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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032775318 
 
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FREDERICK DOUGLASS 
 
 The Colored Orator. 
 
 FREDERIC . MAY _ ,HOLL AND, 
 
 Authtr of" The Reign of ike §tSics,'\'-'.Shries from Robert Brawningi 
 " The Rise cfjntellecttuiff.ilierty" etc. 
 
 R E V I S E.D* ESSi'j I O N 
 
 [printed in the UNlTEjy SJTrtTES] 
 
 IRew 13or?5.--. „„ ; \ 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY (,f\ 
 
 V 
 
 London and ToRONxq (i- 
 
 189s ^V- 
 
 r■:\^:<^^' 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 More generally known sources of information, like the files 
 of the " Liberator," have, of course, been examined thoroughly. 
 Among the most valuable of books to me has been the " Life 
 of Garrison," by his sons, who kindly supplied advance sheets 
 and permitted me to make copious extracts. This favor I 
 should have been glad to repay more fully, but unfortunately 
 there were some serious differences of opinion between their 
 hero and mine, under circumstances now but little known to 
 readers generally. Here it becomes my plain duty to try and 
 vindicate Douglass, even at the expense of a great philanthro- 
 pist whom all delight to honor. Desire to do sufficient justice 
 to important questions has suggested sonne comments on the 
 Harper's Ferry tragedy, socialism, and the Southern problem ; 
 but it did not seem necessary to do more than give the orator's 
 views about prohibition, the tariff, and the merits of various 
 candidates for President; and I hope I have not shown myself 
 too party-colored. 
 
 F. M. H. 
 
 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 To this edition I have added an account of the last five 
 years of the life of Mr. Douglass, and especially of his speeches 
 at the Woild's Fair. I have also been able to show his posi- 
 tion on the Hawaian question, to comple.te my list of his pub- 
 lications, to correct several mistakes, for instance on pp. 45 
 and 229, and to give what may be a more accurate estimate 
 than my previous one of his peculiar greatness. 
 
 F. M. H. 
 April, i8g^. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface 
 
 HI, IV 
 
 Chapter I. 
 The Slave 7-31 
 
 Chapter II. 
 The Fugitive , 32-56 
 
 Chapter III. 
 The Crusader 57-^° 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 " Confident Against the World in Arms" 81-111 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Beyond the Color-Line 1 12-148 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 The " North Star " 149-189 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 With the Men virho Abolished Slavery 190206 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 "The Man who is Right is a Majority" 207-229 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 " Beware of a Yankee when he is Feeding " 230-255 
 
 (v) 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter X. 
 "Is God Dead?" 256-283 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 Union Forever 284-311 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 The Leader in Politics 312-332 
 
 Chapter XIII. 
 Marshal and Recorder 333-357 
 
 Chapter XIV. 
 The Nation's Problem 358-392 
 
 Chapter XV. 
 Conclusion 393-4io 
 
 Appendix 411-416 
 
 Index 417-431 
 
FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SLAVE. 
 
 " It has been a source of great annoyance to me, 
 never to have a birthday," says Mr. Douglass, in a 
 private letter. He supposes that he was born in 
 February, 1817 ; but no one knows the day of his 
 birth or his father's name. Such trifles were seldom 
 recorded of slaves. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was 
 one of the five daughters of Isaac and Betsy Bailey ; 
 and as slaves were not often permitted to own a sur- 
 name, this must have been one of the old families of 
 Maryland. Grandmother Betty was especially hon- 
 ored for her skill in planting sweet potatoes, as well 
 as in making and handling nets for taking shad and 
 herring. When we find further that the village where 
 she resided still bore the aboriginal name, Tuckahoe, 
 we may believe that it was from her, that her grand- 
 son derived those high cheek bones, and other 
 
8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 peculiarities of physiognomy, which often caused 
 him to be mistaken for an Indian in later life. His 
 first master sometimes called him " My little Indian 
 boy," and his whole history shows that he sprang 
 from a race of warriors, who had rather die than be 
 slaves. His oratorical power should be ascribed to 
 his African descent, or to his European parentage. 
 He himself attributes his love of letters to the native 
 genius of his mother, who was the only colored per- 
 son able to read in the whole village^This rare 
 accomplishment suggests the probability that she 
 had once been something more than a field hand. 
 Her son saw her so seldom, however, and lost her so 
 early, that he may have overestimated her ability, in 
 consequence partly of gratitude and partly of a pop- 
 ular theory, about the preponderating influence over 
 great men of gifted mothers, which long investiga- 
 tion justifies my calling extravagant. Inheritance of 
 genius has come, in actual fact, at least as much from 
 the father as from the mother ; and in the most illus- 
 trious instances it has come from both sides. I sus- 
 pect that there is some foundation for the rumor, that 
 the father in this case was a noted politician. White 
 he undoubtedly was, for the son was of much lighter 
 color than his mother, whose " deep black, glossy " 
 features, are said by him to have resembled those of 
 King Rameses the Great, on page 157 of " Prichard's 
 Natural History of Man." 
 
 /She called him Frederick Augustus Washington 
 Bailey ; but after his escape he took the name which 
 he has made famous. She had an older son, Perry, 
 and four daughters; but none of them, I think, was 
 endowed with his peculiar genius. Perhaps there 
 
THE SLAVE. 9 
 
 was a different father. Her services were too valu- 
 able for her to be permitted to waste her time on her 
 children, and Douglass does not remember having 
 ever seen her before he was six years old. 
 
 His earliest memories are of his grandmother's log 
 cabin in his native village, Tuckahoe, on the bank of 
 the Choptank River, in Talbot County, on the eastern 
 shore of Maryland. The floor and chimney were of 
 clay, and there were no windows, nor any bedsteads, 
 except rails flung over the cross-beams. Food was 
 coarse, but it was abundant, and the little boy was 
 never scolded for playing in the dirt, or getting his 
 clothes wet, or not learning his lessons, or using his 
 knife and fork awkwardly. In fact, he had no lessons, 
 or knife and fork, and scarcely any clothing, to be 
 troubled about. Year after year went by, during 
 which he was as free and happy as the squirrels he 
 saw running up the trees, or the minnows for which 
 he used to fish in the mill-pond. His grandmother 
 was always kind, and the only cloud upon his path 
 was the fear of being taken from her, as his brother 
 and his sisters had been. He dreaded to find 
 himself growing taller, and at last the terrible day 
 came. 
 
 One summer morning, before he was seven, she took 
 his hand in hers, and led him, or carried him on her 
 shoulder, over the twelve miles which lay between 
 Tuckahoe and the house of their master, Captain An- 
 thony. This man owned three farms in Tuckahoe, and 
 about thirty slaves ; but his time was mainly occupied 
 in managing the estates of Colonel Lloyd, who had a 
 thousand slaves and twenty or thirty different farms. 
 All the overseers were under the control of Captain 
 
to Frederick doUglasS. 
 
 Anthony, whose plain brick house stood near the 
 stately mansion of Colonel Lloyd, on the latter's 
 home plantation, on the banks of the Wye, which 
 flows into Chesapeake Bay, about thirty-five miles 
 southeast of Baltimore. 
 
 At the " great house " the Lloyds lived in such lux- 
 ury as the little boy had never dreamed of ; but the 
 suffering outside was almost indescribable. Most of 
 the slaves were driven out into the field at the first 
 sign of dawn, with lashes for those who came last ; 
 and they were kept there until it was too dark to work. 
 The mending and cooking were done during the night, 
 and the food was carried out to be eaten in the field, 
 where the babies were nursed, when the mothers 
 could not be spared time to go home. 'I There 
 was no public opinion in Talbot County to hinder 
 the worst of cruelties. Our hero saw his Aunt 
 Esther receive from his master, because he was 
 jealous and she loved another slave, thirty or forty 
 stripes, each of which drew screams and blood. One 
 of his cousins once walked the twelve miles from 
 Tuckahoe, to show how a drunken overseer had 
 gashed her shoulders with his cowhide, and struck 
 her such a blow over the head with his stick as left 
 her face covered with blood. Her master only told 
 her to tramp back at once or he would take the rest 
 of her skin off her back himself. Such floggings 
 were frequent, and a slave who tried to escape one 
 by running into the creek, was shot down there by 
 the overseer, on the very plantation where the little 
 Frederick was kept. His wife's cousin, a girl of 
 fifteen, was beaten to death in her sleep by her mis- 
 tress for being unable to hear the cry of a baby who 
 
THE SLAVE. 11 
 
 had kept her up night after night. Murders of slaves 
 were frequent on the Eastern Shore, but there was no 
 punishment and little blame. The worst sufferings 
 of the slaves, however, seem to have come from lack 
 of sleep and food. The men and women were given 
 about a quarter of a pound of pork, or a little fish, 
 daily, a peck of coarse corn-meal per week, and 
 nothing else, except a little salt. The corn-cake was 
 full of bran, and covered so thickly with ashes that 
 no Northerner could eat it. Bed there was none, 
 only a blanket for each adult. The children had no 
 blanket, nor any clothes, except a pair of shirts of sack- 
 cloth for each child every year. Whole flocks of 
 little boys and girls, from five to ten years old, might 
 be seen running naked around the " great house," or 
 huddled together in the sun during the frosty days 
 of March. 
 
 The little Frederick had to sleep on cold nights 
 with his head and shoulders in a sack, and his feet 
 had cracks big enough to hold a penholder. His 
 share of the mush, which a dozen children at Captain 
 Anthony's ate like pigs out of a trough on the kitchen 
 floor, was so scanty that he was often pinched with 
 hunger. He used to run to pick up the little bones 
 which were flung out for the cats, and he often fought 
 with the dog for the crumbs which fell from the 
 kitchen table. The very taste of white bread was 
 unknown to him ; but he was fascinated by the sight 
 of those snowy biscuits, baked in a. quick oven, out 
 of unleavened flour, which he saw carried to the 
 Lloyd's table, and he made up his mind that he would 
 have some to eat every morning when he was a man. 
 This ambition has been so far satisfied that precisely 
 
ti FREbfellICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 such biscuit have been regularly set before him for 
 his Sunday breakfast at Cedar Hill. 
 
 The worst of it was that the cook, Aunt Katy, often 
 whipped him or made him go all day without food, 
 except a wretched breakfast. One night, when he had 
 been treated thus and was too hungry to sleep, he man- 
 aged to steal a few kernels of Indian corn and roast 
 them in the fire. Just as he was about to eat them, his 
 mother came in and took him in her arms. She had 
 walked twelve miles to see him, and her indignation, 
 at hearing that Aunt Katy threatened to starve the 
 life out of him, was loud and fierce. He ate the large 
 ginger cake she gave him, and felt prouder, as he sat 
 on her knee, than a king on his throne. He soon 
 dropped off to sleep, however ; before he awoke, his 
 mother had to go back to her work ; and he never saw 
 her again, for he was not allowed to stand beside her 
 dying bed. These visits had been rare, for it could 
 only have been under unusually favorable circum- 
 stances that she was able to travel the twenty-four 
 miles in a single night. 
 
 These scenes show what was the early life of 
 " Cap'n Ant'ney Fed," as he was called in the jargon 
 of the plantation, where the, sign of the possessive 
 case was a luxury unknown to the slaves. He was 
 switched into repeating the Lord's Prayer, but had 
 no other religious training, except the information 
 that " God up in the sky " had made white men to be 
 masters and black people to be slaves, and that He 
 knew what was best for them all. The child could 
 not believe that the slaves were as well off as they 
 ought to be, and he used to sit and wonder how 
 slavery could exist if God was good. His trouble 
 
THE SLAVE. I3 
 
 often made him weep, and his perplexity was increased 
 by observing that God had not made, by any means, 
 slaves of all the blacks, or slave-holders of all the 
 whites. Light broke in upon his troubled mind as 
 he found that some of his fellow-slaves had been 
 stolen from homes where they were free, and others 
 were children of fathers and mothers who had been, 
 thus brought into bondage. Clearly it was man who 
 was responsible, not God. The little boy's Aunt 
 Jennie suddenly disappeared with her husband, and 
 it was whispered about that they had run awt.y to the 
 free States, and would henceforth be free. Before he 
 was eight years old he made up his mind that he 
 would, some day, do what they did. No wonder, for, 
 as he said in 1855, he became "just as well aware of 
 the unjust, unnatural, and murderous character of 
 slavery when nine years old, as I am now." 
 
 Among the few bright spots in Fred's plantation 
 life was the kindness of his master's daughter, Mrs. 
 Thomas Auld, still caUed " Miss Lucretia " by the 
 slaves. When he had a fight with another slave-boy, 
 and came home roaring with pain, and streaming 
 with blood from a wound which left the sign of the 
 cross upon his forehead, it was she who washed away 
 the blood, put on balsam, and bound up the wound. 
 When he was unusually hungry he used to go and 
 sing under her window, and she would give him a 
 slice of bread and butter. It may have been her 
 intercession which saved his boyish spirit from being 
 crushed into submission to his lot, and gave him the 
 key to the prison door. 
 
 In the summer of 1825, soon after he had begun his 
 ninth year, she told him that he was to go to Balti- 
 
14 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 more, which seemed like heaven to the slaves on the 
 Eastern Shore. The next three days were the happiest 
 he had ever known, and were spent mainly in the 
 creek, where he was trying to wash the dead skin off 
 his feet and knees. " Miss Lucretia " had told him 
 she would give him a pair of trousers if he could get 
 himself clean. He had no home to regret, and he 
 hardly dared to go to sleep, for fear he might be left 
 behind. 
 
 Early on a Saturday morning he was able to look 
 for the last time, as he hoped, on the plantation, as 
 the sloop carried him over Chesapeake Bay towards 
 Baltimore. He arrived there on Sunday morning, 
 and was kindly received by his new Mistress, Mrs. 
 Hugh Auld, sister-in-law of Lucretia's husband, 
 Thomas. " Miss Sopha," as the boy called her, gave 
 him a comfortable bed, good clothes, and palatable 
 food, while he had nothing harder to do than to run 
 errands and take care of her son, little Tommy. All 
 three soon grew very fond of each other, and she even 
 granted a request, made under circumstances de- 
 scribed thus, in a speech made at Belfast, in 1846 : 
 
 " I remember the first time I ever heard the Bible read, and 
 from that time I trace my first desire to learn to read. I was 
 over seven years old ; my master had gone out one Sunday 
 night, the children had gone to bed. I had crawled under the 
 center table and had fallen asleep, when my mistress com- 
 menced to read the Bible aloud, so loud that she waked me. 
 She waked me to sleep no more. I have found since that the 
 chapter she then read was the first of Job. I remember my 
 sympathy for the good old man, and my anxiety to learn more 
 about him led me to ask my mistress to teach me to read." 
 
 She complied gladly, and was soon looking for- 
 
THE SLAVE. 1 5 
 
 ward to' see him reading the Bible. Her joy led her 
 :o tell her husband, but he at once forbade any more 
 pssons, telling her that learning would spoil any 
 ligger, and that if this one should ever be taught to 
 read the Bible, there would be no keeping him a slave. 
 This was said in Fred's hearing, and it proved the 
 aest lesson he ever had. He heard that knowledge 
 would prevent his remaining a slave, and at once he 
 made up his mind to get all he could. " Miss Sopha " 
 not only taught him no more, but would snatch away 
 any book or newspaper she might see in his hand, 
 while she took great care never to leave him alone 
 with anything he could read. He turned the street 
 into a school-room, and made his white playmates his 
 teachers. He always carried Webster's spelling-book 
 in his pocket, and also bread enough to pay the hun- 
 gry little boys he met for giving him lessons. He 
 used now and then to ask these white boys if it was 
 right for him to be a slave, and they always agreed 
 with him that it was not. Finding them interested in 
 the " Columbian Orator," he bought a copy with fifty 
 cents, earned by blacking boots in the street. Here 
 he found a dialogue between a runaway slave, just 
 recaptured, and his master. The negro demonstrated 
 the injustice of slavery with such power that he was 
 emancipated. Think how eagerly this was read by 
 the boy of thirteen ! He entered with equal zeal into 
 the denunciations of oppression by great orators, and 
 especially by Sheridan in his demand for Catholic 
 emancipation. The speeches of Chatham and Fox, 
 too, in behalf of America, helped him to understand 
 the rights of man. He was all ears when he heard 
 any one speak of slavery, and the heat which his 
 
l6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 master and other white men showed against Abolition- 
 ists, made him very curious to know who they were. 
 Evidently they had something to do with slavery, but 
 what could it be ? At last he found out from one of 
 the city newspapers, probably in February, 1833, 
 when there was much agitation, that they had been 
 sending petitions to Congress, asking for the abolition 
 of the slave trade between States, as well as of slavery 
 itself in the District of Columbia. Thenceforth he 
 knew that he was not without friends upon the earth. 
 This idea assumed a practicable form, when an Irish- 
 man repaid him, for helping to unload a boat full of 
 stones, by telling him that he need only go North to 
 be as free as anybody. 
 
 His confidence that he would finally gain both 
 freedom and knowledge was much increased by an 
 interest in religion, which became very strong before 
 he was fourteen. At this time he used to pick up 
 stray pages of the Bible in the gutter, and wash and 
 dry them, in order to pore over them in secret. His 
 leisure was now mostly spent either in attending 
 prayer-meetings, or in holding private worship with 
 a good old colored man, who prayed almost without 
 ceasing, even when on his dray. The boy taught the 
 old man how to make out the hard words, and, in 
 return was shown something of their meaning. Both 
 felt sure that the Lord would call Frederick in due 
 time to preach the Gospel ; and the exhortation " to 
 wait in trust and patience until the good time came," 
 may have done much to keep him from making a 
 premature attempt to escape. His master tried in 
 vain to break up the intimacy by threats of the lash 
 The young church-member resented bitterly the 
 
THE SLAVE. 1 7 
 
 persecution, as he called it ; and when the cholera 
 smote Baltimore, in 1833, he thought that the Lord 
 was punishing the whites for holding his people in 
 bondage. 
 
 One reason that Frederick did not run away then,, 
 was that he wished first to learn how to write a pass for 
 himself. He had now exchanged his easy life, of 
 waiting on " Miss Sopha '' and little Tommy, for 
 regular work in Mr. Auld's ship-yard. He noticed 
 that the carpenters marked each piece of timber with 
 a capital letter, S. L. A. or F.; and he soon found 
 that these were the initials of the words " Star- 
 board," " Larboard," " Aft," and " Forward." While 
 the men were at dinner, he taught himself to make 
 these four letters. Then he challenged the white 
 boys to " beat that," and thus made them show him 
 other letters. Thus he " learned to write on board 
 fences, making some of his early capitals with their 
 heads downwards and looking the wrong way." By 
 and by he managed to copy the italics out of the 
 spelling-book. He even ventured, at great risk of a 
 flogging, to take the old writing-books which Master 
 Tommy had brought home from school, and copy off 
 line after line In the vacant spaces. He secretly- 
 carried a flour barrel and a chair into the kitchen loft, 
 where he slept, and there he used to work late into 
 the night, copying from the Bible and the Methodist 
 hymn-book. 
 
 While the young slave was preparing himself for 
 freedom, he became, in consequence of the death of 
 " Miss Lucretia " and her father, the property of her 
 husband. Captain Thomas Auld. His new master 
 soon quarreled with his brother in Baltimore, and 
 
1 8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 took his chattel away. This was in March, 1833, 
 when Captain Auld had taken up his residence at St. 
 Michael's, a fishing village on the Bay, about forty 
 miles from Baltimore. He had taken a second wife ; 
 and her father, a rich slave-holder named Hamilton, 
 lived a few miles away. The kitchen at St. Michael's 
 was not very bountifully supplied ; and the appetite 
 of the growing boy was keen enough to tempt him to 
 theft. 
 
 Whatever scruples the young aspirant for the 
 ministry felt, were quieted by this ingenious argu- 
 ment. Captain Auld's meat continued to be his, 
 after it was taken out of one of his tubs and put into 
 another ; so there really was no stealing. As for the 
 neighbors, they were accomplices in deliberately rob- 
 bing the laborer of his reward, and he was justified 
 in protecting himself against starvation at their 
 expense. Another way in which he used to supply 
 himself with food was letting loose his master's 
 horse. The animal would always dash off to its 
 former stable, on the Hamilton plantation, five miles 
 off. The groom would have to be sent to bring him 
 back, and he would return with bread enough to 
 make him comfortable for a dayor two. He gave 
 additional offence by constantly speaking to Mr. 
 Auld, or of him to Mrs. Auld, by his old title, " Cap- 
 tain," and not saying " Master," as was desired by 
 the wife especially. Of course, this led to frequent 
 whippings. 
 
 Mrs. Auld was a devout member of the church, and 
 Thomas became one at a camp-meeting that August ; 
 but Frederick's new brother disappointed all his 
 hopes of better treatinent than before. He ventured, 
 
THE SLAVE. 1 9 
 
 soon after the conversion, to help teach a little Sun- 
 day-school. A dozen old spelling-books and a few 
 Testaments were collected. Twenty children came 
 together the first day, and the young teacher thought 
 he had now found something worth living for. 
 Scarcely had school begun on the second Sunday, 
 however, when in rushed a mob, headed by Master 
 Thomas and two Methodist class-leaders. The 
 scholars were driven away with sticks and stones, and 
 forbidden ever to meet again, for they were black. 
 Frederick was told that he wanted to be like Nat 
 Turner, who led a bloody insurrection in South- 
 ampton, Va., 1831, and that he would get as many 
 balls in his body as Nat had, if he did not look out. 
 He had seen slave girls treated with unusual cruelty 
 by a pious mistress in Baltimore, and he was soon to 
 have new proof of how little could be done, even by 
 religion, to lessen the essential wickedness of slavery. 
 The completion of his industrial education was 
 intrusted by Brother Auld to Brother Covey, a devout 
 neighbor, famous for success in breaking unruly 
 slaves. The morning of the first of January, 1834, 
 found the poor boy trudging along, with his little 
 bundle at the end of his stick, to the new master 
 with whom that year must be spent. Covey, too, 
 was a Methodist, and made his slaves hear a great 
 deal of religious talk on Sunday, as well as a short 
 prayer every morning and a long prayer every night. 
 Frederick was depended upon to lead the singing, 
 but he often failed to do so ; for such worship seemed 
 to him a mockery. He was no longer starved, but he 
 was overworked systematically, and often kept in the 
 field until almost midnight. It wag never too hot or 
 
20 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 too cold for out-door work— it could never rain, blow, 
 snow, or hail too hard. The longest days were too 
 short, he says, for his master, and the shortest nights 
 were too long. Covey relied mainly on hard work 
 for breaking slaves. When he chose to set them an 
 example, he would "make everything fly before him." 
 He was an experienced overseer, and had peculiar 
 skill in watching his slaves, when they thought him 
 far away, and creeping out upon them unexpectedly. 
 They spoke of him to each other as " the snake," and 
 felt as if they were always under his cruel eye. 
 
 The lash was only a secondary feature of his plan ; 
 but it was not left out. Frederick had been with him 
 but three days when he was sent, on one of the 
 coldest mornings of January, with a pair of oxen, to 
 bring in wood from the forest. He had never driven 
 oxen before, and these were scarcely broken in. 
 Covey himself would not have dared to take them- 
 into the woods, until he had let them work off some 
 of their wildness in the open field. The young 
 driver was told to go to the woods ; and thither he 
 went, without daring to make objections. The oxen 
 ran all the way over the fields, pulling him along at 
 the end of the rope with which he was ordered to 
 keep them from running away. When they got in 
 among the trees, they took fright, and rushed about 
 wildly, so that he expected to be dashed to death. 
 At last they stopped, entangled in sapplings, and 
 with the body of the cart, the wheels, and the tongue 
 lying scattered about. It took hard work to get the 
 pieces together and release the oxen. On their way 
 out of the wood they ran away once more, despite a 
 heavy load, broke the gate into splinters, and nearly 
 
TME SLAVE. 2 1 
 
 ;rushed the driver between the wheel and the post, 
 ^t was noon when he reached the house, but he was 
 ient back at once with the cart to the woods. Covey 
 ollowed, overtook him there, and said he would 
 ;each him how to waste time and break gates. He 
 ;ut from a black gum-tree three young shoots, from 
 ■our to six feet long, such as are used for ox-goads. 
 Then he commanded the slave to take off his clothes. 
 >Jo heed was given to the order ; Covey tore them off 
 limself. The tough goads were worn out, one by 
 jne, and such sores were left on the back as kept 
 Dpen, under the coarse shirt, for weeks. This was 
 :he first instance of what happened every few days 
 :or six months. 
 
 Douglass says it was then, if at any one time, more 
 :han another, that he was " made to drink the bitterest 
 iregs of slavery." " A few months of this discipline 
 ;amedme.". . . " I was broken in body, soul and spirit." 
 . . " My natural elasticity was crushed ; my intellect 
 languished ; the disposition to read departed ; the 
 dark night of slavery closed in upon me ; and behold 
 1 man transformed into a brute !"..."! had neither 
 sufficient time in which to eat or sleep, except on 
 Sunday.". . . " I spent this in a sort of beast-like stupor, 
 Detween sleeping and waking under some large 
 iree." ..." I v/as sometimes prompted to take my 
 ife, and that of Covey, but was prevented by a com- 
 Dination of hope and fear." . . . "The over-work, 
 ind the brutal chastisement, combined with that ever- 
 jnawing and soul-devouring thought, 'I am a slave — 
 I slave for life — a slave with no rational ground to 
 lope for freedom,' rendered me a living embodiment 
 )f mental and physical wretchedness." 
 
ii FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 On one of the hottest Friday afternoons in August 
 Covey was thrashing out his wheat in barbaric 
 fashion. Horses were treading it loose from the 
 straw ; and Frederick was carrying the mixture of 
 wheat, chaff and dirt to the fan. He was in a hurry, 
 for he was to have time to go fishing, if the work was 
 finished before sunset. About three o'clock he broke 
 down, with no strength left, an extreme dizziness, 
 and a violent headache. The fanning had to stop, 
 for every hand was needed for the work. Covey 
 found him lying by the fence, and, with a savage 
 kick in the side, bade him rise. He tried to, but fell 
 back. Another heavy kick brought him to his feet ; 
 but as soon as he stooped to pick up the tub in which 
 he had been carrying food for the fan, he fell to the 
 ground, utterly helpless. Then Brother Covey took 
 up the hickory club with which the wheat had been 
 struck off level with the sides of the measure, and 
 gave him such a wound on the head as made blood 
 run freely, saying, " If you have got the headache, I'll 
 cure you." He was still unable to rise, and was left 
 bleeding by the fence. 
 
 His head was soon relieved by the flow of blood ; 
 and he resolved to go and complain to Captain Auld. 
 He started up while Covey was looking another way, 
 and gained the woods. There he had to lie down, for 
 his strength failed him. At last the bleeding ceased, 
 and he made his way barefoot, through bogs and 
 briars, to St. Michael's. It took him five hours to 
 make the seven or eight miles ; and Auld insisted on his 
 going back again to the good, religious man. He did 
 so the next morning, and before the house he met 
 Covey, with rope and cow-hide, ready for him. He 
 
THE SLAVE. 23 
 
 id but just time to get through the corn into the 
 oods. There he lay down exhausted, for he had lost 
 uch blood and eaten nothing since noon the day 
 jfore. All day he lay unpursued, for it was hoped 
 lat hunger would bring him back. His recent ex- 
 iriences with members of his church made prayer 
 ;em useless. There he lay all day in pain and despair. 
 During the night another slave came by, on his way 
 ( spend Sunday with his wife. The good couple fed 
 id sheltered the sufferer, at the risk of being treated 
 I the same way. Sandy, as his benefactor was 
 imed, advised him not to attempt an escape, which 
 ould then have been very difficult, but to trust to 
 le magic power of a root, whose wearer ran no 
 anger of being whipped by any white man. The 
 icredulous listener was reminded that all his book 
 arning had not protected him. Sunday morning 
 )und him with his pocket full of roots in front of 
 ovey's house. He was kindly received, for the good 
 lan was about to go to church. While regaining his 
 rength, he resolved upon a course worth}' of his 
 hite as well as of his Indian blood. He knew that 
 lose slaves who could be whipped easiest were 
 hipped oftenest ; and he felt that he had listened 
 )0 blindly to sermons in which non-resistance was 
 njoined as the peculiar virtue of the colored race. 
 My hands," he says, " were no longer tied by my 
 iligion." He had made up his mind to risk being 
 )ld South, or incurring the penalty of the State law, 
 hich provided that any slave who resisted his 
 laster should be hung, and then have his head cut 
 ff and set up, with the four quarters of his body, in 
 rominent places. 
 
24 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Long before daylight the next morning he was called 
 out and sent to feed the horses. As he was going up to 
 the loft in the stable, Covey sneaked in behind and 
 tried to slip a rope around his leg, in order to tie him 
 up for a flogging. He fell heavily, but leaped up at 
 once and sprang at his master's throat. There the 
 strong black fingers kept their grasp until the nails 
 drew blood. The white man tried to strike ; but 
 every blow was parried, though none was struck in 
 return. He closed with the slave, but went down 
 again and again upon the floor. "Are j'ou going to 
 resist, you scoundrel ? " " Yes, sir," was the steady 
 answer. Covey called his cousin to his assistance ; 
 but the white boy was at once doubled up with pain 
 by the black boy's kick. " Are you going to keep 
 this up ? " " Yes, indeed, come what may. You have 
 treated me like a brute the last six months, and I 
 shall stand it no longer." Covey dragged him out of 
 the stable to a stick of wood, with which he meant to 
 knock him down. Just as he stooped to pick it up, 
 he was seized by the black hands and flung out his 
 full length into the cow-yard. Another slave now 
 came up, and was commanded to take hold of the 
 rebel. He at first pretended not to understand the 
 order, and finally said, " My master hired me here to 
 work, and not to help you whip Frederick." This man's 
 owner would not let him be flogged unless he de- 
 served it ; and the two were left to fight it out. The 
 only slave whom Covey owned was a woman who had 
 been avowedly bought for breeding. She, too, was 
 called upon for aid as she came in to milk the cows ; 
 and she, too, refused, though she knew she must 
 suffer for it. For two hours the fight had gone on, 
 
THE SLaVE. 25 
 
 and Covey had not been able to draw a single drop 
 of blood, while blood had been drawn from him. He 
 had not been able to whip the slave ; but at last he 
 said, " Now, go to your work ; I should not have 
 whipped you half so much, if you had not resisted." 
 He never tried it again, although he had plenty of 
 opportunity, and even provocation, during the next 
 six months. 
 
 Douglass is right in calling this the turning point in 
 his life as a slave. It made him a man instead of a 
 timid boy, " a freeman, in fact, while I remained a 
 slave in form." He was four years more in bondage, 
 but he was never again whipped. It was several 
 times attempted, but without success. Not the 
 slightest punishment was inflicted for his resisting 
 Covey. The latter probably kept his defeat as much 
 of a secret as possible, lest his reputation as a slave- 
 breaker should be forfeited. Captain Auld may have 
 felt even then what he acknowledged forty years 
 afterwards, on his death-bed, to his visitor, then Mar- 
 shal Douglass, that he always thought him too smart 
 to be a slave. 
 
 At all events he was hired out, for the two years 
 after that with Brother Covey, 1835 and 1836, to a 
 neighbor who seldom whipped his slaves, and always 
 gave them plenty of time to sleep and eat, while the 
 supply of food was never stinted. Mr. Freeland did 
 not profess religion, but he was a much better master 
 than the church-members just mentioned, or two 
 ministers in Talbot County, about whom a good deal 
 IS said in " My Bondage and My Freedom." The 
 author had reason to think that the religion of slave- 
 holders often put their consciences to sleep. He did 
 
26 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 not, however, give up all idea of preaching some day 
 himself, and he used, when every one else slept, to 
 try to prepare for the pulpit by going out to the pigs 
 and talking to them as " Dear Brethren." It was 
 much more proper for him to say so to pigs than to 
 white men, according to the laws of the land, and the 
 opinions most revered throughout the United States. 
 He was only a field-hand, and reading matter was 
 more out of reach than in Baltimore. He did, how- 
 ever; manage to re-open his Sunday-school, and this 
 time it escaped attack, although it numbered more 
 than forty scholars. Many learned to read, either 
 there or during the three evenings a week which were 
 devoted to this work in winter ; and the teacher 
 afterward met several of his former pupils as freemen. 
 This employment made the first year pass pleas- 
 antly, but early in 1836, the position of a slave, even 
 in this mild form, began to seem intolerable to the 
 young agitator ; and the ideas which he had learned 
 from the " Columbian Orator," in Baltimore, were 
 earnestly set forth to his companions. Two of the 
 slaves who labored beside him were fully aroused by 
 his passionate declamations on the rights of man and 
 the glories of liberty. Two other young men on the 
 plantation of his owner's father-in-law, Mr. Hamil- 
 ton, joined them. All agreed to set at naught the 
 teachings of the pulpit, and the dangers which 
 threatened fugitives. The conspirators held frequent 
 meetings, and kept up each other's zeal by songs 
 with a secret meaning, like 
 
 " I am bound for the land of Canaan, 
 I don't expect to stay much longer here," etc. 
 
THE SLAVE. 
 
 27 
 
 According to the plan invented by our hero, they 
 ere going to take a large canoe, belonging to Mr. 
 [amilton, sail and paddle to the head of the bay, 
 iventy miles off, and then make their way on foot to 
 le North. The only free city known to them, even 
 y name, was New York. The leader had written 
 asses permitting the bearers to spend the Easter 
 olidays in Baltimore, and they were getting ready 
 ) start on the Saturday evening previous. That 
 lorning, just as Frederick had been called in from 
 le field for breakfast, he saw Mr. Hamilton gallop 
 p to the house ; three other white men followed on 
 orseback ; and after them walked two negroes whose 
 ands were tied. He saw that he was betrayed and 
 lat his best plan was to submit quietly. One of Mr. 
 reeland's slaves followed his example, but the other 
 )ught bravely, though pistols were pointed against 
 is heart. The scuffle gave the writer of the passes 
 chance to burn his own unobserved, and the others 
 ere eaten, by his advice, as the slaves were dragged 
 ong the road by the mounted constables. Mr. 
 reeland's mother had supplied the slaves whom he 
 ivned with food, while she scolded the " long-legged 
 5llow devil," who had made them think of running 
 vay. They stopped during the tramp of fifteen 
 iles at his master's store, and there, as the leader 
 [rected, they all protested that they had not the 
 ightest intention of absconding, and asked indig- 
 intly what evidence there was against them. At 
 St they reached Easton, the county seat, and were 
 eked up in the jail. They could expect nothing 
 ;tter than to be sold to die in the rice swamps. Mr. 
 reeland and Mr. Hamilton had the slaves they 
 
2§ FREDERICK DOUGtASS. 
 
 owned released, however, after the holidays were 
 over, and took them back. The ring-leader was left 
 behind. Captain Auld would have let him work out 
 the year with Mr. Freeland, but Hamilton declared 
 that he would shoot the dangerous fellow if he 
 appeared again in that neighborhood. He was the 
 only slave there who could read and write. Large 
 sums were offered .by the negro-traders, but Auld 
 declared that money would not tempt him to sell 
 Frederick South. Finally he was sent to Baltimore 
 to learn a trade, and promised that, if he would 
 behave himself, he should be emancipated at twenty- 
 five. He had resisted his master with success! he had 
 taken the lead in a plot to run away, and his courage 
 did not go without its reward. 
 
 Three years previous he had left Baltimore an 
 unruly boy. He came back a strong man, resolved 
 to protect himself against injury, and to use the first 
 good opportunity for setting himself free. During 
 the rest of 1836 he worked as apprentice in a large 
 ship-yard, where he was at the beck and call of seventy- 
 five carpenters. These white men, just before he 
 entered the yard, had been led by fear of lower wages 
 to refuse to let colored carpenters work there any 
 longer ; and now they encouraged the white appren- 
 tices to pick quarrels with the new nigger. In one 
 of these he would have lost his life if he had not suc- 
 ceeded in parrying a blow from an adze. Another 
 time he flung the man who struck him into the dock. 
 Whenever he was struck he struck back again, and 
 thus he held his own for about eight months. At 
 last, the man who had been ducked came at him with 
 three other apprentices. One was in front, armed 
 
THE SLAVE. 
 
 29 
 
 'ith a brick, one on each side, and the fourth behind 
 'ith a heavy hand-spike. They closed in upon him. 
 le defended himself, but a blow from the hand-spike 
 tunned him and brought him to the ground. Then 
 11 four fell upon him with their fists, while the car- 
 enters shouted : " Kill the d d nigger ! He 
 
 truck a white man ! " By and bye he came to him- 
 ;lf and rose to his hands and knees. As he did so he 
 ot a kick in the left eye which closed it completely, 
 'hen they left him, but even then he would have run 
 fter them with the hand-spike it the carpenters had 
 ot interfered. 
 
 This scene deserves attention, on account of his 
 auntless courage. The worst of it is, that he could 
 et no protection from the law. He had been put 
 nee more under the charge of his master's brother, 
 [ugh Auld ; but when this gentleman applied for a 
 'arrant, the magistrate refused to issue one, unless 
 'hite witnesses would come forward. Neither the 
 ord of the colored man, nor the sight of his wounds, 
 as of the slightest importance. The laws of Mary- 
 ind were for the protection of whites. All that Mr. 
 .uld could do for the slave was to take him, as soon 
 3 his wounds had healed, into the yard where he was 
 )reman. There the apprentice became an expert 
 ilker, and was able, before the end of 1837, to earn 
 dollar and a half a day, the highest wages paid to 
 len of that trade in Baltimore. He was allowed to get 
 job where he could, and to collect the money ; but 
 e had to hand over every cent he received. He saw 
 lore plainly than before that slaves were not pro- 
 icted, but plundered. 
 His literary education had stood still while he was 
 
JO FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 away from Baltimore ; but now he met colored people 
 who knew more than he did. Some of them were 
 able to teach him geography and arithmetic. The 
 young freedmen even permitted him to enter a club 
 from which other slaves were excluded, " The East 
 Baltimore Mutual Improvement Society ; " and he 
 took a prominent part in its debates. He also, in all 
 probability, spoke often in religious meetings ; and 
 among his delighted hearers may be supposed to 
 have been Anna Murray, a free woman of color, who 
 afterward became his wife. 
 
