held to be superior to any fancied allegiance to individual states; that allegiance and protection are here held to be reciprocal; that there is on the statute books of the nation no law for the protection of personal or political rights, which the nation may not or cannot enforce, with or without the consent of individual states; that this World’s Columbian Exposition, with its splendid display of wealth and power, its triumphs of art and its multitudinous architectural and other attractions, is a fair indication of the elevated and liberal sentiment of the American people, and that to the colored people of America, morally speaking, the World’s Fair now in progress, is not a whited sepulcher.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 594

9/1/21 4:17 PM

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

595

All this, and more, we would gladly say of American laws, manners, customs and Christianity. But unhappily, nothing of all this can be said, without qualification and without flagrant disregard of the truth. The explanation is this: We have long had in this country, a system of iniquity which possessed the power of blinding the moral perception, stifling the voice of conscience, blunting all human sensibilities and perverting the plainest teaching of the religion we have here professed, a system which John Wesley truly characterized as the sum of all villanies,5 and one in view of which Thomas Jefferson, himself a slaveholder, said he “trembled for his country” when he reflected “that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever.”6 That system was American slavery. Though it is now gone, its asserted spirit remains. The writer of the initial chapter of this pamphlet, having himself been a slave, knows the slave system both on the inside and outside. Having studied its effects not only upon the slave and upon the master, but also upon the people and institutions by which it has been surrounded, he may therefore, without presumption, assume to bear witness to its baneful influence upon all concerned, and especially to its malign agency in explaining the present condition of the colored people of the United States, who were its victims; and to the sentiment held toward them both by the people who held them in slavery, and the people of the country who tolerated and permitted their enslavement, and the bearing it has upon the relation which we the colored people sustain to the World’s Fair. What the legal and actual condition of the colored people was previous to emancipation is easily told. It should be remembered by all who would entertain just views and arrive at a fair estimate of our character, our attainments and our worth in the scale of civilization, that prior to the slaver-holder’s rebellion thirty years ago,7 our legal condition was simply that of dumb brutes. We were classed as goods and chattels, and numbered on our master’s ledgers with horses, sheep and swine. We were subject to barter and sale, and could be bequeathed and inherited by will, like real estate or any other property. In the language of the law: A slave was one in the power of his master to whom he belonged. He could acquire nothing, have nothing, own nothing, that did not belong to his master. His time and talents, his mind and muscle, his body and soul, were the property of the master. He, with all that could be predicated of him as a human being, was simply the property of his master. He was a marketable commodity. His money value was regulated like any other article; it was increased or diminished according to his perfections or inperfections as a beast of burden.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 595

9/1/21 4:17 PM

596

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

Chief Justice Taney truly described the condition of our people when he said in the infamous Dred Scott decision, that they were supposed to have no rights which white men were bound to respect.8 White men could shoot, hang, burn, whip and starve them to death with impunity. They were made to feel themselves as outside the pale of all civil and political institutions. The master’s power over them was complete and absolute. They could decide no question of pursuit or condition for themselves. Their children had no parents, their mothers had no husbands and there was no marriage in a legal sense. But I need not elaborate the legal and practical definition of slavery. What I have aimed to do, has not only been to show the moral depths, darkness and destitution from which we are still emerging, but to explain the grounds of the prejudice, hate and contempt in which we are still held by the people, who for more than two hundred years doomed us to this cruel and degrading condition. So when it is asked why we are excluded from the World’s Columbian Exposition, the answer is Slavery. Outrages upon the Negro in this country will be narrated in these pages. They will seem too shocking for belief. This doubt is creditable to human nature, and yet in view of the education and training of those who inflict the wrongs complained of, and the past condition of those upon whom they were inflicted as already described, such outrages are not only credible but entirely consistent and logical. Why should not these outrages be inflicted? The life of a Negro slave was never held sacred in the estimation of the people of that section of the country in the time of slavery, and the abolition of slavery against the will of the enslavers did not render a slave’s life more sacred. Such a one could be branded with hot irons, loaded with chains, and whipped to death with impunity when a slave. It only needed be said that he or she was impudent or insolent to a white man, to excuse or justify the killing of him or her. The people of the south are with few exceptions but slightly improved in their sentiments towards those they once held as slaves. The mass of them are the same to-day that they were in the time of slavery, except perhaps that now they think they can murder with a decided advantage in point of economy. In the time of slavery if a Negro was killed, the owner sustained a loss of property. Now he is not restrained by any fear of such loss. The crime of insolence for which the Negro was formerly killed and for which his killing was justified, is as easily pleaded in excuse now, as it was in the old time and what is worse, it is sufficient to make the charge

Y7870-Douglass.indb 596

9/1/21 4:17 PM

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

597

of insolence to provoke the knife or bullet. This done, it is only necessary to say in the newspapers, that this dead Negro was impudent and about to raise an insurrection and kill all the white people, or that a white woman was insulted by a Negro, to lull the conscience of the north into indifference and reconcile its people to such murder. No proof of guilt is required. It is enough to accuse, to condemn and punish the accused with death. When he is dead and silent, and the murderer is alive and at large, he has it all his own way. He can tell any story he may please and will be believed. The popular ear is open to him, and his justification is sure. At the bar of public opinion in this country all presumptions are against the Negro accused of crime. The crime to which the Negro is now said to be so generally and specially addicted, is one of which he has been heretofore, seldom accused or supposed to be guilty. The importance of this fact cannot be over estimated. He was formerly accused of petty thefts, called a chicken thief and the like, but seldom or never was he accused of the atrocious crime of feloniously assaulting white women. If we may believe his accusers this is a new development. In slaveholding times no one heard of any such crime by a Negro. During all the war, when there was the fullest and safest opportunity for such assaults, nobody ever heard of such being made by him. Thousands of white women were left for years in charge of Negroes, while their fathers, brothers and husbands were absent fighting the battles of the rebellion; yet there was no assault upon such women by Negroes, and no accusation of such assault. It is only since the Negro has become a citizen and a voter that this charge has been made. It has come along with the pretended and baseless fear of Negro supremacy. It is an effort to divest the Negro of his friends by giving him a revolting and hateful reputation. Those who do this would make the world believe that freedom has changed the whole character of the Negro, and made of him a moral monster. This is a conclusion revolting alike to common sense and common experience. Besides there is good reason to suspect a political motive for the charge. A motive other than the one they would have the world believe. It comes in close connection with the effort now being made to disfranchise the colored man.9 It comes from men who regard it innocent to lie, and who are unworthy of belief where the Negro is concerned. It comes from men who count it no crime to falsify the returns of the ballot box and cheat the Negro of his lawful vote. It comes from those who would smooth the way for the Negro’s disfranchisement in clear defiance of the constitution they have sworn to support—men who are perjured before God and man.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 597

9/1/21 4:17 PM

598

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

We do not deny that there are bad Negroes in this country capable of committing this, or any other crime that other men can or do commit. There are bad black men as there are bad white men, south, north and everywhere else, but when such criminals, or alleged criminals are found, we demand that their guilt shall be established by due course of law. When this will be done, the voice of the colored people everywhere will then be “Let no guilty man escape.” The man in the South who says he is for Lynch Law because he honestly believes that the courts of that section are likely too merciful to the Negro charged with this crime, either does not know the South, or is fit for prison or an insane asylum. Not less absurd is the pretense of these law breakers that the resort to Lynch Law is made because they do no wish the shocking details of the crime made known. Instead of a jury of twelve men to decently try the case, they assemble a mob of five hundred men and boys and circulate the story of the alleged outrage with all its concomitant, disgusting detail. If they desire to give such crimes the widest publicity they could adopt no course better calculated to secure that end than by a resort to lynch law. But this pretended delicacy is manifestly all a sham, and the members of the bloodthirsty mob bent upon murder know it to be such. It may deceive people outside of the sunny south, but not those who know as we do the bold and open defiance of every sentiment of modesty and chastity practiced for centuries on the slave plantations by this same old master class. We know we shall be censured for the publication of this volume. The time for its publication will be thought to be ill chosen. America is just now, as never before, posing before the world as a highly liberal and civilized nation, and in many important respects she has a right to this reputation. She has brought to her shores and given welcome to a greater variety of mankind than were ever assembled in one place since the day of Penticost.10 Japanese, Javanese, Soudanese Chinese, Cingalese, Syrians, Persians, Tunisians, Algerians, Egyptians, East Indians, Laplanders, Esquimoux, and as if to shame the Negro, the Dahomians are also here to exhibit the Negro as a repulsive savage. It must be admitted that, to outward seeming, the colored people of the United States have lost ground and have met with increased and galling resistance since the war of the rebellion. It is well to understand this phase of the situation. Considering the important services rendered by them in suppressing the late rebellion and the saving of the Union, they were for a time generally regarded with a sentiment of gratitude by their loyal white fellow citizens. This sentiment however, very naturally be-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 598

9/1/21 4:17 PM

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

599

came weaker as, in the course of events, those services were retired from view and the memory of them became dimmed by time and also by the restoration of friendship between the north and the south. Thus, what the colored people gained by the war they have partly lost by peace. Military necessity had much to do with requiring their services during the war, and their ready and favorable response to that requirement was so simple, generous and patriotic, that the loyal states readily adopted important amendments to the constitution in their favor. They accorded them freedom and endowed them with citizenship and the right to vote and the right to be voted for. These rights are now a part of the organic law of the land, and as such, stand to-day on the national statute book. But the spirit and purpose of these have been in a measure defeated by state legislation and by judicial decisions. It has nevertheless been found impossible to defeat them entirely and to relegate colored citizens to their former condition. They are still free. The ground held by them to-day is vastly in advance of that they occupied before the war, and it may be safely predicted that they will not only hold this ground, but that they will regain in the end much of that which they seem to have lost in the reaction. As to the increased resistance met with by them of late, let us use a little philosophy. It is easy to account in a hopeful way for this reaction and even to regard it as a favorable symptom. It is a proof that the Negro is not standing still. He is not dead, but alive and active. He is not drifting with the current, but manfully resisting it and fighting his way to better conditions than those of the past, and better than those which popular opinion prescribes for him. He is not contented with his surroundings, but nobly dares to break away from them and hew out a way of safety and happiness for himself in defiance of all opposing forces. A ship rotting at anchor meets with no resistance, but when she sets sail on the sea, she has to buffet opposing billows. The enemies of the Negro see that he is making progress and they naturally wish to stop him and keep him in just what they consider his proper place. They have said to him “you are a poor Negro, be poor still,” and “you are an ignorant Negro, be ignorant still and we will not antagonize you or hurt you.” But the Negro has said a decided no to all this, and is now by industry, economy and education wisely raising himself to conditions of civilization and comparative well being beyond anything formerly thought possible for him. Hence, a new determination is born to keep him down. There is nothing strange or alarming about this. Such aspirations as his when cherished by the lowly are always resented by those who have

Y7870-Douglass.indb 599

9/1/21 4:17 PM

600

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

already reached the top. They who aspire to higher grades than those fixed for them by society are scouted and scorned as upstarts for their presumptions. In their passage from an humble to a higher position, the white man in some measure, goes through the same ordeal. This is in accordance with the nature of things. It is simply an incident of a transitional condition. It is not the fault of the Negro, but the weakness, we might say the depravity, of human nature. Society resents the pretentions of those it considers upstarts. The new comers always have to go through with this sort of resistance. The old and established are ever adverse to the new and aspiring. But the upstarts of to-day are the elite of tomorrow. There is no stopping any people from earnestly endeavoring to rise. Resistance ceases when the prosperity of the rising class becomes pronounced and permanent. The Negro is just now under the operation of this law of society. If he were white as the driven snow, and had been enslaved as we have been he would have to submit to this same law in his progress upward. What the Negro has to do then, is to cultivate a courageous and cheerful spirit, use philosophy and exercise patience. He must embrace every avenue open to him for the acquisition of wealth. He must educate his children and build up a character for industry, economy, intelligence and virtue. Next to victory is the glory and happiness of manfully contending for it. Therefore, contend! contend! That we should have to contend and strive for what is freely conceded to other citizens without effort or demand may indeed be a hardship, but there is compensation here as elsewhere. Contest is itself enobling. A life devoid of purpose and earnest effort, is a worthless life. Conflict is better than stagnation. It is bad to be a slave, but worse to be a willing and contented slave. We are men and our aim is perfect manhood, to be men among men. Our situation demands faith in ourselves, faith in the power of truth, faith in work and faith in the influence of manly character. Let the truth be told, let the light be turned on ignorance and prejudice, let lawless violence and murder be exposed. The Americans are a great and magnanimous people and this great exposition adds greatly to their honor and renown, but in the pride of their success they have cause for repentance as well as complaisance, and for shame as well as for glory, and hence we send forth this volume to be read of all men. 1. Douglass’s calculation here appears imprecise. In the entry “American Slavery” that he prepared for the 1894 American edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Douglass cited several dates

Y7870-Douglass.indb 600

9/1/21 4:17 PM

COLORED AMERICAN IS NOT IN THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

601

in the early seventeenth century for the beginning of slavery in England’s North American colonies. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. (Philadelphia, 1894), 22:902–10; Speech, Article, and Book File, 1846–94 and Undated, reel 20, frames 1–23, FD Papers, DLC. 2. Douglass slightly misquotes Abraham Lincoln’s 20 November 1863 Gettysburg Address. Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 7:23. 3. This expression for something lacking cohesion dates back at least as far as the sixteenth century, when it appears in the private journal of Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon, Sir Francis Bacon’s Journals: The Rarest of Princes, ed. Lochithea (New York, 2007), 366. 4. The United States intervened in a civil war in Chile in the early 1890s, creating strong antiAmerican feelings in that nation. An international crisis occurred when two American sailors from the U.S.S. Baltimore were killed while on shore leave by a mob in Valparaiso, Chile, in July 1891. Shortly after, President Benjamin Harrison sent a message to Congress threatening military retaliation, but Chile ultimately apologized and compensated the United States with a $75,000 indemnification. With the use of its naval power, the United States frequently influenced political developments in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. U.S. naval forces materially aided the supporters of Louis Mondestin Florvil Hyppolite in defeating the followers of François Denys Légitime in a bloody civil war in the late 1880s. The Harrison administration dispatched the Atlantic fleet to Haitian waters in an attempt to coerce Hyppolite to lease the United States Môle-Saint-Nicolas in 1891. After U.S. efforts to annex the Dominican Republic during the Grant administration, American involvement in that nation’s politics was less overt. The United States extended protectorates over those two Caribbean nations during Woodrow Wilson’s administration. Joyce S. Goldberg, The Baltimore Affair (Lincoln, Neb., 1986), 3–13, 32–42, 107–08, 124–32; Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 244, 301–02, 309–20; Rotberg, Haiti, 96, 98–99; Wiarda and Kryzanek, Dominican Republic, 29–33. 5. John Wesley (1703–91), English clergyman, evangelist, and missionary, was the driving force behind the emergence of modern Methodism. He described the slave trade as “that execrable sum of all villainies.” John Wesley, The Works of Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 14 vols. (London, 1872), 3:453. 6. Douglass paraphrases Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785). Jefferson, Works of Thomas Jefferson, 4:83. 7. An allusion to the U.S. Civil War (1861–65). 8. A Missouri slave named Dred Scott (c. 1795–1858) was taken by his master in the 1830s into Illinois and Wisconsin, where slavery had been prohibited by either the Northwest Ordinance or the Missouri Compromise. In 1846, Scott sued for his liberty, arguing that his four-year stay on free soil had given him freedom. When the Missouri Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling in favor of Scott, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. After much bargaining among the justices and controversial outside meddling by president-elect James Buchanan, the court handed down a complicated decision on 6 March 1857. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, held that: as a black, Scott was not a citizen and therefore not entitled to sue in a federal court; Scott’s previous residence in free territory had not made him free upon his return to Missouri, since his status was determined by the laws of the state in which he resided when the case was raised; and the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, since it violated the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against Congress’s depriving persons of their property without the due process of law. Douglass specifically quotes Taney’s contention that at the time the Constitution was written, blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, 19 Howard 393 (1857), 407; Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York, 1978), 242–47, 252–53, 261–65, 279–80, 305–24; Carl B. Swisher, Roger B. Taney (1935; Hamden, Conn., 1961), 35, 121–26, 139–40, 158–59, 234, 317; ACAB, 6:28–31; DAB, 18:289–94; DANB, 548–49. 9. The great mass of Southern African Americans had been kept from voting by the violence that accompanied the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Beginning in the l880s, racism and partisanship led white Democrats to amend state constitutions or pass legislation that imposed literacy tests and poll taxes in Southern states, which deprived hundreds of thousands of black males of their voting rights. Williamson, Rage for Order, 153–62.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 601

9/1/21 4:17 PM

602

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

10. The Greek word “Pentecost” refers to the Jewish Feast of Weeks, the second great feast in Judaism, which occurs fifty days after the celebration of Passover. For Christians, Pentecost marks the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, causing them to speak in tongues. Acts 2; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 5:222.

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK (1895) “Douglass, Frederick,” National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1891), 2:309–10.

Of the three entries that Douglass prepared for encyclopedias in the 1890s, perhaps none is more interesting in subject than the autobiographical sketch he prepared for the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. A letter from one of the encyclopedia’s editors, George R. Prowell, recounts that it had taken a visit to Cedar Hill to wring a commitment from Douglass to prepare a fifteen-hundred-word entry on his life. Prowell stated later, in a letter to Douglass, that the encyclopedia sought “to have the sketches of notable living men come from official sources and be recognized as accurate.” Douglass delayed preparing the entry, and Prowell had to warn Douglass, on 4 September 1891, that it was needed by the first of the following month, when the editor would visit Washington to pick up the copy. Written in the third person, this entry was planned to appear in the original 1891 edition of the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography in its second volume, which contained sketches of many other antebellum reformers and abolitionists. Publication of the encyclopedia was suspended after the printing of the first volume, however, and the volume with Douglass’s entry was not released until 1895. It was reprinted in later editions with the notable addition of a new concluding sentence reporting Douglass’s death in Washington, D.C., on 22 February 1895. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography was published by a New York City–based firm headed by James Terry White and would continue to add new volumes until the 1980s. George R. Prowell to Douglass, 4 September 1891, General Correspondence File, reel 6, frames 234–35, FD Papers, DLC.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 602

9/1/21 4:17 PM

602

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

10. The Greek word “Pentecost” refers to the Jewish Feast of Weeks, the second great feast in Judaism, which occurs fifty days after the celebration of Passover. For Christians, Pentecost marks the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, causing them to speak in tongues. Acts 2; Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 5:222.

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK (1895) “Douglass, Frederick,” National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1891), 2:309–10.

Of the three entries that Douglass prepared for encyclopedias in the 1890s, perhaps none is more interesting in subject than the autobiographical sketch he prepared for the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. A letter from one of the encyclopedia’s editors, George R. Prowell, recounts that it had taken a visit to Cedar Hill to wring a commitment from Douglass to prepare a fifteen-hundred-word entry on his life. Prowell stated later, in a letter to Douglass, that the encyclopedia sought “to have the sketches of notable living men come from official sources and be recognized as accurate.” Douglass delayed preparing the entry, and Prowell had to warn Douglass, on 4 September 1891, that it was needed by the first of the following month, when the editor would visit Washington to pick up the copy. Written in the third person, this entry was planned to appear in the original 1891 edition of the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography in its second volume, which contained sketches of many other antebellum reformers and abolitionists. Publication of the encyclopedia was suspended after the printing of the first volume, however, and the volume with Douglass’s entry was not released until 1895. It was reprinted in later editions with the notable addition of a new concluding sentence reporting Douglass’s death in Washington, D.C., on 22 February 1895. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography was published by a New York City–based firm headed by James Terry White and would continue to add new volumes until the 1980s. George R. Prowell to Douglass, 4 September 1891, General Correspondence File, reel 6, frames 234–35, FD Papers, DLC.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 602

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

603

Douglass, Frederick, orator and U. S. minister to Hayti,1 was born a slave to Capt. Aaron Anthony, chief agent of the estate of Col. Edward Lloyd,2 in Talbot county, Md.3 His father was of white and his mother4 of brown complexion. The exact date of his birth is unknown,5 but from a remark in his hearing by the daughter of Capt. Anthony,6 he thinks it was in February, 1817. Separated from his mother in infancy he was placed with his grandmother7 to be reared with other slave children, till five or six years old, when he was removed from her log-cabin near Hillsborough,8 to the home of Capt. Anthony on the Lloyd estate in the county of his birth. Here he remained until he was eight years old, seeing a great deal during his stay of the hardships and cruelties incident to the condition of slavery. Much of the harsh treatment, it seems, was due to the bad temper of the colored woman who had charge of him.9 Lucretia Auld, the daughter of his master, the wife of Capt. Thomas Auld,10 to whom he afterward by inheritance belonged, was very kind to him and often defended him from the brutality of the woman. By her he was transferred from the home of her father to Baltimore, to take care of Thomas, the son of Hugh Auld, brother to her husband.11 The change was greatly to his advantage, inasmuch as it was a change from hunger to plenty, from brutality to refinement, and from misery to comfort. His new mistress, Sophia Auld,12 was kind to him and taught him the alphabet and to spell, though without the knowledge of her husband, who, when it became known to him, promptly forebade it. He told her that a knowledge of letters would ruin a slave and make him discontented. Young as Douglass was, he already had dreams of being free some day, and the prohibition imposed upon his teacher only stimulated his resolution to learn to read, in every way open to him. Thereafter his reading lessons were taken from little school-boys in the street and out-of-the-way places where he could not be interfered with or observed. In fact the street became his school and the pavements and fences in the neighborhood his copy-books and blackboards. When eleven years old he was put to work in his master’s shipyard13 to beat and spin oakum, to keep fires under the pitch boiler and turn the grindstone on which the carpenters sharpened their tools. There he practiced writing by imitating letters on different parts of the ships in process of building. His progress in his studies was so great as to be a surprise to himself as well as to others about him, for in that day there seemed to be a doubt of the ability of one of African descent to learn, even under favorable conditions. But this progress soon received a formidable check. In 1833 he was taken

Y7870-Douglass.indb 603

9/1/21 4:17 PM

604

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

from his easy home in Baltimore, and placed on the farm of Edward Covey, where he was subjected for a time to hard labor, and often to brutal chastisement, so that, as he expresses it, his young human ambition was nearly destroyed, his desire to read and study deserted him, food and rest became his only wants, and he felt darkness closing over his mind and heart. This broken condition did not continue long. Roused to desperation by cruel treatment, he refused to submit to chastisement, and successfully resisted the attempt of Covey to flog him. This daring resistance on his part, committed in a moment of intense feeling and without calculating consequences, finally became a settled disposition and purpose. Success made him fearless and he determined to repeat his conduct should another attempt be made upon him. No further attempt was made, and he often said afterward, “He is whipped oftenest who is whipped easiest.”14 In 1836, after his experience at Covey’s, he planned an escape from slavery for himself and three others, but the plot was discovered before it could be carried out, and he was arrested and put in prison and exposed for sale to the slave-traders.15 For some reason his master refused to sell him, and sent him again to his brother Hugh in Baltimore, to work in the shipyard, where he learned to caulk vessels, working at the trade two years and six months. From here he escaped from slavery on Sept. 2, 1838, was married to Anna Murray,16 a free woman, and went to New Bedford, Mass. Not being allowed, on account of his color, to work at his trade, he went to work as a common laborer and stevedore in fitting out whaling ships for sea.17 During his stay in New Bedford he often spoke in public meetings where questions affecting the colored race were being discussed.18 His speeches attracted the attention of the abolitionists of that city, and in August, 1841, he was persuaded to devote his time and talents to the cause of his people. He was employed successively by the Massachusetts antislavery society, the Rhode Island anti-slavery society, and the American anti-slavery society,19 and in 1843 he was sent, with several other speakers, by the New England anti-slavery convention to hold one hundred antislavery conventions,20 beginning in the state of New Hampshire and ending in the state of Indiana. At one of these, in the last-named state, he was set upon by a mob and badly beaten, having his right hand broken in a fight.21 In 1844 he wrote a narrative of his life,22 in which, to remove doubts of his having been a slave, he told his master’s name and residence, thereby exposing himself to the danger of being returned to slavery. To avoid this he went abroad, traveling and lecturing on slavery, in England, Ireland and Scotland until 1847,23 when, having been ransomed by Mrs.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 604

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

605

and Miss Richardson, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, at the price of £150 sterling,24 and being no longer in danger of recapture, he returned to the United States to continue his work for the emancipation of his people. In December, 1847, he began to edit and publish a weekly paper in Rochester, N. Y., called the “North Star,” which was afterward published as “Frederick Douglass’s Paper.” He continued its publication during sixteen years, lecturing in the meantime all over the northern states, until the emancipation proclamation of President Lincoln25 made further agitation unnecessary. In 1859 he was indicted for being concerned in the John Brown raid, and for a time again took refuge in England, but soon returned to use his pen and voice as before against slavery. On the outbreak of the civil war in 1861, he advocated arming the slaves and making the war directly against slavery, and had several interviews with President Lincoln on the subject. He assisted in raising the 54th and 55th colored regiments in Massachusetts, in which two of his sons, Lewis and Charles, were non-commissioned officers.26 At the close of the war he was in much demand as a lyceum lecturer, and in this vocation traveled extensively. At the close of the war he was a prominent advocate for instant and complete enfranchisement of the freedmen of the South, had a notable debate with President Johnson on the subject,27 and during two years edited and published a paper in Washington called the “New National Era.”28 In 1871 he was sent by President Grant29 with the commissioners B.  F. Wade, Dr. Samuel J. Howe, and Andrew D. White, to St. Domingo, to inquire into the condition of that country and the disposition of its people as to annexation to the United States.30 The same year he was appointed a member of the upper house of the territorial government of the District of Columbia.31 In 1872 he was one of the electors-at-large in the state of New York, being selected by the electoral college of that state to take the vote of New York to Washington,32 and in 1877 he was appointed by President Hayes33 U. S. marshal of the District of Columbia. His appointment to this office created a sensation throughout the country, he being the first of his color to whom that high office had been assigned. On the 4th of August, 1882, his first wife, the mother of his five children died, and on the 24th of January, 1884, he was married to Helen Pitts,34 of New York state. In 1881 he was appointed by President Garfield35 to be recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia.36 In 1889 he was given by President Harrison37 the mission to Hayti as minister resident and consul-general, and Chargé d’Affaires to Santo Domingo. He resigned in 1891. At different times during the fifty years of his public life he was elected president of national

Y7870-Douglass.indb 605

9/1/21 4:17 PM

606

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

conventions of colored citizens, notably at Cleveland in 1848, Syracuse in 1866, and at Louisville, Ky., in 1883.38 In politics, until 1856, he was a member of the liberty party.39 Since then he has steadily supported the republican party,40 often taking the stump for its candidates. Few men have spoken oftener, or more effectively, or to a larger number of the American people, than Frederick Douglass. 1. Douglass was appointed U.S. minister plenipotentiary and consul general to Haiti by President Benjamin Harrison in July 1889. He held this position until he resigned on 31 July 1891 in response to the State Department’s dishonorable treatment of himself and the nation of Haiti during negotiations to acquire a naval coaling station at Môle-St.-Nicolas. Douglass, “Haiti and the United States”; Millery Polyné, “Expansion Now! Haiti, ‘Santo Domingo,’ and Frederick Douglass at the Intersection of U.S. and Caribbean Pan-Africanism,” Caribbean Studies, 34:3–45 (July–December 2006); EAAH, 1:136, 415. 2. Edward Lloyd V (1779–1834) of Wye House was the scion of Talbot County’s first family. One of the state’s largest landowners and slave owners, he was also Maryland’s most successful wheat grower and cattle raiser. As a charter member of the Maryland Agricultural Society, a founder of at least two banks, and a speculator in coal lands, he became the wealthiest of a long line of Lloyds that reached back to colonial Maryland. His huge slaveholdings increased from 420 in 1810 to 545 in 1830. An eager student of politics as an adolescent and a frequent auditor of political debates at the Annapolis State House, Lloyd became a Jeffersonian Republican delegate to the state legislature as soon as he reached the age of majority in 1800. The following year, he was active in securing passage of a bill removing all restrictions on white male suffrage. From 1806 to 1808 he was a U.S. congressman, voting in 1807 against a bill to end the African slave trade. For the next two years he was governor of Maryland, and from 1811 to 1816 he returned to the state legislature. In 1819, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, from which he resigned in 1826 to return to the Maryland senate, of which he was president until 1831. Lloyd married Sally Scott Murray on 30 November 1797 and had six children with her. Settled by the first Edward Lloyd in 1658, Wye House, the home plantation of the Lloyds, was situated on a peninsula formed by the Wye River on the north and the Miles River on the south. By 1790, Edward Lloyd IV, father of Edward Lloyd V, owned 11,884 acres in the region. The mansion house, overlooking Lloyd’s Cove on the Wye River, was built in 1784. Aaron Anthony and his family lived in the “Captain’s House,” a brick outbuilding near the mansion. Douglass lived in Anthony’s home at Wye House from August 1824 to March 1826. 1810 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 342; Tilghman, History of Talbot County, 1:184–210; H[enry] Chandlee Forman, Old Buildings, Gardens, and Furniture in Tidewater Maryland (Cambridge, Md., 1967), 51–80; Hulbert Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore: Seventeen Maryland Rivers (New York, 1944), 269–93; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 26, 30, 37–40, 48–54, 57, 74, 82, 199; BDUSC (online). 3. Talbot County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, was an important tobacco-growing region from colonial times. In 1788, the state legislature designated Easton, until then known as Talbot Town, the administrative center of state operations for all nine Eastern Shore counties. Dickson J. Preston and Norman Harrington, Talbot County: A History (Centreville, Md., 1983), 140, 191, 256; Paul Wilstach, Tidewater Maryland (Indianapolis, 1931), 104–05. 4. Douglass’s mother was a Maryland slave named Harriet Bailey (1792–1825). The identity of his father is not certain, but since his skin color was considerably lighter than that of his siblings, Douglass concluded that it was a white man. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 5, 8. 5. As nearly as can be determined, Douglass was born in February 1818. Ledger books kept by his master, Aaron Anthony, contain a table, “My Black People,” with the notation “Frederick Augustus son of Harriott Feby 1818.” Further evidence for the year 1818 is presented in Preston, Young

Y7870-Douglass.indb 606

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

607

Frederick Douglass, 31–34, 218–19nn1–5; Aaron Anthony Ledger B, 1812–26, folder 95, 165, Dodge Collection, MdAA. 6. Lucretia Planner Anthony Auld (1804–27) was the third child and only daughter of Aaron and Ann Catherine Skinner Anthony. In 1823, she married Thomas Auld, a boarder in her father’s household and an employee of Edward Lloyd. Lucretia and her husband subsequently moved to Hillsborough, Maryland, where they opened a store and he served as town postmaster. Following the deaths of her father and her brother Richard Lee, Lucretia and her older brother Andrew inherited their father’s estate. Her portion included the young slave Frederick Douglass. She died in 1827 and was survived by one child, Arianna Amanda Auld. Auld Family Bible (courtesy of Carl G. Auld); McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 27; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 28, 30, 62, 87–88, 223; Preston and Harrington, Talbot County, 191; Emerson B. Roberts, “A Visitation of Western Talbot,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 41:244–45 (September 1946). 7. Betsey Bailey (1774–1849), the maternal grandmother of Frederick Douglass, grew up a slave on the Skinner plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. In 1797, she became the property of Aaron Anthony, who acquired her and several other slaves through his marriage to Ann Skinner. Anthony moved her to his farm on Tuckahoe Creek in Talbot County. She married Isaac Bailey, a free black who earned his living as a sawyer, and lived with him in her cabin. There she bore nine daughters and three sons. She was also a midwife, and Anthony paid her for her services in that area. Upon Anthony’s death in 1826, his son, Andrew Skinner Anthony, inherited Bailey; when Andrew died in 1833, Bailey became the slave of John Planner Anthony. Despite this succession of masters and the death of her husband, she remained in her cabin on the Tuckahoe Creek farm. She lived alone, nearly destitute and going blind. In 1840, Thomas Auld, John Anthony’s uncle, learned of Bailey’s condition and sent for her, caring for her in his Talbot County home until her death. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58–59, MdTCH; Aaron Anthony, Inventory of Negroes, Distribution of Negroes, folders 71 and 77, Aaron Anthony Ledger A, 1790–1818, folder 94, Ledger B, 1812–26, folder 77, 159, 165–68, Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folder 93, 180, all in Dodge Collection, MdAA; Douglass to Thomas Auld, 3 September 1848, 3 September 1849, in NS, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849, reprinted in Lib., 22 September 1848, 14 September 1849; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 8, 16–20, 167. 8. Douglass’s grandmother Betsey Bailey raised him on a farm owned by their master, Aaron Anthony, along the banks of Tuckahoe Creek near Hillsborough, Talbot County, Maryland. Tuckahoe Creek is a tributary of the Choptank River, which forms part of the eastern boundary of Talbot County. “Tuckahoe” is an Algonquin term for a root or a mushroom. Preston and Harrington, Talbot County, 140, 191, 256; Wilstach, Tidewater Maryland, 104–05; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 3, 9–10. 9. Kate Emblem (1789–?) was the daughter of Sarah Emblem, a slave belonging to Aaron Anthony. Kate had seven children and presided for years over Anthony’s kitchen. At the distribution of property following Anthony’s death in 1827, she and her children were awarded to Richard Anthony. After his death a year later, she was transferred to Andrew Anthony. Upon his death in 1833, she was assigned to White Barwick, the new husband of Andrew’s widow, Ann. Aaron Anthony Ledger B, 1812–26, folders 95, 159, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 27, 91, 225. 10. Born in St. Michaels, Maryland, Thomas Auld (1795–1880) was the eldest son of Hugh and Zipporah Auld. Trained as a shipbuilder, Auld supervised the construction of the Lloyds’ sloop, the Sally Lloyd, and subsequently became its captain. In 1823, he met and married Lucretia Anthony while a boarder in the Anthony home. Shortly thereafter, Auld became a storekeeper in Hillsborough, Maryland, and inherited Douglass along with ten other slaves from the estate of Aaron Anthony. He later kept a store in St. Michaels, where he also served as postmaster, before retiring to a nearby farm. The 1850 census listed him as a “farmer” with $8,500 worth of real estate. References to Thomas Auld in Douglass’s Narrative and public speeches are generally uncomplimentary, though Douglass disclaimed any personal hostility toward his former owner. A reconciliation occurred in the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 607

9/1/21 4:17 PM

608

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

post-Reconstruction period when Douglass visited the dying Auld in St. Michaels. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58–59, MdTCH; 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 1169 (free schedule); NASS, 25 November 1845; NS, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849; Baltimore Sun, 19 June 1877; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 342–43; Tilghman, Talbot County, 1:395; Roberts, “Visitation of Western Talbot,” 235–45. 11. Between 1826 and 1833 and again between 1836 and 1838, the young Frederick Douglass lived and worked in the Baltimore household of Hugh Auld (1799–1861), Thomas Auld’s brother. Born in Talbot County, Maryland, Hugh moved to Baltimore as a young man. There he worked as a ship’s carpenter, master shipbuilder, and shipyard foreman, occasionally serving as a magistrate. Before moving to Baltimore, Hugh married Sophia Keithley, and the young Douglass was placed in charge of the care of their first child, Thomas Auld, Jr. (1824–48). Talbot County Records, V.60, 35–36, 30 November 1846, MdTCH (a copy is found on reel 1, frames 637–39, FD Papers, DLC); Hugh Auld Family Genealogical Chart, prepared by Carl G. Auld, Ellicott City, Md., 5 June 1976; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 81, 84–85, 92, 143, 173–75. 12. Sophia Keithley Auld (1797–1880) was born in Talbot County, Maryland, to Richard and Hester Keithley. Her parents were poor, devout Methodists who held to the antislavery teachings of their church. Before marrying Hugh Auld, she worked as a weaver. Soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Baltimore. Between 1826 and 1833 and again from 1836 to 1838, the young slave Frederick Douglass lived and worked in their household. Both Douglass and Sophia Auld retained great affection for each other long after Douglass had established himself in the North. Douglass tried to visit Auld in Baltimore during the Civil War. Years after her death, Auld’s son Benjamin told Douglass that “[his] mother would always speak in the kindest terms of [Douglass], whenever [Douglass’s] name was mentioned.” Benjamin F. Auld to Douglass, 11 September 1891, General Correspondence File, reel 6, frame 240, FD Papers, DLC; Baltimore Sun, 5 July 1880; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 87, 165–66, 168. 13. Since Douglass did not know the precise date of his birth, he is supplying an estimate for when he began to work on the docks of Baltimore’s Fells Point. In his third autobiography, he reported that his chores at Hugh Auld’s and then at the shipyard of John Durgin and Thomas Bailey, where Hugh worked as a foreman, were “to keep fire under the steam-box, and to watch the ship-yard while the carpenters had gone to dinner.” Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:73; Matchett’s Baltimore Director for 1829 (Baltimore, 1829), 94; Matchett’s Baltimore Director for 1831 (Baltimore, 1831), 21; Matchett’s Baltimore Director for 1835–6 (Baltimore, 1836), 12. 14. Douglass used variants of this expression in his second and third autobiographies and in numerous speeches. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:434; 4:187, ser. 2, 2:55, 3:167. 15. Douglass describes an unsuccessful escape attempt by him and four other slaves hired out to William Freeland, a farmer in Talbot County, Maryland. This party had planned to steal a small boat and sail north via the Chesapeake Bay to freedom. Their conspiracy was betrayed, probably by another slave, and local authorities captured them all on 2 April 1836. They were incarcerated in the county jail in nearby Easton. Thomas Auld allowed Douglass to remain in jail a week, but instead of punishing him further, sent him back to Hugh Auld’s household in Baltimore. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 133–41. 16. Anna Murray, who had assisted in Douglass’s successful escape, rendezvoused with him in New York City. There the two were married by the black Presbyterian minister James W. C. Pennington on 15 September 1838. Three days later, the couple arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, seeking security, in the small city’s diverse population, against Douglass’s recapture. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:196–97, 3:157–60; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 159–60, 200. 17. Although Douglass encountered racial discrimination on occasion in New Bedford, the Massachusetts seaport had long supported a stable and moderately prosperous black community in its midst. Litwack, North of Slavery, 153. 18. In New Bedford, Douglass became a leading member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. In fact, Douglass’s pulpit speaking there predated his first antislavery oratory. In My

Y7870-Douglass.indb 608

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

609

Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass describes his association with the church, which he joined after moving his family to New Bedford, noting that he was “soon made a class leader and a local preacher.” Although his second autobiography offers some details, his full involvement with the New Bedford church is not widely known. The Methodist Episcopal Zion Church minister Thomas James, in his 1887 memoir, recalled Douglass’s activism in the New Bedford church in 1840. James took over the pastorate that year and granted Douglass a license to preach. More details are provided by Douglass in an 1894 letter to James W. Hood, who was researching a book about the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in America. He asked Douglass about his experiences with the New Bedford church. In reply, Douglass described his activities with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination as beginning in 1838, soon after his arrival in New Bedford. “As early as 1839,” he wrote, “I obtained a license from the Quarterly Conference as a local preacher, and often occupied the pulpit by request of the preacher in charge.” Douglass credited his church activism with being an important catalyst for his career as an antislavery activist: “I look back to the days I spent in little Zion, New Bedford, in the several capacities of sexton, steward, class leader, clerk, and local preacher, as among the happiest days of my life.” James W. Hood, One Hundred Years of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (New York, 1895), 541–42; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:203; Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 6–10; William L. Andrews, “Frederick Douglass, Preacher,” American Literature, 54:592–97 (December 1982). 19. Douglass spoke at a special meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society held on Nantucket from 10–12 August 1841. He began his speech just before the evening adjournment on 11 August and resumed at 9:30 the next morning. Douglass was followed by William Lloyd Garrison. At the conclusion of the convention, John A. Collins, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society’s general agent, invited Douglass to go on the lecture circuit to tell of his life as a slave. In 1842, Douglass was sent to help the abolitionist campaign in neighboring Rhode Island defeat a referendum to adopt a new constitution that would restrict suffrage only to white males. Lib., 20 August 1841; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:168–75. 20. As part of a Garrisonian lecturing campaign known as the “One Hundred Conventions,” Douglass traveled extensively in July, August, and September 1843. He usually spoke in the company of George Bradburn and John A. Collins, but also Sydney H. Gay, Charles Lenox Remond, William A. White, Abby Kelley, and other abolitionists. After speaking in Vermont in mid-July, Douglass and his companions lectured in central and western New York in August, and Ohio and Indiana in September. Lib., 23 June, 21 July, 11 August, 8, 22 September, 13 October 1843; NASS, 22 June, 3, 10, 31 August, 14 September, 19 October 1843. 21. A mob attacked Douglass in Pendleton, Madison County, Indiana, on the morning of 16 September 1843. The previous day, Douglass, William A. White, and George Bradburn had spoken at Pendleton’s Baptist church, despite rumors and threats from an excited “mob of thirty or more people,” many of whom were “very much intoxicated.” The next morning, with law-and-order resolutions posted prominently throughout the town, Douglass and his colleagues addressed an outdoor meeting on the wooded banks of nearby Fall Creek, where local Quakers had set up makeshift seats and stands. Menacing hecklers set upon the abolitionist trio, demolishing the speakers’ platform and attacking its occupants. The mob then focused its wrath on Douglass, pursuing and severely beating him. The bleeding and unconscious Douglass was taken to the farm of Mr. and Mrs. Neal Hardy, a Quaker couple, who treated Douglass’s broken right hand and other injuries. Because the bones were not properly set, his hand never regained its “natural strength and dexterity.” NASS, 18 September, 19 October 1843; Lib., 13 October 1843; Howitt, “Memoir of Frederick Douglass”; Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad, 187–88; Harden, History of Madison County, 203–05; Forkner and Dyson, Historical Sketches, 749–53; Netterville, Centennial History of Madison County, 1:321–22; Lewis, “Quaker Memories of Frederick Douglass.” 22. Published in 1845 by the American Anti-Slavery Society, with accompanying prefatory letters by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, Douglass’s first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, was released to the antebellum American public when Douglass was

Y7870-Douglass.indb 609

9/1/21 4:17 PM

610

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

twenty-seven years old. The Narrative achieved widespread success not only in the United States, but also in Great Britain and Europe. In the eight years following its initial publication, Douglass’s Narrative was translated into French, German, and Dutch and was published in over twenty U.S. editions, selling at least 30,000 copies by 1853. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 1:xvii, xxv, xxxii. 23. Douglass departed Boston for Liverpool, England, on 16 August 1845. After nearly two years of lecturing on behalf of the antislavery cause in Ireland, Scotland, and England, he made the return voyage in April 1847. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:181–82, 201, 748–50, 763, 777. 24. Ellen Richardson (1808–96) was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She dedicated herself to the education of working-class girls, holding supervisory posts at both the Royal Jubilee School for Girls and St. Mary’s School. In 1846, she joined her sister-in-law, Anna Atkins Richardson, in providing the money to purchase Douglass’s freedom from Thomas Auld. Anna Atkins Richardson (1806–92), of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, married Ellen Richardson’s brother, Henry Richardson, in 1833. A Quaker, she was active in several reform causes but was particularly dedicated to antislavery activism. A member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, she alienated British Garrisonians by continuing to support Douglass after he had severed ties with Garrison. With her husband, she helped lead the free-produce movement (an international boycott of goods made by slave labor) in England; she was responsible for securing the black lecturers Henry Bibb and Henry Highland Garnet to publicize the cause. From 1851 to 1854, the Richardsons published the Slave, a penny newssheet promoting the free-produce movement. [Mary C. Pumphrey,] Ellen Richardson: In Memoriam, 1808–1896 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1896); R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830–1860 (Baton Rouge, La., 1983), 120, 122, 134; Howard Temperley, British Antislavery, 1833–1870 (London, 1972), 245. 25. Abraham Lincoln. 26. Lewis Henry Douglass (1840–1908) served as a sergeant major in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and embarked with the unit to South Carolina in May 1863. His brother Charles Remond Douglass (1842–92), a private in that regiment, was ill at the time of his unit’s departure and remained as late as November 1863 at the Readville, Massachusetts, training camp. He eventually served in another black regiment, the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, and rose to the rank of first sergeant. C[harles] R. Douglass to Douglass, 20 December 1863, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 824–25, FD Papers, DLC; Douglass to “My Dear Friend,” 21 November 1863, FD Collection, Yale University; Lib., 5 June 1863; DM, 5:859–60 (August 1863); Massachusetts Adjutant General’s Office, Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War, 7 vols. (Norwood, Mass., 1931–33), 4:686, 6:528. 27. On the morning of 7 February 1866, President Andrew Johnson received a delegation appointed by the National Convention of Colored Men, an organization of black men from thirteen states that was then meeting in Washington. Douglass, his son Lewis, and George T. Downing were among the thirteen men (including one white man) escorted into the president’s office at the Executive Mansion. Downing opened the interview, followed by Douglass, who stated the purpose of the visit. Although the president was courteous, the delegates disliked that he “indicated . . . a repressed anger.” Johnson gracelessly sidestepped the concerns of the group, most of which centered on the Thirteenth Amendment and its enforcement in the Southern states. After the meeting, the delegates met briefly with Radical Republicans opposed to Johnson’s policies. Later that day, Douglass composed a written reply to the president, signed by all the delegates, which appeared in the next day’s edition of the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle. James O. Clephane, a stenographic reporter, recorded the interview for the Evening Star and made slight “corrections” in the version published in the Daily Morning Chronicle. Clephane’s text was widely reprinted throughout the nation. Washington Evening Star, 7 February 1866; Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 8 February 1866; Washington National Intelligencer, 8 February 1866; New York Times, 8 February 1866; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 12 February 1866; Springfield Illinois State Register, 13 February 1866; ChR, 17 February 1866; Boston Commonwealth, 17 February 1866; Edward McPherson, The Political History of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 610

9/1/21 4:17 PM

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

611

the United States of America during the Period of Reconstruction, 3d ed. (Washington, D.C., 1880), 52–55; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 226–28. 28. In February and March 1869, Douglass joined his son Lewis, George T. Downing, and several other black leaders in sending out a circular calling for contributions to a proposed new weekly newspaper for African Americans to be published in Washington, D.C. Soon, blacks in Washington had supported this plan with pledges totaling $2,500. It was proposed that Douglass serve as editor in chief, that the Presbyterian minister and experienced journalist J. Sella Martin serve as associate editor, and that Lewis Douglass serve as chief compositor and print shop manager. Douglass, however, declined the offered position and warned that the enterprise would require much more capital. Investors pushed ahead anyway and offered the editorship to Martin, who accepted on the condition that Douglass serve as contributing editor. The New Era published its first issue on 13 January 1870, and Douglass’s first article appeared two weeks later. Foner, Frederick Douglass, 277–79; Washburn, African American Newspaper, 35; Whyte, Uncivil War, 252–53; Wolseley, Black Press, 34–35. 29. Ulysses S. Grant. 30. One of the most controversial diplomatic initiatives of the Grant administration was its attempt to annex the Dominican Republic. In 1869, Grant’s personal representative, General Orville Babcock, negotiated a treaty of annexation with the Dominican president, Buenaventura Báez. The Senate twice refused to ratify the treaty, largely because of vocal opposition by a faction of the president’s own Republican party led by Charles Sumner. To rally public support for his policy, Grant persuaded Congress to authorize sending a commission to the Dominican Republic to investigate political and economic conditions there and to ascertain popular sentiment toward American annexation. The three commissioners selected by Grant were Andrew White, president of Cornell University; Samuel G. Howe, a wealthy Boston reformer; and Benjamin Wade, a former U.S. senator from Ohio. Although he regarded the position as “inconsiderable and unimportant,” Douglass accepted appointment as assistant secretary to the commission. The commissioners, their staff, and numerous reporters left New York City on 17 January 1871 and arrived at Samaná Bay seven days later. Douglass participated in the commission’s interviews with Dominican governmental officials and civic leaders and was responsible for contacting English-speaking blacks who had migrated from the United States to the Samaná area during the Civil War. The commission returned to Washington, D.C., on 26 March 1871 and soon thereafter published a report in favor of annexation. Despite regrets at disagreeing with his friend Sumner, Douglass, in speeches and in editorials in the New National Era, endorsed the annexation policy as being in the mutual interests of both nations. Opponents of annexation remained obdurate, however, and the treaty was never approved. Douglass to Hamilton Fish, 3 April 1871, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 589, FD Papers, DLC; NNE, 19 January, 23 February, 6 April 1871; Washington National Republican, 24 February 1871; Washington Evening Star, 28 March 1871; Tansill, United States and Santo Domingo, 428–40; Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and Santo Domingo.” 31. With the hope that the District of Columbia might be governed more uniformly and representatively, Congress abolished the separate governments of Washington and Georgetown and, on 21 February 1871, formed one municipality to be governed like a territory. A governor, appointed by the president, held executive authority, and legislative power resided in the Legislative Assembly. This bicameral assembly consisted of the Council, composed of eleven residents of the territory appointed by the president, and the House of Delegates, to which local voters annually elected twentytwo residents. Following Douglass’s defeat in the contest for territorial delegate from the District of Columbia to Congress, the Republican nominating convention voted to recommend his appointment as district secretary. Instead, President Ulysses S. Grant chose Douglass to fill one of the eleven seats in the upper house of the newly created territorial assembly. The Council elected William Stickney president and Douglass vice president at its organizational meeting on 15 May 1871. Douglass served on the Council’s committees on printing, schools, transportation facilities, and relations with the federal government. After participating on the Council during its first month of operations, Douglass

Y7870-Douglass.indb 611

9/1/21 4:17 PM

612

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

announced to the body on 20 June 1871 that he had resigned his membership. The Council unanimously passed a resolution expressing its regret at Douglass’s departure, declaring “his association . . . most pleasant to each member thereof, as well as profitable to the people he represents.” The Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, in reporting Douglass’s resignation, stated that he had, “by his simple, cordial, manly bearing, and his manifest ability and sound judgment, won the respect and affection of all.” F. H. Smith to Douglass, 20 June 1871, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 596–97, FD Papers, DLC; NNE, 4, 18 May, 8 June 1871; Washington National Republican, 29 April, 16, 29, 30 May, 1, 2, 14, 15, 17 June 1871; Washington Evening Star, 13, 17, 21 June 1871; Whyte, Uncivil War, 101–13; Edwin Melvin Williams, “The Territorial Period—1871–1874,” in Washington Past and Present: A History, ed. John Clagett Proctor, 4 vols. (New York, 1930), 1:130–41. 32. Douglass was the first black elector from New York, and was appointed to deliver the state’s electoral votes to Washington. Boston Daily Advertiser, 5 December 1872; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 12 December 1872; Lowell (Mass.) Daily Citizen and News, 14 December 1872; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:399; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 263–65, 267. 33. Rutherford B. Hayes. 34. Douglass married Helen Pitts (1838–1903), a white clerk in the recorder of deeds’ office, on the evening of 24 January 1884 at the home of the Presbyterian minister Francis J. Grimké, who officiated at the ceremony. Grimké, “Second Marriage of Frederick Douglass.” 35. James Abram Garfield (1831–81) lost his father at an early age and worked numerous odd jobs to finance his education, graduating from Williams College in 1856. Three years later, while principal of the Hiram Institute in Ohio, he won election to the state senate as a Republican. During the Civil War, Garfield received a rapid series of promotions, but he resigned from the Union Army in December 1863 with the rank of major general to accept election to the first of eight terms in Congress. Initially aligned with Radical Republicans on Reconstruction issues, his views moderated after passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. At the 1880 Republican National Convention, Garfield was serving as John Sherman’s floor manager when the deadlocked gathering turned to him as their presidential nominee on the thirty-sixth ballot. Garfield defeated Winfield Scott Hancock in the general election, but his administration suffered heated disputes over patronage with supporters of former president Grant, led by U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, shot Garfield on 2 July 1881. The president died eleven weeks later. Margaret Leech and Harry J. Brown, The Garfield Orbit (New York, 1978); Allan Peskin, Garfield: A Biography (Kent, Ohio, 1978); ACAB, 2:599–605; DAB, 7:145–51. 36. President Garfield appointed Douglass recorder of deeds soon after his inauguration in March 1881. Douglass served in the post until 1886, when he was replaced by James G. Matthews. Subject File, Recorder of Deeds, 1881–1886, FD Papers, DLC; Justus D. Doenecke, The Presidencies of James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur (Lawrence, Kans., 1981), 49. 37. Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901), twenty-third president of the United States, was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. Beginning his law career in Indiana in 1854, Harrison was a strong supporter of the Republican party from its inception. He served with distinction during the Civil War, earning promotion to brigadier general by war’s end. Though he ran unsuccessfully for the Indiana governorship in the 1870s, he was named leader of the state Republican party in 1877. He was instrumental in helping James Garfield gain the Republican nomination in 1880 and was elected to the U.S. Senate the following year. After losing his Senate seat when the Democrats swept Indiana in 1887, Harrison decided to try for the presidency. Despite divisions within the party, Harrison won the nomination on the eighth ballot. Douglass and other prominent African Americans campaigned widely for Harrison, who received 233 electoral votes to the incumbent Grover Cleveland’s 168. Harrison was nominated again in 1892, but lost to Cleveland. He returned to practice law in Indianapolis, where he died in 1901. Socolofsky and Spetter, Presidency of Benjamin Harrison, 7–16, 127, 185–86; ANB, 10:198–201. 38. Douglass presided at the National Convention of Black Freemen held in Cleveland, Ohio, on 6–8 September 1848; the National Convention of Colored Men held in Syracuse, New York, on

Y7870-Douglass.indb 612

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LIBERIA

613

5–7 October 1864 (not 1866, as Douglass recalls), and the National Convention of Colored Men held in Louisville, Kentucky, on 24–26 September 1883. New York Daily Tribune, 12 September 1848; NASS, 15 October 1864; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:85–109. 39. The Liberty party was organized on 1 April 1840 in Albany, New York, with the abolition of slavery as its central tenet. Specific proposals included abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, ending Jim Crow practices, and opposing the colonization movement. Whereas prominent antislavery figures such as Myron Holley, Gerrit Smith, Joshua Leavitt, and William Goodell supported the creation of a political party dedicated to antislavery principles, other abolitionists—most notably William Lloyd Garrison and his followers—disapproved of the move to political action. Garrisonians argued that a separate party would divide rather than unite abolitionists. Drawing a large portion of its support from New York, the Liberty party nonetheless persevered for several years. By the 1848 presidential election, however, most Liberty party members had moved to the newly formed Free Soil party. A small faction led by Gerrit Smith retained much of the Liberty party’s platform as the Radical Abolition party. It was the Smithite rump of the party with which Douglass was affiliated. Alan M. Kraut, “The Forgotten Reformers: A Profile of Third Party Abolitionists in Antebellum New York,” in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, ed. Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 119–45; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 43–47, 152–69, 285–87. 40. As Douglass recounts, a majority of Liberty party supporters had merged their organization with antiextensionist Democrats and Whigs in the presidential campaign of 1848. After experiencing declining votes in most subsequent elections, Free Soil leaders forged new electoral alliances in Northern states with other antiextensionists opposed to passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. After a few years, this new coalition became known nationally as the Republican party, running its first presidential candidate in 1856. While Douglass endorsed the 1856 Republican presidential candidate, he appears to have supported Gerrit Smith on the Liberty party ticket in 1860. L. Sandy Maisel, ed., Political Parties and Elections in the United States: An Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (New York, 1991), 1:290–91, 409–10, 585–86; John R. McKivigan, “Frederick Douglass and the Abolitionist Response to the Election of 1860,” in The Election of 1860 Reconsidered, ed. A. James Fuller (Kent, Ohio, 2012), 141–64.

LIBERIA (1895) “Liberia,” in Johnson’s Universal Cyclopaedia (New York, 1895), 5:219–20.

In August 1892 Douglass was recruited to write three entries for a forthcoming encyclopedia. A year and a half later, he received a panicked letter from the managing editor of the project, Robert Lilley. Lilley noted that he had corresponded with Helen Pitts Douglass in July 1893 about progress on the assignment and learned of Douglass’s substantial time commitment in directing the Haitian Pavilion at the World’s Columbia Exposition. Lilley then found alternate authors for the entries on Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but pressed Douglass to write the one on Liberia. Lilley worked for Alvin J. Johnson, whose New York City–based firm

Y7870-Douglass.indb 613

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LIBERIA

613

5–7 October 1864 (not 1866, as Douglass recalls), and the National Convention of Colored Men held in Louisville, Kentucky, on 24–26 September 1883. New York Daily Tribune, 12 September 1848; NASS, 15 October 1864; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:85–109. 39. The Liberty party was organized on 1 April 1840 in Albany, New York, with the abolition of slavery as its central tenet. Specific proposals included abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, ending Jim Crow practices, and opposing the colonization movement. Whereas prominent antislavery figures such as Myron Holley, Gerrit Smith, Joshua Leavitt, and William Goodell supported the creation of a political party dedicated to antislavery principles, other abolitionists—most notably William Lloyd Garrison and his followers—disapproved of the move to political action. Garrisonians argued that a separate party would divide rather than unite abolitionists. Drawing a large portion of its support from New York, the Liberty party nonetheless persevered for several years. By the 1848 presidential election, however, most Liberty party members had moved to the newly formed Free Soil party. A small faction led by Gerrit Smith retained much of the Liberty party’s platform as the Radical Abolition party. It was the Smithite rump of the party with which Douglass was affiliated. Alan M. Kraut, “The Forgotten Reformers: A Profile of Third Party Abolitionists in Antebellum New York,” in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, ed. Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 119–45; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 43–47, 152–69, 285–87. 40. As Douglass recounts, a majority of Liberty party supporters had merged their organization with antiextensionist Democrats and Whigs in the presidential campaign of 1848. After experiencing declining votes in most subsequent elections, Free Soil leaders forged new electoral alliances in Northern states with other antiextensionists opposed to passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. After a few years, this new coalition became known nationally as the Republican party, running its first presidential candidate in 1856. While Douglass endorsed the 1856 Republican presidential candidate, he appears to have supported Gerrit Smith on the Liberty party ticket in 1860. L. Sandy Maisel, ed., Political Parties and Elections in the United States: An Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (New York, 1991), 1:290–91, 409–10, 585–86; John R. McKivigan, “Frederick Douglass and the Abolitionist Response to the Election of 1860,” in The Election of 1860 Reconsidered, ed. A. James Fuller (Kent, Ohio, 2012), 141–64.

LIBERIA (1895) “Liberia,” in Johnson’s Universal Cyclopaedia (New York, 1895), 5:219–20.