 As his condition and prospects improved, his desire 
 for freedom grew still stronger ; and he longed to 
 have money enough of his own to be able to escape. 
 In May, 1838, he persuaded Hugh Auld to let him 
 hire his time. He had to buy his tools and clothes, 
 pay his board, and hand over three dollars a week, 
 whether work was good or bad. He succeeded in 
 carrying out the bargain and in laying aside some 
 money. One Saturday evening in August, instead of 
 going to Mr. Auld with the sum due, he went off 
 with a party of friends to camp-meeting, and did not 
 return before Sunday night. The privilege of hiring 
 out was taken away, in punishment ; and his indig- 
 nation led him to spend the next week in idleness. 
 On Saturday night there was a violent quarrel in 
 consequence of his having no money to hand over; 
 but, fortunately for him, they did not get to blows. 
 The next day he made up his mind to go to work 
 early Monday morning, to make Master Hugh as 
 well satisfied as possible with him during that week, 
 and the two following, and then to run away. 
 
 His success will be related in the next chapter, 
 
THE SLAVE. 3 1 
 
 'hus far we have seen him become familiar with some 
 f the best, as well as the worst, aspects of slavery, 
 le had been a half-starved boy, running wild on a 
 ilantation, a petted house-servant, a field-hand, first 
 inder a master who fed him so poorly that he was 
 bliged to steal, then under a professional negro- 
 ireaker, who over-worked him systematically, and 
 /hipped him cruelly, until he saved himself from 
 lore torture by making a resistance which might 
 lave brought him to the gailows. The result was his 
 oming under a master who gave him plenty of food 
 nd rest, and never struck him. His attempt to 
 scape, in company with other slaves, whom he had 
 nduced to join him, sent him back to Baltimore, 
 vhere he was cruelly treated at first, but was soon 
 .ble to learn a good trade and to support himself in 
 ilmost complete liberty. He had worked his way 
 ipward by his own strength and courage, going 
 hrough fight after fight, with his life in his hand, 
 ie had taught himself not only to read and write, 
 )ut to speak effectively. He knew what to say about 
 lavery, and how to say it. The principal thing 
 vhich he needed to do in order to reach the platform 
 vas to break his chain. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FUGITIVE. 
 
 It was on Monday,* September 3, 1838, that the 
 great purpose, which had been cherished for more 
 than a- dozen years, amid many changes in place and 
 fortune, was carried out with complete success. It 
 was many years before the fugitive told how he 
 escaped. He was often tempted to give this addi- 
 tional charm to his lectures and editorials, but he 
 would not resort to this easy way of conquering 
 those slanderers who said that he had never been a 
 slave. He kept his lips firmly shut, partly because 
 he meant to save those who had assisted him from 
 punishment, and partly because he was determined 
 to have this path to freedom remain open to his 
 brothers and sisters still in bondage. He knew that 
 if no accounts of the escape of a slave who let him- 
 self be nailed up in a box, and sent North by rail, 
 had been published, there- might have been a thous- 
 and " Box Browns " a year. Such secrets were often 
 printed, and it was not the slave who read then?f but 
 the master. Fortunately there was, at least, one 
 enemy of slavery who was wise enough to fight her 
 with silence as well as speech. His secret was not 
 told in print before 1872. 
 
 His plan was, in the first place, as already men- 
 32 
 
THK FUGITIVE. 33 
 
 ioned, to work for three weeks so diligently and 
 profitably as to avert all suspicion. He succeeded so 
 well that, on the second Saturday night, he paid over, 
 is the result of that week's work, nine dollars to his 
 master. The latter was so delighted that he actually 
 presented him with the generous sum of twenty-five 
 :ents, bidding him make a good use of it. We shall 
 see that he did. He had already saved up seventeen 
 dollars, and by the end of the third week all his pre- 
 parations were made. The laws of Maryland required 
 every free negro to carry papers describing him 
 accurately and to pay liberally for this protection. 
 Slaves often escaped by borrowing papers from a 
 friend, to whom the precious documents would be 
 returned by mail. Whenever a colored man came 
 with free papers to the railroad station to buy a 
 ticket, he was always examined carefully enough to 
 insure the detection of a runaway, unless the resemb- 
 lance was very close. Our hero was not acquainted 
 with any free negro who looked much like him ; but 
 he found out that passengers who paid on the cars 
 were not scrutinized so minutely as those who bought 
 tickets, and also that sailors were treated with pecu- 
 liar indulgence by the conductors. The dominant 
 party was doing all it could to encourage the shipping 
 interest, and rapidly reducing the tariff. The cry of 
 " Free Trade and Sailors' Rights " meant in this in- 
 stance " Free Labor and the Rights of the Slave." 
 
 Among his friends was a sailor who was of much 
 darker hue than he was himself, but who owned a 
 protection, setting forth his occupation, and bearing 
 the sacred figure of the American eagle. This was 
 borrowed ; sailors' clothes were purchased, and, oii 
 
34 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Monday morning, the fugitive jumped on the train 
 just as.it started. His baggage had been put aboard 
 by a friendly hackman. He was greatly troubled, for, 
 as he wrote to his master, ten years later, " I was 
 making a leap in the dark. The probabilities, so far 
 as I could by reason determine them, were stoutly 
 against the undertaking. The preliminaries and pre- 
 cautions I had adopted previously, all worked badly. 
 I was like one going to war' without weapons — ten 
 chances of defeat to one of victory. One in whom I 
 had confided, and one who had promised me assist- 
 ance, appalled by fear at the trial hour, deserted me." 
 " However, gloomy as was the prospect, thanks be to 
 the Most High, who is ever, the God of the oppressed, 
 at the moment which was to determine my whole 
 earthly career, His grace was sufficient : my mind 
 was made up." 
 
 His anxiety increased in consequence of the harsh- 
 ness with which the conductor questioned other pas- 
 sengers in the negro car. The sailor, however, was 
 addressed kindly and told, after a mere glance at the 
 protection, that it was all right. Thus far he was 
 safe ; but there were several people on the train who 
 would have known him at once in any other clothes. 
 A German blacksmith looked at him intently, and 
 apparently recognized him, but said nothing. On the 
 ferry boat, by which they crossed the Susquehanna, 
 he found an old acquaintance employed, and was 
 asked some dangerous questions. On they went, 
 however, until they stopped to let the train from 
 Philadelphia pass. At a window sat a man under 
 whom the runaway had been at work but a few days 
 before. He might easily have recognized him, and 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 
 
 35 
 
 >uld certainly have had him arrested ; but fortun- 
 ely he was looking another way. The passengers 
 ;nt on from Wilmington by steamer to Philadel- 
 lia, where one of them took the train for New York 
 d arrived early on Tuesday. In less than twenty- 
 ur hours the slave had made himself a free man. It 
 is but a few months since he had become twenty- 
 le. 
 
 He was astonished at "the dazzling wonders of 
 roadway," and so full of joyous excitement that, as 
 ■ wrote at once to a friend — we can guess what 
 iend — in Baltimore, he felt as if he had escaped, like 
 aniel, from a den of lions. That very day, bow- 
 er, he met another fugitive, whom he had known in 
 iltimore as " Allender's Jake," and was told that 
 ey were both in deadly peril. The city was full of 
 )utherners returning home. Many of the colored 
 ;ople could be bribed into betraying a runaway. 
 [1 their boarding-houses were closely watched, and 
 e new comer must not think of looking for work 
 )on the wharves. In fact, the danger of recapture 
 IS even greater then in New York, than after the 
 issage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. Every door 
 emed closed against the stranger. He had no 
 )me, no friends, no chance of work, and he was 
 :ely soon to be out of money, although his first 
 ght in New York was passed in the open air, where 
 I slept amid piles of barrels. He felt all the more 
 irmed because he had never before taken the full 
 sponsibility of looking after himself. • 
 At last he was obliged to tell his story to a sailor 
 lo looked good-natured, and he took him at once to 
 5 own house, and then to that of the Secretary of 
 
36 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 the New York Vigilance Committee, Mr. David Rug- 
 gles. Here he was sheltered for several days, during 
 which time Anna Murray came on from Baltimore 
 and became his wife. She could not have been mar- 
 ried to him according to the la'ws of Maryland. He 
 stated afterwards, in a letter to Captain Auld, that 
 " Instead of finding my companion a burden, she was 
 truly a help-mate." 
 
 The children of this marriage were Rosetta, born 
 June 24, 1839; Lewis Henry, October 2, 1840; 
 Frederick, March 3, 1842 ; Charles Remond, October 
 24, 1844 ; and Annie, March 22, 1849. The cer- 
 tificate, as given in his " Narrative," is dated Sep- 
 tember 15 ; but this was Saturday, which was the day 
 on which he traveled to New Bedford and found work- 
 men busy on the wharves. The wedding took place, I 
 understand, on Friday, September 14. 
 
 The bridegroom had heard of New Bedford as a 
 place where he might be able to wcirk at his trade. 
 Accordingly the newly-married couple set out thither, 
 on the day of the ceremony, by steamer, and in con- 
 formity with the system then universally enforced 
 against people of color in the United States, spent 
 the night on the deck. A stage-coach took them 
 from Newport to New Bedford, but they had no 
 money to pay for breakfast or to the driver, and he 
 took possession of their baggage, which included 
 three music books. What a wedding journey ! 
 
 The entire trip from Baltimore to New Bedford 
 occupied less • than two weeks. The fugitive had 
 changed his name from Bailey, first to Stanley, and 
 then, before his marriage, to Johnson, and he soon 
 made a final change. He had been recommended to 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 37 
 
 !ree colored man, named Nathan Johnson, who at 
 ce redeemed the baggage, in which was a music 
 ok, the " Seraph," which I saw in use just fifty 
 ars afterward in the Douglass mansion, near Wash- 
 ^ton. At Johnson's house the fugitives were treated 
 th the utmost kindness. During breakfast, the 
 inday after reaching New Bedford, the host re- 
 irked that there were so many Johnsons in the 
 wn as. to make it difficult to tell them apart. On 
 is he was invited to choose a surname for his guest, 
 10 insisted on still calling himself Frederick " to 
 eserve a sense of my identity." Nathan Johnson had 
 St been reading the " Lady of the Lake," and he at 
 ce selected the name of the noble fugitive. We 
 all see, hereafter, that the choice was singularly 
 t. 
 
 Among the first lessons which Douglass learnt at 
 5W Bedford, was the immense superiority of free to 
 we labor. On the very day he arrived he saw five 
 
 six men do more work on the wharves, with the 
 1 of an ox and a pulley, than had been done by 
 'enty or thirty in Baltimore. He also soon found 
 it the fallacy of two assertions, often made before 
 e war, namely, that the South was more prosperous 
 an the North, and that the negro was incapable of 
 pporting himself as a free citizen. New Bedford 
 IS the richest community in the United States in 
 oportion to its population, which trebled between 
 20 and 1840. In 1838 she sent out nearly two 
 mdred whalers, and the previous year had brought 
 
 a hundred and sixty thousand barrels of oil. 
 ithan Johnson and his wife earned their bread by 
 rd work ; but these two colored people had a neater 
 
jg FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 house, better food, more books and newspapers, and 
 more general information than nine-tenths of the 
 slaveholders in Talbot County. Many a fugitive was 
 living more comfortably than the master from whom 
 he had fled less than seven years before. The 
 colored people were better treated in New Bedford 
 than in any other place, Northern or Southern ; their 
 children went to school with the whites ; and their 
 determination to stand by each other made the cap- 
 ture of a fugitive impossible. 
 
 Our hero now felt so safe that, on Monday morn- 
 ing, he dressed himself for work, and went out to find 
 it. Seeing a pile of coal in front of a house he got 
 leave to shovel it into the cellar. This was his first 
 work as a freeman, and it was for the minister who 
 had just been installed over the Unitarian Society, 
 Rev. Ephraim Peabody. Four years earlier he had 
 written from New Orleans to Harriet Martineau : 
 " All my sympathies, and to a very great extent, ray 
 judgment is with the Abolitionists — entirely so if Dr. 
 Channing is one.'" His preaching did not fulfill this 
 promise, either at New Bedford, or afterward, at 
 King's Chapel, where his ideal was " not an agitator, 
 nor a revolutionist, nor a professional reformer.'' He 
 and Douglass had much to teach each other ; the 
 fugitive did get help from the clergyman, and if the 
 latter's official position had not stood between them, 
 it is possible that Unitarianism would have made an 
 illustrious convert, that the oppressed would have 
 gained an influential champion, and that King's 
 Chapel would have lost the chance to get a pastor 
 who could offend nobody. It was Mrs. Peabody who 
 gave leave to carry in the coal, and it was she who 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 39 
 
 put two silver half-dollars into a hand which clasped 
 the coins gladly, in the knowledge that no master 
 could take them away, but whatever was earned by 
 the laborer would remain his own. 
 
 His next job was to help load a sloop with oil. He 
 soon got courage enough to try to work at his trade 
 of calker, and a place was offered him by an anti- 
 slavery man who was fitting out a whaler. He had 
 no sooner set foot on the float, however, than all the 
 white calkers declared that they would leave the ship 
 unfinished, if he were allowed to strike a single blow 
 upon her. It was a busy season, and the employer 
 could do no better for him than give him work as a 
 common laborer. The same prejudice met him every- 
 where, and obliged him to content himself with earn- 
 ing only a dollar a day, whereas he was perfectly 
 competent to earn two. In this respect he was even 
 worse treated than in Baltimore, where he was paid 
 a dollar and a half a day, as much as any white rtian, 
 for calking. Later in the season he supported him- 
 self by sawing wood for the whalers, and he never 
 worked harder, even for Brother Covey. On borrow- 
 ing Mr. Johnson's saw, he found it needed a cord as a 
 brace ; so he went to a store and asked for a fip's 
 worth, but was at once told, rather sharply, that he 
 must have come from the South. No harm came 
 from this blunder, however, except a fright. 
 
 His wife went out to service, and he was obliged to 
 do so during the first winter, when prices were unusu- 
 ally high. While waiter in the family of Colonel 
 John H. Clifford, who was Governor of Massachusetts 
 in 1853, he once listened with great delight to the 
 conversation of Robert C. Winthrop, behind whose 
 
40 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 chair he stood. He seems, however, to have found 
 waiting at table less pleasant than even sawing wood, 
 rolling oil casks, digging cellars, removing rubbish 
 from back yards, and scouring cabins. His preference 
 for steady work made him soon take a place in an oil 
 refinery, where he stayed as long as he was needed. 
 Then he found employment, with other colored men, 
 whom he esteemed highly, in fitting out whalers ; 
 and his last place in New Bedford was at Richmond's 
 brass foundry. Here he often worked every day and 
 two nights a week besides, his principal task being to 
 blow the bellows: This was afterward done by 
 steam ; but he kept working at it until he was pro- 
 moted to blow one of the trumpets before whose 
 blast fell the walls of Jericho. 
 
 His zeal for religion had been much weakened by 
 what he saw of the white professors in Maryland : but 
 now he felt that the Lord had brought him out of the 
 house of bondage, and he sought to unite with one of 
 the New Bedford churches. The Methodists, who 
 then worshiped in Elm Street, and afterward in 
 County Street, had, in 1838, a preacher who was so 
 attractive that Douglass determined to become a 
 member. He was not permitted, on account of his 
 color, to sit in the body of the house ; but he accepted 
 this proscription as a necessary deference to the 
 prejudices of the unconverted part of the congrega- 
 tion. He felt sure that the church members would 
 treat him as a man and a brother. " Surely," he said 
 to himself, " these Christian people have none of this 
 feeling against color. They, at least, have renounced 
 this unholy feeling. When none but the saints are 
 assembled they will certainly recognize us as children 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 41 
 
 of the same Father, and heirs of the same salvation 
 on equal terms with themselves." 
 
 " Communion day came ; the sermon was preached ; the 
 congregation departed ; and I remained to see, as I thought, 
 this holy sacrament celebrated in the spirit of its Great 
 Founder. There were only about half a dozen colored people 
 attached to the Elm Street Church at this time. After the 
 congregation was dismissed these descended from the gallery 
 and took a seat against the wall most distant from the altar. 
 Brother B. was very animated, and sang very sweetly, ' Salva- 
 tion, 'tis a joyful sound ; ' and soon he began to administer the 
 sacrament. I was anxious to observe the bearing of the 
 colored members ; and the result was most humiliating. Dur- 
 ing the whole ceremony they looked like sheep without a shep- 
 herd. The white members went forward to the altar by the 
 bench-full ; and when it was evident that all the whites had 
 been served with the bread and wine. Brother B., after a long 
 pause, as if inquiring whether all the whites had been served, 
 and fully assuring himself on that important point, then raised 
 his voice to an unnatural pitch, and, looking to the corner 
 where his black sheep seemed penned, beckoned with his hand, 
 exclaiming, ' come forward, colored friends ! come forward ! 
 You, too, have an interest in the blood of Christ. God is no 
 respecter of persons. Come forward and take this holy sacra- 
 ment to your comfort.' The colored members — poor, slavish 
 souls — went forward as invited. I went out, and have never 
 been in that church since." 
 
 Other churches were tried with the same result. 
 When one of them was holding a revival, he ven- 
 tured to try to sit on the broad aisl-e-; but a deacon 
 hastened to say, what was then often ^aid by drivers 
 of omnibuses, door-keepers at menageries and thea- 
 ters, and officials on board of steamboats and rail- 
 road cars, " We don't allow niggers in here." After 
 
A2 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 many such rebuffs from the white ministers and dea- 
 cons, he joined the African M. E. Zion Church, but 
 he soon left it, because the pastor was persuaded by 
 other clergymen to refuse, like them, to give out 
 notices of anti-slavery meetings. He remained, how- 
 ever, one of the colored Methodists, and occasionally 
 officiated as a lay preacher in the little school-house 
 on Second Street, where they worshiped. 
 
 During these early years at New Bedford, he saved 
 from drowning a boy, whom no one else ventured to 
 try to rescue ; a man named Sullivan had been also 
 saved at St. Michael's, after grappling with his pre- 
 server in a way which nearly proved fatal to them 
 both ; and a white boy, who broke through the thin 
 ice in a basin near Baltimore, owed his life to the 
 courage and presence of mind with which the black 
 boy, then only twelve, managed to reach him with an 
 oar. 
 
 The New Bedford Lyceum was not open at that 
 time to colored people, but they held many meetings 
 for discussion among themselves, and Douglass was 
 an eager listener, as well as an impressive speaker. He 
 had little time to read, but how well it was used may 
 be judged from his habit of nailing up a newspaper on 
 a post in the foundry, so that he could look at it 
 while he worked the heavy beam up and down to fill 
 the bellows. He made himself well acquainted with 
 Scott, Whittier, and other poets, while Combe's " Con- 
 stitution of Man," taught him the supremacy of law 
 and order in, nature, as well as the possibility of 
 attaining happiness here on earth by obedience to 
 natural laws. This book, he says, "relieved my path 
 of many shadows ;" but what he read most devoutly. 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 43 
 
 next to the Bible, was the " Liberator." Soon after 
 becoming a subscriber, he listened, on April 15, 1839, 
 to a lecture from Garrison, of whom he speaks thus : 
 
 " As I looked upon this man from the gallery of old Liberty 
 Hall, then otherwise deserted, dilapidated, and in ill-repute, 
 with its wood-work defaced, its doors off hinges, and its win- 
 dows broken by stones and bad eggs, thrown to break up anti- 
 slavery meetings, the only place in town where such meetings 
 could be held, I saw that the hour and the man were well met 
 and well united. In him there was no contradiction between 
 the speech and the speaker, but absolute sympathy and one- 
 ness. The faces of millions of men might be searched without 
 finding one just like his ; at least, it seemed so to me. In him 
 I saw the resurrection and the life of the dead and buried hopes 
 of my enslaved people. As I now remember, the style of Mr. 
 Garrison's speaking would not be called eloquent. There was 
 no fine flow of words, no dazzling sentences formed to tickle 
 the ear. His. power was the power which belongs only to 
 character, conviction, and high moral purpose, and which can- 
 not well be counterfeited." — (" Thoughts and Recollections of 
 the Anti-Slavery Conflict." A Lecture not yet printed.) 
 
 The express statement (in " Life and Times of 
 Frederick Douglass," pp. 242-3), about the first Aboli- 
 tionist, that, " On this occasion he announced nearly 
 all his heresies," has been declared inconsistent with 
 his habits when he spoke as agent of the Massachu- 
 setts Anti-Slavery Society, which was then the case. 
 (" William Lloyd Garrison : the Story of His Life. 
 Told by his Children." Vol. ii., p. 292, note.) 
 
 The columns of the " Liberator," however, were 
 full of arguments in favor of making no resistance to 
 evil, and it is possible that some allusion to this sub- 
 ject may have inadvertently been made in the lecture, 
 
44 
 
 Frederick Douglass. 
 
 and eagerly taken up by an enthusiastic hearer, who 
 did not see that he had demonstrated the falsity of the 
 doctrine in his own victory over slavery, in the person 
 of Covey. In this and other respects, Douglass was 
 then an ardent Garrisonian. He " loved this paper 
 and its editor ;" he took frequent occasion to attack 
 slavery, not only in assemblages of colored people, 
 but in conversation with white laborers, and he 
 promptly attended every anti-slavery meeting in New 
 Bedford, his " heart burning at every true utterance 
 against the slave system, and every rebuke of its 
 friends and supporters." 
 
 Among other speakers whom he heard in Liberty 
 Hall was Rev. Dr. Garnett, a man of pure African 
 blood, afterwards Minister to Liberia. It is remarked 
 that only a man who has felt the iron of slavery in his 
 own soul, and has been accustomed to look on his own 
 race as doomed and altogether wanting in great mental 
 qualities " can well imagine my exultant feeling, while 
 looking upon, and listening to, this brilliant contra- 
 diction to the degrading and disheartening theories 
 which had been forced upon me by nearly all my pre- 
 vious history." 
 
 Such speakers were sorely needed in 1840. The 
 Pennsylvania Abolition Society had been formed, 
 books had been printed against slavery, and laws to 
 check its increase had been passed before the Revolu- 
 tionary War. Soon after that struggle, new societies 
 were formed in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New 
 York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and even 
 Virginia. Vermont prohibited the wicked institution 
 in 1777 ; and her example was followed throughout 
 the North. A demand for immediate emancipation 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 45 
 
 was published in 1816, and another in 1824. Few 
 desired any but gradual measures, however ; and the 
 general character of the controversy was mild and 
 peaceable before 183a Then began what Harriet 
 Martineau has called " The Martyr Age of the United 
 States." William Lloyd Garrison insisted zealously, 
 as one of the editors of a Baltimore newspaper, in 
 1829, on immediate and unconditional emancipation, 
 without expatriation. He showed that the Coloniza- 
 tion Society, while professedly friendly to the colored 
 race, was really an enemy ; and he frequently exposed 
 the horrors of the domestic slave trade, then flour- 
 ishing rankly in Baltimore. An attack on a merchant 
 in Massachusetts, who allowed his ship to be employed 
 in this trafHc, caused Garrison to be imprisoned for 
 seven weeks, in the spring of 1830. He could get no 
 church that fall in Boston for his lectures, nor any 
 hall, except one belonging to a society of unbelievers, 
 who showed especial interest in his cause, and who 
 did believe in freedom of speech. The first number 
 of the "Liberator" was published on January i, 
 1831 ; and before the close of that year, five thousand 
 dollars was offered by the State of Georgia as a re- 
 ward for kidnapping the editor. Opposition only 
 made him more zealous and steadfast. To a fellow- 
 laborer, who urged him at this time to keep cool, 
 saying, " Why, you are all on fire ! " he answered, 
 " Brother May, I have need to be all on fire, for I 
 have mountains of ice about me to melt." 
 
 And it must not be supposed that all the fire and 
 fury were on one side. Among the events of the 
 seven years between 1831 and 1839 were the follow- 
 ing. A Connecticut kdy was put into a prison cell, 
 
46 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 which had been occupied by a murderer, because she 
 was trying to educate colored girls ; she and her 
 pupils were molested in every possible way , and the 
 school was finally broken up by attempts to burn and 
 tear down her house. An academy, which was opened 
 to colored people in New Hampshire, was dragged 
 from its foundations by a hundred yoke of oxen, 
 according to a vote in town-meeting, and set up as a 
 laughing-stock upon the common. The formation of 
 anti-slavery societies in New York and Philadelphia 
 took place with great difficulty, amid dangerous mobs. 
 The meeting of the American Society in New York, 
 on July 4, was broken up by rioters, who held posses- 
 sion of the city for three days, and did much damage 
 to churches, schools, and private residences ; and that 
 August a Philadelphia mob destroyed forty-four 
 houses of colored people and murdered a black man, 
 while another was drowned in trying to escape. One 
 day, in the next year, October 21, 1835, there were 
 three mobs, that in broad-cloth which put a rope 
 around Garrison's waist, tore his clothes from his 
 body, and might have injured him seriously, if a re- 
 fuge had not been found in Boston jail ; that headed 
 by a member of Congress, which drove out of Utica, 
 New York, a convention of some seven hundred 
 delegates, engaged in the formation of a State anti- 
 slavery society ; and that which broke up a meeting 
 in Montpelier, Vermont. The brother of the Con- 
 necticut lady just mentioned was then serving out a 
 sentence of eight months in the Washington jail for 
 having used anti-slavery newspapers as wrappers for 
 botanical specimens ; and a divinity student, who had 
 committed a similar offence at Nashville, Tennessee, 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 47 
 
 was whipped with twenty lashes on his bare back. 
 And among the outrages of 1835 shoixld also be men- 
 tioned the attempts of various Southern States to 
 have their example, in suppressing all discussion of 
 slavery, carried out, by law as well as by violence, 
 throughout the North. During the next year the 
 printing-press of J. G. Birney, soon to be a candidate 
 for the Presidency, was destroyed by a Cincinnati 
 mob ; a New England clergyman was sentenced to 
 three months of hard labor in the house of correction 
 for his lectures ; and despotic interference with the 
 mails was proposed in Congress. But these details 
 seem almost trivial when we think that a fugitive 
 slave was burned alive in St. Louis soon after, for 
 having stabbed the officers who took him prisoner ; 
 that a Presbyterian clergyman, who was trying to 
 save from destruction the printing office, where he 
 had denounced this and other fruits of slavery, was 
 shot dead in Illinois ; and that Pennsylvania Hall, 
 which had been built at a cost of $40,000, as a place 
 for freedom of speech about all reforms, was burned 
 by a mob, who also set on fire the " Shelter for 
 Colored Orphans." 
 
 All these persecutions took place before the arrival 
 of Mr. Douglass in New Bedford, where he must 
 have heard them often discussed ; and they show, 
 like his own treatment in churches and shipyards, 
 that the North was still with the South against his 
 race. All the anti-slavery philanthropists were but a 
 helpless minority, amid the violence of opposition, 
 which marshaled churches and newspapers. State and 
 'city governments, police and militia, colleges and 
 courts of justice, fine ladies and business men. 
 
^8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 laborers and rowdies, in fact, almost the entire popu- 
 lation of the free States against them. The evils of 
 slavery were scarcely realized in the North ; the 
 pressure of family, denominational, political, and 
 commercial ties with the South, was very strong; 
 fears that agitation would bring on civil war had 
 already been excited ; and many good and wise men 
 considered themselves bound by the Constitution of 
 the United States to refrain from any attacks on insti- 
 tutions whose preservation seemed guaranteed by 
 that great compact. Conservative people were espe- 
 cially alarmed at the irreverence with which the laws 
 and the Constitution were treated, as well as at the 
 encouragement of women to speak in public. The 
 latter fact was peculiarly important to the clergy, as 
 the former was to lawyers and business men. 
 
 Disunionism could not, strictly speaking, be fairly 
 charged against the Abolitionists before 1842 ; but 
 the Declaration of Sentiments, which Tiad been 
 adopted nine years earlier by the American Anti- 
 Slavery Society, on organizing at Philadelphia, and 
 which had been drawn up by Garrison, with the 
 approval of Whittier and S. J. May, speaks thus of 
 the support given to slave-holders by people of the 
 free States, under the Constitution : " This relation 
 to slavery is criminal and full of danger ; it must be 
 broken up." Even from the beginning there was 
 strong temptation to overlook the many peculiarly 
 good features of our form of government, in the 
 . earnestness of indignation against one black spot. 
 Mr. Garrison was led, by a desire to follow the 
 Gospels literally, into maintaining that physical force 
 ought never to be used in resisting evil, or accepted 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 
 
 49 
 
 as the foundation of government. He declared in 
 the " Liberator " for 1837, that human governments 
 are the results of disobedience to God, that they are 
 to be preferred to anarchy just as is " the small-pox 
 to the Asiatic cholera," and that " They are all anti- 
 Christ. (" William Lloyd Garrison : the Story of His 
 Life. Told by His Children." Vol. ii., pp. 150, 202.) 
 
 Whittier complained that " He fills his paper with 
 no-governmentism," and Elizur Wright declared that 
 " His plan of rescuing the slave by the destruction of 
 human laws is fatally conflictive with ours." The 
 discontent of the most patriotic Abolitionists was 
 increased, as he founded, in 1838, a Non-Resistance 
 Society, with the approval of Oliver Johnson, S. J. 
 May, Edmund Quincy, H. C. Wright, Stephen S. 
 Foster, Lydia Maria Child, Maria W. Chapman, Abby 
 Kelley, and Lucretia Mott. The Declaration of Senti- 
 ments pledged its members not to vote or hold office, 
 and it is expressly stated, that " We cannot acknowl- 
 edge allegiance to any human government." 
 
 Such language, at a time when an anti-slavery 
 meeting was sure to call out a mob, was more cour- 
 ageous than prudent. A clergyman or magistrate 
 might seem to justify himself for declining to inter- 
 fere by saying : " Men who disown allegiance to our 
 government have no right to be protected against the 
 righteous indignation which is called out by their 
 /disloyalty. They are to blame themselves for these 
 mobs." We can all see now that these early Aboli- 
 tionists were men and women of whom the world was 
 not worthy ; but I cannot help regretting that they 
 were not a little more under the guidance of worldly 
 wisdom. 
 
go FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Mr. Garrison's anarchism, as it would now be 
 called, was particularly important, because this was 
 in all probability, as is expressly stated by a fellow- 
 champion who is also one of the historians of the 
 great conflict, William Goodell, what kept him from 
 becoming " an early and zealous leader of the Liberty 
 party." This organization, which developed first into 
 the Free Soil and then into the Republican party, and 
 finally abolished slavery, nominated a singularly good 
 candidate for the presidency in 1840. Birney had 
 been a prominent lawyer in Alabama, and had 
 emancipated his slaves before he tried, first in 
 Kentucky, and then in Ohio, to edit an anti-slavery 
 paper which was destroyed three times by mobs ; 
 and he was then serving as secretary of the American 
 Anti-Slavery Society. The nomination was supported 
 by Whittier, Sewall, Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Myron 
 HoUey, and other prominent Abolitionists, and it was 
 made under the official direction of the State Anti- 
 Slavery Society of New York. Most of the men who 
 sympathized with the movement were determined to 
 vote, and the only question was whether they should 
 support Birney or one of the pro-slavery candidates, 
 Van Buren and Harrison. The good of the cause 
 demanded that the vote of the Liberty party should 
 be made as large as possible, and I see a sad lack of 
 ability either to appreciate a republican form of 
 government, or to cooperate with those who differed 
 with him even slightly, in Garrison's course. He 
 followed up the nomination by expressing in the 
 " Liberator " his surprise at " the folly, the presump- 
 tion, the almost unequaled infatuation of the handful 
 of Abolitionists." It rested largely with him to say 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 51 
 
 what gains should be made by this handful among 
 the two hundred thousand members of the anti- 
 slavery societies ; and Birney's failure to get much 
 more than seven thousand votes was largely due to 
 the action taken six weeks after his nomination by 
 the Garrisonians at the annual meeting of the 
 American Anti-Slavery Society in May, 1840, in New 
 York. Fearing to .be outvoted, about four hundred 
 and fifty of them came from New England by a 
 special steamer, forming what their leader called in 
 the " Liberator " " a heart -stirring spectacle ! " About 
 a hundred others of his followers came by rail ; and, 
 as only about a thousand votes were cast, the conven- 
 tion was completely under his control. He used it to 
 pass resolutions, disapproving of the nomination of 
 Birney and another Abolitionist, " as inexpedient and 
 injurious to the cause," and declaring that " We 
 cannot advise our friends to waste their energies in 
 futile efforts to promote their election." 
 
 There is no pleasure in dwelling on the mistakes of 
 men like Garrison, and I hasten to speak of a point of 
 controversy where he was clearly in the right. One 
 reason why he and his adherents captured the con- 
 vention was that they feared it might be packed 
 against them by men who wished to shut out all 
 women from the work. Lucretia Mott was not al- 
 lowed to vote at the formation of the American So- 
 ciety, in 1833, but only to speak ; the two sexes had 
 to organize separate associations ; and it was not con- 
 sidered proper for women to advocate reforms in 
 print or in any place more public than a Quaker 
 meeting-house. Shortly before Garrison was mobbed 
 in Boston, he published, in the " Liberator," a letter of 
 
C2 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 sympathy from the daughter of a judge in the Su- 
 preme Court of South Carolina. Miss Angelina 
 Grimke had abandoned her home and family in hor- 
 ror at the system in which she had been brought up, 
 and in 1836 she felt it her duty to publish an "Ap- 
 peal to Southern Women," which was publicly burned 
 by the postmasters in South Carolina, while the 
 Mayor of Charleston sent her word that she could 
 not be suffered to go there on a visit to her mother. 
 She was soon afterward invited to hold a series 
 of women's meetings in New York parlors, but 
 the audience increased so much that she made the 
 unheard-of innovation of speaking in the session 
 room of- a Baptist church. Her next step was to 
 address colored people of both sexes, and in June, 
 1837, at Lynn, she spoke for the first time to a mixed 
 audience in which white men listened eagerly. Her 
 sister Sarah assisted her ; both asserted their right to 
 speak and publish ; and both were denounced by the 
 Congregational ministers of Massachusetts in the 
 " Pastoral Letter," best known through the poem 
 which was called out in reply from Whittier. Even he, 
 however, felt obliged to warn them privately against 
 injuring the cause of the slave by bringing in a 
 new question prematurely. " Carolina's high-souled 
 daughters," as he calls them, knew better than any 
 one else how to help the slave, and Angelina was 
 soon seen standing in the Speaker's place in the Hall 
 of Representatives in Boston, speaking to the mem- 
 bers of the Legislature, while the seats were filled 
 with the best and brightest people in the State. Her 
 last appearance in public was in Pennsylvania Hall, 
 before a mob who became quiet under the power of 
 
THE FUGITIVE. 53 
 
 her voice ; but twenty hours later the building was 
 set on fire. She had then been for three days a bride. 
 
 By this time there were fighting in the front rank 
 against slavery, not only Lucretia Mott and the 
 Grimke sisters, but Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, Miss 
 Abby Kelley, who has been sadly confounded with the 
 half-witted Abby Folsom, and that gifted lady whose 
 activity had caused her to be nick-named " Captain 
 Chapman." To recognize their services was simply 
 just, and it would have been a disgrace to the cause 
 if the American Society had failed, in May, 1839, to 
 enlarge its membership beyond the line of sex. The 
 motion was supported by Garrison, Phillips, Gerrit 
 Smith, C. C. Burleigh, and Oliver Johnson, but it had 
 only a hundred and eighty-one votes against a hun- 
 dred and forty-one. A year later the question was 
 decided again in the same way, by giving Miss Kelley 
 a place on a committee ; and this time the vote was 
 five hundred and fifty-seven against four hundred 
 and fifty-one. The fact that each side had trebled its 
 strength favors the supposition that both had tried to 
 pack the convention. 
 
 The result of this action, and of the attack on the 
 Liberty candidates, was a secession in which clergy- 
 men were prominent. Rival societies were formed ; 
 and a new paper was started in opposition to the 
 " Liberator." This last manifestation was short-lived; 
 but it is estimated that about four-fifths of the men 
 who had been working with Garrison, now parted 
 company with him permanently. Most of the churches 
 which had hitherto been open to the Garrisonians 
 were now closed against them. Where th«y did 
 speak, their audiences were, for a time, unexpectedly 
 
24 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 scanty ; and Stephen S. Foster was driven to adopt 
 the plan of speaking in church without leave, where 
 he had failed to obtain it. What he suffered in con- 
 sequence will be told in the next chapter. It must 
 now be remarked that, previous to 1841, the Abolition- 
 ists had shown no hostility to the Church ; although 
 they had good reason to regret her supporting slav- 
 ery against them. They were among the most saintly 
 of her children, and they still hoped to save her from 
 being misled by time-serving hirelings. If the Gar- 
 risonians erred at all in regard to the Gospel, it was 
 in following it too literally and zealously. It is true, 
 that Garrison had called out some opposition by 
 views about the Sabbath, which do not now seem 
 irreligious ; but his main heresies were in regard to 
 the prejudices about color and sex. 
 
 No one of these new movements can be properly 
 understood, except by looking at it in connection with 
 many other recent and alarming innovations. The year 
 1840 stood nearer to 1890, in the readiness with which 
 all received opinions, even about clothing and food, 
 were called in question, than to 1820, when contro- 
 versy was mainly inside of the old-fashioned limits. 
 Then Sidney Smith complained that " The Ameri- 
 cans are a brave, industrious, and acute people ; but 
 they have hitherto given no indications of genius, 
 and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their 
 morality or in their character." ..." During 
 the thirty or forty years of their independence, they 
 have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the 
 arts, for literature, or even for the statesman-Hke 
 studies of politics or political economy." . . . "In 
 the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American 
 
THE FUGITIVE. J^ 
 
 book ? " Twenty years, from the time when these 
 words were written, sufficed to bring forward Emer- 
 son, Channing, Prescott, Bancroft, Poe, Hawthorne, 
 Cooper, Holmes, Longfellow, Whittier, and other 
 authors who were read in many lands. The thinker, 
 who rightly stands first on this list, as most original, 
 and who has made many readers feel as completely 
 emancipated as Douglass did on reaching New Bed- 
 ford, said in his lecture on " Man, the Reformer," in 
 1841 : " In the history of the world, the doctrine of 
 reform never had such scope as at the present hour.'' 
 Former accusers of society " all respected something 
 — Church or State, literature or history, domestic 
 usages, the market town, the dinner table, coined 
 money. But now these and all things else hear the 
 trumpet and must rush to judgment — Christianity, 
 the laws, commerce, schools, the farm, the laboratory; 
 and not a kingdom, town, statute, rite, calling, man, 
 or woman, but it is threatened by the new spirit." In 
 another lecture of the same year he says, " The pres- 
 ent age will be marked by its harvest of projects for 
 this reform of domestic, civil, literary, and ecclesias- 
 tical institutions. The leaders of the crusades against 
 war, negro slavery, intemperance, government based 
 on force, usages of trade, court and custom-house 
 oaths, and so on to the agitators on the system of 
 education and the laws of property, are the right suc- 
 cessors of Luther, Knox, Robinson, Fox, Penn,Wesley, 
 and Whitefield." 
 
 Before these last words were spoken in public, the 
 band of agitators had been joined by a new member, 
 who had deeper experience than any of his brethren 
 of the wrongs which he helped to right. We shall see 
 
e6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 him rapidly rise to his full height of culture and genius, 
 bear his share of persecution, and master all the con- 
 ditions of success in that great reform with which 
 his name is forever associated, so thoroughly as to 
 grow wiser than his original teacher, Garrison, and 
 do good service in rolling up the anti-slavery votes 
 from the seven thousand for Birney, in 1840, to the 
 eighteen hundred thousand, in i860, for Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CRUSADER. 
 
 At the beginning of August, 1841, an anti-slavery 
 ;onvention was held at New Bedford, where Douglass 
 leard not only Garrison, but Parker Pillsbury, a 
 Jniversalist clergyman named Bradburn, and other 
 eading Abolitionists ; and he became so much inter- 
 !Sted that he determined to take a holiday, the first 
 le had that summer, and go with his wife to attend 
 he next series of meetings at Nantucket. He had 
 ilready become somewhat noted as a speaker to col- 
 )red people ; but he f«lt greatly embarrassed when, 
 )n the evening of Wednesday, August 11, as is re- 
 :orded in the " Liberator," he was called out, for the 
 irst time in his life, to address a white audience. 
 ' My speech on this occasion," he says, " is about the 
 )nly one I ever made of which I do not remember a 
 dngle connected sentence. It was with the utmost 
 lifficulty that I could stand erect, or that I could 
 :ommand and articulate two words without hesitation 
 md stammering. I trembled in every limb." He has 
 lince told me, that he did manage to thank the 
 ;hampions of his race for their devotion, and also to 
 :xpress his hearty sympathy with their methods. It 
 vas then too late in the evening to say more. The 
 mpression he made was so favorable, however, that 
 57 
 
58 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 he was persuaded to open the last session of the 
 Nantucket convention the next morning, when, as is 
 related by Garrison, " After apologizing for his ignor- 
 ance and reminding the audience, that slavery is a 
 poor school for the human intellect and heart, he 
 proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own 
 history as a slave, and in the course of his speech gave 
 utterance to many noble thoughts and thrilling reflec- 
 tions." He could not safely tell his real name, or his 
 master's, or where he had lived in the South ; but 
 according to Parker Pillsbury, he succeeded in prov- 
 ing that he had been there by giving "a most side- 
 splitting specimen of a slave-holding minister's ser- 
 mon," on the text, '' Servants, obey in all things your 
 masters." A passage from this very effective parody 
 will be found in the next chapter, where Miss HoUey 
 quotes it as she heard it, two years later, in Buffalo. 
 The meetings had begun tamely, but gradually 
 gained in fervor ; and now " The crowded congrega- 
 tion had been wrought up almost to enchantment, as 
 he turned over the terrible apocalypse of his expe- 
 riences in slavery." Then Garrison arose; and as 
 Douglass says, his speech " was one never to be for- 
 gotten by those who heard it. Those who had heard 
 him oftenest, and had known him longest, were 
 astonished. It was an effort of unequalled power, 
 sweeping down, like a very tornado, every opposing 
 barrier." Garrison says himself, " I think I never 
 hated slavery so intensely as at that moment." He 
 began by declaring that Patrick Henry never spoke 
 more eloquently in the cause of liberty. Then, ac- 
 cording to Pillsbury, he asked, " Have we been list- 
 ening to a thing, a piece of property, or to a man ? " 
 
THE CRUSADER. 59 
 
 "A man ! A man ! " shouted full five hundred voices. 
 " And should such a man be held a slave in a repub- 
 lican and Christian land ? " " No, no ! Never, never !" 
 " Shall such a man ever be sent back to slavery from 
 the soil of old Massachusetts ? " shouted Garrison, 
 with all his power of voice. " Almost the whole 
 assembly sprang with one accord to their feet, and 
 the walls and roof of the Athenaeum seemed to shud- 
 der with the ' No, no ! ' loud and long continued in 
 the wild enthusiasm of the scene. As soon as Gar- 
 rison could be heard, he caught up the acclaim, and 
 superadded : ' No ! a thousand times no ! Sootier 
 the lightnings of heaven blast Bunker Hill monument, 
 till not one stone shall be left standing upon another.' " 
 (Pillsbury, " Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles," pp. 
 
 325-8-) 
 
 Before Douglass returned to New Bedford, he 
 accepted an invitation from Mr. Collins, agent of the 
 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, to enter into its 
 service as a lecturer, and go to and fro with him, tell- 
 ing his story wherever he could find an audience. 
 His salary was to be four hundred and fifty dollars a 
 year. He was very unwilling at first, not only 
 because he would be dangerously exposed to dis- 
 covery and arrest, but because he distrusted his own 
 ability. The Abolitionists insisted on his enlisting in 
 their forlorn hope ; " and I finally consented to go 
 out for three months, for I supposed I should have 
 got to the end of my story and my usefulness in that 
 length of time." He has been out before the public, 
 pleading for his race, almost fifty years, and he has 
 not yet got to the end of his usefulness. 
 
 The next place where he seems to have attracted 
 
6o FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 much notice was^ Hingham, where he spoke at the 
 Plymouth County convention, November 4. Ac- 
 cording to an article copied into the " Liberator," from 
 the " Hingham Patriot," he reminded those who saw 
 him of Spartacus, the rebel gladiator, as presented by 
 Forrest. " A man of his shrewdness, and his po.wer, 
 both intellectual and physical, must be poor stuff, 
 thought we, to make a slave of. Any way, we would 
 not like to be his master." . . . . " He is very fluent 
 in the use of language, choice and appropriate lan- 
 guage, too ; and talks as well, for all we could see, as 
 men who have spent all their lives over books." . . . 
 " His master valued him at $2,000. He told us that 
 he could distinguish a slave-holder or a slave by the 
 cast of his eye, the moment he saw one." He seems, 
 even then, to have done much more than tell his own 
 experience. He did, it is true, in favoring the pre- 
 sentation of petitions as a means of attracting notice, 
 relate how he learned himself who the " Bobolition- 
 ists " were, by hearing what they asked of Congress; 
 but he went on to express his decided preference for 
 moral suasion over political action. " We ought to 
 do just what the slave-holders don't want us to do, 
 that is, use moral suasion." He called the pledge of 
 the North to return fugitives " the bulwark of 
 slavery ; " for it " discourages very many from mak- 
 ing any attempt to gain their freedom." . . . " This is 
 the Union whose dissolution we want to accomplish; 
 and he is no true Abolitionist who does not go against 
 this Union. The South cares not how much you talk 
 against slavery in the abstract. They will agree with 
 you, yet they will cling to it as for life ; and it is this 
 pledge, binding the North to the South, on which 
 
THE CRUSADER. 6l 
 
 y rely for its support." This is, of course, simply 
 at he had been taught by Garrison, Phillips, and 
 llins. What was most original in his speeches at 
 3 time was the zeal with which he lashed the 
 irches of the North for their alliance with those in 
 South. 
 
 The most important work done by the Abolitionists 
 1841 was in Rhode Island. This State was still 
 ier the charter of 1663, which had originally been 
 y liberal, but had now become plainly unjust, 
 e voters must not only be white, but must also be 
 ders, or eldest sons of holders, of real estate, so that 
 lost two-thirds of the men were disfranchised ; and 
 
 ■ majority of the Representatives were elected by a 
 rtion of the State inhabited by only about one- 
 rd of its citizens. Thus it was perfectly possible 
 
 fifteen hundred men to get the control of a legis- 
 iire which ruled over fifty thousand adults. About 
 en hundred' of the disfranchised men were colored. 
 ^ movement to enlarge the suffrage, and equalize 
 
 ■ representation, began in 1790, was renewed in 
 19, and assumed formidable proportions in 1841. 
 e Legislature was willing to make some changes, 
 t not enough to satisfy the suffragists. These 
 rrites, as they were called, on account of being led 
 
 Mr. T. W. Dorr, were mostly Democrats, and 
 re determined to have full justice done to the 
 ite man at once. Those of them who wished to 
 
 something for the colored man also were over- 
 ed by the others, and persuaded to make a com- 
 imise. A new constitution was proposed in 
 vember, 1841, allowing all white men to vote, but 
 itponing the question of enfranchising colored 
 
62 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 people for decision afterwards ; and all who would 
 thus be entitled to the ballot were invited to show 
 themselves at the polls on December 27, 28, or 29. 
 
 There were men in Rhode Island who were deter- 
 mined that the negro should have his just part in 
 whatever reform was accomplished. A series of con- 
 ventions was arranged for December, and among the 
 companions of Douglass was one of whom he says 
 " No man thrilled me more on the slavery question 
 than Parker Pillsbury." There, too, were Abby 
 Kelley and Stephen S. Foster, whose conscience was 
 never at peace unless he was stirring up a mob. He 
 was now carrying out his own favorite plan, of rebuk- 
 ing lukewarm ministers and congregations in the 
 midst of what they called pubjic worship, with such 
 success that even he was satisfied. Again and again 
 he was dragged out by deacons and class-leaders. 
 His collar was torn off by excited Quakers in Lynn, 
 and he had been put in prison several times before he 
 was ejected, in September, 1842, from the City Hall iti 
 Portland, with only one tail left on his long coat. 
 How he spoke to opponents may be imagined from 
 this fact. A number of Methodist ministers were led, 
 partly by sympathy and partly by curiosity, into one 
 of the anti-slavery conventions in Boston. Foster 
 recognized their peculiar costume, and began his 
 speech thus : " Is there a single member of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church within the sound of my 
 voice, who dares deny that he is a villain ? " His 
 three companions in Rhode Island were not so fond 
 of church-work ; but the violence of the mob was 
 increased by prejudice against the color of Douglass 
 and the sex of Miss Kelley. I cannot but feel indig- 
 
THE CRUSADER. 63 
 
 nant, even now, when I think of the foul words and 
 rotten eggs that were hurled at her of whom Lowell 
 wrote thus : 
 
 " A Judith there, turned Quakeress, 
 Sits Abby in her simple dress. 
 ******* 
 No nobler gift of heart or brain. 
 No life more white from spot or stain, 
 Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid 
 Than hers — the simple Quaker maid." 
 
 Convention after convention was mobbed, but still 
 the friends of equal suffrage went on pointing out the 
 black spot in the Dorr constitution. Its supporters 
 were indignant, and its opponents rejoiced to see the 
 suffragists at war among themselves. Of the last of 
 these conventions, and one of the noisiest, that held 
 in Providence, while the vote was being taken on the 
 merits of the new plan, we have the following descrip- 
 tion, from the pen of Mr. N. P. Rogers, who was mak- 
 ing the " Herald of Freedom," published at Concord, 
 New Hampshire, a noble ally of the " Liberator" : 
 
 " Friday evening was chiefly occupied by colored speakers. 
 The fugitive Douglass was up when we entered. This is an ex- 
 traordinary man. He was cut out for a hero. In a rising for 
 liberty, he would have been a "Toussaint or a Hamilton. He 
 has the ' heart to conceive, the head to contrive, and the hand 
 to execute.' A commanding person — over six feet, we should 
 say, in height, and of most manly proportions. His head would 
 strike a phrenologist amid a sea of them in Exeter Hall, and his 
 voice would ring like a trumpet in the field. Let the South con- 
 gratulate herself that he is a fugitive. It would not have been 
 safe for her, if he had remained about the plantations a year or 
 two longer. Douglass is his fugitive name. He did not wear 
 
64 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 it in slavery. We don't know why he assumed it, or who be- 
 stowed it on him — ^but there seems fitness in it, to his com- 
 manding figure and heroic port. As a speaker he has few 
 equals. It is not declamation — but oratory, power of de- 
 bate. He watches the tide of discussion with the eye of the 
 veteran, and dashes into it at once with all the tact of the forum 
 or the bar. He has wit, argument, -satcasm, pathos — all that 
 first-rate men show in their master efforts. His voice is highly 
 melodious and rich, and his enunciation quite elegant ; and yet 
 he has been but two or three years out of the house of bondage. 
 We noticed that he had strikingly improved since we had heard 
 him at Dover in September. We say thus much of him, for he 
 is esteemed by our multitude as of an inferior race. We should 
 like to see him before any New England legislature or bar, and 
 let him feel the freedom of the anti-slavery meeting, and see 
 what would become of his inferiority. Yet, he is a thing, in 
 American estimate. He is the chattel of some pale-faced 
 tyrant. How his owner would cower and shiver to hear him 
 thunder in an anti-slavery hall. How he would shrink away, 
 with his infernal whip, from his flaming eye when kindled with 
 anti-slavery emotion. And the brotherhood of thieves, the 
 posse comitatus of divines, we wish a hecatomb or two of the 
 proudest and flintiest of them, were obliged to hear him thun- 
 der for human liberty, and lay the enslavement of his people at 
 their doors. They would tremble like Belshazzar. Poor Way- 
 land, we wish he could have been pegged to a seat in the Frank- 
 lin Hall the evening the colored friends spoke. His ' limitations ' 
 would have abandoned him like the ' baseless fabric of a vision.' 
 Sanderson, of New Bedford,^ Cole, of Boston, and Stanley, 
 of North Carolina, followed Douglass. They all displayed ex- 
 cellent ability." ..." These are the inferior race, these young 
 black men, who, ten years ago, would have been denied en- 
 trance into such an assembly of whites, except as waiters or 
 fiddlers. Their attempts at speaking would have been met with 
 jeers of astonishment. It would have amazed the superior race 
 as the ass's speech did Balaam. Now they mingle with 
 applause in the debates with Garrison, and Foster, and Phillips. 
 
THE CRCJSADER. 65 
 
 Southern slavery — ' hold thine own ' — when the kindred of your 
 victims are thus kindling Northern enthusiasm on the platform 
 of liberty and free debate." 
 
 A series of events in 1842, which attracted much 
 attention at the time, justified fully the course pursued 
 by the Abolitionists against the Dorrites. These latter 
 attempted, merely as agents of the popular will, and 
 without any sanction from the laws of the land, to 
 substitute the new constitution for the old one, and 
 make their leader Governor. President Tyler was 
 appealed to by the lawful Governor, and promised 
 him the support of the nation. Dorr tried to seize 
 upon the administration by force ; but most of the 
 leading citizens, including his father and brother, 
 took up arms against him ; his most influential sup- 
 porters deserted him; the cannons which he attempted 
 to discharge with his own hands against the state 
 troops, were found to be primed with wet paper ; and 
 he was soon obliged to disband his adherents. The 
 law and order party, who were nicknamed Algerines, 
 on account of their severity, made their victory per- 
 manent, by enacting, before the end of 1842, the con- 
 stitution which was in force until very recently, and 
 which has admitted black men to vote on the same 
 terms as white, the. property qualification being re- 
 duced so far as to allow any citizen to vote who would 
 pay a tax of one dollar, and who had resided two 
 years in the State. 
 
 These details are important, because this expe- 
 rience, of the advantage of acting in harmony with our 
 national spirit of respect for the laws and for the 
 magistrates elected under them, may have done 
 something to prepare Douglass for breaking with the 
 
66 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Garrisonian disunionists, as he ultimately did. At 
 this time, however, he was completely carried away 
 by his admiration for the enthusiasts, -who gave their 
 lives to the emancipation of his race, and who were 
 free from that prejudice against any association with 
 colored people, which was then almost universal at 
 the North. He was surprised and delighted at the 
 friendly welcome they gave him when he came to 
 Boston in January, 1842. The first house in the city, 
 where he was welcomed as a guest, was that of one 
 of the few members of the Liberty party. Dr. Henry 
 I. Bowditch, who was, he says, " the first of his color 
 who ever treated me as if I were a man." This organ- 
 ization was not, however, handled very tenderly in 
 the speech which he delivered before the Massachu- 
 setts Society in the Melodeon, on Wednesday, January 
 26. On Thursday evening he helped Garrison, Phil- 
 lips, Rogers, and Abby Kelley take advantage of the 
 convention's having been invited to occupy the Re- 
 presentatives' Hall, in the State House, to pass a 
 resolution declaring " That Massachusetts is degraded 
 and dishonored by her connection with Southern slav- 
 ery; that this connection is not only dishonorable, but 
 in the highest degree criminal ; and that it must be 
 broken up, at whatever sacrifice or hazard." If the 
 meaning of these words was not plain enough, it was 
 made so twenty-four hours afterward. 
 
 The next evening, Friday, January 28, an audience 
 of four thousand people was collected in Faneuil Hall, 
 to demand the abolition of slavery in the District of 
 Columbia. Garrison presided ; and, among the reso- 
 lutions which were adopted, was one declaring that 
 " The American Union is such only in form, but not 
 
THE CRUSADER. 67 
 
 in substance, a hollow mockery instead of a glorious 
 reality." This action was taken with the hearty sup- 
 port of both Phillips and Douglass. The latter enliv- 
 ened the proceedings by giving his very funny imita- 
 tion of the way in which slave-holding clergymen would 
 exhort servants to obey their masters. His mimicry of 
 the Southern preacher's whine was irresistibly comical. 
 This sermon was often delivered by him in county 
 conventions and other local meetings. His conscience 
 was clear in the use of this weapon ; for he was con- 
 vinced, to quote a resolution which he introduced at 
 Worcester, January 6, 1842, that, " The sectarian organ- 
 izations of this country, called churches, are, in sup- 
 porting slavery, upholding a system of theft, adultery, 
 and murder; and it is the duty of Abolitionists to 
 expose their true character before the public." His 
 own attempts to get a chance to plead for his race in 
 the pulpit were often unsuccessful ; and he tells me 
 that "When I asked for a church and the minister 
 said, ' Brother Douglass, I don't know about this. I 
 must ask the Lord. Let us pray,' I always knew I 
 should not get it." He used to say in his early lec- 
 tures, that he had offered many prayers for freedom ; 
 but he did not get it, until he prayed with his legs. 
 His dissatisfaction with the clergy even led him to 
 sing the parody on a familiar hymn, about being 
 saved from a burning hell, and dwelling with Im- 
 manuel "in heavenly union." 
 
 " Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell. 
 How pious priests whip Jack and Nell, 
 And women buy, and children sell. 
 And preach all sinners down to hell, 
 
 And sing of heavenly union. 
 
68 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 " They'll bleat and baa, dona like goats 
 Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes. 
 Array their backs in fine black coats. 
 Then seize their niggers by the throats, 
 
 And choke for heavenly union. 
 
 " They'll church you, if you sip a dram. 
 And damn you, if you steal a lamb. 
 Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam, 
 Of human rights, and bread and ham, 
 
 Kidnappers' heavenly union. 
 
 " They'll loudly talk of Christ's reward. 
 And bind his image with a cord. 
 And scold, and swing the lash abhorred, 
 And sell their brother in the Lord, 
 
 To hand-cuffed heavenly union. 
 
 . . " They'll read and sing a sacred song. 
 And make a prayer both loud and long, 
 And teach the right, and do the wrong. 
 Hailing the brother, sister throng. 
 With words of heavenly union. 
 
 " They'll raise tobacco, corn, and rye. 
 And drive, and thieve, and cheat and lie. 
 And lay up treasure in the sky. 
 By making switch and cowskin fly. 
 In hope of heavenly union. 
 
 " They'll crack old Tony on the skull. 
 And preach and roar like Basham bull. 
 Or braying ass, of mischief full. 
 Then seize old Jacob by the wool. 
 And pull for heavenly union. 
 
THE CRUSADER. 69 
 
 " A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief. 
 Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef. 
 Yet never would afford relief. 
 To needy, sable sons of grief. 
 
 Was big with heavenly union. 
 
 " ' Love not the world,' the preacher said. 
 And winked his eye, and shook his head. 
 He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned, 
 Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread, 
 Yet still loved heavenly union. 
 
 " Another preacher, whining, spoke. 
 Of one whose heart for sinners broke. 
 He tied old Nanny to an oak, 
 And drew the blood at every stroke. 
 And prayed for heavenly union. 
 
 " Two others ope'd their iron jaws. 
 And waved their children-stealing paws. 
 There sat their children in gewgaws ! 
 By stinting negroes' backs and maws, 
 •They kept up heavenly union." 
 
 The " Liberator," of February 25, contains this little 
 ragraph : " Will Frederick Douglass inform the 
 neral agent of his whereabouts ? " During the 
 xt three months he seems to have spoken almost 
 2ry night in Massachusetts. His attacks on clerical 
 nservatism, and on the color prejudice, were heard 
 th delight ; but the attempts made by him and his 
 sociates to pledge their hearers to disunion, did 
 t by any means meet with invariable success. He 
 .s indebted to the members of the Hopedale Com- 
 inity for a chance to speak at Milford, after having 
 
70 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 been denied a hearing. They told him, " We will go 
 there with you to-night, and you shall have forty of us 
 to hear you at all events." That night the Milford peo- 
 ple not only allowed him to speak to them in the town 
 hall, but kept as still as mice ; and there never after- 
 ward was any difificulty about his getting a hearing 
 there. Among other places in Massachusetts where 
 he spoke, early in 1842, were Salem, Andover, and 
 Lexington. 
 
 When the American Society held its annual May 
 convention in New York, Douglass, Phillips, and 
 Abby Kelley tried to carry a resolution to the effect 
 that " The cause of human rights imperatively 
 demands the dissolution of the American Union." 
 They failed, although two hundred and fifty Garri- 
 sonians had come in a body from New England. 
 Garrison himself had thought it better, on account of 
 the open opposition of the managers of this society, 
 to send only a letter. During the anti-slavery con- 
 vention, which now formed one of the May meetings 
 in Boston, a fortnight after those in New York, 
 Phillips brought forward a resolution, calling the 
 Union "a rope of sand." Abolitionism was now 
 rapidly becoming synonymous with disunionism in 
 Massachusetts, although there were still many thor- 
 oughly loyal and sagacious friends of the slave, like 
 Whittier, who now, according to an opinion expressed 
 by the editor of the " Liberator," on August 12, had 
 become " incapable of doing anything important for 
 the cause." ..." Politics will complete his ruin ! " 
 
 Probably it was dislike of disunionism which 
 brought down a shower of stones and brickbats on 
 that same day in August, at Nantucket, upon Mr. 
 
THE CRUSADER. 7 1 
 
 Douglass and his companions. Forty-eight hours 
 before he had exposed the short-comings of the 
 clergy in his most effective manner ; his mimicry is 
 said to have been very amusing ; and there were 
 probably friends of the Church in the mob. The 
 year between his two visits to the island had made 
 him a terror to all not in the anti-slavery ranks. Even 
 then he was as irresistible in making men swear as in 
 making them laugh. One thing also he could do 
 better than any other of the anti-slavery orators, even 
 Phillips. He could make people cry ; and he seldom 
 spoke long before he could see " the white flags 
 wave." He had by this time ceased to confine him- 
 self to telling his experience, and mimicking sermons 
 and hymns. He now exposed the essential wicked- 
 ness of slavery, as well as the guilt of the North in 
 conniving at it, with such power and skill that his 
 hearers found it hard to believe that he had grown 
 up outside of the influence of schools and books. 
 Mr. Collins began to fear that he would no longer be 
 taken for a fugitive slave ; and he was advised not to 
 speak such good English, but to use as much as he 
 could of the plantation accent. 
 
 Soon after revisiting Nantucket, he followed Col- 
 lins and Abby Kelley into the region where he was 
 afterward to spend twenty of his most useful years. 
 He spoke for the first time at Rochester, N. Y., on 
 August 30. It was, I think, on his ^first visit to 
 Western New York, that this little incident occurred 
 at Victor, where he spoke on September 6. He was 
 constantly annoyed in hotels, steamboats, and railway 
 cars by the prejudice against his color, and never let 
 a chance slip of rebuking it. He was now invited to 
 
72 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 eat by himself, at a little table set out in one corner 
 of the dining-room, and at once asked the landlord 
 what he meant by it. " Why, you see, Mr. Doug- 
 lass," was the reply, " I want to give you something 
 a little better than the rest." The joke was so good 
 that he could only say that he did not wish to have 
 any distinction made for his benefit, and eat his 
 dinner in peace. He tried at this time to speak in 
 Lima, but was told that the people there would not 
 let him. Instead of trying, like Foster, to make 
 them listen, he merely said : " The Lord can abolish 
 slavery without the aid of Lima." 
 
 The first place to which he was sent in New Hamp- 
 shire was Concord. No hall or church could be 
 obtained then, in 1842, for an anti-slavery meeting, so 
 he took his stand, one Sunday afternoon, at the cor- 
 ner where a little court ran out from one of the prin- 
 cipal streets, and collected an audience by appealing 
 to the sympathies of people on their way to church. 
 
 Among other New Hampshire towns which he 
 visited that summer was Pittsfield, where an offer to 
 entertain a speaker against slavery had been made by 
 a subscriber to the " Liberator," named Hilles. This 
 man's principles did not stand the sight of his visitor's 
 color, and he could not eat at the same table with his 
 guest. They did unite in family worship, but the 
 next morning Mr. Hilles drove off to church, with 
 two vacant seats in his phaeton, leaving the lecturer 
 to walk two miles to the hall. He found no one 
 there to introduce him, but spoke an hour or two, 
 and then paused to give his hearers time to lunch. 
 No one offered him a rnorsel, not even Mrs. Hilles, 
 who was in the audience. One o'clock came and he 
 
THE CRUSADER. 73 
 
 made his second speech that Sunday. By the time 
 he had spoken he was very hungry. This time the 
 people dispersed as soon as he had finished. He 
 went to the tavern and offered to pay for a meal, but 
 was told that " We don't entertain niggers." He 
 went away hungry, and chilly also, for an east wind 
 had sprung up, and rain was falling. He saw people 
 looking at him from their comfortable homes as if he 
 were a stray bear. At last he went into the grave- 
 yard, where he " felt some relief in contemplating the 
 resting-place of the dead, where there was an end to 
 all distinctions between rich and poor, white and 
 colored, high and low." 
 
 He was thinking of a Great Reformer, who had not 
 " where to lay his head," when a gentleman came up 
 and asked his name. " You do not seem to have any 
 place to stay while in town. Well, I am not an Abo- 
 litionist, I'm a Democrat, but I'm ^ man. Come with 
 me and I'll take care of you." Douglass accepted 
 with thanks, but was surprised to find, before they 
 reached the house, that this was the same Democratic 
 Senator who had recently had a clergyman arrested 
 in the pulpit for attacking slavery, and imprisoned. 
 As soon as his children saw them enter they ran 
 away, screaming " Mother, mother, there is a nigger 
 in the house ; " and it was all the father could do to 
 quiet them. The mother, too, was evidently much 
 disturbed ; and only the kind assurances of Mr. 
 Norris kept his guest from going back to the ceme- 
 tery. When the storm had subsided he ventured to 
 tell the lady that he had taken cold, and asked for a 
 little sugar and water. The mother's heart was 
 touched. She brought him what he wanted with her 
 
74 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 own hands, and after that he found himself fully 
 welcome at his adversary's fireside. He spoke at 
 five, and for the fourth and last time at seven. After 
 that there was quite a contest between Mrs. Norris 
 and Mrs. Hilles, as to which should entertain him 
 over night. He decided to go back to his former 
 quarters, and Mr. Hilles eagerly offered to drive him, 
 saying, " I kind of missed you this morning.'' The 
 next day Douglass was carried on to a neighboring 
 town in the very carriage where he had not been 
 permitted to ride twenty-four hours before ; and its 
 owner told him that he felt it more of an honor to 
 do this for him than for the President of the United 
 States. 
 
 His most effective theme thus far had been the 
 unfaithfulness of the clergy ; but he and the other 
 Abolitionists were fortunate enough, before the close 
 of 1842, to find an issue on which they could all unite 
 and have the best men in the North with them. A 
 fugitive from Virginia, named Latimer, was arrested 
 without a warrant, at his master's request, under a 
 false charge of theft, by men who pretended to act 
 under the laws of Massachusetts, and was confined in 
 the same jail where Garrison had found a refuge. Not 
 only the enemies of slavery but other friends of 
 liberty were indignant. On Sunday, October 30, 
 all the clergymen who officiated in Boston were 
 requested to pray for the prisoner, and also to read a 
 notice of- a mass-meeting to be held that evening in 
 Faneuil Hall. Among the twenty-four clergymen 
 who complied, in part at least, may be mentioned the 
 honored names of Father Taylor, Baron Stow, Clarke, 
 Dr. Lowell, Sargent, Waterston, Neale, and Brown- 
 
THE CRUSADER. 75 
 
 son. Among the twenty who would not, were such 
 eminent ecclesiastics as Huntingdon, Lothrop, Gan- 
 nett, Whittemore, Blagden, and Nehemiah Adams. 
 
 Letters of cordial sympathy were read at Faneuil 
 Hall that night, from Bancroft and John Quincy 
 Adams, and Judge Sewall took the chair; and all the 
 Boston ministers appear to have had followers in the 
 audience. When Mr. Charles L. Remond-, a colored 
 man who had been brought up at the North and was 
 doing a good work for his race, stepped forward to 
 address the meeting, his voice was drowned by shouts 
 of " Sell the nigger." Even the rioters were willing 
 to listen to Wendell Phillips, though he said : " I 
 know I am speaking to the white slaves of the 
 North." Hisses followed, but he went on, " Yes, you 
 dare to hiss me, of course. But you dare not break 
 the chain which binds you to the car of slavery." 
 The uproar after he concluded was so great, that 
 Douglass is said to have stood before the audience 
 for twenty minutes, making passionate gestures, but 
 not succeeding in uttering a single audible word. 
 Mrs. Folsom was in the hall, and was called for, as 
 usual, by the rioters ; but this time she was saner 
 than they, and would say nothing. Colored women 
 who sat in the gallery, under the national emblem of 
 Liberty, were stripped of their shawls and bonnets, 
 and the whole scene was one which only sympathy 
 with slave-holders could have produced in Boston on 
 Sunday night. It is pleasant to read an account of a 
 much more successful meeting a week later, in the 
 same cause. 
 
 On November 8, Mr. Douglass wrote from Lynn to 
 the " Liberator : " 
 
76 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 " Dear Friend Garrison : The date of this letter finds 
 me quite unwell. I have for a week past been laboring, in 
 company with Bro. Charles Remond, in New Bedford, with 
 especial reference to the case of our outraged brother, George 
 Latimer, and speaking almost day and night, in public and 
 private. ... On Sunday we held three meetings in the Town 
 Hall. ... In the morning we had quite a large meeting, at the 
 opening of which I occupied about an hour on the question 
 whether a man is better than a sheep. . . . Long before the 
 drawling, lazy church bells commenced sounding their deathly 
 notes that afternoon, mighty crowds were making their way to 
 the Town Hall. They needed no bells to remind them of their 
 duty to bleeding humanity. ... As I gazed upon them my 
 soul leaped for joy. . . . The splendid hall was brilliantly 
 lighted in the evening, and crowded with an earnest, listening 
 audience. ... A large number had to stand during the meet- 
 ing, which lasted about three hours ; where the standing part 
 of the audience were at the commencement of the meeting, 
 there they were at the conclusion of it. . . . Prejudice against 
 color was not there. . . . We were all on a level; everyone 
 took a seat just where he chose ; there was neither man's 
 side nor woman's side ; white pew nor black pew ; but all seats 
 were free, and all sides free. ... I again took the stand, and 
 called the attention of the meeting to the case of Bro. George 
 Latimer, which proved the finishing stroke of my present public 
 work. On taking my seat I was seized with a violent pain in 
 my breast, which continued till morning, and with occasional 
 raising of blood. ... It is a struggle of life and death with us 
 just now. No sword that can be used, be it never so rusty, 
 should lay in its scabbard. Slavery, our enemy, has landed in 
 our very midst, and commenced its bloody work." ... I can 
 sympathize with George Latimer, having myself been cast into a 
 miserable jail, on suspicion of my intending to do what he has 
 said to have done, viz., appropriating my own body to my own 
 use. My heart is full ; and had I my voice, I should be doing 
 all that I am capable of for Latimer's redemption. I can do 
 but little in ajiy department ; but if one department is more 
 
THE CRUSADER. 77 
 
 the place for me than another, that one is before the people. I 
 can't write to much advantage, having never had a day's 
 schooling in my life ; nor have I ventured to give publicity to 
 any of my scribbling before ; nor would I now, but for my 
 pecuUar circumstances. 
 
 " Your grateful friend, 
 
 " Frederick Douglass." 
 
 It is a great pity that this misfortune marred his 
 day of triumph. He had entered New Bedford a 
 penniless fugitive, fit only for the most menial tasks. 
 He left it a popular orator, a leader of the people in 
 the noblest cause. He had made all his arrange- 
 ments for removing to Lynn with his family, which 
 now included three little children, and he succeeded 
 in carrying out his plan on Monday or Tuesday. His 
 recovery was so complete that he was able to sing 
 the parody on slave-holding clergymen, at Essex, the 
 last Sunday of the month. The day previous he had 
 attempted in vain to amend a resolution proposed 
 there by one of the leading Abolitionists, James N. 
 Bufifum. His resolution was passed, as follows : 
 " Resolved, That no person ought to be considered a 
 Christian unless he is a practical Abolitionist." The 
 amendment proposed was to insert the words " who 
 is acquainted with the principles of anti-slavery.'' 
 
 Latimer had, by this time, been purchased by Dr. 
 H. I. Bowditch and other friends of the slave for four 
 hundred dollars. He got his freedom ; his master 
 got the money ; and the Abolitionists got an unusual 
 amount of popular sympathy. Early next year they 
 presented, at the State House, where Hon. Charles 
 Francis Adams acted in their behalf, a petition with 
 more than sixty thousand signatures, asking that 
 
•jS FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 fugitives from slavery should never again be arrested 
 by town or city officials, nor held as prisoners in the 
 jails of this commonwealth ; and also that the Con- 
 stitution of the United States should be so amended 
 as '' shall forever separate the people of Massachu- 
 setts from all connection with slavery." The legis- 
 lature made it a penal offence for any magistrate or 
 executive officer of the State to help arrest fugitives, 
 and forbade use of the jails for confining them. The 
 excitement sprang throughout New England and 
 into Western New York. The opposition to the 
 Fugitive Slave Bill did not cease until it was repealed; 
 and this was certainly one of the wisest parts of the 
 great anti-slavery movement. Nothing which its 
 advocates could say was heard so willingly by the 
 people, as the call to protect men and women already 
 at the North, from being dragged back into bondage. 
 All discussion of theories was tame in comparison 
 with appeals for individuals seen to be oppressed. 
 
 The Latimer meetings continued to be held during 
 the early months of 1843 ; and among the most enthu- 
 siastic speakers was Douglass. He was also a sup- 
 porter of the resolution, passed on January 27, by the 
 State Society in Faneuil Hall, declaring that " The 
 compact between the North and the South is a cove- 
 nant with death and an agreement with hell," and that 
 " It should be immediately dissolved." On March 6, 
 he lectured in Amory Hall, Boston, on " Slavery as 
 actually existing in the South." Among the other 
 speakers in this course were Phillips, Pierpont, and 
 Garrison. 
 
 Fear that a new field might be opened for slavery, 
 by the annexation of Texas, was among the causes 
 
THE CRUSADER. 79 
 
 which made the annual meeting of the American So- 
 ciety in New York, on May 9, 1843, larger than any 
 that had ever been held before, with the single excep- 
 tion of 1840. Then there was a bittercontest between 
 New York and New England. Now there was per- 
 fect unanimity ; and most of the delegates came from 
 the West. Some of the friends traveled in wagons 
 from Pennsylvania and Illinois, holding meetings 
 along the road. One of the vehicles thus used was 
 named the " Liberator," and did good service that 
 same summer at conventions in Ohio and Indiana. 
 Douglass, on the second day, spoke thus : " Such 
 have been my habits of life as to instil into my heart 
 a disposition I can never quite shake off, to cower 
 before the white man. But one thing I can do. I 
 can represent here the slave, the human chattel." He 
 then introduced a resolution, stating that " The anti- 
 slavery movement is the only earthly hope of the 
 American slave." " Instead of being regarded as a 
 powerful aid to abolition," he continued, " it is far 
 too generally viewed as retarding that event. But 
 this is a grievous error, I know ; for I speak from 
 experience." . . . " Prior to this movement. Sir, 
 the slave in chains had no hope of deliverance. But 
 when he heard of. it, hope sprung up in his mind." 
 . . . " I knew, I felt that truth was above error, 
 that right was above wrong, that principle was above 
 prejudice, and that I should one day be free." . . 
 " There is no hope for the slave in Church or State. 
 But this Society is above either Church or State. It 
 is moving both daily, more and more." 
 