In August 1892 Douglass was recruited to write three entries for a forthcoming encyclopedia. A year and a half later, he received a panicked letter from the managing editor of the project, Robert Lilley. Lilley noted that he had corresponded with Helen Pitts Douglass in July 1893 about progress on the assignment and learned of Douglass’s substantial time commitment in directing the Haitian Pavilion at the World’s Columbia Exposition. Lilley then found alternate authors for the entries on Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but pressed Douglass to write the one on Liberia. Lilley worked for Alvin J. Johnson, whose New York City–based firm

Y7870-Douglass.indb 613

9/1/21 4:17 PM

614

LIBERIA

primarily specialized in atlases. In the 1870s, the Johnson firm had produced a four-volume encyclopedia, reputedly at the suggestion of Horace Greeley. In the 1890s, it expanded to an eightvolume work, Johnson’s Universal Cyclopedia. In the midst of publishing the expanded edition, Johnson sold the work to the D. Appleton Company, which recruited Charles Kendall Adams to be the work’s general editor. Lilley’s persistence led Douglass to produce a short scholarly sketch of the African republic. Robert Lilley to Douglass, 14 March, 3 April 1894, General Correspondence File, reel 7, frames 690, 691–93, FD Papers, DLC; S. Padraig Walsh, Anglo-American General Encyclopedias, 1704–1967 (New York, 1968), 89–90; Ira S. Lourie, “The Atlases of A.  J. Johnson,” Portolan, 9:7–17 (Winter 2000–01). Liberia [from Lat. liber, free]: a republic on the western coast of Africa; between lat. 4° 20′ and 7° 20′ N.; stretching from the river San Pedro on the S. E. to the river Gallinas on the N. E., a distance of 600 or 700 miles.1 Topography.—The coast-line, like that of most of Africa, is rather monotonous, broken only by a few capes and river-mouths. The territorial area, which has been steadily increased by purchases from native tribes, is estimated at from 120,000 to 150,000 sq. miles. The shore is elevated and rocky in the S. E., but otherwise low, generally sandy or gravelly, seldom marshy. The interior of the country is more elevated, swelling into forest-covered hills and lofty mountain ranges, traversed by fine valleys. For 200 miles or more it gradually rises toward the Kong Mountains,2 the head-waters of its rivers, and to a still undetermined boundary toward the interior. Many streams flow to the ocean, but none of them is navigable for more than 20 miles from the mouth; the most important are the St. Paul, navigable for 18 miles, and having 7 feet of water at low tide on the bar at its mouth, the St. John, the Junk, and the Cape Mount river. Fine oysters abound at some points, and some of the rivers are notable for their fine scenery, especially the Cavallo river, which equals the Hudson in its beauty and grandeur.3 Climate.—The climate is thoroughly tropical. Of the two seasons the dry lasts from October to June, and the wet from June to October. In the dry season the average heat is 84°F., the mercury seldom rising above 90° in the shade; in the wet season the average heat is 76°, the mercury never falling below 60°.4 Büttikofer,5 who spent five years in Liberia, found the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 614

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LIBERIA

615

highest temperature to be upon the grass plains, where in 1881, in February, the tropical summer, the mercury marked 113° F. To the white man the climate of the lower regions is deadly, not from its excessive heat, but probably from miasmata; and even the Negro, when born and reared in another climate, suffers, on his arrival, from the so-called African fever.6 The natives, on the contrary, are healthy, robust, and long-lived. Soil and Productions.—The soil is generally very fertile, and, in the more elevated regions particularly, capable of producing many of the products of the temperate zones.7 The principal farming districts lie along the valley of the St. Paul. Here the sugar-cane grows luxuriantly, one year’s product sometimes reaching 300,000 lb. Cotton is indigenous, and yields two crops annually. Coffee of excellent quality is cultivated with success in the interior.8 The cereals are principally maize and rice. Two crops of the latter are produced during the year.9 Cabbages, peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, lemons, oranges, guavas, taraminds, pomegranates, pineapples, and African peaches are easily raised.10 The forests contain teak, mahogany, rosewood, hickory, and poplar trees, several kinds of gum-trees, dyewoods, medicinal shrubs, and varieties of useful palms, among which is the nut-bearing palm from which palm oil is made.11 Palm oil is a very important product, and is sent in great quantities to England and Germany.12 Tobacco, one of the most valuable products, is used as currency, one leaf being equivalent to two cents. Among other valuable products are the African rubber-tree, the cassava,13 the castor-oil plant,14 the pawpaw (Carica papaya), the unripe fruit of which is said to make tender the toughest meat;15 and the kola-nut (Sterculia accuminata), which surpasses in alkaloids any other fruit known. It is active as a stimulant, is a nerve tonic of great value, and is said to remove effectively the stupor of inebriety. Its medicinal properties are also found valuable in asthma, for which it is being brought into use in the U. S.16 The slave-trade of 150 or 200 years ago swept the country and left it desolate,17 so that where formerly hundreds of towns and thousands of inhabitants existed, one may now travel 50 and 75 miles without encountering a single town. The natives, in crossing this desolate region on their way to the coast, carry a few kola-nuts in the folds of their breech clouts, and crunching a few kernels will often perform a whole day’s march without further sustenance. This nut has a more elongated form, but in size and color is not unlike a medium-sized horse-chestnut. The medicinal plants of Liberia are of great value. The active principle of the pawpaw is powerful as a dissolvent of albuminous substances, and the membraneous deposits of croup and

Y7870-Douglass.indb 615

9/1/21 4:17 PM

616

LIBERIA

diphtheria are said to be removed by it. Liberia also furnishes a hæmorrhage plant (the Aspilia latifolia),18 and a powerful antiseptic in its termite earth, valuable in ulcers, boils, and gangrene. Minerals and Animals.—Iron abounds, and copper, gold, and quicksilver, with other minerals, occur in the interior. The country of the Mandingos,19 lying at the base of the Kong Mountains, is said to be goldproducing to a remarkable degree, that metal being used so abundantly that heavy twisted gold rings are common, the gold earrings of the Mandegna women being of such weight as to require being braced to the head-band. Only 140 miles from Grand Bassa iron ore occurs in great abundance and purity, the earth in some places seeming to be composed almost wholly of iron ore. This is, by the Mandingos, smelted in conical clay furnaces.20 Wild animals, the elephant, leopard, hippopotamus, crocodile, etc., are now nearly exterminated. Population.—The population of Liberia consists of colonists and their descendants, estimated at about 15,000 to 20,000 in number; about the same number of contiguous and more or less civilized Christian natives; and the pagan and Mohammedan aborigines, never accurately enumerated, but numbering from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 souls.21 The natives belong to different tribes: the pagan Veys, among whom the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U. S. has established a mission school at Cape Mount, 40 miles from Monrovia;22 the Pessehs, entirely pagans;23 the Bassas, among whom the American Baptist missionaries established a mission in 1835;24 the Kroos, mostly idolaters;25 the Mandingos, the most gifted of the tribes; and others. The Mandingos are a native Mussulman race of great intelligence. They read and write the Arabic language with equal facility to their own. The want of roads and other proper means of communication has prevented their becoming identified with the more cultivated inhabitants of the towns. As their country lies about 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, among them are found various animals of the more temperate zones, including horses, cows, and goats. These enter into the commerce of the people, as do also a great and interesting variety of textile fabrics. The Americo-Liberians possess a regular school system, and are progressing in all branches of civilization. The official report for 1892 shows a public-school system embracing 51 school districts, 58 schools, 60 teachers, 1,750 pupils for whose tuition the sum of $10,819 was paid, while 1,850 pupils were instructed in the private denominational schools. The Mandingos are a people by themselves, and have never come under the jurisdiction of the republic of Liberia. They are

Y7870-Douglass.indb 616

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LIBERIA

617

an extremely fine race of people, and the women are often finely formed and beautiful. Like many of the native African tribes they have shapely limbs and small hands and feet, and have the proud, independent air of a free people. They despise the American Liberian because of his former slavery, and often in disputes with them draw themselves up proudly and exclaim, “Me no slave! me no slave!” The Mandingos and the Veys seem to have been at some former time related, as the Mandingos coming down to the country of the Veys have little difficulty in comprehending them. The Veys are slightly shorter than the Mandingos, being about 5 ft. 8 in. in height. The Bassas are of medium size, and slender, dark brown in color, and keen and shrewd in intellect. Industries and Commerce.—Industrial processes and manufactures have been started, and a lively trade has sprung up between the republic and the U. S., Great Britain, Belgium, and Hamburg. Palm oil, sugar, cotton, coffee, ivory, camwood, arrowroot, etc., are exported; cotton goods, cutlery, powder, and tobacco are imported. The exports are, however, still inferior to the imports. Government and Finances.—The country is divided into four counties—Mesurado, Grand Bassa, Sinou, and Maryland.26 The capital, Monrovia, is situated on Cape Montserrado, and is a town of several thousand inhabitants.27 Other settlements are those of New Georgia, Caldwell, Virginia,28 Edina, Greenville, Lexington, etc. The total population in 1891 was estimated at 1,068,000, only 18,000 of whom were AmericoLiberians. The annual revenue is almost exclusively derived from customhouse duties. The official report of 1892 gives the receipts as $188,075.45; the disbursements as $165,943.60, leaving a balance to the credit of the country of $22,131.85, notwithstanding that in 1871 a debt of $500,000 was contracted. The constitution of the country is modeled after that of the U. S. All men are born free and equal before the law. Elections are conducted by ballot, and every male citizen possessing real estate has the right of suffrage. The president is elected for two years; the senators for four; the representatives for two. Each county sends two senators to the legislative assembly, and one representative for every 10,000 inhabitants.29 The first president was Joseph Jenkins Roberts, who served four terms, from 1848 to 1856, and was once more elected in 1871. Hilary R. W. Johnson was elected president in May, 1883. On May 5, 1891, John Joseph Cheeseman was, according to the provisions of the constitution, elected president for two years, and in 1893 was re-elected for a second term.30 English is the official language.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 617

9/1/21 4:17 PM

618

LIBERIA

History.—Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society, which had been organized in 1811 at Princeton, N. J., and had as its object the settling in Africa of freedmen and recaptured slaves. Since 1822 this society has sent out 18,000 persons from America to colonize Liberia. In 1817 agents were sent out to select a site, and chose Sherbro island and the adjacent coast, and in 1820 a colony of eighty-eight persons emigrated, intending to erect huts for the reception of several hundred slaves and to cultivate land for their own support. In 1822 they abandoned their settlement on Sherbro island and made a new one at Cape Mesurado.31 In 1824 the society adopted a plan for the civil government of Liberia, but retained the ultimate decision on all questions of government. In 1828 a more formal constitution was adopted, giving the colonists greater power in civil matters. To avoid threatened trouble with Great Britain, which claimed that Liberia had no existence as a nation, and could not levy imports on the goods of British traders, the directors of the society surrendered their powers and advised the colony to declare itself an independent nation. This was done July 26, 1847.32 In 1857 Maryland, a Negro republic to the E. of Cape Palmas, founded as a colony in 1821 by philanthropists of Maryland in the U. S., united with Liberia.33 Liberia made an instructive exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exhibition, in a court occupying a space allotted to it in the building of agriculture. It was constructed of African woods, tusks of elephants, and ropes. The collection included many interesting ethnological objects.34 See Stockwell, The Republic of Liberia, its Geography, Climate, Soil, and Productions, with a History of its Early Settlement (New York, 1868); Liberia, the Americo-African Republic (New York, 1886); and Anderson’s Journey to Musardu. FREDERICK DOUG LASS. 1. As Douglass indicates at the end of his entry, he relied almost exclusively on three nineteenthcentury reference works for the details he provides of geographic, economic, and political features of Liberia. For the purposes of annotation, we concentrated on identifying the specific source or sources on which Douglass relied and confirming that he repeated their information correctly. In the instance of the entry’s account of the location of Liberia, Douglass seems to have relied on G[eorge] S. Stockwell, The Republic of Liberia; Its Geography, Climate, Soils, and Productions, with a History of Its Early Settlement (New York, 1868), 9, 11, and Thomas McCants Stewart, Liberia: The AmericoAfrican Republic (New York, 1886), 13. 2. Douglass repeats the erroneous legend of the Mountains of Kong, which typically appeared on maps of western Africa from the 1790s until the 1880s. A band of lower-altitude hills, sometimes called the Kong Hills, help separate coastal West Africa from the interior and are the source of the headwaters of most Liberian rivers. Thomas J. Bassett and Philip W. Porter, “ ‘From the Best Au-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 618

9/1/21 4:17 PM

LIBERIA

619

thorities’: The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa,” Journal of African History, 32:367–413 (1991). 3. Douglass summarizes the description of Liberia’s rivers found in the second chapter of George S. Stockwell’s Republic of Liberia. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 11–13. 4. Stewart’s two detailed chapters on the temperature and other climatic conditions in Liberia supplied Douglass the background material for this section. Stewart, Liberia, 22–30. 5. Douglass alludes to the findings of the Swiss zoologist and explorer Johann Büttikofer (1850– 1927), who led two expeditions to Liberia in the 1880s. His expeditions were reported originally in Dutch, but English translations were soon available. Johann Büttikofer, Travel Sketches from Liberia: Johann Büttikofer’s 19th Century Rainforest Explorations in West Africa, trans. Henk Dop and Phillip T. Robinson (Leiden, Neth., 2013), 55, 64. 6. Stewart noted the prevalence of malaria, or “African fever,” in the swampy territory along Liberia’s seacoast, but argued that drainage of those areas could alleviate the unhealthy conditions. Stewart, Liberia, 30–45. 7. Stockwell provided Douglass with this description and assessment of the fertility of Liberian soils. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 10–11. 8. Stockwell gave a strong affirmation that the soil and climate of Liberia were suitable for the profitable cultivation of sugarcane and cotton. He had not directly observed commercial cotton growing in Liberia, but instead repeated the testimony of some settlers from the American South who believed it to be possible. Stewart added that native species of cotton grew abundantly and that there was therefore a significant commercial potential for that crop. Both writers highly praise the quality of Liberian-grown coffee beans. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 39–43, 46; Stewart, Liberia, 48–49. 9. Stockwell observed that both of these crops were cultivated in Liberia but believed that their production could increase greatly with governmental and market incentives. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 28–29. 10. Stewart and Stockwell verified that all these vegetables and fruits were successfully cultivated in Liberia. Douglass omits plantains from his litany, though Stockwell gave high praise to this fruit. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 29–33, 36–37; Stewart, Liberia, 47. 11. Stockwell and Stewart verified all these tree species grew in Liberian forests. Stewart added that the commercial potential of few of the nation’s forests had been tapped. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 49–50; Stewart, Liberia, 46–47. 12. Stockwell confirmed that Liberians used palm oil and other derivatives of the palm tree in a variety of ways and exported large quantities of the oil. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 48–49. 13. Stewart compared cassava to the American-grown turnip. Stewart, Liberia, 47. 14. Stockwell noted that the palma Christi tree, whose seeds yield castor oil, was indigenous to Liberia but was not grown commercially. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 49. 15. Stockwell compared the taste of Liberian-grown pawpaw to the best pumpkins grown in the United States. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 35–36. 16. Stockwell observed that the cocoa-nut (cacao) tree was grown mainly as an ornamental plant in Liberia. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 36. 17. A slave trade conducted by Spanish agents was still in operation in Liberia at the time of the arrival of the earliest settlers from America in the 1820s. Benjamin B. K. Anderson’s exploration into the Liberian interior in the 1860s revealed significant depopulation in many areas long targeted by the slave trade. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 80, 84–89; Stewart, Liberia, 19, 63; Benjamin B. K. Anderson, Narrative of a Journey to Musardu, the Capital of the Western Mandingoes (New York, 1870), 12, 41. 18. Stockwell did not include this plant in his extensive list of medical plants found in Liberia. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 50. 19. Of Stockwell’s descriptions of indigenous Liberian tribes, his portrayal of the interiordwelling Mandingo tribe is the most detailed, mentioning the Mandingoes’ tall physiques, industry,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 619

9/1/21 4:17 PM

620

LIBERIA

and courage in battle. Stewart described them as “a tall and swiney race of men.” The Mandingo, as of the 1880s, had not been subdued by the central government of Liberia. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 181–83; Stewart, Liberia, 55. 20. Both of Douglass’s principal sources confirmed the rudimentary mining and smelting of gold and iron ore into products by the Mandingoes. Stewart noted the abundance of iron ore near the surface, which native people used in crude manufacturing. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 181–83; Stewart, Liberia, 45–46, 55. 21. These estimates exceed those of Stewart, who, in 1886, believed the native population to total only 800,000 and the descendants of the settlers from the United States under 15,000. Stewart, Liberia, 54, 70. 22. Stewart praised the Vey tribe for having invented a writing system, and noted that they built unusual conical structures to use as residences. Stewart, Liberia, 55–56, 68–69. 95. 23. Stockwell’s book contained a chapter titled “The Pessay Tribe,” by the Reverend George L. Seymour, describing their warlike culture and tribal religion. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 227–31. 24. The Bassa people resided in central Liberia in the district of its capital, Monrovia. Stewart reported that Baptist missionaries were the most energetic of the proselytizers in the country and had established the most congregations in Liberia. Stewart, Liberia, 54, 95; Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 206. 25. The Kros people, commonly referred to as the Krooman, resided mainly along the coastal regions of Liberia. They frequently worked as sailors or local merchants. Stewart, Liberia, 65–68. 26. Other sources indicate that Liberia was originally composed of five, not four, coastal counties, with the addition of Grand Cape Mount in the country’s extreme northwest. Masurado County was more commonly reported as Montserrado County, and Sinou County as Sinoe County. Interior territories were administered by the central government. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 705, 1049, 1190, 1240, 1774. 27. Stockwell reported the population of the Liberian capital of Monrovia as 2,000. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 175–77. 28. Stockwell reported the name as New Virginia. New Georgia, a small community with just two principal streets, supported two Christian churches and a school. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 177, 263–66; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 558, 719. 29. Stockwell reprinted the original national constitution of Liberia, which had clearly been modeled on the U.S. Constitution, and confirmed Douglass’s description of its provisions. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 175–77, 286–99. 30. The first Haitian president was Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809–76), who served from 1848 to 1856 and again from 1872 to 1876. Hilary R. W. Johnson (1837–1901) served from 1884 to 1892, and Joseph James Cheeseman (1843–96) served from 1892 until his death in November 1896. Stewart, Liberia, 85, 88. 31. Stewart provided an account of the initial negotiations between representatives of the American Colonization Society and tribal leaders. Stewart, Liberia, 16–18. 32. Douglass provides an accurate summary of the early history of the settlement of Liberia, drawing heavily on chapters in Stockwell’s and Stewart’s works. Stockwell, Republic of Liberia, 55–83; Stewart, Liberia, 19–22, 83–88. 33. The Maryland State Colonization Society, an auxiliary of the American Colonization Society, received an annual appropriation from Maryland’s legislature to fund the transportation of free African Americans and manumitted slaves to Africa. In 1834, the Maryland group founded a settlement at Cape Palmas, south of the main Liberian communities. The Marylanders maintained their independence until 1857, when they accepted annexation as a means of defense against encroaching native tribes. John H. B. Latrobe, Maryland in Africa: A History of the Colony Planted by the Maryland State Colonization Society (Baltimore, 1885), 10–11, 20, 42, 81–85. 34. Liberia was represented at the World’s Columbian Exposition by a delegation headed by Alfred Benedict King. It is possible that some of the unconfirmed statistics Douglass supplied in this

Y7870-Douglass.indb 620

9/1/21 4:17 PM

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

621

entry were culled from Liberian literature distributed at the exposition. Campbell’s Illustrated History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1894), 2:570.

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION (1895) Charles A. Sheffeld, ed., The History of Florence, Massachusetts, Including a Complete Account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (Florence, Mass., 1895), 129–32.

Although only a single piece of correspondence between Douglass and Charles A. Sheffeld is known to have survived, it provides a glimmer of insight into the origin of this document. Sheffeld refers to a letter he wrote on 25 January 1893 and apparently posted that morning. One may assume that he implored Douglass to contribute a piece to the town history he was compiling, even suggesting “A Stranger’s Impression” as the article’s theme. Clearly concerned that Douglass might balk at having his topic chosen for him, and eager to ensure that Douglass would be among the notables contributing their reminiscences to his history of Florence, Massachusetts, Sheffeld penned this second note to reassure Douglass that he was free to choose any topic he desired. As it turned out, Douglass opted to follow, more or less, Sheffeld’s chosen subject matter, producing a stimulating account of his impressions not only of the town, which he visited in 1844 and again in 1845, but also of its utopian community and a number of its residents, including Sojourner Truth. In doing so, Douglass provided readers with a fascinating glimpse into the larger world of self-improvement societies, utopian communities, and other social reform movements (which he refers to as all of the “isms” of that age) that flourished, particularly in New England, in the antebellum period. Charles A. Sheffeld to Douglass, 25 January 1893, General Correspondence File, reel 7, frame 112, FD Papers, DLC; Sheffeld, History of Florence, Massachusetts, 3–4.

OF the great mental wave of reform that passed over New England fifty years ago and gave rise to the Florence,1 Brook Farm,2 and Hopedale3 Communities, others can tell you more and better than I. The religion of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 621

9/1/21 4:17 PM

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

621

entry were culled from Liberian literature distributed at the exposition. Campbell’s Illustrated History of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1894), 2:570.

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION (1895) Charles A. Sheffeld, ed., The History of Florence, Massachusetts, Including a Complete Account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (Florence, Mass., 1895), 129–32.

Although only a single piece of correspondence between Douglass and Charles A. Sheffeld is known to have survived, it provides a glimmer of insight into the origin of this document. Sheffeld refers to a letter he wrote on 25 January 1893 and apparently posted that morning. One may assume that he implored Douglass to contribute a piece to the town history he was compiling, even suggesting “A Stranger’s Impression” as the article’s theme. Clearly concerned that Douglass might balk at having his topic chosen for him, and eager to ensure that Douglass would be among the notables contributing their reminiscences to his history of Florence, Massachusetts, Sheffeld penned this second note to reassure Douglass that he was free to choose any topic he desired. As it turned out, Douglass opted to follow, more or less, Sheffeld’s chosen subject matter, producing a stimulating account of his impressions not only of the town, which he visited in 1844 and again in 1845, but also of its utopian community and a number of its residents, including Sojourner Truth. In doing so, Douglass provided readers with a fascinating glimpse into the larger world of self-improvement societies, utopian communities, and other social reform movements (which he refers to as all of the “isms” of that age) that flourished, particularly in New England, in the antebellum period. Charles A. Sheffeld to Douglass, 25 January 1893, General Correspondence File, reel 7, frame 112, FD Papers, DLC; Sheffeld, History of Florence, Massachusetts, 3–4.

OF the great mental wave of reform that passed over New England fifty years ago and gave rise to the Florence,1 Brook Farm,2 and Hopedale3 Communities, others can tell you more and better than I. The religion of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 621

9/1/21 4:17 PM

622

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

good will to man; of fervent desire and courageous determination to put aside the old and to venture boldly upon the new; to change and improve conditions of human existence; to liberate mankind from the bondage of time-worn custom; to curb and fix limits to individual selfishness; to diffuse wealth among the lowly; to banish poverty; to harmonize conflicting interests, and to promote the happiness of mankind generally, had at that time such a revival as, perhaps, New England had never seen before, and has certainly never seen since. This high thought of the time took deep hold upon men and women, and led them to dare and do startling things in contradiction to the common sense of the period. Many who thought themselves reformers were not ready to embark in the wild, or what seemed to them wild, and fantastical measures of these radicals; who, in their war against old forms and social arrangements, sometimes seemed to assume that whatever was new, was true, and that whatever was old, was erroneous. With them, the old way was the wrong way, and the new was the right, or at least had within it the promise of the right. The period was one of faith, hope, and charity; of millennial foreshadowing. The air was full of isms—Grahamism,4 mesmerism,5 Fourierism,6 transcendentalism,7 communism,8 and abolitionism.9 Fresh from slavery at that time, and keenly alive to its horrors, my mind was mainly occupied with the last mentioned ism, and yet with a strong leaning towards communism as a remedy for all social ills. I found, too, that the men and women who were interested in the work of revolutionizing the whole system of civilization were also deeply interested in the emancipation of the slaves; and this was enough to insure my sympathy to these universal reformers. Of the various attempts to give form and substance to the broad and beneficent ideas of the times, Florence and Hopedale seemed fullest of promise. For harmony, Hopedale had a decided advantage over Florence, in that its leaders were of one religious faith, while Florence was composed both of men and women of different denominations, and of those of no religious bias or profession. It was from the first a protest against sectism and bigotry and an assertion of the paramount importance of human brotherhood. I visited Florence almost at its beginning, when it was in the rough; when all was Spartan-like simplicity.10 It struck me at once that the reformers had a tremendous task before them. I knew that many of them were people well to do in the world, and I naturally wondered how they could

Y7870-Douglass.indb 622

9/1/21 4:17 PM

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

623

content themselves to leave the smooth and pleasant paths of life to which they were accustomed, for the rough and thorny ways they were now compelled to tread. The site of the Community was decidedly unpromising.11 The soil was poor and had little or nothing upon it but stubby oaks and stunted pines. The most hopeful thing I saw there was a narrow stream meandering through an entangled valley of brush and brier, and a brick building which the communists had now converted into a dwelling and factory. The place and the people struck me as the most democratic I had ever met. It was a place to extinguish all aristocratic pretensions. There was no high, no low, no masters, no servants, no white, no black. I, however, felt myself in very high society. I met there Samuel Hill,12 Seth Hunt,13 George Benson,14 Hall Judd,15 William Bassett,16 James Boyle,17 Giles B. Stebbins,18 Elisha Hammond,19 his wife,20 Miss Sophia Foorde,21 and a number of others, all people from the upper walks of life, and yet fraternizing with the humblest members of the association of which they formed a part. My impressions of the Community are not only the impressions of a stranger, but those of a fugitive slave to whom at that time even Massachusetts opposed a harsh and repellent side. The cordial reception I met with at Florence, was, therefore, much enhanced by its contrast with many other places in that commonwealth. Here, at least, neither my color nor my condition was counted against me. I found here my old friend, David Ruggles,22 not only black, but blind, and measurably helpless, but a man of sterling sense and worth. He had been caught up in New York city, rescued from destitution, brought here and kindly cared for. I speak of David Ruggles as my old friend. He was such to me only as he had been to others in the same plight. Before he was old and blind he had been a coworker with the venerable Quaker, Isaac T. Hopper, and had assisted me as well as many other fugitive slaves, on the way from slavery to freedom. It was good to see that this man who had zealously assisted others was now receiving assistance from the benevolent men and women of this Community, and if a grateful heart in a recipient of benevolence is any compensation for such benevolence, the friends of David Ruggles were well compensated. His whole theme to me was gratitude to these noble people. For his blindness was hydropathically treated in the Community.23 He himself became well versed in the water cure system, and was subsequently at the head of a water cure establishment at Florence. He acquired such sensitiveness of touch that he could, by feeling the patient, easily locate the disease, and was, therefore, very successful in treating his patients.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 623

9/1/21 4:17 PM

624

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

David Ruggles was not the only colored person who found refuge in this Community. I met here for the first time that strange compound of wit and wisdom, of wild enthusiasm and flint-like common sense, who seemed to feel it her duty to trip me up in my speeches and to ridicule my efforts to speak and act like a person of cultivation and refinement. I allude to Sojourner Truth.24 She was a genuine specimen of the uncultured negro. She cared very little for elegance of speech or refinement of manners. She seemed to please herself and others best when she put her ideas in the oddest forms. She was much respected at Florence, for she was honest, industrious, and amiable. Her quaint speeches easily gave her an audience, and she was one of the most useful members of the Community in its day of small things. It is hardly possible to point to a greater contrast than is presented by Florence now, and what it was fifty years ago. Then it was a wilderness. Now it blossoms like the rose. Though the outward form has changed, the early spirit of the Community has survived. The noble character of its men and women, and the spirit of its teachers, are still found in that locality, and one cannot visit there without seeing that George Benson, Samuel Hill, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, Sophia Foorde, William Bassett, and Giles B. Stebbins, and the rest of them, have not lived in vain. 1. Situated approximately three miles west of Northampton, Massachusetts, on the Mill River, the town of Florence was established in 1681 as the site of a sawmill built on Broughton Meadow, a five-acre tract of land. The settlement’s first permanent residence was not built until 1738, and by the 1780s there were still only three houses located there. In 1820, 50 people lived in the village. From 1842 to 1846, it was the home of the utopian community known as the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, but it was not until 1852 that the village was officially renamed Florence. By 1867, Florence was home to 2,000 residents and had become a manufacturing center, producing items that were shipped and sold around the world. Sheffeld, History of Florence, Massachusetts, 22–54, 107–11. 2. Located nine miles from Boston, Brook Farm was a utopian community founded in 1841 by George Ripley, a Transcendentalist and former Unitarian minister, on his 200-acre country home in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Work on the farm, both domestic and agricultural, was to be shared equally by all the members of the community, and profits were also to be divided equally. The goal of this economic system was to allow each resident to spend the maximum amount of his or her time engaged in intellectual and cultural pursuits. Initial membership was limited to twenty people, mostly intellectuals, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, who would write a fictionalized account of his experiences there in his 1852 novel, The Blithedale Romance. Eventually, 115 people lived at Brook Farm. Both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were frequent visitors, and the community’s school, run by members of Brook Farm, proved to be very successful and attracted students from the surrounding communities. In 1844, financial difficulties forced Ripley and several other community leaders, including Charles A. Dana, to embrace Fourierism in an effort to salvage the experiment. The community was renamed the Brook Farm Phalanx, and construction began on a dormitory large enough to house 150 new members. In addition, a Fourierist journal, the Harbinger, was published by

Y7870-Douglass.indb 624

9/1/21 4:17 PM

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

625

the Phalanx from 1845 to 1847. Thousands of people applied for membership, and several industries were added to the mix, but there were never enough members on hand at any given time to allow for the necessary rotation of work duties that had previously existed. When the new dormitory burned down just days after its completion in 1846, there were neither the funds nor the will to rebuild it. The following year, the property was sold and Brook Farm was disbanded. James M. Morris and Andrea L. Kross, eds., Historical Dictionary of Utopianism (Lanham, Md., 2004), 48–49; Immanuel Ness, Encyclopedia of American Social Movements, 4 vols. (Armonk, N.Y., 2004), 3:971–72, 1002. 3. The Hopedale Community, also known as Fraternal Community Number One, was founded in 1842 by the Universalist minister Adin Ballou as a model for the establishment of ideal Christian communities across the United States. Organized as a joint-stock company, it was located on a 250acre tract of land known as Hopedale in the town of Milford, Massachusetts. The members were drawn from a group of Universalists, all of whom belonged to a congregation from Mendon, Massachusetts. The 31 founding members pledged to abstain from murder, hatred, lack of charity, and the consumption of alcohol. They also refused to vote and opposed the taking of oaths, slavery, and violence of any kind, including war. Initially, all members lived communally, but the ownership of individual homes and tracts of land was quickly adopted. By 1845, Hopedale had expanded to 400 acres and 110 residents, with an additional 200 associates who helped support the community’s work. In 1855, Hopedale established a daughter community in Union Grove, Minnesota, which failed within two years. In 1862, Ballou withdrew his support, feeling the community had become too business oriented. The community’s independence came to an end in 1868 when it merged with the Hopedale Parish, a Unitarian organization led by Ballou, who remained pastor until 1880. Morris and Kross, Historical Dictionary of Utopianism, 140. 4. Several members of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, including Sophia Foord, were adherents of Grahamism, a movement founded by the Northampton resident and Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham. Graham, a popular author and lecturer on health, hygiene, and diet, argued that maintaining a lifestyle emphasizing fresh air, frequent bathing, loose clothing, and sleeping on hard mattresses—when combined with a diet of fruits, vegetables, rough stoneground grains, and no red meat or refined flour—would lead to health and longevity. He asserted that unhealthy diets contributed to sexual depravity, and maintained that following his diet and hygiene recommendations would inhibit the sex drive and foster a chaste lifestyle. At its peak, in the 1830s and 1840s, Grahamism enjoyed wide popularity in the United States. At the same time, however, Graham and his more zealous followers were the subjects of much ridicule in the popular press. Today, Graham and his movement are best remembered for the invention of the graham cracker (1829), specifically designed to lower the libido, and for popularizing both vegetarianism and daily bathing. Christopher Clark and Kerry W. Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia: The Stetson Family and the Northampton Association, 1843–1847 (Amherst, Mass., 2004), 70; William F. Williams, ed., Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: From Alien Abduction to Zone Theory (New York, 2000), 137. 5. Mesmerism, named after the German-born Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer, was based on a theory that all natural bodies were imbued with a universal fluid, akin to electricity or magnetism, which, when blocked or thrown into imbalance, led to illness in human beings. Mesmer believed that it was the role of the physician to clear such blockages and restore balance to this fluid, which was done through massage and other forms of manipulating the body’s electromagnetic “poles.” Patients often fell into convulsions or “fits” of various kinds, referred to as “the crisis,” which were interpreted as a sign that the treatment had been successful and the patient was cured. Mesmerism attracted many followers in the upper levels of French society in the late eighteenth century. In 1784, however, a concerned and highly skeptical Louis XVI appointed a special commission of scientists, headed by Benjamin Franklin, to investigate Mesmer’s claims. The commission concluded that while some patients had indeed experienced improvements to their health, such results were due entirely to the “force of imagination,” and that mesmerism was in fact fraudulent. In the United States, mesmerism began gaining followers after the marquis de Lafayette read a paper on the subject

Y7870-Douglass.indb 625

9/1/21 4:17 PM

626

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

before the American Philosophical Society in 1781. It was not until the 1830s and 1840s, though, that the movement peaked in popularity in the United States. When proponents of animal magnetism— the force that Mesmer had claimed allowed him to hypnotize patients—began to achieve results, the occurrences were viewed as proof of the existence of Mesmer’s universal fluid. Within a decade, the medical establishment had marginalized animal magnetism by co-opting its practices under the guise of the new field of hypnotism. This appropriation, in turn, provided rational explanations, based on scientific research, for what had previously been attributed to Mesmer’s universal fluid. As a result, mesmerism fell out of fashion—decades after being debunked by Franklin’s commission. Paul Finkelman, ed., Encyclopedia of the New American Nation, 3 vols. (Detroit, 2006), 2:363; Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology (online). 6. Based on the theories of the noted French socialist Charles Fourier, Fourierism was a communitarian movement that advocated the establishment of self-sufficient communities located in the countryside. In its classical formulation, each community, known as a phalanx (or, more popularly in the United States, as an association), was ideally to be located upon a 1,000-acre tract of land and to consist of 1,620 people—specifically, one man and one woman representing each of the 810 personality types Fourier had identified as necessary for the proper functioning of society. Drawn from all social classes and occupations, the members would live in a central building designed to include not only apartments, but dining halls, meeting rooms, and workshops as well. Each member of the association would invest what they could in the organization, and each man, woman, and child was expected to contribute their labor to the association by following their individual passions. While a minimum provision of food, clothing, and shelter was provided to every member of the community, additional compensation was based on the quality of one’s labor as well as on the amount of money he or she had contributed to the association. In the United States, communities that adopted Fourierism as their organizational model, such as Brook Farm in 1844, viewed it as the most practical way of pooling resources in order to sustain a self-sufficient community. After a period of relative popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the movement had all but disappeared in the United States by the 1850s. Karen Christensen and David Levinson, eds., Encyclopedia of Community: From Village to Virtual World, 4 vols. (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2003), 2:506–09; Morris and Kross, Historical Dictionary of Utopianism, 49. 7. Developing in New England in the 1820s and 1830s, Transcendentalism emerged as an antidote to the constrictions its disciples believed were being imposed upon spirituality by mainline Protestantism. Heavily influenced by German and English romanticism, it was one of the most influential religious, philosophical, and literary movements of nineteenth-century America. Transcendentalists embraced individualism, liberalism, mysticism, and the natural world, all while striving to achieve self-realization—the highest form of spiritual expression. Among the best-known proponents of Transcendental beliefs were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Authors and poets such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (who would eventually lampoon the Transcendentalists after his experiences at Brook Farm) and Emily Dickinson were influenced by the movement, as were many educators, including Bronson Alcott and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Brook Farm was, perhaps, the most famous of the communities founded on the precepts of Transcendentalism. Although the movement was virtually defunct by the 1850s, its influence on American culture was profound. Christopher John Murray, ed., Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850 (New York, 2004), 1149–50; Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online). 8. Based on the works of German social theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, communism in the mid-nineteenth century was best understood through their 1848 publication, The Communist Manifesto, which traced the history of human society from primitive tribal communes through slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, culminating with the proposed final stage, communism. Marx and Engels argued, in fact, that communism would be the inevitable historical outcome of human society. According to their theories, a communist society would be characterized by a community in which ownership of the means of production and exchange was held in common by the workers. Ideally,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 626

9/1/21 4:17 PM

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

627

this arrangement would lead to freedom from exploitation and class divisions, and from political and religious oppression. Under communism, Marx and Engels concluded, all people would be free to work according to their capacity, and all would be compensated according to their need. Christensen and Levinson, Encyclopedia of Community, 2:218–20; Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online). 9. Abolitionism, the movement that sought to end race-based chattel slavery, first emerged in the United States in the late eighteenth century and was heavily influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and by Christian morality. Fueled by Enlightenment concepts such as the notion that every human being shared a common right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the Christian belief that all human beings were created equal in the sight of God, abolitionists argued that the practice of one person owning another was both irrational and contrary to Christian practice. The movement gained new strength in the 1820s as a result of the Second Great Awakening and entered the national consciousness following the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833, with its calls for immediate emancipation. In the years leading up to the Civil War, abolitionism became a national crusade and served as a model for similar nineteenth-century reform efforts, including the temperance and woman suffrage movements. Maryanne Cline Horowitz, ed., New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 4 vols. (Detroit, 2005), 1:1; Ness, Encyclopedia of American Social Movements, 3:946–48. 10. Douglass visited the Northampton Association of Education and Industry twice, in April 1844 and April 1845. Christopher Clark, The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995), 81, 94; Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 99, 240. 11. Douglass was not alone in his view that the setting of the Northampton Association was less than inviting. Sojourner Truth found it so forbidding upon her arrival that she thought of leaving at the earliest opportunity. A visitor from Boston described the property as being “huddled, uncomfortable, and gloomy,” and another visitor compared it to places he had seen in frontier Wisconsin. On the other hand, some friends and supporters of the Association described the site, both in print and in private correspondence, as a sort of “paradise.” Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 10. 12. A native of Smithfield, Rhode Island, Samuel Lapham Hill (1806–82) was raised in the Quaker faith and worked as a carpenter, schoolteacher, and storekeeper in his youth. Following his expulsion from the Society of Friends because of his marriage to a non-Quaker (Louise Chase), Hill joined the local Baptist church. He severed ties with the Baptists, however, after his church’s deacon disrupted an abolitionist lecture there by Wendell Phillips. Hill then moved to Willimantic, Connecticut, where he became an overseer at a cotton mill. In 1841, he moved his family, including four children, to Florence, Massachusetts, and in 1842, Hill and his second wife, Roxana Maria Gaylord, became founding members of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. He remained part of the Northampton Association until its demise, serving as the treasurer and assistant director of its silk mill. After the association disbanded in late 1846, Hill paid off its debts and took ownership of the silk mill. Working closely with Isaac M. Singer, Hill formed the Nonotuck Silk Company and developed a means of consistently manufacturing a silk thread that was fine enough in quality to be used by Singer’s sewing machines. Hill remained a committed abolitionist while active in business, and his home served as a stop on the Underground Railroad from 1842 until 1861. After the failure of the Northampton Association, he helped Sojourner Truth obtain a mortgage in her own name on the only home she ever owned. He also provided one of several testimonials to her character, which appeared in the 1850 edition of her autobiography, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Hill, particularly interested in education and school reform, established the first privately endowed kindergarten in the United States, known as the Hill Institute, which was open to all local children in 1876. Sheffeld, History of Florence, Massachusetts, 205–211; Marjorie Senechal, “The Camel and the Needle: Silk and the Stetson Letters,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 231–32, 238; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 4:596; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 15, 20–21, 30–31, 98, 188–89, 209, 212–16; Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 138–39.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 627

9/1/21 4:17 PM

628

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

13. Seth Hunt (1814–93) held the positions of clerk and treasurer of the Connecticut River Railroad Company from 1845 through the late 1890s. His office was located in Springfield, Massachusetts. Hunt was a Garrisonian abolitionist as well as a member of the communitarian settlement of Florence, Massachusetts. In the mid-1840s, Hunt met Douglass at Florence while the latter was still a fugitive slave. Hunt also befriended David Ruggles, who had come to Florence because of medical problems and had been nursed back to health by the community there. Hunt and Ruggles induced the local sheriff, Ansel Wright, to meet with a slave girl and her owner and to explain that since the girl’s master had brought her into the free state of Massachusetts, she was free to leave him. Fearing her owner, the girl refused to leave, and the sheriff incurred the owner’s great wrath. New York Times, 4 July 1893; Joseph Marsh, “The Underground Railway,” in Sheffeld, History of Florence, Massachusetts, 167; T. A. Busbey, ed., The Biographical Directory of the Railway Officials of America (Chicago, 1893), 187. 14. George W. Benson (1808–79) was the son of George Benson (1752–1836), a merchant, a founding member of the Providence Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and later the third president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. In 1824, the senior Benson converted to Quakerism and moved the family to a farm in Brooklyn, Connecticut. George W. Benson became active in abolitionist circles as a young man and formed a close friendship with William Lloyd Garrison. In 1834, Garrison married the younger Benson’s sister, Helen. From 1831 until 1836, when he moved back to Brooklyn to take over the family farm, Benson was a partner in a Providence wholesale wool and leather firm. In 1837, he became the Connecticut agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Concluding that the farm was too small to support his growing family, Benson sold it in 1841 and moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, where he invested most of the proceeds from the sale of the farm in the Northampton Silk Company. The following year, however, the company went bankrupt, and most of its property—470 acres, a four-story brick factory, a dam and water-power site on the Mill River, a sawmill, several houses, and other workshops and outbuildings—was purchased by a group of reformers, including Benson, to serve as the location of the newly formed Northampton Association of Education and Industry. After cutting his ties with the Northampton Association in 1845, Benson entered into a partnership with three local businessmen to form the Bensonville Manufacturing Company, where he began manufacturing cotton cloth. Later, Benson briefly became proprietor of a small silk factory, but rumors that he was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy began to circulate in 1849, and he was forced to flee Northampton to avoid his creditors. For a few years, he ran a laundry in Williamsburgh, Long Island, New York. He then moved to New York City in 1855, going into business as a commission broker. In 1860, he moved his family once again to a farm near Lawrence, Kansas. Sheffeld, History of Florence, Massachusetts, 242; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 18–20, 30–38, 203–205; Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 138; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 6:53. 15. Another founding member of the Northampton Association, Hall Judd (1817–50) was a native of Northampton and the son of a local newspaper editor. As a young man, Judd worked as a farm laborer and a clerk in Connecticut and western Massachusetts. Both he and his wife, Frances Birge Judd, were abolitionists. While a member of the Northampton Association, Judd initially served as the community’s bookkeeper, and for a period of time he also ran the community store and oversaw the distribution of groceries and other goods to community members. Ill health forced him to limit his involvement in the community in 1844, but after George W. Benson withdrew from the group in 1845, Judd was elected secretary of the Northampton Association and became a member of its executive council. Ongoing health problems led Judd to participate in hydrotherapy treatments in the winter of 1844–45, which were being offered by the Northampton Association under the supervision of David Ruggles. After the community disbanded in 1846, Judd worked as a clerk for the Bensonville Manufacturing Company. His health continued to decline, however, and he died in Northampton in 1850. Sylvester Judd, Thomas Judd and His Descendants (Northampton, Mass., 1856), 35; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:215; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 15, 17, 23–24, 138, 179–80, 197–98.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 628

9/1/21 4:17 PM

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

629

16. A native of Lynn, Massachusetts, William Bassett (1803–71) was a member of a prominent family of Quaker merchants. By 1830, he was the leading shoe manufacturer in Lynn, but by the end of the decade, religious concerns and social issues had begun to take up more of his time. Initially, Bassett supported the policy of excluding abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison, from speaking at Quaker meetings, but by 1836 he was increasingly concerned over the Quakers’ reluctance to publicly condemn slavery. Early in 1837, Bassett joined an antislavery society and was consequently disowned by the Society of Friends for joining an outside association. In 1838, he began publishing attacks on Quaker meetings that segregated white and black members; the same year, he became a founding member of the New England Non-Resistance Society. In 1840, he cofounded the Worcester Reformer, which served mostly as a vehicle to publish his abolitionist and nonsectarian writings. After the newspaper ceased publication, Bassett, whose business had already failed, moved his family to Northampton in 1843 and joined the Northampton Association. Within a few months, however, Bassett grew disillusioned with the communitarian movement and moved his family back to Lynn, where he went into the dry goods business. In the years that followed, he once again concentrated on business matters, becoming a successful auctioneer, real estate broker, surveyor, and insurance agent. Bassett withdrew his membership from the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society around 1846. In 1848, he supported the Free Soil party, and was consequently elected clerk of Lynn’s newly established city council. He later became an officer of one of Lynn’s leading banks and remained so until his death. Clark, Communitarian Moment, 69–70, 194–95; Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 139. 17. James Boyle was born a Roman Catholic in Upper Ontario, but by the early 1820s he had become a Methodist minister noted for his fiery preaching. Throughout the 1820s, he served churches in Ohio, Michigan, and upstate New York, where he became acquainted with Charles Grandison Finney. In 1831, the young John Humphrey Noyes heard Boyle preach in Brattleboro, Vermont. Greatly moved by Boyle’s conviction and oratory, Noyes recommended him for the pastorate of the Free Church in New Haven, Connecticut. Boyle took the position in the spring of 1833, and he and Noyes became close. Together they developed some of the earliest tenets of perfectionism. In the spring of 1834, they launched a biweekly periodical, the Perfectionist, to highlight this new religious teaching. Soon, however, they parted ways, since Boyle found himself increasingly unable to embrace Noyes’s more radical positions, such as the possibility of actual human perfectibility through the removal of any trace of sin. By early 1835, Boyle had assumed complete control of the Perfectionist, and in it he contested Noyes’s teaching while espousing the free-love creed of Theophilus Gates. In 1836, Boyle left New Haven and moved to Newark, New Jersey, to live closer to Gates. In 1837, he allied himself with William Lloyd Garrison, advocating for immediate abolitionism. Boyle then relocated to Ohio, where he served as an antislavery agent and lecturer for the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society and wrote occasional articles for the Liberator. In the 1840s, Boyle became interested in socialism and joined a Fourierist community in Northampton, Massachusetts. At the same time, he embraced the New Covenant Movement, which eschewed all formal religious organizations and ritual. Boyle later followed Swedenborgianism and experimented with faith healing. Lib., 2 August 1839, 31 March 1843; Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (New York, 1950), 189–91; Robert David Thomas, The Man Who Would Be Perfect: John Humphrey Noyes and the Utopian Impulse (Philadelphia, 1977), 43–44, 70–71, 76–77; George Wallingford Noyes, ed., Religious Experience of John Humphrey Noyes, Founder of the Oneida Community (New York, 1923), 59, 165–69, 178–85, 202–07, 253, 255, 298–301. 18. Giles Badger Stebbins (1817–1900), an abolitionist and author, first toured on the lecture circuit in 1845 in the company of Abby Kelley and Stephen S. Foster. Stebbins’s writings focused on such diverse subjects as transcendentalism, abolitionism, temperance, industrial and agricultural development, and, later, spiritualism and “psychic science.” His views on abolition found him fi rmly in Garrison’s camp, but he retained a cordial relationship with politically minded abolitionists, including Douglass and Gerrit Smith. In 1853, Stebbins published a book outlining the opinions of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 629

9/1/21 4:17 PM

630

WHAT I FOUND AT THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION

prominent blacks in opposition to colonization. Giles B. Stebbins, Upward Steps of Seventy Years (New York, 1890), 86–90, 102–05; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 118. 19. Elisha Livermore Hammond (1799–1882) was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and received a limited education at the local school. At a fairly young age, he was trained in stuccowork in Boston, and for several years he studied with the painter Chester Harding. Following his marriage to Eliza Preston, he spent a number of years in the vicinity of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, farming and painting portraits. He was an abolitionist and also active in the temperance movement. In 1844, he sold his property in New Hampshire and moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, to join the Northampton Association. In 1845, Hammond is known to have painted Douglass’s portrait, now presumed lost; the painting of Douglass in the National Gallery is no longer attributed to Hammond. In November 1846, Hammond and his wife withdrew from the Northampton Association, but they purchased a home in Florence, which became a stop on the Underground Railroad. Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis and Nancy Lewis, American Characters: Selections from the National Portrait Gallery, Accompanied by Literary Portraits (New Haven, Conn., 1999), 387; Sheffeld, History of Florence, Massachusetts, 221–24; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 4:596; Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 140, 387. 20. Eliza Preston Hammond (1804–78) was the daughter of Dr. John Preston of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and the second wife of Elisha Livermore Hammond. Like her husband, Eliza Preston Hammond was an abolitionist and supported the temperance movement. Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 4:596; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 67, 191. 21. A respected teacher and gifted amateur naturalist, Sophia Foord (1802–85) was born in Milton, Massachusetts, but spent most of her life in nearby Dedham. In 1833, she became a teacher at the First Middle School of Dedham. Foord joined the New England Non-Resistance Society in 1842, and the following year she became a member of the Northampton Association. In 1844, Bronson Alcott, the father of Louisa May Alcott, began working on a plan to organize a private school in Concord, Massachusetts, and convinced Foord to serve as his assistant. After leaving Northampton in June 1845, Foord joined the Alcott household in Concord, but her relationship with Alcott’s wife, Abigail, quickly grew strained, and within a few months she was moved into quarters that had been specially constructed for her in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s barn. Having failed to raise the funds necessary for launching his school, Alcott arranged for Foord to remain in Concord and tutor his children, Emerson’s children, and William Ellery Channing’s children. In 1846, ill health, resulting in part from Henry David Thoreau rebuffing her proposal of marriage, forced her to give up teaching. In March 1847, she left Concord and returned to Dedham. In the mid-1850s, she worked as a governess to the children of the well-known abolitionist Elizabeth Buffum Chace in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. By 1870, however, Foord was once again living in Dedham, where she remained until her death in 1885. 1850 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Norfolk County, 256; 1870 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Norfolk County, 54; Martha Saxton, Louisa May Alcott: A Modern Biography (1977; Boston, 1995), 159–60, 163, 247–48; Gregory Eiselein and Anne K. Phillips, eds., The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia (Westport, Conn., 2001), 109, 150; Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 137. 22. David Ruggles (1810–1849), a free black man, was born and educated in Norwich, Connecticut. In 1827, he moved to New York, where he worked as a grocer. In 1834, he opened a book and print shop that specialized in abolitionist literature. Ruggles became active in the New York antislavery movement, serving as a writer, lecturer, and traveling agent for the reform publication Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals. He was also a conductor on the Underground Railroad, an editor of the Genius of Freedom and the Mirror of Liberty, and a secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee. His career in the antislavery movement ended abruptly in 1842 when temporary blindness, an illness that would plague him for the remainder of his life, forced him to curtail his activities and seek medical attention. At the Northampton Association, he underwent hydrotherapy, which temporarily relieved his blindness. Soon thereafter, he began a new career as a hydrotherapist in Northampton, treating such celebrated individuals as Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd Garrison.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 630

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE STORY OF THE HUTCHINSONS: INTRODUCTION

631

His reputation as a hydrotherapist gave him a prominence that rivaled his stature as an abolitionist. NASS, 20 December 1849; Lib., 21 December 1849; New York Evangelist, 27 December 1849; Salem (Ohio) Anti-Slavery Bugle, 29 December 1849; NS, 1 February 1850; Penn, Afro-American Press, 118; DANB, 536–38. 23. David Ruggles introduced hydrotherapy to the Northampton Association after his arrival there in 1843. After the community disbanded, he purchased land in the area and set up his own water-cure facility, which he operated until his death in 1849. Clark, Communitarian Moment, 197–202; Paul Gaffney, “Coloring Utopia: The African American Presence in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 243, 260, 262–263. 24. Sojourner Truth joined the Northampton Association in November 1843. She remained a resident until the community disbanded in 1846; thus, she would have been living there during both of Douglass’s visits to the group. Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 10; Gaffney, “Coloring Utopia,” 244, 252–56, 264–66.

THE STORY OF THE HUTCHINSONS: INTRODUCTION (1896) John Wallace Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 1:xv–xviii

The Hutchinson Family was a popular antislavery musical quartet, organized in 1841 and made up of four of the thirteen Hutchinson children: Judson, John, Asa, and Abby. Douglass had a long history with the family, whose store was located near Douglass’s home in Lynn, Massachusetts. The quartet traveled to England with Douglass in 1845 aboard the Cambria and occasionally performed at meetings where Douglass spoke. The original quartet disbanded when Abby married in 1849, but the family remained active in musical ventures throughout their lives. In 1894, John Hutchinson invited Douglass to supply the introduction to his forthcoming two-volume book, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), to which Douglass obliged, writing, “Hoping you may find it suitable to fill the space you desire . . . send me a book if I am living when it is published.” The book was published in 1896, after Douglass’s death in February of the preceding year. Douglass’s introduction was occasionally noticed by reviewers; an anonymous reviewer for the Literary World wrote, “It is honored with an introduction by Frederick Douglass, which it does not need.” Douglass to John Hutchinson, 6 December 1894, Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, New-York Historical Society; “The Hutchinson Family,” Literary World, 27:227 (1896); Brink, Harps

Y7870-Douglass.indb 631

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE STORY OF THE HUTCHINSONS: INTRODUCTION

631

His reputation as a hydrotherapist gave him a prominence that rivaled his stature as an abolitionist. NASS, 20 December 1849; Lib., 21 December 1849; New York Evangelist, 27 December 1849; Salem (Ohio) Anti-Slavery Bugle, 29 December 1849; NS, 1 February 1850; Penn, Afro-American Press, 118; DANB, 536–38. 23. David Ruggles introduced hydrotherapy to the Northampton Association after his arrival there in 1843. After the community disbanded, he purchased land in the area and set up his own water-cure facility, which he operated until his death in 1849. Clark, Communitarian Moment, 197–202; Paul Gaffney, “Coloring Utopia: The African American Presence in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 243, 260, 262–263. 24. Sojourner Truth joined the Northampton Association in November 1843. She remained a resident until the community disbanded in 1846; thus, she would have been living there during both of Douglass’s visits to the group. Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 10; Gaffney, “Coloring Utopia,” 244, 252–56, 264–66.

THE STORY OF THE HUTCHINSONS: INTRODUCTION (1896) John Wallace Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 1:xv–xviii

The Hutchinson Family was a popular antislavery musical quartet, organized in 1841 and made up of four of the thirteen Hutchinson children: Judson, John, Asa, and Abby. Douglass had a long history with the family, whose store was located near Douglass’s home in Lynn, Massachusetts. The quartet traveled to England with Douglass in 1845 aboard the Cambria and occasionally performed at meetings where Douglass spoke. The original quartet disbanded when Abby married in 1849, but the family remained active in musical ventures throughout their lives. In 1894, John Hutchinson invited Douglass to supply the introduction to his forthcoming two-volume book, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), to which Douglass obliged, writing, “Hoping you may find it suitable to fill the space you desire . . . send me a book if I am living when it is published.” The book was published in 1896, after Douglass’s death in February of the preceding year. Douglass’s introduction was occasionally noticed by reviewers; an anonymous reviewer for the Literary World wrote, “It is honored with an introduction by Frederick Douglass, which it does not need.” Douglass to John Hutchinson, 6 December 1894, Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, New-York Historical Society; “The Hutchinson Family,” Literary World, 27:227 (1896); Brink, Harps

Y7870-Douglass.indb 631

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE STORY OF THE HUTCHINSONS: INTRODUCTION

632

in the Wind; Scott Gac, Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform (New Haven, Conn., 2007), 43; Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons: 1:6, 40, 70–71, 142–46; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:158n.