 The resolution was seconded by Abby Kelley, whom 
 John Neal, who was one of the audience, describes as 
 
8o FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 " a pleasant Quakerish woman, with a white shawl 
 on, the smoothest possible hair, the smoothest possible 
 voice, and no very great superabundance of action." 
 A more sympathetic observer praises her " fine person, 
 clear blue eye, delicate complexion, fair hair, and 
 lady-like hands." " Mr. Douglass," said she, "is free 
 and can speak for himself ; but his sisters are still in 
 the hands of the outragers ; and it is therefore fit that 
 a woman should stand here by his side." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "confident against the world in arms." 
 
 What Shakespeare says of his Douglas, (" Henry 
 IV.," Part I, Act V, Scene I), was perfectly true of 
 our hero, as soon as he got over the embarrassment, 
 caused by being suddenly brought into association 
 with gentlemen and ladies whom he revere'd even, 
 more for their character than for their culture and 
 race. He had not resided long in Lynn before he 
 vindicated his rights, by main force, against the 
 Eastern Railroad. This corporation had been de- 
 nounced, week after week, in the "Traveller's Direc- 
 tory " in the " Liberator," for " an odious distinction 
 on account of color, and a bullying propensity to carry 
 it out." The passengers had fight after fight with 
 conductors and brakemen, before the battle of which 
 this account is given by a writer, who also describes 
 the chief combatant : 
 
 " Mr. Douglass lived in Lynn about this time. He was not 
 then the polished orator that he has since become, but even at 
 that early date he gave promise of the grand part he was to 
 play in the conflict which was to end in the destruction of the 
 system that had so long cursed his race. He was more than 
 six feet in height ; and his majestic form, as he rose to speak, 
 straight as an arrow, muscular, yet lithe and graceful, his 
 flashing eye, and more than all, his voice, that rivaled Web- 
 8i 
 
82 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 ster's in its richness, and in the depth and sonorousness of its 
 cadences, made up such an ideal of an orator as the listeners 
 never forgot. And they never forgot his burning words, his 
 pathos, nor the rich play of his humor. He had just escaped 
 from the ' house of bondage '■, and as he recited his experience 
 as a slave, his sufferings as he grew old enough to reahze the 
 bitterness of his lot, his alternate hope and despair as he 
 attempted to lift the veil of the future — his eyes would now 
 flash with defiance, and now grow dim with emotions he could 
 not control ; and the roll of his splendid voice, as he hurled his 
 denunciations against the infamous system, would pass to the 
 minor key, whose notes trembled on his tongue. Then, with 
 inimitible mimicry, he would give a droll recital of some 
 ludicrous scene in his experience as a slave, or with bitter sar- 
 casm he would tell a tale of insult offered by some upstart who 
 fancied he held his title to manhood by the whiteness of his 
 sldn ; and then again, with flashing eye, he would hurl his 
 indignation at 'wickedness in high places,' against m.en who, 
 under the pretended sanction of religion, defended the ' infernal 
 institution,' whose horrors had filled his days with dread, and 
 his night dreams with terror. An incident, which the writer 
 heard him relate in his peculiar manner, half amusing and half 
 indignant at the outrage he had suffered, occurred about this 
 time. Its recital will sound strangely some years hence. 
 These were the days when ' negro cars ' were on our railroads. 
 Mr. Douglass and his friend, James N. Buffum, having pur- 
 chased their tickets, entered one of the cars, not taking special 
 pains to get into the negro car. It was on the Eastern Rail- 
 road, and they were bound for Newburyport. The conductor 
 came along and, spying Mr. Douglass, asked him what he was 
 in that car for. Mr. , Douglass replied in substance, that he 
 wanted to go to a certain place, and thought that the most 
 direct way. The conductor ordered Mr. Douglass to leave. 
 Mr. Douglass assured the conductor that he was satisfied with 
 his seat, and excused himself from accepting the invitation. 
 The conductor called to his aid two or three brakemen, who 
 proceeded to make a demonstration, that looked as though Mr. 
 
"confident against the world in arms." 83 
 
 Douglass was to be taken from the car, without gaining the 
 consent of his will or the aid of his limbs. It was amusing to 
 hear Mr. Douglass relate this part of the scene. ' When they 
 took hold of me,' said Mr. Douglass, with a broad grin, ' I felt 
 my hands instinctively clutch the arms of the seat where I sat, 
 and I seemed to be very firmly attached to the place.' But two 
 or three stout brakemen were too much for young Douglass, 
 though he had the grip of a giant ; or rather, they were too 
 strong to deal with the kind of car furniture then in use. Doug- 
 lass left the car, and left behind him an empty space in one 
 end of it where seats had been." — (Johnson's " Sketches of 
 Lynn," pp. 230-232.) 
 
 The amount of damage was to great that the 
 superintendent refused, during two or three days, to 
 allow any trains to stop for passengers at Lynn, 
 while the people took part with their townsman. 
 Some of them remonstrated with the official against 
 his " Jim Crow Car," but he replied that they ought 
 not to object to it, so long as the churches had negro 
 pews. The only other railroad in the State which 
 made this distinction was that on which Wendell 
 Phillips rebuked the prejudice, in a way described as 
 follows, in " Thoughts and Recollections of the Anti- 
 Slavery Conflict," a lecture not yet published, by 
 Frederick Douglass : 
 
 " I knew him, after delivering his famous lecture on ' The 
 Lost Arts ' in New Bedford, Mass., more than forty years 
 ago, enjoying the hospitality of the wealthiest citizens of that 
 opulent city, and moving in its most refined society, to alight 
 at the railroad station from a splendid carriage, walk deliber- 
 ately down the platform, past the long line of elegantly cush- 
 ioned and richly ornamented coac+ies, till he came to a little 
 box next the engine, exposed to dust, sparks, and smoke, and 
 
84 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 there take his seat for Boston, because that miserable little 
 box — then known as the Jim Crow Car — was exclusively set 
 apart for negroes." 
 
 Douglass kept on fighting against this indignity, 
 until it was abolished. After that he was, he says, a 
 gainer by the color prejudice ; for it usually gave 
 him the whole of a seat. He did, however, at first, 
 feel annoyed at being shunned ; and he mentions 
 gratefully, (" Bapdage and Freedom," p. 403,) hovir 
 Governor Briggs once asked for the vacant place, and 
 behaved so courteously that no seat was more sought 
 after in that car. Another time, he found only a 
 single place left empty on a crowded train, and asked 
 the man who sat next to it, to let him come in. 
 
 " My fellow-passenger gave me a look, made up of reproach 
 and indignation, and asked me why I should come to that 
 particular seat. I assured him, in the gentlest manner, that, of 
 all others, this was the seat for me. Finding that I was 
 actually about to sit down, he sang out, ' Oh, stop, stop ! and 
 let me get out.' Suiting the action to the word, up the 
 agitated man got, and sauntered to the other end of the car, 
 and was compelled to stand for most of the way thereafter. 
 Half-way to New Bedford, or more. Colonel Clifford, recog- 
 nizing me, left his seat, and not having seen me before since I 
 ceased to wait on him (in everything except hard arguments 
 against his pro-slavery position), apparently forgetful of his 
 rank, manifested in greeting me something of the feeling of an 
 old friend. This demonstration was not lost on the gentleman 
 whose dignity I had an hour before most seriously offended. 
 Colonel Clifford was known to be about the most aristocratic 
 gentleman in Bristol County ; and it was evidently thought I 
 must be somebody, else I should not have been thus noticed by 
 a person so distinguished. Sure enough, after Colonel Clifford 
 left me, I found myself surrounded by friends ; and among the 
 
"confident against the world in arms." 85 
 
 number my offended friend stood nearest, and with an apology 
 for his rudeness, which I could not resist, although it was one 
 of the lamest ever offered." 
 
 About this time Mr. Douglass, on finding no church 
 open to him at Concord, New Hampshire, told his 
 audience, in the dirty Town Hall, that he was not a 
 fugitive from slavery, but still a fugitive in slavery, 
 and that it was because their religion sanctified the 
 system. This was on Sunday afternoon ; and that 
 evening, according to Mr. Rogers, after relating his 
 sufferings and struggles, " in a somewhat suppressed 
 and hesitating way, interesting all the while for its 
 facts, but dullish in manner, he closed his slave narra- 
 tive, and gradually let out the outraged humanity 
 that was laboring in him, in indignant and terrible 
 speech. It was not what you could describe as ora- 
 tory or eloquence. It was sterner, darker, deeper 
 than these. It was the volcanic outbreak of human 
 nature, long pent up in slavery and at last bursting its 
 imprisonment. It was the storm of insurrection ; and 
 I could not but think, as he stalked to and fro on the 
 platform, roused up like the Numidian lion, how that 
 terrible voice of his would ring through the pine 
 glades of the South, in the day of her visitation." . . . 
 " There was great oratory in his speech, but more of 
 dignity and earnestness than what we call eloquence. 
 He was not up as a speaker, performing. He was an 
 insurgent slave, taking hold on the rights of speech, 
 and charging on his tyrants the bondage of his race. 
 One of our editors ventured to cross his path by a 
 rash remark. He had better have run upon a lion. 
 It was fearful, but magnificent, to see how magnani- 
 mously and lion-like the royal fellow tore him to 
 
86 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 pieces, and left his untouched fragments scattered 
 around him." 
 
 The members of the New England Anti-Slavery 
 Convention, which came together in Boston, May 30, 
 1843, were greatly encouraged by the strong opposi- 
 tion made in the legislature to the " Jim Crow Car," 
 by the permission of intermarriage, by the passage in 
 Vermont, as well as in Massachusetts, of laws to protect 
 fugitives, and by the large attendance from the West in 
 New York two weeks previous. It was agreed that 
 one hundred conventions should be held in various 
 States ; and the ablest of the speakers engaged was 
 Douglass, who " never entered upon any work with 
 more heart and hope." 
 
 The first meetings, held that July in Vermont, were 
 thinly attended ; and the students of the Congrega- 
 tionalist College, at Middlebury, covered the town with 
 placards, describing him as an escaped convict from 
 the State prison, and doing equal justice to his com- 
 panions. Thence they went to Western New York, 
 where these disunionists were naturally regarded with 
 some suspicion by the leaders of the Liberty party, 
 who were re-organizing for the presidential campaign 
 of 1844, with a vigor which crushed the hopes of one 
 of their most formidable opponents, Henry Clay, and 
 insured a much needed and highly beneficial reduc- 
 tion of the tariff. At their headquarters, Syracuse, no 
 church or hall could at first be had by the Garrison- 
 ians. Some of them could think of nothing better 
 than shaking off the dust from their feet against the 
 wicked city ; but the Douglass was not to be defeated 
 thus. On the morning appointed for opening the 
 mass-meeting, July 31, he took his stand under a little 
 
" CONFIDENT AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS." 87 
 
 tree, in the corner of the park, and began with an 
 audience of five people. There were five hundred 
 at the close of the afternoon meeting ; and they had 
 the use of an abandoned church for the remainder of 
 the convention, which continued three days longer. 
 
 Before it closed, there broke loose, from an unex- 
 pected quai*ter, a storm which might easily have 
 wrecked Garrisonianism. Mr. John A. Collins, who 
 engaged Douglass at Nantucket, two years before, to 
 work for the Massachusetts society, was its general 
 agent for five years, and had shown great energy, 
 especially in packing conventions. How little he 
 shared that single hearted sincerity, which was the 
 secret of the success of the Abolitionists, is shown by 
 several incidents. In 1842 he complained to the 
 county convention at Littleton, of a tavern-keeper, 
 who charged twice the usual sum for taking care of 
 his horse, saying that " this was cheap enough for 
 Abolition beggars." The convention voted that the 
 publican was '' a public imposition ; " and he got a 
 verdict for a hundred and fifty dollars in damages, as 
 is related in the " Liberator " for that year, page 72. 
 Collins had been a divinity student, and used to open 
 meetings with prayer ; but, either this or the previous 
 summer, he had been invited to say grace and had 
 turned over the duty to Douglass, who went through 
 it with an embarrassment which was much increased 
 by the pinches which were administered under the 
 table. As soon as they were alone together, the 
 " field-hand " remonstrated with his superior, who 
 said, with a laugh, " If your religion cannot stand a 
 pinch, it is not worth much." " Mr. Collins," was the 
 reply, " you took me off of the wharf in New Bedford ; 
 
88 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 and I had rather go back there than help a hypo- 
 crite." 
 
 Collins had suggested the hundred conventions ; 
 but, according to the report of the State society for 
 1844, " his ill-health did not permit him to partake of 
 the labors." The fact is that he was trying to ride two 
 horses, or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say 
 that he had been carried off his feet by the tide of 
 socialism, which was sweeping over the land. Com- 
 munities had been founded in 1842 at Brook Farm, 
 Hoped ale, and Northampton ; and the next year pro- 
 duced some fifteen or twenty new phalanxes and 
 associations, more or less under the influence of 
 Fourierism. This doctrine was regularly promul- 
 gated in the " New York Tribune," and among its 
 adherents were Greeley, Parke Godwin, Dana, Rip- 
 ley, Curtis, Dwight, Hawthorne, Parker, Margaret 
 Fuller, Lowell, and Whittier. The general plan had 
 some of the attractive features of that recently made 
 familiar by Mr. Bellamy. All the evils of poverty, 
 over-work, luxury, idleness, and competition were to 
 vanish before a system which should make us all 
 equally well off, and unite a maximum of culture and 
 comfort with a minimum of constraint. A new com- 
 munity of this sort was the real object for which 
 Collins was working in 1843. He came with some 
 other Socialists to Syracuse, and asked the Abolition- 
 ists to turn their convention into a No Property 
 one. If this little game had succeeded, it would have 
 been kept up at subsequent meetings. How the 
 influence of the Garrisonians would have suffered 
 from such a close alliance with communism may be 
 imagined from this fact. The basis on which 
 
"CONFIDENT AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS." 89 
 
 Collins founded his community, that same month at 
 Skaneateles, near Syracuse, was a declaration, that 
 when married people " have outlived their affections, 
 and cannot longer contribute to each other's happi- 
 ness, the sooner the separation takes place the bet- 
 ter ; " that " There is to be no individual property, 
 but all goods shall be in common ; " that " All forms 
 of worship should cease;" that "All religions of 
 every age and nation have their origin in the same 
 great falsehood, viz., God's special providence ; " and 
 that " We regard the Sabbath as other days, the 
 clergy as an imposition, and the Bible as no authority." 
 (See Noyes' " History of American Socialism.") 
 
 This feature of the Skaneateles scheme was not 
 known when Collins tried to capture the Syracuse 
 convention ; but the man who had made it a success, 
 instead of an utter failure, had his heart full of love 
 for the slave, and he protested that the building and 
 Ihe money, which had been given for this cause, 
 could not honestly be used tor any other. This argu- 
 ment carried everything before it at Syracuse ; com- 
 munism got no assistance from anti-slavery conven- 
 tions ; and Collins not only resigned his place as 
 general agent of the M. A. S. S., but declined any 
 salary for 1843. 
 
 His old associates say nothing of the reason why he 
 left them, in their report for 1844, and speak of him 
 much more kindly than if he had gone into the 
 Liberty party. Douglass was promptly and sharply 
 reprimanded for insubordination by " Captain Chap- 
 man," but he is still confident that he was in the 
 right, and events have justified him fully. Glowing 
 reports of the New Dispensation were sent out from 
 
9° 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Skaneateles ; but as soon as they had gathered in 
 their first harvest, they began to throw out hints that 
 they would not be offended by the gift of potatoes, 
 or apples, or cabbages. The difficulty, fatal sooner 
 or later to all such undertakings, of getting work 
 enough out of the members, was aggravated by the 
 unwillingness of Collins, who was still a non-resistant, 
 to save the community from the burden of any lazy 
 vagabond, who chose to quarter himself upon it. 
 Debts increased ; quarrels arose ; the communists 
 separated before they had been three years together; 
 and Collins went back, as was said of him, " to God 
 and the Whig party." His desire to go to Congress 
 made him deny that he had been an Abolitionist, and 
 even say that he did not know jnen who had received 
 him as a guest, while he was general agent, and who' 
 sought to renew their friendship in California. 
 Abolitionism, meantime, has changed the whole 
 condition of things in this country, while socialism 
 has contributed nothing of much importance to 
 history, except the ruin of the second French 
 republic. 
 
 In order not to seem to treat superficially and flip- 
 pantly of schemes which are still enthusiastically 
 advocated by many of the noblest men and women in 
 this country as well as in Europe, I venture to present 
 some further considerations, in substantial conformity 
 with the present views of Mr. Douglass. We all know 
 that our existing system, of free labor in keen compe- 
 tition, has many lamentable defects. The weak, 
 clumsy, and ignorant suffer pitiably ; the rich oppress 
 the poor; competition produces fraud; and the wealth 
 thus gained is often wasted viciously. But it must 
 
"confident against the world in arms." 91 
 
 not be forgotten that these and similar evils are grow- 
 ing less, although they are too closely connected, I 
 fear, with the fundamental conditions of human 
 existence to disappear entirely. Nothing seems to 
 me plainer than that this competitive system has 
 succeeded much better than any other, not only in 
 increasing the general wealth, to the benefit of even 
 the poorest, but in developing individual energy, 
 intelligence, industry, economy, foresight, perse- 
 verance, and self-control. These and other good 
 qualities flourish much more bountifully in the man 
 who knows that he must have them in order to be 
 respectable and prosperous, than they would if he 
 knew his utter lack of these virtues would not prevent 
 his enjoying as much comfort as his neighbors. In 
 order to understand the real value of this system, we 
 must also remember that there is only one other 
 which has ever proved capable of even sustaining 
 itself on any large scale, or for any considerable 
 time. It is often said that the only successful com- 
 munities have been religious ones ; but even the 
 Puritans could not make communism succeed at 
 Plymouth ; and no amount of religion would have 
 made Brook Farm prosper permanently. What suc- 
 cess has been attained by religious communities, like 
 the Shakers, has been owing to the willingness of 
 the members, not only to live very cheaply, but to 
 yield the most submissive obedience to superiors, who 
 keep them at work. Comparatively little work has 
 ever been done, except in free competition or else 
 under compulsion. No authority has ever made men 
 work as well as they can do in competition, a fact 
 of which Douglass became fully aware, when he 
 
92 FREDERICK. DOUGLASS. 
 
 exchanged Baltimore for New Bedford ; but ascet- 
 icism enables the laborers to live so cheaply as to 
 make up for the loss of energy and ambition. Thus the 
 ancient monks were able to turn deserts into gardens. 
 One secret of their success, and that of the Shakers, 
 was that all the members began by obeying willingly, 
 even gladly ; and most of them continued perfectly 
 docile. If all the laborers, however, in a whole 
 nation, were brought under a system of compulsory 
 labor, some of them would be sure to dislike it ; and 
 very severe punishments would have to be employed. 
 This was sometimes necessary in the monasteries ; 
 and any general system of compulsory labor would 
 necessarily resemble slavery in its cruelties, as well as 
 in its privations. The only alternative, besides our 
 competitive system, is one which has too much in 
 common with negro slavery. The only system of 
 labor which a lover of liberty can favor consistently, 
 is the one which we have already established among 
 us. We ought to do all we can to lessen its defects ; 
 but to abandon it would be not only " looking back- 
 ward," but going backward. 
 
 From Syracuse the Garrisonians came to Rochester, 
 where the Liberty men received them hospitably. 
 Then Douglass went to Buffalo with Bradburn, who 
 refused to stop, because no better place had been en- 
 gaged than a deserted room, without doors or win- 
 dows, formerly used as a post-office, and nobody came 
 to the convention except a few hackmen, of various 
 colors, who sat there, whip in hand. Such was the 
 audience before which Bradburn deserted his com- 
 panion and went off to Cleveland. But the spirit of 
 Douglass rose to the occasion ; and so did his voice. 
 
" CONFIDENT AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS." 93 
 
 It pealed forth from that old building, like a trumpet, 
 through the streets, and called in the passers-by. 
 Every meeting increased his audience ; ere long 
 he was invited into a church ; this soon became 
 too small ; and he had to speak in the park, where 
 there were four or five thousand hearers. The 
 audience in the old post-office was so fully in keeping 
 with the place, that he " was delighted to see there, 
 one day, a young lady, who brought no escort but a 
 little girl, and who was so beautiful as to look, in that 
 rough crowd, like an angel of light.'' He did not 
 expect to see her there again ; but she came every 
 time. He asked her name ; and found she was the 
 daughter of Myron Holley, one of the founders of the 
 Liberty party. Her father had been reduced to 
 earning his living by carrying round milk ; but he 
 still retained such dignity, that a little girl, who was 
 a visitor at the house of a Rochester clergyman, once 
 ran into the parlor to say, " God did bring in milk." 
 His daughter has done good service as an Abolitionist 
 lecturer, and is still working, as a teacher, among the 
 freedmen. A letter of recollections, which she has 
 kindly contributed, opens thus : 
 
 " In the early autumn of 1843, at an anti-slavery meeting in 
 Buffalo, I first had the happiness to hear Frederick Douglass 
 make a speech. He was then a young man, only in the faint 
 dawn of his splendid day. It was a poor little meeting — the 
 odds and ends of the city — not a soul there I had ever seen. I 
 had never heard a fugitive slave speak, and was immensely in- 
 terested to hear him. He rose, and I soon perceived he was 
 all alive. His soul poured out with rare pathos and power. 
 Among other things, he told how a slave-holder would preach 
 to an audience of slaves and take the text : ' Servants, be obe- 
 
94 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 dient to your masters,' and then proceed to say, ' The Lord in 
 His Providence sent pious souls over to Africa — dark, heathen, 
 benighted Africa — to bring you into this Christian land, where 
 you can sit beneath the droppings of the sanctuary and hear 
 about Jesus ! The Lord has so established things that only 
 through the channel of obedience can happiness flow. For in- 
 stance, Sam, the other day, was sent out by his master to do a 
 piece of work that would occupy about two hours and a half. 
 At the expiration of that time, Sam's master went out ; and, lo ! 
 and behold ! there lay Sam's hoe in one place, and Sam in an- 
 other, fast asleep ! The master remembered the words of 
 Scripture ; ' He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it 
 not, shall be beaten with many stripes.' So Sam was taken up 
 and whipped, so that he was disabled from doing any work for 
 the short space of three weeks and a half. ' For only through 
 the channel of obedience can happiness flow ! ' " 
 
 Soon after the convention which opened among the 
 hackmen in Buffalo, another was held there by the 
 colored people ; and then Douglass carried his audi- 
 ence with him in opposition to Dr. Garnett, who 
 wished to have the slaves advised to rise and slay 
 their masters. His pacific course did not prevent an 
 attempt to lynch him at Manayunk, near Philadelphia, 
 on his return from a meeting of the Abolitionists of 
 Pennsylvania at Norristown. The danger was known 
 in season ; and the train dashed through without 
 stopping, in spite of an attempt to wreck it. 
 
 We next find him in Ohio as one of the speakers 
 at the mass-meeting, held by the State Society in 
 Oakland, Clinton County, where several thousand 
 Abolitionists were gathered together, after having in 
 some cases traveled hundreds of miles. It may have 
 been on this occasion, and it was at all events in this 
 State, that an Irishman, who was in the audience, said 
 
"confident against the world in arms." 95 
 
 I another, " And what do ye think of that for a 
 lygur ? " " Be aisy," was the answer. " He's only 
 alf a naygur." " And if a half a naygur can spake 
 ke that, what could a whole one do?" His com- 
 anions on the platform found that when he was 
 mong the first speakers, the interest ended too soon; 
 ut when he was not, it did not begin until he did. 
 Before leaving Ohio, they separated into two par- 
 es, with different routes. He was not in that which 
 )de through Indiana in the " Liberator ;" but he 
 ad the honor of being hospitably entertained by 
 [on. J. R. Giddings, as well as of having other mem- 
 ers of Congress take part in greeting him at Rich- 
 lond, Indiana, with a shower of pro-slavery eggs, 
 t Pendleton, in that State, things looked so black 
 n the first day, September 15, that they had reason 
 ) be glad of the rain, which drove them away from 
 leir platform in the woods. That night, the citizens 
 dopted resolutions insisting on the rights of free 
 iscussion. Scarcely had the meetings begun, how- 
 rer, when a column of rowdies, armed with pistols 
 nd clubs, marched in, two by two, one of the leaders 
 •earing a coon-skin cap, to show that he was a Whig; 
 hile the other was supposed to be a Democrat of the 
 Id school, from his dirty, ragged shirt, and no coat. 
 ine of them asked the Abolitionists, why they did 
 ot go South to speak ; and they politely invited him 
 ) mount the platform. He made so poor an appear- 
 nce on it, however, that his friends began to tear it 
 Dwn. Others were about to attack Douglass ; but 
 le lady who had received him as a guest, Mrs. Re- 
 ;cca Fussell, wife of a physician in the town, held up 
 iT baby before him ; and he was left unharmed for 
 
g6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 a while. A little boy ran up, however, crying, " They 
 are killing Mr. White ! " Douglass thought it was a 
 friend who had come with him from the East. All 
 his principles of non-resistance vanished. He seized 
 a stick, and plunged, as eager as any knight, into the 
 fray. He soon found that his friend was in no danger; 
 but another Mr. White had been knocked down, and 
 had lost several teeth ; his club was wrested from 
 him and he had to retreat. He was pursued, and 
 struck down with a blow that broke his right hand. 
 A second blow was aimed at his head, and might have 
 been fatal, if his friend. White, had not saved him, at 
 the cost of being knocked down himself and badly 
 wounded in the head. Douglass was able to lecture 
 next day, however ; but he never went back to non- 
 resistance. Bradburn's first words to him were, 
 " Where's your consistency ? Why did you fight ? " 
 " Where's yours ? " was the answer. " Why didn't you 
 fight ? " 
 
 It was, I think, at another place in Indiana, that 
 Bradburn received warning, just as he was about to 
 begin a meeting in company with Douglass, that the 
 ■latter was going to be taken out of the hall to be 
 tarred and feathered. Bradburn quietly looked 
 about, and found, in the rear of the platform a little 
 door, opening on a passage which led out into a back 
 street. Scarcely had he made this discovery when 
 the mob began to mount the platform and order the 
 Abolitionists to disperse. He whispered a word or 
 two to Douglass and then went forward to meet the 
 rioters. " What can I do for you, gentlemen ? " said 
 Bradburn, with the utmost politeness. " We don't 
 want nothing of you," was the reply. " We want 
 
"confident against the world in arms." 97 
 
 that nigger of yours." " Beg your pardon, gentle- 
 men, but I am very deaf," as was really the case. 
 " Please speak a little louder." " We want Fred 
 Douglass," shouted the mob ; " and we are going to 
 have him. We mean to take his jacket off." " What 
 do you say, please," said Bradburn, with his hand to 
 his ear ; and so it went on, until it was found that 
 Douglass had escaped. 
 
 Another incident of this campaign was, that White 
 and Douglass once happened to be invited to pass 
 the night with a farmer, who had only one bed-room 
 for all his household, and only one spare bed. When 
 it was time to go to rest, there was a good deal of 
 anxious whispering, until the dark guest said : 
 " Friend White^ having got entirely rid of my preju- 
 dice against color, I think, as a proof of it, I must 
 allow you to sleep with me to-night." 
 
 The last convention of 1843 was held on December 
 4, in Philadelphia, to commemorate the foundation, 
 ten years before, of the American Anti-Slavery 
 Society, and Douglass was among the speakers, 
 although he was told, as he passed through Gettys- 
 burg, that he was in danger of being kidnapped, and 
 had better not go out of doors except at night. He 
 also held a debate with Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, who 
 had done good work for abolitionism, as well as for 
 the enfranchisement of her own sex. She now 
 asserted the superior importance of socialism, and 
 Douglass said nothing against it, but simply insisted 
 on the claims of the slave to be considered first. 
 
 The next year gave disunionism a complete vic- 
 tory, first in January and then in May, at the three 
 annual conventions in Boston and New York. 
 
98 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 At the annual meeting of the M. A. S. S., in 1844, 
 Douglass opposed a resolution, which was passed in 
 Faneuil Hall, January 24, declaring that the Ameri- 
 can Church "Is not the Church of Christ, but the 
 synagogue of Satan." During subsequent sessions, 
 Ex-president Adams, then almost eighty, was cen- 
 sured for not doing more against slavery, which he 
 was then resolutely opposing to the best of his judg- 
 ment in Congress. The Liberty party was voted pro- 
 slavery. Birney, who had been nominated for the 
 Presidency once more, in opposition to both Whigs 
 and Democrats, was declared to have " conspired to 
 betray the anti-slavery cause into the hands of its 
 most insidious foes," and to be " a man not deserving 
 of the approval or support of any genuine Abolition- 
 ist ; " and on January 27 the publication was ordered 
 of a "Protest of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery 
 Society against the Constitution of the United States 
 and the Union." This was written by Foster, whose 
 influence was now said to be greater than dven Gar- 
 rison's ; and among the characteristic sentences are 
 these : " We now publicly adjure our allegiance : " 
 " Henceforth let Repeal be our watchword." 
 
 The best thing done at this convention was to agree 
 to hold a hundred others, that winter and spring, in 
 various towns of Massachusetts. One of these meet- 
 ings was held at Townsend, where Douglass, as he 
 says in a letter written for the "Liberator," on March 
 6, noticed in the old church, then belonging to the 
 town, as they came together, a hole in the wall about 
 twelve feet long, beside the pulpit. He asked what 
 it was, and was told that this had formerly been 
 *' the niggers' seat," but had gone out of use. The 
 
" CONFIDENT AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS." 99 
 
 sexton showed him how to climb up there by a lad- 
 der, but it made him giddy to look down. Then the 
 Hutchinsons took possession, and sang there through 
 the meeting. 
 
 At Sudbury there was a strong opposition from the 
 enemies of temperance, who had just carried the 
 town-meeting, and who are thus described : 
 
 " Such a set of rum-faces, rum-noses, rum-heads, I think I 
 never saw congregated in town-meeting anywhere. It was 
 impossible to get us a meeting in this place. The clergy here 
 bear -almost entire sway. They decide for the people what 
 they shall hear, and what they shall not hear. Each of the 
 ministers devoted a good part of last Sunday to warning their 
 congregations against attending our meetings. The conse- 
 quence is that a mob is threatened, if we should attempt to 
 hold our meeting according to notice. We should not, how- 
 ever, be intimidated by that, if we could get the people out. 
 But this we cannot do, and must therefore pass this place by, 
 at least for the present. It was not a little amusing to see the 
 harmony and perfect agreement of the Rabbis and rummies of 
 the place, in their opposition to our meeting." 
 
 In Grafton our hero was allowed to decide for him- 
 self whether there should be a meeting. " I was 
 alone," he says, " and there was neither house, hall, 
 nor church in which I could speak to the people. 
 But, determined to speak, I went to the hotel and 
 borrowed a dinner-bell, with which in hand I passed 
 through the principal streets, ringing the bell and 
 crying out, ' Notice ! Frederick Douglass, recently 
 a slave, will lecture on American slavery, on Grafton 
 Common, this evening at seven o'clock. This 
 brought out a large audience, but after that evening 
 the largest church in town was open to me." He had 
 
lOO FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 afterward to take the same course at Manchester, 
 New Hampshire, and with similar results. 
 
 On Thursday, May lo, at New York, the A. A. S. S. 
 adopted, by a vote of three to one, a resolution 
 declaring that " Secession from the present United 
 States government is the duty of every abolitionist." 
 Mr. White, who had saved the life of Douglass in 
 Indiana, protested in vain, as did Mr. Child, who then 
 gave up editing the " National Anti-Slavery Stand- 
 ard," on which his gifted wife, too, had labored. On 
 the last day of this month, the New England conven- 
 tion, in Boston, voted to agitate for a dissolution of 
 the Union. In the list of two hundred and fifty ■. 
 names in the affirmative, that of Douglass standSjO 
 tenth ; and there were but twenty-four in the nega- j\) 
 five. That Friday evening a disunion banner was ^ 
 publicly presented by C. C. Burleigh, in behalf of this 
 convention to Garrison, as President of the A. A. S. S. 
 On one side was the new motto, " No Union with 
 Slaveholders," and on the other a slave lay prostrate 
 and trampled down by the American eagle, who was 
 wrapped in the national flag, on which was the word 
 " Protection," and had under one wing the Capitol 
 with a slave-sale in front, while under the other was 
 a church with a negro under the lash. The ground 
 was red, and highest of all the emblems was the eye 
 of God. The audience was so excited by this scene, 
 as well as by the attacks made on the Church, that 
 the convention ended that night in a row. 
 
 Neither a resolution condemning the Church, nor 
 one repudiating the Union, could be carried by 
 Douglass, Burleigh, and Remond, in the meeting, 
 held on June 12, in the Universalist church, now a 
 
"confident AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS.'' 101 
 
 Catholic one, in Concord. But few of the residents 
 would go to the Court House, and the Unitarians 
 would not suffer their bell to be rung, except for two 
 or three unauthorized strokes,when Emerson lectured, 
 on August I, on " The History of Emancipation in 
 the British West Indies." Little reference seems to 
 have been made by him to the condition of the slaves 
 in the United States ; but his treatment of the sub- 
 ject announced was so lofty, that when the audience, 
 mostly from abroad, met for a collation afterward, 
 they said to each other, " Can you eat? I cannot." 
 Douglass was among the listeners that morning, and 
 also among the speakers in the afternoon. The next 
 day he took part with Pierpont and James Freeman 
 Clark, in a great mass-meeting, appointed for the 
 first, but postponed on account of the weather, at 
 Hingham, where the disunion banner was carried 
 through gaily decorated streets in a long^ procession, 
 amid the ringing of the bells. He is described by a 
 lady who saw him this summer, and often afterwards, 
 as showing as much culture from the very first as 
 ever after, and as displaying in his conversation rare 
 integrity of character, as well as great activity of 
 intellect. She also says that he made no gestures, 
 unless excited ; and that he was not only very fond 
 of horses, but perfectly able to pick out a good one. 
 That same month Douglass revisited Norristown ; 
 and on August 17, he spoke on a table in the State 
 House yard in Philadelphia. During the autumn we 
 hear of him at various cities in New Hampshire, 
 Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. There was 
 now great excitement on account of the prospect that 
 Texas would soon be annexed, as actually-happened in 
 
102 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 1845 ; and Douglass took part with Phillips, Garrison, 
 and Remond in the protest made by the M. A. S. S., 
 in Representatives' Hall, on Friday evening, January 
 26, against throwing open this new field to slavery. 
 
 He had abstained, hitherto, from telling the public 
 where he had been a slave, or what was his original 
 name. These precautions seemed necessary for his 
 safety ; but they were not favorable to his reputation 
 for veracity. People began to think that he had 
 never been a slave. They said he did not talk, or 
 look, or act like one ; and his failure to give particu- 
 lars was sadly against him. His education, too, was 
 not to be reconciled with the ignorance in which 
 slaves were said to live. As he walked down the 
 aisles of a church, after a lecture, he used to hear 
 people say, " He's never been a slave, I'll warrant 
 you." Douglass has never been so little of a man as 
 to stand any doubt of his honor. He preferred to run 
 the risk of recapture, and tell all about himself to the 
 world, except the way he escaped. When he declared 
 his intention at New Bedford, there was a general 
 murmur through the audience of " He had better 
 not." This Phillips mentioned in a lecture that 
 March, and exclaimed, " God dash the Common- 
 wealth of Massachusetts into a thousand pieces, till 
 there shall not remain a fragment on which an honest 
 man can stand and not dare to tell his name." He 
 
 added that " Frederick , to our disgrace, we know 
 
 not what to call him " . . . " has won a colorless 
 reputation in these parts." Soon after saying this, he 
 wrote him thus, " I shall read your book with 
 trembling for you. Some years ago, when you were 
 beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace, you 
 
" CONFIDENT AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS." lO^ 
 
 nay remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain 
 gnorant of all. With the exception of a vague 
 Jescription, so I continued till the other day, when 
 iTOU read me your memoirs. I hardly knew at the 
 :ime, whether to thank you or not for the sight of 
 ;hem, when I reflected that it was still dangerous in 
 Vlassachusetts for honest men to tell their names." . . . 
 ' In all the broad lands which the Constitution of the 
 United States overshadows, there is no single spot, 
 lowever narrow or desolate, where a fugitive slave 
 :an plant himself and say, ' I am safe.' The whole 
 irmory of Northern law has no shield for you. I am 
 free to say that, in your place, I should throw the 
 manuscript into the fire." 
 
 This letter was printed, with the " Narrative of the 
 Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, 
 Written by himself ; " in a bound volume of a hun- 
 dred and forty pages, which was published at the 
 Anti-Slavery office in Boston, and sold for fifty cents. 
 The little book also contains a portrait of the author and 
 a letter describing his first appearance at Nantucket, 
 from Garrison, who also says that, " His success in 
 combating prejudice, in gaining proselytes, in agitat- 
 ing the public mind, has far surpassed the most san- 
 a^uine expectations that were raised at the commence- 
 ment of his brilliant career." Scarcely anything is 
 said about this career in the " Narrative," which, so 
 far as it goes, is substantially the same as the auto- 
 biographical accounts published in 1855 and 1882. 
 The earliest of the three memoirs was merely 
 expanded to form the second ; and that was con- 
 [racted again to make part of the third. The prin- 
 :ipal peculiarities of the " Narrative " are the portrait. 
 