It is no light task to write an introduction to this book of the Hutchinsons.1 They were a unique and striking family. In personal appearance and in moral and intellectual qualities, they were in the strictest sense, of the best New England mould. More than fifty years ago they were introduced to the country from the granite hills2 of New Hampshire, through the columns of The Herald of Freedom,3 by Nathaniel P. Rogers,4 one of the most brilliant and gifted writers of that day. He was an Abolitionist of the Abolitionists, and in thrilling words and at the very top of his sublime enthusiasm in that cause, he hailed with welcome the Hutchinsons, as did all Abolitionists, regarding them as a splendid acquisition to that then unpopular and persecuted cause. To write worthily an introduction to this book, the record of their career, one should have in some measure, the genius of the editor of The Herald of Freedom, for the Hutchinsons should be handed down to future generations in a light no less glorious at the sunset, than that which gilded their sky in the morning of their advent. The Hutchinsons were indeed an acquisition to the anti-slavery cause and to all other good causes. They were, when in England, fittingly called by Mary Howitt,5 “a band of young apostles.”6 They sang for freedom, for temperance, for peace, for moral and social reform. In their earlier days they were well described as a “nest of brothers with a sister in it.” Judson, John, Asa and Abby were their names. They brought to the various causes which they served, the divinest gift that heaven has bestowed upon man, the gift of music—the superb talent to touch the hearts and stir the souls of men to noble ends, even when such hearts were encased with the hardest pride and selfishness. No matter how high, no matter how low, this gift of music has, like the all-pervading love of God, power to reach, melt and fuse the souls of men into a sense of common kinship, common brotherhood and a common destiny. While it is of no language, it is of all languages, and speaks to the souls of men of all nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and like the overhanging firmament ever speaks forth the glory of God. To no singers whom I have ever heard was there given a larger measure of this celestial

Y7870-Douglass.indb 632

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE STORY OF THE HUTCHINSONS: INTRODUCTION

633

quality. Men and women who, at that early day, heard the Hutchinsons and who had heard other great singers, were compelled to confess that, in all their experience, they had never heard human voices blended into a concord of sounds purer or sweeter than those of this family. There was something almost miraculous in the singing of these three brothers and one sister. I have heard them, in a time of great excitement on the slavery question, calm to silence and order a turbulent and determined mob when it was in full blast and fiercely bent upon breaking up an anti-slavery meeting. We had, in the old Tabernacle in Broadway, New York, an instance of this power. One of the most furious mobs that I ever saw, confronted the American Anti-Slavery Society and determined that its speakers should not be heard.7 It stamped, shouted, whistled, howled, hooted and pushed and swayed the multitude to and fro in confusion and dismay. It silenced the platform and threatened the speakers with violence; and when neither the prophet-like solemnity of Garrison nor the sublime eloquence of Phillips could silence that tempest of rowdyism and wrath, the voices of this family came down from the gallery of the old Tabernacle, like a message from the sky, and in an instant all was hushed and silent. Every eye was raised and every ear attent. The stillness was like that which comes immediately after the vivid flash of forked lightning and the crash of its thunder. But the Hutchinsons were not merely a family of singers and sentimental reformers; they were actuated and guided by high moral principle. The world had much for them and courted them. It had wealth and popularity, but neither could seduce them from their steadfast convictions, nor could persecution drive them from the side of unpopular truth. Their fine talent for music could have secured for them wealth and fame; but, like Moses, they preferred to suffer affliction in the cause of justice and liberty than to enjoy the fruits of a concession to slavery. Jesse, the eldest brother, had the gift of verse as well as that of music; and well did he use it. He wrote on the spur of the moment and with surprising facility. He could frame words fitted to the immediate occasion; and these were sung with telling effect by the rest of the family. In answer to pro-slavery threats they sang “Party threats are not alarming, For, when music ceases charming, We can earn our bread by farming In the old Granite State.”8

Y7870-Douglass.indb 633

9/1/21 4:17 PM

634

THE STORY OF THE HUTCHINSONS: INTRODUCTION

While Jesse made no literary pretensions, some of his verses were as apt as any found in the songs of Robert Nichol9 or of Robert Burns.10 Those who heard Judson, John and Asa and their angelic sister Abby sing, heard much, but heard nothing in comparison to what I heard in their home. I was permitted to hear the whole “Tribe of Jesse”11 sing in their old family mansion, where thirteen of the family poured out their souls together in pious song, till it appeared as if the very roof were rising skyward.12 The scene of that hour has been present to me during all these fifty years, and I still recall it as one of the most sublime and glorious hours I ever experienced. I saw this family in all the vicissitudes of its career, covering a period of more than half a century. I saw it in times that tried men’s souls.13 I saw it in peace and I saw it in war; but I never saw one of its members falter or flinch before any duty, whether social or patriotic; and it is a source of more satisfaction than I can express, to have lived, as I have now done, to bear this high testimony to the character of the Hutchinsons, especially now that only one of them has survived to write this book in perpetuation of their precious memory.14 FREDERICK DOUG LASS. 1. John Wallace Hutchinson published Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse) in two volumes in 1896. Douglass’s introduction was printed in the first volume. Gac, Singing for Freedom, 43. 2. The nickname is derived from the many years that New Hampshire was one of America’s most important centers for granite quarrying. Adrian Room, Nicknames of Places (Jefferson, N.C., 2006), 112. 3. Founded in 1835 and published in Concord, the Herald of Freedom was the official newspaper of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. Nathaniel P. Rogers became its editor in 1838. Robert Adams, “Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: 1794–1846,” NEQ, 20:366–68. 4. The New Hampshire abolitionist Nathaniel Peabody Rogers (1794–1846) left a law practice in Plymouth to edit the Concord abolitionist weekly Herald of Freedom in 1838. He also worked to desegregate transportation facilities, promote temperance, and end capital punishment. In the mid1840s, Rogers quarreled bitterly with other Garrisonian abolitionists, charging that disunionism carried an implicit threat of war. Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 162–63; Mabee, Black Freedom, 116, 123; Adams, “Nathaniel Peabody Rogers,” 365–76; NCAB, 2:320. 5. Mary Botham Howitt (1799–1888) and her husband, William Howitt (1792–1879), were among the foremost authors and publishers in Victorian England. From a partnership that began with their marriage in 1821, the Howitts cowrote several books and the short-lived Howitt’s Journal (1847–48). Both of them also continued to write separately, with selections of their poetry appearing in antislavery newspapers. Mary in particular became known for her translations of the works of Hans Christian Andersen and Frederika Bremer. Throughout their careers, the Howitts supported radical movements in politics and literature, including abolition, women’s rights, and the romantic poets. In March 1846, Mary Howitt penned a poem titled “To the Hutchinson Family.” She printed the poem in the People’s and Howitt’s Journal, a periodical that she and William published. The poem is made up of three stanzas, and each stanza begins with the words “Band of young apostles.”

Y7870-Douglass.indb 634

9/1/21 4:17 PM

THE STORY OF THE HUTCHINSONS: INTRODUCTION

635

Mary Howitt, “Poetry for the People,” People’s and Howitt’s Journal, 154 (14 March 1846); Barbara Onslow, Women of the Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain (New York, 2000), 228; Mitchell, Victorian Britain, 145, 382, 848; DNB, 10:122–25. 6. Nathaniel Parker Willis, poet, editor, and friend of the Hutchinson family, was most likely the first to describe the quartet of singers as such. Along with George P. Morris, Willis edited the New York Evening Mirror from 1844 to 1846. Most records indicate that Willis first described the Hutchinson singers as “a nest of brothers with a sister in it” in the Evening Mirror sometime in 1844. In November 1844, at least two newspapers—the Vermont Patriot and the New-Hampshire Statesman and State Journal—claimed that Willis had again used this particular description. Concord New-Hampshire Statesman and State Journal, 15 November 1844; Montpelier Vermont Patriot, 16 November 1844; Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, 1:46, 2:239; Ella Giles Ruddy, ed., The Mother of Clubs: Caroline M. Seymour Severance (Los Angeles, 1906), 57; P. B. Cogswell, “Abby Hutchinson Patton,” Granite Monthly, 15:17 (January 1893). 7. On 7 May 1850, the American Anti-Slavery Society held its annual meeting at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City. A mob led by Isaiah Rynders harassed the speakers and attempted to break up the gathering. Amid the commotion, the Hutchinson Family Singers, who were in attendance in the gallery, began to sing in an effort to restore order. Some sources claim that the singers tamed Rynders and his group, while others state that the family’s voices were barely audible over the mob. Lib., 3 May 1850, 17 May 1850; NS, 3 May 1850; First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia, Exercises at the Meeting of the First Congressional Unitarian Society, January 12, 1875, Together with the Discourse Delivered by Rev. W. H. Furness, D.D., Sunday, January 10, 1875, On the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of His Ordination, January 12, 1825 (Philadelphia, 1875), 29–30. 8. These lyrics come from the song “The Old Granite State,” written by Jesse Hutchinson. This song, set to the tune of the revival hymn “Old Church Yard,” served as the theme song for the Hutchinson Family Singers. As time went on, the group added further reformist stanzas to their songs, including “The Old Granite State.” In December 1846, the troupe performed at the Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia to a mixed-race crowd, despite the city’s mayor instructing officers to prohibit blacks from entering the hall. According to Philip Jordan, it was at this performance that the group added these specific lyrics to “The Old Granite State.” Lib., 8 January 1847; Philip D. Jordan, Singin’ Yankees (Minneapolis, 1946), 147–48; Caroline Moseley, “The Hutchinson Family: The Function of Their Song in Ante-Bellum America,” in American Popular Music: Readings from the Popular Press, vol. 1: The Nineteenth Century and Tin Pan Alley, ed. Timothy E. Scheurer (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1989), 71. 9. Robert Nicoll (1814–37) was a Scottish poet born in the small town of Tullybelton in Perthshire, Scotland. As a young man, he secured an apprenticeship to a grocer in Perth, but poor health caused him to leave his post in 1834. Nicoll then moved to Dundee, where he opened and operated a small circulating library. He also wrote for local liberal newspapers and delivered public political addresses. After leaving the library, he became editor of the Leeds Times. In 1835, he published Poems and Lyrics. Suffering from consumption, Nicoll died on 9 December 1837. Maria Norris, “The Life of Robert Nicholl,” Ladies Companion and Monthly Magazine, 3:308, 312–14 (1853); Peter Robert Drummond, Life of Robert Nicoll, Poet (London, 1884); James Grant Wilson, The Poets and Poetry of Scotland: From the Earliest to the Present Time (New York, 1896), 370–71. 10. Robert Burns (1759–96) was a farmer who became Scotland’s most celebrated poet. Following his death, Burns became a cultural icon for Scots and their admirers around the world. Though he received little formal education, Burns took up poetry to express his emotions and observations. The success of his first published volume, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), enabled him to abandon farming and move to Edinburgh, where he won acceptance into literary circles. Although he soon retreated to rural life, he continued writing and publishing poetry and lyrics to accompany Scottish folk melodies. DNB, 3:426–38.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 635

9/1/21 4:17 PM

636

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

11. “Tribe of Jesse” is a biblical reference to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. These tribes are represented by the twelve sons of Jacob, whose own name was later changed to “Israel.” His sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. The biblical Jesse, in fact, was descended from the tribe of Judah. Jesse’s lineage within the tribe is vital to Judaism and Christianity. He was reported to be the grandson of Ruth, the father of David, and an ancestor of Jesus. The allusion to the tribe of Jesse was likely an attempt both to stress the singing family’s Christian image and to refer to the large number of children the singers had produced. Gen. 49:1–28, Matt. 1:5–16; Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch (New Haven, Conn., 2012), 66–75. 12. Douglass is most likely referring to his June 1843 visit following the New England AntiSlavery Convention held in Boston. The Hutchinson Family Singers and Douglass attended this meeting. As John Hutchinson remembered, following the convention, Douglass and his fellow black abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond accompanied the troupe back to Milford, New Hampshire, and stayed at the family home for a couple of days. In 1843, thirteen of the Hutchinson children were living in the home: David, Noah, Andrew, Zephaniah, Caleb, Joshua, Jesse, Benjamin, Judson, Rhoda, John, Asa, and Abby. Benjamin passed away the following year at the age of twenty-nine. Lib., 16 June 1843; Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, 1:5–6, 89; Dale Cockrell, ed., Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842–1846 (Stuyvesant, N.Y., 1989), x–xi; Gac, Singing for Freedom, 82, 86. 13. The first line of Thomas Paine’s first Crisis paper, 23 December 1776. Thomas Paine, The Political Writings of Thomas Paine, 2 vols. (Boston, 1859), 1:75. 14. John Wallace Hutchinson (1821–1908) was the last surviving member of the Hutchinson family in 1896. His sister Abby, the youngest in the family and eight years John’s junior, died in 1892. Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, 1:iii–iv; Cockrell, Excelsior, xi.

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE: AN ESTIMATE BY A FELLOW-AFRICAN (1903) New York Independent, 23 April 1903. Other texts in New York Colored American, 8:487–92 (6 July 1903); Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 13, frames 699–753, FD Papers, DLC.

Douglass wrote the following sketch of Toussaint L’Ouverture as an introduction to an unpublished English translation of a French biography of the Haitian leader who led a successful slave revolt in Saint-Domingue. Written by the French politician, philanthropist, and reformer Victor Schoelcher, best known for his efforts in securing emancipation for slaves in France’s colonies during the Revolution of 1848, the original volume, Vie de ToussaintLouverture, was published in 1889. While honeymooning in Paris in 1887 with wife, Helen Pitts, Douglass implored a mutual friend, Theodore Stanton, to introduce him to Schoelcher, whom Stanton described as the “William Lloyd Garrison of France.” Through

Y7870-Douglass.indb 636

9/1/21 4:17 PM

636

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

11. “Tribe of Jesse” is a biblical reference to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. These tribes are represented by the twelve sons of Jacob, whose own name was later changed to “Israel.” His sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. The biblical Jesse, in fact, was descended from the tribe of Judah. Jesse’s lineage within the tribe is vital to Judaism and Christianity. He was reported to be the grandson of Ruth, the father of David, and an ancestor of Jesus. The allusion to the tribe of Jesse was likely an attempt both to stress the singing family’s Christian image and to refer to the large number of children the singers had produced. Gen. 49:1–28, Matt. 1:5–16; Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch (New Haven, Conn., 2012), 66–75. 12. Douglass is most likely referring to his June 1843 visit following the New England AntiSlavery Convention held in Boston. The Hutchinson Family Singers and Douglass attended this meeting. As John Hutchinson remembered, following the convention, Douglass and his fellow black abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond accompanied the troupe back to Milford, New Hampshire, and stayed at the family home for a couple of days. In 1843, thirteen of the Hutchinson children were living in the home: David, Noah, Andrew, Zephaniah, Caleb, Joshua, Jesse, Benjamin, Judson, Rhoda, John, Asa, and Abby. Benjamin passed away the following year at the age of twenty-nine. Lib., 16 June 1843; Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, 1:5–6, 89; Dale Cockrell, ed., Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842–1846 (Stuyvesant, N.Y., 1989), x–xi; Gac, Singing for Freedom, 82, 86. 13. The first line of Thomas Paine’s first Crisis paper, 23 December 1776. Thomas Paine, The Political Writings of Thomas Paine, 2 vols. (Boston, 1859), 1:75. 14. John Wallace Hutchinson (1821–1908) was the last surviving member of the Hutchinson family in 1896. His sister Abby, the youngest in the family and eight years John’s junior, died in 1892. Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, 1:iii–iv; Cockrell, Excelsior, xi.

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE: AN ESTIMATE BY A FELLOW-AFRICAN (1903) New York Independent, 23 April 1903. Other texts in New York Colored American, 8:487–92 (6 July 1903); Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 13, frames 699–753, FD Papers, DLC.

Douglass wrote the following sketch of Toussaint L’Ouverture as an introduction to an unpublished English translation of a French biography of the Haitian leader who led a successful slave revolt in Saint-Domingue. Written by the French politician, philanthropist, and reformer Victor Schoelcher, best known for his efforts in securing emancipation for slaves in France’s colonies during the Revolution of 1848, the original volume, Vie de ToussaintLouverture, was published in 1889. While honeymooning in Paris in 1887 with wife, Helen Pitts, Douglass implored a mutual friend, Theodore Stanton, to introduce him to Schoelcher, whom Stanton described as the “William Lloyd Garrison of France.” Through

Y7870-Douglass.indb 636

9/1/21 4:17 PM

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

637

subsequent meetings, Douglass came to hold Schoelcher in high esteem. Writing about Schoelcher to Stanton, Douglass declared, “I shall never forget the meeting we that morning had with that grand old man, blest with recollection of a long life of noble deeds.” During their time together in Paris, Schoelcher informed Douglass of the biography of L’Ouverture he was then writing. A year after the book’s publication, Schoelcher wrote to Stanton to remind him of a promise he had made to translate the work into English. This project, however, was contingent on Douglass’s agreement to write an introduction. Schoelcher asserted that an introduction from Douglass “would add new value to my book, to make known in the United States and its large black population, a negro who grandly ennobled his race in attaining the position of what is called ‘a great man.’ ” Stanton wrote to Douglass, who, having been recently appointed minister to Haiti, declined: “I fear, however, that my appointment as Minister Resident and Consul-General to Hayti, and the work of preparing for the same, will make it impossible for me to write an Introduction to the English edition as you request. If, however, I can find time between now and my departure for Hayti, I will write the Introduction and send it to you.” In April 1890, Douglass wrote Stanton from Port-au-Prince, enclosing the following essay on L’Ouverture for inclusion in the English translation. The introduction was published posthumously in the New York Independent in 1903 to commemorate the centennial anniversary of L’Ouverture’s death. Douglass to Theodore Stanton, 25 November 1886, 13 January 1887, 16 August 1889, Theodore M. Stanton Papers, NjR; ChR, 10 February 1887; Chicago Open Court, 8:4151–53 (19 July 1894); New York Independent, 23 May 1895.

To write out a full and fair estimate of the life and works of a great black man like Toussaint L’Ouverture and in such a manner that it shall be favorably received by the people of the United States, is a task not easily performed. Whether attempted by a Frenchman or by an American, by a white man or by a black man, the undertaking, in some respects, will probably be a failure. Even in regard to the character of Toussaint himself, there is danger of an incorrect measurement. The author may intend to be strictly just, to

Y7870-Douglass.indb 637

9/1/21 4:17 PM

638

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

hold perfectly fair and steady the scales in which he proposes to weight his hero’s worth, and yet he may find that he has missed his honest aim. The moral atmosphere, not only of this country, but, more or less, that of the civilized world, is against his undertaking. The external pressure is unequal, more on one side than on the other. It is the misfortune of men of African descent to be heavily shadowed by a cloud and they must wait to have it dispelled before they can be properly seen, either by themselves or by others. Suspicion of the presence of a drop of African blood in the veins of a man, however able and distinguished, is a blight and mildew upon his life for American society. He is regarded by the many as outside the pale of social brotherhood. Averted eyes meet him at every turn in the path of life. Even the Christianity of his times scarcely includes him and evidently cares more for him abroad than at home, afar off than near at hand. His race is hated and his color is crime. The verdict of both court and country is against him in advance of evidence or argument. Under such conditions a man can do but little to gain a creditable standing either in the favor or the conduct of the community. There are few things in the world more blinding than race prejudice, and there are but few things more inflexible and persistent. Against the claims of truth and justice, to say nothing of brotherly kindness, it stands like a wall of brass.1 Reason and common sense dash themselves against it in vain. Individual men have risen and are rising above it, but the masses are ever under its sway and direction. In one form or another it has existed in all countries and in all ages. It was present at the marriage of Moses2 and confronted the star of Bethlehem at the birth of the Savior of the world. No good could come out of Nazareth,3 it said, and the Jews should have no dealings with the Samaritans.4 In some parts of our own country to-day “There is no good Indian but a dead one,”5 and neither Irishman, Jew nor Chinaman is fully included in the high human circle. But the fiercest wrath of this race prejudice is reserved for men and women of African blood. For the heads of such there is a stick in every hand. The North meets the negro with scorn and proscription, and the South meets him with lynch law and with assassination. It must be admitted, if I have rightly stated the presence, the force and the effect of this vulgar and absurd prejudice, that it will not be easy to get Toussaint well before the American people. There is, however, a large love of truth and a measure of candor to be found here, and this, with the universal love of reading, may bring the general attention to the claims even of a great negro. This generous side of our countrymen may be reached by

Y7870-Douglass.indb 638

9/1/21 4:17 PM

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

639

this volume and its publication6 may also do something toward dispelling the murky cloud that bars its way among our people at large. But the difficulty of presenting to the public the life and works of Toussaint lies not wholly on one side. Extremes beget extremes.7 There are prejudices for the negro as well as prejudices against him, and neither are to be heeded in the honest pursuit of truth. A man of tender and humane sensibilities, deeply penetrated with a sense of the immeasurable wrongs of which the negro has been the victim for ages, may, in the fervor of a feeling thus excited, do a little more than justice to the negro and less than justice to what may be his vices. I do not know whether I have been the more amazed or amused at some descriptions I have read and heard of the negro’s perfections, some making him out a very angel of piety, a natural born Christian, a lamb in docility, while the truth is that the negro is in all respects simply a man, one who possesses the possibilities of all the virtues and of all the vices common to all other varieties of mankind. No better, no worse. The angel in him is as lovely as in any other description of man; and the brute is, in him, not less visible or brutal than in any other. We differ as the waves, but are one as the sea. But in addition to these prejudices for and against the negro, tending to obscure the truth, there is apt to come a certain enthusiasm in those who take up the cause of the negro, which may conduct one a little aside from the truth, which should ever be our aim and to be attained at whatever cost. There is much in the character and career of Toussaint that touches the humane and poetic side of human nature. Under the influence of his transcendent qualities and of his own warm heart the author may be easily led to do injustice to his own head. Of course the tendency against the negro is much stronger than any that is yet developed for him, and it is against this adverse tendency that both the writer and the reader should be on their guard. Men are not unlike sheep. They are apt to go with the multitude and often blindly. It is much easier to conform to popular sentiment than to confront and oppose it. Again, there are two standards by which the greatness of individual men is measured, and what result we shall reach in our estimate of Toussaint will in great measure depend upon which standard of measurement we apply to him. One standard of measurement is the ethnological standard, based upon points of difference of color and features in races; the other is the standard based upon the broad foundation of the common and essential humanity of all races, and applied to all human being alike, of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 639

9/1/21 4:17 PM

640

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

whatever country or complexion. When a man affirms that he prefers an honest negro to a dishonest white man, and that he would rather have the company of an intelligent negro than that of an ignorant white man, one need not hesitate to conclude that he is measuring men by the ethnological standard and not by that broader and better one that judges men by character rather than by color or race. But worse still. Adopting this limited method of judgment, the negro often gets his best taken for his worst and gets no justice at all. What is applauded in the white man is abhorred in the black man. George Washington, leading his countrymen through a seven years’ war for freedom, is regarded as a paragon of patriotism and of all that is noble in manhood. Toussaint L’Ouverture, moved by the same heroic spirit to the like effort, was looked upon by the contemporary Christian world as a moral monster deserving death by the hangman’s halter. Washington was fighting for political freedom; Toussaint was fighting against a personal slavery, one hour of which, according to the great Thomas Jefferson, was worse than ages of that which Washington rose in rebellion to oppose.8 Yet in the eye of the world, and according to this partial standard of measurement, the one was a saint, the other was a sinner; the one was an honor to human nature, the other was a dastardly felon. The same method of judgment was applied to Denmark Vesey at Charleston,9 to Nat Turner at Southampton, Virginia, and to John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. Had these men espoused the cause of white men instead of that of poor, despised colored men, monuments of marble would before this have arisen to commemorate their deeds. Color and race make all the difference. What is welcomed in the one case is met with repulse in the other. There is one other impediment, too, in the case of Toussaint L’Ouverture, which does not rest upon the accident of race or color. It is the relativeness of greatness itself. Thus it is less easy to discover and define greatness while it stands alone than when viewed in comparison with some admitted example of greatness. A ship sailing alone on a smooth sea, under a full canvas and making the water foam under her prow, will seem to those upon her deck to be making much better speed than when another vessel is alongside sailing the same way at the same rate of speed. In other words, it is easier to discover a giant among pigmies than among giants. It was thus with Toussaint. His work was peculiar and his character unique. Both his task and the material with which he had to work were of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 640

9/1/21 4:17 PM

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

641

an uncommon nature. In fact he was without example and stands alone. He not only had to make bricks without straw,10 but he had to make wood take the place of iron and to make a rope of sand11 strong as a chain of steel. He had to make what were considered things into men, property into persons, to make slaves who had always cowered before their haughty masters to confront these same masters with the port and dignity of freemen determined to be free at whatever cost to themselves or to others. It was a Herculean task,12 and required a moral Hercules to perform it. Great generals have done great things, but nothing greater than did this man when measured by their different circumstances. It is not merely or principally his success that bespeaks Toussaint’s merit. It is the faith and courage of the man which should most distinguish him. The contest into which he flung himself was desperate enough to appal any ordinary courage. He was to attempt the impossible. The wealth, valor and military skill of the most war-like nation of modern times were employed against him. The interest and moral sentiment of the Christian world were also largely against him. All the sister islands of Haiti were slave-holding and were, therefore, against him. He had to match the fire-arms of France with the wooden arms of Haiti. It was rags against uniforms, poverty against wealth, and ignorant mobs against trained soldiers. Other men have done great things in great circumstances. Toussaint did great things against circumstances, or rather he made the circumstances. He made not only the ship but the sea upon which he floated to victory and freedom. The fire and fortitude of his soldiers proceeded from himself. No war was ever undertaken by Washington or Wellington13 which, upon its face, appeared more hopeless of success. Then, in measuring this man, we should consider also the point from whence he came. Other liberators and saviors of men have come from above. This man came from below. It is not the lowly slave, but the highborn freeman from whom we are taught to expect great things. It is the man whose neck has never bowed to the yoke, whose limbs have never been galled by the bondman’s chain, whose flesh has never been torn by the driver’s lash, and whose primal manhood has never been crushed by the iron hand of the tyrant, who usually has the spirit and eloquence to rouse the masses to deeds of daring and himself becomes the leader of a liberating host. But here we have a slave in possession of and employing the highest qualities of the freeman. This in itself is something great. But why did not his fellow slaves refuse to be led by him, saying, “You are the same as ourselves! Who made you a commander over us?” The fact that

Y7870-Douglass.indb 641

9/1/21 4:17 PM

642

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

his people believed in him is one of the best evidences of the greatness of the man. In this respect he was an exception to a general rule. On broad philosophic principles the starting point of Toussaint was against him. He was proclaimed unfit for the position to which he was called. His antecedents made him a follower, while his nature made him a leader. The poet says, truly, “It is the hand of little employment that hath the daintier touch.”14 Sensibility is at the bottom of revolt. Men feel before they think, and think before they act. Sensibility comes of gentle usage. The iron hand of slavery blunts and destroys, in large measure, the sensibility of the slave. Moses was fitted to slay the Egyptian who was ill treating a Hebrew, by being brought up in the king’s palace and cradled in the lap of the king’s daughter.15 Raised above the dead level of his animal wants the slave has created in him a higher range of wants, still more exacting. Give him food, clothes, a good bed and time for recreation and thought and you make him a full-fledged rebel against slavery. But Toussaint illustrates in some degree both sides of this seemingly contradictory proposition. He was slave enough to seem contented with his lot, but his easy condition was a preparation for better things. He was a favored slave and almost a free man. He was his master’s coachman, and the distance between the coach and the family was not great.16 The intelligence on the inside sometimes extends to the man on the box. Toussaint had a chance to hear much, to learn much and to think much, and he doubtless did all three. He was not tortured by cruelty, famished by hunger, worn out by labor, or hardened by brutal chastisements. It is easy to see that as his physical wants diminished his mental wants must have increased. Yet on the face of it there was something strange in the fact, that such a man should all at once become a leader of insurgents against a slavery that to him had been so mild. His time of life, too, tended to increase this strangeness. He was fifty years of age, a time when men are generally averse to change and are supposed to shrink from new conditions of existence. But no one except himself knew how deeply he was affected by the simple thought of being a slave, tho in his case the conditions were easy and had been long borne. What must have been the surprise of his master and of those who knew how kindly he had been treated when they discovered him at the head of a rebellion against slavery. It was like a bolt from a cloudless tropical sky; or rather a sudden upheaval from subterranean depths and darkness, an outpouring of volcanic fire and noxious vapors. It meant that now Santo Domingo17 was to become a perfect hell of

Y7870-Douglass.indb 642

9/1/21 4:17 PM

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

643

horrors, and the tenderly treated Toussaint was thereafter to be seen as by the lurid glare of a furnace infernal, where men ceased to be men and became devils incarnate who gloated over human blood, laughed at human agony and mocked at despairing innocence. For since the days of the Spanish Inquisition,18 when bigotry in the name of religion raised high its bloody hand against the happiness of mankind, there has been nothing to surpass the terrible scenes enacted in Santo Domingo. In this sanguinary struggle, if mercy was still found lurking in one breast, it was in that of Toussaint. For the sake of the much maligned negro I am glad that Toussaint was a negro, and was the negro that he was. My residence in Haiti has fully satisfied me on this point. He was a full blooded negro. His busts and portraits leave no doubt of his origin. His color, his features and hair tell the whole story. No part of his greatness can be fairly ascribed to kinship with the white race. He stands as a demonstration of what is possible under a woolly head, negro features and a black skin. What nature has done nature can do again. A Toussaint number one makes possible a Toussaint number two, and many to follow. It is said that he was an exception. So he was, but only in the sense in which other great men are exceptions. All Englishmen are not Peels,19 Gladstones20 and Brights,21 and all Americans are not Websters,22 Clays23 and Conklings,24 but the races which have produced these can produce others like them. The material will not be exhausted while the race remains. We dare to think of Toussaint in this light and to view him with the same complacency with which other varieties of mankind view their great men. We present him as a standing reply to the assertion of negro inferiority. But the beneficent influence of the example afforded in Toussaint was not confined to the negro. He had a mission to the whole white world scarcely less important than to the negro. His coming was a great and much needed awakening. The slavery of the Christian world was more disturbed by him than by any man prior to him. He taught slaveholders of every color in every land the danger of goading to madness the energy that slumbers in the black man’s arm. My appointment as United States Minister to Haiti afforded a welcome opportunity to learn more of this remarkable man and of the estimation in which he is held by his countrymen. It was with keen regret that I discovered that in Haiti the memory of Toussaint is not held in the honor which it deserves. Very little is said of him there and that little is not much in his praise. His case is another illustration of the truth that a prophet is without honor in his own country and among his own kinsmen.25

Y7870-Douglass.indb 643

9/1/21 4:17 PM

644

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

The absence of appreciation of Toussaint in Haiti seems to be owing to the facts that he was not sufficiently blood-thirsty and that he was opposed to the complete separation of his country from France. He was also blamed for compelling his countrymen to work and to keep the productiveness of the country up to the point attained in the time of slavery.26 No one pretends that Toussaint was not a friend to his people and a valiant friend of their freedom, but he was, they insist, too much of a Frenchman. Strange that the very people who say this to-day are themselves wedded to the French. They send their children to France to be educated; are proud of their French language, manners and customs, and many of them take shelter under the citizenship of France even when proposing to spend their days in Haiti.27 But the memory of Toussaint L’Ouverture is not confined and will not be confined to his own country. He was too great for such limitations. His character and works make him the property of mankind, and the best minds and hearts of the civilized world will cherish and vindicate his memory and execrate the base treatchery and remorseless cruelty that left him to perish of cold and hunger in the icy damps of a gloomy prison. “Sleep calmly in thy dungeon tomb, Beneath Besancon’s alien sky, Dark Haytien!—for the time shall come, Yea, even now is nigh— When, everywhere, thy name shall be Redeemed from color’s infamy; And men shall learn to speak of thee As one of earth’s great spirits, born In servitude, and nursed in scorn, Casting aside the weary weight And fetters of its low estate, In that strong majesty of soul Which knows no color, tongue, or clime— Which still hath spurned the base control Of tyrants through all time!”28 1. Jer. 15:20. 2. Num. 12:1. 3. John 1:26. 4. John 4:9. 5. Of uncertain origin, this phrase is often attributed to the American general Phillip Sheridan. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York, 2009), 194.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 644

9/1/21 4:17 PM

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

645

6. Douglass refers to the intended English translation of Victor Schoelcher’s Vie de ToussaintLouverture (Paris, 1889), which was never published. Chicago Open Court, 8:4151–53 (19 July 1894). 7. Attributed to Charles Caleb Colton. Maturin Ballou, A Treasury of Thought: An Encyclopaedia of Quotations from Ancient and Modern Authors (Boston, 1872), 161. 8. Douglass is referring to part of a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Jean Nicholas Demeunier, dated 26 June 1786, that discussed Virginia slaveholders: “What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment or death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him thro’ his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.” The letter was one of several that Jefferson, the U.S. minister to France, exchanged with Demeunier during the first half of 1786. Demeunier was writing articles on the political economy of the United States, as well as individual states, for inclusion in the Encyclopédie Méthodique. In an effort to correct factual errors and positively shape the author’s impressions, Jefferson generously responded to Demeunier’s questions and provided him with official documents and source materials. In this letter, Jefferson’s view of slavery is similar to those presented in his Notes on the State of Virginia, completed only a few years prior: the enslavement of Africans is unjust, in his opinion, but the combined economic interests and racial prejudice of American whites made its peaceful abolition nearly impossible to fathom. Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, eds. Julian P. Boyd et al., 41 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1950–2014), 10:3–64. 9. Denmark Vesey (c. 1767–1822), who led a conspiracy of slaves and free blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822, was born with the name Telemaque, probably on the West Indian island of St. Thomas. At the St. Thomas port of Charlotte Amalie in 1781, he was among the 390 slaves purchased by the slave trader Captain Joseph Vesey for resale in the French colony Saint-Domingue. Because Telemaque suffered from ill health, Vesey repurchased him in 1782. He worked as a cabin boy for Vesey, moving to Charleston with him in 1783. Upon winning the East-Bay Lottery in 1799, the slave now known as Denmark purchased his freedom, adopted the surname Vesey, and established himself as a carpenter. In December 1821, Vesey began to organize a slave revolt through secret meetings, enlisting as many as nine thousand blacks from Charleston and its vicinity. Vesey’s plans proposed the takeover of city arsenals and guardhouses, the assassination of the governor, and a massacre of all whites and nonparticipating blacks. He named Saint-Domingue as the rebels’ eventual refuge; however, a house slave who had incautiously been apprised of the plot revealed the conspiracy to white authorities. Vesey tried to change the date of the uprising before going into hiding. Soon discovered and arrested, he conducted his own legal defense, arguing that he, a free man, could have no reason to rebel. Found guilty, Vesey and five coconspirators were hanged on 2 July 1822. Twenty-two additional slaves were subsequently hanged, and many more were sold to slaveholders outside the United States. Douglas R. Egerton, He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, rev. ed. (Lanham, Md., 2004); John Lofton, Insurrection in South Carolina: The Turbulent World of Denmark Vesey (Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1964), 37, 73, 131–34, 140–42, 156–57, 206–10; ACAB, 6:283–84; DAB, 19:258–59; DANB, 618–19. 10. Exod. 5:7. 11. This expression for something lacking cohesion dates back at least as far as the sixteenth century, where it appeared in the private journal of Francis Bacon. Bacon, Journals, 366. 12. Douglass refers to the twelve labors that Hercules was compelled to perform after killing his wife and children in a fit of madness sent by the goddess Hera. The oracle at Delphi told Hercules that as penance, he had to serve the king of Mycenae, Eurystheus, for twelve years. The tasks assigned by Eurystheus were inordinately difficult, and only Hercules, with his supernatural strength, was able to complete them. Pierre Grimal, A Concise Dictionary of Classical Mythology, trans. A. R. MaxwellHyslop (Oxford, 1951), 185. 13. Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), was a British soldier and statesman who was reputed to have never lost a battle. He distinguished himself by defeating, against overwhelming odds, armies in India and by defeating the French in Portugal and Spain during the

Y7870-Douglass.indb 645

9/1/21 4:17 PM

646

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

Peninsular Campaign (1808–1814). He acquired lasting fame by vanquishing Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. He was the most acclaimed figure in the British Empire—and possibly the entire world—during the first half of the nineteenth century. Mitchell, Victorian Britain, 850–51; Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 973–74. 14. Hamlet, sc. 8, lines 3040–41. 15. Though he was a Hebrew, Moses was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised as a prince. While outside the palace, he saw a Hebrew slave being beaten. Moses intervened and killed the Egyptian. Resentful of Moses’s elevation, the Hebrew revealed what Moses had done, forcing the prince to flee Egypt. Exod 2:1–15. 16. Because of the paucity of reliable and accessible primary sources related to eighteenthcentury French Saint-Domingue, nearly everything about Toussaint’s life is contested by modern historians. Nevertheless, scholars generally agree that Toussaint was a coachman and an overseer of livestock on the Bréda estate, just outside Cap-Français, the cultural capital of the French colony. These duties, though positions of considerable responsibility, were less physically taxing than laboring in the plantation’s sugarcane fields. Most importantly, they allowed him to closely observe the colony’s highly stratified societies of whites, mulattoes, and African slaves, and to navigate within and between them. The trust and favor that Bréda’s manager had for Toussaint probably explains why he was freed sometime between 1772 and 1776—fully fifteen years before the slave insurrection began on the island in 1791. Douglass did not know of Toussaint’s prolonged period of freedom, or that he owned and rented slaves to work his small landholdings during this time; Toussaint’s writings intentionally obscured these matters. In fact, historians discovered these stunning revelations only in the mid-1970s through the close study of Saint-Domingue plantation records and French colonial documents. David Patrick Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington, Ind., 2002), 16; Gabriel Debien, Jean Fouchard, and Marie-Antoinette Menier, “Toussaint Louverture avant 1789: Légends et Réalités,” Conjonction: Revue Franco-Haïtienne, 134:67–80 (June–July 1977); Philippe R. Girard and Jean-Louis Donnadieu, “Toussaint before Louverture: New Archival Findings on the Early Life of Toussaint Louverture,” William and Mary Quarterly, 70:41–78 (January 2013). 17. The island of Hispaniola was sighted and named by Christopher Columbus in 1492, although it soon acquired the name Santo Domingo as a Spanish colony. France acquired the western third of the island in the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. This French colony was called Saint-Domingue until General Jean-Jacques Dessalines and his entourage declared it to be the independent nation of Haiti on 1 January 1804. The residents of the eastern two-thirds of the island declared themselves the Dominican Republic in 1844, although they had a torturous time maintaining their independence. Douglass is using the term “Santo Domingo” to refer to the entire island of Hispaniola, a custom relatively common in the late nineteenth century. Haggerty, Dominican Republic and Haiti, 3, 7–12. 18. Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition, a tribunal to investigate heresy, in 1231. The goal of these courts was to convince the guilty to voluntarily confess before formal proceedings began, whereupon they would be given relatively light penances. Those who remained suspected of heresy were placed on trial, in secret, without knowing who had accused them and without the benefit of legal defense. After 1252, defendants were frequently tortured to produce confessions. Sentences ranged from light penances to flogging, life imprisonment, or burning at the stake; the last two penalties were accompanied by the confiscation of property. The Inquisition did not operate in Spain until 1478, when Pope Sixtus IV established it under the authority of the monarchy of Spain in order to root out conversos, Jews who had allegedly converted to Christianity—ironically, they did so to escape the Inquisition. In the sixteenth century, the Inquisition shifted its focus to suspected Protestants, and in 1570 it was extended to Mexico and Peru. It survived in Spain until 1834. With the rise of Protestantism in Europe, the Inquisition became a byword for all that was allegedly wrong with Roman Catholicism and the regimes that embraced it. Since Spain was the great Catholic power from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, anti-Spanish political propaganda routinely condemned the Inquisition’s power, scope, and cruelty. As a result, by the mid-nineteenth century most citizens of Protestant

Y7870-Douglass.indb 646

9/1/21 4:17 PM

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

647

nations simply assumed, as Douglass seems to here, that the Reformation liberated the human spirit from the chains of Roman Catholic superstition and tyranny, as exemplified by the Spanish Inquisition. William J. Collinge, ed., Historical Dictionary of Catholicism, 2d ed. (Lanham, Md., 2012), 216–17; Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (London, 1997), 305–20. 19. Robert Peel. 20. William E. Gladstone. 21. John Bright (1811–89), a member of the House of Commons 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 lead the Liberal party, he held his seat for many years. During the 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 his 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. 22. Daniel Webster. 23. Henry Clay. 24. Roscoe Conkling (1829–88), a Republican politician, was born in Albany, New York. He trained for the law in Utica, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and served as district attorney for Oneida County from 1850 to 1858, when he was elected mayor of Utica. The following year he entered the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until an 1862 defeat, but returning in 1865 for one additional term. Serving in the Senate from 1867 until 1881, Conkling ardently advocated Ulysses Grant’s Reconstruction policies. A champion of the political spoils system, Conkling opposed the civil service reforms advocated by Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield. During Garfield’s administration, Conkling and a colleague, Thomas C. Platt, resigned from the Senate to protest Garfield’s appointment of a former Liberal Republican to a key patronage job in the New York City customshouse. Platt and Conkling were chagrined when they lost their anticipated reelections. Conkling resumed law practice in New York City. David M. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in the Senate (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971); Donald Barr Chidsey, Gentleman from New York: A Life of Roscoe Conkling (New Haven, Conn., 1935); ACAB, 1:706–07. 25. Matt. 13:57. 26. Douglass held a romantic view of Toussaint L’Ouverture as a noble warrior of black liberation. Nevertheless, he at least acknowledges the complex issues that made Toussaint a controversial figure among his countrymen. Modern historians have determined that Toussaint was a shrewd, calculating man who demonstrated both ruthlessness and humanity, depending on his objectives. In 1800, after killing or politically outmaneuvering all rivals, he was recognized as the governor of Saint-Domingue by a wary French government. To forestall a future French military intervention that would likely overthrow his rule and reinstate slavery in the colony, Toussaint repeatedly pledged loyalty to France rather than declare national independence, as his advisers and junior officers strongly recommended. Additionally, to placate France and provide revenues to support his army of more than 20,000 men, he instituted harsh policies to restore the colony’s shattered sugar and coffee export economy. He used the army to force ex-slaves off their individual landholdings and sign long-term work contracts with plantation managers, and he even sanctioned the use of corporal punishment to enforce compliance. Most controversially, Toussaint encouraged white planters to return from exile to operate their abandoned estates. These policies raised suspicions even among Toussaint’s most ardent supporters, and help explain the colonists’ ineffective resistance to the French invasion of February 1802, which quickly captured Toussaint and imprisoned him in France, where he died in April 1803. The ex-slave Jean-Jacques Dessalines assumed command of Saint-Domingue’s forces in late 1802, and by 1 January 1804 he had expelled the French Army, slaughtered or exiled all whites on

Y7870-Douglass.indb 647

9/1/21 4:17 PM

648

UNDATED POEMS

the island, and established the independence of the new nation of Haiti. Compared with Dessalines’s record, Toussaint’s actions appeared, to many nineteenth-century Haitians, to be excessively influenced by his personal ambitions and affinity for white French culture. Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, 17, 22–23, 25–27; Madison Smartt Bell, “Toussaint between Two Worlds,” Journal of Haitian Studies, 11:41–43 (Fall 2005); Philippe Girard, “Black Talleyrand: Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Secret Diplomacy with England and the United States,” William and Mary Quarterly, 66:87–124 (January 2009). 27. Within a decade of independence, Haitian society had largely assumed the structure it would carry into the twentieth century. A small ruling class consisting of mulatto urban elites (professionals, businessmen, governmental officials) and the military’s officer corps worked in alliance to deny social and political power to the mass of black ex-slave peasants. These urban elites embraced all things French—language, education, manners, Roman Catholicism, light skin—as a means of asserting a presumed cultural superiority that justified their rule. In contrast, the vast majority of citizens were cultivators who pursued self-sufficiency on small plots of land carved from colonial plantations. Members of this peasant class exclusively spoke Creole (Haitian French), commonly practiced vodou in addition to Catholicism, generally were uneducated, and remained remarkably isolated from events within their nation and the larger world. Instead of a defense of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Douglass’s criticism of the mulatto elites’ Francophilia appears to be an oblique attack on their lack of identification with the nation’s poor, rural masses. Haggerty, Dominican Republic and Haiti, 248–50, 257–58; Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, 28–29, 206. 28. Douglass quotes the final stanza of John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “Toussaint L’Ouverture,” first published in the 1846 collection Voices of Freedom. John Greenleaf Whittier, The Writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, ed. Elizabeth Hussey Whittier, 7 vols. (Boston, 1888), 3:18.

UNDATED POEMS Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 19, frames 644–45L, 645R, 654–57, 658, FD Papers, DLC.

In the large collection of Douglass’s papers donated in the 1970s to the Library of Congress by the Douglass Memorial and Historical Association and the National Association of Colored Women, the last co-owners of Douglass’s Cedar Hill home in the Anacostia neighborhood of the District of Columbia, were three undated manuscript poems. Each contains clues to the timing and circumstance of its composition, but none of these poems can be dated conclusively. The seventy-two-line “After the departure of a friend” seems addressed to a recent visitor to Cedar Hill on “a warm december day.” There are two extant copies of this poem in the Library of Congress’s collection, one in Douglass’s hand and a second in an unknown hand; the latter includes corrections in spelling and capitalization. Reproduced below is the former text,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 648

9/1/21 4:17 PM

648

UNDATED POEMS

the island, and established the independence of the new nation of Haiti. Compared with Dessalines’s record, Toussaint’s actions appeared, to many nineteenth-century Haitians, to be excessively influenced by his personal ambitions and affinity for white French culture. Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, 17, 22–23, 25–27; Madison Smartt Bell, “Toussaint between Two Worlds,” Journal of Haitian Studies, 11:41–43 (Fall 2005); Philippe Girard, “Black Talleyrand: Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Secret Diplomacy with England and the United States,” William and Mary Quarterly, 66:87–124 (January 2009). 27. Within a decade of independence, Haitian society had largely assumed the structure it would carry into the twentieth century. A small ruling class consisting of mulatto urban elites (professionals, businessmen, governmental officials) and the military’s officer corps worked in alliance to deny social and political power to the mass of black ex-slave peasants. These urban elites embraced all things French—language, education, manners, Roman Catholicism, light skin—as a means of asserting a presumed cultural superiority that justified their rule. In contrast, the vast majority of citizens were cultivators who pursued self-sufficiency on small plots of land carved from colonial plantations. Members of this peasant class exclusively spoke Creole (Haitian French), commonly practiced vodou in addition to Catholicism, generally were uneducated, and remained remarkably isolated from events within their nation and the larger world. Instead of a defense of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Douglass’s criticism of the mulatto elites’ Francophilia appears to be an oblique attack on their lack of identification with the nation’s poor, rural masses. Haggerty, Dominican Republic and Haiti, 248–50, 257–58; Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, 28–29, 206. 28. Douglass quotes the final stanza of John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “Toussaint L’Ouverture,” first published in the 1846 collection Voices of Freedom. John Greenleaf Whittier, The Writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, ed. Elizabeth Hussey Whittier, 7 vols. (Boston, 1888), 3:18.

UNDATED POEMS Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 19, frames 644–45L, 645R, 654–57, 658, FD Papers, DLC.

In the large collection of Douglass’s papers donated in the 1970s to the Library of Congress by the Douglass Memorial and Historical Association and the National Association of Colored Women, the last co-owners of Douglass’s Cedar Hill home in the Anacostia neighborhood of the District of Columbia, were three undated manuscript poems. Each contains clues to the timing and circumstance of its composition, but none of these poems can be dated conclusively. The seventy-two-line “After the departure of a friend” seems addressed to a recent visitor to Cedar Hill on “a warm december day.” There are two extant copies of this poem in the Library of Congress’s collection, one in Douglass’s hand and a second in an unknown hand; the latter includes corrections in spelling and capitalization. Reproduced below is the former text,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 648

9/1/21 4:17 PM

UNDATED POEMS

649

although the latter was consulted for difficult transcription issues. Another poem, only twenty-four lines long, is entitled “The meeting of two friends After long separations.” The poem describes the solace derived from a meeting between two friends, “the other’s woes sharing,” and regrets that “[h]ard fate has decreed separation.” Two drafts survive of a third undated poem entitled “What Am I to You?,” which seems to be addressed to a “greatly honored maid.” One draft appears to be a copy in handwriting other than Douglass’s, with corrections indicated by cross-outs on the other draft, but fails to strictly follow the earlier version’s stanza formatting. It also omits several stanzas at the end of the poem, concluding instead with the line “To rest this treasure from me.” The original, fuller, one-hundred-line version is reproduced below. One stanza in this final poem perhaps best expressed Douglass’s modest assessment of his poetic talents: “And if my lines should limp and halt / And your fine taste should loud revolt / Charge not to me the awkward fault, / But to the old plantation.” Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 360–61; Fought, Women, 368.

After the departure of a friend There is gloom within my study, dear The rosy light thrives there no longer, Your green Magnolia oft drops a tear The cedars look sad and sombre. The grasses upon my wintry Lawn That joyed to feel thy lightsome tread, The Evening sky and morning dawn, Seem mournful since my hope has fled. Fido the faithful, takes ill the blow And whines for thy gracious form and face, And sable Aleck goes too and fro Searching my secret woe to trace. That something vast has touched me deep, A thousand vails would fail to blind Yet in its full measure, scope and sweep, A thousand eyes would fail to find.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 649

9/1/21 4:17 PM

650

UNDATED POEMS

My spirit has dropt her cheerful mood Since thy bright radiance passed away Though reason calls this evil good Feeling still claims her wonted sway. I must not essay to settle now, Feeling and Reason’s debated point But only relate the things that show My own condition out of joint. Truly, cedar hill has lost a gem Brighter than morn or Evening star, More precious than the diadem Of England’s queen or Ruyssia’s czar. Yet my mood shall touch another cord, Vibrating to a happier tone. Warmly escpressing a grateful word For blessings here and blessings gone. For why should I sing disconsolate Why battle deg decrees of luck and chance? A wise man should ever bow to fate And spare his breath her deadly lance. And doth not thy spirit linger still, Around the volumes thy hand has blest? And is it not upon cedar hill Thy spirit finds its sweetest rest? Come freely then spirit of love Defying the bars of space and time Over these fair hills divinely rove, Wreath them with beauty and grace sublime! No eye shall see thy vision but mine Thy step shall be music alone to me, alone. And my glad heart shall respond to thine, In all a friend can do and be. The high road along the river side The peaceful wood that adorns the way Will often recall the pleasant ride We took that warm december day. Kate seemed to feel the dreamy state, The light and shade that filled the air, And calmly halted her wonted gait

Y7870-Douglass.indb 650

9/1/21 4:17 PM

UNDATED POEMS

651

To share the bliss that lingered there. Queen Mary may sound more soft and sweet Since you were pleased to call it fine, My happiness would be complete Were such approval always mine. But never from those things can make The mournful music of that sad song Without that piercing pain and ache Which comes to love by cruel wrong. And now these lingering lines must close They’ve wandered on without skill or art Though not poetry, take them as prose But read in all a friend’s heart. If aught offense within them dwell, Leave it to the kind powers above, Construe it as a warm farewell From one who knows the soul of love. The meeting of two friends After long separations Shall we sing of a lovely morning The purple and gold of its sun, Or of hearts that longed for the dawning Of the day at Noroton.1 For lovelier far, was that meeting, Of trusted and truest of friends, With pulses responsively beating To noblest aims and ends. Each for the other’s event caring, While neither took thought of his own, Each the other’s woe sharing Either would bear both alone. Could they live in sight of each other, All trouble would pass as a dream, More they, than sister and brother In friendship, love and esteem. Hard fate has decreed separation As fate has decreed such before But the sacred cords of affection,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 651

9/1/21 4:17 PM

652

UNDATED POEMS

Are bonds that live evermore There Noroton, rejoice in that day, In the golden radiance it gave, Send clouds and regrets far away, Be strong, be cheerful, be brave! “What am I to you?” I venture now to say in verse And beg you not to think the worse Of somethings I would fain rehearse In friendly conversation. And if my lines should limp and halt And your fine taste should loud revolt Charge not to me the awkward fault, But to the old plantation. If aught in all should seem to you To shock the sense of right and true The same benevolent course pursue In kind consideration. But to my case I now resort I will I’m bound to make to you a true report As though I stood in open court For solemn vindication. Well, brought within a garden fine, My thought fell somewhat out of line Perhaps a wish to make it mine Without a fair condition For heart of man though mainly right, Hides many things from mortal sight Which seldom ever come to light Except upon compulsion, But whether this be so or not The garden fine I soon forgot One object fixed me to the spot In silent admiration. The same old story often told Here again must be unrolled And be repeated manifold To each new generation.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 652

9/1/21 4:17 PM

UNDATED POEMS

653

An apple swinging light and free High pendent on a brave old tree Flung a sweet fragranse down to me That thrilled all my senses. In size, and form and hue divine, Perfect in beauty’s every line Might Easily win won Were framed to pierce a soul like mine, Though fortified by reason. Amazed I stood in wonder bound Till then such fruit I’d never found, I needed help and looked around For means to gain possession. But none was there to give a hand And I could scarcely understand Why I such treasure should command As that so far above me. But there it was and there was I With a face upturned to tree and sky With a will to do, yet feared to try With will to do, but not to try, Heed to the spot enchanted. One rash impulse “said “shake it down”. But contact with the flinty ground Was sure to mar, and bruise and wound This precious gem of Eden. Hence from my soul flung the thought As one with dreadful danger fraught One which at best could come to naught But greif and sorrow final Besides the grand old tree stood firm, Resisting time, and wind and storm Would laugh to scorn my puny arm Should I essay to move it. What then my friend was left to me? Why only this as you may see, To prize that fruit upon the tree Where nature wisely held it. And so I shall, with heart sincere Hold that object forever dear

Y7870-Douglass.indb 653

9/1/21 4:17 PM

654

UNDATED POEMS

Though distance, land me far or near Unless indeed it scorn me, Yet even then I fain would think, Of happy hours on rook and brink Where hand in hand we went to drink The morning’s purest air. Not one excursion of this kind, Shall slip from my retentious mind, Though all the future be combined To rest this treasure from me The distant hills your pencil traced, The views of ocean’s lonely waste, Can never be from soul effaced Till thought shall cease to serve me. Even much less, can I forget The soft repose one spirit met While I while I sat calmly by the net, Guarding a precious treasure prescious inmate, The cottage at the Seaside Bar, With a gentle radeince reaching far Is in my mind a steady star With not a cloud to hide it. Very dear friend I’ve told you all, I’ve spoken frankly at your call, Let not your censure on me fall I’ve only done my duty. And now then greatly honored maid May peace and joy your life pervade Nor on your sunny brow be laid 1. A neighborhood of Darien, Connecticut, adjacent to Long Island Sound. Seltzer, Columbian Lippincott Gazetteer, 489, 1335.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 654

9/1/21 4:17 PM

Textual Notes on The Heroic Slave

The goal of the Frederick Douglass Papers edition of The Heroic Slave is to provide readers with a definitive critical text of this historically important work. While a few other editions of Douglass’s novella have been reprinted in modern times, none of them have been guided by the principles of critical editing. Other editions have reproduced an electronic facsimile or have reset the text of one of the work’s three earliest printings in 1853. Such an “uncritical” preparation of a text overlooks the corruptions of the author’s intentions by contemporary copy editors, compositors, or bookbinders; moreover, it ignores any “authoritative” corrections or revisions that Douglass might have made for later printings of his work. Therefore, our objective for this edition is to recover and reproduce a text that accurately reflects Douglass’s intentions for The Heroic Slave. The first step in our work on The Heroic Slave was to discover as much as possible about its publication history. Our research uncovered three potentially authoritative texts for the novella: the first was published in the Rochester edition of Autographs for Freedom in January 1853; the second was printed serially in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, on 4, 11, 18, and 25 March 1853; and the third appeared in a British edition of Autographs for Freedom, published by the London firm of Low, Son & Company and John Cassell later in the spring of 1853. Based on critical readings and collations of these potentially authoritative editions of The Heroic Slave and analysis of external evidence, the editors selected the Rochester edition of Autographs for Freedom as the copy-text to be critically edited. This text was reproduced as carefully as possible from its original published source, as were the other two 1853 editions of the work. The editors strove to preserve the distinctive features, dubbed “accidentals” by literary scholars, of the work; thus, the original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, and other distinctive stylistic aspects were reproduced, though the possibility existed that many of them had been introduced by a copy editor or compositor. The editors then compared or collated these three texts and identified a list of variations in the texts.

655

Y7870-Douglass.indb 655

9/1/21 4:17 PM

656

TEXTUAL NOTES ON THE HEROIC SLAVE

Since our objective was to provide the readers of the Yale University Press edition the text of The Heroic Slave as precisely as possible as Douglass intended it for his 1853 readers, the editors made just twenty-five alterations, or “emendations,” to the original Rochester-published Autographs for Freedom text. Most were intended to correct errors by the original compositors and were based on intensive study of the subsequent two authoritative editions of the novella. A smaller number of our emendations are dubbed “substantives”—changes in capitalization, punctuation, or spelling—by critical textual editors. These correct grammatical errors that the editors could not reasonably deem intentional, since they produce confusion or provide misinformation. Where possible, Douglass’s usage elsewhere in the novella or in his other contemporary writings guided such emendations.