104 FREDERICK DOUGtASS. 
 
 the introductory letters from Garrison and Phillips, 
 and the appendix, containing not only the parody of 
 the slave-holders' hymn, but this explanation of 
 rebukes often administered : 
 
 " I find, since reading over the foregoing ' Narrative,' that I 
 have, in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner 
 respecting religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted 
 with my religious views to suppose me an opponent of all reli- 
 gion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I deem 
 it proper to append the following brief explanation. What I 
 have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to 
 apply to the slave-holding religion of this land, and with no 
 possible reference to Christianity proper ; for, between the 
 Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recog- 
 nize the widest possible difference, so wide, that to receive the one 
 as good, pure and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, 
 corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity 
 to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and 
 impartial Christianity of Christ ; I therefore hate the corrupt, 
 slave-holding, woman-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and 
 hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no 
 reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of 
 this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all mis- 
 nomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. 
 Never was there a clearer case of ' stealing the livery of the 
 court of Heaven to serve the devil in.' I am filled with unutter- 
 able loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, 
 together with the horrible inconsistencies, which everywhere 
 surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, woman- 
 whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church 
 members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin 
 during the week, fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a 
 minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. He who sells my sister 
 for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate 
 of purity. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of 
 
"confident against the world in arms." to5 
 
 :ach week, meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to 
 show me the way of life and the path of salvation. He who 
 proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible, denies me the 
 right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He 
 who is the religious advocate of marriage, robs whole miUions 
 af its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages o( whole- 
 sale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the 
 family relation, is the same that scatters whole families, sunder- 
 ing husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and 
 brothers, leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. We 
 see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against 
 adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to 
 support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the 
 poor heathen — all for the glory of God and the good of souls. 
 The slave-auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in 
 with each other ; and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave 
 are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revi- 
 vals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand 
 together. The slave-prison and the church stand near each 
 other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the 
 prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church 
 may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and 
 souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit ; and 
 they mutually help each other. The dealer gives hts blood- 
 stained gold to support the pulpit ; and the pulpit in return 
 covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here 
 we have religion and robbery the allies of each other, devils 
 dressed in angels' robes, and hell presenting the semblance of 
 paradise. " 
 
 The words of Jesus against the Pharisees are then 
 quoted with the comment : 
 
 " Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly 
 true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in 
 America. They strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Could 
 anything be more true of our churches ? They would be 
 
Io6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 shocked at the proposition of fellowshiping a sheep-stealer ; 
 and at the same time they hug to their communion a man- 
 stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with 
 them for it." ..." They love the heathen on the other side of 
 the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible 
 put into his hands, and missionaries to instruct him ; while they 
 despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such 
 is very briefly my view of the religion of this land ; and, to avoid 
 any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, 
 I mean by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the 
 words, deeds, and actions of those bodies. North and South, 
 calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with 
 slave-holders. It is against religion, as presented by these 
 bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify." 
 
 The same week that this little book was published, 
 we find its author, on May 8, 1845, repeating the 
 Covey episode in full in the Broadway Tabernacle, at 
 the convention of the A. A. S. S., to prove that slav- 
 ery was necessarily cruel. Various portions were 
 copied by friendly newspapers with high praise. The 
 " Tribune," for instance, says that, " Considered 
 merely as a narrative, we never read one more simple, 
 true, coherent and warm with genuine feeling. It is 
 an excellent piece of writing, and on that score to be 
 prized as a specimen of the powers of the black race." 
 The " Liberator " says, on May 28, two weeks after 
 announcing the publication, that " The edition is pas- 
 sing off rapidly." The demand was so brisk that the 
 author had to carry copies into the churches, where 
 he lectured, and go with them through the aisles. 
 Four more editions were called for within twelve 
 months, besides two at Dublin and another at Leeds, 
 of five thousand copies. There is also, I think, a 
 German or Dutch translation, and certainly a French 
 
"CONFIDENT AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS." I07 
 
 ne, made by Miss Parkes, who contributed an excel- 
 :nt preface, but left out the introductory letters and 
 lart of the appendix. This last version, which is a 
 easonably faithful one, except that the proper names 
 re sometimes misspelled, was published by Pagnerre, 
 "aris, in 1848. 
 
 At the N. E. Convention in Boston, May 27, 1845, a 
 esolution was proposed by Wendell Phillips, and 
 lassed as follows : 
 
 " Resolved, That we joyfully welcome to our ranks the new 
 nti-slavery lecturer, the ' Narrative of the Life of Frederick 
 Douglass, Written by himself;' that we commend it with con- 
 idence to all who believe the slaves of the South to be either 
 irell treated, or happy, or ignorant of their right to freedom, or 
 n need of preparation to make them fit for freedom ; and that 
 ife urge upon the friends of the cause the duty of circulating it 
 imong all classes." 
 
 At a subsequent session, presided over by Remond, 
 Robert Owen, the great philanthropist, who had been 
 idvocating fornearly thirty years a socialistic scheme, 
 vhose basis much resembled that adopted at Skane- 
 iteles, tried to prove that there was worse slavery in 
 ingland than at the South. But the members of the 
 onvention were perfectly aware that, as Douglass 
 lad said in one of the sessions, twelve months before, 
 ' The hungry Englishman is a freeman ; while the 
 lave is not only hungry but a slave. The difference 
 s said to be, that the Briton says to his victim, ' Work 
 or me, or you shall starve,' while the American says 
 o the slave, ' Work, or you shall be whipped.' But 
 
 know something of this matter at home ; and I have 
 
lo8 FREDEfelCK DOUGLASS. 
 
 found that we say, 'Whip' and ' Starve ' too." He 
 did not, however, strike another such 'blow this year, 
 when the good old man was within his sword's 
 length, but reserved his full strength for Bradburn. 
 The latter had gone over to the Liberty party and 
 now spoke with great ability and bitterness against 
 his former associates, protesting against any money 
 being given to people who were so violent and 
 abusive. Then Douglass carried the war into Africa, 
 by saying to Bradburn, " I heard you myself, not two 
 years ago, at Pittsburgh, denounce the very party 
 which you have since joined, as a set of unprincipled 
 scoundrels. I heard you." " So did I ! " "And I!" 
 shouted others. A spectator describes the scene as 
 one of the most exciting he ever witnessed. Another 
 account says, " There was the high-born and high- 
 minded representative of the African race, into whose 
 hands (if he is the man I think and trust he is) God 
 seems to have given a mission as lofty and inspiring 
 as that entrusted to any one man of our generation, 
 Frederick Douglass, to whom I look more than to 
 any other, as the herald of his people's redemption." 
 This was written by a clergyman, who thought that 
 his cloth was too roughly handled. Pillsbury and 
 Phillips finally charged Christianity with being less 
 humane to the slave than Moslemism ; and the con- 
 vention broke up in a disgraceful row. 
 
 This I mention partly because Rogers had now car- 
 ried the No Government doctrine so far as to hate 
 every kind of organization. He blamed the Abolition- 
 ists for not letting poor crazy Mrs. Folsom say all she 
 chose ; and he now seemed glad of the mob, and said, 
 in the " Herald of Freedom," " In such a contest 
 
"CONFIDENT AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS. I09 
 
 jctween Platform and People, I am glad to see Plat- 
 orm defeated." His head seems to have been much 
 ess clear than when he wrote the descriptions of 
 3ouglass already quoted, and corrected the saying of 
 jarrison, that slavery was a sin because the slave 
 sras the image of God. " Nay," said Rogers, 
 'Slavery is sin, because the slave is the reality of 
 Man." His paper had come, early in 1841, under the 
 :ontrol, so far as receipts and expenses were con- 
 :erned, of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society ; 
 md he had himself announced in an editorial, calling 
 [or continued support, that " Every subscription aids 
 the society." In 1844 the " Herald " collapsed, and 
 de tried to revive it in complete independence of the 
 N. H. A. S. S. Some of the members objected, 
 stheirs stood by him, and the dispute was referred to 
 a committee, which included Garrison, Phillips, and 
 others of his best friends, and which decided unani- 
 mously against him. He refused to submit, and there 
 was a sad quarrel early in June, 1845, at the meeting 
 of the N. H. A. S. S. in Concord. Phillips spoke for the 
 Society so strongly that there was no reply, and Gar- 
 rison charged Rogers with dishonesty. His partisans 
 became too excited to listen for more than a moment 
 to any criticism ; and Douglass, who admitted the 
 innocence of his motives, insisted so earnestly on 
 being allowed to blame his course, that Rogers 
 :harged him with falling into " the vein of a planta- 
 tion slave, with the overseer's whip put into his hand." 
 He also said, " I deny here that Douglass, or anybody 
 5lse, has the right of speech-making," or delivering " a 
 long, uninterrupted, and uninterruptible harangue." 
 That July Douglass made another trip to Western 
 
no FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 New York. The Liberty party organ in Utica speaks 
 thus of his visit : 
 
 " This fugitive from oppression lectured in this city last 
 Tuesday evening. There are not Garrisonian Abolitionists 
 enough in this city to get him up a meeting, and he was 
 indebted to ourself for the one he held. Pity that so noble a 
 specimen of a man should have been spoiled by the miserable 
 fallacies of the Garrisonian philosophy. We knew Frederick 
 held those peculiarities, but we hoped he was not so set upon 
 the project of abolishing the Liberty party and the Union, as to 
 make these objects the prime end of his mission. In this, 
 however, we were mistaken. He labored an hour and a half to 
 bring contempt upon the position, the consistency, and the 
 morality of the very persons by whose courtesy he had obtained 
 a hearing in this city. We regret this exceedingly."' 
 
 Another incident of this journey is that, while he 
 was going on a canal-boat from Palmyra to Rochester, 
 he was told that he must not sit down to breakfast 
 with the other passengers, but might with the 
 " hands." " No," said he, "They have just as much 
 right as your passengers to be free from the disgrace 
 of my company." His color had often shut him out, 
 even in December, from the cabin of the steamboat. 
 On one such occasion Phillips refused to leave him, 
 but passed the night with him on deck. Another 
 time one of the officers took pity on him, and asked 
 him if he were not an Indian. The Douglass would 
 not stretch the truth to get into comfortable quarters, 
 but answered, " No. Only a d d nigger." 
 
 We have seen him fighting against brakemen in 
 Massachusetts and armed rioters in Indiana, arguing 
 against Socialists, Anarchists, and Liberty party men, 
 addressing sometimes half-a-dozen hackmen, and 
 
"CONFIDENT AGAINST THE WORLD IN ARMS." Ill 
 
 )metimes, as at Hingham, six or eight thousand 
 [telligent sympathizers. For seven years he had 
 een in constant danger of arrest, and the peril was 
 :ry serious after he chose to publish the name and 
 idress of his master. We shall next meet him in 
 ifer and smoother paths. This change of scene will 
 )rtunately make it unnecessary to dwell on the 
 rrors of the men and women whose services to our 
 ation are really beyond all praise, but whose mis- 
 ikes must be kept in mind, to understand why our 
 lack knight was finally obliged to ride against them 
 Iso, with lance in rest. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 
 
 The Fugitive Slave Law was not so severe in 1845, 
 as it became five years later ; and recent legislation 
 forbade State officials in Massachusetts to assist a kid- 
 napper. He could, however, easily get support enough 
 from the national courts, and also from public senti- 
 ment, to secure his prey ; and the publication of the 
 " Narrative " made it very rash for its author to remain 
 even for three months, as he actually did, in the 
 United States. Great Britain offered perfect security, 
 and also new opportunities of education, as well as 
 the possibility of obtaining liberal aid. For these 
 reasons he took the Cunard steamer " Cambria," for 
 Liverpool, on Saturday, August 16, 1845, in company 
 with one of his best friends at Lynn, where he still 
 resided, James N. Buffum. His color shut him out 
 from the first cabin ; but his book was eagerly read 
 there. Mr. Buffum, the Hutchinsons, and other pas- 
 sengers visited him often and invited him not only to 
 their cabin, but to the saloon-deck. All parts of the 
 steamer soon became almost equally free to him. 
 But, " I preferred to live within my privileges and 
 keep upon my own premises. I found this quite as 
 much in accordance with good policy as with my own 
 feelings. The effect was, that, with the majority of 
 112 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 1 13 
 
 iie passengers, all color distinctions were flung to the 
 rinds ; and I found myself treated with every mark 
 f respect.'" (" Bondage and Freedom," p. 367.) 
 There were, however, so many Southerners on 
 oard, as to produce a curious mixture of " anti-slavery 
 inging and pro-slavery grumbling." The system was 
 ubjected to continual discussion, so that, as he wrote 
 3 the " Liberator," iropi Dublin, on September i: 
 
 " If suppressed in the saloon, it broke out in the steerage ; 
 nd if it ceased in the steerage, it was renewed in the saloon ; 
 nd if surpressed in both, it broke out with redoubled energy 
 igh up on the saloon-deck, in the free ocean air. I was happy. 
 Everything went on nobly. At last, the evening previous to 
 ur arrival in Liverpool, the slave-holders, convinced that reason, 
 lorality, common humanity, and Christianity were all against 
 lem, abandoned their post in debate, and resorted to their old 
 nd natural mode of defending their morality by brute force." 
 
 . . " Things went on as usual, till between five and six o'clock 
 1 the afternoon of Wednesday, when I received an invitation 
 rem the captain to deliver an address upon the saloon-deck. I 
 ignified my willingness to do so ; and he at once ordered the 
 lell to be rung and the meeting cried. This was the signal for 
 
 general excitement. Some swore I should not speak ; and 
 thers said I should. Bloody threats were made against me, if 
 
 attempted it. At the hour appointed I went upon the deck, 
 /here I was expected to speak. There was much noise going 
 n among the passengers, evidently intended to make it impos- 
 ible for me to proceed. At length, our Hutchinson friends 
 roke forth in one of their unrivalled songs, which, like the 
 ngel of old, closed the lions' mouths, so that, for a time, silence 
 revailed. The captain now introduced me ; and after express- 
 's iny gratitude to a kind Providence that liad brought us 
 afely across the sea, I proceeded to portray the condition of 
 ly brethren in bonds. I had not uttered five words, when a 
 Ir, H., from Connecticut, called out in a loud voice, ' That's a 
 
114 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 lie!' I went on, taking no notice of him, though he was 
 murmuring nearly all the while, backed up by a man from New 
 Jersey. I continued, till I said something which seemed to cut 
 to the quick ; when out bawled H., ' That's a lie ! ' and seemed 
 anxious to strike me. I then said to the audience, that I would 
 explain the reason of his conduct. The colored man in our 
 country was treated as a being without rights. ' That's a lie ! ' 
 said H. I then told the audience, that as almost everything I 
 said was pronounced lies, I would endeavor to substantiate 
 them by reading a few extracts from slave-laws. The slavo- 
 crats, finding that they were now to be fully exposed, rushed up 
 about me, with hands clenched, and swore I should not speak. 
 They were ashamed to have American laws read before an 
 English audience. The captain said he had tried to please all 
 his passengers ; a part of them had expressed a desire to hear 
 me lecture ; and those who did not wish to hear me might go 
 to some other part of the ship. He then returned and requested 
 me to proceed." [Another account is that he said, " Give it to 
 them, Douglass, like bricks ! "] " I again commenced, but was 
 again interrupted, more violently than before. One slave-holder 
 shook his fist in my face and said, ' Oh, I wish I had you in 
 Cuba.' ' Ah,' said another, ' I wish I had him in Savannah. 
 We would use him up.' Said another, ' I will be one of a party 
 to throw him overboard.' A noble-spirited, Irish gentleman 
 assured the man, that two could play at that game ; and, in the 
 end, he might be thrown overboard himself. The clamor went 
 on, waxing hotter and hotter, till it was quite impossible forme 
 to proceed. I was stopped ; but the cause went on. The clamor 
 was only silenced by the captain, who told the mobocrats that 
 he would have them put in irons ; and he actually sent for them, 
 and doubtless would have made use of them." 
 
 Nothing shows more clearly the inability of the 
 friends of slavery even to listen to facts, than this 
 curious incident, the original account of which has 
 been copied with scarcely any omissions. 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. I15 
 
 The next morning, Thursday, August 28, 1845, they 
 landed at Liverpool, and the pro-slavery champions 
 soon had their visit to Eaton Hall spoiled; for the 
 hated negro was actually admitted at the same time 
 with them; and treated equally well. They said all 
 they could about him in the newspapers, and thus 
 greatly increased his popularity. 
 
 Three days after disembarking we find him in Ire- 
 land. The potato-rot, which was to destroy, but lit- 
 tle more than a year later, a quarter of a million 
 lives, and make three million paupers, had already 
 shown itself, and the condition of the people had 
 long been pitiable. Popular education, poor-laws, 
 and other practical remedies had been introduced by 
 the government, but public attention was absorbed 
 by a wild agitation for repealing the Union with the 
 country which was soon to feed the whole island. 
 O'Connell's im.prisonment for sedition kept alive his 
 popularity until the end of 1845, when it was dis- 
 covered, not only that his schemes were hopelessly 
 visionary, but that he had long been one of the most 
 iniquitous landlords in Ireland. There was a carica- 
 ture of him in " Punch," as the real potato-blight. 
 Douglass was just in time to get the full benefit of 
 the cordial relations between Irish and American dis- 
 unionists. The " Liberator," as O'Connell was called, 
 had denounced slavery nobly. Garrison had been 
 among his open admirers, and vast sums had come 
 over from the United States. No wonder that " the 
 black O'Connell," as he was soon named, was able to 
 write to Boston, from Dublin, on September 16: 
 
 " Our success here is even greater than I had anticipated. 
 We have held four glorious anti-slavery meetings, two in the 
 
Il6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. ^ 
 
 Royal Exchange, and two in the Friends' meeting-house, all 
 crowded to overflowing. I am to lecture to-morrow evening 
 in the Music Hall. It will hold three thousand persons, and is 
 let for about fifty dollars a night. But its generons proprietor 
 has kindly agreed to let me have it free of charge. I have 
 attended several temperance meetings, and given several tem- 
 perance addresses. One of the most pleasing features of my 
 visit, thus far, has been a total absence of all prejudice against 
 me, on account of my color. I find myself not treated as a 
 color, but as a man ; not as a thing, but as a child of the com- 
 mon Father of us all." 
 
 Thirteen days later he writes that he has heard 
 O'Connell condemn slavery at a great Repeal meet- 
 ing in Dublin, has been introduced to him on the 
 platform, and has then said to the multitude, " I 
 have stopped in this country for a month to see the 
 ' Liberator,' and when I heard of his approach in the 
 streets to-day, I rushed forward to catch a sight of 
 him who had befriended the poor negro." 
 
 Next he went to Cork, where a public breakfast 
 was given him, and the Mayor took the chair the first 
 evening he spoke. Would the Mayor of any city in 
 the United States, in 1845, have gone into an Aboli- 
 tionist meeting, unless he wanted to have it dis- 
 persed ? A soiree was given by Father Mathew, on 
 October 21, to Douglass and Buffum ; and the dark 
 guest writes that he was " so entirely charmed by the 
 goodness of this truly good man, that I besought him 
 to administer the pledge to me. He complied with 
 promptness, and gave me a beautiful silver pledge. 
 I now reckon myself with delight the fifth of the last 
 five of Father Mathew's 5,487,495 temperance chil- 
 dren." He was invited soon after to a reception in 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. I17 
 
 5t. Patrick's Temperance Hall, where a song of wel- 
 ;ome, especially composed for the occasion, was sung, 
 ind all the company joined in the chorus. In his 
 speech that night, he uttered this great truth : " All 
 :rue reforms are kindi-ed." He went on to say of 
 those who spoke of the Irish as slaves, a word still 
 a;rossly misapplied by agitators, that 
 
 " They do not sufficiently disting-uish between certain forms 
 of oppression and slavery. Slavery is not what takes away any 
 one right or property in man ; it takes away man himself, and 
 makes him the property of his fellow. It is what unmans man, 
 tal<es him from himself, dooms him as a degraded thing, ranks 
 him with the bridled horse and muzzled ox, makes him a 
 chattel personal, a marketable commodity, to be swayed by the 
 caprice and sold at the will of his master." 
 
 So important is this distinction that I will here 
 quote from a speech of his, made at Rochester, New 
 York, December i, 1850, as follows : 
 
 " It is often said by the opponents of the anti-slavery cause, 
 that the condition of the people of Ireland is more deplorable 
 than that of the American staves. Far be it from me to i ider- 
 rate the suffering of the Irish people. They have long been 
 oppressed ; and the same heart that prompts me to plead the 
 cause of the American bondmen, makes it impossible for me not 
 to sympathize with the oppressed of all lands. Yet, I must say, 
 that there is no analogy between the two cases. The Irishman 
 is poor, but he is not a slave. He may be in rags, but he is not a 
 slave. He is still the master of his own body, and can say with 
 the poet : 
 
 " The hand of Douglas is his own. 
 
 " The world is all before him, where to choose ; " 
 " and poor as may be my opinion of the British Parliament, I 
 cannot believe that it will ever sink to such a depth of infamy as 
 
Il8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 to pass a law for the re-capture of fugitive Irishmen ! The 
 shame and scandal of kidnapping will long remain wholly 
 monopolized by the American Congress. The Irishman has not 
 only the liberty to emigrate from his country, but he has 
 liberty at home. He can write, and speak, and co-operate for 
 the attainment of his rights and the redress of his wrongs. The 
 multitude can assemble upon all the green hills and fertile plains 
 of the Emerald Isle ; they can pour out their grievances, and pro- 
 claim their wants without molestation ; and the press, that 
 ' swift-winged messenger,' can bear the tidings of their doings 
 to the extreme bounds of the civilized world. They have their 
 ' Conciliation Hall,' on the banks of the Liffy, their reform clubs 
 and their newspapers ; they pass resolutions, send forth 
 addresses, and enjoy the right of petition. But how is it with 
 the American slave ? Where may he assemble ? Where is his 
 Conciliation Hall ? Where are his newspapers ? Where is his 
 right of petition ? Where is his freedom of speech .' His lib- 
 erty of the press ? And his right of locomotion ? He is .said to 
 be happy ; happy men can speak. But ask the slave what is his 
 condition— what his state of mind — what he thinks of enslave- 
 ment ? and you had as well address your inquiries to the silent 
 dead. There comes no voice from the enslaved. We are left 
 to gather his feelings by imagining what ours would be, were 
 our souls in his soul's stead. If there were no other fact descrip- 
 tive of slavery, than that the slave is dumb, this alone would be 
 sufficient to mark the slave system as a grand aggregation of 
 human horrors." 
 
 After a very successful tour through southern Ire- 
 land, Douglass went, to Belfast, where, on January 
 6, 1846, a public breakfast was given to him, with a 
 member of Parliament in the chair. On this occasion 
 he was presented, in behalf of the local branch of the 
 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, with a 
 Bible, " splendidly bound in gold." In receiving it, 
 he said : " I accept thankfully this Bible ; and while 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. II9 
 
 shall have the best place in my house, I trust also 
 give its precepts a place in my heart." After refer- 
 g to his having been led, by hearing the first chap- 
 r of Job, to wish to know how to read, he said : 
 
 ' Twenty years ago while lying, not unlike a dog, at the feet of 
 ' mistress, I was roused from the sweet sleep of childhood, to 
 ar the narrative of Job. A few years afterward found me 
 irching for the Scriptures in the muddy street gutters, and 
 icuing its pages from the filth." ..." A few years later I 
 :aped from my chains, gained partial freedom, and became an 
 vocate for the emancipation of my race. During this advo- 
 cy, a suspicion obtains that I am not what I profess to be, to 
 ence which it is necessary to write out my experience in 
 ivery, and give the names of my enslavers. This endahgers 
 jT liberty. Persecuted, hunted, outraged, in America, I have 
 me to England, and behold the change ! The chattel becomes 
 man. I breathe, and I am free. Instead of culling the Scrip- 
 res from the mud, they come to me dressed in polished gold, 
 the free and unsolicited gift of devoted hearts." 
 
 A few days before he wrote thus to the " Lib- 
 ator : " 
 
 " I can truly say I have spent some of the happiest months 
 my life since landing in this country. I seem to have under- 
 ine a transformation. I live a new life. The warm and 
 ;nerous cooperation extended to me by the friends of my 
 ispised race ; the prompt and liberal manner with which the 
 ess has rendered me its aid ; the glorious enthusiasm with 
 Kich thousands have flocked to hear the cruel wrongs of my 
 iwn-trodden and long-enslaved fellow-countrymen portrayed ; 
 e deep sympathy for the slave, and the strong abhorrence of 
 e slave-holder, everywhere evinced ; the cordiality with which 
 ;mbers and ministers of various religious bodies, and of 
 rious shades of religious opinion, have embraced me and 
 It me their aid ; the kind hospitality constantly proffered to 
 
120 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 me by persons in the highest rank in society ; the spirit of free- 
 dom that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, 
 and the entire absence of anything that looked like prejudice 
 against me, on account of the color of my skin, contrasted so 
 strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United 
 States, that I look with wonder and amazement on the transi- 
 tion. In the southern part of the United States I was a slave, 
 thought of and spoken of as property ; in the Northern States a 
 fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at any moment, like a felon, 
 and to be hurled into the terrible jaws of slavery — doomed by 
 an inveterate prejudice against color to insult and outrage on 
 every hand (Massachusetts out of the question) — denied the 
 privileges and courtesies common to others in the use of the 
 most humble means of conveyance — shut out from the cabins 
 on sfteamboats — refused admission to respectable hotels — cari- 
 catured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with 
 impunity by any one (nO matter how black his heart), so he 
 has a white skin. But now behold the change ! Eleven days 
 and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand miles of 
 the perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am 
 under a monarchical government. Instead of the bright, blue 
 sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the 
 Emerald Isle. I breathe ; and lo ! the chattel becomes a man. 
 I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal 
 humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I 
 employ a cab — I am seated beside white people — I reach the 
 hotel — I enter the same door — I am shown into the same par- 
 lor — I dine at the same table — and no one is offended. No 
 delicate nose grows deformed in my presence. I find no diffi- 
 culty here in obtaining admission into any place of worship, 
 instruction, or amusement, on equal terms with people as white 
 as any I ever saw in the United States. I meet nothing to 
 remind me of my complexion. I find myself regarded ?ind 
 treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to 
 white people." 
 
 So pleasant, in fact, was this part of Mr. Douglass' 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 121 
 
 life that he recently selected it as the subject of his 
 address, on being invited to speak to a literary club 
 in Washington. 
 
 On January lo, 1846, the two travelers left Ireland, 
 where Douglass had given " upward of fifty lectures 
 in four months ; " and an even more promising field 
 of labor was entered at once in Scotland. The Free 
 Church had been created by the heroism of the four 
 hundred Presbyterian clergymen, who resigned, on 
 May 23, 1843, their pulpits and salaries, a loss of a 
 hundred thousand pounds a year, rather than sup- 
 port any longer a system by which pastors were 
 appointed by wealthy laymen, without the consent of 
 the parishioners. The way in which this body was 
 formed gave high authority to all its utterances, and 
 it was shocking to see Dr. Chalmers condemn exclu- 
 sion of slave-holders from church fellowship, while the 
 deputies who were sent to the United States, to raise 
 funds, carefully avoided showing any sympathy with 
 Abolitionists. They thus managed to collect about 
 three thousand pounds, and a large part of this sum 
 came from South Carolina, where a white man had 
 recently been sentenced to death for trying to help 
 the woman he loved to escape from slavery. O'Con- 
 nell had refused to accept contributions from the 
 Southern States, saying, " I do not want your blood- 
 stained money." Earnest appeals to do likewise were 
 made by the women of Glasgow, and other friends of 
 the slave, to the Free Church, as early as 1844, but 
 the ministers were much too shrewd. The question 
 was of great importance, because it involved that of 
 the duty of the churches to teach morality ; as well 
 as because the most effective way of turning public 
 
122 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 opinion against slavery was to disfellowship slave- 
 holders. And this course was far less objectionable 
 than that of trying to withdraw from political rela- 
 tions. The latter have given the opportunity of 
 emancipation, while the only way in which the 
 churches could exert any authority was through 
 excommunication. The religious relations with 
 slavery were, of course, the only ones which ought to 
 have been discussed in Great Britain, where there 
 were no political ones, except those necessary for the 
 world's peace. 
 
 Decidedly too much, however, was said in favor of 
 disunionism by Henry C. Wright, in southern Scot- 
 land, early in 1846 ; and Buffum, who went through 
 the North and West with Douglass, used to repeat so 
 often a story about the hatred which he was able to 
 call out in Scotland against the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, that I am not altogether sorry to hear it 
 said that his roguish companion once cut him out, by 
 going over all his points before he could repeat them. 
 At all events, Douglass himself kept true to the real 
 issue, as may be judged from a speech made on Feb- 
 ruary 10, at Arbroath, where he was charged with 
 being in the pay of some rival sect. " So far," he 
 says, "as the charge is brought against me, I pronounce 
 it an unblushing falsehood." ..." I am not here 
 alone, I have with me the learned, wise and reverend 
 heads of the church. But with or without their sanc- 
 tion, I should stand just where I do now, maintaining 
 to the last that man-stealing is incompatible with 
 Christianity ; that slave-holding and true religion 
 are at war with each other, and that a Free Church 
 should have no fellowship with a slave church." . . . 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. I23 
 
 The Free Church in vindicating their fellowship of 
 lave-holders, have acted upon the damning heresy, 
 hat a man may be a Christian, whatever may be his 
 iractice, so his creed is right. So he pays tithes of 
 nint, anise and cummin, he may be a Christian, 
 hough he totally neglect judgment and mercy. It is 
 his heresy that now holds in chains three million of 
 nen, women and children in the United States. The 
 lave-holder's conscience is put at ease by those 
 ninisters and churches." 
 
 In this town the indignation was so great that 
 )eople who came, one Sunday morning to worship in 
 he Free Church, found that its walls had been dec- 
 )rated during the night with these words, painted 
 n black letters, and not to be effaced, " The Slave's 
 Blood," while around were red spots to represent gore. 
 Dther churches bore in bloody characters, " Send 
 3ack the Slave Money." Posters were put on all the 
 vails, wherever he spoke, and even on the pavements, 
 •epeating the words, " Send back the Money." In 
 act the war-cry got so familiar to him that he cut it 
 n the turf, when he visited Arthur's Seat in Edin- 
 Durgh ; and he still remembers a song, with a chorus 
 running somewhat thus : 
 
 " Where gat ye the bawbies, Tammy ? 
 I dinna think they're canny," etc. 
 
 He was soon able to report that "Old Scotland boils 
 ike a pot." One of the best meetings was that in 
 jlasgow, on April 21, when he complained that " Not 
 )nly did the Free Church Deputation not preach the 
 jospel, or say a word in behalf of the slave, but they 
 ook care to preach such doctrines as would be 
 )alatable, as would be agreeably received, and as would 
 
124 FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 
 
 bring them the slave-holder's money." Mr. George 
 Thompson, a member of Parliament, whose presence 
 in Boston had done much to excite the mob in 1835, 
 and whose eloquence was still terrible, made that 
 night a very effective speech, in which he exclaimed, 
 " Oh, that a thousand pounds should out-weigh 
 the chains of three million slaves ! " He also 
 brought up the fact that one of the clergymen who 
 was now foremost in holding fast the price of blood. 
 Dr. Cunningham, had formerly, at his suggestion, 
 reprinted a little book called " A Picture of American 
 Slavery," and put upon the title-page these lines : 
 
 " Is there not some chosen curse, 
 Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, 
 Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man 
 Who gains his fortune from the blood of souls ? " 
 
 A few days before these speeches were delivered, 
 Douglass wrote a letter to the " Tribune," which was 
 printed not only there, but in the " Liberator," and 
 which contains these words : 
 
 " I am called by way of reproach, a runaway slave, 
 as if it were a crime, an unpardonable crime, for a man 
 to take his inalienable rights." He also mentions 
 having been denounced by the " New York Express," 
 as " a glib-tongued scoundrel," and says he is used to 
 such epithets ; and their force is lost on him ; for he 
 was reared where they were in the most common use. 
 "They form a large and very important portion of the 
 vocabulary of characters known in the South as 
 ' plantation negro drivers.' A slave-holding gentle- 
 man would scorn to use them." 
 
 The friends of slavery had been so unwilling to see 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 1 25 
 
 iny truth in the " Narrative," that its author was 
 a;lad to have it substantially confirmed by an un- 
 friendly witness. A Southerner, named Thompson, 
 who had known him at St. Michael's, published, 
 early in 1846, a letter which is reprinted in the " Lib- 
 erator," page 29. "He had evidently done his best to 
 collect testimony ; but it touched only two points in 
 the statements of Douglass, namely that Thomas 
 Auld had given him " a number of severe whippings," 
 and had kept his slaves on very short allowance. In 
 a letter quoted by Thompson, Auld says, " I can put 
 my hand upon my Bible, and with a clear conscience 
 swear, that I never struck him in my life, nor caused 
 any person else to do it. I never allowanced one of 
 my slaves." His neighbors speak of him as a kind 
 master, who " has invariably emancipated his slaves, 
 when they arrived at the age of twenty-five." He 
 complains that Douglass does not mention, in the 
 " Narrative," that this promise had been made him- 
 A neighbor, who had boarded with him, says, " I 
 speak from personal knowledge when I say that Fred 
 and all his servants were treated well. Indeed, I 
 never knew him to strike, much less abuse them. I 
 knew Fred well ; we were boys together in the same 
 family.'' It is certainly in Auld's favor, that he had 
 not sold his slave to the Georgia traders, when he 
 first tried to escape, but sent him to learn a trade in 
 Baltimore ; that he never pursued him at the North ; 
 and that he felt so much aggrieved, on account of 
 having been misrepresented that he forbade his son- 
 in-law to talk with him, in 1859. They did, however, 
 have a long conversation, in which the young man 
 insisted, that Auld was really kind-hearted and a 
 
126 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 good master. " I replied," says Douglass, " that there 
 must be two sides to the relation of master and slave, 
 and what seemed kind and just to the one was the 
 opposite to the other." On Auld's death-bed, in 1878, 
 he was reconciled to Douglass, who admitted that he 
 had been mistaken in charging him, in a letter writ- 
 ten to him in England, and published in " Bondage 
 and Freedom," with turning out his grandmother to 
 perish as an outcast, whereas he had saved her from 
 this fate. Mr. D. added that " I regard both of us as 
 victims of a system." (" Life and Times,'' pp. 437 and 
 491.) Each of the two later autobiographies speaks 
 more favorably than the earliest of Captain Auld ; 
 but the statements to which he objected are repeated; 
 and the author declared, in 1846, that he had nothing 
 to take back. It seems to me plain, that he did suffer 
 hunger, though perhaps not from any fault of his 
 master ; and that he was punished for stealing food ; 
 as his statements on these points are not only too 
 minute, but too much against himself, to be rejected. 
 He also published, at this time a circumstantial 
 statement, that Thomas Auld once beat him with a 
 coach whip until he was weary, and in the presence 
 of a white man whom he names, because a carriage 
 lamp had been lost through no fault of the victim. 
 
 The " Liberator " was soon able to publish a letter 
 from a man who knew the country where Douglass 
 was a slave. " I am fully prepared," he says, " to 
 bear a decided testimony to the truth of all his asser- 
 tions with regard to the discipline upon the planta- 
 tions of Maryland, as well as his descriptions of 
 cruelty and murder." It is to be particularly noticed 
 that Thompson, the American, makes no attempt to 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 127 
 
 refute what is said of Covey, and other wicked 
 neighbors, but merely says they had a good reputa- 
 tion with other slave-holders. So we may take the 
 worst charges brought by Douglass against slavery 
 as substantially correct. He may have failed, as we 
 should undoubtedly do, to see all the good points of 
 a man who dared to treat him as property ; but he 
 had a perfect right to say to Thompson : 
 
 " You have completely tripped up the heels of your pro-slav- 
 ery friends, and laid them flat at my feet. You have done a 
 piece of anti-slavery work which no anti-slavery man could do." 
 ..." I am now publishing a second edition of my ' Narra- 
 tive,' in this country, having already disposed of the first. I 
 will insert your article, with my reply, as an appendix." 
 
 He adds, with reference to the timid way, in which 
 he used to pass him at St. Michaels : 
 
 " If I should meet you now, amid the free hills of old Scot- 
 land, where the ancient ' black Douglas ' once met his foes, I 
 presume I might summon sufficient fortitude to look you in the 
 face ; and were you to attempt to make a slave of me, it is pos- 
 sible you might find me almost as disagpreeable a subject as was 
 the Douglas to whom I have just referred." 
 
 How much our black knight has of what was best in 
 ancient chivalry, was shown while he was traveling 
 through the Highlands. It was a rainy day, and he 
 was one of the passengers who filled the inside of the 
 coach. By and bye a lady asked for a seat, but there 
 was none vacant except on the outside. Then the 
 Douglass gave her his own .place, and climbed up 
 himself to sit in the rain. He did this as a matter of 
 course, and was surprised to find the sturdy Britons 
 look at him as a second Don Quixote. It was not 
 their way of treating women. 
 
128 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 While unsuccessful agitations were going on in 
 Scotland and Ireland, a great reform, destined to 
 bless all mankind, was finished triumphantly in Eng- 
 land. Ever since the beginning of the century the 
 members of the working-classes had suffered pitiably ; 
 and their distress had been aggravated by the tariff, 
 which was laid on so many articles as to form an 
 almost complete list of the world's products. Most 
 oppressive of all was the duty on wheat, which was 
 imposed for the enrichment of the owners of land, 
 mostly members of the wealthiest class, and which 
 kept bread at starvation prices. There were also 
 heavy taxes on all manufactured articles, as well as 
 on raw materials ; and the natural result was that the 
 factories could not turn out goods cheaply enough to 
 send much to foreign markets. Thus there was so little 
 demand for skilled labor as to keep wages low, while 
 prices remained cruelly high. It is now many years 
 since there has been such destitution as in i84i,when 
 there were twenty thousand people in Leeds who did 
 not earn on the average a shilling a week, while nearly 
 one-fifth of the population of Nottingham was on the 
 parish. Fortunately, the manufacturers were intelli- 
 gent enough to see the real cause of the people's 
 sufferings, and generous enough to imperil their own 
 immediate interest for the nation's permanent good. 
 As early as 1838 they united with Cobden and Bright 
 in the Anti-Corn Law League, so called, it may be 
 observed, with an especial view to attacking the 
 duties on wheat, which, with other kinds of grain, is 
 known as " corn " in England. The Free-traders 
 were fiercely opposed, not only by the Conservatives, 
 but by the Chartists, who wished to make everything 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 1 29 
 
 else give way to their own visionary schemes ; but 
 the cause of practical reform was carried steadily 
 onward. Important reductions were made in 1842 
 and 1844 ; and, on June 26, 1846, the Corn Laws were 
 repealed, and all the other protective parts of the 
 tariff abandoned. The League dissolved soon after, 
 and "Punch" published a cartoon, in which it was 
 represented as the magic staff, now broken by Pros- 
 pero because its work was done. In another picture 
 the British Lion was seen, fattened on free trade into 
 a strong resemblance to a prize pig at a cattle show. 
 And, as the present condition of England has been 
 badly misrepresented, for the purpose either of 
 hindering a much needed reform, or else of fostering 
 afresh crop of visionary projects, it is well to mention 
 a few significant facts. The average income of fami- 
 lies in the working-class has doubled since 1840, as 
 has recently been shown in the " New York World," 
 by calculations based on the British legacy and suc- 
 cession returns, while the cost of most of the neces- 
 saries of life has been reduced to about one-half of 
 the old prices. There was twice as much money 
 deposited in the savings banks, in proportion to the 
 population, in 1878 as in 1841 ; and the ability of the 
 poor to purchase luxuries has increased so much as 
 to make the average consumption of sugar five times 
 as great in 1887 as in 1840, while that of eggs and 
 butter has more than doubled The number of 
 paupers in England and Wales fell, as is easily com- 
 puted from the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," during 
 the thirty years succeeding the abolition of pro- 
 tectionism, from one in seventeen of the population 
 to one in thirty, and there were less than one-half as 
 
130 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 many able-bodied adults on the parish, on a given 
 day in 1878,33 in 1849. Great Britain, meantime, has 
 become the leading manufacturer for all nations, and 
 has had no occasion to abandon the principles which 
 triumphed in 1846. 
 