Y7870-Douglass.indb 656

9/1/21 4:17 PM

List of Emendations

The page and line numbers are keyed to the copy-text. The reading following the page and line numbers are the variants selected by the editors. To the right of the bracket and to the left of the semi-colon are abbreviations for the edition or editions of the emendation source. Following the semicolon is the copy-text reading. A L F

Autographs for Freedom Autographs for Freedom, London edition Frederick Douglass’ Paper

178.1 pitchfork] F; pitch-/fork 179.3 the lion’s] F; a ~ 182.9 land.”] F; ~. 182.20 Five] Five 185.9 said he,] F, L; ~ he 186.25 of the earth] L; of earth 194.28 mention them?”] L; ~ them.” 198.11 ‘Oh look] F; Oh ~ A; O ~ L 199.16 Listwell,] F, L; ~ 200.7 ‘it was given me] F, L; it ~ 201.1 “The] The 201.21 your food] F, L; you ~ 202.17 uneasiness,”] L; ~, 202.18 “for if] L; for ~ 204.31 after:] F; after. A; after: — L 205.19 Just] Just 207.23 no-body’s] F; nobody’s 210.24 friend.”] L; ~. 218.2 there?] L; ~! 222.29 Mr.] L; “Mr. 225.10 What] What 226.24 “that] L; that 228.21 “you’re] L; you’re 231.3 Williams, “that] L; ~,” ~ A; ~, ~ F 231.12 “For] F, L; For 657

Y7870-Douglass.indb 657

9/1/21 4:17 PM

Line-End Hyphenation in the Copy-Text

The list below contains all the possible compound words hyphenated at the end of lines in the Heroic Slave text found in the 1853 Rochester printing of Autographs for Freedom. The form in which each possible compound is presented indicates the editors’ decision regarding the form (hyphenated or unhyphenated) that the compound should take when it occurs within a line. The editors’ decisions were based on Douglass’s usage in The Heroic Slave and other writings. 174.8 statesmen 178.1 pitchfork 183.28 footsteps 184.3 look-out 199.25 blood-thirsty 201.7 to-night 206.14 out-spread 206.25 man-traps 208.27 gentleman 212.17 dish-water 224.1 round-tops

658

Y7870-Douglass.indb 658

9/1/21 4:17 PM

Line-End Hyphenation in the Yale Edition

In quoting from the Yale edition, the only line-end hyphen that should be retained is the following: 42.39

heart-rending

659

Y7870-Douglass.indb 659

9/1/21 4:17 PM

Historical Collation

The number gives the page and line number of the copy-text, the American publication of Autographs for Freedom. Unless otherwise noted, only the variant text has been recorded; any text not listed should be assumed to agree with the copy-text. A L F

Autographs for Freedom Autographs for Freedom, London edition Frederick Douglass’ Paper

174.5 The] The F 174.12 birth-place] birthplace F 176.21–22 Tie-[/]ing] tying L 177.26 I] I F 177.29 stood back] stood F 178.5 This] this F 178.6 This] this F 178.30 brightly] bright F 179.19 the head] a ~ L 180.25 sorrow-smitten] ~-stricken L 181.26 christian] Christian F, L 182.24 burnt] burned F, L 184.7 re-seated] reseated F 184.19 quickly] soon L 187.6–7 Mr. and Mrs.] Mrs. and Mr. F 187.24 secret; describing rehearsing] secret; rehearsing F 188.30 met my every] met every F 188.31–189.1 as to construe] as [illeg.] construe F 189.4 whipt] whipped F 190.19 Although] Altho’ F 191.3 an alarm] the ~ F 192.2 though] tho’ F 193.1 and had made] and made F 195.4 all my just] all just F 196.21–22 their laughing axes] their axes L 660

Y7870-Douglass.indb 660

9/1/21 4:17 PM

HISTORICAL COLLATION

661

196.22 as many] so ~ F 196.26 felt myself comparatively] felt comparatively L 198.9 “I] ‘I F 198.11 them,”] ~,’ F 199.29 possible.] possible.” F 200.7 money,’] ~, L 201.21 did’nt] didn’t L 202.16 safely on] on F 203.19–20 interruption] any ~ F 204.2 queen] Queen L 205.1 Canada West,] C.W., F 205.7 slave-holders.] slaveholders. F 207.4 rebuilt] re-built L 207.18 every-body every-body] everybody everybody L 207.23 every-body’s] everybody’s L 209.5 Jemmy.] Jimmy. F 209.15 was’nt] wasn’t L 209.22 would’nt] wouldn’t L 210.3 has’nt] hasn’t L 210.4 was’nt] wasn’t L 210.8 bekase] because L 212.6 on his money] of ~ ~ F 212.9 my corn] corn F 212.10 becase] be-/cause F 212.13 any body] anybody F 212.25 did’nt] didn’t L 212.29 etc.,] &c., L 213.13 “a sweet morsel”] “sweet morsel” L 213.27 the half] half F 215.4 good nature] goodnature L 215.9 way towards] ~ to L 215.20 christian] Christian F, L 215.27 forever.] ~.— F; for ever. L 220.30 berated] be-rated L 222.12 alley] allay L 223.20 stept] stepped L 224.3–4 broad fore topsail] broad topsail L 227.8 set of rebellious darkies,] set of darkies, L

Y7870-Douglass.indb 661

9/1/21 4:17 PM

662

HISTORICAL COLLATION

227.18 indicated] intimated L 230.22 mean’t] meant L 231.28 all of them] ~ ~ whom L 235.8 were] are F 238.11 in our behalf] on ~ ~ L

Y7870-Douglass.indb 662

9/1/21 4:17 PM

Index

Page numbers in italics indicate detailed biographical sketches. Abbot, Lyman, 430 Abda (slave), 515n Abecrombie, James, 81n abolitionism: in Baptist Church, 499, 503; in Congregational Church, 142n, 242n, 447n, 500, 518n, 523–24nn, 528n; Douglass writes about, xl, 433–43; Enlightenment inspiration, 627n; in France, xl, 182n; gradualism and, 12, 455n, 499–500; in Great Britain, xvii–xviii, lxvi, 124–25n; history of, 434; in Ireland, 124n, 301n, 375–76nn, 406n; journalism and, xvii; literature and, xxvii; in Methodist Episcopal Church, 500, 503; opposed Mexican American War, 140n, 229n, 439; moral suasion and, 61n; origins of, 61n; pacifism and, 446n, 524n; politics and, xxxiii, 522n; in Presbyterian Church, 246n, 500, 503, 523n; principles of, xxiii–xxiv; reforms similar to, 622, 627n; religious revivalism and, 91, 627n; in Scotland, 443n; women and, xix, xxx, lxi–lxii, lxiv, 5, 445n, 524n, 630n. See also Abolitionists; Antislavery; Garrisonian abolitionists Abolitionist (Boston, Mass.), 522n abolitionists: American churches and, xxiv, 11, 440, 446n; autobiographies of, 182n; bazaars of, 248n; free blacks as, xvi, xix, lxi, 2, 216, 223–24nn, 375–76nn; colonization supported by, 442n; in Connecticut, 449n, 501, 503; criticize Lincoln, xxxi, lxvii, lxviii, 93, 164; eloquence of, 107; support “Exodus,” 203; factions of, 11, 203n, 228n, 522n, 528n; aid free blacks, 246n; free blacks as, xix, lxi, 3, 66, 216, 245–46nn, 501, 524n; free speech and, 436–37, 447n; Fugitive Slave Law denounced by, 445n, 503, 529n; fund raising for, xxv, xxxii; gift books of, xxvii, 5, 19; in Great Britain, xix, xxi, lxii– lxiii, 97–98n, 101n, 320n, 390n; in Illinois, 439, 442n; in Indiana, 182n, 457n, 69n; in Kentucky, 11–12, 452n; mail campaign of,

451n, 531n; in Maine, 375n, 455n, 523–24n; in Massachusetts, xvi, lxi, lxiii, lxvii, 3, 61n, 119, 222–23nn, 242n, 253n, 267, 328n, 376–77nn, 447–48nn, 454n, 501, 523n, 530n, 627–30nn; mobs attack, 450nn, 455n, 502, 525–26nn, 633; murder of, 123n, 439, 455n, 502–03; in New Hampshire, 228n, 446–47nn, 630n, 632, 634n; in New Jersey, 525n; in New York state, xxix–xx, xxiii, xxv, xxviii, xlv, lxiii–lxvi, 1–2, 17, 56–57nn, 59n, 61n, 80, 219, 223nn, 228n, 244–46nn, 248n, 262n, 376n, 390n, 396n, 431, 432n, 450nn, 456–57nn, 501, 519n, 522nn, 529n, 609n, 613n; newspapers of, xx, xliii, 14n, 15, 127; in Pennsylvania, xvii, xix, lx, lxvi, 439, 443–44nn, 455n, 501, 516n, 519n, 525n, 557n; petition campaigns of, 436, 445n, 502; in Ohio, xix–xx, 2, 24–25, 127, 129–30, 153n, 182n, 376n, 439, 443n, 452n, 457n, 502, 609, 629nn; in Pennsylvania, xvii, lx; petition Congress, 9n, 439; political strategies of, xxvii, 403n, 613n, 528n; in Presbyterian Church, 246n, 523n; Quakers as, 182, 227n; Reconstruction and, 113n; in Rhode Island, 293n, 375–76nn, 500–501, 609n; slave revolts and, 60n; temperance and, 528n; tracts of, 440; in Unitarian Church, 377n; U.S. Constitution and, xxv–xxvi, lxiv–lxv, 57n. 228n, 446n, 452n; in Vermont, 609n; violence and, xxvii, lxi, 60n, 223n, 228n; in Virginia, 50; Daniel Webster criticizes, 450n; women’s involvement with, xix, xxx, lxi, 376n, 390n, 439, 502; women’s rights and, 404n, 446n, 456n, 627n. See also abolitionism; antislavery; Garrisonian abolitionists; individual states Abyssinian Mountains, 392n Abreu, Enrique, 145–49, 151n Academy, Athens, Greece, 395n Accomack County, Va., 247n Acosta, José Silvano, 147, 151, 156n 663

Y7870-Douglass.indb 663

9/1/21 4:17 PM

664 Acropolis, Athens, Greece, 356, 394–95nn Act of Union (1800), 226n, 318n Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, The (Pillsbury), 448n Adams, Charles Francis, lxvii, 129, 132n Adams, Charles Kendall, 614 Adams, James, 453n Adams, John, 360, 403n, 444n, 499, 515nn; American Revolution and, 519n Adams, John Quincy, 444–45n; administration of, 444n; antislavery of, 5, 436, 444–45n, 503; congressional career of, 253n, 439, 444–45, 527n; censure of, 452n; family of, 132n; presidential campaigns of, 450–51nn, 464n Adams, Louisa Catherine, 132n Adelphi Hall, Philadelphia, Pa., 522n Adlium, Athens, Greece, 356 Admiral (ship), 36, 58n Adriatic Sea, 402n Advent Harbinger (Rochester, N.Y.), 18 Adventist movement, 18 Aegean Sea, 358n Aegina (island), 395n Aeneid (Virgil), 380n Aeolus (Roman god), 384n Aeschylus, 394n, 400n Aesop, 584n Africa: free black emigration to, 89–90n; climate of, 614–15; colonization in, 230n; cotton grown in, 89–90n, 615, 619n; Douglass visits, xxxviii, xli; Egypt in, 203n; geography of, 614; Liberia in, 613–18; missionaries to, 518n; sailors from, 104n; scientific exploration of, 152n; slave trade and, 48, 59–60nn, 92, 98n, 496, 505–06nn, 601n, 615, 619 African American Episcopal Church: bishops of, 262n; in Ohio, 262n; periodicals of, xxxviii, 287; schools of, 262n African Civilization Society, 86, 89–90n, 223n African Free School, New York City, 223n, 246–47nn African Methodist Episcopal Church, 210–11n; services of, 353 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, lxi, lxvii, 208, 383n, 608–09n Afro-American Press and Its Editors, The (Penn), liii: Douglass contributes to, xl, lxxiii, 489–91; Douglass reviews, xl–xli, 491–93

Y7870-Douglass.indb 664

INDEX Agamemnon, 396n Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe, 152n Agg, Miss, 355 Akademos, 395n Akerman, Amos T., 178n Al-Qadimad, 386n Alabama, 242n, 258; freedmen in, 184n, 262n, 258; Civil War in, 142n; manumissions in, 498; politicians of, 452n; secession of, 531n; slave code in, 278n, 498, 514n; slaveholders in, 312, 452n; slavery in, 278n, 498 Alabama, C.S.S., 261n Alabaster Palace, Gizeh, Egypt, 389n Alaska, 112n, 540n Alassio, Italy, 372n Albany, N.Y., lxix, 81n, 112n, 161n, 203n, 377n, 390n, 507n, 613n, 647n Albany Manual Labor Academy, Albany, Ohio, 264n Albemarle County, Va., 589n Albemarle Sound, N.C., 507n Alcázar de Colón, Dominican Republic, 159n Alcott, Abigail, 630n Alcott, Bronson, 626n, 630n Alcott, Louisa May, 630n Aleck (horse), 649 Alexander, John H., 185n Alexander II (czar of Russia), 125n, 280n, 286n, 417n Alexander III (czar of Russia), 417n Alexander County, Ill., 178n Alexander Mission, Washington, D.C., 211n Alexander of Hales, 375n Alexander the Great, 392n Alexandra Dock, Liverpool, Eng., 366n Alexandria, Egypt, 355, 386n, 392–93nn, 403n Alexandria, Va., 201n, 261–62nn Alexandrian Library, Alexandria, Egypt, 355, 393n Alfred (king of England), 368–69nn Algeria, 598 Algiers, 49 Algonquins, 607n Allah, 387–88nn, 391n Allegheny City, Pa., 210–11n Allegheny Seminary, Pa., 388n, 393n Alleghany Mountains, 243n Allen, Charles Harris, 362, 406n Allen Ethan, 81n Allen, Henry, 145, 152n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Allen, Richard, 207n Allen University, Colombia, S.C., 262n Allender, Joseph, 236, 244nn Allender, Tolly, 236 Allender’s Jake (fugitive slave), 236, 244n Alpha (Washington, D.C.), 332, 363n Alpha Life Insurance Company, 264n Alps Mountains, 339, 371n, 377n Alsace-Lorraine, 315n, 421n Alta Velo Island, Santo Domingo, 150, 161n Alton, Ill., 439, 455n Alyscamps, Arles, France, 371n Amalfi, Italy, 346–47, 382nn A.M.E. Church Review, xxxviii, 211n, 287, 303–13, 559–72 A.M.E. Magazine, 208 Amenhotep (pharaoh of Egypt), 88n “America” (Webb), 11n American Abolition Society, lxvi, 228n American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society: free black supporters of, 223n, 246n; founding of, 223n, 228n, 246n American Anti-Slavery Society, 14n: affiliated societies of, 521n, 524n; agents of, 446–47nn, 457n, 527–28nn, 628n; bazaars of, 525n; free blacks in, 222–2nn, 228n, 246n, 250n, 376n; conventions of, 457n, 523n, 525n, 530n, 633, 635n; dissolution of, 530n; Douglass criticized by, xxvi; Douglass employed by, 604; Douglass speaks at meetings of, lxii, 1; founding of, lx, 61n, 227n, 228n, 246nn, 435, 443n, 522–23nn, 627; fund-raising for, 406n, 525n; members of, 246n, 455n, 523nn; William Lloyd Garrison and, lx, 1, 2, 61n, 123n, 228n, 246n, 502, 530n, 633; mobs attack, 635n, 644; New York City offices of, 502; officers of, 377n, 448n, 452n, 456n, 502, 522–23nn, 525n, 530n; publications of, 9n, 59n, 502, 525n; schism of, 61n, 246n; women’s affiliated societies, 524n. See also Garrison abolitionists American Association of Educators of Colored Youth, 260n American Bible Society, 11–13, 14n, 228n, 246n American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 228n American Colonization Society: abolitionists quit, 246n, 522; agents of, 522n; Henry Clay and, 9n, 89n; founding of, 618; Liberia founded by, 618, 620n; opposition to, 89n;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 665

665 racism of, 86, 89n; resurgence of, 78nn; supporters of, 57n, 78n, 89n, 224n, 452n. American Copyright League, 297 American Eclipse (horse). See Eclipse (horse) American Equal Rights Association: Douglass and, lxix; founding of, 448n; officers of, 448n; supporters of, 528n American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 181–82n American Home Missionary Society, 246n American Jubilee (New York City), 523n American Magazine (Brooklyn, N.Y.), 294 American Manufacturer (Boston, Mass.), 523n American Missionary Association, lxiii, 531n; Bibles to Slaves campaign of, 11–12, 14n; advocates education of freedmen, 201–03, 275; Douglass praises, 202, 275; history of, 203n, 228n, 246nn American Missionary Magazine, xxxvii, 201–03 American Negro Academy, Washington, D.C., 224n American party, 99n, 280n American Peace Society, 446n American Philosophical Society, 626n American Reformer (New York City), xxxvii, 264–68, 269n American Revolution, 77n, 248n; antislavery sentiment of, 500–501, 518n; armies in, 20, 55n, 81nn, 451n, 499, 514–15n; battles of, 70, 80–81nn; black soldiers in, 63, 71–73, 81n; causes of, 77; Douglass discusses, 63; First Continental Congress and, 55n, 100n, 5, 54720n; leaders of, 62n, 83n, 95; loyalists in, 548; in Massachusetts, 126n, 499; monarchy rejected, 124; in North Carolina, 452n; principles of, 54, 63–64, 126n, 519n; slavery and, 498, 515n, 500; slogans of, 77; in South Carolina, 73, 83n, 499; Tories in, 548n; Treaty of Paris ends, 519n; veterans of, 79; in Virginia, 20, 55n, 95, 100n, 499–500, 520n, 548 American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (Weld), 9n, 527n American Social Science Association, xxxviii, 204 American Temperance Society, 524n American Tract Society, 246n Amherst, Mass., 328n Amherst, N.H., 176n Amherst College, Amherst, Mass., 227n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

666 Amherst County, Va., 493n Amherstburg, Ont., 56n Amistad (ship), 62n, 228n, 445n Amsterdam, Neth., 506n Anacostia, Washington, D.C., 396n; Douglass’s home in, lxxi, 254, 579n, 648 Anchor Line, 362n Andersen, Hans Christian, 634n Anderson, Benjamin B. K., 619n Anderson, James, 349, 385n Anderson, James George, 385n Anderson, Osborne, 553n Anderson, Anderson and Company, 385n Andersonville (prison camp), 116, 124n, 424n Andover Theological Seminary, 8n, 182n, 242n, 363n, 446–47nn Andrew, John, 328n Andrews, Stephen Pearl, 397n Angenard, Louis P., 160n Anglican Church. See Church of England Annual Cyclopedia of Insurance of the Unites States, The, 420n Annapolis, Md., 242n Anne (queen of England), 495n, 506–07nn Anti-Sabbatarianism, 528n Anti-Slavery Convention of Women” (1838), 455n “Anti-Slavery Societies, The” (Johnson), 434 Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, 223n Anthems (Dyer), 450 Anthology Club (Boston), 211; or Society 448n Anthony, Aaron, lix, 1, 251n, 278n, 603, 606–07nn Andrew, Andrew Skinner, 607n Anthony, Ann Catherine Skinner, 607nn Anthony, Harriet Lucretia, 251n Anthony, John Planner, 607n Anthony, Lucretia, 444n, 603 Anthony, Richard Lee, 607n Anthropological Society, 363n, 478n Antiabolitionism: among clergy, 8n; mobs of, 2, 455n, 525n, 633; of Horace Greeley, 176n; in Unitarian Church, 8n Antietam, Battle of (Md.), 178n, 331n Anti-Corn Law League (Great Britain), 407n Antiextensionism: Democrats and, 139n; Free Soil party and, xxiv, 253n, 464n; KansasNebraska Act stimulates, xxix; ministers endorse, 227n; Republican party endorses, xxxi; Whig party and, 132n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 666

INDEX Antifederalists, 95 Anti-Masonic party, 123n, 528–29n Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 253n, 378n Antislavery: in American Revolution, 500–501, Douglass defines, xxxvii; in Massachusetts, 267; in Methodist Episcopal Church, 518, 608n; in Presbyterian Church, 518n; Republican party and, 175, 503. See also Abolitionism; Abolitionists; Garrisonian Abolitionists Anti-Slavery Bugle (Salem, Ohio), xix–xx, 530n Apollodorus, 373n Appalachian Mountains, 89n, 195n, 316–17n Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (Child), 448n Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (Grimké), 525n Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (Walker), 520n Apennine Mountains, 343, 357, 360, 377n, 379n, 384n Appomattox, Va., 164, 177n Aquidneck Island, R.I., 248n, 250n Arabs, 349, 385n Arago, Dominique François Jean, 416, 425–26n Aragon, Spain, 394n Arapaho County, Colo., 370n Arc de Triomphe, Paris, France, 369n, 412, 420n Archivio di Stato, Venice, Italy, 403n Areopogus, Athens, Greece, 356, 396nn Ares, 396n Ariosto, Ludovico, 378n Aristophanes, 394n Arkansas: Civil War in, 181; “freedom suits” in, 512n; freedmen in, 259, 262n; lynchings in, 542; secession of, 531n; slave code of, 514n; slavery in, 142n, 182n, 512n Arles, France, 370–72nn Arlington, Va., 264n Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D.C.,138, 143–44n Armenians, 225n Armstrong, Samuel C., 282 Army Compensation Bill (1864), 329n Army of Northern Virginia (C.S.A.), lxviii, 177n Army of the Potomac (U.S.A.), 331n Arno River, Italy, 360, 372n, 401–02nn Arnold, Benedict, 80n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Arnold, James, 240, 252n Arnold, Sarah Rotch, 149, 252n Arnold Arboretum, Cambridge, Mass., 252n Arouet, François-Marie, 296n Arthur, Chester, 254, 257, 296n; appointments of, 269n, 242n; copyright laws and, 298n; as “Stalwart,” 290n Articles of Confederation, 519n Articles of Confederation of New England, 495, 507n Ashtabula, Ohio, 89n Ashley, James, 112n Ashley River, S.C., 507n Assing, David, 400n Assing, Ludmilla, 359, 400n Assing, Ottilie, xxxiv–xxxv, lxv, 359 Assing, Rosa Marie, 400n Associated Press, 153n, 190, 190n Astor, John Jacob, 152n, 244n Astor House, New York City, 146, 152n, 244n Astor Library, New York City, 401n Atchinson, David R., 454n Athena (Greek god), 395–96nn Athens, Greece, 356, 381n, 394–96nn Atkinson, Edward A., 259, 263n Atkinson, Edward S., 188n Atlanta, Ga., 201n Atlantic Ocean, 151n, 306, 317n, 362, 365n Atlantic Monthly (Boston), xxxiii, 104, 253n, 523n; Douglass writes for, 113–22 Atlantic slave trade: American Revolution and, 500–501, 520–21nn; Dutch and, 495; France and, 495; Great Britain and, 98n, 494, 506n; Italy and, 506n; New England’s role in, 508–09n; Portugal initiates, 494, 505n; Quakers condemn, 518n, 520n; suppression of, 98n Attica, Greece, 356, 394–95nn Atwood, Charles B., 549n Auburn, N.Y., 153n Augusta, Ga., 201n Augustus (Roman emperor), 398n Auld, Arianna Amanda, 607n Auld, Benjamin, 608n Auld, Hugh, 608n; Douglass lived with, lix, 1n, 244n, 444n, 603–04, 608n; manumits Douglass, 97–98n; opposes Douglass’s education, 608n Auld, Lucretia Planner Anthony, lix, 444n, 607n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 667

667 Auld, Sophia Keithley, lix, 603, 608n Auld, Thomas, 98n, 607–08n: Betsey Bailey and, 607n; Douglass and, lix–lx, lxii, 1n, 251n, 603, 607n; Douglass escapes from 236–37, 245n; Douglass visits on deathbed, lxxi Auld, Tommy, 603, 608n Auld, Zipporah, 607n Auld & Harrington (Baltimore, Md.), lix, 444n Aurora, N.Y., 186n Australia, 86, 89n, 349, 382n, 385nn Austria: anti-Semitism in, 210n; Italy and, 315n, 375n, 401–03nn; political oppression in, 119; Mexico and, 136; Napoleon defeats, 404n; Prussia defeats, 316n; Switzerland and, 540n Austro-Prussian War (1866), 316n Autobiography of a Fugitive Slave (Ward), 223n Autographs for Freedom (Boston; Auburn, N.Y.): Douglass’s speech in, xxviii; Julia Griffiths and xxvi–xxvii, lxv, 390n; The Heroic Slave in, xxvii, lxv, 19–55, 655–62; layout of, xxvii; Harriet Beecher Stowe and, xxvii Avery College, Pittsburgh, Pa., 210n Avignon, France, 339–40, 370–71nn Ayers, Edward, 541 Azua de Compostela, Dominican Republic, 149–50, 155n, 161n Babcock, Cecelia Remond, 376n Babcock, Orville, 144, 611n “Babylonian Captivity,” 370n Bachelor (horse), 39, 59n Bacon, Francis, 600n, 645n Bacon, John F., 60n Baden, Duchy of, 158n Báez, Buenaventura, 144, 146–47, 149–50, 155n, 156n, 161n, 611n Bahamas, xxvi, 60n, 452n, 454n, 496, 505n Bahri, 388n Bailey, Betsey, 603, 607n Bailey, Esther, 278n Bailey, Gamaliel, 503, 529–30n Bailey, Harriet, lix, 384n, 606n Bailey, Isaac, 607n Bailey, John, 438, 446n Bailey, Philip James, 244n Bailey, Thomas, 608n Baksheesh, 386n, 391n Ballou, Adin, 3, 635n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

668 Balston, N.Y., 244n Baltard, Victor, 419n Baltimore, Md., 243n.: abolitionists in, 61n, 441n, 448n, 520–21n; Civil War and, 153n, 179n; Confederate sympathizers in, 179n; Douglass lives in, lix–lx, 8n, 369n, 435, 444–45nn, 603–04, 608nn; emigrants from, 147, 160n, 207n; Fells Point in, lix, 444n; free blacks in, 8n, 152n, 160n, 211n, 237, 243n, 262n, 369n; fugitive slaves from, 236, 244n; immigrants in, 250n; lectures in, 262n; newspapers in, 158n, 441n, 448n, 520–21n; Quakers in, 441n; Reconstruction and, 112n; Republicans in, 153n; ship building in, lix–lx, 47, 59n, 234, 435, 444n, 603–04, 608n; slaves in, 98n, 369n, 445n; train station of, 233; Underground Railroad in, 242n, 445n Baltimore, U.S.S, 539n, 601n Baltimore American, 153n Baltimore clippers, 47, 59–60n Baltimore Sun, 153n Bancroft, George, 377n, 496, 508n Banian Tree, Cairo, Egypt, 354 Bank of Ireland, Dublin, Ire., 308, 318n Bank Panic of 1882, 290n Bannbridge, Ire., 320n banyan tree, 392n Baptist Church: abolitionists in, 499, 503; antislavery in, 518n; black ministers in, 264n; blacks in, 279n; clergy of, 449n; in Great Britain, 367n, 406n; in Indiana, 457n, 609n; in Kansas, 449n; Liberia mission of, 616, 620n; in Massachusetts, 363n; missions to Indians, 186n; revivals among, 381n; in Rhode Island, 364n; in Santo Domingo, 146, 156n; white ministers, 363–64nn Baptistery, Pisa, Italy, 340, 373n Barbados, 495, 507nn, 509n, 517n Barbardos, Fredrick G., 188n Barbour, James, 81n Bardstown, Ky., 99n Bararab I (king of Wallachia), 226n Bar Harbor, Me., 306 Barnett, Ferdinand L., 592n, 593 Barnett, W. R., 552n Barringer, Victor C., 393n Basilica di San Marco, Florence, Italy, 402–03nn Basilica Eudossiana, Vincoli, Italy, 374n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 668

INDEX Basilica Julia, Rome, Italy, 373n Bassas, 617, 620n Bassett, Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, 150, 162n, 184n Bassett, Eliza Park, 150, 162n Bassett, Frederick Douglass, 162n Bassett, Tobias, 162n Bassett, William, 623–24, 628n Batchelor (horse). See Bachelor Baxter, Richard, 500, 517n Bay of Eleusis, Greece, 395n Bay of Naples, 378n, 379–80nn Bayard, Thomas, 293 Beauregard, Pierre Gustave Toutant, 137 Bedford College for Ladies, London, Eng., 376n Bedford County, Tenn., 142n, 426n Bedford County, Va., 548 Bedford Square, London, 407n Bedouins, 388n Bedrachên, Egypt, 354, 392n Beecher, Henry Ward, xxxix, lxxii, 83, 219, 227–28n, 294, 322; antislavery work of, 431, 445n; death of, 432n; Douglass praises, 430–32; New York Independent and, 91; Tilton adultery trial and, 397n, 404n Beecher, Lyman, 227n, 451n “Beecher’s Bibles,” 432–33nn Belcher, Edwin, 184n Belfast, Ire., 308, 318n Belgium, 224n, 617 Bell, Philip A., 237, 247n Belle Isle (prison camp), 116, 124n Bembo, Pietro, 378n Benedict XII (pope), 371n Benedict XIII (antipope), 371n Benedict XIV (pope), 374n Benedictines (religious order), 371n Benezet, Anthony, 500, 518n Beni Hassen, Egypt, 355, 392n “Benjamin Lundy: The First Abolitionist” (Sanborn), 434 Bennett, James Gordon, 153n, 190n Bennett, James Gordon, Jr., 190n, 296n Benson, George, 628n Benson, George W., 623–24, 628n Bensonville Manufacturing Company, 628nn Bering Sea, 540n Bernard, Simon, 418n Berkeley, William, 510n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Berkshire County, Mass., 153n Berlin, Germany, 210n, 218, 397n, 400n, 403n, 423n Bermuda, 211n Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo, 399n Berwick-upon-Tweed, Scot., 88n Besor, Israel, 57n Bethune, Donald, 57n Bevan, Paul, 405n Bey, J. S. Grant, 389n Bibb, Henry, xlv; Bibles to Slaves campaign and, 11, 14n; British abolitionists aid, 610n Bible: defense of slavery in, 440; Israel in, 57n; Judah in, 57n; distributed to slaves, lxiii, 11–14, 14n; slavery defended by, 441 Bible against Slavery, The (Weld), 527n Biblical quotations and allusions, 11n, 13, 14n, 56–58nn, 126n, 201n, 221–22nn, 250n, 269n, 278n, 284n, 294, 295n, 301n, 373–74n, 386n, 406n, 409, 415, 418n, 420n, 435, 441n, 546, 571n, 644nn, 647n; Abel in, 124n; Abraham in, 97, 348, 350, 377n, 386nn; Acts of the Apostles in, 374n, 380–81nn, 602n; Adam in, 387n; Amalekites, 510n; Asenath in, 390n; Balaam in, 346, 381n; Bethlehem in, 373n, 638; Cain in, 118, 124n, 219; Canaan in, 386n; Corinthians in, 448n, 451n, 572n; Crucifixion in, 319n, 342, 374nn, 379n; Daniel in the lion’s den in, 244n; David in, 636n; Egypt in, 276, 283, 284n, 351, 386n; Elijah, 391n; Ephraim in, 390n; Eve in, 387n; Exodus in, 209n, 280n, 284n, 383n, 386n, 391n, 510n, 645n; Fugitive Slave Law and, 440; Genesis in, 102n, 124n, 227n, 373n, 286n, 390n; Goshen, 350, 386n; Hagar in, 377n; Hebrews in, 276, 283, 348, 448n, 581–83; Hosea in, 553n; house upon rock in, 101n; Isaiah in, 371n, 421n, 423n, 449n, 572n; Israelites in, 381nn, 384n, 636n; Jacob in, 383n, 636n; Jephthah, in 425n; Jesus and His teachings in, 59n, 127n, 225–26n, 341; Job in, 59; Joseph in, 348–49, 383–84n, 390n; Judah in, 636n; Lazarus and, 342, 374n; Leviticus in, 510n; Lord’s Prayer in, 255, 256n; Luke in, 374n, 380–81n. 572n; Manasseh, 390n; Mary, Mother of Jesus, 374–75nn; Mary and Martha and, 342, 374n; Matthew, 572nn; Moab in, 381n; Moses in, 284n, 348, 351, 384n, 391n, 406n, 638, 642, 646n; Nazareth

Y7870-Douglass.indb 669

669 in, 638; Old Testament in, 381n; Paul (Saul) in, 345, 348–49, 356, 374n, 380–81nn, 385n, 396n; Paul returns Onesimus to 441; Philemon in, 440, 456n; Pentecost in, 598, 602n; Peor in, 381n; Peter in 433n, 448n; Pharaoh in, 348–49, 383–84nn, 386n, 390, 642, 646n; Pharisees in, 212, 221n; Pontius Pilate in, 374n; Potipherah in, 390n; Prodigal son in, 573n; Proverbs in, 582–84, 584n; Psalms in, 227n, 243n, 550n; Puteoli in, 345, 380n; Revelations in, 462, 465n; rich man in, 584n; Romans in, 539n; Ruth in, 636n; St. Luke, 342; Samaritans, 638; Sarah in, 386n; Satan in, 485; Solomon in, 301, 317n, 582–83, 584n; Twelve Tribes of Israel, 635n; Zachaeus in, 57n Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris, 413, 421n Bigelow, Mr., 362 Bingham, Caleb, lx, 250–51n Birmingham, Eng., 405n Birney, James G, 452n: as editor, 127, 439, 502, 529n; as lecturer, 527n; as mob target, 502, 526n; as presidential candidate, 529n; as slaveholder, 131n Bismarck, Otto van, 316n Black, A. & C. (publishers), 493 Black Codes; black progress hindered by, 66, 77–78n; in Ohio, 57n. See also discrimination; segregation Black laws. See Black Codes Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, The (Brown), 223n Blacks/freed people: in Alabama, 184n, 262n, 258; as American citizens, 63–73; in Arkansas, 259, 262n; as bankers, 264n; as Baptists, 279n; Chinese compared to, 208; churches of, 274, 279n; as citizens, 282; civil rights efforts by, xxxiii, xxxviii–xxxix, lxix, 110, 170, 206, 257–59, 263n, 264; as clerks, 262–64nn; condition of, in U.S., 254; conventions of, lxx, 257–59; convict labor system entraps, 363n, 570, 573n; Democrats entice, 560–71, 571n, 573n; discrimination against, 212–21, 258, 271–77, 299, 597; disenfranchisement of, 570, 574n, 597, 601n; as doctors, 103, 274; Douglass as a leader of, xxxiii, 257; education of, xviii, xxxiii, xxxvii, lxviii, lxxii, 103, 111n, 170, 201–03, 258, 260n,

9/1/21 4:17 PM

670 Blacks/freed people (continued) 272–73, 279n, 299, 332, 363n, 388n, 505, 531n, 540n, 546; economic achievements of, 600; emigration of, xxxvii, 206, 207n, 283; Exodus from South of, lxxi, 203–06; families of, 103; as farmers, 103, 170, 203, 276, 505; as federal officeholders, 172; financial condition of, lxix, lxxi, 103, 189, 199–200, 258, 270–77; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 111n, 166; in Georgia, 258, 262n, 276; as journalists, xviii, xxxiii, xl, 103, 274, 281, 489–93, 573n; in Kentucky, lxxii, 256–59; landowning by, 103; as lawyers,103; lynching of, 534, 541; in Maryland, 269; Medes and Persians in, 386n; as Methodists, 279n; as ministers, xxxiv, 103, 210–11n, 263n, 274, 611n; migration of, xxxvii; missionaries to, 363n; in Mississippi, 167, 176–77n, 224n, 227n, 259; morality of, 547, 598; mortality rate of, 284n; newspapers of, xxxviii, xl, xlviii, lxix, 274, 549n, 569; in New York State, 223n; in North Carolina, 258, 262n, 276; in Ohio, 259n, 264n; as parents, 103; political independence advocated for, 561–67; population of, in U.S., 115, 123n, 170, 227n, 258, 259n, 277, 281n, 283, 284n, 286n, 586, 588n; Populist party and, 572n; as postmasters, 540n; poverty of, 545–46; prediction of gradual extinction of, 284; as printers, 260n; religious traditions of, 103, 203, 279n, 283, 639; Republican party and, 163, 185n, 257, 259n, 263n, 370n, 533–34, 559–61; as sailors, 103, 453n, 526n; sharecropping and, 570, 573n; as shoemakers, 264n; swing vote held by, 561; as taxpayers, 276, 505; as teachers, 103, 224nn, 273–74, 493n; in Texas, 259, 262n; as typesetters, 369–70n; as Underground Railroad operators, 369n; violence against, 299; in Virginia, lxxii, 182n, 258, 260n, 263n, 276, 332, 447n. See also Black soldiers; Black suffrage; Free blacks; Slaves Black soldiers: in American Revolution, 68, 71–73, 515n, 547, 553n; Douglass praises, 116, 598; Douglass recruits, lxvii–lxviii, 222n, 322n, 328–29nn, 382n, 605; courage of, 383n; enlistment of, 165–66, 180–2nn, 259n, 369n, 376n, 383–83nn; ingratitude of nation toward, 598; as laborers, 329n; Lincoln and, 323, 383n, 556n; maltreatment of, 191, 264n, 322–23 328–29nn; massacres

Y7870-Douglass.indb 670

INDEX of, 142n; from Massachusetts, 222n, 323, 328n; number of, 119, 125n, 266; as officers, xxxii–xxxiii, 324, 329n; unequal pay of, 324, 328–29nn; as prisoners, 328n; promotion of, 324; as teamsters, 261n; valor of, 264n; units of, 181n, 261n, 264n, 269n; in War of 1812, 73–74, 247n. See also Union Army Black suffrage, lxvii, 65, 77–78n, 219: Compromise of 1877 and, 291n; Democratic party and, 175; Douglass on, 106, 110, 114–22, 605; Ulysses S. Grant advocates, 170–72, 175–76, 177n, 183–84nn; literacy tests curtail, 466n, 540n, 574n, 601n; opposition to, 132n; in postbellum South, 106, 143n, 466n; Republican party and, 121, 127, 258, 291n, 462–63, 537, 541n, 554, 561–64; restriction of, 77–78n; in Rhode Island, 293n; in South, 110, 143n, 540n; woman suffrage and, 597 Blackstone, William, 549–50n Blackwood Publishers, 322 Blaine, James G., 287, 290n, 293n, 365n, 415, 424n; corrupt reputation of, 465n; Douglass criticizes, 555, 557n, 577, 580n; Douglass writes, 488n; Election of 1884 and, 555, 556n, 558n, 79; Election of 1892 and, 572n, 577, 580n; ill health of, 536, 580n; as secretary of state, 472–74, 476–77nn, 481–82, 536, 556–57n, 580n; as protective tariff advocate, 555, 556n, 577, 580n Blaine Invincible Republican Organization, Washington, D.C., 259 Blair, Appoline Alexander, 139n Blair, Eliza Violet Gist, 139n Blair, Francis P., Jr., 131n, 134, 139n, 207n Blair, Francis Preston, Sr., 139n Blair, Henry W., 466n, 540n Blair, Montgomery, 139 Blair Education Bill, 462–63; 466n; defeated in Congress, 538, 540n; Democrats oppose, 576; Harrison supports, 466n, 533, 537, 540n Blaloch, George H., 333–34, 364n Blaloch, Jean, 364n Blassingame, John W., xi, xv Blatchford, Samuel, 269n Blight, David W., xxxi, xlii Blithedale Romance, The (Hawthorne), 624n Bllelock, Mr. See Blaloch, George H. Blockson, Charles L., 1 Blood, James Harvey, 397n Blue Nile River, 392n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Body of Liberties (Massachusetts), 495, 506–07n Bogota, Columbia, 187n Bohemia, 388n, 403n Bok, William, 293 Boleyn, Anne, 134n Bondone, Giotto di, 402n Bonn, Germany, 397n Book of Common Prayer, The, 123n, 373n Booker, W. M. H., 259 Booth, John Wilkes, lxviii, 364n Borden, Miss, 349, 385n Bordentown, N.J., 260n Bordentown Industrial and Manual Training School, 260n “Border Ruffians,” 439, 454n, 531n Border States: in the Civil War, 178; in Reconstruction, 292n. See also individual states Borga Neuvo, Rome, Italy, 375n Borga Veccho, Rome, Italy, 375n Boston, George H., 259, 261n Boston, Mass., 132n, 159n, 183n, 209n, 253n, 624n; abolitionists of, lxi, lxvii, 5, 61n, 123n, 160n, 229n, 248n, 375n, 377n, 406n, 438, 448, 522nn, 529–30nn, 589n, 636n; in American Revolution, 81n; Civil War and, 99n, 377n; clergy of, 77n, 251n, 363n, 365n, 377n, 399n, 529n, 589n; Douglass in, lxii–lxiii, lxvii, 317n, 332, 442–43, 610n; Douglass speaks in, lxvii, 557n; free blacks in, 207n, 375n, 377n, 521–22n; Free Soilers in, 522n; fugitive slave renditions in, 503; fugitive slaves in, 246n, 439–40, 455n; Irish American political power in, 304, 316n; lawyers in, 122n, 132n, 179n, 253n, 518n; mobs in, 448–49nn, 528nn; newspapers in, 61n, 104, 132n, 160n, 211; as slave trade port, 496, 508n; Unitarians in, 399n, 449n, 529–30nn Boston and Maine Railroad, 457n Boston and Providence Railroad, 252n, 457n Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaa r, 406n Boston Athenaeum, 438, 448–49n Boston Atlas, 399n Boston Commonwealth, 160n Boston Co-Operator, 263n Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, lxi, 5, 448–49nn, 524–25nn Boston Observer, 263n Boston Port Act (1774), 520n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 671

671 Boulanger, George, 424n Bourbon dynasty, 378n, 381n, 434 Bourbon Palace, Naples, Italy, 344 Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me., 195n, 228n, 251n, 398n, 465n Bowen, Henry C., 533 Boyer, Jean-Pierre, 149, 152n, 160–61n, 207n Boyle, James. 623, 629n Boyle County, Ky., 268n Boynton, Charles B., 153n Boynton, Henry Van Ness, 146, 153n Boynton, Maria Van Buskirk, 153n Boys in Blue (veterans), 259n Bradburn, George, 457n, 609nn Bradley, Joseph P., 269n Bradstreet, Simon, 496 Brahmins, 218, 225n Brattleboro, Vt., 629n Brazil, 102n, 380n, 457n Breckinridge, John Cabell, 179n Breelock, Mr. See Blaloch, George H. Bremer, Frederika, 634n Bridgehampton, N.Y., 79n Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times (Sandiford), 517n Brigades des sapeurs, 420n Bright, Elizabeth Priestman, 399n Bright, John, 399n, 407n, 643, 647n Brindisi, Italy, 380n Brinkhouse, Judge, 355, 393n Bristol, Eng., 405n Bristol, Mass., 496 Bristol, N.Y., 528n Bristol County (Mass.) Anti-Slavery Society, 446n British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 14n, 228n, 406n, 610n British Bards and Scottish Reviewers (Byron), 191, 194n British Grenada, 157n British Guiana, 399n Broad Street Station, London, 406n Broadway, New York City, 235, 244n, 442 Broadway Tabernacle, New York City, 228n, 530n, 633, 635n Brook Farm, West Roxbury, Mass., 621, 624n, 626n Brooklyn, Conn., 628n Brooklyn, N.Y., 294, 431–32, 432n Brooklyn Magazine, 293–95

9/1/21 4:17 PM

672 Brooke, Abraham, 457n Brooke, Samuel, xix Brooks, David, 148, 160n Brooks, John Henry, 259, 261n Brooks, Noah, 331n Brooks, Preston Smith, 122n, 191, 194n, 195n, 439, 527n Brotherhood of Thieves, The (Foster), 446n Brown, B. Gratz, 175, 187n Brown, John, 195n; arrest, trial, and execution of, 143n, 195n, 440; critics of, 192; Douglass and, xxx, xlviii, lxiii, lxv–lxvi, 84, 345, 605; in Kansas Territory, xxx, 88n, 195n; legacy, 380n; raids Harpers Ferry, lxvi, 141n, 195n; Republicans and, 229n; reputation of, 194; supporters of, 57n, 160n, 253n, 298, 399n, 431, 432n, 448n Brown, John, Jr., 85 Brown, John Milton, 259, 262n Brown, Solomon G., 259, 261–62n Brown, William, 368n Brown, William Wells, xli, 3, 216, 223n Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 5, 359, 400n Browning, Robert, 400n Brown University, Providence, R.I., 160n, 363nn, 380n Brownson, O. A., 310 Brownson’s Quarterly Review (Boston, Mass.), 310, 319n Bruce, Blanche K., 206n, 216, 224–25n Bruce, Josephine Beal Wilson, 225n Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, 548n Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, 365n Brunelleschi, Filippo, 401n Brutus, 345, 380n Bryan, Edward H., 338, 370n Bryce, Lloyd, 541 Buck, Welcher, 145 “Bucktails,” 464n Brummel, H., 150, 161n Buchanan, James, xxx, 453–54n; Bloody Kansas and, 10n, 439, 454n, 531n; cabinet of, 142n; Dred Scott case and, 601n; Lecompton Constitution and, 573n; secession crisis and, 95, 101n, 454n; opposes slave trade reopening, 453n Buckingham, William Alfred, 325, 330n Buffalo, N.Y.: clergy of, 364n; conventions in, lxiii, 127, 223n, 589n; Democrats in, 557–58n; freed people in, 23n Buffum, Arnold, 445n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 672

INDEX Buffum, James N., 438, 446–47n Bullock, Penelope L., xlii Bull Run, First Battle of, 578, 580–81n Bull Run, Second Battle of, 124n Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 344, 360, 373n, 378n, 399n, 402n, 405n Bunker Hill, Battle of, 70. 80–81n, 553n Burgundy, Duchy of, 141n, 369n, 394n Burgoyne, John, 81n Burji, 388n Burke, Edmund, 299n, 301–02n, 304, 314n Burke, Samuel Constantine, 151, 162n Burleigh, Charles C., 503, 528n Burleigh, William Henry, 528n Burling, William, 500, 517n Burnham, Daniel H., 549n Burns, Anthony, 455n Burns, Robert, 523n, 633, 635n; quoted, 88, 90n, 230n, 302n Burnside, Ambrose E., 331n burqa, 386n Burr, Aaron, 519n Burr, James E., 526n Burton, Allan A., 149, 174, 187n Burton, Robert A., 187n Burton, Sallie Williams, 187n Buscarlet, A. F., 379n Bush, Rufus T., 294 Butler, Andrew P., 195n Butler, Benjamin Franklin, 179n; contraband policy of, 165, 178–79nn; Abraham Lincoln and, 322; in Virginia, 58n; Victoria Woodhull and, 397n Butler, Nathaniel, 509n Butler, Pierce, 520–21n Butler Zouaves (Washington, D.C.), 261n Büttikofer, Johann, 614, 619n Byberry, Pa., 519n Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 58n; attacks on, 191, 194n; quoted, 37, 47, 57n, 60n Byse, Fanny, 362, 405n Byzantine Empire, 377n, 385n, 393–94nn, 403n Cabral, Jose Maria, 146, 150, 156n Caesar, Gaius Julius, 344, 380n, 393n Cahirciveen, Ire., 320n Cain, James, 151 Cairo, Egypt, 350, 386–89nn, 391–93nn Cairo, Ill., 164, 168, 178–79n Calabria, Italy, 379n Calcutta, India, 336, 365n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Caldwell, Liberia, 617 Caldwell, N.J., 557n Caledonian Hotel, London, Eng., 358, 399n, 405n Calhoun, John C., 10n, 456n; election of 1824 and, 79n; proslaveryism of, 7, 463, 466n; states’ rights and, 10–11nn, 98n, 132n, 463, 504, 531n; as vice president, 464n, 531n Caliban (character), 59n Calidan Hotel, London, 362 California, 19n, 161n, 370n; admission as a free state, 550n; anti-Chinese sentiment in, 206–07n, 209–10n, 218–19, 226–27n, 305, 545, 552n; black population of, 259, 262n; Chinese in, 208, 209–10n, 219, 226–27n, 305, 545; free blacks in, 86, 103, 247n, 250n; gold rush to, 4, 89, 103, 109n, 206–07n, 208, 226n, 250n; Irish immigrants in, 227n, 305; lynchings in, 542–43, 549n; mobs in, 209–10n; Republican party in, 247n, 549n; United States acquires, 508n Calusa, 162n Calvinists, 113n, 517–18nn Cambria (ship), 317n, 530n, 631 Cambridge, Mass., 82n Campagna, Italy, 397n, 430n Campanile, Pisa, Italy, 372n (Leaning Tower) Campbell, Thomas: quoted, 317n Camp meetings, 391n Campo dei Frari, Venice, Italy, 403n Camucinni, Vincenzo, 378n Canaan, N.H., 527n Canada, 99n, 160n; boundary of, 3n; Confederate supporters in, 99nn; Douglass flees to, xxx, lxvi; emigrants to Haiti from, 89n; as French colony, 507n; fugitive slaves flee to, xlv, 26, 35–36, 44, 55n, 57–58nn, 85, 207n, 211n, 223n, 369n, 455n, 524n; newspapers of, xlv, 223n; sealing in, 540; Union Army recruits from, 328n; U.S. relations with, 229n, 540n; Madison Washington in, 56n Canal Grande, Venice, Italy, 402–03nn Canandaigua, N.Y., 430n, 528n Canary Islands, 496, 509n Cannon-Johnson gang, 245n Canterbury, Conn., 449n, 526n Canterbury, N.H., 446n Canterbury Female Boarding School, 449n Cap-Français, Haiti, 157n, 646n Cap-Hatien, Haiti, 478n Cape Cod, Mass., 454n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 673

673 Cape Fear, N.C., 507n Cape May, N.J., 244n Cape Montserrado, Liberia, 617 Cape Mount, Liberia, 614, 616 Cape Palmas, Liberia, 620n Cape Verde, 104n Cape Verde Islands, 509n capital punishment: abolitionists oppose, 528n; Douglass opposes, lxvi Capital Savings Bank, Washington, D.C., 264n Capitoline Hill, Rome, Italy, 343, 374n Capo di Montin, Naples, Italy, 344 Capri, Italy, 344, 378n Capuano, Pietro, 382n Capuchins (religious order), 344, 347, 379n, 382n Caracciolo, Giovanni Battista, 379n Cardwell, John, 351, 387n Caribbean: blacks in 104n, 207n; native tribes of, 495; slave trade to, 496; slavery in, 425n Caribbean Sea, 59n, 101n; colonies in, 158n; U.S. interest in, 472, 601n Caribs, 283, 285n Carillon, N.Y., 81n Carlisle, John G., 466n Carlisle Bridge, Dublin, Ire., 317nn Carlyle, Thomas, 265n, 405n Carlow, County of, Ire., 318n Carmelite Order, 423n Carpathian Mountains, 226n Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, Pa., 520n Carson, P. H., 257, 259, 259n Carthusian Monks, 379n Cassell, John, 655 Castle St. Angelo, Rome, Italy, 375n Castle Thunder (prison camp), 116, 124n Catherine of Aragon (queen of England), 134n Catholic Emancipation, 124n, 321n Cavallo River, 614 Cayuga Academy, Aurora, N.Y., 186n Cazenovia Seminary, 401n Cazneau, Jane McManus Storms, 159n Cazneau, Wiliam L., 148, 151n, 159n Cecil, Robert (3rd marquis of Salisbury), 315n Cedar Hill, Washington, D.C., lxxi, 145, 254, 332, 363n, 396n, 430n, 579n, 591, 602, 648–51 Cefn-y-Bedd, Wales, 366n Celts, 208–09, 209n, 285n Cemetery of the Red Cross, Lyon, France 370n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

674 Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, Pa., 337, 367n, 548n Centerville, Ind., 291n Central America: emigration to, 207n; filibustering in, 439, 453n Central Park, New York City, 296n Centre College, Danville, Ky., 268n Century Magazine (New York City), xxxvi, xxxviii, xlviii, 231–42, 296–98 Chace, Elizabeth Buffum, 630n Chace, W. C., 259 Chaffin’s Farm, Battle of, 264n chain gangs, 570 Chalgrin, Jean, 420n Chamberlain, Daniel Henry, 142n Chambersburg, Pa., lxvi Chancellorsville, Battle of, 195n Chandler, George W., 333–34, 364n Chandler, Izora, 334, 364n Chandler, William E., 463, 466n Channing, William Ellery, 8n, 503, 529n, 630n Chaplin, William L., 502–03, 524n, 526n Chaplin Fund Committee, 524n Chapman, Henry Grafton, 554n Chapman, Maria Weston, xix, lxi; 502, 525n: as abolitionist,524n; Douglass writes, 8n; edits Liberty Bell, 58n Champs-Elysees, Paris, 412 Chapel of St. George, Athens, Greece, 395n Chapultepce, Battle of, 143n “Character” (Beecher), 433n Charles (duke of Calabria), 379n Charles I (king of Hungary), 226n Charles II (king of England), 58n, 495, 506–07nn Charles III (king of the Two Sicilies), 377n, 381n Charles V (king of France), 421n Charles V (king of Spain), 495, 505n Charles VII (king of the Two Sicilies), 378n Charles IX (king of France), 422n Charles X (king of France), 418n Charles River, 81n Charles the Bold (duke of Burgundy), 369n Charleston, S.C., 62, 143n; black sailors in, 439, 453n; Civil War and, 269n; Douglass visits, 151, 163n; establishment of, 507n; mail censored in, 451n; newspapers of, 453n; slaveholders in, 525n; slave revolt in, 640, 645n Charleston (S.C.) Standard, 453n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 674

INDEX Charlestown Heights, Mass., 81n Charybdis, 384n Chase, Salmon P., 219, 325: as abolitionist, 127–28; as chief justice, 330n; courted Democrats, 127–31, 131n, 133n, 135; death of, lxix; Douglass criticizes, xxxiii, 127–31; Liberty party, 127–28, 131n; seeks presidency, 127, 133n; 133n; Jefferson Davis and, 133–34n; as Whig, 127, 131n Chase, William Calvin, 262–63n Château de Fontainebleau, Paris, France, 421n Chatham, Ont., 369n Chatham Garden Theatre, New York City, 450n Chatham Street Chapel, New York City, 450n Chattanooga, Tenn., 201n Cheeseman, John Joseph, 617, 620 Cheever, George Barrell, 91, 404n Cherbourg, Battle of, 262n Cherokee Freedmen’s Act, 184n Cherokees, 184n Château D’if, 340 Cheap Postage Society, 524n Chesapeake Bay, 48, 61n, 243n, 608n Cheltenham, Eng., 343, 376n Cheops (pharaoh of Egypt), 389n Cheops Pyramids, 352, 389nn Chephren (pharaoh of Egypt) 389n Cheshire, Eng., 368n Chesnutt, Charles W., xli Chester, Eng., 337, 368n Chester, N.J., 82n Chesterfield County, Va., 58n Chicago, Ill., 112n, 296n: Douglass in, xxxix, lxxii–lxxiii; Douglass speaks in, 557n; free blacks in, 369n; Irish in, 317n; Republican party convention (1888) in, lxxii, 463; Republican party convention (1892) in, 538; World’s Columbian Exposition in, xxxix, lxxiii, 548–49n, 584–87, 588n, 590–92 Chicago Advance, 191 Chicago Inter-Ocean, 407–17, 549n Chickamagua, Battle of, 153n Child, Davis, 448n Child David Lee, 503, 529n Child, Lydia Maria, xxxiii, lxviii, 102–03, 246n, 439, 448n, 502–03, 522n Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Byron), 194n Chile, 536, 539–40n, 601n China, 220; dynasties of, 113n; coolie laborers from, 280–81n; emigrants to the U.S. from, 598; Great Wall in, 110, 113n; plants of, 112n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Chinese: emigration of, to U.S., 204, 207n, 208, 285–86n; stereotypes of, 207n Chinese Americans: in California, 206–07n, 208, 209–10n, 218–19, 226–27n, 286n, 305, 317n, 545, 552n; compared to blacks, 208; discrimination against, 206n, 218–19, 226–27n, 283, 285–86n, 305, 314, 545, 552n, 636; economic progress of, 271; education of, 207n; exclusion as immigrants, 552n, 555; industriousness of, 545, 552n; as laborers, 209–10n, 226n, 285–86n, 545; mobs attack, 210n, 227n, 300, 302n, 317n, 594; in postbellum South, 207n Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 207n, 227n, 286n, 552n Chippewa, 377n Chiriqui, Honduras, 207–08n Choate, Rufus, 399n Choptank River, Md., 607n Christian Connection Church, Union Mills, N.Y., 17 Christian Examiner (Boston), 8n Christian Herald (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 208 Christian Palladium (Union Mills, N.Y.), 17 Christian Recorder (Philadelphia, Pa.), 208–09, 211n, 287 Christian Soldier (Boston), 530n Christian Union (New York City), 228n Christiana, Pa., 440, 455n Christianity: Adventists movement in, 18; antiSemitism and, 218, 226n, 286n, 638; Islam and, 218, 354, 387n; leveling principles of, 566; proslavery sentiments of, 436, 440; role in the United States, 1 “Christ’s Triumph over Death” (Fletcher), 98n Christy, David, 590n Christophe, Henry, 147, 157n, 160–61n Church of England, 123n, 338, 368n; abolitionists in, 500, 517n; ministers in, 321n; Puritans and, 517n; Separatists and, 506n Church of Santa Maria at Aracoeli, Rome, Italy, 374n Church of St. Martha, Tarascon, France, 371n Church Street, New York City, 237 Cicero, 251n, 345 Cimetière de Loyasse, Lyon, France, 370n Cincinnati, Ohio: abolitionists in, 153n, 182n, 439, 502; abolitionist meetings in, 127; Democrats in, 398n; schools in, 493n; free blacks in, 493n; fugitive slaves in, 127, 131n; German immigrants in, 398n; mobs in, 439,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 675

675 452n, 502, 526n; newspapers of, 153–54nn, 502; political conventions in, 187n; Underground Railroad in, 127, 133n, 182n Cincinnati Commercial, 154n Cincinnati Gazette, 153n Circassians, 388n Cirono, Piero, 400n Cistercian Order, 382n Citadel Henry, Haiti, 157n Citadelle Lafarriere, Haiti, 157n City of Rome (ship), lxxii, 333–35, 343, 349, 362–63nn, 365n, 404n City University of New York, 404n Civil Rights Act (1866), 105, 111n, 123n, 188n Civil Rights Act (1875), xxxvii; criticized as a “Social Rights” act, 268; Douglass defends, 264–68; Charles Sumner originates, 177n; supporters of, 269n; Supreme Court overturns, lxxii, 257, 264–68, 269nn, 270, 574n Civil Rights Act (1957), 265 civil service laws, 465n, 557–58n; Grover Cleveland and, 571, 574n; Republican party and, 461, 647n. See also Pendleton Civil Service Act Civil War, xxxvii, xli. lxxiii, 4, 10n, 55n, 83, 89nn, 123n, 132n, 153n, 195n, 283, 304, 330n; in Alabama, 242; in Arkansas, 181; beginning of, xxxi, 84, 106; battles of, 580–81n; blacks and, 116, 369n; blockade in, 162n; casualties in, 435; causes of, 440; Congress and, 154n; contraband slaves in, 165–66, 179–80nn, 182n; Democratic party and, 124, 139n; Douglass characterizes, 595; draft in, 135, 139n, 316–17n; economic impact of, 101n; emancipation and, lxvii, 92, 100n, 122–23nn, 178n, 188n, 277, 440, 504; European powers and, lxvii, 100n, 111–12nn 140n, 162n; in Florida, 162nn; in Georgia, 153n; Great Britain and, xxxii, 90–97; 101n, 132n, 154n; hospitals in, 58n; immigrants in, 158n, 186n, 315–17n; in Indiana, 291n; interpretations of, 126–27n; Irish Americans in, 316–17n; Kansas and, 89n, 180n, 211, 224n; lessons of, 106–07; Massachusetts and, lxviii, 323, 376n; Mexico and, 140n; military progress of, lxvii–lxviii, 181nn, 188n; naval blockade during, 90, 100n; navy’s role in, 154n, 156n, 261n; in North Carolina, 162n, 264n; Ohio and,153n, 179n; opposition to, 139n; peace terms debate, 169, 183n, 269n, 329–30n; in Pennsylvania, 154n, 323; prison

9/1/21 4:17 PM

676 Civil War (continued) camps in, 116, 124n; slavery during, 547, 597; in South Carolina, 88n, 143n, 269n, 383n, 610n; in Tennessee, 153n, 179n; in Texas, 181n, 264n; in Virginia, 58n, 61n, 102n, 124n, 141nn, 143n, 195n, 264n, 266, 269n; in Washington, D.C., 143–44n, 211n, 329n, 581n. See also Black soldiers; Lincoln, Abraham Claflin, Tenn., 397n Clark, David, 185n Clark, Jonas Gilman, 3 Clark, Helen Priestman Bright, 358, 399n Clark, Robert, 68, 79n Clark, Susan Wright, 3 Clark, William, 399n Clark University, Worcester, Mass., 4 Clarke, Capitan (character), 52, 54 Clarkson, Charles, 540n Clarksville, Geo., 456n Clay, Cassius M., 322 Clay, Henry, 9n; antislavery pretensions of, 9n, 107; colonization supported by, 9n, 89n; Compromise of 1850 and, 9n, 432n, 550n; election of 1824 and, 79n, 450–51nn; intellect of, 643, 647n; Missouri Compromise and, 81n; slavery and, 7, 107, 440, 456n Clement V (pope), 371n Clement VI (pope), 371n Clement VII (antipope), 371n, 402n Clephane, James O., 610n Clergy: Bibles for Slaves campaign and, 12; in Congregational Church, 77, 77n, 82n, 83, 227–28n, 294, 381n, 430, 447n, 523–24n, 527–28nn; free blacks as, 71, 223nn, 237, 246nn, 262nn; Fugitive Slave law and, 441; in Methodist Church, 36n, 364n, 391n; in Presbyterian Church, 237, 246n, 332, 380n, 455n, 523n; proslavery sentiment of, 12, 436, 440; in Unitarian Church, 8n, 365n, 529n. See also individual denominations Cleveland, Grover, lxxii–lxiii, 557–58n; appointments of, 142n, 158n, 303, 332, 387n, 393n, 398n; anti-Chinese riots suppressed by, 302; civil service reform and, 571, 574n; Douglass and, 287–90, 533, 558n, 571, 576–79; Election of 1884 and, 254, 270, 287–89; 291–93nn, 364n, 424n, 555, 557n, 579; Election of 1888 and, 465n, 467n, 558n; Election of 1892 and, 533, 553, 558nn, 559,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 676

INDEX 572n, 575–78, 579n; gold standard and, 539n, 558n; as governor, 287; lynchings and, 578; “Mugwumps” support, 365n, 465n, 557n; tariffs and, 465n, 558nn, 575, 580n; Republicans criticize, 467n Cleveland, Ohio, xx, 36, 58n,112n, 225n; freed people in, 260n; Irish in, 316n; Republicans in, 269n; woman suffrage convention in, 528n Cleveland Clubs, 569, 573n Clifford, John Henry, 442, 456–57n Clinton, DeWitt, 464n Clotel (Brown), 223n Clough, William, xxi Clyde, Thomas, 489n Clyde, William P., 488–89nn Clyde Steamship Company, New York City, 479, 481, 483–87, 488–89nn Clytemnestra (character), 396n Cobb, Howell, 137, 142n Cobb, Mr., 241 Cobden, Richard, 399n Cobh, Ire., 366n Cobourg, Ont., 58n Cockburn, Francis, 60n, 62n Codding, Ichabod, 375n, 503, 528n coffee, 615, 619n, 647n Coffin, Catherine, 182n Coffin, Levi, 168, 182n, 458n Coffin, Vestal, 182n Colby College, 179n, 455n Coleman, Elihu, 500, 517n Coligny, Gaspard II de, 422n Coliseum (Colosseum), Rome, Italy, 342, 374n Colfax, Evelyn Clark, 144n Colfax, Schuyler, lxix, 133n, 134, 144n, 187n, 322 Colfax, Louisiana, lxx Collège de France, Paris, 413, 421n Collège Louis-le-Grand, Paris, France, 425n College of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C., 194n College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va., 519n Collins, John A., 447n, 609nn Collins, Richmond J., 259, 263n Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London, 382n colonization of blacks: abolitionists oppose, 89n, 522n, 524n, 613n; in Caribbean, 281n; Henry Clay supports, 9n, 89n; clerical

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX support for, 8n; during Civil War, 188n; Douglass opposes, 86, 90n, 115, 589n; free blacks oppose, 89n, 246n, 630n; post-Civil War proposals for, 281–82; supporters of, 176n, 589n. See also American Colonization Society Colonna, Vitoria, 344, 378n Colorado, 259, 383n Colored American (New York City), xlviii, 224n, 246–37nn Colored American Day, 585 Colored Association of Massachusetts, 222n Colored Citizen (Washington, D.C.), xxxv Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, 493n Colton, Charles Caleb, 645n Columbia, 160n, 464n Columbia County, N.Y., 464n Columbia, S.C., 141n Columbia College, New York City, 79–80nn, 161n, 519n Columbian Orator, The (Bingham), 250–51n; influence on Douglass, lx, 239 Columbus, Bartholomew, 157–58nn Columbus, Christopher: celebrations of, 548–49, 584–87, 590–92; Santo Domingo and, 147–48, 151n, 158n, 159n, 161n; slavery and, 494, 505n Columbus, Diego, 158–59nn Columbus, Ohio, 262n Commentaries on American Law (Kent), 80n Committee for Trade and Foreign Plantations (Great Britain), 496 Committee of Thirteen, New York City, 247n Common School Journal (Boston), 253n Communism, 626n Communist Manifesto (Mark and Engels), 626–27n Communitarianism, xl, lxii, 3, 447n, 621–24, 627–29nn Compagnie de Navigation Sud-Atlantique, 383n Company of Merchant Adventurers, 506n Company of Providence Island, 496 Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa, 506n Compromise of 1850, lxiv, 78n; abolitionists oppose, 132n, 531n; Henry Clay and, 9n, 432n, 550n; clergy support, 8n; Democratic party endorses, 55n, 139n, 142n, 464n; Douglass criticizes, 129, 132n; opponents of, 112n, 253n; peace terms sought, 169; Southern demands in, 531n; Daniel Webster

Y7870-Douglass.indb 677

677 supports, 132n, 573n. See also Fugitive Slave Law (1850) Compromise of 1877, 291n Comte, August, 405n Conciliation Hall, Dublin, Ire., 309–10, 318–19nn Concord, Mass., 253n, 335, 630n Concord, N.H., 82n, 219, 227n, 634n Confederate Mining Company, 206n Confederate States of America, 113n: black soldiers mistreated by, 322–33; conscription under, 169; debt of, 112–13nn, 120; desertions in, 183n; foreign recognition of, lxvii, lxvii, 90, 92, 98–99nn; government of, 99n, 142n, 280n; leaders of, disenfranchised, 112n, 163, 282, 415; dissent inside, 269n; “Lost Cause” of, 121, 126–27n, 136; military efforts by, lxvii–lxviii, 120–21, 141–43nn, 162–63n, 177n, 206n, 269n, 322, 325, 581n; Native Americans and, 186n; navy of, 162n; officers of, 281–82; prisoners of, 328n; secession by, 133n; states’ rights and, 269n; women in, 121 Congdon, James B., 437, 445n Congregational Church: abolitionist members of, 142n, 242n, 447n, 500, 518n, 523–24nn, 528n; blacks in, 224n; in Illinois, 381n, 528n; in Iowa, 528n; in Massachusetts,77n, 242n; ministers in, 77, 82n, 83, 227–28n, 294, 381n, 430, 447n, 523–24n, 527–28nn; in New York, 83, 294; newspapers of, 191; in Ohio, 351n; in U.S. west, 191 Congressional Medal of Honor, 264n Coningsby (Disraeli), 292n Conkling, Roscoe, 612, 643, 647n Connaught, Ire., 318n Connecticut: abolitionists in, 449n, 501, 503; “Black Laws” of, 528n; black population of, 259; free blacks in, 162n, 224n, 449n, 503, 528n; Civil War and, 330n; in colonial era, 507n; Congregational Church in, 527n; free blacks, 526n; “freedom suits” in, 499, 515n; gradual emancipation in, 499, 516n; legislature of, 80n; politicians of, 330n, 521n; Republican party in, 330n, 557n; slavery in, 495; temperance in 522n; Whigs in, 330n Connecticut River Railroad Company, 627n Connecticut State Normal School, 162n Conner, Miss, 352 Connery, Thomas B., 190n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

678 Conservative party (Great Britain), 100n, 292n; oppose Home Rule, 315n, 565, 573n; leaders of, 100n, 289, 292n, 643, 647n Constantinople, 218, 225n, 373n, 402n, 423n Constitutional Convention (U.S.): antislavery sentiments in, 501; debates in, 83n; creates Electoral College, 255–56n Constitutional Union party, 142n Continental Army, 519n Continental Congress (U.S.), 83n, 519n Convict labor system, 570, 574n Conway, Monecure, xxxvii, 434 Cook, Helen Appo, 260n Cook, James, 230n Cook, John Francis, Jr., 259, 260n, 262n Cook, John Francis, Sr. 260 Coolies, 280–81n Cooper, Edward E., 581 Cooper Institute, New York City, 556n, Cooper, S.C., 507n Coppin, Levi Jenkins, 559 Coptic Church of St. Mary, Cairo, Egypt, 391n Copts, 353, 387n Copyright law, 296–97, 297–98n, 493 Correggio, Italy, 348 Cork, Ire., 227n, 308, 406n; Douglass speaks in, 318n, 406n Cork Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, 406n Corn Laws (Great Britain), 289, 292n, 399n, 407n, 647n Cornbury, Lord (Edward Hyde), 507n Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 158, 161nn, 401n, 403n, 423n, 611n Corning, N.Y., 364n Cornish, Samuel, 207n, 237, 246n Cornwall, Eng., 422n Corps Legislatif, France, 415, 423n Corrientes Bay, 163n Corwin, Thomas, 101n Cosmopolitan Magazine (New York City), 433–43 Costa, Silvana, 146 cotton: free labor cultivation of, 89–90n, 96; grown in Africa, 89–90n, 615, 619n; Civil war disrupts supply, 101n; grown in India, 96; political influence of, 121; post-Civil War production, 532n, 573n; price of, 505; sharecropping and, 532n, 573; U.S. production of, 89–90n, 504–05. See also Textile industry cotton gin, 589n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 678

INDEX Cotton is King (Christy), 590n Council of Chalcedon, 391n Count of Monte Cristo, The (Dumas), 340, 372n Countryman (Lyons, N.Y.), 529n Court of St. James, 418n Courtland, N.Y., 223n Cove Gap, Pa., 453n Cove of Cork, Ire, 366n Covey, Edward, lx, 240, 251n, 604 Cowper, William, quoted, 87 Coxhoe, Durham, Eng., 400n Coy, Ed., 541–42, 549n Craft, Ellen, 253n Craft, William, 253n Cragie, Andrew, 253–54n Crandall, Almira, 449n Crandall, Lee, 203, 206n Crandall, Prudence, 438, 449n, 503, 524n, 526–27nn Crawford, William, 79n, 450n Crawfordsville, Ga., 269n Crédit Mobilier scandal, 144n Cree, Thomas, 422n Creeks, 451n Creole (ship), 19, 48–55, 55–56n, 229n; crew of, 60–62nn; dispute with British over, 439, 452n; slaves aboard freed, 452n Creswell, John A. J., 201n Crete, 348, 385nn “Crime against Kansas, The” (Sumner), 122n, 194–95n Crimean War, 320n, 331n Crisis, The (Paine), 36n Crofts, Henry O., 390n Crofts, Julia Griffiths. See Griffiths, Julia Cromwell, Oliver, 58n crop-lien system, 573n Cropper, James, 124n Crummell, Alexander, 216, 224n, 449n Crummell, Boston, 224n Crusades, 372n, 384n, 393n Crusor, Collins B., 259, 261n Crosor, Collins, Jr., 261n Cuba,151, 157n, 163n; Columbus and, 505n; as filibustering target, 439, 453n; geography of, 321n; revolts against Spanish rule, 162n, slavery in, 425n; U.S trade with, 159n Cuney, Wright, 540n Curaçao, 155n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Curie, Marie, 296n Curie, Pierre, 296n Curran, John Philpot, 299, 304 currency issue, 535, 539n, 555, 576 Curtis, Benjamin Robbins, 265, 267, 268n Curtis, George Tichnor, 355n Curtis, George William, 270 Curzon, George, 417n Cushing, Charles Wesley, 269n Custom House, Dublin Ire., 308, 317–18n Cuyahoga, U.S.S., 243n czars (Russia), 408, 650 D. Appleton Company (publishers), 614 Daguerre, Louis., M., 56n daguerreotypes, 56n Dahabiyeh, Egypt, 355, 392n Dahabiyeh (ship), 355 Dahomey, 598 Dakota Territory, 160n Dallas, George Mifflin, 408 418n Damascus, Syria, 373n Dana, Charles A., 296n, 580n, 624n Dandolo, Enrico, 402n Daniel: A Model for Men (Scott), 196n Dante (poet), 399n, 401n Dantès, Edmond (character), 372n Danube River, 226n Danville, Ky., 268n Danville, Va., 271, 277n Darrien, Conn., 654n Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., 122n, 131n, 182n, 446n, 523n Davenport, Iowa, 161n, 396n da Vinci, Leonardo, 399n Davis, Clarkson, 379n Davis, Henry Winter, 154n Davis, Jefferson, 120, 129, 179n; amnesty for, 415, 424–25n; cabinet of, 42n; imprisonment of, 133–34n; as war president, 143n, 280n, 328n Davis, Hannah Ellen Brown, 347, 379n Davis, Thomas, 320n Davis, Miss, 344, 357 d’Avelos, Fernando Francesco, 378n Dawn Settlement, Ont., 56n Death of Caesar, The (Camuccini), 378n Declaration of Independence; abolitionist and, 62n; Douglass praises, 64; equality of men proclaimed in, 64, 68–70; Thomas Jefferson

Y7870-Douglass.indb 679

679 authors, 55n, 589n; principles of, 62n, 499, 594; signers of, 519n Dedham, Mass., 253n, 630n Deerfield, Mass., 399n Defence of Kansas (Beecher), 433n Dejun, France, 338 Delane, John Thadeus, 318n Delany, Dora, 362 Delany, Martin Robinson; free black emigration and, xxiv–xxv black nationalism and, xxiv; Mystery and, xix, 208; North Star and, xxii, xliii, lxiii Delaware: black population of, 259, 263n; slavery in, 233n, 514n; Underground Railroad in, 8n, 233n Delaware Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, Buffalo, N.Y., 364n Delaware County N.Y., 79n Delaware River, 81n, 235 Delfino, Chevalier, 403n Delphi, Greece, 645n Démeunier, Jean Nicholas, 645n: democracy: Douglass praises, 66; principles of, 66; slavery contradicts, 106 Democratic party: abolitionists criticize, 529n; abolitionists in, xxxiii, 57n, 131n; anti-black violence by, 210n; black suffrage and, 554, 559; candidates of, 127, 134–38, 187n, 270, 331n, 365n; black voters and, 135–36, 163, 561–63, 568–69, 175; civil service reform and, 574n; ex-Confederates in, 136–37; Salmon P. Chase courts, 127–31, 131n, 133n, 135; in Civil War, 134–35; Compromise of 1850 and, 55n, 139n, 142n, 464n; conservative Republicans join, 132n, 139n, 188n, 365n; conventions of, 131n, 134, 138n, 175, 179n, 187–88nn; currency issue and, 539n, 576; Stephen Douglas faction of, 229n; Douglass criticizes, 175, 289–91, 459, 464, 560–63, 568–71; in Election of 1856, xxx; in Election of 1864, 331n; in Election of 1868, xxxiii, 127, 131n, 133n, 134–38; in Election of 1872, 163–75, 187–88nn; in Election of 1876, 210n; in Election of 1880, 612n; in Election of 1884, lxxii, 254, 270, 287–89, 365n, 424n; in Election of 1890, lxxiii, 461; in Election of 1892, 539n, 558n; Federal Election Bill opposed by, 574n, 577; Free Soilers and, 127; free trade and, 461, 465n, 575–76; “Hunker” faction of,138n; Irish

9/1/21 4:17 PM

680 Democratic party (continued) American support, 566; Andrew Jackson and, 451n, 460; Liberal Republicans and, 163–76, 176n, 187–88nn; lynchings by, 561, 578; in Massachusetts, 179n, 187n, 461, 465n; members of, 135; Mexican American War supported by, 136, 139–40nn; in Mississippi, 10n, 210n, 277n; in Missouri, 139n; in mobs condoned by, 571, 578, 635n; New York State, in Ohio, 131n; “Peace” faction of, 135; in Pennsylvania, 10n, 418n, 454n, 461; platforms of, 138n; proslavery in, 135, 159n, 175, 178n, 440, 550n; Reconstruction and, 120, 127–28, 131n, 136, 138–39nn, 210n; segregation supported by, 570; in South Carolina, 141n, 194n, 289; “Solid South” and, 289, 291n, 570–71; states’ rights and, 120; Tammany Hall and, 128; tariffs opposed by, 101n, 451n, 558n, 575, 580n; temperance issue and, 293n; Texas annexation and, 139–40n; in Virginia, 141n; former Whigs join, 142n Democratic-Republican party, 79n, 82–83nn, 451n, 464n Denmark, 401n Denton, Caroline County, Md., 247n Denver, Colo., 369n Department of Mississippi (Union Army), 182n Department of Ohio, 331n Department of Tennessee (Union Army), 165, 182n Der el-Bahri, Egypt, 390n Derryname, Ire., 309–10 dervishes, 353, 390–91nn Desdemona (character), 360, 403n Desire (ship), 496, 509n Despotism in America (Hildreth), 359, 529n Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 157nn, 160–61n, 489n, 646–47nn Destroy Not Man’s Faith in Man! Accept the Right Man, Whichever Party Nominates Him! (Smith), 132–33n Detroit, Mich., 262n, 316n Dewey, Loring, 207n Dewey, Orville, 6–7, 8n Dhulip Gingh, 388n Dial, 253n di Bassi, Matteo, 382n Dichmain, Mr., 147 Dick, John, xxi–xxiii, xliii, 390n Dickinson, Anna Elizabeth, 554, 557n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 680

INDEX Dickinson, Emily, 626n Dictionary of the English Language, The (Walker), 444n Dijon, France, 369nn Diocletian (Roman emperor), 373n discrimination: abolitionists oppose, 613n; against Chinese, 208–09, 226–27n, 210n, 283, 305, 636; in employment, 608n; against free blacks, 241; against Irish Americans, 579n; against Jews, 213, 225n, 284, 286n 292n, 305, 319n 545, 551n; at hotels, 375n; origins of, 211–21; in schools, 375–76nn; on steamships, 375n; on streetcars, 416; in theaters, 376n; in Union Army, 324, 328–29nn. See also Black Codes disenfranchisement: of blacks, 124n, 597, 601n; of ex-Confederates, 114–22 Disraeli, Benjamin, 100n, 289, 292n: feuds with Daniel O’Connell, 311, 319n District of Columbia: abolitionist petitions regarding, 436, 445n, 613n; Douglass as U.S. marshal of, lxxi, 229–30n, 605; Douglass as recorder of deeds in, lxxi, 303, 332, 363n, 605, 612n; local government of, 383n, 605, 611; slavery in, 9n, 453n, 466n. See also Washington, D.C. disunionism: Douglass on, xxiv, lxii; Garrisonians and, lxxii, 123n, 634n Divine Right of Kings, 124n Divona (ship), 383n Dixon, Jeremiah, 207n, 530n Dixon, William, 236, 244n Doge’s Palace, Venice, Italy, 360, 403n Dominican Republic. See Santo Domingo Dominicans (religious order), 402n Donatello, 399n Doniphan (Kans.) Crusader of Freedom, 88n Doolittle, James R., 175, 281n Dorr, Thomas, 293n Douglas, Stephen A, 112n: As Democratic party leader, 570; Kansas and, 140–41n, 454n, 531n, 573n; popular sovereignty and, 140n, 573n; as presidential candidate, 269n Douglas, Ellen, 250n Douglas, James, 250n Douglass, Anna Murray, lx, lxxi, lxxii, 237, 248n, 332, 604; death of, 362n, 605; marries Douglass, 608n; as parent, 382n, 390n Douglass, Annie, xxx–xxxi, lxvi, 432, 433n Douglass, Blanche Elizabeth, 429n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Douglass, Charles Frederick, 383n, 427, 429n Douglass, Charles R., 146, 148, 155n, 382–83n; children of, 383nn, 426n, 427–28, 428–29nn; employment of, 430n; father writes, 347, 354, 361, 383n, 392n, 403n; in Union Army, 328n, 605, 610 Douglass, Charley Paul, 383n Douglass, Edward Arthur, 430n Douglass, Fannie May Howard, 429n Douglass, Frederick, lxxix; as abolitionist, xvi–xix, xxi, xxiii, xxvi–xx–xxix, lxi, lxv, 16, 306, 318n, 390n, 604, 609nn; writes about abolitionist history, xl, 433–43; Africa visited by, xxxviii, xli; on African American press, 489–93; Aaron Anthony and, 1n; as army recruiter, lxviii, 180n, 322–33; Ottilie Assing and, lxv; Auld family and, lix–lx, lxii, 1n, 97–98n, 244n, 251n, 444n, 603–04, 607–08nn; autobiographies of, xvi–xviii, xxviii, xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxviii, xli–xlii, lxxii, lxv, lxxi, 4, 204, 222n, 230–31, 245n, 278n, 408, 456n, 602–06, 607–10nn; in Baltimore, lix–lx, 1n, 8n, 60n, 244n, 369n, 435, 444–45nn, 603–04, 608nn; biographies of, xlii birth of, lix, 384n, 603; birthdate of, 603, 606n, 608n; on black emigration, xxiv–xxv; on black suffrage, 106, 110, 114–22, 462, 605; James G. Blaine and, 106, 110, 114–22, 605; in Boston, lxii–lxiii, lxvii, 317n, 332, 442–43, 610n; John Brown and, xxx, xlviii, lxiii–lxvi, 84, 141n, 345, 605; British financial assistance to, lxii–lxiii; bust of, 367n; in Canada, xxx, lxvi; children of, lxvi, 18, 282, 382–83n, 390n; on Chinese immigrants, 204, 208–09; on civil and political equality for freed people, xxxviii– xxxix, lxix, 257–59, 264–68; on Civil War, lxvii, 595; Grover Cleveland and, 287–90, 533, 558n, 571, 576–79; Clyde concession and, 484–88, 488–89nn; on class divisions, 412–13; Columbian Orator influences, 239 communitarianism, 621–24, 627n; opposes Compromise of 1850, 129, 132n; on conditions of blacks in U.S., xxxviii; Edward Covey and, 604; criticism of, xxxviii, 204; death of, xxv, 602; Democratic party and, 175, 287–91, 459, 464, 560–63, 568–71; on discrimination, 441, 456n, 586; diaries of, 144–51; disenfranchisement opposed by, 597, 601n; District of Columbia council and, 611n;

Y7870-Douglass.indb 681

681 disunionism advocated by, xxiv, lxii; as editor, xxi, xxxi, xxxvi, xli, lii–liii, lxiii, lxvii–lxx, 12, 15, 163, 185n, 605; education of, lix–lx, 603; on education of blacks, xxxv, 65; in Egypt, lxxii, 332, 347–55; in Electoral College, 605, 611n; on Emancipation Proclamation, xxxi, lxvii, 92, 97, 164; emigration opposed by, xxii, xxiv–xxv, xxxvii, 176n, 283; as encyclopedia contributor, xl, 493–504, 600n, 602–06, 613–18; escapes slavery, lx, 1, 1n, 5, 8n, 83–90, 206, 236–37, 245n, 436, 445n, 604, 608n; Exoduster movement and, xxxviii, 203–06, 262n; family of, xxx, lxi; filibustering condemned by, 453n; financial status of, xxii; in Florence, Italy, 258–60, 359–60; in France, xl, lxxii, 331, 407–17; as free black leader, xx, xxii, xxix, lxviii, 63; Free Soil party and, xxiv, lxiii–lxiv; Freedmen’s Bank and, xxxvi, lxxi, 188–90, 190n, 196–200; as fugitive slave, xvii, xix, 230–42, 604, 623, 627n; denounces Fugitive Slave Law, xxx, 66, 439; Garrisonians and, xvi, xviii, xix–xx, xxiv, xlv, lxi, 1, 222n, 376n, 457n, 604, 629n; as grandfather, 383n, 390n; Ulysses S. Grant and, xxxiii, xxxv, lxix–lxx, 134–38, 163–76, 183n, 185n, 536, 539n; in Great Britain, xvii–xviii, xxx–xxxi, lxii, lxv–lxvii, 4, 15, 91, 222n, 248n, 292n, 317n, 332, 390n, 399n, 405n, 418n, 447n, 530n, 604–05, 610n, 631; in Greece, lxii, 332, 347, 356; Julia Griffiths and, xxvi, xxx, xlii–xliii, lxv, 353, 368–69n, 390n; Haiti ambassadorship of, lxxiii, 18n, 162n, 434, 467–76, 476n, 540–41nn, 588n, 603, 605, 606n, 637, 643; Harpers Ferry Raid and, lxv, 141n, 433n; Benjamin Harrison and, lxxiii, lxxiii, 468, 472–73, 476n, 533–39, 541n, 553, 612n; Rutherford B. Hayes and, lxxi, 220, 229–30n, 463; and The Heroic Slave, xv, xxvi–xxvii, 19–55, 655–62; historical reputation of, xvi; supports Home Rule Movement, xxxviii, 303, 314; homes of, lxiii–lxix, lxxi, lxxiv; honeymoons in Europe and Africa, xxxviii, xl–xli, lxxii, 303, 588n, 636; defends O. O. Howard, 191–94; Howard University and, 262n, 408; immigration defended by, 208–09; Indians characterized by, 208–09; intellectual development of, xvi, xxiv, xxxvii; in Ireland, xx, ixviii, lxii, 15, 227n, 303–14, 318–19nn, 332, 406n, 604,

9/1/21 4:17 PM

682 Douglass, Frederick (continued) 610n; in Italy, lxxii, 332; 343–47; Andrew Johnson criticized by, xxxiii, lxix, 104, 129, 138, 254, 325, 605; as journalist, xv; xvii, xix–xx, xxiii–xxiv, xxxi–xxxiii, xxxvii–xl, xliii, xlviii, lxviii, 5, 12, 134–38, 201–03, 208–09, 211–21, 264–68, 270–77, 281–84, 287–90, 296–98, 298–301, 303–14, 321–27, 433–43, 458–64, 468–76, 479–88, 533–39, 541–48, 553–56, 559–72, 575–79, 581–87, 621–24; in Kentucky, xxxix; on Liberia, 613–18; as Liberty party advocate, xxv–xxvi, xiii, 589n, 606, 613n; Abraham Lincoln and, xxxi, lxvii–lxviii, 22, 93, 164, 173, 321–27, 392–09nn, 333, 364n, 441, 536, 554, 605; lecturing by, xvii, xix, 333; as lyceum speaker, xxxiii, lxvi, 88n, 605; on Toussaint, L’Ouverture, xl, xlviii, 636–44; lynching condemned by, xxxvii–xxix, lxxiii, 533–39, 541–48, 553–56; in Lynn, Mass., 6–8, 248n, 530n, 631n; manumission of, xviii, lxii, 91, 97–98n, 605; marriage of, lxi, lxxii, lxxviii, 237, 247n, 603–04, 608n; in Maryland, xvii–xviii, xxiii, lix–lx, 1n, 8n, 278n, 369n, 435, 444–45nn, 603–04, 608nn; as marshal of District of Columbia, lxxi, 229–30n, 605; in Massachusetts, xvi–xvii, lxi, 3; as minister plenipotentiary to Haiti, 468–76, 606; on miscegenation, 282, 298–301; mobs attack, lxi, 2, 443, 457n, 604, 609nn, 633, 635n; in, 443, 457n, 604, 609nn; Môle-St.-Nicolas negotiations and, 468–76, 477–79nn, 479–88, 538, 541n, 606; name change by, 238–39; in Naples, Italy, 356–57, 378n; in New Bedford, lxi, 60n, 237–38, 383n, 390n, 436, 441–42, 445n, 457n, 604, 608–09nn; in New Hampshire, 604; in New York State, xx–xxii, xxvii–xxviii, xxxi, lx, lxx, lxiv, lxvi, lxx, lxxii–lxxiii, lxvii, 1, 8n, 145, 235–37, 246n, 327, 363n, 383n, 445n, 456–75nn, 589m, 605, 623; as newspaper editor, xv; xxiii, xxxii; as novelist, xxvi, xxviii, liii; on Daniel O’Connell, 303, 308–11, 318–19nn; officer’s commission promised, 329n; in Ohio, xix, 2, 609n; as orator, xxx, xxxvi, xli, lx, lxvii, 227n, 318n, 390n, 606; in Paris, 338, 361–62, 406n, 407–17, 636–37; in Pennsylvania, xvii, xix, lxvi, 234, 367n, 442; personal wealth of, xxxvi; Wendell Phillips and, xviii, lxi, 265,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 682

INDEX 268n, 443, 457n, 609n; poetry by, xxviii, xli, liii, 1, 17–18, 648–54; in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 434, 467, 472–76, 477, 488n, 637; as presidential elector, 605, 611n; on racial prejudice, lxix, 211–21, 440; as recorder of deeds of District of Columbia, xli, lxxi, 303, 332, 363n, 468, 476n, 588n, 605, 612n; Charles L. Remond and, 343, 382n, 447n, 609n, 636n; Quakers praised by, 500; recruits soldiers for Union Army, xxxii–xxxiii, lxvii–lxviii, 222n, 322n, 323, 328–29nn, 382–83nn, 605; religious views of, 208–09, 608–09n; Charles L. Remond, 343, 376n, 382n, 447n, 609n, 636n; on Reconstruction, 104–111; Republican party and, xxix, xxxi, xxxvi–xxxviii, lxv, lxix–lxx, lxxii–lxxiii, 134–38, 163–73, 287, 293n, 458, 533–39, 541n, 555, 557n, 559–71, 571n, 576–79, 581, 606, 613n; in Rochester, xxii, xxi–xxii, xxxi, xliii, lxiv, lxvi, lxx, 57n, 327, 328n, 333, 383n, 390n, 440, 456n, 605; in Rome, Italy, 144–57, 340, 357–58, 378n, 398n, 472, 605; on Sabbatarianism, 409; in Santo Domingo, xxxv, xli, lxx, 144–57, 605, 611n; in Scotland, lxii, 15, 59n, 604, 610n; on Dred Scott decision, lxvi, 439; second marriage of, 3n, 282, 302n, 303, 332, 362n, 396n, 408, 605, 611n; segregation protested by, 248–49n, 266, 442–43, 441, 456n, 545, 570; on “self-made men,” lxvi; as ship caulker, 60n, 604; as slave, xvi, xxiii, xl, liv, lix–lxx, 1, 97–98n, 103, 230–42, 251n, 278n, 306, 348, 435, 440, 595, 603, 608nn; in Scotland, 433n; on slavery, xl, liii, 19–55, 299, 493–504, 595–96; Gerrit Smith befriends, xxv, xxviii, xxx, lxiii–lxiv, lxvii, 57n, 219, 229n, 613; 57n; Charles Sumner and, 164, 173, 276, 611; supports Stalwart Republicans, 290n; as stevedore, 604; temperance and, 293n; travel diaries of, xli, 144–51, 332–62; as Underground Railroad conductor, xx, xxx, 455n; Union cause supported by, xxxi, lxvii– lxviii; on U.S. Constitution, xii, xxxiii, 62n, 64, 68–70; criticizes U.S. Supreme Court, xxxvii, 264–68; as vice-presidential candidate, lxx, 397n; violent tactics and, xxvii, xxx; as voter, xlv; in Washington, D.C., xxxiv, lxix–lxxi, lxxiv, 185n, 229–30n, 254, 256–57, 332, 378n, 467n, 579n, 588n, 648; Ida B. Wells and, xxxiv, xxxix, lxxiv,

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX 585, 590–92, 592n; whipped as slave, lx; White House visited by, 229–30n, 322, 326, 327n, 329–30nn, 610n; woman suffrage and, xxxv, lxiii, lxix; women’s rights and, xvi, xxiv, lxix; World’s Columbian Exposition and, xxxix, lxxiii, lxxiv, 584–87, 588n, 590–92, 592n, 592–600, 613 Douglass, Frederick, Jr. 383n, New National Era and, xxxiv; speeches by, 188n; Henry O. Wagoner and, 369–70n Douglass, Frederick, III, 429n Douglass, H. Ford, 207n Douglass, Haley George, 417, 429n Douglass, Helen Amelia Loguen, 383nn Douglass, Helen Pitts, xl, 362–63n 426; as clerk for Douglass, xli, lxxii, 332, 363n, 613; death of, lxxiv; European honeymoon of, 303, 333–34, 336–39, 343–44, 348–49, 358–59, 361, 407–08, 636; resides in Haiti, 476n; marries, lxxii, lxxviii, 3n, 282, 298, 332, 390n, 396n, 401n, 605, 611n; papers of, xlviii; as teacher, lxxii Douglass, Jean, 429n Douglass, Joseph Henry, 383n, 426, 428–29n, 430nn, 467–68 Douglass, Joseph H. (child of Haley George Douglass), 429n Douglass, Julia Ada, 347, 383n, 429n, 430n Douglass, Laura Antoinette Haley, 383n, 429n, 430n Douglass, Lewis Henry, 383n: Andrew Johnson meets, 610n; assists with Frederick Douglass’ Paper, xxx; New National Era and, xxxiii, xxxv, 611n; father writes, 332–33, 347, 383n; in Union Army, 328n, 605, 610n; Henry O. Wagoner and, 369–70n Douglass, Mary Elizabeth Murphy (“Libbie”), 383nn, 428n Douglass, Margaret Crittendon, 439, 454–55n Douglass, Mary (“Mattie”) Louise, 383n, 430n Douglass, Rosetta, 18, 390n; Douglass writes, 353, 390n, 467–68 Douglass, Virginia, 383n Douglass’ Monthly (Rochester, N.Y.), xvi, British target audience of, xxx, xxxii; discontinued, xxxii, lxviii, 329n; Douglass’s editorial in, xxxi, liii, 328n; founding of, lxvi; historians praise, xlii, xlviii; lost issues of, 91 Dover, N.H., 228n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 683

683 Downing, George T., xxxiii, 188n, 610–11nn Downing, Thomas, 237, 247n Draft Riot (New York City), 139n Draper, William, 138n Drennen, William, 314n Dred Scott v. Sandford; black rights obliterated by, 111n, 115, 122n, 531n, 596; dissents from, 265, 268n; Douglass criticizes, lxvi, 439; Roger B. Taney and, 265, 268n, 596, 601n Dreyfus Affair, 423n Dresden, N.Y., 381n Drewry’s Bluff, Second Battle of, 58n Drogheda Street, Dublin, Ire., 317n Dryburgh Abbey, Scot., 38, 58–59n Dublin, Ire., 307, 318nn; Douglass speaks in, 318–19nn Dublin (Ire.) Standard, 318n Du Bois, W. E. B.: critics of, 263n; on Douglass, 302n Dumas, Alexandre, 296n, 340, 372n Dundee, Scot., 635n Dungiven, Ire., 320n Dunmore, Lord (John Murray), 520n Duomo, Florence, Italy, 360, 402n Durant, Henry, 424n Durgin, John Durgin & Bailey (shipbuilders), 608n Durham, Eng., 400n Dyer, James, 250n Dyer, Sarah Burton, 250n Dyer, Sarah Owen, 250n Dyer, Samuel, 238, 250n Eagleswood School, Perth Amboy, N.J., 527 Early Black Press in America, The (Hutton), xlii East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, 248n East India Company, 101n, 506n Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 528n Eastern Railroad, 457n Eastern Steam Navigation Company, Millwall, Eng., 365n Easton, Md., 606n, 608n Eaton, John, 179nn, 181–82nn, 182n Eclipse (horse), 39 École des Hautes Études, Paris, France, 321n École Polytechnique, Paris, France, 425n Edgefield County, S.C., 194n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

684 Edinburgh, Scot, 250n, 433n, 635n Edina, Liberia, 617 Edinburgh Review, 321n education: Douglass advocates, xxxv, 65; Douglass’s education, lix–lx, 603; of free blacks, xxiv, xxix, lxv, 8n, 65, 77n, 122n, 223–24nn, 246n, 262n, 503; of slaves, 6, 8n, 13, 182n, 202–03, 272, 283, 439, 449n, 454–55n, 491, 498, 514n Edwards, Jonathan, 80n, 518n Edwards, Ogden, 69, 80n Egypt, 598; African peoples and, 349; ancient, 88n; Arabs in, 349, 386n, 393n; blacks in, 209; British occupy, 354, 385n, 392n; cotton grown in, 102n; Douglass in, lxxii, 332, 347–55; French intervention in, 392n; Helen Douglass lectures on, 363n; Greeks in, 386n; Jewish captivity in, 209, 346–48, 386n; missionaries in, 203n; Romans colonize, 393n Eighteenth Ohio Infantry Regiment, 264n Eire Canal, 80n, 139n, 528n Election of 1824, 10n, 79n, 450–51nn Election of 1828, 450–51nn, 464n Election of 1836, 464n Election of 1840, 128, 451n, 460, 464nn Election of 1844, Henry Clay in 9–10n; Texas issue and, 139n Election of 1848, 132n, 228n Election of 1852, 57n, 228–29nn, 528n Election of 1856, xxx, 139n, 228n, 280n, 454n Election of 1860, xxxi, 179n, 187n, 269n, 504, 550n Election of 1864, lxviii, 228n, 331n Election of 1866, 104, 112–13n Election of 1868, xxxiii, lxix, 129, 132–33n, 134–38, 139n, 144n; freed people vote in, 260n; Republican ticket in, xxxiii, lxix, 129, 133n, 134–38, 144n Election of 1872, xxxv, 144n, 163–76, 176–77nn, 186–87nn, 260n, 397n, 573n; Douglass as elector in, 605, 611n. See also Liberal Republicans Election of 1876, 154n, 210n, 254–55, 254– 55nn, 259n, 268n, 289, 291n, 424n Election of 1880, 254, 260n, 269n, 424n, 612n Election of 1884, lxxii, 179n, 254, 269n, 270, 287–89, 290n, 291–93nn, 364n, 424n, 555, 557–58nn, 573n, 579 Election of 1888, lxxiii, 269n, 465n, 468, 476n, 541n, 557–58nn, 573n, 612n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 684

INDEX Election of 1890, xxxvii, lxxiii, 458–64, 465n, 558n Election of 1892, xxxvii, 533–39, 539n. 553, 559–71, 571–72nn, 575–79, 579n, 612n; economic issues in, 555, 558n, 573n, 612n Election of 1895, 539n Electoral College, 255n, 605, 611n Electoral Commission (1876), 291n Eleusis, Greece, 395n Elgin, Lord (Thomas Bruce), 394n Elizabeth I (queen of England), 495, 506n Elizabeth Town, N.J., 79n Elleston, Miss, 343 Ellsworth, Oliver, 521n emancipation: in British West Indies, 58n, 91, 97n, 101n, 124n, 276, 280n; Civil War and, lxvii, 92, 100n, 122–23nn, 178n, 188n, 277, 440, 504; in French colonies, 404n, 416, 425nn, 488n; gradual, 12, 97n, 124n, 188n, 276, 280n, 452n, 455n, 499, 515–16n; immediate, 61n, 452n; in Northern states, 77–78n, 499; Lincoln and, xxxi–xxxii, lxvii, 93–95, 164, 178n, 324–25; Thirteenth Amendment and, 188n Emancipation League (Boston, Mass.), lxvii, 589–90n Emancipation Proclamation, 165: abolitionists applaud, 448n; celebrations of issuance of, kxvii; colonization and, 207n; Douglass on, xxxi, lxvii, 92, 97, 164; implementation of, 92, 164; Lincoln and, 92, 164, 178n, 441; terms of, 98n, 178n, 556n Emancipator (New York City), 14n, 520n, 523–24nn Emblem, Kate, 603, 607n Emerson, J. A., 281 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, xix, 104, 253n, 335, 365n, 630n; opposes slavery, 253n, 390n, 503; as lyceum lecturer, 241, 253n; quoted, 205n, 303; Transcendentalism and, 253, 365n, 624n, 626n Emigration movement: to Africa, 223n; contrasted to “Exodus,” 206; to Haiti, xxxii, lxvii, 84–88, 88–90nn, 152n, 206, 207n; to Texas, 444n Emory University, 279n Encyclopedia Britannica: Douglass writes for, xl, 493–504, 600n Encyclopédie Méthodique, 645n Engels, Friedrich, 626–27n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Enlightenment, 627n English Channel, 261n English Traits (Emerson), 253n, 335 Ensor, Robert, 62n Epsom, N.H., 82n Equal Rights League of California, 247n Equal Rights party (1872), lxx, 397n Erasmus, Desiderius, 42, 59n Erechtheiom, Athens, Greece, 356, 394–95nn Erie Canal, 464n Eskimos, 598 Espremonts, L., 361, 404n Essex County, N.Y., xlv Essey County Anti-Slavery Society, 376n, 447n Ethnology: on Negro race, 385n; racial prejudices in works on, 385n Ethiopia, 216 Etruscans, 373n Euripides, 394n Europe: antislavery attitudes in, xl; Confederacy and, lxvi; Douglass tours, xxxviii, xl–xl; racism in, 216. See also individual nations Eurystheus, 645n Equality of the Human Races, The (Firmin), 478m Executive Mansion (“White House”), Washington, D.C., 181n; Douglass visits, 229–30n, 322. 326, 327n, 329–30nn, 610n; East Room of, 326, 330n “Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping Negroes” (Keith), 517n “Exile’s Departure, The” (Whittier), 523n Europe Viewed through American Spectacles (Fulton), 153n Eustis, William, 70–71, 82nn Evangelist (New York City), 524n Evering, Mr., 345 Ewing, Samuel Currie, 355, 393n Ewing v. Thompson, 513n Excelsior (Boston, Mass.), 458n Exodusters: beginnings of, lxxi; Douglass opposes, xxxviii, 203–06, 262n Ezbekiyah Place, Isma’îlîya, Egypt, 387n Ezra, 391n Fabens, Joseph W., 151n “Fable for Strategists, A” (Newell), 331n Fairbank, Calvin, 502, 526n Fair Oaks, Battle of, 195n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 685

685 Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pa., 367n Fall Creek, Ind., 457n, 609n Fall River, Mass., 252n, 261n, 349, 385n Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass., 529n Fanny Bullit (ship),261n Farmville, Va., 224n Farragut, David G., 112–13n Farwell Hall, Chicago, Ill., 557n Fatmids, 386n Federal Election Bill, 462–63, 533, 538, 580n; Democratic opposition to, 571, 577; Benjamin Harrison supports, 466n, 537, 540n, 574n Federal Security Agency, 531n Federal Street Church, Boston, Mass., 529n Federalist Papers The, 519n Federalist party, 80–81nn, 132n, 229n, 447n, 454n Fee, John G., 11–12 Feeding Hills, Mass., 154n Fell’s Point, Baltimore, Md., lix, 244n, 608n Ferdinand I (emperor of Austria), 125 Ferdinand II (king of the Two Sicilies), 377n Ferdinand (king of Spain), 158n. 285n, 505n Ferrero, Edward, 269n Ferris, G. W. G., 549n Ferris wheel, 549n Fessenden, Samuel, 502, 523–24n Festus (Bailey), 244n fez, 230n, 386n Field, Stephen J., 269n Fields, James Thomas, 113 Fifteenth Amendment: Force Act and, lxix, 177n; passes Congress, 114, 612n; Ulysses S. Grant supports, 170, 177n, 184n; provisions of, 265, 581n; ratified, lxix, 171; South subverts, 570, 574n Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., 429n Fifth Amendment, 134n Fifth Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., 261n Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment, 610n Fifth U.S. Colored Troops, 264n Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 328nn, 383n, 605 Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 222n, 269n; Frederick Douglass recruits, 323, 328nn, 382–83nn, 605; Lewis Douglass serves in, 610n; at Ft. Wagner, 383n filibustering, 439

9/1/21 4:17 PM

686 Fillmore, Millard; Douglass criticizes, 154n; Whig party and, 268n, 280n Finley, Robert S., 522n Finney, Charles G., 228n, 450n, 527n, 629n Fiorelli, Giuseppe, 381n Firmin, Anténor Joseph, 474–76, 479n, 480–81, 485, 488n First Baptist Church, Boston, Mass, 363n First Baptist Church, Providence, R.I., 364n First Congregational Church, New Bedford, Mass., 445n First Continental Congress, 55n First Louisiana Regiment (Union Army), 269n First Methodist Episcopal Church, Ithaca, N.Y., 364n First Methodist Episcopal Church, Lockport, N.Y., 364n First Separate Battalion (Washington, D.C.), 261n First South Carolina Infantry Regiment, 180n Fish, Hamilton, 293, 296n Fisher, Charles Benedict, 259, 261n Fiske, Daniel Willard, 359, 401n Fitzgerald, Oscar Penn,545, 551n Fletcher, Calvin, 380n Fletcher, Frederika, 383n Fletcher, Giles, 98n Fletcher, Henrietta Malan, 380n Fletcher, James Cooley, 345–47, 357, 380n, 382–83nn Fletcher, Sarah Hill, 380n Flipper, Henry O., 185n Floquet, Charles Thomas, 415, 424n Florence, Italy, 359–60, 372n, 376n, 394n, 399–401nn Florence, Mass. xl, xlii, 245n, 621–24, 624n, 627n Florida, 60n, 151; anti-black violence in, 210n; black population of, 259, 262n; in Civil War, 162nn; Republicans in, 540n; secession of, 162–63n, 531n; slave code of, 514n; slavery in, 454n, 556n; Seminole Wars in, 140n, 439; as Spanish colony, 162n; Underground Railroad in, 454n, 526n “Florida War, The” (Giddings), 452n Foner, Eric, 185n Foner, Philip S., xxviii, xlii Foord, Sophia, 623–25, 630n “For A’ That and A’ That” (Burns), 302n, Force Acts, lxix, 177n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 686

INDEX Foreign Miners’ Tax (California), 286n Forrest, Mary Ann Montgomery, 142n Forrest, Nathan B., 137, 142–43n Forster, William Edward, 320n Fort Fisher, N.C., 154n, 264n Fort McPherson, Va., 143n Fort Mercer, Pa., 81n Fort Pickering, Tenn., 126n Fort Pillow, Tenn., 142n, 261n Fort St. André., France, 339, 371n Fort Sumter, S.C., lxvii, 143n, 243n Fort Wagner, S.C., 266, 269n, 383n Fort Warren, Mass., 99nn Fort Whipple, Va., 143n Forten, James, 207n Fortescue, John, 550n Fortress Monroe, Va., 48, 61n, 133n, 179n Forum, Rome, Italy, 341, 373n Forum of Trajan, Rome, Italy, 341, 373n Fortune, T. Thomas, 556n: supports Grover Cleveland, 573n; condemns lynching, 553–56; criticizes Douglass, 256, 477n; Douglass praises, 554 Foster, Abigail Kelly, 446n, 502, 525n, 609n, 629n Foster, Stephen Symonds, xviii, lxvii, 438, 446n, 503; American Anti-Slavery Society and, 629n; American Equal Rights Association and, 448nn; marriage of, 525n Foster, Thomas Campbell, 320n Fourier, Charles, 626n Fourierism, 447n, 622, 624–25nn, 629n Fourteenth Amendment, lxix; provisions of, 111–12n, 133–34n, 265, 267; Republicans support, 123n; South subverts, 570 Fourvière Hill, Lyon, France, 370n Fox, Charles James, 251n, 304n Fox, George, 249n France, 220: abolitionists in, xl, 182n; antiSemitism in, 210n; army of, 230n, 641; blacks in, 224n; colonies of, 155n, 230n, 285n, 476n, 488n; Confederacy and, 98n; cotton imports of, 532n; Douglass visits, xl, lxxii, 331, 407–17; Egypt and, 392n; emancipation by, 404n, 425nn, 488n; FrancoPrussian War and, 148, 216n, 418n, 421–22n; government of, 295n, 404n, 415, 417n; Haiti and, xl, lxxiii, 147, 147n, 160–61n, 478n, 488–89nn, 647–48nn; Italy and, 315n, 377n, 403n; labor legislation of, 418n; Mexico and,

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX 136; Protestantism in, 414, 422n; revolutions in 124n, 160n, 408, 418–19nn, 422n, 424n, 425n, 488n, 636, 645n; rulers of, 124n; schools of, 413–14, 423n; Second Empire of, 269n, 418nn, 421n; Second Republic of, 295n, 416, 418nn; slavery in colonies of, 483, 495, slave trade and, 496; U.S. ministers to, 183n; Third Republic of, 296n, 408, 412, 415, 421–22nn; U.S. relations with, 403n Francis I (king of France), 419n, 421n Francis Joseph (emperor of Austro-Hungarian Empire), 125n Franciscans (religious order), 382n François I (king of France), 421n Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, xxxvii, 458–64 Franco-Prussian War, 148, 316n, 413, 418n, 421n, 424n Franklin, Benjamin, 360, 403n; American Revolution and, 519n; antislavery views of, 500–501, 517n, 520nn; Mesmerism and, 625–26n Franklin, W. B., 541–42 Franklin, Mass., 253n Franklin College, Franklin, Ind., 363n Fraternal Community Number One. See Hopedale Community Frederic, Harold, 552n Frederick, Md., 211n Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, 363n, 648 Frederick Douglass, the Orator (Gregory), 260n Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, N.Y.), xvi, 605; closure of, xxx, lxvii; Douglass’s editorials in, liii; financial state of, xxvi, xxviii–xxx, lxv, 320n; Free Soil party supported by, lxiv; The Heroic Slave serialized in, xxvii, 20, 655–62; Liberty party supported by, xxvi, lxiv; origins of, xxv, lxiv, 15; Republican party supported by, lxv; Gerrit Smith supports, xxv–xxvi, xxviii, 57n; staff of, xxviii, xxx; subscribers to, xxvi, xxx; William J. Watkins and, xxviii. See also North Star (Rochester, N.Y.) Frederick Green and Company, 385n free blacks: as abolitionists, xix, lxi, 3, 66, 216, 245–46nn, 501, 524n; as barbers, 375n; in California, 86, 103, 247n, 250n; as caterers, 375n; churches of, 66, 262n; as citizens, 64–65, 67–68; civil rights of, xxix, xxxi, 64,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 687

687 77–78n; colonization condemned by, 89n, 246n; communitarianism and, xl, 621–24; in Connecticut, 162n, 224n, 449n, 503, 528n; conventions of, xx, xxix, lxv, lxviii, 62–83; discrimination against, 241; Douglass as a leader of, xx, xxii, xxix, lxviii, 63; education of, xxiv, xxix, lxv, 8n, 65, 77n, 122n, 223–24nn, 246n, 262n, 503; emigration of, xxii, xxxii, lxvii, 88–89nn, 207n; Haiti and, 88n, 152n; health of, 10n; industrial school for, 77n; kidnapping of, 245–46nn, 501; support Liberty party, 223n; literary societies of, xxiv; in Maryland, 8n, 231, 232n, 248n, 262n, 369n, 604, 607n; in Massachusetts, xxviii. lx, 71–72, 85, 222–23nn, 261nn, 375–76nn, 501; militias prohibit, 66 78n; as ministers, 71, 223nn, 237, 246nn, 262nn; Missouri barred, 70; in New York State, xix–xx, xxii, xxiv–xxv, xxxi, lx, lxv–lxvi, 86, 382n; newspapers of, xix–xx, xxii, xxv, xxix, xli, xliii, 16, 66, 77n, 245–47nn; numbers of, 90n, 178n; organizations of, xxiv; papers carried by, 232; in Pennsylvania, xix 56n, 160n, 224n, 235, 247n, 262n, 390n; as physicians, xxiv; prejudice against, 75; as printers, 245n; racial separatism and, xxiv; religious nature of, 64–65; as restauranters, 247n, 260n; as sailors, l, 8n, 65, 232, 242n, 439; schools for, 65, 71, 251n. 375n, 449–50nn, 526n; segregation of, 122n, 251n, 390n; in South, 8n; South expels, 84; suffrage rights of, lxvii, 65, 77–78n, 219; as teachers, 71, 224n, 375n, 390n; support Underground Railroad, xxx; in Union Army, xxxii; organize vigilance committees, 245–46nn; in Virginia. xix, 33–34, 260–61nn. See also Black codes; Freedmen entries Free Church of Scotland: abolitionists attack, 446n; American contributions to, 228n; missionaries of, 380n; “Send Back the Money” campaign against, 228n Free Democratic party, lxiv Free produce movement, 96, 182n, 223n, 610n Free Library, Liverpool, Eng., 337 Freeman, J. W., 259 Free silver, 539n Free Soil party: abolitionists oppose, 228n; in Congress, 154n; candidates of, 132n, 228n, 464n; conventions of, n, lxiii–lxiv, 528n; Democratic party and, 192, 613n;

9/1/21 4:17 PM

688 Free Soil party (continued) Douglass and, xxiv, lxiii–lxiv; Liberty party and, xxvii, 57n, 228n; in Maine, 534n; in Massachusetts, 122n, 187n, 253n, 328n, 629n; members of, 122n; newspapers of, 529n; in Ohio, 127, 154n, 229n; in Pennsylvania, lxiv; Republican party and, xxix, 613n; views on the U.S. Constitution and slavery, xxv; Whigs and, 613n Free trade: Corn Law repeal and, 292n, 399n, 647n; Democratic party and, 461, 465n, 575–76; Liberal party (Great Britain) and, 100n, 647n; Liberal Republicans, 187n; U.S. supports, 243n Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 160n Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company (Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Bank), xxxv; branches of, 189, 190nn; closure of, lxxi, 197n, 225n; creation of, lxix; Douglass as president of, xxxvi, lxxi, 188–90, 190n, 196– 97; insolvency of, 188–90, 190nn, 196–200, 201nn; racism of its critics, 198 Freedmen’s Book, The (Child), xxxiii, lxviii, 102–11 Freedmen’s Bureau, 103; branches of, 201n; O. O. Howard heads, 195n; Andrew Johnson opposes, 180n; responsibilities of, 111n, as mob target, 126n; origins of, 166, 180n, 182n; schools of, 184n, 278n; staff of, 185n, 198 Freedmen’s Bureau Bill (1866), 105n, 111n, 123n Freedmen’s Village, Arlington, Va., 264n “Freedom National” (Sumner), 122n “freedom suits,” 499, 511–12n Freedom’s Journal (New York City), 246n, 490, 520n Free Elector (Hartford, Conn.), 529n Freeland, William, lx, 608n free love, 629 Freeman, A. N., 77 Free Press (Newburyport, Mass.), 523n Friend of Man (Utica, N.Y.), 523n Friends of Social Reform, 447n Frémont, John Charles, xxix–xxx, 139n French, Rodney, 240–41, 252–53n French Academy of Sciences, 425n French and Indian War, 81n French Revolution, 295n, 301n, 369n, 408, 418n, 488n French Society for Arbitration between Nations, 424n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 688

INDEX Frye, William Pierce, 358, 398n Fugitive Blacksmith, The (Pennington), 224n Fugitive Pieces (Byron), 194n Fugitive Slave Law (1793), 501, 531n, 551n Fugitive Slave Law (1850), 195n, 526n; abolitionists denounce, 445n, 503, 529n; American churches and, 440–41; clerical supporters of, 8n, 441; commissioners of, 455n, 551n; Democratic party supports, 55n; Douglass denounces, xxx, 66, 439; emigration caused by, 224n, 244–45n; enforcement of, 78n, 455n, 551n; free blacks and, 66, 247n; James Murray Mason proposes, 98–99n; mobs free accused, 543; personal liberty laws against, 133n, 551n; protests against, 78n, 122n, 252–53nn, 431, 432n; provisions of, 78–79nn; Southern demand for, 531n, 543; supporters of, 221n; U.S. Constitution and, 98–99n; violent resistance to, xxx. See also Compromise of 1850; fugitive slaves “Fugitive Slave’s Apostrophe to the North Star, The” (Pierpont), 530n fugitive slaves: as abolitionists, 503; in Canada, xlv, 26, 35–36, 44, 55n, 57–58nn, 85, 207n, 211n, 223n, 369n, 455–56nn, 524n; Douglass as one, xvii, xix, 230–42, 604, 623, 627n; in Great Britain, 224n; from Maryland, 223–24nn, 230–42, 242n, 252n, 524n, 604; in Massachusetts, xvi, 438, 440, 445n, 455n; Native Americans shelter, 136; in New York State, 438, 440, 455n; in Ohio, 25, 32, 57n, 75, 127, 129, 131n, 133n, 154n; in Pennsylvania, 223n, 233–34, 246n, 440, 455n; punishments of, 514n; Quakers assist, 223n; rendition of, xvi, 55n, 102n, 131n 133n, 440, 455n, 502. See also Fugitive Slave Law; Underground Railroad Fuller, Margaret, xix, 5, 626n Fuller’s City Hotel, Washington, D.C., 588n Fulton, Charles Carroll, 146, 153n “Future of the Negro Race, The” (Douglass), 281–84 “Gag Rule,” 228–29n, 452nn, 527n Galigniani’s Magazine (Paris, France}, 426n Galena, Ill., 183n, 186n, 369n Galfeur, Bertrand, 371n Galilei, Galileo, 230, 358, 372n, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy, 402n Gallican Church, 423n Gallinas River, 614

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Galveston, Tex., 540n Galway, Ire., 313 Gami’ ibn Tulun, Cairo, Egypt, 391n Gandon, James, 317–8nn Garcia, Elvira, 148 Garcia, Emelia Mary, 148 Garcia, Isabel, 148 Gare de Perrache, Lyon, France, 369n Garfield, James A., lxxi, 154n, 254, 612n; appointments of, 269n, 605, 612n, 647n Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 315n Garner, Margaret, 129, 133n Garnet, Henry Highland, 12, 216, 223n; British abolitionists aid, 610n; education of, 223n, 449n; free black emigration and, 89–90n, 207n; slave revolts advocated by, lxi; aids Madison Washington, 56n Garrard County, Ky., 187n Garrison, William Lloyd, 61n, 245n, 630n: as abolitionist, xvi, lxix, 2, 11n, 50, 228n, 267, 269n, 377n, 416, 438, 445n, 447–48nn, 502. 522n, 529n, 633, 636; Benson family and, 628n; bounty on, 438, 448n, 502, 525n; closes Liberator, 530n; criticizes Douglass, xxi, xlv, lxv, 222n; Douglass mentored by, xviii, xx, xxiv, lxi, 15, 609–10nn; Douglass writes, xv– xviii; as editor, 525n; Great Britain visited by, 61n, 375n; jailed, 448n; Benjamin Lundy mentors, 443n, 502, 520–21n; mobs attack, 438, 528n; Daniel O’Connell and, 124n, 303; on Reconstruction, 466n. See also Liberator (Boston) Garrisonian abolitionists: abolitionist opponents of, 242n, 613n; accused of religious infidelity, 446n; free blacks as, lxi; churches criticized by, 4, 61n, 446n, 523n; Civil War and, 448n; colonization opposed by, 9n, 61n; disunionism and, xxiv, 634n; Douglass and, xviii, xix–xx, xxiv, xlv, lxi, 1, 222n, 376n, 457n, 629n; Douglass breaks from, 19–20, 376n; Douglass criticized by, xx, xxii, xxv– xxvi, xxix, xlv, 376n; Douglass criticizes, xxii; in eastern states, xxiii–xxv; free love and, 629n; in Great Britain, 610n; internal quarrels among, 446–48nn, 634n; in Massachusetts, 3, 445n, 447n, 627n; in New York, xxiii, 15, 456n; newspapers of, xvi–xvii, xix– xx, lxv, 15, 59n, 447n; opponents of, 11–12; pacifism of, 61n, 123n, 227n, 442n, 448n; political abolitionism opposed by, 613n, 629n; Quakers as, 227n; U.S. Constitution