 The men who then insisted that legislation should 
 not be for the protection of the few, but of the many, 
 were consistent enough to hate slavery and honor the 
 Abolitionists. Garrison was in favor of " free trade 
 and free intercommunication the world over ; '' and 
 his adherents agreed, for once, with both Liberty 
 party men and Democrats, in supporting that reduc- 
 tion of our tariff which was made this very year, with 
 the best possible results to all our industries. Eng- 
 land looked back with pride to the recent emancipa- 
 tion in the West Indies ; and there was no such 
 excuse as in Scotland for tolerating slave-holding. 
 All these circumstances combined to make the eleven 
 months which Douglass spent there one long ovation. 
 An invitation to speak at the annual meeting of the 
 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, on Mon- 
 day, May 18, brought him that day to London. The 
 next night he spoke to a Peace convention ; Wed- 
 nesday, to one for extending the suffrage to all Eng- 
 lishmen ; Thursday, on temperance ; and Friday, at 
 a reception, the date of which is printed May 12, in 
 " Bondage and Freedom," whereas it should be May 
 22. The speech, which he made that night, contains 
 this passage : 
 
 " I have to inform you that the religion of the Southern 
 States, at this time, is the great supporter, the great sanctioner 
 of the bloody atrocities to which I have referred. While 
 America is printing tracts and Bibles, sending missionaries 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. I3I 
 
 abroad to convert the heathen ; expending her money in vari- 
 ous ways for the promotion of the Gksspel in foreign lands, the 
 slave not only lies forgotten, uncared for, but is trampled under 
 foot by the very Church of the land. What have we in 
 America ? Why, we have slavery made part of the religion of 
 the land. Yes, the pulpit there stands up as the great defender 
 of this cursed institution, as it is called. Ministers of religion 
 come forward and torture the hallowed pages of inspired wis- 
 dom to sanction the bloody deed. They stand forth as the 
 foremost, the strongest defenders of this ' institution.' As a 
 proof of this, I need not do more than state the general fact 
 that slavery has existed under the droppings of the sanctuary 
 of the South for the last two hundred years, and there has not 
 been any war between the religion and the slavery of the South. 
 Whips, chains, gags, and thumb-screws have all lain under the 
 droppings of the sanctuary, and instead of rusting from off the 
 limbs of the bondsmen, these droppings have served to pre- 
 serve them in all their strength. Instead of preaching the 
 Gospel against this tyranny and wrong, ministers of religion 
 have sought, by all and every means, to throw in the back- 
 ground whatever in the Bible could be construed into oppo- 
 sition to slavery, and to bring forward that which they could 
 torture into its support. This I conceive to be the darkest 
 feature of slavery, and the most difficult to attack, because it 
 is identified with religion, and exposes those who denounce it 
 to the charge of infidelity. Yes, those with whom I have been 
 laboring, namely, the old organization anti-slavery spciety of 
 America, have been again and again stigmatized as infidels, 
 and for what reason ? Why, solely in consequence of the 
 faithfulness of their attacks upon the slave-holding religion of 
 the Southern States, and the Northern religion that sympa- 
 thizes with it. I have found it difficult to speak on this mat- 
 ter without persons coming forward and saying, ' Douglass, are 
 you not afraid of injuring the cause of Christ ? You do not 
 desire to do so, we know ; but are you not undermining religion ? ' 
 This has been said to me again and again, even since I 
 came to this country ; but I cannot be induced to leave off 
 
132 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 these exposures. I love the religion of our blessed Saviour. I 
 love that religion that comes from above, in the ' v^risdom of 
 God, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be 
 entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and 
 without hypocrisy.' I love that religion that sends its votaries 
 to bind up the wounds of him that has fallen among thieves. 
 I love that religion that makes it the duty of its disciples to 
 visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction. I love 
 that religion that is based upon the glorious principle of love 
 to God and love to man ; which makes its followers do unto 
 others as they themselves would be done by. If you demand 
 liberty to yourself, it says, grant it to your neighbors. Jf you 
 claim the right to think for yourself, it says, allow your 
 neighbors the same right. If you claim to act for yourself, 
 it says, allow your neighbors the same right. It is because I 
 love this religion that I hate the slave-holding, the woman- 
 whipping, the mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that 
 exists in the Southern States of America. It is because I 
 regard the one as good, and pure, and holy, that I cannot but 
 regard the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. Loving the one, 
 I must hate the other ; holding to the one, I must reject the 
 other." 
 
 At the Peace convention, three days earlier, he 
 said : 
 
 " You may think it somewhat singular that I, a slave, an 
 American slave, should stand forth at this time as an advocate 
 of peace between two countries situated as this and the United 
 States are, when it is universally believed that a war between 
 them would result in the emancipation of three miUions of my 
 brethren, who are now held in the most cruel bonds in that 
 country. I believe this would be the result ; but such is my 
 regard for the principle of peace, such is my deep, firm convic- 
 tion that nothing can be attained for liberty universally by war, 
 that were I to be asked the question whether I would have my 
 emancipation by the shedding of one single drop of blood, my 
 answer would be in the negative." 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 133 
 
 This was all the nobler, because he undoubtedly 
 knew then, as is mentioned in a letter written before 
 the end of this week, that Hugh Auld, who now 
 :laimed him as property, had publicly threatened to 
 arrest him as soon as he returned to the United States, 
 and send him, for the vindication of the family honor, 
 into slavery in those regions where it is most cruel. 
 An attempt was made at the reception on Friday 
 evening to induce him to remain in England ; and 
 money was subscribed for bringing over his family. 
 Reports soon reached Boston that he would never 
 return ; but he wrote back in July from Belfast that 
 " No inducement could be offered strong enough to 
 make me quit my hold upon America as my home. 
 Whether a slave or a freeman, America is my home ; 
 and there I mean to spend and be spent in the cause 
 of my outraged fellow-countrymen." 
 
 Garrison had already been invited by George 
 Thompson to come over and assist in reorganizing 
 the enemies of slavery in Great Britain. The night 
 before he left, he said at a reception given him by the 
 colored people of Boston, in their church in Belknap 
 Street, that among his reasons for going was this : " I 
 want to see Douglass ; and is he not in truth a man ? 
 What a grand mistake his master made when he 
 thought he was a chattel ! " Both champions were 
 soon obliged to draw the sword against their own 
 countrymen in London. At the opening session of 
 the World's Temperance convention, August 4, Gar- 
 rison rebuked a Boston clergyman for defending 
 slavery, but was pronounced out of order, and stayed 
 away afterward. Douglass was invited to speak on 
 the night of the 7th, and called attention to a fact 
 
134 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 which had not been mentioned by the delegates from 
 America. They had said a great deal in praise of 
 their temperance societies ; but there were three 
 millions of Americans who could not join them. 
 Slaves could not meet by themselves for any purpose ; 
 and the attempt of the free colored people to form 
 societies of their own, had called out a mob in 
 Philadelphia on August i, 1842, when their proces- 
 sion was broken up by showers of stones and brickbats ; 
 their teetotal banners were trampled in the dust ; 
 one of their churches was burned to the ground ; and 
 their best temperance hall was demolished. The 
 British hearers were indignant at the outrage, and the 
 Americans at the orator. He said afterward that 
 " There was one Doctor of Divinity there, the ugliest 
 man I ever saw in my life, who almost tore the skirt 
 of my coat off, so vehement was he in his friendly 
 attempts to induce me to yield the floor." The 
 audience was with him by a large majority, and he 
 was urged to go on ; but next morning the Rev. Dr. 
 Cox wrote to the New York papers to denounce " the 
 colored Abolition agitator and ultraist," who had 
 ruined a moral scene which " was superb and glorious,'' 
 by lugging in abolitionism, and " is supposed to have 
 been well paid for the abomination." Douglass 
 promptly denied this last charge ; and accepted the 
 description " as a compliment." All he said was fully 
 justified by " the deep depression of the colored people 
 in America, and the treatment uniformly adopted by 
 white temperance societies toward them." " The 
 temperance cause," he added, " is dear to me. I love 
 it for myself, and for the black man as well as 
 for the white man. I have labored both in England 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. I35 
 
 and America to promote the cause, and am ready still 
 to labor ; I should grieve to think of any act of mine, 
 which would inflict the slightest ruin upon the cause ; 
 but I am satisfied that no such injury was inflicted." 
 
 This correspondence did much to make Douglass 
 favorably known in Europe, and so did another con- 
 troversy of his with the same clergyman. The Evan- 
 gelical Alliance was organized on August 19, by about 
 a thousand delegates, representing fifty orthodox 
 sects, and coming from many lands. No slave-holders 
 had been invited ; and the question of fellowshiping 
 them brought up a discussion, in which almost all the 
 Americans, including Dr. Beecher, sided with Dr. 
 Cox. What he said, .and how he was answered else- 
 where, are stated by Douglass in his last speech in 
 London, thus : 
 
 " Dr. Cox said at the recent meeting of the Evangelical Alli- 
 ance, ' I knew a brother in the South, a dear brother, to whom I 
 spoke on this subject, and I told him what a great sin I thought 
 it was for him to hold slaves ; but he said to me, " Brother, I 
 feel it as much as you do ; but what can I do ? Here are my 
 slaves, take them. You may have them. You may take them 
 out of the State, if you please,'' said he. I could not ; so I left 
 them ; and what would you do, brethren of Manchester and 
 Liverpool, if you were placed in such difficult circumstances ? ' 
 There is no truth in this at all ; let me tell you what has been a 
 standing article in anti-slavery journals for the last ten years. 
 As soon as the noble Gerrit Smith and others heard of this diffi- 
 culty, under which the slave-holders represented that they 
 labored, what did they do ? They inserted advertisements in all 
 the respectable papers in America, stating that there were ten 
 thousand dollars at the service of any poor slave-holders who 
 might not have the means of removing their slaves. Now, 
 every slave-holder must have seen that, for they find no difficulty 
 
136 FREDERICK DOOGtASS. 
 
 in seeing money ; they must have seen this ; but was there ever 
 a demand for a single red copper of all those ten thousand 
 dollars ? Never, never ! " 
 
 He also pointed out the fact that there were many 
 States, where slaves could be emancipated and not 
 sent away ; and in reply to the bugbear, set up in the 
 Alliance, of negro pauperism, he said : 
 
 " I do not know that I ever saw a black pauper. In Philadel- 
 phia they not only support their own poor by their own benevo- 
 lent societies, but actually pay five hundred dollars ^^r annum 
 for the support of the white paupers of that city. We do not 
 have black paupers. We leave pauperism to be taken care of 
 by white people. I mean no disrespect to my audience ; for I 
 have no prejudice against color.'' 
 
 Armed with facts like these, he made what Garrison 
 calls " a very effective sp)eech," and was " warmly 
 applauded." At the meeting held on September 14, 
 in Exeter Hall, for denouncing the cowardice of the 
 Alliance, by the Anti-Slavery League, which had but 
 just been formed, Mr. Garrison was so bitter as to 
 call out much opposition and disturbance ; but 
 Thompson succeeded in carrying the meeting with 
 him ; and Douglass brought it to a triumphant close. 
 The clergyman who edited a London paper, the 
 "Christian Witness," says: "The speeches of Mr. 
 Thompson and Mr. Douglass were all that could have 
 been desired. Both were worthy of the occasion.'' 
 He complains, however, that Garrison " seems to have 
 made the science of offense a special study, and has, 
 we think, attained to very great proficiency." The 
 increasing heterodoxy of his views, about the Bible 
 and the Sabbath especially, helped to create an 
 
BEVOND TME color-line. I37 
 
 unpopularity, which Douglass labored loyally and 
 constantly to diminish. In one of his latest speeches, 
 this year, he says, " I love the Abolitionists of Eng- 
 land ; but they ask of me too much, when they desire 
 me to step from the side of Garrison." He remarks, 
 at present that he was one of the most amiable of 
 men, to those who agreed with him, and makes the 
 comparison between him and Thompson, that the 
 latter was more of an orator than of a man, whereas 
 Garrison was more of a man than an orator. 
 
 Douglass was now a lion in London, on account of 
 the eloquence of his speeches against the Free Church 
 and" the Alliance, although we cannot, in view of the 
 work done by the latter body against persecution, 
 even recently, say, as his admirers then did, that he 
 " shattered it to atoms." He was hospitably enter- 
 tained, at the same time as Andersen, by the Howitts, 
 who " were among the kindliest people lever met." 
 He went with Garrison and Thompson to breakfast 
 at Sir John Bowring's, and also to call on the aged 
 Abolitionist, Clarkson, then near his end. The 
 Chartist leader, Lovett, speaks of " a very delightful 
 evening," when " Our friend, Douglass, who had a fine 
 voice, sang a number of negro melodies, Mr. Garri- 
 son sang several anti-slavery pieces, and our grave 
 friend, H. C. Wright, sang an old Indian war-song." 
 Douglass also met Lord Brougham and Douglas 
 Jerrold, but he was too much in request for the plat- 
 form to be able to meet many of the literary cele- 
 brities, though he must have heard a great deal about 
 them, especially Carlyle, Macaulay, Thackeray, Dick- 
 ens, and Tennyson. One curious result of this visit 
 was that a gentleman, who had come over from one 
 
138 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 of our Southern States, was told by an Englishman, 
 who was showing him his pictures and statues, " I 
 want particularly to have you look at my bust of your 
 countryman, Mr. Douglass." " With the utmost 
 pleasure," was the reply. " Senator Douglas is one 
 of our most distinguished men." But the bust was 
 in black marble. 
 
 A more practically useful form was given to the 
 admiration for our colored orator, by Mrs. Ellen 
 Richardson, who now collected money enough to 
 purchase his freedom of Hugh Auld. Garrison was 
 among the contributors, and also one of the defenders 
 of this act of generosity, which many Abolitionists 
 condemned as a sanction of slavery. Henry C. 
 Wright, for instance, wrote a most earnest letter, 
 advising his friend never to make any use of his free 
 papers. Douglass replied that it was just as proper 
 for him to protect himself by them, as for Mr. Wright 
 to protect himself, while traveling on the Continent, 
 by so far acknowledging the claims of the despots as 
 to take out a passport. He added : 
 
 " I am free to say that, had I possessed one hundred and 
 fifty pounds, I would have seen Hugh Auld kicking before I 
 would have given it to him. I would have waited till the 
 emergency came, and only given the money when nothing else 
 would do. But my friends thought it best to provide against 
 the contingency. They acted on their own responsibility, and 
 I am not disturbed about the result. But having acted on a 
 true principle, I do not feel free to disavow their proceedings." 
 
 He also said, as the purchase continued to be 
 blamed, " I expected that would be the case, and I 
 deem no man the less my friend, for not being pleased 
 with it." The controversy seems to have been finally 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. I39 
 
 extinguished by a lady, who wrote to the editor of 
 the " Liberator " : 
 
 "Let me beg of you never to publish another word in your 
 paper about the ransom of Douglass. I am quite ashamed 
 that our American Abolitionists should expose their narrow- 
 ness in expressing so many regrets at their loss of slave 
 property in Douglass. They seem to feel that he was their 
 property and not his own man." 
 
 After the August meetings in London, where the 
 Slave-holder's Sermon was occasionally repeated to 
 a delighted audience, we find the two champions 
 from America at Sunderland, Birmingham, Wrex- 
 ham (in Wales), Manchester, Glasgow, Dundee, and 
 Edinburgh. In the last city Douglass was able to 
 thank George Combe for what he had learned from 
 the " Constitution of Man ; " and he also had the 
 pleasure of taking part in the presentation of a silver 
 tea-set, and a purse of gold, on October 21, to the 
 agitator, who on that day, eleven years before, had 
 been dragged about by a Boston mob. On Novem- 
 ber 4, he led the cheering, when his leader set out for 
 America, where he had fresh experience of the 
 iniquity of custom-houses. The letter in which 
 Lowell describes the Anti-Slavery Bazaar — among 
 whose treasures were an unusual number of gifts 
 from British friends, for instance, the pupils of the 
 Bristol Blind Asylum, who had become deeply 
 interested in the black knight — contains these lines : 
 
 " There's Garrison, his features very 
 Benign for an incendiary. 
 Beaming forth sunshine through his glasses 
 On the surrounding lads and lasses. 
 
140 FRECERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 (No bee could blither be or brisker,) 
 A Pickwick somehow turned John Ziska, 
 His bump of firmness swelling up. 
 Like a rye cup-cake from its cup. 
 And there, too, was his English tea-set, 
 Which in his ear a kind of fiea set. 
 His Uncle Samuel, for its beauty, 
 - Demanding sixty dollars duty. 
 'T was natural Sam should serve his trunk ill. 
 For G., you know, has cut his uncle." 
 
 Do,uglass remained to work in Great Britain, and 
 one of the most active of the Scotch Abolitionists 
 writes that " He is greeted with rapturous applause 
 wherever he goes, and cannot be spared, but must be 
 here at least till next summer." On the last night of 
 1846, he said, at Newcastle, that there were three 
 million decided Abolitionists in the Union, while at 
 least forty periodicals advocated the negro's cause. 
 We find that on February 9, 1847, he " appeared 
 thoroughly worn out," and that sixteen days later, at 
 Sheffield, " Frederick was too ill from long continued 
 exertion to do himself justice ; but, for the cause in 
 which he so nobly labors, he pleaded powerfully." 
 In the meantime, one of the most deeply respected 
 of the English Abolitionists, Elizabeth Pease, wrote 
 thus : 
 
 " Much had I longed to see this remarkable man, and 
 highly raised were my expectations, but they were more than 
 realized. A living contradiction is he, truly, to that base 
 opinion, which is so abhorrent to every humane and Chris- 
 tian feeling, that the blacks are an inferior race." 
 
 He spoke every night in March, but was obliged, 
 during the last week, to decline more than thirty 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. I4I 
 
 invitations to lecture, for it was known that he was 
 about to leave. At a farewell soiree, given in Lon- 
 don, on March 30, William Howitt said : 
 
 "He has appeared in this country before the most accom- 
 plished audiences, who were surprised, not only at his talent, 
 but at his extraordinary information. And all I can say is, 
 I hope America will continue to send us such men as 
 Frederick Douglass, and slavery will soon be abolished." 
 
 The orator himself began by insisting that not 
 only the Constitution of the United States, but the 
 American churches deserved all that had been said 
 against them, by a man whose " name is unjustly 
 coupled with opprobrium in this country." . . . "My 
 beloved, my esteemed, and almost venerated friend, 
 William Lloyd Garrison, who is hated and despised 
 in this country, because he has fearlessly, on both 
 sides of the Atlantic, unmasked their hypocrisy, 
 branded their impiety in the language that it 
 deserves." The execration in which Garrison was 
 held had somewhat hindered his own recognition; 
 but he had had sympathy here and cooperation 
 there ; and the number of unfriendly Abolitionists 
 was really insignificant. After an account, already 
 quoted, of his passage at arms with Dr. Cox, he went 
 on to speak of his purchase, and remarked : " By the 
 bye, I want to tell the Audience one thing, and that 
 is, that I have just as much right to sell Hugh Auld 
 as he had to sell me, and if any of you are disposed 
 to make a purchase to-night, just say the word." 
 
 The conclusion of this speech is as follows : 
 
 " Let me say one word to you on parting, for this is probably 
 the last time I will have an opportunity of speaking to a Lon- 
 
142 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 don audience. I came here a slave ; I came here degraded ; I 
 came here under a load of odium heaped upon my race by the 
 American press, by ' the American pulpit, by the American 
 people ; I have gone through this land ; and I have steadily 
 increased the amount of attention bestowed upon this question 
 by the British people. Wherever I have gone I have been 
 treated with the utmost kindness, with the utmost deference, 
 with the utmost attention. I have reason to love England. 
 Truly liberty in England is better than slavery in America ; 
 freedom at Hyde Park corner is better than slavery in front of 
 the American Capitol. I have known then, these last nine- 
 teen months, what it was for the first time in my life to enjoy 
 freedom. Just before leaving Boston for this country I was not 
 allowed to ride in a public conveyance ; I was kicked from an 
 omnibus. I was driven from the lower floor of a church because 
 I had dared to enter there, forgetting my complexion, remem- 
 bering that I was a man, and thinking I had an interest in the 
 Gospel there proclaimed. In my passage to this country I was 
 driven out of the cabin of the steamboat, out of all respectable 
 parts of the ship, onto the floor of the deck, among the cattle — 
 not allowed to take any place among human beings as a man 
 and a brother. I was not allowed to go into a menagerie or a 
 theater, if I wanted to go, nor to a museum, nor to an Athe- 
 nasum, nor into a picture gallery, if I wished to do so. I was not 
 allowed any of these privileges ; I was mobbed ; I was beaten ; 
 I was driven, dragged out, insulted, outraged in all directions; 
 every white man, no matter how black his heart, could insult me 
 with impunity. 
 
 " I came to this land — how great the change ! The moment 
 I stepped upon the soil at Liverpool, I saw people as white as I 
 ever saw in the United States, as noble in their exterior ; and, 
 instead of seeing the curled lip of scorn, the fire of hate kindled 
 in the eye of the Englishman, all was respect and kindness. 
 [Cheers.] I looked around in vain for the insult ; I looked, for 
 I hardly believed my eyes ; I searched to see if I could see in 
 an Englishman any look of disapprobation of me on account of 
 my complexion — not one. [Loud cheers.] I have traveled 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 143 
 
 in all parts of the country, in Ireland, in Scotland, and in Eng- 
 land and Wales ; I have traveled on highways, byways, rail- 
 ways, and steamboats ; and in none of these instances have I 
 met anything I could torture into an expression of disrespect of 
 me on account of my complexion. [Loud cheers.] I have visited 
 your Colosseum, your Museum, your gallery of paintings; I even 
 had the pleasure of going into your House of Commons, and, still 
 more, into the House of Lords, and hearing what I never heard 
 before, and what I had long wished to hear, the eloquence of 
 Lord Brougham. [Cheers.] In none of these places did I 
 ever hear one word of scorn. I have felt, however much Ameri- 
 cans may affect to despise and scorn the negro, that Englishmen 
 — the best of Englishmen — do not hesitate to give the right hand 
 of manly fellowship to such as I am. [Much cheering.] 
 
 " When I return to the United States, I will try to impress them 
 with these facts, and to shame them into a sense of decency 
 upon this subject. Why, sir, the Americans do not know that I 
 am a man ; they think the negro is something between the man 
 and the monkey. The very dogs here, sir, know that I am a man. 
 I was at a public meeting at Bromley, the other day, and while 
 I was speaking, a great Newfoundland dog came and put his 
 paws on the platform, and gazed at me with such interest, that 
 I could tell by the very expression of his eye, that he recognized 
 humanity. [General laughter.] I came here a slave ; but 
 I go back free. I came here despised : I go back with a reputa- 
 tion. I am sure if the Americans will believe one tithe of all 
 that has been said in this country respecting me, they will cer- 
 tainly admit that I am better than I was. Though in better 
 circumstances than I came, yet I go back to toil, not to have ease 
 and comfort. Since I came to this land I have had every 
 inducement to stop here. The kindness of my friends in the 
 North has been unbounded ; they have proffered me every 
 inducement to bring my family over to this country ; they have 
 gone so far as to offer to give money that they might be brought 
 to this land ; and I should settle down here in a different posi- 
 tion from that which I should occupy in the United States ; but 
 I prefer to live a life of activity : I prefer to go home, to go back 
 
144 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 to America. I glory in the conflict, that I may also glory in the 
 victory. I go back, turning away from comfort, and ease, and 
 respectabSity which I might maintain here: I go back for the sake 
 of my brethren. [Cheers.] I go back to suffer with them, to 
 toil with them, for that emancipation which is yet to be achieved 
 by the power of truth over the basest selfishness. [Great 
 cheering.] I go back gladly, I leave this country for the United 
 States on the fourth of April, which is near at hand. I feel not 
 merely satisfied, but highly gratified, with my visit to this 
 country. I will tell my colored brethren how Englishmen feel 
 for them. It will be something to give them patience under 
 their sorrows, and hope of a future emancipation. I shall try to 
 have daguerreotyped upon my heart this sea of up-turned faces. 
 I will tell them this ; it will strengthen them in their suffering 
 and in their toils ; and I am sure in this I have your sympathy 
 as well as their blessing. Pardon me, my friends, for the dis- 
 connected manner in which I have addressed you, but I have 
 spoken out of the fulness of my heart ; as the words came up, so 
 they have been uttered ; not altogether, perhaps, so delicately, 
 and systematically, and refinedly as they might have been, but 
 still you must take them as they are. They are the free out- 
 gushings of my heart, overborne with grateful emotion for the 
 kindness I have received in this country, from the day I arrived 
 here to the present moment. With deepest gratitude, fare- 
 well ! " 
 
 The day after this speech a letter was written in 
 Scotland, summing up his work there thus : 
 
 " He has divided the Free Church against itself on account 
 of slavery. He has gained the admiration and esteem of all the 
 friends of the slave in this country. He has always kept an 
 open platform, yet none of the Rabbis have been found gal- 
 lant enough to break a lance with him. He completely 
 exploded their miserable attempts to reconcile slavery with 
 Christianity." 
 
 His last speech in Great Britain was made on 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 145 
 
 Thursday, April i, at Bristol, where he said, " This 
 night, ten years ago, at least the night before Good 
 Friday, I passed in the woods, planning with four of 
 my friends an escape, which proved unsuccessful." 
 A new disappointment was waiting for him. 
 
 He had bought his ticket four weeks before, and 
 engaged a berth in the first cabin, on the express 
 understanding that he was to be treated as well, in 
 every respect, as the other passengers. When he 
 reached Liverpool, the day before the steamer left, he 
 was told that his berth would be occupied by some 
 one else, and he would have to keep away from the 
 other passengers. The reason assigned was his hav- 
 ing lectured against slavery on this same vessel, 
 nearly two years before. In fact, the agent, who 
 came from one of the Southern States, declared soon 
 after, in print, that he would have acted just so " if 
 he had been the whitest man in the world." He at 
 once wrote a protest, in which he said, " I have 
 traveled in this country nineteen months, and have 
 always enjoyed equal rights with other passengers ; 
 and it was not until I turned my face toward 
 America, that I met with anything like proscription 
 on account of my color." His friends at once printed 
 this letter on slips, which were sent to all the British 
 papers. More than a hundred of them published it 
 at once, and there were very severe editorials against 
 the Cunard Company in the London " Times," and a 
 score of other leading journals. Douglas Jerrold, 
 for instance, was indignant at the insult to " the man 
 of color, whose eloquence has stirred the English 
 hearts of tens of thousands ; " and it was only Ameri- 
 can newspapers which approved of such treatment of 
 
146 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 the " negro impostor." A letter was published in 
 England, purporting to be from a Virginian, named 
 Burrop, a proprietor in the steamship company, and 
 head-manager, and declaring that the exclusion was 
 made on the color line, heavy losses having been sus- 
 tained in consequence of acting otherwise. But 
 these statements were pronounced entirely untrue by 
 Mr. Cunard, who also said that he had never heard 
 of Burrop, and would take care that nothing of the 
 sort should happen again. 
 
 John Bright and his sisters made the last night 
 which their friend passed in England cheerful, and 
 the conversation lasted until morning. It was Easter 
 Sunday, April 4, when he went on board the "Cambria." 
 The other passengers, especially the ladies, looked at 
 him with contempt, and he said to the Britons, who 
 came to see him off, " I feel, friends, and I cannot 
 help it, that in leaving this country I am going from 
 home to a land of oppression and slavery — a land oi 
 man-stealers.'' Captain Judkins, who had stood by 
 him on the voyage out, was still in command, and he 
 was treated with the utmost politeness and kindness 
 by every one. His room was the same that had been 
 occupied shortly before by the Governor-General of 
 Canada, and was large enough for a dozen people to 
 sit in ; but he was treated as a prisoner of state, 
 obliged to eat by himself, and not even permitted to 
 attend the religious services. He felt deeply the 
 humiliation, but " This I thought was American 
 slave-holding religion under British colors, and I felt 
 myself no great loser at being excluded from its 
 benefits." 
 
 His sixteen days of solitary confinement must have 
 
BEYOND THE COLOR-LINE. 147 
 
 been consoled by the recollection of what were by far 
 the brightest scenes in his life, before he reached 
 fifty. He had made a great discovery, whose import- 
 ance is not even yet recognized fully. He had proved 
 that the color-prejudice is not a universal character- 
 istic of the white race, too widely diffused and deeply 
 seated to stand much chance of being eradicated, but 
 merely a local idiosyncrasy, destined tc become obso- 
 lete, like the peculiar dialect in which the " Biglow 
 Papers " were at this time written. It is necessary in 
 " the survival of the fittest," that all national peculiari- 
 ties of speech, dress, food, amusement, or opinion, not 
 limited by climate, should ultimately either become 
 universal and cosmopolitan, or else disappear entirely. 
 The color-prejudice is only an Americanism, and 
 never can be anything more. It may linger long 
 among the uncultivated ; but its days are numbered. 
 To prove this was worth a great deal to the anti- 
 slavery cause ; but otherwise the British sympathy 
 called out by Douglass and Garrison was not, I think, 
 of much value, especially as the money was never sent 
 back from Scotland. Ireland was more responsive ; 
 but the example of O'Connell and Father Mathew 
 does not seem to have had the slightest influence on 
 their admirers who emigrated to America. We shall 
 find George Thompson treated all the worse in 
 Boston in 1850, because he was an ambassador from 
 most of the respectable men and women in England. 
 The fathers of the men who now seem to think that 
 the principles of civil service reform and free trade are 
 false and dangerous here, because they have been 
 found true and beneficial in Great Britain, hated " the 
 nigger," Douglass, all the more bitterly after they saw 
 
148 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 him honored by the Britishers. I doubt if a single 
 hunker would have been converted by hearing that 
 the "Liberator" had got a hundred thousand sub- 
 scribers in England ; and the amount of national aid 
 which came across the water to Boston does not seem 
 to have been very great. I find no record of any 
 other contributions so large as that which purchased 
 freedom for Douglass, and that which, as we shall 
 see, soon enabled him to publish a newspaper, whose 
 name furnishes a title for our next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE "north star." 
 
 When Douglass returned to the United States, 
 April 20, 1847, he brought with him the news that the 
 lady who had made him legally free, Mrs. Ellen 
 Richardson, of Newcastle, had just opened a sub- 
 scription for a newspaper, which he should edit in 
 the interest of colored people. He had at first made 
 several objections. His friends in Boston might not 
 like it ; the average American would be prejudiced 
 against any enterprise started by British capital ; he 
 did not himself like a sedentary life; and money was 
 more needed in Ireland, just then, than in America. 
 All these objections were outweighed, however, by 
 the zeal of his English friends, and the subscription 
 was Hkely to be a success. The time was propitious 
 for several, reasons. His victories abroad enabled 
 him to return in triumph. The war which had been 
 undertaken against Mexico, for the extension of 
 slavery, had now assumed a character of such atrocity 
 as to justify the opening against it of a new battery, 
 especially as Lowell and Whittier were furnishing 
 abundance of ammunition. And the discontinuance 
 of the " Herald of Freedom," in 1846, had left a gap 
 which ought to be speedily filled. 
 
 The prisoner on the "Cambria" had consoled himself 
 149 
 
150 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 by visions of what he was about to do for his race, 
 when he could use his pen as well as his voice, and 
 reach constantly all who sympathized with him, 
 instead of only scattered portions intermittently. He 
 was sadly perplexed and disappointed at finding 
 Garrison and the other Boston Abolitionists insist 
 that he was better fitted for speaking than writing ; 
 that editing a paper would interfere with his useful- 
 ness as a lecturer; and that there was no room for 
 another anti-slavery journal. The field seemed, in 
 fact, pretty full, as three new ones had been started 
 that very year by the colored people, who are said to 
 have got out as many as a hundred before 1855. The 
 first on the list is dated as early as 1827 ; and twenty 
 years later I find that the " Ram's Horn " was in full 
 blast ; the " Mystery " was awaiting its solution or 
 dissolution ; the " National Watchman " was going 
 its rounds busily ; the " Disfranchised American " 
 was on the war path; and the "Northern Star and 
 Colored Farmer " was shining under the direction of 
 the black pastor of a white congregation, Rev. S. 
 R. Ward, who evidently believed that every farmer 
 should hitch his wagon to a star. The " Elevator," 
 however, was not running; the "Struggler" had 
 either ceased or not begun to struggle; and the 
 ''Palladium of Liberty" had, T fear, been captured 
 by the enemy, in company with the " Demosthenian 
 Shield." But at all events, there were no,w so many 
 rivals to the proposed paper, and there had been so 
 many failures in this quarter, that the enterprise 
 naturally seemed perilous. How far Garrison was 
 influenced by determination, that there should be 
 order in the ranks, it is hard to say. The fact which 
 
THE "NORTH STAR." 15! 
 
 he brought forward in July, that he once had four 
 hundred colored subscribers in New York City, and 
 as many in Philadelphia, and now had not half-a- 
 dozen in eitherplace, was really a much more favor- 
 able indication than he represented it to be for Doug- 
 lass ; and I hardly think Garrison had a right to say 
 that " It is quite impracticable to combine the editor 
 with the lecturer, without either causing the paper 
 to be more or less neglected, or the sphere of lectur- 
 ing to be seriously circumscribed." He had himself 
 been so successful in making his lecturing and his 
 editing help each other, that it is a great pity that he 
 did not promptly and cordially urge his young friend 
 and disciple to go and do likewise. He declared in 
 the " Liberator," before the money had been sent 
 over, that he considered " such a present inexpedient ; " 
 and two days later, June 27, Douglass wrote a letter 
 for publication, in which he said, " I have, with some 
 reluctance, given up the idea of publishing a paper 
 for the present." Four weeks later, in consequence 
 of suggestions that he had been unduly influenced, 
 he stated that he had acted " wholly on my own 
 responsibility ; " but it was mainly due to Garrison 
 that the publication of the " North Star " was delayed 
 nearly a year ; and it finally had to appear without 
 his approbation. 
 
 Our Douglass has so noble a nature that no opposi- 
 tion could damp his zeal for his race. The " Boston 
 Post " mentioned, in May, that " The Abolitionists, 
 headed by Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, and tailed by 
 Mr Frederick Douglass, the fugitive slave, are in full 
 blast at the Broadway Tabernacle." It is further 
 stated of Douglass that he " elaborates very eloquently 
 
152 FREDERICK Douglass. 
 
 and fearfully ; " that he is " a good deal of a demagogu( 
 in black,'' and also that he " was armed to the teeth 
 and was in fact a walking San Juan de Ulloa." Then 
 was an attempt to silence him by force. But he die 
 not hesitate to support Garrison's resolution againsi 
 a proposal to give the Bible to the slaves, who oughl 
 first to have a chance to learn how to read it ; and h« 
 declared that " The only thing that links me to this 
 land is my family, and the painful consciousness thai 
 here there are three million of my fellow-creatures 
 groaning beneath the iron rod of the worst despotism 
 that could be devised, even in Pandemonium." He 
 then took up the charge that he had irritated the 
 American people and said, " I admit that we have 
 irritated them. They deserve to be irritated." . . 
 " The conscience of the American public needs this 
 irritation ; and I would blister it all over from centei 
 to circumference." The New York " Sun " complained 
 that he had acted as ungratefully toward the countrj 
 which protected him, as if he had accepted a gentle-; 
 rhan's hospitality and abused the fare ; but he wrote 
 from Lynn, on May 18, a letter for the " Ram's Horn,' 
 in which he suggests to the editor of the " Sun " thai 
 
 " A cook-shop (a thing which I am surprised he should evei 
 forget) bears a far greater resemblance to the government of this 
 country than that of a gentleman's house and hospitality. Le( 
 'Cook-shop ' represent 'Country' — ' Bill of Fare,' ' Bill of RightsJ 
 and the ' Chief Cook,' ' Commander-in-Chief.' Enters editor ol 
 ' Sun ' with a keen appetite. He reads the bill of fare. It con- 
 tains the names of many palatable dishes. He asks the cool 
 for soup ; he gets dish-water. For salmon, he gets a serpent 
 for beef, he gets bull-frogs ; for ducks, he gets dogs ; for salt, h( 
 gets sand ; for pepper, he gets powder ; and for vinegar, he get; 
 
THE "NORTH STAR. 153 
 
 frail." ..." This is just the treatment which the colored 
 people receive in this country at the hand of this government 
 Its Bill of Rights is in practice toward us a bill of wrongs. 
 Its self-evident truths are self-evident lies." ..." The great 
 Constitution itself is nothing more than a compromise with 
 man-stealers, and a cunningly devised complication of false- 
 hoods, calculated to deceive foreign nations into a belief 
 that this is a free country ; at the same time that it pledges the 
 whole civil, naval, and military power of the nation to lieep three 
 millions of people in the most abject slavery. He says I abuse 
 a country under whose government I am safely residing and 
 securely protected. I am neither safely residing nor securely 
 protected in this country. I am living under a government which 
 authorized Hugh Auld to steal seven hundred and fifty dollars 
 from me, and told me if I did not submit, if I resisted the robber, 
 I should be put to death. This is the protection given to me and 
 every other colored man from the South ; and nobody knows 
 this better than the editor of the ' Sun.' And this piece of 
 robbery the ' Sun ' calls ' the rights of the master,' and says that 
 the English people recognized those rights by giving me money 
 with which to purchase my freedom. The ' Sun,' complains 
 that I defend the right of invoking England for the overthrow 
 of American slavery. Why not receive aid from England to 
 overthrow American slavery, as well as for Americans to send 
 bread to England to feed the hungry ? Answer me that ! " 
 
 Another New York paper, very felicitously entitled 
 the " Subterranean," was provoked by his having 
 " reiterated his slanders in an obscure gathering of 
 fanatics in this city,'' into calling him a " semi- 
 baboon," and "a most repulsive-looking darkey.'' 
 