Y7870-Douglass.indb 689

689 and, xxv, 446n opposes voting, lxiv, 61n, 123, 446nn; in western states, xix–xx; women as, xix, lxi, 525n; women’s rights and, 123n. See also abolitionism, abolitionists, American Anti-Slavery Society, antislavery Gates, Adelia Sarah, 378nn Gates, Theophilus, 629n Gates, Miss, 344 Gay, Sydney Howard, xviii, 432n, 530n, 609n Gaylord, Franklin, 422n Gaylord, Roxana Maria, 627n Geddes, John, 162n Geffrard, Fabre, 84–85, 88n Gelasius II (pope), 372n Geneva, N.Y., 441 Geneva, Switz., 378n, 380n, 423n Genius of Temperance (New York City), 523n Genius of Universal Emancipation (Baltimore), 61n, 443–44n, 448n, 501, 520–21n Genoa, Italy, 158n, 340, 372n, 402n George III, 514n George Fox and His Friends: As Leaders in the Peace Cause (Naish), 405n Georgetown, D.C., 211n Georgia: anti-black violence in 177n; freedmen in, 258, 262n, 276; churches in, 262n; Civil War in, 153n; “freedom suits” in, 512n; offers bounty for Garrison, 448n, 502, 525–26n; legal codes of, 497–98; as colony, 507–08n; manumissions in, 498, petitions from, 452n; politicians in, 142nn, 184n, 266, 269n, 280n, 387n; racism in, 441; Reconstruction in, 113n, 280n; secession of, 142nn, 269n, 531n; slave codes of, 514n; slavery in, 8n, 136, 253n, 278n, 495–98, 501, 507–08nn, 531n, 588–89n; slaves escape from, 253n, 439, 455n; Whig party in, 280n Georgiana (ship), 146 Georgics (Virgil), 380n Geoti, Mrs., 358 German Americans, lxv, 85, 158n, 234, 243n, 567 German Nationalverein, 316n Germantown, Pa., 500, 516n Germany, 138n, 220, 377n: anti-Semitism in, 210n, 286n; cotton imports of, 531n; Haiti and, 489n; Liberia and, 615; revolutions in, 158n; unification of, 304, 316n; World War I and, 401n Gettysburg, Battle of, 195n “Gettysburg Address” (Lincoln), 556n, 600n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

690 Gherardi, Bancroft, 468, 470, 472–76, 476n, 477n, 478–79nn, 480–81, 483, 488n, 541n Ghezireh Palace, Cairo, Egypt, 354, 392n Giant Enceladus, 384n Gibraltar, 383n Gidding, Joshua, 154n, 219, 229n, 439, 452n Gifford, Zephaniah Chadwick, 60n Gift books, xix, 5, 19 Gilmanton Theological Seminary, N.H., 447n Giotti, Madam, 399n Giza, Egypt, 389nn Gizeh, Egypt, 388nn Glad Tidings of the Kingdom at Hand (Rochester, N.Y.), 17 Gladstone, William Ewart, 99–100n, 643, 647n: as Home Rule advocate, 303–04, 316n, 573n; supports Confederacy’s recognition, 94, 99–100nn Glasgow, Scot., 383n, 433n Gloucestershire, Eng., 376n Gobineau, comte de, 578n Gobu vs. Gobu, 511n Godwyn, Morgan, 500, 517n Goffstown, N.H., 82n Golan, Israel, 57n gold rushes, 4, 86, 89, 89n,103, 109n, 206–07n, 208, 226n, 250n gold standard, 539n, 558n Gonaïves, Haiti, 481, 488n Gonaïves, Gulf of, 152n Goodell, William, 502–04, 517–18n, 520n, 522n, 523n, 613n Gorsuch, Edward, 455n Grace, William R., 296n gradual emancipation, 12, 455n; in Connecticut, 499, 516n; in New Jersey, 499; in New York, 244n, 499; in Pennsylvania, 500, 516n Graham, Sylvester, 625n Grahamism, 622, 625n Granby, Lord (John Manners), 135 Grand Army (France), 420n Grand Bassa, Liberia, 616–17 Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia, 620n Grand Junction, Tenn., 179n Grand Market, Paris, 410 Grant, Dr., 352 Grant, Fred, 296n Grant, Tom (character), 50–51 Grant, Ulysses S., lxxvi, 141n; as antislavery convert, 169–70, 176–77n, 183n; appoint-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 690

INDEX ments of, 162n, 172, 182–85nn, 259–60nn, 263n, 269n, 383n, 508n, 611; black civil rights and, 188n; advocates black suffrage, 170–72, 175–76, 177n, 183–84nn; Civil War and, 137, 164, 177n, 181n, 183n, 186n; contraband camps and, 165–69, 176–77n, 179–82nn; corruption scandals and, 163; Democrats attack, 164; Douglass supports, xxxiii, xxxv, lxix–lxx, 134–38, 163–76, 536, 539n; grave of, 295, 296n; inaugural address of, 183n; Andrew Johnson and, 112–13n; memorial to Lincoln and, 322, 326–27, 331n; personality of, 185n; as presidential candidate (1868), xxxiii, lxix, 129, 133n, 134–38, 144n; as presidential candidate (1872), xxxv, lxx, 573n; Reconstruction policies of, lxx, 164, 170–74, 177–78n, 183n, 229, 647n; Santo Domingo annexation and, xxxv, xli, 122n, 144–45, 152nn, 155–56nn, 472, 477n, 611n; Charles Sumner feuds with, 122n, 145, 164, 177n; third term desired by, 254 Grant Monument Association, 296n Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot (Cardinal), 137, 141n Granville, N.Y., 523n “Grasshopper and the Ants, The” (Aesop), 584n Grattan, Henry, 299, 302n, 304, 314n Gray, Gordon, 379n, 398n Gray, Horace, 269n Gray, John A., 185n, 259, 263n “Great Agitation, The” (Cosmopolitan), xxxvii Great Britain: abolitionists in, xviii, xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxx, xxxii, lxii–lxiii, lxvi, 9n, 15, 56n, 61n, 91, 123–24n, 168, 224n, 228n, 375–76n, 390n, 433n, 448n, 610n; Act of Union and, 226n, 318n; American Revolution against, 81n, 515n, 572n; antislavery in, xxvi; army of, 138n, 645–46n; blacks in, 222–24nn, 376n; Canada and, 540n; colonies of, xxvi, 8n, 19, 51, 101n, 207n, 225n, 285n, 301n, 354, 452n, 494; Confederacy and, lxvii, 93–94, 98–99nn, 111n, 433n, 647n; Corn Laws of, 289, 399n, 647n; cotton imports of, 532n; courts of, 192, 196n; Creole incident and, 439, 452n; Douglass assisted by, xxv, xxx, 15, 610n; Douglass in, xvii–xviii, xxx– xxxi, lxii, lxv–lxvii, 4, 15, 91, 222n, 248n, 292n, 317n, 332, 390n, 399n, 405n, 418n, 447n, 530n, 604–05, 610n, 631; Egypt and, 354, 385n, 392n; emancipation and, 8n, 58n,

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX 91, 97n, 101n, 124n, 276, 280n, 502; empire of, 96–97, 162n, 225n; English Civil War in, 58n; Florida and, 162n; fugitive slaves in, 224n; Haiti and, 157n, 489n; Home Rule debate in, 303–04, 316n, 573n; immigrants from, 161n, 250n; industry hurt by Civil War, 96; Ireland and, 119, 124–25n, 226n, 292n, 301n, 318n, 573n; Liberia traded with, 615, 617; lion as symbol of, 58n; Methodists in, 390n; Mexico and, 140n; navy of, 162n, 230n; Normans in, 212, 221n, 284, 286n; racism absent in, 216, 222n; Roman invasion of, 337, 368n; Saxons in, 212, 284, 286n; slave trade and, 92, 98n, 495; slavery and, 19, 440, 483, 494; soldiers of, 54; Spanish Armada defeated by, 317n; suffrage in, 119, 289, 292nn; textile industry of, 101–102nn, 590n; trade with U.S., 79n, 101n; Unitarians in, 397n; U.S. ambassadors to, 409, 444n, 454n, 466n, 508n; U.S. Civil War and, xxxii, 90–97; 101n, 132n, 154n; War of 1812 and, 72–74 Great Dismal Swamp, 30–31, 35, 56n Great Eastern (ship), 334, 365n, 368n Great Sphinx, Giza, Egypt, 389n Greece: ancient, 196n, 377n, 380n, 382n, 393nn; Douglass visits, lxii, 332, 347, 356; clothing of, 230n; rebels against Turkey, 160n; religion in, 56n; Romans conquer, 394n; territories of, 385n; U.S. relations with, 401n; war with Persia, 394–96nn Greeley, Horace, 176n, 614: as antislavery leader, 390n, 441; Civil War and, 178n, 324, 329–30n; allies with Democrats, 570, 573n; Douglass criticizes, 187n; Lincoln and, 178n, 343; as presidential candidate, 122n, 163–64, 175, 186–88nn, 456n, 579, 573n; Reconstruction plan of, 187n Greeley, Molly, 187n Green, Beriah, 502, 523n Green, William, 450n Greenback-Labor party, 179n, 206n, 465n greenbacks, 290n Greene, Christopher, 81n Greener, Richard T., 259, 262n; Exodus and, 262n; as journalist, 281–82 Greenville, Liberia, 617 Greenville, Tenn., 443n, 520n Gregory VI (pope), 371n Gregory IX (pope), 646n Gregory, James M., xlii, 259, 260n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 691

691 Grenada, Spain, 285n Griffiths, Eliza, xliii, 390n Griffiths, Julia, 390n: Autographs for Freedom edited by, lxv, 19, 390n; correspondence with Douglass, 353; Douglass’s home mortgage and, xliii; as fundraiser, xxvi, xxxv, 390n; Garrisonians attack, xxvi, lxv; hosts Douglass in Great Britain, xxx, 368–69n; manumission of Douglass, lxii; North Star and, xxiii, xxvi, 15, 390n; returns in Great Britain, xxviii, xxx, lxv, 390n Grimelli, Gino, 400n Grimké, Angelina, 502, 525n; marriage of 525n Grimké, Francis James, 332, 363n, 611n Grimké, Sarah, 249n, 502, 525n Grinnell, Henry, 240, 252n Grinnell, Joseph, 240, 252n Grinnell, Moses, 240, 252n Gross, Elijah, 148–49, 160n Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 140n Guano Island Act, 161–62n guest books, xli, 4 Guillaume Tell (Rossini), 540n Guinea Coast, Ghana, 48; slaves imported from, 496, 509n Guiteau, Charles, 612n Gulf of Guanahacabibes, 63n Gulf of Salerno, 378n, 382nn Gulf of Suez, 385n Gurney, Joseph, 56n Gutteridge, 346, 382n habeus corpus, 78n, 131n, 133n, 178n, 551n Hadrian (Roman emperor), 395nn, 398n Hagerstown, Md., 369n Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, 373n Haiti: army of, 88n; Ebenezer Bassett and, 162n; diplomats from, 174, 186n; relations with Dominican Republic, 152nn, 177n, 646; Douglass in, lxxiii, 19n, 434, 467–76, 605; Douglass’s opinion of, xxxii, lxvi, 586; emigration to, xxxii, lxvii, 84–88. 88–90nn, 152nn, 206, 207nn; Francophilia in, 644, 648n; as French colony, 152n, 155n, 478n, 488n, 553n, 648n; government of 84–85, 186n, 485, 648n; independence of, 147, 155n, 157n, 161n, 483, 553n, 647–48n; missionaries in, 203n; Môle-St.-Nicolas dispute and, 468– 76, 477–79nn; 479–88, 538, 541n; navy of, 479n; James Redpath and, 88n; revolutions

9/1/21 4:17 PM

692 Haiti (continued) in, 88n, 152n, 155n, 157n, 161n, 477–79nn, 483, 487, 547, 553n, 601n, 636, 642–43, 646–68nn; slavery in, 157nn, 161n, 483, 636; as Spanish colony, 155n; sugar plantations of, 152n, 647n; U.S. ministers to, xxxvii, lxxiii, 162n, 467n, 470, 477n; at World’s Columbian Exposition, lxxiii, 584–87. See also Môle Sainte-Nicolas; Toussaint L’Ouverture Haitian Emigration Bureau, 84, 88–89nn Hale, John Parker, lxiv, 219, 228n Haley, Arthur, 430n Haley, Elizabeth, 430n “Half-Breeds,” 424n Half Way House, Chesterfield County, Va., 58n Halifax, Eng., 390n Halirrihotus, 396n Hall of Consistory, Avignon, France, 371n Halliday, Samuel Bryam, 430 Hamburg, Germany., 400–401nn, 617 Hamburg Massacre, Hamburg, S.C., 270n, 277n Hamilton, Alexander, 80n, 519n Hamilton, Joseph P., 146, 148, 156n, 160n Hamilton College Clinton, N.Y., 401n Hamilton House, Washington, D.C., 263n Hamlet (character), 578, 580n Hamlet (Shakespeare), 420n, 425n, 646n Hammond, Elisha Livermore, 623–24, 630n Hammon, Eliza Preston, 630n Hammond, James H., 590n Hampstead, Eng., 406n Hampton, Wade, 137, 141n Hampton, Conn., 527n Hampton Roads Peace Conference, 269n Hancock, Winfield Scott, 612n Handel, George Fredric, 404n, 425n Hanover, Germany, 508n Hapsburg dynasty, 125n, 141n, 443n, 540n Harbringer (West Roxbury, Mass.), 624–25n Harding, Chester, 630n Hardy, Neal, 457n, 609n Harlan, John Marshall, lxxii, lxxvii, 264–68, 268n, 269n Harper and Brothers, 270 Harpers Ferry Raid, 57n, 84, 88–89nn, 160n, 253n, 440, 640; black raiders in, 547, 553n; Douglass and, lxv, 141n, 433n; Garrisonian abolitionists and, 448n, panics the South, 88n, 141n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 692

INDEX Harper’s Weekly (New York City), xxxvii, 270–77, 291 Harris, Joel Chandler, 282 Harris, J. D., 207 Harris, Sarah, 449n Harrison, Benjamin: administration, 424n, 465n, 468, 478n, 537, 540n, 574n, 588n, 612n; Chile crisis and, 600n; Douglass supports, xxxvii, lxxiii, 468, 476n, 533–39, 612n; in election of 1888, lxxiii, 465n, 468, 476n, 557–58nn, 612n; in election of 1892, 533–39, 553, 559, 572n, 575–79, 579n, 612n; supports Federal Election Bill, 466n, 537, 540n, 574n; make Douglass an ambassador, lxxiii, 434, 540n, 605, 606n; lynchings opposed by, 535; seeks Môle-St.-Nicolas, 472–73, 476n, 478–79nn, 482, 488n, 538, 541n, 600n; as U.S. senator, 536; favors protective tariffs, 558n, 581n; World’s Columbian Exhibition and, 590 Harrison, George L., 444n Harrison, William Henry, 141n, 460, 464n, 589n, 612n Hartford, Conn., 224n Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., graduates of, 81–82nn, 122–23nn, 152–53nn, 160n, 229n, 252n; 262n, 264n, 268n, 365n, 377n, 399n, 429n, 458n, 508n, 518n, 524n, 529nn; Divinity School at, 251n, 377n, 399n; Harvard Medical College, 160nn; officers of, 447n Harve de Grace, Md., 233–34, 243n Harvey, Henrietta Lee, 388n Harvey, William, 352–53, 388n Hatcher, William, 58n Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, 419–30nn Havana, Cuba, 162n Haverhill, Mass., 523n Hawaii, 161n, 220, 230n, 465n Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 624n, 626n Hay, John, 329–30n Hayes, Rutherford B., 229n, 279n; appointments of, 268–69nn, 383n, 647n; Douglass and, lxxi, 220, 463; election of, 154n, 210n, 254, 254n, 289, 291n; Reconstruction program of, 466n Haygood, Atticus Green, 279n Hebron, Israel, 57n Heliopolis, Egypt, 389n Hennessey, David, 539n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Henniker, N.H., 447n Henry of Navarre, 422n Henry, Joseph, 261n Henry, Patrick, 20, 55n, 95, 100n, 500, 519–20n Henry, William (“Jerry”), 455n, 524n Henry VI (king of England), 196n Henry VIII (king of England), 134n, 368n Henry (horse), 59 Hephaestus (Roman god), 384n Hephaistos (Greek god), 396n Hera Argiva, 382n Hera (Roman god), 645n Heracleidae (Euripedes), 83n Herald of Freedom (Concord, N.H.), 447n, 632, 634n Herculanium, Italy, 345, 380n Hercules, 56n, 396n, 641, 645n Herford, William H., 358, 397–98n Hermitage, (Andrew Jackson’s residence, Tenn.), 451n Heroic Slave, The (Douglass), xv, xxvii–xxviii, liii, lxv; British edition of, 656–62; critical textual editing of, liv, 655–62 Hewell, John R., 60–61nn Hicks, Charity, 224n Hicksite Quakers, 227n Highland Beach, Md., 429 Hildreth, Richard, 359, 399–400n, 503 Hileopolis, Egypt, 352 Hill, Benjamin Harvey, 276, 280n, 415, 424n Hill, Louise Chase, 627n Hill, Samuel Lapham, 623, 627n Hill Institute, Florence, Mass., 627n Hillsborough, Md., 603, 607nn Hindu, 225n Hippodrome, Nice, France, 372n Hipwell, Mr, and Mrs., 344 Hiram Institute, Hiram, Ohio, 612n Hispaniola, 155n History, 119 History of the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Union (Parnell), 321n History of the United States (Bancroft), 508n History of the United States (Hildreth), 399n, 529n Hittites, 363n Hoar, Samuel, 439, 453n Hoboken, N.J., 401n Hobomok (Child), 448n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 693

693 Hodges, Willis A., xix Hoffman and Campe (publishers), 401n Holland. See Netherlands Holland, Bird, 264n Holland, Frederic May, xlii Holland, James, 264n Holland, Milton Murray, 259, 264n Holland, Matilda, 264n Holland, William F., 264n Holley, Myron, 503, 528–29n, 613n Holme Hill Farm, Talbot County, Md., lix, 1 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 104 Holzer, Harold, 556n Home Rule Movement (Ireland): American support for, 304; Douglass supports, xxxviii, 303, 314; Gladstone advocates, 303–04, 316n, 573n; parliamentary opposition to, 647n Homer, Ohio, 397n Homestead and Southern Emigration Society, 447n Honeoye, N.Y., 332, 362n, 396nn, 404n, 523n Hood, James W., 609n Hopedale Community, Milford, Mass., 3, 621–22, 625n Hôpital de la Croix-Rousse, Lyon, France, 370n Hopkins, A. A., 269n Hopkins, Samuel, 500, 518n Hopper, Isaac Tatem, 237, 244n, 246n, 502, 522–23n, 624 Hoppess, Henry, 131n Horan, Lewis, 145, 151n Hornby Dock, Liverpool, Eng., 366n Hornet (ship), 150, 162n horse racing, 39, 59n Hospital Dieu. See Hôtel Dieu, Lyon, France, Hotel Beauvau, Marseilles, France, 340, 372n Hotel Bonnard, Alexandria, Egypt, 355, 393n Hôtel Britanique, Paris, France, 338, 361, 369n Hotel De La Poste, Rome, Italy, 357 Hôtel de l’Univers, Lyon, France, 338, 369n Hôtel de Ville, Paris, France, 369n, 410, 418n, 421n Hotel Des Bains de Mer, Isma’îlîya, Egypt, 350, 386n Hôtel Dieu, Lyon, France, 338, 370n Hôtel du Luxembourg, Avignon, France, 371n Hotel du Sud, Rome, Italy, 341, 373n Hôtel le Bordeaux, Lyon, France, 338, 369n Hôtel Posta, Rome, Italy, 397n Hôtel West End, Nice, France, 340, 372n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

694 Hours of Idleness (Byron), 194n Houston, Samuel, 456n Houston, Tex., 201n Howard, Mitchell, 185n Howard, Oliver Otis, 195n: court martial of, lxx–lxxi, lxxvii, 191–94; heads Freedmen’s Bureau, 180n, 278n Howard University, Washington, D.C.: Douglass and, 262n, 408; Law Department of, 262n, 370n, 556n; O. O. Howard and, 195n; medical school of, 429n; professors at, 260n, 429n; students of, 260n, 262–63nn, 370n, 556n; trustees of, 260n, 262n Howe, Julia Ward, xxxvii, 160n, 434 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 149–51, 160n, 174, 605, 611n Howitt, Mary Botham, 632, 634n Howitt, William, 634n Howitt’s Journal (London, Eng.), 634n Howland, Gideon, Jr., 240, 251n Howland’s Wharf, New Bedford, Mass., 240, 251n Hubbard Brothers (publishers), 494 Hubbardston, Mass., 4 Huddersfield, Eng., 222n Hudgins v Wrights, 511n Hudson, N.Y., 82n Hudson Bay Company, 506n Huguenots, 422n, 518n Hugli River, India, 365n Hugo, Victor, 296n Humbert I (king of Italy), 360 Humboldt, Alexander von, 312, 321n Hundred Years’ War, 286n Hungary, 119, 125n Hunt, Seth, 623, 628n Huntington, Eng., 368n Huntington, Ind., 363n Huntsville, Ala., 201n Hurlburt, William Henry, 153n Huse, Lieutenant, 479n Hutchinson, Abby, 530n, 631–33, 636n Hutchinson, Asa, 530n, 631–32 Hutchinson, Jesse, 530n, 633–34 Hutchinson, John Wallace, xl, 530n, 631–32, 634n, 636n Hutchinson, Judson, 530n, 631–32 Hutchinson, Polly, 530n Hutchinson Family Singers, xl, lxi, lxxv, 503, 631–34, 636n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 694

INDEX Hutton, Frankie, xlii Hyacinth Pere. See Loyson, Charles hydropathy, 245n, 623, 628n, 630–31nn Hymettos (mountain), Greece, 395n Hyppolite, Louis Modestin Florvil, 478n; Clyde concession and, 486; Douglass and, 584, 588n; Môle-St. Nicolas and, 474–75, 476n, 479n, 489n; cabinet of, 478n, 485; wins civil war, 478–79nn, 479, 489n, 601n “I Was Born a Slave” (Douglass), liii Iberian Peninsula, 302n, 505n Île de la Cité, Paris, France, 419n Illinois, 296n, 601n: abolitionists in, 439, 442n; black population of, 259, 262n; Congregational Church in, 381n, 528n; Douglass in, xxxix, lxvi, lxxii; fugitive slaves in, 331n; mobs in, 439, 455n, 502, 609n; politicians of, 140n, 183n, 331n, 381n, 531n; Whigs in, 183n Illinois Central Railroad, 331n Immaculate Conception, 375n Immigrants: Douglass on, 85–86; from Germany, 89n, 398n, 400n-401n; from China, 206–7n, 208, 209–10n, 218–19, 226–27n, 286n, 305, 317n, 545, 552n; from England, 363n; from Ireland, 89n, 219, 227n, 30506, 318n; from Italy, 477n, 593n; from Scotland, 79n, 86n, 88–89nn, 364n. See also Chinese Americans; Irish Americans Impartial Citizen (Syracuse, N.Y.), xxv, 12, 223n Independent, The (New York City). See New York Independent indentured servants, 517n India, 101n, 225n, 598; British control over, 365n; coolie laborers from, 280–81n; cotton grown in 102n Indian Removal Act (1830), 451n Indiana; abolitionists in, 182n, 457n, 469n; blacks in, lxxi, 259, 262n; Baptist Church in, 457n, 609n; black swing vote in, 561, 572n; Civil War and, 291n; colonizationist support in, 78n; Congregational Church in, 528n; Democratic party in 291n, 612n; Douglass lectures in, lxii, 2, 441, 457n, 557n, 609n; Douglass mobbed in, 443, 457n, 604, 609nn; politicians of, 14n, 464n, 612n; Quakers in, 2, 182n, 457n, 609n; Republican party in, 144n, 187n, 291n, 612n; Southern immigrants to,

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX 443; Underground Railroad in, 458n, 26n; Whigs in, 144n Indianapolis, Ind., 227n, 316n, 380n, 612n Indianapolis Freeman, 581–84 Indianapolis Recorder, xxxix Indiana State Anti-Slavery Society, 182n Indians, 344; assimilation of, 209; blacks compared to, 208–09; Douglass on, 208–09; enslavement of, 496; removal of, 451n; in Texas, 456n Indonesia, 112n Industrial Building and Savings Company, Washington, D.C., 264n Industrial College, lxv, 77n Influence of Sea Power upon History, The (Mahan), 478n Ingersoll, Ebon Clark, 381n Ingersoll, Robert Green, 322, 345, 381n Inman Line, 362n Innocent VI (pope), 371n Inquisition, 137, 339, 371n, 643, 646n Institute for Colored Youth, Philadelphia, Pa., 162n International Anti-Slavery Society, 182n International and Permanent Peace League, 424n International Phonetics Association, 421m Iowa: black population of, 259, 262n; Congregational churches in, 528n; politicians of, 269n Ireland: abolitionists in, 124n, 301n, 375–76nn, 406n; Act of Union and, 226n, 314n, 318n; British prejudices against, 125n, 218, 226n, 305; Catholic Emancipation in, 314n; Catholic persecution in, 124n, 302n, 321n; coast of, 336; Douglass in, xx, xviii, lxii, 15, 227n, 303–14, 318–19nn, 332, 406n, 604, 610n; emigrants to Great Britain from, 318n; emigrants to U.S. from, 86n, 89n, 306, 316–18nn; English spoken in, 318n; Gaelic spoken in, 318n; Great Britain and, xxxviii, 99–100n, 119, 124n, 226n, 285n, 309, 573; history of, 300, 302n, 304; Home Rule of, 99–100n, 303–04, 309, 647n; nationalist movements in, 88n, 124–25nn, 316n; nicknames for, 304, 307, 314n; parliament of, 302nn, 308, 318n; poverty in, 299, 307–08; persecutions of, 119; potato famine in, 89n, 292n; religious divisions in, 309, 312, 318n; Repeal Movement of, 309, 318n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 695

695 Irish Americans: anti-Chinese sentiments of, 219, 227n, 305, 317n; in Civil War, 316–17n; contributions to the U.S. by, 305; Democratic party loyalty of, 566; Home Rule supported by, 304–05, 316n; in New York City, 243n; Daniel O’Connell and, 124n; political influence of, 304–05, 316–17n; prejudice against, 316–17n, 638; proslavery feelings and, 320n; racial prejudice of, 307 Irish National Federation of America, 316n Irish Parliamentary party, 316n “Irrepressible Conflict, The” (Seward), 112n Irvine, T. Johnson, 379–81nn Irving, Mr., 346 Irwin, Pa., 393n Isabella (queen of Spain), 158n, 285n, 505n Islam, 225n, 351, 354, 386–88nn, 391n; in Africa, 616. See also dervishes Ismâ’îl Pasha, 385–87nn, 391n Isma’îlîya, Egypt, 350, 385n Istanbul, Turkey, 225n “‘It Moves,’ or the Philosophy of Reform” (Douglass), xxxviii, xl Italian National Society, 315n Italy, 400n; African colonies of, 401n; American expatriates in, 341–43, 376–77nn, 399n; Douglass visits, lxxii, 332; 343–47; immigrants from, 539n; kingdom of, 373n; Protestants in, 344, 346, 358, 379–80nn, 382nn, 399n; unification of, 304, 315n, 375n, 377n, 401n; U.S. relations with, 401n, 536, 539n Ithaca, N.Y., 364n J. M. Stoddart Company (publishers), 494 Jackson, Alexander, 145 Jackson, Andrew, 451n; on black soldiers, 73; cabinet of, 10n, 451n, 454n, 464n; Democratic party and, 460, 464n; order mail censorship, 531n; hostility toward Native Americans, 140n; presidential campaigns of, 450n; in White House, 330n Jackson, Thomas J. (“Stonewall”), 581n Jackson, La., 477n Jackson, Miss., 224n Jacksonville, Fla., 201n Jacovacci, Francesco, 378n Jamaica, 8n, 162n, 203n, 223nn, 488n, 505n Jamieson, Mr. (character), 52, 54 James II (king of England), 495 506n, 516n James, Jacob, 145, 152n, 159n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

696 James, Theophilus, 145, 152n James, Thomas, 609n James River, 124n Jamestown, Va., 495, 506n Japan, 207n, 220, 598 Jasper County, Ga., 280n Java, 112n, 598 Jay, John, 68, 79n, 500, 502, 519n Jay, Peter Augustus, 68–69, 79–80n Jay, William, 523n Jay Cooke and Company, 190n, 198, 201n Jefferson, Thomas, 55n, 360, 403n: as ambassador to France, 645n; antislavery views of, 500, 519–20nn, 645n; cabinet of, 82n; quoted, 77n, 273, 278n; in American Revolution, 20, 640; as secretary of state, 519n; as slaveholder, 587, 589n; views on slavery, 273, 278n, 595, 601n Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pa., 393n Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa., 529n Jeffersonian-Republican party, 81n, 399n, 606n Jennings, Ann, 406n Jennings, Charlotte, 406n Jennings, Helen, 406n Jennings, Isabel, 406n Jennings, Jane, 406n Jennings, Thomas, 406n Jericho, N.Y., 456n “Jerry” McHenry Rescue, 223n, 455–56n, 524n Jerusalem, 380n Jewell, Henry, 549n Jewett, Helen, 80n Jewish Americans, 286n Jews: compared to U.S. slaves, 208; Christianity resisted by, 380–83n; discrimination against, 213, 225n, 284, 286n, 319n; in Egypt, 353; in France, 339; in Great Britain, 292n, 319n; persecution of, 75, 209, 210n, 218, 225–26n, 284, 286n, 319n, 400–401n, 545, 646n; religion of, 387n “Jim Crow” cars, 457n “Jim Crow” laws: Northern origins of, 78n; in Southern states, 78n John I (king of England), 366n John II (king of France), 371n John XXII (pope), 371n John W. Richmond (ship), 237, 248n Johnson, Alvan J., 613

Y7870-Douglass.indb 696

INDEX Johnson, Andrew, 112n; administration of, 112–13nn, 132nn, 153n, 180n, 196n, 508n; battles Congress, 108, 112n, 123n; Douglass criticizes, xxxiii, lxix, 104, 129, 138, 254, 325, 605; Douglass meets with, lxix, 605, 610n; impeachment of, 112n, 122–23nn, 129, 132n, 154n, 179n, 188n, 268n; Mexico and, 140n; pardons by, 142n; racism of, 260n, 610n; “Restoration” policy of, xxxiii, 109, 111–113nn, 126n, 138, 139n, 153n, 291n; speaking tour of, 119; supporters of, 139n; vetoes by, 111n Johnson, Hilary R. W., 617, 620n Johnson, J. A., 259 Johnson, Mary Page, 250n Johnson, Nathan, 238–40, 250n Johnson, Oliver, 282, 434, 503, 530n Johnson, Reverdy, 126n Johnson, Robert Underwood, xxxviii, 231 Johnson, Samuel, 514n Johnson’s Universal Encyclopedia, 613–14 Johnston, Albert Sydney, 143n Johnston, Joseph, 581n Jones, Benjamin S., 2 Jones, T. W. S., 346, 382n Jordan, Phillip, 625n Joseph, John, 89n Journey to Musardo (Anderson), 618 Juarez, Benito, 140n Judd, Frances Burge, 628n Judd, George Lewis, 156n Judd, Hall, 623, 628n Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), quoted, 433n Jumping Jemmy (horse), 29 Junk River, 614 Jura River, 161n Juvenile Miscellany (Boston, Mass.), 448n Kalamazoo College, Mich., 63n Kansas: Baptists in, 449n; black population of, 259; blacks migrate to, 552n; Border Ruffians invade, 439, 454n; Civil War and, 89n, 180n, 211, 224n; Exoduster movement to, lxxi, 203–04, 262n, 328nn; Lecompton Constitution in, 573n; politicians from, 133n, 293n, 322; Republican party in, 293n, 328n; as territory, xxx, 10n, 88n, 454n, 573n; slavery controversy and, in 88, 89n, 136, 160n, 195n, 431, 439, 454nn, 531n, 573n; Stephen A. Douglas and, 454n, 573n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), xxix, 136, 228n, 453n; Democrats support, 464n; Stephen Douglas introduces, 531n; Douglass condemns, 439; passage of, 140–41n; proslavery intentions of, 504; protests against, 433n; Republican party and, 229n, 528n, 613n; Whig party and, 531n Kate (horse), 651 Kearney, Denis, 227n, 317n Keasarge, U.S.S., 261n Kedesh, Israel, 57n Keiley, Anthony M., 393n Keith, George, 500, 517n Keithley, Hester, 608n Keithley, Richard, 608n Kellogg, Day Otis, 494 Kelly, Abby. See Foster, Abby Kelly Kelly, Diana Daniels, 525n Kelly, Wing, 525n Kendall, Amos, 451n Kenneth I (king of Scotland), 285n Kent, James, 68, 79n, 80n Kent County, Maryland, 223n Kentucky, 178n: abolitionists in, 11–12, 452n; freedmen in, lxxii, 256–59; in Civil War, 268n; colonizationist support in, 78n; Confederacy and, 99n; conventions in, lxxi; Douglass speaks in, xxxix, 356–59; politicians of, 9n, 99n, 160n, 257, 268n, 466n; Republicans in, 160n, 187n, 267, 268n, 466n; slave code of, 514n; slave marriages in, 513n; slavery in, 129, 133n, 164, 223n, 512–14nn; Whig party in, 99n Kentucky Military Institute (Lydon, Ky.), 153n Kennebec, Me., 424n Kerr, Orpheus C., 326–27. See also Newell, Robert Henry Kerry, County, 320nn Key, David M., 229n Key to the Language of America, A (Williams), 510n Key West, Fla., 151, 162–63n Khafra (pharaoh of Egypt), 389n Khartoum, Sudan, 392n Khufu (pharaoh of Egypt), 389n Killarney, Ire., 318n King, Alfred Benedict, 620n King, Rufus, 520n “King Cotton,” 121, 587, 590n Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 315n, 377n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 697

697 Kingdom of Upper Italy, 315n Kingston, Jamaica, 150–51, 162n, 481, 488n King William’s War, 10n Kinsman, J. B., 355, 393n Kircheveen, Ire., 311 Knapp, Isaac, 525n Knickerbocker (New York City), 18n, 201n Knights of Labor, 317n Know-Nothings, 99n, 141n, 320n Knowles, Charles, 162n Knox, George L. 581 Knoxville, Tenn., 320n Knoxville Southern Citizen, 320n Kong Mountains, 614, 616, 618n Koran, 353–54, 388n, 391nn Kros, 616, 620n Ku Klux Act (1871), lxx, 177n Ku Klux Klan: federal laws against, 176–77nn; Nathan B. Forrest and, 142–43n; Ulysses S. Grant attacks, 164, 172–73; iterations of, 574n; in Mississippi, 210n; in North Carolina, 177n; in Texas, 126n labor movement, 123n, 154n Lady Barn House, Worthington, Eng., 397n Lady of the Lake, The (Scott), 239, 250n Lady Sterling (ship), 162n Laertes (character), 425n Lafayette, Alphonse Marie de, 408 418n, 625–26n LaGrange, Geo., 280n La Grange, Tenn., 165 Lake Avernus, Italy, 380n Lake Champlain, N.Y., 81n Lake Erie, 3n, 57–58nn Lake Geneva, Switz., 405n Lake Lucerne, Switz., 402n Lake Timsah, Egypt, 386n Lambdin, Thomas H. W., 444n Lancashire, Eng., 97, 101–02nn, 397n Lancaster, Ky., 187n Lane, Henry S., 291n Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, 227n, 527nn, 529n Lane Rebels, 527nn Lanfranco, Giovanni, 379n Langston, John Mercer, 185n, 490 Lanman, Tom, 436 Laona, N.Y., 154n Lapland, 598

9/1/21 4:17 PM

698 Las Casas, Bartholomé de, 495, 505–06n Lassus, Jean-Bapiste, 419n Latimer, George, xvi Laurens, Henry, 83n Laurens, Mary Eleanor, 83n L’Aurore (Paris, France),423n Lausanne, Switz., 405n Law and Order party (Rhode Island), 289–90, 293n Lawrence, Kans., 628n Lawrenceburg, Ind., 227n Laws, Robert S., 259, 264n Laws, William R., 259, 260n Lay, Benjamin, 500, 517n Lazarus of Bethany, 374n League of the Rights of Man, 423n Leaning Tower, Pisa, Italy, 340 Leavitt, Joshua, 11, 14n, 502, 522n, 524n, 613n Lebanon, Conn., 330n LeBarnes, John W., 188n Leclerc, Charles Victor Emmanuel, 157n Lecompton Constitution (Kansas), 10n, 454n, 531n, 573n Lee, Henry (“Lighthorse Harry”), 143n Lee, Mary Ann Randolph Custis, 143–44n Lee, Richard Henry, 100n, 503, 531n Lee, Robert E, 143n., 503; Arlington plantation of, 264n; Ulysses S. Grant and, 181n; Maryland campaign of, 331n; as college president, 138, 143n; avoids Reconstruction controversies, 143n; secession supported by, 266; surrender of, lxvii, 143n, 177n, 186n Leeds, Me., 195n Leeds (Eng.) Mercury, 91 Leeds (Eng.) Times, 635n Légitime, Francois-Denis, 476, 476n, 478n, 479n, 489n, 601n Leiden, Netherland., 506n Leighton, Frederic, 400n Leinster, Ire., 318n Leisler, Jacob, 495, 507n Leopold I (duke of Austria), 540n Les Halles, Paris, France, 369n, 419n Les Misérables (Hugo), 222n “Lesson of the Hour” (Phillips), 268n “Lessons of the Hour” (Douglass speech), xxxviii Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 386n Le Temps (Paris, France), 423n Levantados, Dominican Republic, 151n Levine, Robert, xxii, xxiv–xxv, xliii

Y7870-Douglass.indb 698

INDEX Lew, Barzillai, 553n Lewis, Eleanor, 378n Lewis, Mary Edmonia, 343–44, 377n Lewis, Samuel, 129–30 Lewiston, Maine, 398n Lexington, Ky., 139n, 223n, 268n, 330n Lexington, Liberia, 617 Lexington, Va., 260n Liberal party (Great Britain): Irish Home Rule and, 100–101n, 303, 315n, 565, 647n; leaders of, 99–100n, 111n, 643, 647n Liberal Republican party, 647n: candidates of, 176, 176n, 187–88nn; allies with Democrats, 573n; Douglass opposes, xxxv; 163–76; Election of 1872, xxxv, 163–76, 176n, 187n, 573n; free trade and, 187n; attack Grant at corrupt, 163, 187n; Reconstruction and, 163, 187n, 573n; conciliate Southern whites, 163; Charles Sumner supports, 122n Liberal Unionists (Great Britain), 315n, 573n Liberator (Boston), 253n: agents of, 247n; closure of, lxix, 61n; contributors to, 528n, 629n; critical of Douglass, xxi, xxvi, lxv; Douglass subscribes to, lxi; Douglass writes, xvi–xvii; Garrison founds, 59n, 61n, 502; masthead of, 11n; staff of, 229n, 447n, 525nn, 530n; subscribers to, 246n Liberia, 60n; Americo-Liberians of, 616–17, 620n; climate of, 614–15; colonization to, 89n; commerce of, 617; constitution of, 617, 620n; cotton grown in, 615; disease found in, 615; Douglass describes, 613–18; geographic location of, 614; history of, 618; minerals of, 616; population of, 616–17, 620n; products of, 615–16; religions in, 616; U.S. ministers to, 184n Liberia: the Americo-African Republic (Stewart), 618 Liberty: American Revolution pursued, 498 Liberty Bell (Boston), xix, xxvii, lxi; Douglass writes for, 5–8, 8n, 11–14 Liberty Hall, Elizabeth Town, N.J., 79n Liberty Hall, New Bedford, Mass., 445n Liberty Hall, Oakland, Ohio, 457n Liberty party: Douglass supports, xxv–xxvi, xiii, 589n, 606, 613n; candidates of, 57n, 128, 452n, 526n, 529n; conventions of, 529n, 589n; establishment of, 228n, 613n; free black supporters of, 223nn, 246n; Garrisonians and, 446n; in New Hampshire, 228n; in New York State, xxiii, xxv, 523nn, 528–29nn,

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX 613n; Free Soil party and, xxvii, 131n, 228n, 523n, 613nn; aid fugitive slaves, 455n; in Ohio, 127; Radical Abolition party and, 613n; Gerrit Smith and, xxiii, xxv, lxiii, 57n, 613n; Republican party and, xxix; supporters of, xxv, 10n, 131n, 246n, 529n; views on U.S. Constitution of, xxv–xxvi, lxiv Liberty Party Paper (Syracuse, N.Y.), xxv, lxiv Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 254n, 263n, 303, 648–54 Libyan Desert, 389n Libyan Hills, Egypt, 352 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Douglass), lxxi, 327–28nn, 332, 408, 456nn: extract in Century, xxxvi, xxxviii, 231–42; quoted, xxxiii; extracts in North American Review, xxxviii, 468–76, 479–88; Douglass revises, 557n; Douglass writes, xli; Douglass’s journalism not quoted in, xlii; “Exodus” discussed in, 204 Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, The (Foner), xxviii life insurance, 522n Life of Louis Adolphe Thiers, The (le Goff), 403n, 423n Life of Rosa Bonheur (Stanton), 403n, 423n Liffey River, Ire., 317–18nn Ligne de la Haute-Égypte, Bulak ed-Dâkrûr, Egypt, 392n lignumvita, 161n Ligurian Alps, 377n Lilley, Robert, 613 Lime Street Station, Liverpool, Eng., 366n Limerick, Ire, 313; Douglass speaks in, 318n Lincoln, Abraham: antiextensionist platform of, xxxi; assassination of, lxviii, 112n, 176, 196n, 333, 364n; support black emigration, 207n; black soldiers and, xxxi, 78n, 322, 328n, 383n, 556n; cabinet of, 78n, 112n, 127, 129, 133n, 139n; cane of, 327, 331n; character of, 322, 325–27; Civil War and, 90, 164; Cooper Institute speech of, 556n; Douglass criticizes, xxxi, lxvii, lxviii, 93, 164; Douglass meets, lxviii, 22, 302–09nn, 326, 605; Douglass praises, 333, 364n, 536, 554; Douglass quotes, 178n; Douglass reminisces about, xxxix, 321–27; Election of 1860 and, 133n, 139n, 187n, 531n; Election of 1864 and, 133n; Election of 1868 and, 129; emancipation and, xxxi, lxvii, 93–95, 164, 178n, 324–25; Emancipation Proclamation and, xxxi, 92, 98n,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 699

699 164, 178n, 443, 605; first inauguration of, 531n; foreign policy and, 132n, 160n, 187n, 229n, 399n; Fort Sumter and, 243n; freedmen and, 194; “Gettysburg Address” by, 600n; Ulysses S. Grant and, 167–69, 181n, 185n, 326–27; logic of, 554, 556n; Mexico and, 140n; as presidential candidate, xxxi, 101n; racial attitudes of, 219, 325–26; religious values of, xxxi; reputation of, 194; secession crisis and, 101n, 454n, 504, 531n; second inauguration of, lxviii, 325, 330nn; supporters of, 144n, 270; Supreme Court appointments of, 269n, 303n; Trent incident and, 98n Lincoln, Mary Todd, 327, 330–31n Lincoln’s Inn, London, Eng., 292n Lispenard Street, New York City, 237, 247n Listwell (character): conversion to abolitionism, 24; overhears Madison Washington, 21–24 Litchfield, Conn., 162n Litchfield Law School, Litchfield, Conn., 80n Literary World (Boston, Mass.), 631 Livermore, Me., 183n Liverpool, Eng., lxii–lxiii, 100n, 102n, 317n, 336–39, 363n, 366–67nn, 517n; abolitionists in, 433n; Douglass in, 368n, 610n; religious character on, 414; as shipping center. 404–05nn Liverpool Free Public Museum, 367–68n Liverpool International Exhibition of Navigation, Traveling, Commerce and Manufacturing, 367n Liverpool Town Hall Liverpool, Eng., 368n Lloyd, Daniel, 278n Lloyd, Edward IV, 606n Lloyd, Edward V, 278n, 603, 606n, 607n Lloyd, Sally Scott Murray, 606n Lloyd Family, lix, 278n Locke, Pliny, 185n Lodge, Henry Cabot, 462–63, 466nn, 540n Lodge Force Bill. See Federal Elections Bill Loguen, Jermain Wesley, 383n, 524n Lombardy, Italy, 315n, 402nn London, Eng., 365n, 405n; antislavery meetings in, 375n, 433n; art galleries of, 367n; blacks in, 224n, 376nn, 426n; Douglass visits, 229, 362; French exiles in, 418n, 425n; galleries in 405n; history of, 369n; Irish immigrants in, 218; newspapers of, 366n; religious character of, 414; as shipping port, 383n, 385n, 405n London Daily Chronicle, 366n London Daily News, 90

9/1/21 4:17 PM

700 London Daily Telegraph, 366n London Morning Chronicle, 366n London Morning Post, 366n London News of the World, 366n London Standard, 366n London Times, 366n: supports Confederacy’s recognition, 94, 99n; criticizes Daniel O’Connell, 309–11, 320nn; nicknames of, 318n London University, 397n Long Island, N.Y., 59n, 79n, 500, 517n Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, xix, xxvii– xviii, 5, 104; quoted, 196n, 201n Lookout Mountain, Battle of, 153n Lopez, Narciso, 453n Loring, Ellis Gray, 97n Los Angeles, Calif., 210n, 227n, 302n Lossing, Benjamin F., 294 “Lost Cause,” 121 Loudon, N.H., 447n Louis (king of Holland), 418n Louis XIV (king of France), 419n, 421n Louis XVI (king of France), 418n, 421n, 625n Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III), 369n, 418n: assassination attempt on, 408, 418n; FrancoPrussian War and, 421n; government of, 295n, 404n, 418n; Italy and, 373n; Mexico and, 140n; opponents of, 424n, 425n; Paris renovation by, 419n Louis-Phillipe (king of France), 404n, 418n Louisiana: anti-black violence in, 126n, 138, 210n; black population of, 227n, 259, 262n, 276; black suffrage in 143n; Civil War in, 180–81nn, 269n; emancipation in, 164, 178n; “Exodus” from, 203n; free blacks in, 73–74, 262n, 269n; Italian immigrants in, 539n; legal codes of, 497, 511n; Negro Seamen Acts and, 242n; railroad segregation in, 552n; Reconstruction in, lxx, 126n, 138, 143n, 229n; secession of, 143nn, 531n; slave code of, 278n, 511–12nn, 514n; slave marriages in, 513n; slave trade in, xxvi; War of 1812 in, 73–74 Louisiana Purchase, 79n, 83n, 140–41n, 501, 520n, 531n Louisville, Ky.: Douglass speaks at, xxxviii, lxxii, 256–59, 590n; black political convention in 156–59; clergy of, 262n; Underground Railroad in, 526n L’Ouverture, Francois Dominique Toussaint,147, 157-n; biography of, xl, xlviii,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 700

INDEX lxxiii, 417, 425n; Douglass on, xl, xlviii, 636– 44; Haitian independence and, 488–89n, 640 Louvre, Paris, France, 369n, 404n, 404n, 410, 413, 419nn Lovejoy, Elijah, 123n, 439, 447n, 455n, 502–03, 526n Low, Son and Company, 655 Lowell, James Russell, 503, 530n Lowell, Maria White, 530n Lowell, Mass., 179n, 378n Lowrie, Walter, 97n Loyal National Repeal Association (Ire.), 319–20nn Loyson, Charles, 414, 417, 423n Lucas, John, 407n Lucas, Margaret Bright. 362, 407n Lucerne, Switz, 360–61, 402n Luddites, 222n Lundy, Benjamin, 61n, 207n, 249n, 435, 443–44n, 445n, 501–02 Lunelle, Piere de, 371n Luperón, Gregorio, 147, 156n Lycabettus, Greece, 356 lyceums, 253n, 557n: Douglass speaks in, xxxiii, lxvi, 88n, 605; Lykabettus, Athens, Greece, 395n Lynch, Charles, 548n Lynchburg, Va., 201n, 260n, 491, 493n Lynchburg (Va.) Virginia Laborer, 493n lynching; in Arkansas, 542; in California, 542–43, 549n; Douglass condemns, xxxvii– xxxviii–xxix, lxxiii, 533–39, 541–48, 553–56; T. Thomas Fortune condemns, 553–56; Benjamin Harrison condemns, 535; fabricated justifications for, 543–44; of Italian Americans, 539n; lack of legal justification for, 543, 597–98; mobs conduct, 594, 598; moral rebuke of, 546; Republican party condemns, 533–39; in Texas, 549n; Ida B. Wells exposes, 549n; white supremacy and, 548n Lynn, Mass., lxi, 446–47nn, 457n, 525n, 628n; Douglass in, 6–8, 248n, 530n, 631n Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society, 248n, 525n Lyon, France, 338–39, 369–70nn Macbeth (Shakespeare), 581n McAll, Robert Whitaker, 422n McAll Mission, Paris, France, 414 McCargo, Thomas, 56n, 61n McCague, Thomas, 388n McClellan, George B., 327, 331n, 557n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX McClernand, John, 181 McCormick, Cyrus, 143n McDowell, Calvin, 552n McDowell, Irwin, 581n McFeely, William, 185n McGatchell, William, 269n McGowan, John, 234, 243n McKim, James Miller, xvii McKinley, William B., 142n, 269n, 429n, 572n McKinley Tariff (1890), 465n, 555, 558n, 580n Macedon, 396n Madeira, 496 Madagascar, 496 Madawaska, U.S.S., 154n Madison, James, 73–74, 100n; cabinet of, 82n; as slaveholder, 587, 589n; U.S. Constitution and, 95, 100n, 501, 519n Madison County, Ind., 457n, 609n Mafia, 539n Maginn, William, 318n Magnuson Act (1943), 286n Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 478n Maidstone, Eng., 292n Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 291n Maine, lxvi, 187n, 248n, 251n; abolitionists in, 375n, 455n, 523–24n; admission of, 520n; black population of, 259; coast of, 306, 317n; Free Soil party in, 534n; ministers of, 455n; politicians of, 393n, 398n, 424n, 524n; Republicans in, 398n, 424n, 465n, 524n Maine Anti-Slavery Society, 524n Malan Caesar, 380n Malan, Jenny, 380n malaria (“African fever”), 615, 619n Malta, 379n Mamelukes, 351, 388–89nn, 392n Manchester, Eng., 258, 397n, 405–06nn: abolitionists in, 433n; textile industry in, 102n Manchester, N.H., 530n Manchester-Petersburg Turnpike (Virginia), 58n Mandingos, 616–17, 619–20nn Manin, Lodovico, 403n Mann, Horace, 241, 253n Mann, Ambrose Dudkey, 98n Manners, John, Marquis of Granby, 138n manumission: of Douglass, xviii, lxii, 91, 97–98n, 605; restrictions on, 498, 513–14n Maplewood, Ky., 133n Marat, Jean-Paul, 296n Marathon, Greece, 356, 396n Marco Aurelia (ship), 162n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 701

701 Marchena, Spain, 161n Marciacq, Jean-Louis, 145, 152n Marcus Lucretius, 381n Mardonius, 83n Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio, 182n Marion & Memphis Railroad, 142n Marcy, William L., quoted,466n Marguerite of Valois, 422n Marie Antoinette (queen of France), 419n Marine Bank, New Bedford, Mass., 252n Marine Coffee House, Richmond, Va., 48 Marion County, Mo., 526n Marr, Wilhelm, 210n Mars (Roman god), 398n Marseilles, France, 340, 371n Marsh, George Perkins, 359, 401n Marsh, Joseph, 17–18 Marsh, Sarah Adams, 17 Marshall, John, 100n Marshfield, Mass., 447n Martin, J. Sella, xxxiv–xxxv, 611n Martin, John Biddulph, 357, 397n Matin, Luther, 520n Martin, Waldo, xlii Martineau, Harriet, xix, 5 Martin’s Bank, London, 397n Marvine, Archibald, 146, 153n Marx, Karl, 626–27n Maryland: abolitionists in, 61n, 441n, 448n, 520–21n; borders of, 530n; Civil War and, 153n, 179n; colonizationist support in, 78, 618, 620n; Douglass resides in, xvii–xviii, xxiii, lix–lx, 1n, 8n, 278n, 369n, 435, 444–45nn, 603–04, 608nn; Douglass visits, lxxi; Eastern Shore of, 606n; emancipation in, 131; free blacks in, 8n, 152n, 160n, 211n, 231, 232n, 237, 243n, 248n, 262n, 369n, 604, 607n; freedmen in, 259; “freedom suits,” 512n; freedmen in, 259; fugitive slaves from, 223–24nn, 230–42, 242n, 252n, 524n, 604; Freedmen’s Bureau in, 182n; government of, 606n; law code of, 497; Mason-Dixon Line and, 207n; Methodists in, 262n, 608n; politicians of, 126n, 520n, 606n; Quakers in, 441n; slave codes in, 511–12nn, 514n; Reconstruction and, 112n; slaveholders in, xviii, lix–lx, 1n, 242n, 436, 455n, 603, 606n; slaves in, xviii, xl, lix–lx, 1, 9n, 97–98n, 223n, 231–42, 251, 278nn, 280n, 369n, 455n, 497, 603, 606n; Underground Railroad in, 242n, 369n, 524n, 604; War of 1812 in, 243n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

702 Maryland Agricultural Society, 606n Maryland County, Liberia, 617–18 Maryland Penitentiary, 526n Maryland State Colonization Society, 618, 620n Mason, Charles, 207n, 530n Mason, George, 98n, 100n Mason, James Murray, 93, 98–99n Mason-Dixon Line, 207n, 503 Masons, 230n Masque of Pandora, The (Longfellow), 196n Massachusetts: abolitionists in, xvi, lxi, lxiii, lxvii, 3, 5, 61n, 119, 123n, 160n, 222–23nn, 229n, 242n, 248n, 253n, 267, 328n, 375n, 376–77nn, 406n, 438, 448, 447–48nn, 454n, 501, 522–23nn, 529–30nn, 589n, 636n; American Revolution and, 81n, 126n, 499; antiabolitionism in, 436; Baptists in, 363n; black population of 259, 261n; black swing vote in, 572n; Civil War and, lxviii, 99n, 323, 376–77nn; as colony, 509–10nn; communitarianism in, 621–24, 624–25nn, 627–29n; constitution of, 251n, 499, 515; Democrats in, 179n, 187n, 461, 465n; Douglass in xvi, lx–lxi, lxiv, 6–8, 621–24; Douglass speaks in, xvi, lxi; education in, 253n; emancipation in, 499, 515–16nn; Federalists in, 447n; free blacks in, xxviii. lx, 71–72, 85, 207n, 222– 23nn, 261nn, 375–76nn, 377n, 501, 521–22n; Free Soil party in, 122n, 187n, 253n, 328n, 522n, 629n; “freedom suits” in, 499, 515; fugitive slaves in, lx, 246n, 439–40, 455n, 623; Know Nothings in, 187n; lawyers in, 77n, 179n; legislature of, 249n; 253n, 523n; ministers in, 77; mobs in, 448–49nn, 528nn; Native Americans persecuted by, 496–97; physicians in, 160nn; politicians of, 82n, 132nn, 179n, 187n, 212, 393n, 442, 444n, 447nn, 453n, 456–57n, 527n, 540n; Quakers in, 249n, 438, 447n, 500; Reconstruction and, 126n; Republican party in, 122n, 179n, 183n, 187n, 465n, 540n; segregation in, 251n, 441–43, 546; slavery in, 495–96, 510n; slave trade and, 508–10nn; teachers in, 525n; temperance movement in, 377n; textile industry in, 378n, 445n, 590n; Underground Railroad in, 239, 399n, 627n, 630n; Unitarians in, 8n, 240, 251n, 253n, 365n, 399, 339n, 449n, 529–30nn, 624n; Whig party in, 122n, 132n, 253n, 268n, 444n, 453n; woman suffrage movement in, lxiv, 377n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 702

INDEX Massachusetts Abolition Society, 242n Massachusetts Abolitionist (Boston), 242n Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society: agents of, 447n, 609n; employs Douglass, xvi, 376n, 604; conventions of, lxi, 609n; William Lloyd Garrison and, xvi, 229n; members of, 375n, 446n, 629n; officers of, 525n, 530n; Charles Remond and, 222n, 375–76n, 609n; William Wells Brown and, 223n Massachusetts Board of Charities, 160n Massachusetts General Colored Association, 520n Mather, Cotton, 510n Mathew, Theobald, 304, 314–15n Matthews, George W., 144n Matthews, James G., 612n Matthews, Stanley, 269n Maxcy, Virgil, 11n Maximilian I (emperor of Mexico), 140n May, Samuel Joseph, 456n, 502, 524n, 528n Mayhew, Jonathan, 77 Mayflower (ship), 495, 506n Medea, 351 Medford, Mass., 448n Medici, Guilio de’, 402n Medici, Juliana de’, 402n Medici, Lorenzo de’, 402n Medici, Maria de’, 421n Medici family, 360, 399n, 402n Medina, N.Y., lxix Medinet el-Faiyum, Egypt, 388n Mediterranean Sea, 340–41, 344, 347–48, 370n, 384–85nn Meigs, Charles Austin, 197, 201n Melbourne, Aus., 383n Melodia Sacra, The (Shaw), 250n Memmi, Simone, 371n Memphis, Egypt, 354, 386n, 392nn Memphis, Tenn., 119, 126n, 142n, 182n, 545, 552n Memphis Post, 182n Mendon, Mass, 625n Menes (king of Egypt), 392nn Menkaura (pharaoh of Egypt), 389n Mentone, France, 340, 372n Merchant of Venice, The (Shakespeare), 222n Mededith, J., 98n Mersey River, 366nn Mesmer, Franz Anton, 625n Mesmerism, 622, 625–26n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Messina, Italy, 348 Mesurado, Liberia, 617–18 Methodist Episcopal Church: antislavery in, 518, 608n; black members of, 279n; lynching condemned by, 551n; in Maryland, 262n, 608n; ministers of, 36n, 364n, 391n; in New York, 364n; in Ohio, 629n; revivals led by, 391n; in Santo Domingo, 148, 152n, 156n, 159n; in South, 279n, 545, 551n Methodists: in France, 422n; in Great Britain, 390n; in Italy, 346, 382nn Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, Eng., 406n Mexican Cession, 161n, 466n, 531n Mexican American War: abolitionists oppose, 140n, 229n, 439; battles of, 143nn; Democrats support, 136, 139–40nn; opposition to, 122n, 140n, 464n; treaty ends, 140n; U.S. Army in, 140n, 331n; U.S. Navy in, 154n, 243n Mexico: American aggression against, 439; European intervention in, 140n; geography of, 321n; inquisition in, 646n; Maximilian and, 140n; Texas and, 139–40n; U.S. trade with, 159n. See also Mexican American War Miami, Fla., 488n Michelangelo. See Buonarroti, Michelangelo Michigan: abolitionists in, 376n; black population of, 259, 262n; farmers in, 79n; Methodists in, 629n Middleboro, Mass., 250n Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt., 528n Milan, Italy, 360–61, 402n Milan Cathedral, 373n, 403n Milburn, William Henry, 303 Miles River, Md., 606n Milford, Mass., 625n Milford, N.H., 636n Miliken’s Bend, La., 166, 181n Militia Act of 1862, 78n, 329n Mill River, 624n, 628n “Millennial Dawn” (Webb) 11n Miller, Samuel F., 269n millennialism, 17 Miller, Madison, 184n Miller, William, 17–18 Mills, Isabella, 362, 406n Mills, Robert, 406n Mills, Ro C., 465n Mills Tariff Bill, 465n Millwall, Eng., 365n Milton, John, 523n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 703