 When the New England Convention met at Boston 
 in Anniversary Week, he was elected president, but 
 was kept away by a " severe indisposition." On June 
 17, he gave an account of his visit to England, at Fall 
 River; and on July 3 and 4, he took part at Plymouth 
 
154 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 in a discussion about a resolution, finally laid on the 
 table, and meant to incite the slaves to insurrection. 
 In August and September he took a journey, of which 
 he does not speak in his autobiographies ; but his 
 companion, Mr. Garrison, has left a full account in 
 letters, from which I take these extracts. (" William 
 Lloyd Garrison : the Story of his Life. Told by his 
 Children." Vol. iii., pp. 189-205) ; 
 
 " August 7, 
 
 " Our three days' meeting at Norristown closed last evening, 
 and a famous time we have had of it. Every day two or three 
 hundred of our friends from Philadelphia came up in the cars, 
 and the meetings were uniformly crowded by an array of men 
 and women who, for thorough-going anti-slavery spirit and 
 solidity of character, are not surpassed by any in the world. 
 Douglass arrived on the second day, and was justly the ' lion ' 
 of the occasion ; though a considerable number participated in 
 the discussions, our friend Lucretia Mott speaking with excel- 
 lent propriety and effect. Thomas Earle was present to annoy 
 us, as usual. Our meetings were not molested in any manner, 
 excepting one evening, when Douglass and I held a meeting 
 a:fter dark, when a few panes of glass were broken by some 
 rowdy boys while D. was speaking. It was a grand meeting, 
 nevertheless, and the house crowded with a noble auditory to 
 the end. The meetings will have a powerful effect in the prose- 
 cution of our cause for the coming year. It was worth a trip 
 from Boston to Norristown merely to look at those who assem- 
 bled on the occasion." 
 
 " Harrisburg, August 9, 1847. 
 
 " On Saturday morning, Douglass and I bade farewell to our 
 kind friends in Philadelphia, and took the cars for this place 
 — a distance of 106 miles. Before we started, an incident 
 occurred which evinced something of that venomous pro-slavery 
 spirit which pervades the public sentiment in proportion as you 
 approach the borders of the slave States. There is no distinc- 
 
THE "NORTH STAR." ISS 
 
 tion made at Philadelphia in the cars on account of complexion, 
 though colored persons usually sit near the doors. Douglass 
 took a seat in one of the back cars before I arrived, and, while 
 quietly looking out at the window, was suddenly accosted in a 
 slave-driving tone, and ordered to ' get out of that seat,' by a 
 man who had a lady with him, and who might have claimed the 
 right to eject any other passenger for his accommodation with 
 as much propriety. Douglass quietly replied, that if he would 
 make his demand in the form of a gentlemanly request, he 
 would readily vacate his seat. His lordly commander at once 
 laid violent hands upon him, and dragged him out. Douglass 
 submitted to this outrage unresistingly, but told his assailant 
 that he behaved like a bully, and therefore precluded him (D.) 
 from meeting him with his own weapons. The only response of 
 the other was that he would knock D.'s teeth down his throat 
 if he repeated the charge. The name of this man was soon 
 ascertained to be John A. Fisher, of Harrisburg, a lawyer, and 
 the only palliation (if it be one) that I hear offered for his con- 
 duct is, that he was undoubtedly under the influence of intoxi- 
 cating liquor. This was a foretaste of the violence to be 
 experienced on our attempting to lecture here, and which I 
 anticipated even before I left Boston. 
 
 " The Court House had been obtained for us for Saturday 
 and Sunday evenings. Hitherto, nearly all the anti-slavery 
 lecturers have failed to gather any considerable number 
 together ; but, on this occasion, we had the room filled, some 
 of the most respectable citizens being present. At an early 
 period of the evening, before the services commenced, it was 
 evident that mischief was brewing, and an explosion would 
 uhimately follow. I first addressed the meeting, and was 
 listened to, not only without molestation, but with marked 
 attention and respect, though my remarks were stringent, and 
 my accusations severe. As soon, however, as Douglass rose 
 to speak, the spirit of rowdyism began to show itself out- 
 side of the building, around the door and windows. It was 
 the first time that a ' nigger ' had attempted to address the 
 people of Harrisburg in public, and it was j«gaxded by the 
 
156 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 mob as an act of unparalleled audacity. They knew noth 
 at all of Douglass, except that he was a ' nigger.' They ca 
 equipped with rotten eggs and brickbats, fire-crackers, a 
 other missiles, and made use of them somewhat freel] 
 breaking panes of glass, and soiling the clothes of some w 
 were struck by the eggs. One of these bespattered my he 
 and back somewhat freely. Of course, there was a gr: 
 deal of yelling and shouting, and of violent exclamatior 
 such as, ' Out with the damned nigger,' etc., etc. 1 
 audience at first manifested considerable alarm, but I v 
 enabled to Obtain a silent hearing for a few moments, wh 
 I told the meeting that if this was a specimen of Harrisbi 
 decorum and love of liberty, instead of wasting our bre: 
 upon the place, we should turn our back upon it, shaking 
 the dust of our feet," etc., etc. 
 
 " Pittsburgh, August 12, 1847 
 " I endeavored to complete a letter for you at Harrisbu 
 before leaving for this place, on Monday morning, but was al 
 to write only a portion of one before it was time to be at t 
 depot. In my perplexity, not knowing what else to do, 
 requested a colored friend to finish my letter, explaining to y 
 the reasOn why he did so, and put it into the post-office. 1 
 promised to do so, and I hope was faithful to his promise. . 
 I left off just as I was giving you the particulars of the rowd 
 ish outbreak at our rrieeting at H., I requested Mr. Brown 
 mention that no attempt was made to molest me, and tl 
 Douglass escaped without any serious injury, although he \\ 
 struck in the back by a stone, and a brickbat just gp-azed 1 
 head. All the venom of the rowdies seemed to be direct 
 against him, as they were profoundly ignorant of his charact 
 . . . On Sunday forenoon and afternoon we addressed c 
 colored friends in their meeting-house at H., at which a numl 
 of white ones were also present. The meetings were crowd( 
 and a most happy time we had indeed. Not the slight( 
 molestation was offered. 
 - " On Monday we left Harrisburg in the cars for Chambersbu; 
 
THE "NORTH STAR." 157 
 
 a distance of fifty-four miles. On arriving, to our serious regret, 
 we found that the ticket which Douglass obtained at H. for 
 Pittsburgh, enabled him to go directly through in the 2 o'clock 
 stage, while I should be compelled to wait until 8 o'clock (it 
 proved to be 11 o'clock) in the evening. This was annoying 
 and unpleasant in the extreme. Douglass had a hard time of 
 it, after we parted. The route over the Alleghany Mountains, 
 although a very beautiful and sublime one, is a very slow and 
 difficult one, and with a crowded stage, in a melting hot day, is 
 quite overpowering. It seemed to me almost interminable — 
 almost equal to a trip across the Atlantic. Douglass was not 
 allowed to sit at the eating table on the way, and for two days 
 and nights scarcely tasted a morsel of food. 0, what brutality ! 
 Only think of it, and then of the splendid reception given to him 
 in all parts of Great Britain ! On his arriving at Pittsburgh, 
 however, a different reception awaited him, which was also 
 intended for me. A committee of twenty white and colored 
 friends, with a colored band of music, who had sat up all night 
 till three o'clock in the morning, met him to welcome him to the 
 place, and to discourse eloquent music to him. Of course, they 
 were greatly disappointed at my not coming at that time. 
 
 " I arrived toward evening, entirely exhausted, but soon recov- 
 ered myself by a good warm bath. A meeting had been held in 
 the afternoon in the Temperance Hall, which was ably 
 addressed by Douglass. In the evening we held one together 
 in the same place, crowded to overflowing.— [August 13.] Yes- 
 terday, Friday, [Thursday], we held three large meetings, two 
 of them in the open air, and concluded last night with the 
 greatest enthusiasm. I have seen nothing like to it on this side 
 of the Atlantic. The place seems to be electrified, and the hearts 
 of many are leaping for joy." 
 
 On Wednesday, August i8, they took part in the 
 mass-meeting of the Western Anti-Slavery Society, at 
 New Lyme, a village in the Northeastern corner of 
 Ohio. The great Oberlin tent, " capable of holding 
 
IjS FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 four thousand persons," had been put up ; man 
 prominent members of the Liberty party were on th 
 ground ; and 
 
 " Notwithstanding the unpropitious state of the weather, : 
 an early hour vehicles of various descriptions began to pour int 
 the place in great numbers. We held two meetings in the tei 
 on the first day, which were attended by a large concoursi 
 among them some of the choicest friends of our cause in th 
 land — ay, and the choicest women, too. Messrs. Giddings an 
 Tilden, members of Congress, who have nobly battled for free 
 dom in that body, were also present. After the organization c 
 the meeting, a poetical welcome to Douglass, Foster, and mysel 
 written by Benjamin S. Jones, was sung with exquisite tast 
 and feeling by a choir, causing many eyes to be moistened wit 
 tears. I then addressed the great multitude at considerabl 
 length, and was followed by Douglass in a capital speech. I 
 the afternoon we again occupied the most of the time. Th 
 interest manifested, from beginning to end, was of the mo: 
 gratifying character, and all seemed refreshed and great! 
 pleased. As the night approached, there appeared to be som 
 symtoms of rowdyism, and it became necessary for some ( 
 our friends to watch all night, lest the tent should be damagec 
 
 " Yesterday, all day, our meetings were still more thronged- 
 four thousand persons being on the ground. The disunio 
 question was the principal topic of discussion, the speaker 
 being Douglass, Foster, and myself, in favor of disunion, an 
 Mr. Giddings against it. Mr. G. exhibited the utmost kindnes 
 and generosity toward us, and alluded to me in very handsom 
 terms, as also to Douglass; but his arguments were very specioui 
 and I think we had with us the understanding and conscienc 
 of an overwhelming majority of those who listened to the debati 
 As a large proportion of the Abolitionists in this section of th 
 country belong to the Liberty party, we have had to bring thei 
 to the same test of judgment as the Whigs and the Democrat 
 for supporting a pro-slavery Constitution ; but they are general! 
 
THE "north star." 159 
 
 very candid, and incomparably more kind and friendly to us 
 than those of their party at the East. 
 
 " To-day (Friday), we shall close this cheering anniversary ; 
 after which, Douglass and I must ride forty miles to attend 
 another convention at Painesville, which commences to-morrow 
 morning at lo o'clock; at the conclusion of which we must 
 take another long jaunt, to hold meetings on Sunday at Munson. 
 Our friends here have so multiplied the meetings that not an 
 hour is left us for rest. They are unmerciful to us, and how we 
 are to fulfill all the engagements made, without utterly breaking 
 down, I do not know. Douglass is not able to speak at any 
 length without becoming very hoarse, and, in some cases, losing 
 the ability to make himself heard. 
 
 " Up to the last hour" [says a later letter to Mrs. Garrison] " the 
 audience was immense. We adjourned at half-past two o'clock 
 p. M., and were then busily engaged for some time in shaking 
 hands and bidding farewell to a host of friends. When the 
 dense mass moved off in their long array of vehicles, dispersing 
 in every direction to their several homes, some a distance of 
 ten, others of twenty, others of forty, others of eighty, and 
 others of a hundred miles, it was a wonderful spectacle. One 
 man (colored) rode three hundred miles on horseback to be at 
 the meeting." 
 
 On they went to Painesville, where " Frederick's 
 voice was much impaired, and he had to have a bad 
 tooth extracted during the meeting." Then they 
 came on Sunday, August 22, to Munson, where 
 
 " We saw the great Oberlin tent in a distant field ; but no 
 village was to be seen, and only here and there a solitary log 
 cabin. ' Strange,' said I to myself, ' that our friends should 
 pitch their tent in such a place. From whence are we to get 
 our audience ? ' But, on going to the spot, I found a large 
 company already assembled, and in a short time the vast tent 
 was densely filled, even to overflowing ; so that the multitude 
 was greater than we had even at New Lyme. It was a grand 
 
t6o FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 and imposing spectacle. Poor Frederick was still unwell, and 
 could only say a few words in the forenoon ; and in the after- 
 noon he absented hiniself altogether from the meeting, and put 
 a w ct bandage round his throat. This threw the labor mainly 
 upon me, though our sterling friends, S. S. Foster and J. W. 
 Walker, made long and able speeches, which aided me consid- 
 erably. The enthusiasm was general and \ery gre.it. We 
 continued our meeting through the next day, with a large and 
 most intelligent audience, and made a powerful impression, 
 Douglass was much improved, and spoke with inimitable humor, 
 showing up the religion of the South in particular, and of the 
 country in general. At the close. Dr. Richmond (one of our 
 most intelligent and acti\-e come-outers, last from the Lilnrty 
 liarty) offered a series of resolutions, strongly commendatory to 
 Douglass and myself, which were unanimously adopted by a 
 tremendous ' Ay ! ' — after which six cheers were given in the 
 heartiest manner. Altogether, it was the most interesting meet- 
 ing I have ever attended in this country, . . ." 
 
 That week they attended commencement at the 
 famous anti-slavery college, Oberlin, where among the 
 graduates of this year they met Miss Lucy Stone. 
 Nearly three thousand people listened to their debate, 
 with President Mahan, who defended the Consti- 
 tution of the United States as anti-slavery. Then 
 came one immense meeting after another in various 
 places, including Salem, where "The rain poured 
 down in torrents, giving us all a pretty thorough bap- 
 tism ; but the people would not disperse ; and we 
 looked the storm out of countenance and wound up 
 gloriously." Their arrival in Cleveland had been 
 announced in one of the Liberty party organs, the 
 " Plain Dealer," by a paragraph headed, " The Men- 
 agerie Coming," and saying that "Ciarrison, Doug- 
 lass, Foster, (and, we expect, Satan also), are to be 
 
THE "NORTH STAR." l6l 
 
 here on Saturday next, and open at 7 o'clock in the 
 evening in their big tent, and continue their haran- 
 gues over the Sabbath. This trio have made sale for 
 a great many unmerchantable eggs in other places." 
 
 Their meetings on Sunday were so crowded that 
 they had to go out from the church into the grove. 
 Neither the big tent nor the eggs seem to have been 
 on hand ; but on Monday Garrison was attacked by a 
 fever, which kept "him prostrate for five weeks ; 
 while Douglass and Foster went on to a series of con- 
 ventions which began at Buffalo, September 14, and 
 closed with the month at Albany, after taking in 
 Rochester and Syracuse. 
 
 The publication of the " North Star " was now 
 announced, under circumstances which it is my duty 
 to try to present in a different light from that thrown 
 upon them in the really noble work above quoted. It 
 must be remembered that Garrison had been con- 
 sulted when the project was first entertained, and had 
 spoken of it editorially in a way likely to hinder it 
 from succeeding. I do not think that Douglass was 
 under any obligation to consult Him again, especi- 
 ally as this was not even suggested by the givers of 
 the five hundred pounds. This money, as stated in an 
 article published in London, July 24, and reprinted 
 two months later by the " Liberator," was sent on the 
 express understanding that Douglass might, if he had 
 no immediate use for it, have it invested " under 
 trustees of his own choosing," for his own permanent 
 benefit and that of his children ; but that " If at any 
 future time he should consider it advisable to estab- 
 lish a newspaper of his own, the capital so invested 
 shall be available for that purpose." He was the 
 
1 62 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 only man in America who had any right to decide 
 what should be done with this gift. Of course, he 
 was under great obligations for what Garrison had 
 done for him individually, as well as for his race. 
 But we must not forget that he had made some return 
 in the praises given to the " Liberator " and its editor 
 in a widely circulated book, and in speeches applauded 
 by great multitudes. Garrison would undoubtedly 
 have said, " If you owe anything to me, pay it to our 
 cause." That cause had no more faithful servant 
 than the man who risked his life at Pendleton and 
 Manayunk; who labored so diligently as repeatedly to 
 exhaust his mighty strength ; who spent year after 
 year, without complaint, in journeys which seldom 
 allowed him to be with his family ; who deliberately 
 exposed himself to be sent back into slavery, in its 
 most cruel form, rather than keep back facts which 
 might help on the work ; who had come back to 
 danger, ignominy, and privations in America, instead 
 of remaining abroad with his family in luxury, 
 safety, and honor ; and who now chose to put his 
 entire fortune into an enterprise of doubtful prospects, 
 but of possible benefit to his race, rather than lay it 
 aside for his permanent comfort and that of his 
 children. Douglass had now paid all his debts to 
 Garrison ; and there was a large balance due him on 
 the other side. 
 
 He still considered himself pledged to devote the 
 money to the purpose for which it was originally 
 subscribed, as soon as he could find a favorable 
 opening. He declined a place on the " Liberator," 
 for this would not have been what was designed by 
 the donors. In August we find him almost decided 
 
 . J 
 
THE " NORTH STAR." 1 63 
 
 to become an associate editor of the " Ram's Horn," 
 and write regularly for the " Standard," both which 
 journals were published in New York City. On 
 October i, however, the " Liberator " announced 
 that he was about to publish a new paper at Cleveland, 
 called the " North Star." This notice was probably 
 given in consequence of a letter which he wrote after 
 September 12, the day when Garrison was taken sick. 
 At all events, Douglass had at that time been only 
 thirty-six hours in the city ; and his new scheme can 
 scarcely have been sufficiently matured to make it 
 necessary to say much about it. There would have 
 been very little to complain of, if Garrison had, as he 
 said, heard nothing about it before his illness ; but it 
 is altogether probable that the violence of the attack 
 caused him to forget what had been told him just 
 before his siqkness by Douglass, according to a state- 
 ment made by the latter that winter. 
 
 The reader is now requested to compare carefully 
 two letters. Rev. S. J. May wrote to Garrison, on 
 October 8, from Western New York, that 
 
 " Frederick Douglass was very much troubled that he did 
 not get any tidings from you when he reached Syracuse on the 
 24th of September. He left you reluctantly, yet thinking that 
 you would follow on in a day or two ; and as he did not get 
 any word from you at Waterloo, nor at Auburn, he was almost 
 sure he should meet you at my house. His countenance fell, 
 and his heart failed him, when he found me likewise in sad 
 suspense about you. Not until he arrived at West Winfield 
 did he get any relief, and then through the ' Liberator ' of 
 the 23d." 
 
 This letter had, I fear, been read by Garrison, when 
 
164 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 he wrote, twelve days later, from Cleveland, which 
 he had not quitted, to his wife thus : 
 
 " Is it not strange that Douglass has not written a single 
 line to me, or to any one in this place, inquiring after my health, 
 since he left me on a bed of illness ? It will also greatly 
 surprise our friends in Boston to hear that, in regard to his 
 project for establishing a paper here, to be called the ' North 
 Star "... he never opened to me his lips on the subject, nor 
 asked my advice in any particular whatever ! Such conduct 
 grieves me to the heart. His conduct about the paper has 
 been impulsive, inconsiderate, and highly inconsistent with his 
 decision in Boston. What will his English friends say of such 
 a strange somerset ? I am sorry that friend Quincy did not 
 express himself more strongly against this project in the 
 ' Liberator.' It is a delicate matter, I know, but it must be 
 met with firmness." 
 
 We must remember that Douglass had at first given 
 up his own wishes in deference to Garrison's advice, 
 and had spent months in deliberation before he 
 finally decided to use money which had been put 
 entirely at his own disposal, in the way originally 
 selected by the givers. Was this " impulsive " or 
 " inconsiderate ? " And what need was there for 
 "firmness," or for a single word against the publica- 
 tion from Mr. Quincy, who was temporarily editing 
 the " Liberator ? " The " North Star " was soon to 
 appear, and the only question was whether it should 
 be a success or a failure. Is it necessary to say which 
 result would have been for the good of the cause? 
 Did Douglass deserve nothing but opposition in his 
 new career? A dozen friendly wOrds might have 
 brought him a thousand subscribers. It is sad not 
 to find them in the early numbers of the " North 
 
THE " NORTH STAR." 165 
 
 Star," nor in the long editorial which Garrison wrote, 
 as he resumed his charge of the "Liberator," on 
 January 7, 1848. A week later he reprinted, without 
 comment, the statement of Mrs. Chapman that a 
 subscription list for the " North Star " had been hung 
 up in the Anti-Slavery Bazaar at Boston. She also 
 expressed her hopes for the new editor thus : 
 
 " Let him be, as heretofore, proof against every form of 
 temptation, and a long and glorious career, like that of Clarkson 
 (whose past is already sealed) and Garrison (whom God 
 preserve to a like late and faithful ending) lies before him. 
 More fortunately circumstanced than Toussaint," ..." may 
 his success be made proportionate to his ability by his devoted- 
 ness and perseverance to the end." 
 
 But it was not until January 28 that the " Liber- 
 ator " acknowledged that 
 
 " The facility with which Mr. Douglass has adapted himself 
 to his' new and responsible position, is another proof of his 
 genius, and worthy of especial praise. His editorial articles 
 are exceedingly well written ; and the typographical, ortho- 
 graphical, and grammatical accuracy, with which the " North 
 Star" is printed, surpasses that of any other paper ever 
 published by a colored man." 
 
 He had already made up his mind that Western 
 New York, where he had often spoken acceptably, 
 would give him an even better field than Ohio ; and 
 thus, as he says himself in "Life and Times" (p. 295), 
 " From motives of peace, instead of issuing my paper 
 in Boston, among New England friends, I went to 
 Rochester, New York, among strangers." This last 
 word is amply justified by Miss Holley's letter, which 
 will be found in another chapter. The first number 
 
1 66 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 of the " North Star " appeared accordingly at Roch- 
 ester, on December 3, 1847. Mr. Delany, who had 
 edited the "Mystery," and who was not prevented by 
 the complete blackness of his skin from afterwards 
 becoming a major in our army, was associated with 
 Douglass ; and there were agents in Pennsylvania, 
 Ohio, and Michigan, as well as in New England. The 
 first article is an account of the convention of colored 
 people which opened October 6, at Troy, where 
 Douglass exhorted them to come out of the pro- 
 slavery churches, and said, that " His right arm should 
 wither before he would worship at their blood-stained 
 altars." The next number, four weeks later, con- 
 tains cordial notices from the Rochester dailies, the 
 " New York Tribune," the" Standard," and the "Anti- 
 Slavery Bugle," whose editor had warmly encouraged 
 the plan of the new paper, and would have merged 
 his own sheet in it if it had been published at Cleve- 
 land. The " Liberator " was still under the charge 
 of Mr. Quincy, who had promptly acknowledged his 
 friend's " eminent ability to man any breach that 
 calls for a ready mind and a strong arm," and who 
 now said that the " North Star's " " literary and me- 
 chanical execution would do honor to any paper, new 
 or old, anti-slavery or pro-slavery, in the country." 
 It was certainly a much more interesting paper, for 
 general readers, than the " Liberator," whose sub- 
 scribers must have been largely actuated by a sense 
 of duty. There were not so many long contributions 
 about visionary schemes ; and there was a great 
 abundance of selections from the brightest and ablest 
 authors of the day, like Parker, Longfellow, Sumner, 
 Douglas Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray, Macaulay, 
 
.THE "north star." 167 
 
 Howitt, Emerson, Lamartine, and Andersen. In fact, 
 the main difficulty I found, in looking over the "North 
 Star," was the constant temptation to linger over 
 interesting extracts. To a poor family, who had little 
 reading matter besides, its arrival must have been the 
 great event of the week, especially as there were many 
 valuable suggestions on practical points, while ample 
 notice was taken of all important events, for instance 
 the dethronement of Louis Philippe. Its chief editor 
 had the advantage of a great gift, which he had already 
 shown on the platform, and which is manifest on 
 every page of his books, that of always knowing hdw 
 to interest people. Even his boldest utterances were 
 made attractive. Publishing this paper was, to quote 
 his own words to me, " almost the wisest thing I ever 
 did." He had to keep hard at work reading and 
 thinking, collecting new matter and revising his old 
 views. He was still a staunch disunionist ; and the 
 Harrisburg riot had been praised by a Pennsylvania 
 newspaper, which declared that " Douglass is a darkey 
 and a tool for the enemies of our country." . . . "He 
 lets no opportunity pass without giving our country 
 a stab. It is unnecessary to say that he also stabs 
 Democrats at every corner, and is armed to the shirt- 
 collar with treason." He was now in the region where 
 the Liberty party had its main strength ; and the 
 necessity of meeting its arguments led him to test 
 repeatedly the strength of his own position. He was 
 as firm in it, however, in 1848, as ever before. 
 
 He had scarcely started the " North Star," when he 
 made a long journey as a lecturer, speaking in Janu- 
 ary at the Bazaar in Boston, in April at various points 
 in Ohio, and on May 9 at the annual meeting of the 
 
t68 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 A. A. S. S. in the Broadway Tabernacle, in New York 
 City. Before copying the account of his speech, writ- 
 ten down that day on the platform by Henry C. 
 Wright, one of an audience of nearly three thousand, 
 I must give a word or two of explanation. John P. 
 Hale, who had but just before been nominated for 
 the Presidency by the Liberty party, had lost his 
 election as a member of the House of Representatives, 
 because he opposed the annexation of Texas, but had 
 recently been chosen Senator. Soon after he took his 
 seat in Washington an attempt was made to rescue 
 seventy-five slaves, among whom were three young 
 girls of remarkable beauty. The vessel in which they 
 fled was brought back ; and popular indignation 
 against the captain was expressed in a shameful riot. 
 This disorder gave Hale a good opportunity for be- 
 ginning an attack upon the whole system of slavery. 
 His colleagues were too angry, however, to let him do 
 more than begin ; and his purpose was not under- 
 stood by the Abolitionists. Such was the state of 
 things when, according to Wright's letter, 
 
 " Frederick Douglass now takes the platform, and is 
 welcomed with applause. The assembly is now fixed in its 
 close attention, and Frederick is going on to show up the 
 cowardly and sneaking conduct of John P. Hale, in bringing in 
 a bill to protect property, and not daring to stand up and fear- 
 lessly advocate the right of slaves to run away, and the right 
 and duty of Abolitionists to protect them. Frederick is describ- 
 ing ' Punch's ' portraits of Brother Jonathan, with the devil 
 hovering over him, eying with satisfaction passing events. The 
 audience give him great applause. He is speaking to great 
 effect, portraying the wrongs of the colored population of this 
 nation. His eloquence sways the great assembly with him. 
 He denounces the Northerners, who swear to support the 
 
THE " NORTH STAR." 169 
 
 Constitution, as the real slave-holders of the country. It is 
 good to listen to him. He shows up the Northern apologists 
 of slavery as those whose smiles he does not want. He 
 pledges himself to denounce those enemies of God and man, 
 who swear to support the Constitution, as his enemies. 
 Frederick has got the audience into a great state of glorifica- 
 tion ; and he is now showing that there is no way to abolish 
 slavery except by the dissolution of the Union. There, he is 
 done ; and the meeting is breaking up. It has been a pleasant 
 and profitable time.'' 
 
 Dquglass now enlarged his aims so far as to include 
 a new reform, even more unpopular than abolitionism. 
 Women were then excluded, throughout the "United 
 States, not only from the suffrage, but from almost 
 every lucrative or honorable employment, while their 
 pay, in such occupations as were left open to them, 
 was but scanty. They had scarcely any opportunity 
 to get a thorough education, and their attempts at 
 public speaking met with violent opposition, as we 
 have seen to have been the case with Abby Kelley 
 and Angelina Grimke. A married woman could own 
 nothing, not even her daily earnings or her clothes ; 
 and her husband or father might take away her 
 children. Efforts had been made from time to time, 
 by Frances Wright, the Grimke sisters, Ernestine L. 
 Rose, and other women individually, to right these 
 wrongs, but there was no concerted movement before 
 1848. Then a " Woman's Rights Convention " met, on 
 July 19, at Seneca Falls, on a call sent out by 
 Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and two other 
 ladies. A declaration of independence, closely copied 
 from that adopted in 1776, was signed by a hundred 
 men and women, and among the names is that of 
 
170 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Frederick Douglass. He took part with Mrs. Stanton 
 in a proceeding which she described, on March 31, 
 1888, before the International Council of Women at 
 Washington, as follows : 
 
 " I wanted to demand the right of suffrage then and there, 
 because I saw that was the fundamental right out of which all 
 others would necessarily flow, so I drew up, myself, a very 
 short resolution, and my husband told me, ' Now, you make the 
 whole thing ridiculous. So long as you advocate simply rights 
 of education, rights of property, rights of children, and all that 
 sort of thing, it is very well, but the idea of demanding the 
 right of suffrage ! ' And Lucretia Mott said the same "thing, 
 and all the convention ; those who were interested in it vifere 
 opposed to this resolution. So I seemingly gave it up, but 
 when- 1 got into the convention I determined to push forward 
 my resolution ; but, unfortunately, I had never said a word in 
 public, and how to put two sentences together I did not know. 
 So I surveyed the convention, and there I saw one man, 
 Frederick Douglass, and I knew that Frederick, from personal 
 experience, was just the man for the work ; so I read my reso- 
 lution, and then I hurried to his side, and whispered into his 
 ear what I wanted said ; and he went along awhile very well, 
 but he didn't speak quite fast enough for me, nor say all I 
 wanted said ; and the first thing I knew I was on my feet 
 making a speech for that resolution, and Frederick Douglass 
 and I carried the whole convention, and the resolution was 
 passed unanimously." 
 
 Another of the speakers on this fortieth anniver- 
 sary of the reform, said, in reply : 
 
 " There are few facts in my humble history to which I look 
 back with more satisfaction than to the fact, recorded in the 
 history of the Woman Suffrage Movement, that I was sufficiently 
 enlightened at that early day, and when only a few years from 
 slavery, to support your resolution for woman suffrage. 1 have 
 done very little in this world in which to glory, except this one 
 
THE "north star.' 1 71 
 
 act— and I certainly glory in that. When I ran away from 
 slavery, it was for myself ; when I advocated emancipation, it 
 was for my people ; but when I stood up for the rights of 
 woman, self was out of the question, and I found a little 
 nobility in the act." 
 
 Scarcely was the convention of 1848 finished, when 
 he wrote an editorial, ending thus : 
 
 " Standing as we do upon the watch-tower of human freedom, 
 we cannot be deterred from an expression of our approbation 
 of any movement, however humble, to improve and elevate the 
 character of any members of the human family. While it is 
 impossible for us to go into this subject at length, and dispose 
 of the various objections which are often urged against such a 
 doctrine as that of female equality, we are free to say that in 
 respect to political rights, we hold woman to be justly entitled 
 to all we claim for man. We go further, and express our 
 conviction that all political rights which it is expedient for man 
 to exercise, it is equally so for woman. All that distinguishes 
 man as an intelligent and accountable being, is equally true of 
 woman ; and if that government only is' just which governs by 
 the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the 
 world for denying to woman the exercise of the elective fran- 
 chise, or a hand in making and administering the laws of the 
 land. Our doctrine is that ' Right is of no sex.' We, therefore, 
 bid the women engaged in this movement our humble God- 
 speed." 
 
 The Seneea Falls convention had adjourned on 
 July 20, to reassemble on August 2, in Rochester ; 
 and there we find the editor of the " North Star " 
 advocating " the emancipation of women from all the 
 artificial disabilities imposed by false customs, creeds, 
 and codes." We also read that " In answer to the 
 many objections made by gentlemen present to grant- 
 ing to women the rights of suffrage, Frederick 
 Douglass replied in a long, argumentative, and 
 
172 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 eloquent appeal for the complete equality of women 
 in all the rights that belong to any human soul. He 
 thought the true basis of rights was the capacity of 
 individuals ; and as for himself, he should not dare 
 claim a right that he would not concede to women." 
 One active worker in the cause wrote soon after to 
 another, " Can you tell me of any paper that advocates 
 our claims more warmly than the ' North Star ? ' " 
 (" History of Woman Suffrage." Vol. i, pp. 67-91, 
 802-810.) 
 
 One week later he was present at a convention, 
 with whose objects he had not full sympathy. 
 Many of our best and ablest men had supposed that 
 they could do better work against slavery by remain- 
 ing Whigs or Democrats, than by becoming either 
 Garrisonians or members of the Liberty party, which 
 latter broke up in 1847 into two factions with differ- 
 ent candidates for the Presidency. Thus, the anti- 
 slavery champions were scattered about in five hostile 
 camps. Four of these detachments united in 1848 to 
 form the Free Soil party. Early in that year, Lewis 
 Cass, who had declared himself opposed to that 
 attempt to check the extension of slavery, known as 
 the Wilmot Proviso, was nominated on a pro-slavery 
 platform by the Democratic party, which had taken 
 the lead in annexing Texas, as well as in making war 
 on Mexico, and which was now determined to carry 
 slavery into new territory. The anti-slavery Demo- 
 crats of New York, nicknamed " Barnburners," on 
 account of their desire to reform the civil service, 
 were so badly treated in the nominating convention 
 that they withdrew in disgust, and recommended for 
 President Martin Van Buren, who had been elected 
 
THE "north STAR. 173 
 
 by the Democrats in 1836, had been re-nominated in 
 1840, but not elected, and would have been chosen as 
 the party candidate in 1844, if he had been sufficiently 
 in favor of annexation and war. Mean time, General 
 Taylor, a slave-holder who had never cast a vote or 
 held any civil office, and who had no scruples about 
 taking a nomination from anybody, was put up, 
 merely to catch votes, by the Whigs, who refused to 
 frame any platform, and voted down resolution after 
 resolution against the extension of slavery. Taylor's 
 position was described in the " Biglow Papers" as 
 "frontin' South by North," and his letters were 
 parodied thus : 
 
 " Ez to my princerples, I glory 
 
 In hevin' nothin' o' the sort ; 
 I ain't a Wig ; I ain't a Torj' ; 
 
 I'm jest a candidate in short. 
 That's fair an' square an' parpendicler ; 
 
 But if the public cares a fig 
 To hev me an 'thin' in particler, 
 
 Wy, I'm a kind o' periwig.'' 
 
 Foremost among those members of the Whig con- 
 vention, who had protested against the retirement of 
 the party into neutrality about all political questions, 
 was Henry Wilson ; and he now took the lead in a 
 movement for cooperating with the Barnburners in 
 forming a new party. A convention to meet for this 
 purpose, in Buffalo, early in August, was planned ; 
 and the suggestion was accepted by a mass-meeting 
 of citizens of Ohio of all parties opposed to the 
 extension of slavery, which met in Columbus at the 
 same time that Van Buren was nominated by the 
 Barnburners. The plan was also indorsed by a con- 
 
174 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 vention of the Liberty party at Columbus, with Sal- 
 mon P. Chase in the chair. A fourth convention, 
 that same month, June, 1848, was held, in opposition 
 to the extension of slavery, at Worcester, where 
 speeches were made by Sumner, Giddings, and 
 Charles Francis Adams, and delegates from each of 
 the three parties were appointed for Buffalo. Daniel 
 Webster was at first inclined to favor the movement ; 
 and it had the steady support in New York of Bryant, 
 Dix, and Tilden. 
 
 When the convention met at Buffalo, on August 9, 
 Frederick Douglass was present as a spectator ; and 
 the mention of his name was received with loud 
 cheers ; but he declined the invitation to speak. He 
 was still too much of a disunionist to join any party; 
 and he was soon confirmed in this position by the 
 platform as well as by the nomination for the Presi- 
 dency. It was proposed to prohibit slavery in all 
 free territory, to make no more compromises with its 
 supporters, and to relieve the general government of 
 all responsibility for its continuance ; but at the same 
 time it was recognized as a State institution, which 
 should not be interfered with by Congress ; and 
 Van Buren had made so many concessions to the 
 South, that it was a great mistake to prefer him 
 to Hale at Buffalo. He received five times as 
 man}"- votes as the candidate of the Liberty party 
 had done four years before ; and the agitation soon 
 carried Chase, Seward, and Sumner into the Senate ; 
 but the Garrisonians held, with the " North Star," 
 " That the Free Soil movement ought not to be con- 
 sidered as the real anti-slavery movement of the 
 country." It was looked upon more favorably than 
 
THE "NORTH STAR. 1 75 
 
 the Liberty party had ever been ; but the feeling 
 about Van Buren among Abolitionists was what 
 Lowell expresses thus : 
 
 " I swan, I'm clean disgusted. 
 He ain't the man that I can say, is fittin' to be trusted ; 
 He ain't half anti-slav'ry 'nough ; nor I ain't sure, as some be. 
 He'd go in fer abolishin' the Deestrict o' Columby. 
 
 ***** 4t * 
 
 An' then, another thing, I guess, though mebby I am wrong. 
 This Buff'lo plaster ain't a goin' to dror almighty strong." 
 