703 Milton and the Continent (Byse), 405n Mine Creek (Kans.), Battle of, 206n Miner, Myrtilla, 449n Minneapolis, Minn., lxxiii, 572n Minnesota: lxxiii, 259 Minoans, 385n Minotaur, 396n minstrels, 75 miscegenation, 281–82; Douglass on, 282, 298–301 Missionaries: to Africa, 97; to West Indies, 97 Missionary Ridge, Battle of, 153n Mississippi, 448n: anti-black violence in, 138, 177n, 209, 210n, 277n; Chinese laborers in, 210n; Civil War in, 165, 167, 176–77n, 181n, 323; Democratic party in, 10n, 210n, 277n; “Exodus” from, 203; freed people in, 167, 176–77n, 224n, 227n, 259; “freedom suits,” 512n; legal codes of, 497; politicians of, 453n; Reconstruction in, 113n, 128, 170, 183n, 210n, 224–25n, 277n; Republican party in, 224n, 277n, 540n; secession of, 531n; Union Army recruits in, xxxii; slave code of, 514n; slavery in, 10n, 141–42nn, 165, 181n, 278n, 449n. 497 Mississippi Plan, 210n, 277n Mississippi River, 178n, 181nn, 261n Missouri, 178n, 370n: admission debate, 70–73; 81n, 501, 520n; black population of, 259, 262n; Civil War in, 158n, 184n, 426n; colonizationist support in, 78n; constitution of, 70; Democratic party in, 139n; free blacks barred from, 70–73, 81n; “freedom suits” in, 512n, 601n; fugitive slaves in, 526n; Liberal Republicans of, 187n; politicians of, 139n, 187n, 454n; Republican party in 207n; slave codes of, 513–14nn; slavery in, 184n, 278n, 417, 426n; Whigs in, 455n Missouri Compromise, 9n; debate over, 70–73, 81n, 501, 520n; Dred Scott case and, 601n; repeal of, 136, 140–41n, 504, 531n Missouri Equal Rights League, 184n Mitchel, John, 312, 320n Mobile River, 74 Mobs: in Boston, 438, 528n; in California, 209–10n; in Cincinnati, 439, 452n, 502, 526n; in Connecticut, 449n; Douglass attacked by, lxi–lxii, 2, 443, 457n, 604, 609nn, 633, 635n; in, 443, 457n, 604, 609nn, Douglass criticizes, 255, 594; free blacks attacked by,

9/1/21 4:17 PM

704 Mobs (continued) 452n; in Indiana, lxii, 443, 457n, 604, 609nn; in Illinois, 439, 455n, 502, 609n; in Memphis, 119, 126n; in New Hampshire, 449n, 527n; in New Orleans, 119, 126n, 594; in New York City, 450n, 633, 635n; in Philadelphia, 439, 439n, 455n, 525n; in Tennessee, 552n; in Washington, D.C., 449n, 529n. See also lynching Modena, Italy, 315n Mohammed, 386–87n, 391n Mohamedan College, Cairo, Egypt, 353–54 Moldovia, 226n Môle-Sainte-Nicolas, Haiti: U.S. efforts to annex, xxxviii, lxxiii, 468–76, 477–78nn, 538, 541n; Douglass criticized about, 469 Molly Maguires, 317n Mona Lisa (da Vinci), 419n Monaco, 372n Mona Passage (Caribbean Sea), 477n Monastery of San Martino, 379nn Monroe, James, 10n; administration of, 444n; Missouri Comprise and, 70–72, 81–82n; as president, 589n; U.S. Constitution and, 100n Monroe, James (Oberlin professor), 443, 457n Monroe, R. D., 333–34, 365n Monroe County, Mich., 79n Monroe Doctrine, 140n Monrovia, Liberia, 616–17, 620nn Montagu, John, 230n Montcalm, Louis-Joseph, marquis de, 81n Monte Carlo, 372n Montgomery, Ala., 201n Montpelier (Madison’s plantation), Orange County, Va., 589n Montreal, Quebec, 229n Montserrado County, Liberia, 620n Moore, Lindley Murray, 56n Moore, Putnam, 444n Moore, Thomas, 47, 60n Moors, 283, 285n Morehead, Charles Slaughter, 93, 99n, 133n Morgan, J. P., 296n Morgan, John T., 281 Morgarten, Switz., 540n Morgenblatt, (Stuttgart, Germany), 400n Moriscos. See Moors Morrill, David Lawrence, 72, 82n Morrill Tariff (1861), 101n Morris, George P., 635n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 704

INDEX Morris Island, S.C., 269n Morse, Samuel F. B., 261n Morton, Oliver Hazard Perry Throck. 288, 291n Moss, Thomas, 552n Mott, Abigail, 390n Mott, Frank Luther, xlii Mott, James, 524n Mott, Lucretia Coffin, 502, 524n Mott, Lydia, 390n Mound Plantation (La.), Battle of, 181n, 269n Mount Etna, 348, 377n, 384n Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass., lxxii, 332, 363n, 396n Mount Hope Bay, Mass., 385n Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, N.Y., 363n Mount Lykabettos, Athens, Greece, 395n Mount Zion Baptist Church, Arlington, Va., 264n Muckrakers, 433 Muhammad Ali, 393n Mulhall’s Dictionary of Statistics, 420n Mundy, Johnson M., 367n Munster, Ire., 318n Murray, Bambarra, 248n Murray, Mary, 248n Murray, William G., 382n, 385n Murry, 346, 349 Musical Fund Hall (Philadelphia, Pa.), 635n Muscovy Company, 506n Muesée de Luxembourg, Paris, France, 413, 421n Museo de Capodimonte, Naples, Italy, 378n Museo Nazionale, Naples, Italy, 379–80nn Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, 390n Music School Settlement for Colored People (New York City), 429n Muskegon, Mich., 454n My Bondage and My Freedom (Douglass), xxviii, lxv, 230n, 245n, 384n, 456n, 609n; man translation of, 401n; quoted, xviii Mycenae, 645n Mycerinus (pharaoh of Egypt), 389n Myers, Peter, xlii Mystery (Pittsburgh), xix–xx, 208 Nacogdoches, Tex., 456n Naish, Arthur John, 362, 405n Naish, William, 405n Nantucket, Mass., 252n, 500

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Nassau, Bahamas, xxvi, 19, 53–55, 60nn, 62nn. See also Creole Nantucket, Mass., lxi, 609n Naples, Italy, 315–16n, 332, 343–44, 380n, 397nn, Douglass in, 356–57, 378n; Douglass lectures in, 345; founding of, 377n; Protestant churches in, 344, 379–80nn, 382n; as ship port, 383n Naples, Bay of, 343–45, 377n Napoleon I, 147, 295n, 369n, 418–19nn; as general, 404n, 646n; Haiti and, 157n, 489n; Italy and 403n, 404n; Paris and, 420n Napoleonic Code, 393n Narragansetts, 510n Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass), xvii, lxxii, 4, 230, 604, 607n, 609–10n Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Truth), 627n Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave (Brown), 223n Nash, Charles Edward, 184n Nashville, Tenn., 141n, 363n Nassau, Bahamas, 19, 56n, 152n Natchez, Miss., 10n Nation (Dublin, Ire.), 320n “Nation Still in Dan, The” (American Missionary Association), 201–03 National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York City), xviii–xx, 253n, 376n, 525n; Douglass write articles for, xxxiii; editors of, 246n, 448n, 530n, 522n; motto of, 59n; in Reconstruction era, 447n; staff of, 530n National Archeological Museum, Naples, Italy, 379n National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 429n National Association of Ireland for Full and Prompt Justice or Repeal, 318n National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children, 363n National Baptist (Philadelphia, Pa.), 363n National Convention of African Americans (Louisville, Ky.), xxxix, lxxii, 256–59, 260n, 606, 613n National Convention of Black Freemen (Cleveland, Ohio), 606, 612n National Convention of Colored Citizens (Buffalo, N.Y.), lxi, 223n National Convention of Colored Citizens (Syracuse, N.Y.), lxviii, 606, 612n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 705

705 National Convention of Colored Men (Washington, D.C.), 610n National Convention of Colored People and Their Friends (Troy, N.Y), xx National Convention of Colored People of the United States (New Orleans, La.), lxx National Convention of the Free People (Rochester, N.Y.), xx, lxv; address of, 62–77; attendance at 63; officers of, 63 National Council of the Colored People, xxix, 77n National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 602–06 National Endowment for the Humanities, xv National Enquirer (Philadelphia, Pa.), 444n National Era (Washington, D.C.), 451n, 523n, 529n National Historical Publications and Records Commission, xv National Intelligencier (Washington, D.C.), 71 National League, xxiv National Militia Act of 1792, 78 National Negro Convention (Philadelphia, Pa.), 250n National Park Service, 254 National Picture Gallery, London, Eng., 362, 405n National Portrait Gallery, London, Eng., 405n National Union Convention (Philadelphia, Pa.), 126n Native American tribes, 162n: colonists persecute, 496–97, 507n, 510n; economic progress of, 271; enslavement of, 507n, 509nn; fugitive slaves sheltered by, 140n; intermarry with slaves, 279n; maltreatment of, 283, 285n; in Northwest Territory, 464n; removal of, 522n; rights of, 123n, 224n, 269n; in Southwest, 496; treaties with, 285n; violence against, 638. See also individual tribes nativism, 139n Nebraska, 259 Necropolis of Sakkara, Egypt, 354, 392n Negro Seamen Acts, 242n, 503 Negro’s and Indian’s Advocate, Suing for their Admission into the Church, The (Godwyn), 517n Nell, William C., xxii; 63 Neptune, Temple of (Pestum, Italy), 347 Nero (Roman emperor), 398n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

706 Netherlands, 59n, 82n, 137, 141n, 444n; colonies of, 285n; slavery and, 483; slave trade and, 495, 506n Neutrality Act (U.S.), 453n New Albany, Ind., 19n New Amsterdam, 516n Newark, N.J., 246n, 629n New Bedford, Mass.: abolitionists in, 249–52nn, 436, 445–46nn; churches in, 251n; Civil War and, 252n, 445n; clergy of, 8n, 609n; Douglass in, lxi, 60n, 238, 383n, 390n, 442, 445n, 457n, 604, 608–09nn; free blacks in, 237–38, 248n, 250–52nn, 390n, 608–09nn; fugitive slaves in, 237–38, 252n, 436, 441, 445nn, 608n; 237–38, 436, 441; government of, 252n; Quakers in, 249n, 251–52nn, 444–46nn; shipbuilding in, 252n; Unitarians in, 252n; whaling industry in, 60n, 237, 248n, 251–52nn, 445n, 604 New Bedford African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 608–09n New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society, 249n, 445n New Bedford Atheneum, 249n New Bedford Commercial Bank, 249n New Bedford Gas Light Company, 249n New Bedford Institute for Savings, 249n New Bedford Lyceum, Mass., 241, 253n New Bedford Merchant’s Bank, 445n New Bedford Pathfi nder, 446n New Bedford People’s Press, 446n New Bern, N.C., 520n Newbury, Mass., 517n Newburyport, Mass., 61n, 380n, 457n; as slave trade port, 496, 508n Newburyport (Mass.) Free Press, 61n Newburyport (Mass.) Herald, 61n New Carlisle, Ind., 144n New Castle, Del., 180n Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Eng., lxii, 94, 100n 390n, 605, 610n Newcastle (Eng.) Guardian, 90–91 Newcomb, Wesley, 150, 161n New Covenant Movement, 629n Newell, Robert Henry, 331n New England: abolitionists in, lx, lxi, 61n; antebellum reforms in, 621–22; Civil War and, 179n; Native Americans in, 510n; Pilgrims in, 495, 506n; slavery in, 495; wealth of, 110; writers of, 104. See also individual states New England Anti-Slavery Convention, lxi, 604

Y7870-Douglass.indb 706

INDEX New England Anti-Slavery Society, 61n, 222n, 502, 522n, 524–25nn, 530n, 628n, 636n New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, Mass., 426, 428n New England Friends’ Boarding School, Providence, R.I., 525n New England Non-Resistance Society, 446n, 629–30nn New Englander (Boston, Mass.), 458n New Era (Washington, D.C.). See New National Era (Washington, D.C.) New Georgia, Liberia, 617, 620n New Hampshire, 179n, 182n, 336: abolitionists in, 228n, 446–47nn, 630n, 632, 634n; Democrats in, 228n; emancipation in, 499, 516n; Liberty party in, 228n; militia of, 455n; mobs in, 449n, 527n; nicknames of, 632–33, 634n; politicians of, 71, 82n, 132n, 228n, 466nn, 540n; Republicans in, 466nn, 540n, 557n New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society, 447n, 634n New Hampshire Non-Resistance Society, 448n New Hampshire Statesman and State Journal (Concord, N.H.), 635m New Hampshire Woman’s Suffrage Association, 448n New Hampshire Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, 446n New Haven, Conn., 80n, 162n, 224n, 507n, 629n New Hotel, Cairo, Egypt, 351 New Ipswich, N.H., 630n New Jersey, 79n, 246n: abolitionists in, 525n; black population of, 259, 262n; as colony, 507n; government of, 331n; gradual emancipation in, 499; Quakers in, 443n, 518n; slavery in, 495 New Lisbon, Ohio, 2 New Lyceum, Manchester, N.H., 530n Newman, John Henry, 368n New Market Heights, Battle of, 264n New Mexico, 550 n New National Era (Washington, D.C.), xvi; closure of, xxxv–xxxvi, lxxi; Douglass’s editorials in, xxxiv, xliii. liii, lxix–lxx, 163, 187n, 611n; founding of, xxxiii–xxxiv, xliii, 185n, 605, 611n; readers of, xxxv; staff of, xxxiv–xxxv, lxix–lxx New Orleans, Battle of, 451n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX New Orleans and Carrolton Street Railway, 143n New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad, 143n New Orleans, La.: Civil War and, 179n, 206n, 269n; conventions in, lxx; Creoles in, 152n; Douglass speaks in, lxx; free blacks in, 59n, 269n; mobs in, 594; Reconstruction in, 184n; schools in, 260n; slave markets in, xxvi, 45–46, 49, 56n, 59–60nn, 133n; violence against blacks in, 119 New Park Street Church, London, Eng., 406n Newport, R.I., 238, 248n, 445n; abolitionists in, 500, 518n; as slave trade port, 496; Southerners vacation in, 244n New Providence, Nassau, 19 New Republic (New York City), 146 New Selections of Sacred Music (Dyer), 250n Newton, Mass., 630n Newton Female Institute, Whitesville, Miss., 449n Newton Theological Institute, 363n Newtown, Long Island, N.Y., 224n New Virginia, Liberia, 620n New York Age, 552n, 556n New York Anti-Slavery Society, 228n, 502, 522n New York Central Railroad, 441, 456n New York Citizen, 320n New York City, 144n, 209n, 363n, 397n, 588n: abolitionists in, xix, xxviii, lxvi, 59n, 61n, 219, 228n, 244–46nn, 432n, 450nn, 457n, 522nn; antiabolitionism in, 432n; clergy of, 8n, 404n, 432n, 450n; commerce of, 307; Democratic party in, 134, 139n; discrimination in, 416; Douglass in, xxviii, lx, lxx, lxxii–lxxiii, 8n, 145, 235–37, 246n, 363n, 445n, 457n, 623; Douglass speaks in, xxvii, lxvii, 457n; draft riots in, 139n; free blacks in, xix, xxiv, 219, 223–23nn, 244–48nn, 432n, 623, 630n; fugitive slaves in, 8n, 235– 37, 244n, 246n, 248n; government of, 262n, 296n, 331n; Grant’s tomb in, 296n; horse racing in, 59n; hotels in, 152n; immigrants in, 243n; Irish American political influence in, 304, 316n, 320n; lawyers in, 79–80nn, 519n; mobs in, 450nn, 633, 635n; newspapers of, xix, xxxi–xxxiii, xlviii, 59n, 83–87, 88n, 90–100, 153nn, 158n, 176n, 177–90, 186– 87n, 188–90, 190–91n, 206, 228, 245–46nn,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 707

707 257, 261n, 269nn, 330n, 403n, 423n, 425n, 528n, 530n, 533–39, 556n, 630n, 635n, 637; parks of, 296n, 320nn, 404n, 433–44, 483, 489n; population of, 243n; prisons in, 237, 245–46nn; religious character of, 414; shipping industry of, 248n, 363n, 404n; as slave trade port, 496, 508n; Tammany Hall in, 128, 131n; Underground Railroad in, 245n, 432n, 623; Wall Street in, 397n New York City Anti-Slavery Society, 522n New York Conservatory of Music, 428n New York Daily Tribune, 88n, 186–87nn, 403n, 423n, 528n, 530n New York Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals, 245n, 630n New York Evangelist, 228n New York Evening Mirror, 635n New York Freeman, 556n New York Genius of Freedom, 245n, 630n New York Globe, 257, 261n, 556n New York Graphic, 206n New York Herald, xlvii, 153n; Douglass writes, 188–90, 553–56; T. Thomas Fortune writes, 556n; Freedmen’s Bank and, 177–90, 190–91nn; reports of, 330n New-York Historical Society, 80n New York Hospital, 80n New York Independent, 376n: Henry Ward Beecher and, 228n, 432n; Congregational Church and, 533; Douglass writes articles for, xxxi–xxxiii, xxxvii, 83–90; 90–100, 425n, 533–59, 637; Theodore Tilton edits, 90–91, 134, 228n, 404n, 533 New York Manumission Society, 246n, 519n New York Mirror of Liberty, 245n, 630n New York Negro World, 556n New York Observer, 91, 404n New York Rights of All, 246n New York State, 20, 79n, 381n, 449n, 520n: abolitionists in, xxix–xx, xxiii, xxv, xxviii, xlv, lxiii–lxvi, 1–2, 17, 56–57nn, 59n, 61n, 80, 219, 223nn, 228n, 244–46nn, 248n, 262n, 376n, 390n, 396n, 431, 432n, 447n, 450nn, 455–57nn, 501, 519n, 522nn, 524n 529n, 609n, 613n; African American civil rights in, xxxi, lxix, 85; black population of, 259, 262n; black suffrage in, xlv, lxvii, lxix, 68–70, 80n, 247n; black swing vote in, 561; chancellor or, 79–80nn; as colony, 507n; constitution of 1821 of, 68–70, 79–80nn; Democratic party

9/1/21 4:17 PM

708 New York State (continued) in, 55n, 57n, 134, 139n 287, 290n, 293n, 464n, 557–58; Douglass in, xxii, xxvii–xxviii, xxxi, lx, lxx, lxiv, lxvi, lxx, lxxii–lxxiii, lxvii, 8n, 145, 235–37, 246n, 327, 363n, 383n, 445n, 456–75nn, 589m, 605, 623; as Dutch colony, 499, 516n; Election of 1884 in, 293n; free blacks in, xx, lxix, 57n, 223n, 246n; Free Soil party in, lxiii, 464n fugitive slaves in, 223n, 430n, 440; gradual emancipation in, 244n, 499, 516n; lawyers in, 79n, 478n; legislature of, 79–80nn, 139n, 528n; Liberty party in, xxv, lxiii, 523nn, 589n, 613n; Methodists in, 629n; ministers in, 83; physicians in, 79; politicians of, 71, 79n, 82n, 112n, 159n, 287, 290n, 464n, 550n; Quakers in, 1, 56n, 390n 500, 623; Republican party in, 112n, 293n, 557n, 580n, 612n; segregation in, 440; slave revolts in, 516n; slavery in 495; temperance in, 57n, 293n; Underground Railroad in, 17, 58n, 237–28, 245n, 247n, 432n, 455–56nn, 524n, 623; Whig party in, 80n, 112n; woman suffrage movement in, lxiii, lxix New York State Anti-Slavery Society, 146n. 523–24nn New York Sun, 580n New York Times, 153n, 156n, 158n, 551n; Freedmen’s Bank and, 191n; Môle St. Nicolas negotiations and, 477n, 489n New York Tribune, 148, 293n, 376n: Horace Greeley and, 176, 178n, 187n, 441, 528n; reporters of, 154n; Môle St. Nicolas negotiations and, 489n New York Vigilance Committee, 237, 245–47nn, 623, 630n New York Voice, 269n New York Weekly Advocate, 247n New York World, 153n Niagara Falls, N.Y.: Douglass describes, 2–3, 3n, 434; Douglass honeymoons at, 3n, 332; peace conference at, 329–30n Niagara River, 3n Niagara Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Lockport, N.Y., 364n Nicaragua, 159n Nice, France, 315n, 340, 372n Nicholas, George, 100n Nichols (black sailor), 234 Nicoll, Robert, 633–44, 635n Nicaragua, 453n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 708

INDEX Nihilists, 417n Nile River, 349, 355, 386n, 389n, 392nn Niles Register, 70, 73–74 Ninety-second Ohio Infantry Regiment, 264n Nixon, William Penn, 408 Noble Peace Prize, 421n Nonconformists (Great Britain), 100n Nonotuck Silk Company, 627n Non-Resistance. See Pacifism Norfolk, Va., 363n, 439, 454n Normal School for Colored Girls, Washington, D.C., 449n Norman Conquest, 221n, 286n Normans, 212, 218, 221n, 284, 286n, 368n, 377n Noroton, Conn., 651–52, 654n North American Commercial Company, 540n North American Review: Civil War covered in, 166, 180n; Douglass articles published in, xxxvi–xxxviii, xlvii, 211–21, 281–84, 298–301, 321–27, 468–76, 479–88, 541–48; management of, xlviii, 211, 298, 321. 541–42; political coverage in, 580n North Berwick, Me., 446n North Carolina, 56n, 112n, 451n; American Revolution and, 520n; antislavery in, 500; freed people in, 258, 262n, 276; Civil War in, 162n, 264n; as colony, 495, 507n; emigrants from, 443; Ku Klux Klan in, 177n; Quakers in, 181–82nn, 458n; railroad segregation in, 551n; Republicans in, 187n, 549n; secession of, 531n; slave codes of, 9n, 511n, 514n; slavery in, 9n, 278n, 280n, 495, 497, 507n, 511n, 514n Northampton, Mass., 245n, 508n, 624n, 628nn Northampton Association of Education and Industry (Florence, Mass.), xl, xlii, 245n, 624n, 627–30nn Northampton Silk Company, 628n North Star, The (Ursa Major), 22, 34, 55n, 57n North Star (Rochester, N.Y.), xvi; circulars of, 15–17; Martin R. Delany as co-editor, xxiv–xxv, xliii, lxiii; Douglass’s editorials in, xxi, liii; finances of, xxi–xxiii, xxv, lxiii, 15; founding of xx–xxi, lxiii, 15, 456n, 605; Garrisonians criticize, xx; Julia Griffiths and, xxiii, lxiii, 15, 390n; merges with Liberty party papers, xxv, lxiv, 15; offices of, xxi; staff of, xxi–xxiii, xliii, lxiii, 15, 390n; poetry in, 530n; quality of, xlii, lxiii;

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX subscribers of, xxi, 15–17. See also Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, N.Y.) Northern German Confederation, 316n Northumberland, Pa., 10n North Washington Mission Sunday School, Washington, D.C., 262n North Washington National Union League, Washington, D.C., 262n Northwest Ordinances, 601n Northwest Territory, 464n Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France, 369n, 410–11, 419nn Norwalk, Conn., 245n Norwich, Conn., 279n, 330n, 630n Notes on the State of Virginia (Jefferson), 501, 520n, 601n, 645n Nouveau Cimetière de la Guillotière, Lyon, France, 370n Nouveau Cimetière Israélite, Lyon, France, 370n Noyes, John Humphrey, 629n Noyes Academy, Canaan, N.H., 223n, 449–50n, 527n Nullification Crisis, 10n, 450–51nn, 531n Oakland, Ohio, 443, 457n Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, 184n, 246n; abolitionists in, 443, 457n, 527n; black students in, 260nn, 262n, 377n, 390n; professors at, 457n O’Brien, William Smith, 320n O’Connell, Daniel, 123–24n, 299, 304, 314n; attacks Disraeli, 311, 319n; befriends Douglass, 303, 309, 318n; death of, 319nn; on Irish history, 115, 313; as landlord, 320nn; leads Repeal movement, 318n, 320nn; in Parliament, 124n; opposes slavery, 310–12, 319–20nn O’Connell Street, Dublin, Ire., 317n Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Athens, Greece. 394n Oglethorpe, James, 495, 507–08n O’Hara, James E., 206n “Oh! Where’s the Slave” (Moore), 60n Ohio, 182n, 296n; abolitionists in, xix–xx, 2, 24–25, 127, 129–30, 153n, 182n, 376n, 439, 443n, 452n, 457n, 502, 529n, 609, 629nn; Black Laws of, 57n; black swing vote in, 561, 572n; Civil War and, 153n, 179n; Congregational Church in, 381n; Douglass lectures in, xix, 2, 609n; farming in, 89n; Free Soil party

Y7870-Douglass.indb 709

709 in, 127, 154n, 229n; free blacks in, xlv, 369n; freed people in, 259n, 264n; fugitive slaves in, 25, 32, 57n, 75, 127, 129, 131n, 133n, 154n; Liberty party in, 127; Methodists in, 629n; politicians of, 127, 154n, 229nn, 269n, 457n, 611–12nn; Quakers in, 3, 457n; Republican party in, 127, 154n, 187n, 229nn. 254, 269n, 270, 557n, 612n; Underground Railroad in, 57n, 127, 133n, 182n, 458n; Whigs in, 127, 154n, 229n Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society, 2, 457n Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, 529n, 629n Ohio River, 19n, 178n, 452n Oklahoma, 552n Old Catholic Church, 423n “Old Granite State, The” (Hutchinson), 635n Old Point Comfort, Va., 48, 61n Old Soldiers’ Home, Washington, D.C., 144n, 181n, 324, 329n Olmsted, Frederick Law, 549n Olympieion, Athens, Greece, 395n On, Egypt, 352 “On American Morals and Manners” (Dewey), 8n “One Hundred Conventions,” lxi, 1, 2, 443, 447n, 457n, 604, 609n Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, N.Y., 223–24nn, 523n Ontario County, N.Y., 430n Ophelia (character), 425n Oporto, Portugal, 383n Orange County, Va., 589n Oregon, 364n Orestes (character), 396n Orient Steam Navigation Company, 383n, 385n Original Melodies (Shaw), 250n Ormuz (ship), 347, 383n, 385nn Orsini, Felice, 418n Orvis, John, 447n Osborn, Charles, 4431n Otego, N.Y., 378n Othello (character), 360, 403n Otis, Harrison Gray, 448n Otis, James, 77n, 126, 500, 518n Otsego Lake, 243n Ottoman Empire, 225–26nn, 230n, 285n, 385n, 388n; and Egypt, 393n; and Greece, 394–95nn; U.S. relations with, 401n “Our Composite Nationality” (Douglass), 557n Ouse River, 368n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

710 Outlook (New York City), 19n Ovando, Nicolas de, 159–60n Ovid, 373n Oxford, Miss., 165 Oxford Movement, 368n Oxford University, 100n, 389n, 397n Oyster House, New York City, 247n Pacific Ocean, 140n, 230n Pacific Railway, 142n Pacifism, 123n, 227n, 367n, 424n, 446n, 448n, 524n Paestum, Italy, 382nn Pagani, Italy, 357, 397n Page Act (1875), 286n Paine, Thomas, 636n Palais de Justice, Paris, France, 410, 419n Palazzo Caffarelli, Rome, Italy, 374n Palazzo Contrarini Fasan, Venice, Italy, 403n Palermo, Italy, 272n Palestine, 368n Palm oil, 615, 619n Palmerston, Lord (Henry John Temple), 100n Panama, Isthmus of, 160n Panama City, Panama, 489n Panic of 1837, 464n Panic of 1873, 290n Panic of 1884, 290n Panthéon, 295, 295–96n Papacy, 13; Avignon popes, 339, 370–71nn; Reformation and, 373n. See also Roman Catholic Church Papal Palace, Avignon, France, 371n Papal States, Italy, 315–16n, 371n, 375n Parent Home and Foreign Mission Society, A.M.E, Church, 262n Paris, France, 148, 152n, 182n, 295–86n, 320n, 370nn, 425n; American expatriates in, 378n, 404n; beauty of, 360; as French capital, 369n, 409; Douglass visits, 338, 361–62, 406n, 407–17, 636–37; fires in, 411–12, 420n, 425n; Franco-Prussian War and, 421n; galleries in 369n; Protestants in, 423n; renovation of, 419–20n Paris Commune, 418–19nn, 421–22n, 424n Parker, Eli Samuel, 174, 186n Parker, Elizabeth Johnson, 186n Parker, George Tann, 18n Parker, Permelia Jane “Jennie” Marsh, xxv, 18–19n; Douglass’s poem for, 17–18; visits Haiti, 19n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 710

INDEX Parker, Theodore, 241, 253n, 358–59, 377n, 399n; denounces Fugitive Slave Law (1850), 503, 529n Parker, William, 186n, 455n Parkman, Francis, 294 Parliament (Great Britain): Corn Law debate in, 292n, 647n; disputes with American colonies, 126n; Home Rule debates in, 303, 316n, 647n; Irish members of,123–24n, 301–02nn, 314n, 321n; members of, 495, 647n; West Indies emancipation and, 97n, 280–81n, 526n Parma, Italy, 315n Parmaely Hall, Peoria, Ill., 557n Parnell, Charles Stewart, 316n, 573n Parnell, Henry, 321n Parocchi, Lucido Maria, 374n Parry, Charles Christopher, 150, 161n Parthenon, Athens, Greece, 356, 394nn Passy, Felix, 424n Passy, Frédéric, 415, 421n, 424n Passy. Paul, 413. 421–22n Paul V (pope) 374n Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, Washington, D.C., 429 Pawtucket, R.I., 446n Payne Institute, Cokesbury, S.C., 262n Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer, 626n Peabody, Ephraim, 240, 251n Peace Democrats, 135–36 Pearce, Edward Lovett, 318n Pearl (ship), 526n Peel, Sir Robert, 289, 292n, 643, 647n Peisisttratos, 395n Pelham, Mass., 525n Peloponnesian War, 394–956n Pemberton, John, 181n Pembrooke Chapel, Liverpool, Eng., 337, 367n penal reform, xxxv, 123n, 223n Pendleton, Edmund, 100n Pendleton, Ind., lxii, 2, 443, 457–58nn, 609n Pendleton, S.C., 456n Pendleton Civil Service Act, 465n, 574n Penn, Irvine Garland, liii, 493n: contributes to The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, xxxix, 591n, 593; Douglass on, 491–93; interviews Douglass, lxxiii, 489–91; praises Douglass’s journalism, xli–xlii. See also Afro-American Press and Its Editors, The Penn, William, 243n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Pennington, James William Charles, 63, 216, 223–24n, 237, 248n, 608n Pennsylvania; abolitionists in, xvii, xix, lx, lxvi, 246n, 439, 443–44nn, 455n, 501, 516n, 519–20nn, 522n, 525n, 557n; black population of, 259; borders of, 530n; black swing vote in, 561; Civil War in, 154n, 323; Democrats in, 10n, 418n, 454n, 461; Douglass in, xvii, xix, lxvi, 234, 367n, 442; free blacks in, xix 56n, 160n, 224n, 235, 247n, 262n, 390n; Free Soilers, in, lxiv; fugitive slaves in, 223n, 233–34; 246n, 440, 455n; gradual emancipation in, 500, 516n; lawyers in, 122n; Mason-Dixon Line and, 207n; mobs in, 439n, 455n, 525n; politicians of, 418n; Quakers in, 223, 223n, 243n, 249n, 444n, 499–500, 516–187nn, 521n, 525n, 557n; Republicans in, 123n, 187n, 557n; Underground Railroad in, 246n, 455n; Whigs in, 123n, 572n Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 246n, 501, 520nn, 522n Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., 588n Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, Pa., 455n, 502, 525n Pennsylvania Freeman (Philadelphia, Pa.), xvii, 528n, 530nn Pennsylvania State Anti-Slavery Society, 444n Pensacola, Fla., 454n Pentelikon (mountain), Greece, 395n People’s Act of 1867 (Great Britain), 125–26n People’s and Howitt’s Journal (London, Eng.), 634n People’s Grocery, Memphis, Tenn., 552n Peoria, Ill., 557n Pequot tribe, 162n, 497, 509–10nn Perfectionist (New Haven, Conn.), 629n Pericles, 394nn Perry, Matthew C., 162n Persia, 531, 388n, 395–96nn, 598. See also Iran personal liberty laws, 133n, 551n Perth, Scot., 635n Peru, 321n, 646n Pessehs, 616, 620n Pestum, Italy, 347 Peterboro, N.Y., lxiii Peterhead, Scot., 385n Petersburg, Va., 37, 59n, 124n; siege of, 264n, 266, 269n Pétion, Alexandre, 157n, 160–61n Petrarch, 401n Peyster, J. Watts de, 420n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 711

711 Pharaoh, 84, 88n, 348, 383n Pharsalus, Greece, 393n Phi Beta Kappa, 522n Philadelphia, Pa.,112n, 153n, 206n, 331n, 418n, 456n; abolitionists in, lx, 439, 443–44n, 455n, 519n, 524–25nn, 557n; black population of, 262n; commerce of, 307; Constitutional Convention in, 519n; Douglass in, 234, 367n, 442; Douglass speaks in, lxvi; First Continental Congress in, 55n, 100n, 520n; free blacks in, 56n, 160n, 224n, 235, 247n, 262n, 390n; founding of, 143n; fugitive slaves in, 233–34; Irish in, 316n; mobs in, 439n, 455n, 525n; newspapers in, 153n, 154n, 444n; nicknames of, 235, 243n, 551; political conventions in, 119, 126n, 187n; publishing houses in, 494; Quakers in, 500, 517–18nn, 521n, 525n, 557n; railroads of, 233, 235, 243n; segregation in, 442 Philadelphia, U.S.S., 472, 478n, 480–81 Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, 524n Philadelphia National Gazette, 153n Philadelphia Press, 154n Philadelphia Times, 154n Philanthropist (Cincinnati), 443n, 452n, 526n 529n Philip II (king of France), 419n Philip Augustus, 369n Philip the Fair (king of France), 371n Philopappos Hill, Athens, Greece, 395n Philippi, Battle of, 380n Philleo, Calvin, 449n Phillipines, 398n Phillips, Wendell: as abolitionist, 2, 267, 270n, 431, 432n, 438, 445n, 503, 627n; supports black suffrage, 115; Douglass and, xviii, lxi, 265, 268n, 443, 457n. 609n; on Elijah Lovejoy murder, 529n; as orator,633; protested by, 443, 457n Phillips, William B., 146, 153n Phillips Exeter Academy, 82n, 429n, 508n Phoenicians, 300, 302n phrenology, 89n Pia Portal, Rome, Italy, 377n Piazzi Barnerini, Rome, Italy, 358, 399n Piazza della Signoria, Florence, Italy, 402n Piazza di San Silvestro, Rome, Italy, 397n Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy, 403n Picton Reading Room, Liverpool, Eng., 367n Picts, 283, 285n Piedmont-Sardinia, Kingdom of, 315–16n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

712 Pierce, Franklin, 159n, 528n, 454n Pierce, William, 509n Pierpont, John, 503, 530n Pilgrims, 495, 506n Pillsbury, Parker, 438, 447–48n, 503 Pinar del Rion, Cuba, 163n Pinchback, P. B. S., 490 Pinckney, Charles, 72–72, 82–83n Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 520n Pincio, Rome, Italy, 358, 398n Pinician Hill, 342, 373n Pintor, Lazaro, 376n Pintor, Sarah Remond, 358, 399n Pioneer Sabbath School, Washington, D.C., 262n Piraeus, Greece, 395nn Pisa, Italy, 340–41, 371–72nn, 382n Pitt, William, 251n Pitts, Gideon, 332, 362–63n, 396n Pitts, Hiram, 332, 363n Pitts, Jane (“Jennie”), 396n Pitts, Jane Willis, 332, 356, 362–63n, 396–97n Pitts, Peter, 396n Pittsburgh, Pa., xix, lxiv, 112n, 207n, 210n Pittstown, N.Y., 161n Pius IX (pope), 343, 375n Place de Grève, Paris, 418n Place de la Concorde, Paris, 404n Place de l’Étolie, Paris, France, 420n Place de l’Opera, Isma’îlîya, Egypt, 387n Plainfield, Conn., 528n Plataea, Battle of, 83n Plato, 356, 395n Platt, Thomas C., 647n Platt-Simmonds Act (1891), 298n Plazzor Moroni, Rome, Italy, 344 Plessy, Homer A., 552n Plessy v. Ferguson case Plutarch, 124n Plymouth, Eng., 506n Plymouth Bay Colony, 506n Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., 227n, 431, 432–33nn Plymouth Rock, 495 Poems (Emerson), 253n Poems and Lyrics (Nicoll), 635n Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Burns), 635n Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States (Whittier), 523n Polipo Hill, Naples, Italy, 380n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 712

INDEX Polk, James K, 418n: cabinet of, 10n, 454n, 508n; Mexican War and, 139–40nn Polk, U.S.S., 243n poll tax, xxxi, 574n Polonius (character), 416, 425n Polycrates, 83n Pomeroy, Samuel, 133n, 207n, 322, 324, 327n, 328n Pompei Italy, 345–46, 380–81nn Pompey the Great, 393n Pompey’s Column, Alexandria, Egypt, 355, 393n Ponce de León, Juan, 162n Pontius Pilate, 374n Poor, Salem, 553n Popular Sovereignty, 140n, 550n Populist party, 539n, 558, 572n Port Hope, Ont., 58n Port Hudson, Battle of, 266, 269n Porter, David, 294 Portia, 345, 380n Portland, Me., lxvi, 306, 424n, 442 Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth Railroad, 457n Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 145, 150, 152n, 160–62nn; Douglass in, 434, 467, 472–76, 477, 488b, 637; Admiral Gherardi in, 462–73, 477n, 479n, 483, 541n Porto Maurizio, Italy, 372n Port Royal, Jamaica, 488n Portsmouth, N.H., 457n Portugal, 380n, 383n, 483, 645n Port Said, Egypt, 349, 383n, 385n Poseidon (Greek god), 394n, 396n Poseidonia, Italy, 382n Post, Amy Kirby, xx, 1, 333, 442, 456n Pottawatomie Creek Massacre, 89n, 195n Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 80n Pozzuoli, Italy, 345, 380nn prejudice: against free blacks, 75–76; Douglass describes, lxix, 65, 211–21, 440; against Irish Americans, 316–17n, 638; in legal system, 65; in the press, 75; religious, 65, 75 Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, xxxi, 207n Presbyterian Church: abolitionist ministers in, 246n, 523n; antislavery in, 518n blacks in, xxxiv, 223n, 237, 246n, 332, 611n; in Egypt, 354; in Italy, 358; ministers in, 237, 246n, 332, 380n, 455n, 523n; in Scotland, 320n Presbytery of Troy, 223n “Presidential Election of 892, The” (Baine), 580n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Pressence, Edmond de, 423n Pressence, Francis Dehaut du, 414–15, 423n Preston, John, 630n Pribilof Islands, 540n Price’s shipyard, Baltimore, Md., 234 Prichard, James Cowles, 385n Prince William County, Va., 580n Princeton, N.J., 618 Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., 80n, 139n, 380n, 455n, 519n Principia (New York City), 523n prohibition, 123n, 139n Promenade des Anglais, Nice, France, 372n Prometheus Bound (Browning), 400n Propylaea, Athens, Greece, 356, 394–95nn Proslavery: Christianity and, 436, 440; ministers and, 5–7, 436, 440; politicians and, 6–7, 141n, 440; press and, 440; U.S. Constitution as, 95, 100–101n, 376n Protestant Episcopal Church: blacks in, 224n; members of, 18n; missions in Liberia, 616 Protestantism, 13, 59n; prejudice against Catholicism, 218, 647n Providence, R.I., 248nn, 250n, 252n, 293n, 628n Providence Arsenal, 293n Providence Isle, Bahamas, 496, 509n Providence Selection of Psalms and Hymns (Shaw), 250n Providence Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 445n Provincial Freeman (Windsor, Ont.), xlv, 223n Prowell, George R., 602 Prussia, 316n, 321n, 400n, 421n, 444n, 508n Pryne, Abram, xxx Ptah (Egyptian god), 392n Ptolemy II (pharaoh of Egypt), 385n, 393n public lands, 66, 78n Public Life of Captain John Brown, The (Redpath), 88n Puerta Plata, Santo Domingo, 156n Puerto Rico, 147, 505n Pulitzer, Joseph, 296n Punjab, India, 388n Purchase Street, New Bedford, Mass., 436 Purnell, John, 245n Purvis, Robert, 56n, 201n, 579n Puteoli, Italy, 345, 380nn Putnam, Agnes Ellison, 342, 344, 357, 374n Putnam, Caroline Remond, 375n, 376nn Putnam, Edmund Q, 343, 347, 374–75nn, 376n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 713

713 Putnam, Joseph Hall, 375n, 376n Putnam, Louisa Victoria, 375n pyramids, 351–52, 354, 389nn Qin Shi Huangdi, 113n Qin dynasty, 113n Quakers: abolitionism of, 1, 56n, 182n, 219, 227n, 238, 246n, 249n, 405n, 441n, 457n, 500–50, 516–18nn, 514n, 525nn, 610n, 629n; abolitionists expelled from, 246n, 249n, 523n, 525n, 629n; in Connecticut, 449n, 457n; Hicksite wing of, 524n; in Indiana, 2, 182n, 457n, 609n; in Great Britain, 223n, 249n, 405n, 407n, 610n; in Indiana, 379n; in Maryland, 442n; in Massachusetts, 238, 445nn, 447n; in New Jersey, 443n; in New York, 1, 56n 390n, 500; in North Carolina, 181–82nn, 458n; in Ohio, 3, 457n; pacifism of, 249n; in Pennsylvania, 223, 223n, 243n, 249n, 444n, 499–500, 516–187nn, 521n, 525n, 557n; petition Congress, 501; in Rhode Island, 526n, 627n; temperance and, 447n; in Tennessee, 443n; as Underground Railroad conductors, 227n; in Virginia, 443n Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine (New York City), 522n Quarterly Review (London, Eng.), 222n Quebec, Canada, lxvi Queen Mary (horse), 651 Queen’s College, Cambridge, Eng., 224n Queenstown, Ire., 336, 366n Quincy, Edmund, xliii, 219, 229n, 438, 447n, 503, 530n Quincy, Josiah, 447n Quirinal Hill, Rome, Italy, 377n Quock Walter cases, 56n Ra (Egyptian god), 389n racism, xxxii, xlvii, 60n, 211–21, 440, 478n, 548, 593, 599–600, 638. See also discrimination; prejudice Radical Abolitionist (New York City), 523n Radical Abolitionist party, xxix–xxxi, lxv– lxvii, 613n Radical Republicans: Douglass endorses, xxxv, 610n; Andrew Johnson and, xxxiii, 112n, 132n, 154n, 291n; Abraham Lincoln and, 127; members of, 127, 187n, 229n; Reconstruction and, xxxiii, xxxv, 108, 113–14, 122, 132n, 154n, 187nn, 229n, 288, 291n, 559, 610n, 612n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

714 Raleigh, N.C., 112n, 201n Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Va., 520n Ram’s Horn (New York City), xix Ramoth, Israel, 57n Ramsdell, Hiram J., 146, 154n Ramses II (pharaoh of Egypt), statue of, 354, 392n Randall, Samuel J., 424–25n Randolph, David Meade, 529n Randolph, Edmund, 500–501, 519n Randolph. Peyton, 519n Ransom, Roger L., 573n Raphael, 399n, 405n Rapier, James T., 184n Rawlins, Arnold V., 366n Rawlins, Frank L., 336, 366n Rawlins, John A., 179nn, 181nn Rawlins, John H., 366n Readjusters (Va.), 277n Readville, Mass., 610n, Real Museo Borbonico, Naples, Italy, 379n Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, The, xxxix, 585, 592n, 592–600 Recollections of A Busy Life (Greeley), 176n “Recollections of the Anti-Slavery, The” (Howe), 434 Reconstruction (U.S.), xxxiii; abolitionists and, 127, 446–47nn, 457n, 466n; amnesty and, 113n, 114, 187n, 424–25n; anti-black violence in, 271, 277n; black suffrage issue in, 114–22; Civil Rights Act (1866) and, 111n; Compromise of 1877 ends, 291n; Congressional, xxxiii, 108, 111–12n, 113–14, 154n ; conservative Republicans and, 123n, 281n; constitutional amendments passed in, 111–12n, 120; Democratic party and, 120, 127–28, 131n, 136, 138–39nn, 210n; Douglass address its issues, 104–111; economic issues of, 269n, 576n; in Georgia, 113n, 280n; Ulysses S. Grant and, lxx, 164, 170–74, 177–78n, 183n, 229n, 647n; Rutherford B, Hayes and, 229n, 291n, 463, 466n; Andrew Johnson resists, xxxiii, 104, 112–13nn, 114, 123n, 610n; Liberal Republicans and, 163, 187n, 573n; Abraham Lincoln begins, 113n, 154n; in Louisiana, lxx, 126n, 138, 143n, 229n; in Mississippi, 113n, 128, 170, 183n, 210n, 224–25n, 277n; newspapers report, 104; Radical Republicans

Y7870-Douglass.indb 714

INDEX and, xxxiii, xxxv, 108, 113–14, 122, 132n, 154n, 187nn, 229n, 291n, 559, 610n, 612n; in South Carolina, 110, 119, 126n, 141–42n, 177–78n, 229n, 277n; southern resistance to, lxx, 119–20, 141–42n, 210n, 229n, 463; in Tennessee, 126n, 138, 383n; in Texas, 113n. 119, 138; violence during, 109, 119, 126n, 138, 142n, 172–73, 210n; in Virginia, 170, 183n, 277n; Wade-Davis Bill, and, 154n; women during, 121 Reconstruction Acts, 127 Red Bank, Battle of, 70, 72, 81n Red Cross, 424n Red, White, and Blue Mining Company, Denver, Colo., 383n Redeemers, 277n Redmond, John, 316n Redpath, James, xlviii, 84–85, 88n, 89n: at North American Review, 298, 32–22 Red River, 168 Reed, E., C., 483–87, 489n Reed, Thomas Bracket, 461, 465n Reeder, Andrew H., 454n Reform Bills (Great Britain), 289, 292n Reformation, 59n, 141n Reggia de Capodimonte, Naples, Italy, 377–78nn Reggio, Italy 384n Reform party (Louisiana), 143n Rembrandt, 405n “Reminiscences” (Douglass), 434–43 Remond, Caroline, 343 Remond, Charles Lenox, 216, 222n, 375n: as abolitionist, xvi, 2, 447n, 503, 528n, 609n; Douglass and, 343, 382n, 447n, 609n, 636n; family of, 343 Remond, John, 375nn Remond, Marchita Juan, 375n, 376n Remond, Nancy Lenox, 375n Remond, Sarah Parker, 343, 375n, 376n Remond, Maricha, 343 Remus, 398n Reni, Guido, 379n Report of the General Superintendent of Freedmen, Department of the Tennessee, and State of Arkansas, for 1864 (Eaton), 180, 182n Representative Men (Emerson), 253n Republic of Liberia, The (Stockwell), 618, 618–19nn

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Republican party: African American support for, xxxviii, 262n; antiextensionism and, xxix, 531n; antislavery principles of, 175, 503; befriends giant corporations, 461; black civil rights and, xxxv, xxxvii, 184n, 267; black suffrage and, 121, 462–63, 537, 541n, 554, 561–64; candidates of, 112n, 139n, 175, 183n, 254, 287–88, 540n, 571n, 580n, 612n; in California, 247n, 549n; civil service laws and, 461, 647n; in Connecticut, 330n, 557n; conventions of, lxxiii, 139n, 153n, 183n, 187n, 259n, 263n, 290n, 463, 466n, 533, 537, 559, 572n, 580n, 612n; currency issue and, 539n, 576; Douglass criticizes, xxxvii; Douglass supports, xxix, xxxi, xxxvii–xxxviii, lxv, lxx, 134–38, 287, 533–39, 541n, 560–63, 581, 613n; economic policies of, 101n, 288, 450–51n, 458, 461, 465n, 555, 558nn, 559, 580n; in Election of, 1856, 613n; in Election of 1860, 133n, 139n, 613; in Election of , 1864, lxviii; Election of 1866 and, 104; in Election of 1868, 134–38; Election of 1872, lxx, 163–75, 187n; Election of 1880 and, 254, 612n; Election of 1884 and, 287; Election of 1888, 466n, 558n, 612n; Election of 1890, 458–63, 465n, 558n; in Election of 1892, 533–39, 558n, 561–64. 582; factional divisions of, 287–88, 290n, 424n; gold standard and, 288, 558n; in Indiana, 144n, 187n, 291n, 612n; Andrew Johnson and, xxxiii, 112n; in Kansas, 293n, 328n; Kansas-Nebraska Act and, 229n, 528n, 613n; in Kentucky, 160n, 187n, 267, 268n, 466n; “Liberal” faction of, 288, 290n, 450–51n, 555, 558nn, 559, 580n; opposes lynching, 533, 535; in Maine, 398n, 424n, 465n, 524n; in Massachusetts, 122n, 179n, 183n, 187n, 465n, 540n; members of, 122n, 228n; in Mississippi, 224n, 277n, 540n; Mugwump faction of, 290n, 334, 364n, 465n, 557n; in New Hampshire, 466nn, 540n, 557n; in New York, 528n; newspapers of, 104, 176n, 408, 458, 549n; in North Carolina, 187n, 549n; in Ohio, 127, 154n, 187n, 229nn, 254, 269n, 270, 557n, 612n; patronage feuds in, 290n; in Pennsylvania, 123n, 187n, 557n; platform of, 175, 463, 466n, 533, 538, 541n; protective tariffs and, 288, 450–51n, 555, 558nn, 559, 580n; Radical faction of, 112n, 288, 404n; Reconstruction issues and, xxxiii, 111–12nn, 121, 462; Santo Domingo annexa-

Y7870-Douglass.indb 715

715 tion and, 156n; secession opposed by, 462; in the South, 121; in South Carolina, 540n; Stalwart faction of, 254, 290n; temperance issue divides, 293n; support tariffs, 101n, 288, 458, 461, 465n; in Vermont, 187n; in Wisconsin, 528n.. See also Liberal Republican party Republican National Committee, 153n, 259–60nn, 557n “Republican Party Must be Maintained in Power, The” (Douglass), lxx Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (Prichard), 385 n Resumption Act (1875), 290n Revere House, Boston, Mass., 221n Revolution (New York City), 448n Revolution of 1848, 158n, 295n, 320n, 636 Revolution the Only Remedy for Slavery (Foster), 446n Rhode Island: abolitionists in, 293n, 375–76nn, 500–501. 609n; Baptists in, 627n; black population of, 259; black regiment of, 81n; Douglass lectures in, 293n, 609n; free blacks in, 293n, 609n; gradual emancipation in, 499, 516n; militia of, 455n; Native Americans persecuted by, 496–97, 510n; Quakers in, 526n, 627n; slave trade and, 508n; suffrage dispute in, 289, 293n, 609n Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, 293n, 530n, 604n Rhône River, France, 339, 370n Rialto Bridge, Venice, Italy, 402n Ribera, Jusepe de, 379n Rice, Alan Thorndyke, xlviii, 298, 327 Richard III (king of England), 405n Richards, Richard, 367n Richardson, Anna Atkins, lxii, 97–98n, 604, 610n Richardson, Ellen, lxii, 97–98n, 604, 610n Richardson, Henry, 91, 610n Richardson, Miss, 355 Ricketson, Joseph, 238, 249–50n Richmond, Anthony, 241, 253–54n Richmond, Va., 37, 178n, 529n: as Confederate capital, 124n, 143n; McClellan’s attack on, 331n; slave sales in, 39, 44, 60n; siege of, 264n; slaves in, xxvi, 39, 49. See also Creole Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, 58n Richmond (Va.) Enquirer, 320n Richmond Theatre, Richmond Va., 100n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

716 Richmond Township, Ontario County, N.Y., 396n Richmond’s Brass Foundry, New Bedford, Mass., 253–54n Rights of Colored Men to Suffrage, Citizenship and Trial by Jury (Yates), 79n Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Otis), 518 Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The (Coleridge), 365–66n Rio Grande River, 140n Ripley, George, 624n Riqueti, Honoré-Gabriel, 295n River Styx, 380n River Tweed, 58n Riverside Park, New York City, 296n Rivoli, Italy, 404n Roaches, 240, 437. See Rotch family Roanoke Island, N.C., 507n Roberts, Joseph Jenkins, 617, 620n Roberts, Ned, 278n Roberts, Sarah, 122n Robeson, Andrew, 240, 445n Robinson family, 437 Robespierre, 418n Rochambeau, Donatien, 157n Rochester, N.H., 228n Rochester, N.Y.: abolitionists in, xxiii, xxx, lxiv–lxvi, 1, 17, 56n, 248n, 390n, 431, 456n, 529n; black convention in, 62–83; churches of, lxvii; colonist sentiment in, 86; Civil War and, 382n; Douglass buried in, 363n; Douglass family in, 429n; Douglass resides in, xxii, xxi–xxii, xxxi, xliii, lxiv, lxvi, lxx, 57n, 327, 328n, 333, 383n, 390n, 440, 456n, 605; Douglass speaks in, lx, lxiv–lxvii, 333, 364n; Douglass’s newspapers in, x–xxix, xli, lxiii– lxiv, 15, 605; free blacks in, xx, xxii, lxv, 86, 382n; newspapers in, 17, 19n, 390n, 456n; Quakers in, 1, 56n, 390n; schools in, 152n, 382–83nn, 390n; Underground Railroad in, 17, 58n, 455n Rochester Express, 19n Rochester Historical Society, 19n Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, xxx, lxiv, 390n, 406n Rochester University, Rochester, N.Y., 431–32, 433n Rockland, Me., 398n Rocky Mountains, 161n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 716

INDEX Rodman, Elizabeth Rotch, 252n, 445n Rodman, Samuel, Jr., 252n Rodman, Samuel, Sr., 240, 252n, 445n Rodman family, 437, 445nn Rogers, Nathaniel Peabody, 632, 634n Rolls, Isaac, 233, 243n Rolls, Lucretia Johnson, 243n Roma, 226n Roman Catholic Church, 629n; anticlericalism and, 422n; cemeteries of, 370n; Church of England and, 368n; College of Cardinals of, 371n; educates blacks, 275; in France, 414, 422–23nn; Galileo and, 398n; in Haiti, 648n; Inquisition and, 137, 339, 646n; in Ireland, 321n; in Italy, 346; male religious orders in, 371n, 379n, 382n, 402n, 423n; Papacy in, 342; Reformation and. 141n, 218, 368n; Western Schism of, 371n Roman Empire: in Britain, 369n; cities of, 380n, 382n; Egypt and, 380n, 383n; emperors of, 395nn, 398n; Greece conquered by, 396n; history of, 285n, 340, 345–46, 371n, 373–74nn, 377n; law codes of, 350n; religion in, 56, 380n, 382n Romania, 226n Rome, Italy, 205, 303, 315–16n; American expatriates in, 341–43, 376–77nn; Douglass visits, 340, 357–58, 378n, 398n; founding of, 398n; becomes Italian capital, 373n, 401n; nicknames of, 341, 373n; Paul jailed in, 381n; Protestant churches in, 379n, 398n Romulus, 398n Roosevelt, Theodore, 429n Root, John W., 549n Rossini, Gioachino, 540n Rost, Pierre A., 98n Rotch, William, Jr., 251–52n, 445n Rotch, William, Sr., 251–52n, 445n Rotch family, 240, 437 Round Hill School, Northampton, Mass., 508n Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 296n Royal Academy, London, 405n Royal African Company, 495, 506–07nn Royal Geographical Society (Great Britain), 406n Royal Horse Guards (Great Britain), 138n Royal Jubilee School for Girls, Newcastle, Eng., 610n Royal Library, Berlin, Germany., 400n Royal Society of British Artists, London, 405n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Rubens, 405n Rue de Richelieu, Paris, France, 421n Rue de Rivoli, Paris, 362, 369n, 404n Rue du Chapeau-Rouge, Avignon, 371n Rue Le Peletier, Paris, 418n Ruggles, David: in Florence Community, 623–24, 628nn, 630–31n; Underground Railroad and, 237–38, 245n, 247, Rush, Benjamin, 500, 519n Rusk, Thomas Jefferson, 441, 456n Russell, Lord (John Russell), 105, 111n Russell, William, 465n Russia, 119, 125n, 132n, 158n; anti-Semitism in, 210n, 286n, 545, 552n; despotism in, 409; empire of, 226n, 417–18n; emancipates serfs, 276, 280n, 546; U.S. ambassadors to 418n, 444n, 454n Russwurm, John, 246n Rutledge, John, 503, 520–21n, 530n Rynders, Isaac, 635n sabots, 411, 420n Sackville, Lionel Cranfield, 317n Sackville Street, Dublin, Ire., 308–09, 317n Said Pasha, 385n Sailor’s Magazine (New York City), 524n St. Augustine, 113n Saint Augustine, Fla., 162n St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 414, 422n St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 375n St. Césaire, 371n St. Clair, Arthur, 81n Saint Eustache, Church of, Paris, France, 410, 419n Sainte Geneviéve, 295n St. George’s Hall, Liverpool, Eng., 336, 366n St. John, John Pierce, 290, 293n St. John River, Liberia, 614 St John’s College, Fordham, N.Y., 398n St. John’s Wood Park, Westminster, Eng., 405n St. Joseph Valley Register, (South Bend, Ind.), 144n St. Louis, Mo., 112n, 139n, 455n, 588n: slaves in, 184n, 223n, 426n St. Luke’s Church, Washington, D.C., 224n St. Mary’s School, Newcastle, Eng., 610n St. Michaels, Talbot County, Md.; Thomas Auld in, 697n; Douglass in, lx, lxxi, 608n; slavery in, lx, 444n St. Noets, Eng., 338, 368–69n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 717

717 St. Paul River, 614–15 St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, Eng., 373n St. Peter, 374nn St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Italy, 341–43, 357–58, 373–75nn, 397–98nn St. Petersburg, Russia, 132n, 218 St. Thomas, 645n St. Xavier School, Cincinnati, Ohio, 398n Saint-Dominique. See Haiti Salamis, Battle of, 356, 395nn Salas, Juan Pablo, 162n Salem, Peter, 553n Salem, Mass., 222n, 375n, 457n; abolitionists in, 524n; as slave trade port, 496, 508–09nn; slaves in, 499 Salem, N.J., 390n Salem, Ohio, xix, 530n Salem Anti-Slavery Society, 376n Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, 375n, 524n Salerno, Italy, 347, 382n Salisbury, Conn., 528n Salles des Momies Royales, 390n Sally Lloyd (ship), 607n Salmson, Jules, 405n Salnave, Sylvain, 152n, 186n, 478n Salnave, Rosa, 478n Salomon, Etienne Féicité (Lycius), 478–79nn, 489n Salon de le Societé des Artistes Français, Paris, 405n Samaná Bay, Dominican Republic, 145, 147, 151n, 472, 477n, 611n Samaná Peninsula, Dominican Republic, 161n Sambo stereotype, 275, 279–80n San Anna di Palazzo (street), Naples, Italy, 382n San Antonio Cape, Cuba, 151, 163n Sanborn, Franklin B., 434 Sanchie (ship), 355–56 San Cristobal, Santo Domingo, 161n Sandford, Nathan, 68, 79n Sandiford, Ralph, 500, 517n Sandwich Islands. See Hawaii Sandy Hook, N.J., 334, 365n San Francisco, Calif., 549n San Francisco Elevator, 237, 247nn San Francisco Pacific Appeal, 247n San Jacinto, Battle of, 456n San Marco, Church of, Florence, Italy, 360, 402n San Marino Convent, Naples, Italy, 344

9/1/21 4:17 PM

718 Sannazaro, Jacopo, 378n San Pedro River, 614 San Remo, Italy, 372n Sans-Souci Palace, Haiti, 157n Santa Bárbara de Samaná, Dominican Republic, 145–46, 151–52nn, 156nn Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, Florence, Italy, 376n Santana y Familias, Don Pedro, 155–56n Santo Domingo:; American black settlers of, 145, 147–48, 152n, 156nn, 159–60nn; annexation of, xxxv, xli, 122n, 144–45, 152nn 155–56nn 159n, 472, 477n, 601n, 611n; Christopher Columbus and, 151n, 505n; Douglass as chargé d-affaires to, 605; Douglass visits, xxxv xli, lxx, 144–57, 472, 605; earthquakes in, 156n; wins independence from Haiti, 155nn; political parties of, 155–56nn, 161n; revolutions in, 155–56nn; Spain recolonizes, 155–56nn, 158n, 161n; slavery in, 148–49, 159–60n; as Spanish colony, 146; Charles Sumner and, 122n, 145, 472; U.S. consulate at, 383n; U.S. trade with, 159n Santo Domingo City, Dominican Republic, 147, 149, 158nn, 160–61nn Santo Domingo Commission, lxx, 144–45; report of, 151n, 154–55nn, 159–61nn; members of, 154n, 158n, 160n, 185–86nn, 611n; reporters travel with, 158n; staff of, 152–53nn, 155n, 160–61nn, 187n; White House dinner of, 174, 186n; witnesses of, 156nn, 159–60nn Saône River, France, 339, 370nn Saratoga Springs, N.Y., 204, 218, 244n Sardinia, 376n Sargent, Christine K., 377n Sargent, John Turner, 343 Savannah, Ga., 280n Savery, Mrs., 145 Savona, Italy, 372n Savonarola, Hieronymus, 360, 402n Savoy, France, 315n Saxons, 212, 218, 221n, 284, 286n Schenectady, N.Y., 142n Schiller, Friedrich, 540n Schlicht, Paul, 433 Schoelcher, Victor, xi, xlviii. lxxiii, 362, 404n, 416–17, 425n, 636–37 School of Industrial Arts, Geneva, Switz., 405n School of Mines, Paris, France, 152n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 718

INDEX Schuyler, Eugene, 387n Schuylkill River, 243n Schumacher, F., 160n Scribner’s Monthly Magazine (New York City), xxxviii, 231 Scribner’s Publishing House, 295 Scotch-Irish, 316–17n Scotland, 517n; abolitionists in, 59n, 376n; blacks in, 376n; Robert Burns and, 301, 635n; Celtic culture of, 209n; churches of, 223, 320; Douglass in, history of, 250n, 283, 332; immigrants from, 79n, 86n, 88–89nn; Picts in, 283, 285n; Vikings in, 285n Scott, Dred, 601n Scott, Sir Walter, 58n, 250n Scott, Winfield, 141n, 143n, 180n Scottish Borders, 58n Scottish Covenanters, 320n Scrooby, Eng., 506n Scylla, 384n Scythians, 302n Secession: James Buchanan and, 95, 454n; causes for, 94–95; compromises to prevent, 95, 99n, 101n; constitutionality of, 133n; of Georgia, 142nn, 269n, 531n; Lincoln’s election and, lxvi, 504, 531n; proslavery motivation for, 137; of Virginia, 99n, 141n, 266, 531n. See also individual states Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, Pa., 451n Second Great Awakening, 627n Sedan, France, 421n “Secret Six,” 160n, 253n Segregation: in education, 122n; Emerson opposes, 253n; against free blacks, 122n, 251n, 390n; in hotels, 266, 268, 574n; in lyceums, 241, 253n; on railroads, 233, 248n, 266, 442–43, 545, 551–52nn, 570, 574n; in restaurants, 248n, 268, 574n; in schools, 251n, 390n, 524n; on steamships, 238, 248–49n, 442–43, 457n, 574n; in streetcars, 443, 574n; in theatres, 268, 428n, 574n Seine River, 360, 402n, 404n, 419n Seirhausen, Oldenburg, Germany., 398n “Self-Made Men” (Douglass), lxvi “Self-Reliance” (Emerson), 253n Selim I (sultan of Ottoman Empire), 230n “Selling of Joseph, The” (Sewall), 500, 517n Selma, Ala., 142n Seminoles, 136, 140n, 439

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Seminole Wars, 140n, 180n, 195n; opposition to, 439, 452n Senate (French), 415–16, 423n Seneca Falls, N.Y., xxiv, 403n, 423n, 528n; convention in, lxiii, 456n, 524n Senegal, 505–06nn, 598 Senegal Adventurers, 506n Senusret I (pharaoh of Egypt), 389n Separatists, 506n Serfdom (Russia), 119, 125n, 276, 280n, 546 Seven Years’ War, 138n “Seventy, The” (abolitionists), 446n Seville, Italy, 506n Sewall, Samuel, 500, 517n Seward, William Henry, 219; Douglass praised by, 323, 328n; “higher law” and, 543, 550n; Andrew Johnson and, 108, 112n, 128; Reconstruction and, 108, 112n; as secretary of state, 112n, 132n, 323; Whig party and, 176n, Seymour, George L. 620n Seymour, Horatio, 134–35 Shadd, Mary Ann, xlv Shadrach. See Wilkins, Frederick Shakespeare, William: quoted, 24, 56n, 59nn, 132n, 134n, 213, 302n, 403n, 466n Shankland, 352 Shannon River, 317n sharecropping, 521n; injustice of, 570; Southern poverty and, 573n Shaw, Hannah Heath, 250n Shaw, Oliver, 238, 250n Shaw, Robert Gould, 377n Shechum, Israel, 57n Sheffeld, Charles A., 621 Sheffield, Mass., 8n Sheldon Jackson College, (Sitka, Alaska), 182n Shepherd, Alexander Robey, 153n Shepherd, Arthur, 146, 148, 153n Sherbo Island, Liberia, 618 Sheridan, Phillip, 191, 644n Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 304, 314n Sherman, John, 267, 269n, 612n Sherman, Ro, 521n Sherman, William Tecumseh, 88n, 181n, 195n, 269n, 294 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1892), 465n Shiloh, Battle of, 143n Shiloh Presbyterian Church, New York City, 224n Shoemaker, Mr. See Schumacher, F. Shriners, 230n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 719

719 Shubra Avenue, Cairo, Egypt, 391n Shumacher, F., 149 Shurba Road, Cairo, Egypt, 353 Shylock (character), 213 Sicily, Italy, 315n, 348, 377n, 384nn Siena, Italy, 371n Sigel, Franz, 147, 158n Simonton, John W., 162n Sims, Thomas, 355n Sinou County, Liberia, 617, 620n Sir Charles (horse), 59n Sixtus IV (pope), 646n Skaneateles, N.Y., 447n Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery, A (Stroud), 514n Skinner Plantation, Talbot County, Md., 607n Slater, John F., 274, 279n “Slaughter in the South” (Fortune), 553, 556n Slave (Newcastle, Eng.), 610n Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore, The (Hildreth), 529n Slave catchers, 234, 236, 253n, 526n slave codes and laws regarding slavery: in Alabama, 278n, 498, 514n; n Arkansas, 514n; in Kentucky, 514n; in Louisiana, 278n, 511– 12nn, 514n; in Maryland, 511–12nn, 514n; in North Carolina, 9n, 511n, 514n; in South Carolina, 514n; in Tennessee, 513–14nn; in Texas, 514n; in Virginia, 9n. 511–12nn, 514n slaveholders: in Alabama312, 452n; Civil War and, xxxii; deny Bibles to slaves, 13; cruelty of, 28, 596; Douglass ridicules, 116, 217, 587; immorality of, 273–74, 596; injured by slavery, 59 ; legal codes and, 497–98; mail censored by, 439, 504, 531n; in Maryland, in, xviii, lix–lx, 1n, 242n, 436, 455n, 603, 606n; in North Carolina, 182n; political power of, 217, 587; rebellions feared by, 436, 643; marriages and, 278n, 498; in South Carolina, 194n, 502; as traitors, 116; U.S. presidents as, 587; vacation in North, 244, 248nn; in Virginia, 9n, 44–45, 55n, 444n, 464n, 497–98, 07n, 645n slave hunters. See slave catchers Slave patrols, 88n Slave revolts: abolitionists advocate, 446n; John Brown and, 640; aboard Creole, xxvi, 48–55, 60–62nn, 229n, 452–53n; fears of, 88, 643; in Jamaica, 8n; Nat Turner, 8n, 444n, 640; Denmark Vesey and, 640, 645n; in Virginia, 436, 444n, 640

9/1/21 4:17 PM

720 Slave trade: African, 48, 59, 98n, 517n; in Caribbean, 159–60n; domestic, 47, 453n; Great Britain and, 92, 98n, 495; in New England, 252n; Liverpool as center, 366n; Quakers and, 252n, 518n; reopening of, 141n, 439; U.S. Constitution and, 100–101n, 501, 520–21n, 589n; in Virginia, 9n, 37, 39, 41, 100n; John Wesley condemns, 595, 601n Slave traders, 38, 41–47, 56n, 142n, 517n Slavery: in Alabama, 278n, 498; ancient, 505n, 512n, 570; in Arkansas, 142n, 182n, 512n; Biblical defense of, 122; in British West Indies, 404n; in Caribbean, 508–09nn, 641; churches support, 4, 106; in colonial era, xl, 508–09nn, 587, 600–01n; in Connecticut, 495; in Cuba, 404n, 641; in Delaware, 233n, 514n; in the District of Columbia, 9n, 445n; Douglass writes about, xl, liii, 19–55, 299, 493–504, 595–96; Ethnological justifications for, 122; euphemisms for, 7, 11n; extension of, 140n; in fiction, 451n; fostered low morals, 273–74; in Georgia, slavery in, 8n, 136, 253n, 278n, 495–98, 501, 507–08nn, 531n, 588–89n; in Haiti, 157n, 641; humanitarian justification for,122; in Kentucky, 129, 133n, 164, 223n, 512–14nn; legal codes and, 497, 511n; legacy of 593–95; lingering effects of, 106, 202, 273–74, 299; literary depictions of, 19–55, 451n; in Louisiana, xxvi, 278n. 511–14nn; in Maryland, xl, lix–lx, 511n; in mines, 570; in Mississippi, 10n, 141–42nn, 165, 181n, 278n, 449n, 497; in Missouri, 184n, 278n, 417, 426n; in North Carolina, 9n, 278n, 280n, 495, 497, 507n, 511n, 514n; race and, 497; in South Carolina, 9n, 96, 141n, 278n, 280n, 495, 497, 507–08nn, 510n; U.S. Constitution on, xxix, 80n, 62n, 95, 100–101n, 121, 376n, 501, 520n, 523n, 589n; in Virginia, 7, 9n, 436 Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States of North America (Weld), 9n, 527n Slavery and Anti-Slavery (Goodell), 517–18n, 520n Slaves: autobiographies of, xvii, lxxii, 4, 223n, 230, 604, 607n, 609–10n, 627n; baptism of, 517nn; Bibles distributed to, 11; compared to Chinese workers, 227n; in Civil War, xxxii, 163–69; conditions of, 275–76; as cooks, 56n; discontent of, 21–22; education of, 6, 8n, 13,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 720

INDEX 182n, 202–03, 272, 283, 439, 449n, 454–55n, 491, 498, 514n; escape attempts of, xxxvi, lx, 9n, 22, 25–36, 55–56nn; financial value of, 83n, 440, 456n; health of, 7, 10n; hired out, lx, 251n, 608n; Jews compared to, 208; literary depictions of, xxvi–xxvii; manumission of, xviii, lxii, 91, 97–98n, 224n, 247n, 498, 605; marriages of, 6, 23, 44–45, 274, 278, 498, 513n, 596; in Maryland, xviii, xl, lix–lx, 1, 9n, 97–98n, 223n, 231–42, 251, 278nn, 280n, 455n, 497, 603, 606n; murdered, 596; numbers of, xx–xxi, 90n, 178n, 440, 509n; as parents, 7, 276, 596; as preachers, 203, 275; prices of, 453n; as property, 14, 440, 595; punishments of, 28, 49, 274, 276, 299, 498, 514n, 574n, 595–96; religion of, 7, 24, 203, 272, 274, 444n, 498, 500; revolts of, 8n, 436, 444n, 630; in Tennessee, 164, 182n, 451n, 498; Union Army recruits, xxxii, lxviii; in Virginia, xix, xxvi, 7, 9n, 519–55, 5–56nn, 100n, 247n, 261n, 278n, 280n, 430n, 436, 439, 444n, 454–55nn, 495–96, 498, 507–08nn, 510n, 587, 589n. See also fugitive slaves, slavery Slew, Jenny, 515n Slew v. Whipple, 515n Slidell, John, 98–99nn Smith, Arthur A., 259, 260n Smith, Gerrit, 57n: as abolitionist, xxv, xxxi, 31, 502–03; supports black suffrage, 115; Salmon P. Chase and, 129, 132–33n; Civil War and, 328n; as congressman, lxiv–lxv, 229n; Douglass and, xxv xxviii, xxx, lxiii–lxiv, lxvii, 219, 229n, 613; free blacks and, xlv, 63; Garrisonians and, 629n; Jerry Rescue and, 456n; Liberty party and, xxiii, xxv, lxiii–lxiv, 613n; philanthropy of, xlv; as presidential candidate, xxxi, xvii; founds Radical Abolition party, xxix–xxx, lxv; rejects Republican party, xxix, 132–33n; views slavery as unconstitutional, xxv, 62n, 520n; wealth of, lxiii Smith, James McCune, xxiv, 176n Smith, James H., 259, 263n Smith, James Webster, 185n Smith, Jean Edward, 185n Smith, Samuel Francis, 11n Smith, Sydney, 313, 321n Smithfield, R.I., 627n Smithsonian Institution, 261–62n, 378nn

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Society of the Friends of Ireland of All Religious Persuasions, 318n Social Sacred Melodist (Shaw), 250n Socialism, 88n, 218, 263n, 367n Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, 447n Socrates, 356, 395n “Soft money,” 291n Somerset, Eng., 399n “Son of Thy Sire’s Eternal Love” (Wesley), 57n “Song of Hiawatha, The” (Longfellow), 377n Sonnets from the Portuguese (Browning), 400n Sonnets to the Memory of Frederick Douglass (Tilton), 404n Sophocles, 394n Sorbonne, Paris, France, 421n Sorrento, Italy, 344, 378n, 382n Soufflot, Jacques-main, 295n Soulouque, Faustin, 88n South: abolitionists in, 88n, 434; anti-black violence in, 271, 277n; black suffrage, 106, 110, 219, 277n; camp meetings in, 391n; “carpetbaggers” in, 291n; compared to Celts, 209n, conditions of blacks in, xxxvii, xlvii, 204–05; convict lease system in, 363n, 570, 573n; disenfranchisement of blacks in, 540n, 574n, 601n; Exodus from, lxxi, 204; free blacks in, 8n; freedom of speech suppressed, 121; “home rule” in, 553; lynchings in, xxxix, 533–34, 547–48, 53–56, 598; newspapers in, 9n; opposition to slave literacy in, 8n; political violence in, lxxi, 109, 463, 533–34, 560; poll taxes enacted in, 574n; Quakers driven from, 182n; racism in, xlvii, lxxi, 211–21, 533–34, 548; Reconstruction resisted in, lxx, 113n, 119–20, 177n, 291n; “Restoration” governments of, 109, 113n; “Scalawags” in, 291n; schools in, 388n; secession of, xxxi, 120, 454n; slave revolts feared, 88n; slaves escape from, 9n; slavery’s lingering effect in, 202; Whigs in, 229n; whipping posts in, 574n. See also individual states; Confederate States of America South Bend, Ind., 144n South Butler, N.Y., 223n South Carolina, 153n, 456n, 489n; American Revolution in, 73, 83n, 499; anti-black violence in, 142n, 177–78n, 277n; black population of, 227n, 258, 262n; Civil War in, lxvii, 88n, 143n, 269n, 383n, 610n; as colony,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 721

721 508n, 510n; cotton grown in, 96; Democratic party in, 141n, 194n, 289; Douglas speaks in, 456n; free blacks in, 520n; “freedom suits” in, 512n; legal codes of, 497; passes Negro Seamen Acts, 242n, 453n; nicknames of, 119, 126n; Nullification Crisis and, 10n, 450n, 531n; politicians of, 10n, 72–73, 82–83n, 141n, 162n, 194–95nn, 453n, 501, 503, 520n, 527n, 530–31nn, 589n; railroad segregation in, 551n; Reconstruction in, 110, 119, 126n, 141–42n, 177–78n, 229n, 277n; Republicans in, 540n; secession of, 141n, 503, 531n; slave codes of, 514n; slave marriages in, 513n; slave revolts in, 640, 645n; slaves in, 9n, 96, 141n, 278n, 280n, 495, 497, 507–08nn, 510n; characterized as “Solid,” 289, 291n, 570; states’ rights and, 10n, 266 South Canaan, Conn., 522n South Kensington Museum, London, Eng., 405n Southampton, Eng., 506n Southampton, Mass., 328n Southampton County, Va., 436, 444n, 640 “Southern Abolitionists” (Conway), 434 Southern Horrors (Wells), 549n Spain, 220, 377n: colonies of, 159–60n, 162n, 285n, 496, 508n; Cuba and, 162n; FrancoPrussian War and, 421n; Haiti and, 157n, 489n; Holland and, 137; Inquisition and, 137, 643, 646n; Louisiana and, 83n; Mexico and, 140n; monarchs of, 158n; Moors persecuted in, 283, 285n; Napoleon invades, 529n, 645n; navy of, 162n; Santo Domingo and, 155n; slavery and, 159–60n, 483; slave trade and, 619n; U.S. relations with, 228n, 519n Spanish Armada, 317n Spanish-American War, 398n, 465n Spanish Town, Jamaica, 162n Sparta, Greece, 356, 394n, 396n Spartans, 57n, 622 Speedwell (ship), 506n Spiceland Quaker Meeting, Ind., 458n Spiceland, Ind., 379n Spiceland Academy, Spiceland, Ind., 379n Spiritualism, 397n, 446n, 629n spoils system, 451n Spooner, Lysander, 523n Spratt, Leonidas, 453n Sprague, Annie, 390n Sprague, Hattie, 390n Sprague, Nathan, 390n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

722 Spring Street A.M.E. Church, Rochester, N.Y., lxvii Springfield, Mass., 364n, 628n Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, 362, 406n Square of St. Marks, Venice, 360 Stallo, Johann Bernhard, 358. 398–99n Stanningley, Eng., 222n Stanton, Edwin, lxviii, 112n, 144n, 180n, 196n, 324; Douglass meets, 329n Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, American Equal Rights Association and, 524n; family of, 403n, 415, 423n,527n; edits Revolution, 448n; organizes Seneca Falls convention, 524n Stanton, Henry Brewster, 403n, 415, 423n, 503, 527–28n Stanton, Marguerite Berry, 403n, 423n Stanton, Theodore, 361–62, 403–04n, 408, 415–16, 425n, 636–37 Stanton High School for Negroes, Jacksonville, Fla., 556n Stanzione, Massimo, 379n Star of the West, U.S.S., 243 States’ rights: John C. Calhoun and, 10–11nn, 504; in postbellum South, 494; U.S. Constitution and, 94–95, 105–06, 463; U.S. Supreme Court and, xxxvi Stearns, Charles, 447n Stearns, George L., 328n Stebbins, Giles Badger, 623–24, 629–20n Stephens, Alexander, 113n, 169, 266, 269n Stephenson, George, 405n Stevens, Lucius, 61n Stevens, Thaddeus, 113n, 115, 122n Stevenson, Andrew, 124n Stewart (sailor), 245n Stewart, Alvin, 502, 523n Stewart, Henry, 552n Stewart, Thomas McCants, 618–20nn Stickney, William, 611n Stockwell, George S., 618n Stone Bridge Village, R.I., 250n Stonington, R.I., 443 Story, Joseph, 122n Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse) (Hutchinson, 631–34, 634n Stout, Ira, lxvi Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 104, 451n, 530n: in Europe, xxix; Industrial College and, xxix; Uncle Tom’s Cabin and, xxvi, 227n, 439, 503 Strait of Messina, 377n, 384n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 722

INDEX Street, Eng., 399n Strombli, Italy, 348, 384n Stroud, George M., 514 n Strong, James, 72, 82n Stuart, Charles, 527n Stuart (sailor), 237 Stuart dynasty (Great Britain), 495, 506n Styx, 345 Sudan, 598 Suez Canal, 349–50, 383n, 385nn, 392n Suffrage: Great Britain, 119, 125–26n, 289, 292nn; literacy tests and, 466n, 574n, 6001n; in Rhode Island, 289, 293n, 609n; white male suffrage, 606n, 609n. See also Black suffrage; Woman suffrage Suffrage Party (R.I.), 293n Sumner, Charles, 122n, 219, 267, 269n, 454n; black suffrage and, 115, 122n; Preston Brooks attacks, 191–92, 194–95nn, 439, 503, 527n; death of, 191n; Douglass praises, 164, 276; Ulysses S. Grant opposed by, 122n, 145, 164, 177n; Andrew Johnson attacks, 113n, 122n; as lyceum lecturer, 241, 253n; as Radical Republican, 288; opposes Santo Domingo annexation, 177n, 611n; reputation of, 194; in U.S. Senate, 122n Susquehanna River, 233, 243n Sutch, Richard, 573n Sybil (Disraeli), 292n Sutton, N.H., 182n Sweden, 401n Swedenborgianism, 629n “Swing around the Circle,” 108–09, 112–13n, 119; Republicans denounce, 132n; Seward joins, 132n Switzerland, 332, 370n, 536, 540n Sydenham. Eng., 374n Sydney, Aus., 346, 382–83nn, 385n Sylvestrines, 402n Synge, J. M., 318n Syracuse, N.Y., 158n; abolitionists in, lxv, 447n, 455n, 524n; free blacks in, 223n; fugitive slaves in, 440, 455n; Jerry Rescue in, 455n, 524n Syria, 388n, 598 Taber, William C., 238, 249n Taccillo, Mr., 357 Taft, William Howard, 429n Talbot, Gerald F., 365n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Talbot County, Md., lix, 1n. 98n, 251n, 278n, 603, 606–08nn Taliaferro County, Ga., 269n Tallahassee, Fla., 201n Tallahatchie County, Miss., 224n Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Maurice de, 443n Talliaferro, W. A., 259 Tallmadge, Ohio, 522n Talman Building, Rochester, N.Y., xxi, 17 Tammany Hall, New York City, 131n Tancred (Disraeli), 292n Taney, Roger B., 111n, 122n, 131; Dred Scott decision and, 265, 439, 453n, 596, 601n Tanner, Benjamin Tucker, xxxviii, 208–09, 210–11n, 287 Tanner, Henry Ossawa, 211n Tanner, Sarah Elizabeth Miller, 211n Tappan, Arthur, 228–29n, 237, 246n, 450n, 502, 522n, 528n Tappan, Lewis, 203n, 219, 228n, 238, 450n, 502, 522n Tarascon, France, 371n tariffs, 10–11nn, 101n, 123n, 288, 450n, 458, 465n, 531n, 555; Grover Cleveland and, 465n, 558nn, 575, 580n; Democrats oppose, 575; Douglass’s position on, 535; Benjamin Harrison advocates, 558n, 581n Tate, Alexander, 174, 186n Taunton, Eng., 319n Taylor, Zachary, 140n, 401n, 589n Tecumseh, 464n telegraph, 261n Télémaque, Seide, 378n, 645n Tell, William, 536–37, 540n temperance and temperance advocates; abolitionists and, 246, 446n, 524n, 528n, 627n, 629n, 632, 633n; in Connecticut, 522n; Douglass advocates, 293n; free blacks and, 223n in Great Britain, 407n; lectures on, 144n; in Massachusetts, 458n, 629n; Theobald Mathew and, 314–15n; in Massachusetts, 445n, 447n; in New York, 57n, 269n; newspapers of, 269n; Quakers and, 252n, 445n; Unitarians and, 377n Temple, William G., 146, 154n Temple of Appollo, Pompeii, Italy, 381n Temple of Athena Nike, Athens, Greece, 394–95nn Temple of Diana, Ephesus, 395n Temple of Hephaistos, Athens, Greece, 396n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 723

723 Temple of Isis, Pompei, Italy, 381n Temple of Jupiter, Athens, Greece, 356 Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, Rome, Italy, 374n Temple of Jupiter, Pompei, Italy, 381n Temple of Mercury, Pompei, Italy, 381n Temple of Neptune, Paestum, Italy, 382n Temple of Neptune, Pozzuoli, Italy, 380n Temple of Reason, Paris, France, 419n Temple of Serapis, Pozzuoli, Italy, 380n Temple of the Nymphs, Pozzuoli, Italy, 380n Temple of the Olympian Zeus, Athens, Greece, 395n Temple of the Vestal Virgins, Rome, Italy, 373n Tennessee: anti-black violence in, 126n, 138; black disenfranchised in, 574n; Civil War in, 153n, 179n; emancipation in, 178; “Exodus” from, 203n; Fourteenth Amendment ratified by, 112n; freed people in in, 259, 262n; legislature of, 112n; lynchings in, 545; manumissions in, 498; politicians of, 112n, 141n, 451n, 453n; Quakers in, 443n; Reconstruction in, 126n, 138, 383n; secession of, 531n; slave codes of, 513–14nn; slave marriages in, 513n; slavery in, 164, 182n, 451n, 498; in War of 1812, 451n Tennessee, U.S.S., lxxvi, 146, 153–55nn, 163n Tennison’s Hotel, Washington, D.C., 588n Testimony against that Antichristian Practice of making Slaves of Men, A (Coleman), 517n Texarkana, Tex., 549n Texas: annexation of, 10n, 136, 139–40n, 228–29nn, 399n, 439; anti-black violence in, 119, 126n, 138; freedmen in, 259, 262n; Civil War and, 181n, 264n; as colony for manumitted slaves, 444n; “Exodus” from, 203n; lynchings in, 549n; politicians of, 387n, 441, 456n; Reconstruction in, 113n. 119, 138; as republic, 159n, 453n, 456n; secession of, 531n; slave code of, 514n; statehood admission of, 453n Tewfik, 387n Textile industry, 252n, 279n, 330n, 590n, 627–28nn Thailand, 203n Thames River, Eng., 365n Thayer, Phebe, 390n Theatre of Dionysus, Athens, Greece, 356, 394n Thebes, Egypt, 392n Thebes, Greece, 396n Theosius, Temple of, Athens, Greece, 356

9/1/21 4:17 PM

724 Theseus, 395–96nn Thesion, Athens, Greece, 396n Third Louisiana Regiment (Union Army), 269n Thirteenth Amendment, lxviii, 98n; ultimate emancipation and, 516n; William Lloyd Garrison and, 61n; provisions of, 112n, 265, 267, 610n; ratification of, 113n Thomas, Lorenzo, xxxii, 166, 168, 180n, 324, 329n Thompson, Edwin, 438, 447n Thompson, George: mob targets him, 448–4n, 502; tours United States, 61n Thompson, George, 526n Thoreau, Henry Davis, 624n, 626n` Thoughts on the Death Penalty (Burleigh), 528n Tibullus, 373n Ticonderoga, Battle of, 70, 81n Tilden, Samuel, 210n, 291n Tilton, Elizabeth, 228n Tilton, Theodore, 404n: corresponds with Douglass, 90; divorce of, 228n, 397n; recruits Douglass as author, xxxi, xxxiii, 83–84, 91, 134, 404n, 533; Douglass visits in Paris, 361, 412 Tippecanoe, Battle of, 464n Tipperary, Ire., 314n, 321n Titus (emperor), 374 Tiverton, R.I., 250n “To the Hutchinson Family” (Howitt), 634n Todd, Francis, 448n Tombs (prison), 237, 245–46nn Tonawanda reservation, N.Y., 186n Toombs, Robert, 137, 142n Topeka (Kans.) Call, 591 Torah, 391n Toronto, Ont., 58n, 390n Torrey, Charles Turner, 231, 242n, 502, 526n Torrington, Conn., 195n Tory party (Great Britain), 289, 292nn, 319n, 572n Total Abstinence Society, 314n Tour des Latrines, Avignon, France, 371n Tourgée, Albion, 549n “Toussaint L’Ouverture” (Whittier), 648n Towanda, Pa., 364n Tower of St. John, Avignon, France, 371n Towns, Mary, 131n Tracey, Benjamin Franklin, 473, 478n Trafalgar Square, London, Eng., 405n Trajan (Roman emperor), 373n, 385n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 724

INDEX Transcendentalism, 253n, 365n, 622, 624n, 626n, 629n Transcontinental railroad, 123n Transylvania University, Lexington, Ky., 99n, 139n, 187n, 268n Travis, Joseph, 444n Travis, Sally, 444n Treaty of Paris, 519n Treaty of Plombiers, 315n Treaty of Ryswick, 155n, 646n Treaty of Washington, 154n Trieste, Italy, 400n Trent Incident, 94, 98–99nn Trinity College, Dublin, Ire., 302n, 320n Treason and Felony Act (1848), 320 Trinidad, 505n Triple Alliance, 401n Triumphal Arch of Septimus Servus, Rome, Italy, 373n Trumbull, Lyman, 111n Truth, 107 Truth, Sojourner, xl, lxii, 245n, 624, 627n, 630–31nn Tuckahoe Creek, Md., 607nn Tucker, Henry St. George, 141n, 511n Tudor, William, 211 Tuileries Gardens, Paris, France, 369n, 404n, 419n, 421n Tullybelton, Scot., 635n Tunisia, 598 turban, 353 Turkey, 160n, 218–19, 230n, 305 Turner, Hannah, 184n Turner, James Milton, 184n Turner, John, 184n Turner, Nat, 8n, 436, 444n Turner, William V., 263n Turin, Italy, 401n Tuscany, Italy, 315n “Twa Dogs, The” (Burns): quoted, 301 Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), 196n Twenty-seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 179n, 182n Twyeffort, L. P., 423n Tyler, John, n, 10n, 139n, 141n, 254, 464n, 589n Typhon, 384n Tyrrhenian Sea, 384n Ufizzi Palace, Florence, Italy, 360 Ulster, Ire., 318n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Umberto I (king of Italy), 401n Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), xxvi, 227n, 439, 451n, 503 Underground Railroad: to Canada, 58n, 223n; Levi Coffin and, 182n; contrasted to “Exodus,” 205; in Delaware, 8n, 233n; Douglass and, xx, xxx, 455n; in fiction, 451n; in Florida, 454n, 526n; in Indiana, 458n, 526n; Madison Washington and, 25–36; in Maryland, 242n, 369n, 524n, 604; in Massachusetts, 239, 399n, 627n, 630n; in New York, 17, 58n, 237–28, 245n, 247n, 432n, 455–56nn, 524n, 623; in Ohio, 57n, 127, 133n, 182n, 458n; in Pennsylvania, 246n, 455n; Quakers active in, 223n, 227n; in Virginia, 242n, 498; in Washington, D.C., 524n, 526n Underwood, Francis, 104 Union Army: black officers in, xxxii–xxxiii, lxviii; black soldiers in, xxxii, lxviii, 125n, 191, 266, 328–29n, 425n, 556n; black units in, lxviii; chaplains in, 363n; contraband slaves and, 165–67, 179–82nn; discrimination in, 324, 328–29nn; Douglass recruits for, xxxi, lxviii; fugitive slaves returned by, 97, 102n; officers in, 139n, 141n, 153n, 158n, 179n, 185–86nn, 264n, 268–69nn, 329n, 549n, 581n, 612n; slaves sheltered by, 165, 179n; taken prisoners, 124n, 424–25n. See also Black soldiers Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 142n, 363n Union Defense Committee, 252n Union Grove, Minn., 625n Union Mills, N.Y., 17 Union Missionary Association, 246n Union Republican Congressional Committee, 163 Union Seminary, Washington, D.C., 260n, 262n Union Street, New Bedford, Mass., 240 Union Theological Seminary, New York City, 446n Uniontown, Washington, D.C., 579n Unionist (Brooklyn, Conn.), 528n Unitarian Church: abolitionism in, 524n, 530nn; antiabolitionism in, 8n; in Great Britain, 397n; Massachusetts, 8n, 240, 251n, 253n, 365n, 399, 339n, 529n, 624n; ministers in, 8n, 240, 251n, 253n, 377n, 397n, 624n; in Ohio, 251n United Irishmen (Dublin, Ire.), 320n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 725

725 United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 223n, 352, 358; missionaries in Egypt, 388–89nn, 393n; missionaries in Italy, 379n United States: boundary of, 3n; Continental Congress of, 520n; eagle as symbol of, 58n; Haiti and, 477n; Liberia and, 617; population of, 284n U.S. Agriculture Department, 161n U.S. Army, black recruits in, xxxii; blacks forbidden to join, 78n; in Mexican American War, 180n, 331n; in Southern Reconstruction, 229n U.S. Census: of 1790, 516n; of 1840, 10n, 250n; of 1860, 90n, 178n; of 1870, 123n, 227n, 260n, 263n; of 1880, 259–60nn 263nn; of 1890, 259–20nn, 286n, 588n; of 1910, 261n; inaccuracies of, 7, 10n U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 186n U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, 190nn, 201n U.S. Congress: abolitionists in, lxiv–lxv, 228n, 452n; abolitionist petition, 9n, 436, 439, 444–45nn, 501–02, 531n; antiabolitionism in, 530–31n; antislavery petitions to, 503, 520–22nn; black civil rights and, 171–72, 269n; black emigration and, 207n; black members of, 224n; black soldiers and, 329n; black suffrage and, 106, 115; Civil War and, 331n; Compromise of 1820 debated in, 71–73; former Confederates in, 282; copyright law and, 297, 297–98n; Democrats in, 268n, 454n, 456n, 458, 464–66nn, 579n; Federal Elections Bill filibustered, 466n; Fourteenth Amendment and, 104, 112n; Freedmen’s Bank and, 188–90, 196, 199, 200–210n; Free Soilers elected to, 122n, 127, 139n, 192, 253n; Fugitive Slave Law passed by, 445n, 504; gag rule in, 139–40n, 228–29nn, 439, 452nn, 504, 527n, 531n; impeachment trials and,112n; laws of, lxix–lxx; 78m, 101n, 111n, 207n, 588n; members of, xxxviii, lxxiii, 9–10nn, 72, 82nn, 98–99n, 104, 108, 111–13nn, 114, 121–22, 122–23nn, 127, 132n, 139n, 141–42nn, 144n, 175, 177n, 179n, 191–92, 194n, 228–29nn. 269n, 303, 381n, 398n, 401n, 424n, 440, 451n, 454n, 456–57nn, 464n, 606n, 612n; Reconstruction debated in, 107–08, 111–12nn, 114, 224n, 466n; Republicans in, 144n, 159n, 179n, 183n, 228–29nn, 267, 269n, 328n, 398n, 424n, 458, 461, 463, 465–66nn, 579n, 612nn, 647n;

9/1/21 4:17 PM

726 U.S. Congress (continued) Santo Domingo annexation opposed by, 611n; slave trade abolished by, 606n; Southerners in, 453n, 589n, 606n; states’ rights and, 11n, 141n; territories and, 140–41; thirteenth amendment and, 112n; treaties and, 144–45, 177n; violence in, 122n, 191, 194n, 439, 527n; Whig party in, 123n, 142n, 183n, 259n, 401n, 453n U.S. Constitution: amendments to protect slavery, 95; antifederalists oppose, 95, 100n, 520n; as antislavery document, xxix, 80n, 95, 501, 520n, 523n, 589n; black civil rights and, 68–72, 110–11, 463; Civil Rights Act (1875), 269n, 574n; comity clause in, 80n; detention clause on, 78n; Douglass interprets, 64, 68–70; drafting of, 519–21nn; Electoral College in, 255–56n; federalists support ratification of, 100n; Fifteenth Amendment to, lxix, 170–72, 184n, 265, 612n; Fifth Amendment to, 601n; Fourteenth Amendment to, lxix, 112n, 114, 265, 267, 552n; framers of, 171, 255–56n, 501; fugitive slave clause of, 98–99n. 101n, 432–33n; “higher law” doctrine and, 112n; interpretation of, 62n, 69, 100–101n, 550n; James Madison and, 501n; preamble to, 64, 77n; principles of, 64; as proslavery document, 95, 100–101n, 376n; ratification of, 519n; Reconstruction era amendments to, 105; Sixth Amendment to, 549n; slave trade and, 100–101n, 501, 520–21n, 589n; slavery and, 62n, 268n, 463; states’ rights and, 94–95, 105–06, 463; threefifths clause of, 453n; thirteenth amendment to, lxviii, 100n, 112n, 188n, 265, 267; Twelfth Amendment to, 256n U.S. Department of Education, 272, 278n U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey, 153n U.S. Government Printing Office, 383n U.S. Interior Department, 263n, 278n United States Magazine and Democratic Review (New York City), 550n U.S. Marines: blacks forbidden to join, 78n U.S. Military Academy (West Point), 143nn, 180n, 182n, 195n, 331n; black cadets at, 185n; traditions of, 193 U.S. Naval Academy, 477n, 508n U.S. Navy, lxxv, 263n; black sailors in, 261n; blacks forbidden to join, 78; in Caribbean,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 726

INDEX 156n; in Chile, 539–40n, 594, 601n; in Civil War, 162n, 181n, 211n, 243n, 252n, 261n, 477n; in Mexican American War, 154n, 243n; Môle-St.-Nicolas dispute and, 468, 472–76; 477n, 485, 541n, 594; North Atlantic Squadron of, 477–78nn, ships of, 153–54nn, 243n; Trent incident and, 98–99nn U.S. Post Office, 154n, 383n U.S. Sanitary Commission, 160n U.S. Supreme Court: Amistad case and, 445n; black civil rights and, xxxvii, 257; chief justices of, 79n, 127, 129, 519n; Civil Rights Act (1875) and, xxxvi, lxxii, 257, 264–68, 269n, 270, 574n; Dred Scott case and, lxvi, 111n, 265. 268n, 595; members of, lxix, 269n, 588n; Douglass criticizes, xxxvii, 264–68; segregation sanctioned by, 552n. See also Dred Scott v. Sandford U.S. Treasury Department, 185–86nn, 261n, 263–64nn, 383n U.S. War Department, 264n, 383n Universal Peace Union, 446n Universalists, 447n, 625n University of al-Azhar, Cairo, Egypt, 391n University of Frankfurt, 321n University of Georgia, 142n, 269n, 280n University of Gottinberg, 321n University of Heidelberg, 224n University of Michigan, 158n University of North Carolina, 139n University of Pennsylvania, 10n, 519n University of Rochester, 152n 363n University of South Carolina, 141n University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt., 82n Upas, 107, 112n Urban V (pope), 371n Uri, Switz., 540n Utica, N.Y., 56n, 139n, 647n Usertesen I (pharaoh of Egypt), 389n Vache Island, Haiti, 208n Valentine’s Day, 384n Valjean, Jean (character), 213, 222n Valladoid, Spain, 159n Valley Falls, R.I., 630n Valley Forge, Pa., 572n Valparaiso, Chile, 539n, 600n Van Buren, Martin, 55n, 464n, 466n; as leading Democrat, 139n, 460; as Free Soil party candidate, 132n, 228n; New York constitution

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX and, 69; Seminole Wars and, 140n; as U.S. Senator, 79n Vance, Zebulon Baird, 281–82 Van Damien Island (Tasmania), 320n Vandals, 374n Vanderbilt, Cornelius II, 296n, 397n Varnhagen, Karl August, 400n Van Hook, John, 579n Van Rensselear, Thomas, xix Van Vohres, Nelson, 264n Varenan, France, 340 Vashon, George B., 77 Vashon, John B., 63 Vassall, John, 507n Vendôme, Paris, France, 369n Venetia, Italy, 315n Venice, Italy, 360, 385n, 394n, 402–03nn Vergennes, Vt., 219 Vermont, 154n, 530n: abolitionists in, 609n; emancipation in, 499, 516n, 589n; Republicans in, 187n; self-made men in, 122n; Whigs in, 401n Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., 261n Vermont Medical School, 161n Vermont Watchman (Montpelier, Vt.), 530n Vermont Patriot (Montpelier, Vt.), 635 Versailles, Palace of, 315n, 419n Vesey, Denmark, 640, 645n Vesey, Joseph, 645n Veys, 616–17, 620nn Vesuvius, 344, 357, 377nn, 379–80nn Via della Vite, Rome, Italy, 397n Via Venti Settembre, Rome, Italy, 377n Vikings, 285n, 367n, 505n Vicksburg, Battle of, 167, 266, 269n Vicksburg, Miss., 167–68, 181nn, 186n, 201n, 329n Victor Emanuel I (king of Italy), 315n, 401n Victor Talking Machine Company. 429n Victoria (queen of England), 58n, 367n, 650 Vie di Toussaint-Louverture (Schoelcher), 425–26nn, 636–44, 645n Vienna, Austria, 376n Vigilance committees, 245–46n Villa, Forini, Florence, Italy, 401n Villa Nazionale, Naples, Italy, 235, 380n Vincoli, Italy, 374n Vindication of the British Colonies (Otis), 519n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 727

727 Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives (Otis), 518n Vindication of the English Constitution, The (Disraeli), 292n Viollet-la-Duc, Eugene, 419n Virgil, 345, 380n Virginia, 9n; American Revolution in, 20, 55n, 95, 100n, 499–500, 520n, 548; anti-black violence in, 277n; antifederalists in, 95; antislavery in, 500–501, 517n; borders of, 530n; Civil War in, 58n, 61n, 102n, 124n, 141nn, 143n, 195n, 264n, 266, 269n; as colony, 507–08nn, 510, 520n; colonizationist support in, 78n; Democrats in, 141n; emancipation in, 164, 178n; emigrants from, 443; first families of, 38; free blacks in, xix, 33–34, 260–61nn; freedmen in, lxxii, 182n, 258, 260n, 263n, 276, 332, 447n; “freedom suits,” 512n; horse racing in, 39, 59n; legislature of, 98n, 497, 520n; manumissions in, 498; Mason-Dixon Line and, 207n; nicknames of, 38, 55n, 58n, 587, 589n; politicians of, 81n, 95, 100n, 141n, 589n; Quakers in, 443n; railroad segregation in, 552n; Reconstruction in, 170, 183n, 277n; secession of, 99n, 141n, 266, 531n; slave codes in, 9n. 511–12nn, 514n; slave holders in, 9n, 44–45, 55n, 444n, 464n, 497–98, 507n, 645n; slave revolts in, 436, 444n, 640; slavery in, xix, xxvi, 7, 9n, 519–55, 55–56nn, 100n, 247n, 261n, 278n, 280n, 430n, 436, 439, 444n, 454–55nn, 495–96, 498, 507–08nn, 510n, 587, 589n; Underground Railroad, 242n, 498; U.S. Constitution ratified by, 100n; Whigs in, 141n Virginia Company, 506n Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg, Va.), 520n Virginia Plan, 83n Visigoths, 394n Vladivostok, Russia, 262n Voice of the Fugitive, A (Windsor, Ont.), xlv Voice of Truth (Rochester, N.Y.), 17 Voices of Freedom (Whittier), 648n Voices of the Night (Longfellow), 201n Voltaire. See Arouet, François-Marie Voyage aux regions equinoxiales du Noveau Continent (von Humboldt), 321n Wade, Benjamin F., 146–47, 150–51, 154n, 155n, 174, 186n; as Radical Republican, 288; as Santo Domingo commissioner, 605, 611n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

728 Wade-Davis Bill, 154n Wagoner, Henry O., Sr., 77, 369–70n Wagoner, Henry O., Jr., 338, 370n Waite, Morrison Remick, 269n Waldenses, 380n Wales, 366n Walker, Andrew Barclay, 367n Walker, David, 501, 521n Walker, John, 435 Walker, John Brisben, 434 Walker, Jonathan, 439, 454n, 503, 526n Walker, Robert John, 7, 10n Walker, William, 453n Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Eng., 367n Walker’s Dictionary, 435 Wallachia, 218, 226n Walworth, J. H., 282 Walpole, Mass., 447n War Hawks, 10n War of 1812, 10n, 243, 451n; black soldiers in, 73; Great Britain and, 72–74; in Northwest Territory, 464n Ward, Henry Augustus, 146, 152n, 161n Ward, Samuel Ringgold, 216 223n; as editor, xxv Ward, Thomas, 9n Ward, William Henry, 534 Washburne, Elihu Benjamin, 183n Washington, Booker T.; and African American press, 490; critics of, 263n, 556n; as Douglass’s biographer, xlii Washington, George, 55n, 79n, 456n; in American Revolution, 55n, 514–15n, 640–61; cabinet of, 519n; farewell address of, 171, 184n; as president, 171, 184n, 256n; reputation of, 640; as slaveholder, 440, 587 Washington, Madison, xxvi, 55–56n; appearance of, 22–23, 52, 55–56n; discontent of, 21–23; religious faith of, 32–33; as slave revolt leader, 52–55, 60n, 62n, 223n Washington, Susan, 23, 29–30, 44–45, 56n Washington State, 302n Washington, D.C.: abolitionists in, 242n, 529n; black community of, xxxiv–xxxv, lxxii, 182n, 184–85n, 188n, 211n, 224–25nn, 256–57, 259, 259n, 262–64nn, 273, 332, 390n, 428–29nn, 449n, 611n; churches in, 211n, 224n, 261n, 264, 332; Civil War and, 143–44n, 211n, 329n, 581n; Douglass resides in, xxxiv, xli, lxix–lxxi, lxxiv, 229–30n, 254,

Y7870-Douglass.indb 728

INDEX 256–57, 332, 579n, 588n; Douglass speaks in, xxxviii, 188n, 256–57, 303, 329n, 371n, 557n, 586, 605; Douglass visits, lxviii, lxix, 145, 185n, 329nn; emancipation in, 187n, 258; federal government jobs in, 225n, 260n; Freedmen’s Bank headquartered in, 188, 190n, 198, 201n; French consulate in, 423n; government of, xli, 153–54nn, 185nn, 206n, 229–30n, 259–60nn, 263n, 383n, 605; mobs in, 529n; monuments in, 295, 296n; newspapers of, xxxiv–xxxv, xxxviii, lxix, 153n, 203, 263n, 363n, 605, 611; printers in, 260n; Republicans in, 259–60n; schools in, 127, 260nn, 273, 428–29n, 449n; slaves in, 261n; Southern character of, 206n; Underground Railroad in, 524n, 526n Washington (D.C.) Advocate, 153n Washington (D.C.) Argus, 263n Washington (D.C.) Bee, 263n Washington College, Washington, Pa., 141n, 424n Washington County, N.Y., 79n Washington and Lee University, 143n Washington (D.C.) Daily Morning Chronicle, 610n Washington (D.C.) Free Lance, 263n Washington (D.C.) National Leader, 203–06 Washington (D.C.) National Republican, 153n Washington (D.C.) Plain Dealer, 263n Washington Peace Convention, 141n Washington (D.C.) People’s Advocate, 556n Washington (D.C.) Southern Citizen, 320n Washington Tennis Association, 429n Washingtonian (Boston, Mass.), 458n Washburne, Mr., 169 Waterloo, Battle of, 424n, 646n Watertown, Mass., 458n Watson, B. F., 206n Watson, Samuel, 131n Wattles, John O., 447n Waverley (Scott), 18n Wayland, Francis, 333, 363–64n Wayland, Heman Lincoln, 333–35, 363n Wayles, John, 589n Wayne County, Ind., 182n, 291n Wears, Isaiah C., 206n Weaver, James. 558n, 579n Webb, George James, 11n Webster, Daniel, xix, 132n; attacks abolitionists, 450n; colonization supported by, 78n;

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX Compromise of 1850 defended by, 132n, 573n Fugitive Slave Law (1850) and, 221n, 252n, 432n, 445n, 573n; intellect of, 643, 647n; nationalism of, 132n, 212; as political leader, 129, 268n, 570; quoted, 561, 572n; as secretary of state, 452n Webster, Noah, 444n Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842), 453n Weed, Thurlow, 176n Weekly Chronotype (Boston, Mass,), 522n Weekly Commonwealth (Boston, Mass.) 522n Weld, Angelina Grimké, 2, 249n Weld, Theodore, 9n, 228n, 446n, 503, 527n Welles, Gideon, 78n Wellesley, Arthur, 641, 645–46n Wellington, Duke of. See Wellesley, Arthur Wells, Ida B., lxxix; Douglass works with, xxxix, lxxiv; journalism by, 408; lynchings exposed by, 549n, 552n; marriage of, 593; World’s Columbian Exhibition and, 585, 590–92, 592n, 593 Wells, James Madison, 126n Wellsboro (Pa.) Agitator, 154n Wesley, John, 221, 601n; on slavery and the slave trade, 595 Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham, Mass., 162n Wesleyan Methodist Church (Great Britain), 221n, 601n West Barnstable, Mass., 518n West Boylston, Mass., 529 West Brownsville, Pa., 424n West Chester, N.Y., 68 West Chester, Pa., 528n West Indian Emancipation Day celebrations, lxix, West Roxbury, Mass., 624n West Virginia: black population of, 259 Western Anti-Slavery Society, 530n Western Freedmen’s Aid Society, 182n Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, 223n Western Reserve, 522n Western Reserve College, (Cleveland, Ohio), 522–23nn Western Theological Seminary, 211n Westminster, Eng., 196n Westminster Abby, London, Eng., 293–95 Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pa., 388n Wexford, County of, 318n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 729

729 Whaling industry, 103, 104n, 248n, 252n; in New Bedford, Mass., 60n, 237, 248n, 251–52nn, 445n, 604 What American Authors Think about International Copyright, 297 “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” (Douglass), lxiv Whately, Elixabeth Jane, 352, 389n Whately, Mary, 389n Whately, Richard, 389n Wheaton, Charles A., 455n Wheeling (Va.) Times, 9n Wheelwright, Henry Blatchford, 149, 160n Whidden, Benjamin F., 477n Whig party (Great Britain), 111n, 301n, 321n Whig party (United States): abolitionists in, 57n, 131n, 529n; antislavery in, 123n; candidates of, 9n, 464n; in Congress, 99n; in Connecticut, 495; Conscience faction of, 122n; Election of 1840 and, 176; in Georgia, 280n; in Illinois, 183n; in Indiana, 144n; Andrew Jackson opposed by, 451n; in Kentucky, 161n; Kansas-Nebraska Act divides, 531n; in Massachusetts, 122n, 132n, 253n, 268n, 444n, 453n; members of, 9n, 112n, 142n; in Missouri, 455n; newspapers of, 176n; in New York, 80n; in Ohio, 127, 154n, 229n; in Pennsylvania, 123n, 572n; slavery and, 131n; tariffs favored by, 450n; in Vermont, 401n; in Virginia, 141n; Daniel Webster and, 572n Whipping posts, 574n Whipple, George, 203n Whipple, John, Jr., 515n White, Andrew Dickson, 147, 158n, 174, 186n, 605, 611n White, Catherine, 458n White, Isaac, 458n White, Louisa, 458n White, Martha Todd, 331n White, Micajah, 443, 458n White, William Abijah, 443, 457–58nn, 609nn White, Zebulon, 154n Whitesboro, N.Y., 523n “White City.” Chicago, Ill., 590, 594 Whitefield, George, 275, 280n Whitfield, James Monroe, 77 White Nile River, 392n Whitesville, Miss., 449n Whiting, Nathaniel H., 438, 447n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

730 Whiting, William, 329n Whitman, Walt, 321–22 Whitson, Thomas, 219, 227n Whittier, John Greenleaf, xix, 2, 104, 269n, 502–03, 523n, 530n, 648n Wicklow, County of, Ire., 318n Wicklow Hills, Ire., 308, 318n Wickoff, Henry, 330n Wigfall, Louis, 194n Wilberforce, Ont., 56n Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio, 262n Wilbraham, Mass., 162n Wilhelm I (kaiser of Germany), 315n Wilhelm Tell (Schiller), 540 Wilkes, Charles, 99n Wilkes (character), 38–41, 46 Wilkins, Frederick (“Shadrach”), 455n Wilkinson, Joseph Francis Nichols, 259, 263n Willard, Edwin, 588n Willard, Henry, 588n Willard’s Hotel, Washington, D.C., 586, 588n Willey and Company, Publisher, 491 William III, 506n William Brown Library, Liverpool, Eng., 367–68n William Brown Street, Liverpool, Eng., 367nn William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia, Pa., 478n William Street, New Bedford, Mass., 436 William Street Depot, Philadelphia, Pa., 235 Williams, Andrea, 278n Williams, George W., 259, 260–61n Williams, George Washington, 260–61n Williams, Heather Andrea, 514n Williams, Jack (character), 48–55 Williams, Peter, Jr., 207n, 522n Williams, Roger, 497, 510–11n Williamsburg, Va., 520n Williams College, 8n, 612n Williamsburg, Long Island, N.Y., 628n Willimantic, Conn., 627n Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 635n Willow Street Depot, Philadelphia, Pa., 243n Wilmington, Del., 235, 520n Wilmington, N.C., 162n Wilson, Henry, 219; as historian, 531n; as vice-presidential candidate, 175, 187n; as Republican leader, 183n; slavery opposed by, 267, 269n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 730

INDEX Wilson, Hiram, 56n Wilson, James H., 142n Wilson, Woodrow, 601n Wilton, N.H., 251n Windsor, Ont., 36 Windham, Conn., 82n Winthrop, John. 507n, 509–10nn Wirz, Henry, 124n Wisconsin, lxvi, 601n, 627n: Congregational Church in, 381n, 528n; politicians of, lxvi, 188n, 281n; Republican party in, 281n Wise, Henry A., 141n: as Democrat, 137; n; Harpers Ferry Raid and, 432n Wolsey, Thomas, 130, 134n Woman suffrage, 88n, 403n: conventions of, lxiii, lxix, 528n; Douglass supports, xxxv, lxiii, lxix; in Great Britain, 407n; newspapers support, 332, 363n; supporters of, 123n, 154n. See also American Equal Rights Association Woman Question in Europe, The (Stanton), 404n, 423n Women: abolitionism and, xix, xxx, lxi–lxii, lxiv, 5, 445n, 524n, 630n; antislavery petitions by, 445n; blacks as, 524n; politics, 469; during Reconstruction, 121; as teachers, lxxii, 525n, 630n; as workers, 411, 420n Women’s rights; abolitionists and, 404n, 446n, 456n, 627n; blacks support, 223n; conventions of, xxiv, lxiv; Douglass supports, xvi, xxiv, lxix; Garrisonians support, 61n; in Great Britain, 634n; property rights issues and, xxiv; Unitarians and, 377n Woodbroke College Library, Birmingham, Eng., 405n Woodhull, Canning, 397n Woodhull, Victoria, lxx, 367n, 397n Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly (New York City), 397n Woods, William B., 269n Woodson, Lewis, 207n Woodstock, Vt., 401n Woolman, John, 500, 518n Woodward College, Cincinnati, Ohio,153n Worcester, Mass., lxiv, lxvii, 3, 508n Worcester (Mass.) Reformer, 629n Wordsworth, William, 194n Work, Alanson, 526n Workingmen’s party (Calif.), 227n, 317n

9/1/21 4:17 PM

INDEX World’s Anti-Slavery Convention (London, Eng.), 61, 123–24nn, 222n, 224n, 375n World’s Columbian Exposition, lxxviii: architecture of, 549n; attendance at, 542, 549n; black representation at, lxxiv; Douglass and, xxxix, lxxiii, lxxiv, 584–87, 588n, 590–92; Haiti represented at, xxxix, lxxiii, 584–85; inauguration of, 585, 588n; Liberia represented at, 618, 620–21n; managers of, 590–91; Manufacturing and Liberal Arts Building at, 585, 588n; racial discrimination at, xxxix, lxxiv, 428n, 549n, 584, 586–87, 590–90, 592n, 594; site selected, 548–49, 586, 588n World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated (Chicago), xxxix, 584–87 World War I, 401n, 422n Wren, Christopher, 369n Wrexham, Wales, 336, 366n Wright, Ansel, 628n Wright, Elizur, Jr., 502, 522nn Wright, Henry C., 438, 446n Wright, Theodore S., 237, 246n Wright v. Weatherly, 513n Wycomb, Eng., 319n Wye Plantation, lix, 278n, 603, 606n Wye River, Md., 606n

Y7870-Douglass.indb 731

731 Wythe, George, 511n Wyoming Territory, 302n Yale College, New Haven, Conn., 79n, 139n, 158n, 162n, 242n, 522n Yancey, William Lowndes, 98n Yates, William, 79n Yates Academy, Orleans County, N.Y., 186n Yazoo City, Miss., 270, 277n Yeamans, John, 495, 507n Yeatman, James Erwin, 426n Yeatman, Thomas, Jr., 317, 426n Yeatman, Thomas, Sr., 326n Yorkshire, Eng, 212, 222n Young, Aaron, 184n Young, Charles H., 185n Young, Theodosia, 184n “Young Ireland,” 320–21nn Young Men’s Christian Association, 414, 422–23n Young’s Point, La., 181n Zacchaeus, 57n Zeus (Greek god), 384n, 395n Zion’s Herald (Boston), 559 Zola, Emile, 296n Zouaves, 230n Zurich, Switz., 397n

9/1/21 4:17 PM