 A resolution, indorsing the new party, was passed 
 in the colored people's convention, which met early 
 that September at Cleveland ; but the president, Mr. 
 Douglass, had his dissent recorded formally. He 
 succeeded in carrying an amendment, by which women 
 were made members ; and there was no opposition to 
 the address, drawn up by him, and saying, " We ask 
 that the doors of the school-house, the workshop, the 
 church, the college shall be thrown open as freely to 
 our children as to the children of other members of 
 the community." His speech presented what is still 
 an advanced idea of education, thus : 
 
 " Try to get your sons into mechanical trades. Press them 
 into the blacksmiths' shops, the machine shop, the joiner's 
 shop, the wheelwright's shop, the cooper's shop, and the 
 tailor's shop." . . . . " Every blow of the sledge hammer, 
 wielded by a sable arm, is a powerful blow in support of our 
 cause. Every colored mechanic is, by virtue of circumstance, 
 an elevator of his race. Every house built by black men is a 
 strong tower against the allied hosts of prejudice. It is 
 impossible for us to attach too much importance to this aspect 
 of the subject. Trades are important. Wherever a man may 
 be thrown by misfortune, if he has in his hands a useful trade, 
 he is useful to his fellow-man, and will be esteemed accord- 
 
176 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 ingly. And of all men in the world who need trades, we are 
 the most needy." 
 
 While traveling, in consequence of this convention, 
 on one of the steamers which ran between Cleveland 
 and Buffalo, he gave a lecture at the invitation of 
 some of the other passengers. He closed by saying, 
 that he should be happy to hear from any slave- 
 holder in reply ; and he may possibly have mentioned 
 that there was one already trying to apologize for his 
 position in the " North Star." One of the audience 
 told him indignantly, that no white man would con- 
 descend to argue with a nigger. " My dear father was 
 as white as you are," rejoined Douglass. " If you 
 cannot condescend to argue with my negro blood, 
 please reply to the European blood." 
 
 On returning home, he found that the color- 
 prejudice had shown itself in a peculiarly base and 
 cruel form. His family had followed him to Roch- 
 ester ; and his daughter, Rosetta, then nine years old. 
 had been accepted as a pupil in a private' school, kept 
 by a Christian lady and near his house, which was 
 on high ground not far from Mount Hope cemetery. 
 He was happy in the thought, that his child was 
 having advantages which he had lost. The little 
 girl did not seem happy, however ; and he soon 
 found that she was kept in a room by herself, a 
 prisoner on account of her color, not permitted to 
 see or hear any of the other pupils, but obliged to 
 recite and take a recess by herself. He complained 
 to the teacher of this cruel fraud, but was told that 
 it was necessary for the good of the school. He in- 
 sisted that the other girls should be asked, whether 
 they had any objection to his daughter's company ; 
 
THE "north star. 177 
 
 and it was found that none of them had yet been 
 contaminated by the popular prejudice. The teacher 
 now declared that she could not let Rosa be with 
 them, unless all their parents were satisfied ; and 
 strong objection was made by one of the fathers, 
 whose house stood next to that of Douglass. After 
 this he had to have his children taught at home by a 
 governess from England. There was no other school 
 open to them, except a very poor one kept up for 
 colored people only at the other side of the city ; and 
 the boys were even younger than the girl. That 
 winter, however, he took the lead in an agitation 
 which did not cease until all children were permitted 
 to enter the Rochester schools without distinction of 
 color, a reform not yet accomplished at Washington. 
 He also opposed all restrictions at theaters, lecture- 
 rooms, and other public places ; and colored travelers 
 soon told him, that they felt the influence of his paper 
 within a radius of fifty miles. 
 
 On the Friday after the slave-holder without opin- 
 ions was elected President, it was declared in the 
 "North Star" that "The cry of disunion shall be 
 more fearlessly proclaimed till slavery be abolished, 
 the Union dissolved, or the sun of this guilty nation 
 go down in blood." At the meeting of the A. A. S. S. 
 in New York city, an address was made on Wednes- 
 day evening. May 9, 1849, by Douglass, who 
 condemned the project of circulating tracts and the 
 Bible amongst the slaves. " Give them freedom 
 first," he said, " and then they will find the Bible for 
 themselves. The owners of slaves dread nothing 
 more than that any of their slaves should learn to 
 read. That instant he feels the fetters that bind 
 
lyS FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 him." He then " went on to censure the religionists, 
 who conferred honors on the spillers of blood ; for 
 instance, on Zachary Taylor, who sent the hound on 
 the track of the Indian." 
 
 The " North Star " had not met with so warm a 
 welcome from the Garrisonians as from men who 
 were trying, like Gerrit Smith, Horace Mann, Chase, 
 Sumner, Seward, Giddings, and Palfrey, to turn the 
 whole force of the Constitution against slavery. The 
 necessity of defending his position against the argu- 
 ments of his new friends forced Douglass to look 
 beyond the narrow limits of Garrisonian orthodoxy. 
 Even as early as February, 1849, he made an impor- 
 tant concession to the Free Soilers. He said in his 
 paper that " On a close examination of the Constitu- 
 tion I am satisfied that, if strictly construed, accord- 
 ing to its reading, it is not a pro-slavery instrument." 
 He still held, however, that " The original intent and 
 meaning" . . . "makes it a pro-slavery instrument, 
 such a one as I cannot bring myself to vote under or 
 swear to support." Two daj-s after the speech in 
 New York City, just quoted, he held a public debate 
 there with the editor of the " Northern Star and 
 Colored Farmer," who, about this time, changed the 
 name of his paper to avoid an)- confusion with its 
 rival. Mr. Ward was a negro of the purest blood, 
 and the force of his arguments is acknowledged by 
 his rniilatto antagonist to have been so great as 
 ultiAiately to have made a permanent conquest. The 
 coriyersion 'was far from sudden, however, and we 
 find the littte rerhriant of the Liberty party persuaded 
 by Gerrit'Smifh, bn'lJuly 3,1849,10 resolve unani- 
 mously "That t:^e ' t'hiilipses, and Quinceys, and 
 
THE "north star. 179 
 
 Garrisons, and Douglasses, who " . . . " chime in 
 with the popular cry that the Constitution is pro- 
 slavery, do thereby, notwithstanding their anti- 
 slavery hearts, make themselves practically and 
 effectively pro-slavery." 
 
 The controversy which now took place between 
 the author of this resolution and Douglass must have 
 stimulated the growth of the seed sown by the 
 " Colored Farmer." The arguments brought forward 
 by the leader of the Liberty men had much to recom- 
 mend them besides their intrinsic truth. He had 
 been eagerly observing the course of politics for 
 more than twenty years, and from an independent 
 standpoint. He had been working busily for the 
 slave ever since 1830, siding for a while with Garri- 
 son, but soon leaving him to organize that series of 
 appeals to the ballot-box, which at last was answered 
 by a final verdict against slavery. His vast wealth 
 was still freely given to the disunionists, as well as to 
 colonizationists and laborers in his own path. The 
 temperance, peace, and woman's rights movements 
 found him among their earliest and most zealous 
 advocates. His princely hospitality welcomed to his 
 board the illiterate negro missionary, the medium, 
 the Catholic priest, the fugitive slave, and the blind 
 beggar ; politicians of all parties, proselyters of all 
 sects, and agitators for every novelty. Again and 
 again he gave away farms so freely that he issued 
 deeds to three thousand colored people between 1845 
 and 1849, and then he began afresh series of presents 
 of land to white men. Soon after we find him giving 
 twelve thousand dollars to set free a friend who had 
 been put in prison for aiding fugitives ; and he 
 
l8o FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 subscribed ten thousand at one time for the deliver- 
 ance of Kansas. The comparatively small assistance 
 which he gave from time to time to the " North 
 Star," would undoubtedly have been continued if it 
 had never shifted its place ; and we know too much 
 about its editor's independence of character to admit 
 that he could ever have disguised his opinions in 
 order to get aid from any quarter. He was too able 
 a man to continue long a disunionist, after he had a 
 chance to see both sides of the case ; but it is no 
 discredit to him, if he was strongly influenced by the 
 personal worth of a philanthropist without bitterness, 
 whose burning zeal for religion and reform was never 
 darkened by any ambition or intolerance. 
 
 The cost of publishing the "North Star" was 
 about eighty dollars a week, and the number of sub- 
 scribers was so small that, on May 5, 1848, a call for 
 more money was issued in its columns. The editor 
 had mortgaged his house, and was "heavily in debt," 
 when his friend, Miss Julia Griffiths, afterward Mrs. 
 Crofts, a lady of some literary ability and great 
 energy, came over with her sister from England. 
 On Thursday, May 24, 1849, these ladies were with 
 Mr. Douglass, going down the Hudson from Albany to 
 New York, on the steamer " Alida," when he ventured 
 to go with them to the dinner-table. He was taken 
 away by force and obliged to leave the cabin, but 
 they followed at once, and went on to New York, 
 hungry and indignant. Miss Julia's zeal and busi- 
 ness ability soon caused the mortgage to be released, 
 all the debts to be paid, and the circulation to rise, 
 in a single year, from two thousand to four thousand 
 copies. She remained for some years in Rochester, 
 
THE " NORTH STAR." l8l 
 
 where she became an active officer of the Ladies' Anti- 
 Slavery Society, and edited an annual called "Auto- 
 graphs for Freedom." It was, I presume, in her 
 company, that Mr. Douglass, now sole editor, went 
 in June to Niagara Falls, where he was treated like 
 a prince on one side of the river, and like a Pariah on 
 the other. The color-line seems to have been simply 
 the boundary of the United States. 
 
 The influence of the Garrisonians was never large 
 enough to be compared with that of the Southern 
 disunionists, and these latter excited so much alarm 
 in 1850 as to cause Congress to adopt a compromise 
 which threatened to throw open the territories to 
 slave-holders, and ensured the passage of a new law 
 against fugitives, much worse than that which had 
 sent Douglass abroad. Webster had spoken in behalf 
 of these measures on March 7, and had won great 
 applause at the North, especially from merchants 
 who wished to please Southern customers, and manu- 
 facturers who hoped to gain Southern votes for a 
 return to the high duties which had been given up in 
 1846. The leaders of both of the great parties were 
 bidding against each other, at the expense of the 
 slaves, for the support of the slave-holder. Thus the 
 political and business influences were so strongly on 
 the side of slavery as to give it almost complete con- 
 trol of both the press and the pulpit. One sign that 
 public opinion condemned the Abolitionists was the 
 license given to the rioters against them in New York 
 City. Leading newspapers announced the annual 
 meeting of the A. A. S. S. in language intended to 
 collect a mob. On the first morning, that of May 7, 
 but very few colored people were present, and they 
 
l82 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 took care to keep near the doors. In one of the 
 front seats on the platform, however, sat Frederick 
 Douglass, " with brows knit, fiery eyes looking dag- 
 gers, gcorn upon his thick curled lips, and, lurking 
 in his sable, woe-begone visage, the traces of malig- 
 nity, disappointment, and despair." Thus speaks 
 one of the pro-slavery papers, and another calls him 
 " the master-genius of the crowd." Phillips and 
 Lucretia Mott were also on the platform, and so was 
 a gambler named Rynders, who had been the leader 
 of the riot against Macready, a year before, in Aster 
 Place, and who was afterward made marshal of the 
 district by Buchanan. His band of rowdies was 
 before him, waiting for a signal, which he gave in 
 consequence of an attack on President Taylor by 
 Garrison. The uproar was now furious, and the 
 police were evidently under orders not to repress it. 
 At last, Rynders was induced, by the promise that 
 one of his supporters should be heard on the plat- 
 form, to allow Garrison to conclude. Dr. Furness, 
 whose recollections have been freely drawn upon by 
 those who would describe the scene, was also per- 
 mitted to speak ; and then came a fellow named 
 Grant, who tried to prove that a negro is a kind of 
 monkey. His own adherents soon got tired of hear- 
 ing him, and then Douglass seized his opportunity. 
 " Captain Rynders," said he, " Do you think that I 
 am a monkey ? " " Oh no," replied Rynders, " you 
 are half a white man." " Then I am half man and 
 half monkey ? " " Yes." " And half brother to Cap- 
 tain Rynders ? " , 
 
 The whole audience united in laughter and 
 applause. Douglass now had the floor, and went on 
 
The "north star." 183 
 
 to attack a critic of Garrisonianism, whom he knew 
 to be hated by the rioters before him, Horace 
 Greeley, who had recently said in his paper that the 
 blacks did nothing for themselves. " When I first 
 came North," said Mr. Douglass, " I went to the most 
 decided anti-slavery merchant in the North, and 
 sought employment on a ship he was building, and 
 he told me that if he were to give me work every 
 white operative would quit ; and yet Mr. Greeley 
 finds fault with us that we do not help ourselves." 
 This criticism pleased Rynders, who bore that gentle- 
 man no good will ; and he added a word to Douglass's 
 against Greeley. " I am happy," said Douglass, " to 
 have the assent of my half-brother here," pointing to 
 Rynders, and convulsing the audience with laughter. 
 After this, Rynders, finding how he was played with, 
 took care to hold his peace ; but some one of Rynders' 
 company in the gallery undertook to interrupt the 
 speaker. " It's of no use," said Mr. Douglass ; " I've 
 Captain Rynders here to back me. We were born 
 here," he went on to say. " We have made the 
 clothes you wear, and the sugar that you put into 
 your tea ; and we mean to stay here and do all we can 
 for you." " Yes," cried a voice from the gallery, 
 "and you'll cut our throats!" "No," said the 
 speaker, "we'll only cut your hair." When the 
 laughter ceased, Mr. Douglass proceeded to say : 
 " We mean to stay here, and do all we can for every 
 one, be he a man or be he a monkey," accompanying 
 these last words with a wave of his hand toward 
 the quarter whence the interruption had come. He 
 concluded with saying that he saw his friend, Samuel 
 Ward, present, and would ask him to step forward. 
 
184 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 All eyes were instantly turned to the back of the 
 platform, or stage rather, so dramatic was the scene, 
 and there, amidst the group, stood a large man, so 
 black that, as Wendell Phillips said, when he shut his 
 eyes you could not see him. " Had I observed him 
 before, I should have wondered what brought him 
 here, accounting him as fresh from Africa." He 
 belonged to the political wing of the Abolition party 
 (Gerrit Smith's), and had wandered into the meeting, 
 never expecting to be called upon to speak. At the 
 call of Frederick Douglass he came to the front, and 
 as he approached, Rynders exclaimed, " Well, this is 
 the original nigger ! " " I've heard of the magnani- 
 mity of Captain Rynders," said Ward ; " but the half 
 has not been told me." And then he " went on with a 
 noble voice, and his speech was such a strain of 
 eloquence as I never heard excelled before or since." 
 " There are more than fifty people here," said he, 
 " who may remember me as a little black boy running 
 about the streets of New York. I have always been 
 called nigger, and the only consolation that has been 
 offered me for being called nigger, was that, when I 
 die and go to heaven, I shall be white. If " — and 
 here, with an earnestness of tone and manner that 
 thrilled us to the very marrow, he continued — " if I 
 cannot go to heaven as black as God made me, let me 
 go down to hell, and dwell with the devils forever ! " 
 The effect was beyond description. " This gentle- 
 man," he said, " who denies our humanity, has 
 examined us scientifically ; but I know something of 
 anatomy. I have kept school, and I have had pupils, 
 from the jet-black up to the soft dissolving views ; and 
 I have seen white boys with retreating foreheads and 
 
THE " NORTH STAR." 185 
 
 projecting jaws, and, as Dickens says in ' Nicholas 
 Nickleby ' of Smike, ' you might knock here all day,' 
 tapping his forehead, ' and find nobody at home.' " 
 In this strain he went on ruling the large audience 
 with Napoleonic power. Coal-black as he was, he 
 was an emperor. When he ceased speaking the time 
 had expired for which the Tabernacle was engaged, 
 and we had to adjourn. " Never was there a grander 
 triumph of intelligence of mind over brute force. 
 Two colored men, whose claim to be considered 
 human was denied, had, by mere force of intellect, 
 overwhelmed their maligners with confusion." 
 
 The victory would have been complete if the poli- 
 ticians and merchants, whom Rynders served, had 
 not ordered him to go back to the Tabernacle 
 next day, and not let any one speak. Burleigh's 
 voice was drowned that day by shouts of, " Oh, let 
 Douglass shave that man, and make a wig for Garri- 
 son ! " Even Phillips was silenced by cries of, " This 
 is an imposition ! " "A white-washed nigger instead 
 of a black one ! " " Put him out ! " " Put the red- 
 head down ! " No hall or church in the city could 
 be obtained for completing the business of the society, 
 which had to elect its officers and pass its resolutions 
 in a private parlor. 
 
 Such manifestations of sympathy with the South 
 in the greatest city in the Union, encouraged Con- 
 gress to pass the Fugitive Slave Bill, which provided 
 that the trial should be summary, that no one arrested 
 under it should be heard before a jury or allowed to 
 testify, in his own behalf, and that any attempt to 
 prevent kidnapping might be punished by fines 
 amounting to two thousand dollars, and also by six 
 
l86 FREDERICfc DOUGLASS. 
 
 months in prison. More than forty colored people 
 left Boston within three days after the signing of the 
 bill, on September i8, 1850 ; while the pastor of the 
 Colored Baptist Church in Rochester fled with every 
 other member, except two, out of a hundred and 
 fourteen, to Canada. The little girls in that city used 
 to wonder every morning, whether they should see 
 Mr. Douglass that day in the street, or hear that he 
 had been carried off during the night. Many free 
 negroes were enslaved ; but he was able not only to 
 protect himself but to save others. He was an active 
 agent of the Underground Railroad ; and a large 
 room in his house was always ready for fugitives. 
 Once he had eleven there together ; and John Brown 
 made them a speech. When any new arrival took 
 place, the little Douglass boys would go to and fro 
 collecting funds, to pay the fare on the steamer across 
 Lake Ontario. Several instances of the way in which 
 Douglass helped men who were in especial danger 
 may be found in the " Life and Times ; " and there 
 was also one case in which he took charge of a very 
 small fugitive in petticoats, on the cars. He took a 
 seat beside the child, saying very kindly, " Well, my 
 little girl." The reply was in an indignant whisper, 
 " I'm a boy." 
 
 The "swarthy Ajax," as he was now called, put 
 forth all his powers of ar_gument, repartee, ridicule, 
 and denunciation against the supporters of the wicked 
 law. Once, when he was speaking in Rochester, he 
 called out, " Is there a single man here, who would 
 sell his brother into bondage ? " "I would," said a 
 fellow who stood in the rear. " Then turn your face 
 to that wall," thundered the orator. He spoke with 
 
THE " NORTH STAR." 187 
 
 Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, and Charles 
 Francis Adams, on October 14, before one of the 
 largest and noblest meetings ever held in Faneuil 
 Hall. He found time even then to appear with 
 Sojourner Truth before the Woman's Rights Conven- 
 tion, which was held in Worcester, October 23 and 24, 
 with the result of leading. Mrs. Taylor, afterwards 
 Mrs. J. S. Mill, to write a powerful article in the 
 "Westminster Review." But at the close of the 
 month he was back in Boston, active in the defense of 
 William and Ellen Craft. 
 
 These two slaves had made their escape, eighteen 
 months before, when she traveled North as a white 
 gentleman in delicate health, and took her husband 
 as her servant. They were picked out for the first vic- 
 tims in Boston ; but they had too many friends there. 
 She was secreted at once ; and he was urged to fly ; 
 but he declared that he had run far enough already. 
 He even refused to be bought, and insisted that he 
 wanted to test the law. He is said to have been the 
 coolest man in Boston ; and it was all his friends 
 could do to persuade him to keep out of sight, and 
 carry several dirks and pistols. The slave-hunters 
 were themselves arrested, for calling him a thief, and 
 were followed about the streets by hooting crowds. 
 The Vigilance Committee met every night in a dark- 
 ened room, and there it was finally agreed, in the 
 presence of Douglass, that a deputation should be 
 sent to warn the hunters to leave the town. The 
 name of Theodore Parker was proposed ; but Mr. 
 Slack said it would be better not to have any clergy- 
 man appointed. "And th.en," says Douglass, " I got a 
 peep into Parker's soul." He said, " This committee 
 
iSS FREDEklCK DOUGLASS. 
 
 can appoint me to no duty that I will not perform." 
 The passage quoted from his journal, in the memoir by 
 John Weiss, shows that he did the duty so faithfully 
 that the birds of prey fled from Boston the next after- 
 noon. 
 
 On the very day when Parker spoke thus to the 
 other members of the Vigilance Committee, George 
 Thompson arrived in Boston from England. A 
 reception was given him in Faneuil Hall on Novem- 
 ber IS, but a party of pro-slavery men entered before 
 Garrison had half-finished his address of welcome, 
 and not another word of it reached the ears of the 
 audience. Phillips tried to get a hearing, but his 
 voice was drowned by continuous cheers for Daniel 
 Webster, a common way in those days of answering 
 anti-slavery speeches. Mr. Thompson himself was 
 greeted by all sorts of noises. Dogs were heard to 
 bark, cocks to crow, and ducks to quack. Yankee 
 Doodle was whistled furiously, and there were loud 
 questions about how many babies Queen Victoria 
 had, and how she was treating the Irish and the Hin- 
 doos. The member of Parliament soon left in dis- 
 gust, and then Mrs. Abby Folsom was persuaded to 
 offer some inappropriate and inaudible remarks. 
 Theodore Parker came forward and stood for some 
 time, pointing to the portrait of Washington, while 
 no one' could hear a word, except the loud cries that 
 he had better go and buy a bottle of Bogle's Hyper- 
 ion Fluid, a kind of hair-oil then in vogue. Neither 
 Parker Pillsbury nor Elizur Wright had any better 
 success, and Douglass stood for some time, pointing 
 his finger at the audience, with the utmost contempt, 
 amid a perfect storm of hisses, and shouts of " Hot 
 
THE " NORTH STAR." 189 
 
 Corn,'' " Charcoal," etc. All sorts of things were 
 thrown at him, and a man who stood near by was hit 
 by one of the big copper cents, then current. Big 
 and little fights were now going on all over the hall ; 
 hats were smashed ; canes were being flourished 
 briskly ; women fled with screams ; and there were 
 dances, accompanied by imitations of the Indian 
 war-whoop. At last the biggest policeman in Boston 
 stepped out upon the platform, and made a historic 
 speech, the only one which had been heard from 
 there since Garrison was first interrupted. " Gentle- 
 men," said Captain Adams, " I am requested by the 
 Marshal to inform you that this meeting is now 
 adjourned." 
 
 There had been no change of feeling sixice the 
 slave-hunters were driven away, but they and the dis- 
 unionists were considered equally worthy of execra- 
 tion by many a Bostonian. The North did not like 
 to return fugitives, but it was much too anxious to 
 keep at peace with the South ; and it was high time 
 to speak as Frederick Douglass did at Rochester, on 
 December i, 1850, when he said : 
 
 " While this nation is guilty of the enslavement of three mil- 
 lions of innocent men and women, it is as idle to think of hav- 
 ing a sound and lasting peace, as it is to think there is no God 
 to take cognizance of the affairs of men. There can be no 
 peace to the wicked, while slavery continues in the land. It 
 will be condemned ; and while it is condemned, there will be 
 agitation. Nature must cease to be nature ; men must become 
 monsters; humanity must be transformed; Christianity must 
 be exterminated ; all ideas of justice and the laws of eternal 
 goodness must be utterly blotted out from the human soul ; ere 
 a system so foul and infernal can escape condemnation, or this 
 guilty republic can have a sound, enduring peace.'' 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. 
 
 " Against his sovereign, Douglas ne'er 
 Will level a rebellious spear." 
 
 — " Lady of the Lake.'' 
 
 The " North Star " fully justified its name by 
 enabling its editor to guide fugitives to freedom ; 
 and it also helped him to free himself from a 
 peculiarly Southern view of the United States Con- 
 stitution, which deprived the Garrisonians of the 
 influence they deserved, and to rise to that higher view 
 which soon gained the supremacy at the North. Our 
 estimate, not only of his mental caliber, but of his 
 fidelity to his cause, will depend largely on our 
 opinion about this question ; and it must therefore be 
 examined thoroughly. 
 
 The Abolitionists were either disunionists, or else 
 Free Soilers and Liberty party men, according to 
 their view of the Constitution as pro-slavery or anti- 
 slavery. Douglass had been attacking it as pro- 
 slavery ever since his first speech in 1841 ; but on 
 May 7, 185 1, when the A. A. S. S. was obliged to 
 meet in Syracuse, because no suitable place could be 
 found in New York City, a resolution was proposed, 
 indorsing the " Liberator " and other papers as anti- 
 190 
 
WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. I9I 
 
 slavery organs. Some one asked why the paper 
 edited by Frederick Douglass was not on the list. 
 Then he declared that he preferred to be left out, for 
 he had more sympathy with those Abolitionists who 
 were willing to vote, than with those who would not. 
 He had then been carrying on his paper for three 
 years and a half. How he thought at that time may 
 be imagined from what he saiti, a few years later, 
 in a lecture, entitled " The Anti-Slavery Movement," 
 and published in Rochester, 1855. In speaking of 
 " the different anti-slavery sects," he says : 
 
 " I shall consider, first, the Garrisonian Anti-Slavery Society. 
 I call this the Garrisonian Society, because Mr. Garrison is, 
 confessedly, its leader. This Society is the oldest of modern 
 anti-slavery societies. It has, strictly speaking, two weekly 
 papers, or organs, employs five or six lecturers, and holds 
 numerous public meetings for the dissemination of its views. 
 Its peculiar and distinctive feature is its doctrine of ' No union 
 with slave-holders.' This doctrine has, of late, become its bond 
 of union, and the condition of good fellowship among its mem- 
 bers. Of this Society I have to say, its logical result is but 
 negatively anti-slavery. Its doctrine of ' No union with slave- 
 holders,' carried out, dissolves the Union, and leaves the slaves 
 and their masters to fight their own battles, in their own way. 
 This I hold to be an abandonment of the g^eat idea with which 
 that Society started. It started to free the slave. It ends by 
 leaving the slave to free himself. It started with the purpose 
 to imbue the heart of the nation with sentiments favorable to 
 the abolition of slavery, and ends by seeking to free the North 
 from all responsibility for slavery, other than if slavery were in 
 Great Britain, or under some other nationality. This, I say, is 
 the practical abandonment of the idea with which that Society 
 started. It has given up the faith that the slave can be freed 
 short of the overthrow of the Government ; and then, as I 
 understand that Society, it leaves the slaves, as it must needs 
 
192 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 leave them, just where it leaves the slaves of Cuba, or those of 
 Brazil. The nation, as such, is given up as beyond the power 
 of salvation by the foolishness of preaching; and hence, the 
 aim is now to save the North, so that the American Anti-Slavery 
 Society, which was inaugurated to convert the nation, after ten 
 years' struggle, parts with its faith, and aims now to save the 
 North. One of the most eloquent of that Society, and the man 
 who is only second to Mr. Garrison himself, defines the Garri- 
 sonian doctrine thus : ' All the slave asks of us is to stand out 
 of his way; withdraw our pledge to keep the peace on the 
 plantation ; withdraw our pledge to return him ; withdraw that 
 representation which the Constitution gives in proportion to the 
 number of slaves ; and without any agitation here, without any 
 individual virtue, which the times have eaten out of us, God 
 will vindicate the oppressed by the laws of justice which he 
 has founded. Trample under foot your own unjust pledges ; 
 break to pieces your compact with hell, by which you become 
 the abettor of oppression. Stand alone, and let no cement of 
 the Union bind the slave, and he will right himself.' 
 
 " That is it. ' Stand alone.' The slave is to ' right himself." 
 I dissent entirely- from this reasoning. It assumes to be true 
 what is plainly absurd, and that is, that a population of slaves, 
 without arms, without means of concert, and without leisure, 
 is more than a match for double its number, educated, accus- 
 tomed to rule, and in every respect prepared for warfare, offen- 
 sive or defensive. This Society, therefore, consents to leave 
 the slave's freedom to a most uncertain and improbable, if not 
 an impossible, contingency. As a mere expression of abhor- 
 rence of slavery, the sentiment is a good one ; but it expresses no 
 intelligible principle of action, and throws no light on the path- 
 way of duty. Defined, as its authors define it, it leads to false 
 doctrines and mischievous results. It condemns Gerrit Smith 
 for sitting in Congress, and our Saviour for eating with publi- 
 cans and sinners. Dr. Spring uttered a shocking sentiment 
 when he said, if one prayer of his would emancipate the slaves, 
 he would not offer that prayer. No less shocking is the senti- 
 ment of the leader of the disunion forces, when he says, that if 
 
WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. 1 93 
 
 one vote of his would emancipate every slave in this country, he 
 would not cast that vote. Here, on a bare theory, and for a 
 theory which, if consistently adhered to, would drive a man out 
 of the world — a theory which can never be made intelligible to 
 common sense — the freedom of the whole slave population 
 would be sacrificed. 
 
 " But again : ' No union with slave-holders.' I dislike the 
 morality of this sentiment, in its application to the point at 
 issue. For instance : A. unites with B. in stealing my property, 
 and carrying it away to California, or to Australia ; and, while 
 there, Mr. A. becomes convinced that he did wrong in stealing 
 my property, and says to Mr. B., ' No union with property- 
 stealers,' and abandons him, leaving the property in his hands. 
 Now, I put it to this audience, has Mr. A. in this transaction 
 met with the requirements of stringent morality ? He certainly 
 has not. It is not only his duty to separate from the thief, but 
 to restore the stolen property to its owner. And I hold that in 
 the Union, this very thing of restoring to the slave his long- 
 lost rights can better be accomplished than it can possibly be 
 accomplished outside of the Union. This, then, is my answer 
 to the motto, ' No Union with slave-holders." 
 
 " But this is not the worst fault of this Society. Its chief 
 energies are expended in confirming the opinion, that the 
 United States Constitution is, and was, intended to be a slave- 
 holding instrument — thus piling up, between the slave and his 
 freedom, the huge work of the abolition of the Government, as 
 an indispensable condition to emancipation. My point here is, 
 first, the Constitution is, according to its reading, an anti- 
 slavery document ; and secondly, to dissolve the Union, as a 
 means to abolish slavery, is about as wise as it would be to 
 bum up this city, in order to get the thieves out of it. But 
 again, we hear the motto, ' No union with slave-holders ; ' and 
 I answer it, as that noble champion of liberty, N. P. Rogers, 
 answered it with a more sensible motto, namely — ' No union 
 with slave-holding.' I would unite with anybody to do right, 
 and with nobody to do wrong. And as the Union, under the 
 Constitution, requires me to do nothing which is wrong, and 
 
194 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 gives me many facilities for doing good, I cannot go with the 
 American Anti-Slavery Society in its doctrine of disunion.'' 
 
 A more complete statement of his position was 
 made in i860, when, in reply to the attack made upon 
 his views by George Thompson, he delivered a speech, 
 entitled " The Constitution of the United States : is 
 it Pro-slavery or Anti-slavery ? " He meets the prin- 
 cipal objections of the Garrisonians to the Constitu- 
 tion thus : 
 
 " It gives representatives to the South for three-fifths of its 
 slaves ; but what does that amount to .' It is a downright dis- 
 ability laid upon the slave-holding States, one which deprives 
 those States of two-fifths of their natural basis of representa- 
 tion. Instead of encouraging slavery, the Constitution encour- 
 ages freedom, by giving an increase of two-fifths of political 
 poM'er to free over slave States.'' 
 
 There is also a clause about importation of per- 
 sons ; but 
 
 " It should be remembered that this very provision, if made 
 to refer to the African slave-trade at all, makes the Constitution 
 anti-slavery instead of pro-slavery; for it says to the slave 
 States, the price you will have to pay for coming into the Amer- 
 ican Union is, that the slave-trade, which you could carry on 
 indefinitely out of the Union, shall be put an end to in fifty 
 years, if you come into the Union." . . . "It looked to the 
 abolition of slavery rather than to its perpetuity." 
 
 There is also a clause about suppressing riots : 
 
 " I will be generous here, as well as elsewhere, and grant that 
 it applies to slave-insurrections. Let us suppose that an anti- 
 slavery man is President of the United States, (and the day that 
 shall see this case is not distant) ; and this very power of sup- 
 pressing slave-insurrection would put an end to slavery." . . , 
 " If it should turn out that slavery is a source of insurrection, 
 
WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. 1 95 
 
 that there is no security from insurrections while slavery lasts, 
 why the Constitution would be best obeyed by putting an end 
 to slavery." 
 
 This prophecy was made on March 26, i860, before 
 Lincoln was even nominated. Of the so-called " Fug- 
 itive slave clause," it is correctly remarked that here, 
 as in the other three cases, there is nothing in the 
 Constitution to show that slaves were thought of. 
 There was an attempt to make the words plainer ; 
 but it failed. " The Convention would not consent 
 to the idea, that property in man should be admitted 
 into the Constitution." As the clause stands, it can 
 refer only to apprentices and others who have bound 
 themselves over to service ; the words " Person held 
 to service or labor in one State, under the laws there- 
 of," did not, in the opinion of Douglass, apply to the 
 slave ; for " He is not described in it. He is a simple 
 article of property." 
 
 It would, I suspect, have been better to say that, as 
 the slave was here, and in the clauses about repre- 
 sentation and importation, acknowledged to be a 
 person, he was entitled to the full benefit of the Fifth 
 Amendment, which declares that " No .person shall " 
 ..." be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without 
 due process of law." As soon as these words could 
 be appealed to before unprejudiced judges, they 
 would have amply protected fugitive slaves ; and 
 their surrender, as well as every other attempt to assert 
 a right of property in man, would have become 
 illegal as soon as the Supreme Court should give due 
 heed to a fact which was stated in the Senate by the 
 author of the Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850 ; namely, 
 that there was not " A single State in which the insti- 
 
196 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 tution is established by positive law." What Doug- 
 lass thought of the guarantees in the Constitution is 
 stated as follows in the speech of i860, which, it must 
 be remembered, was directed against Thompson, 
 rather than Garrison : 
 
 " Its language is, ' We the people ; ' not we the white people, 
 not even we the citizens, not we the privileged class, not we 
 the high, not we the low, but we the people ; not we the horse's, 
 sheep, and swine, and wheelbarrows, but we the people, we the 
 human inhabitants ; and, if negroes are people, they are 
 included in the benefits for which the Constitution of America 
 was ordained and established. But how dare any man who 
 pretends to be the friend to the negro thus gratuitously concede 
 away what the negro has a right to claim under the Constitu- 
 tion ? Why should such friends invent new arguments to 
 increase the hopelessness of his bondage ? This, I undertake 
 to say, as the conclusion of the whole matter, that the constitu- 
 tionality of slavery can be made out only by disregarding the 
 plain and common-sense reading of the Constitution itself ; by 
 disregarding and casting away as worthless the most beneficent 
 rules of legal interpretation ; by ruling the negro outside of 
 these beneficent rules ; by claiming everything for slavery; by 
 denying everything for freedom ; by assuming that the Consti- 
 tution does not mean what it says, and that it says what it does 
 not mean ; by disregarding the written Constitution, and inter- 
 preting it in the light of a secret understanding. It is in this 
 mean, contemptible, and underhand method that the American 
 Constitution is piessed into the service of slavery. They go 
 everywhere else for proof that the Constitution is pro-slavery, 
 but to the Constitution itself. The Constitution declares that 
 no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without 
 due process of law ; it secures to every man the right of trial 
 by jury, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus — that great 
 writ that put an end to slavery and slave-hunting in England ; 
 it secures to every State a republican form of government. 
 Any one of these provisions in the hands of Abolition States- 
 
WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. 197 
 
 men, and backed up by a right moral sentiment, would put an 
 end to slavery in America." 
 
 He concludes with these arguments to prove that, 
 
 " The way to abolish slavery in America is to vote such men 
 into power, as will use their powers for the abolition of slavery. 
 
 ..." My argument against the dissolution of the American 
 Union is this : It would place the slave system more exclu- 
 sively under the control of the slave-holding States, and with- 
 draw it from the power in the Northern States which is 
 opposed to slavery. Slavery is essentially barbarous in its 
 character. It, above all things else, dreads the presence of an 
 advanced civilization. It flourishes best where it meets no 
 reproving frowns, and hears no condemning voices. While in 
 the Union it will meet with both. Its hope of life in the last 
 resort is to get out of the Union. I am, therefore, for drawing 
 the bond of the Union more closely, and bringing the slave 
 States more completely under the power of the free States. 
 What they most dread, that I most desire. I have much 
 confidence in the instincts of the slave-holders. They see that 
 the Constitution will afford slavery no protection, when it shall 
 cease to be administered by slave-holders. They see, more- 
 over, that if there is once a will in the people of America to 
 abolish slavery, there is no word, no syllable in the Constitution 
 to forbid that result. They see that the Constitution has not 
 saved slavery in Rhode Island, in Connecticut, in New York, or 
 Pennsylvania ; that the free States have increased from one up 
 to eighteen in number, while the slave States have only added 
 three to their original number. There were twelve slave States 
 at the beginning of the Government : there are fifteen nov/. 
 There was one free State at the beginning of the Government : 
 there are eighteen now. The dissolution of the Union would 
 not give the North a single advantage over slavery, but would 
 take from it many. Within the Union we have a firm basis of 
 opposition to slaveiy. It is opposed to all the great objects of 
 the Constitution. The dissolution of the Union is not only an 
 
IgS FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 unwise but a cowardly measure — fifteen millions running away 
 from three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders. Mr. 
 Garrison and his friends tell us that while in the Union we are 
 responsible for slavery. He and they sing out ' No union with 
 slave-holders,' and refuse to vote. I admit our responsibility 
 for slavery while in the Union ; but I deny that going out of 
 the Union would free us from that responsibility. There now 
 clearly is no freedom from responsibility for slavery to any 
 American citizen short of the abolition of slavery. The 
 American people have gone quite too far in this slave-holding 
 business now, to sum up their whole business with slavery by 
 singing out the cant phrase, ' No union with slave-holders ! ' 
 To desert the family-hearth may place the recreant husband 
 out of the presence of his starving children, but this does not 
 free him from responsibility. If a man were on board of a 
 pirate ship, and, in company with others, had robbed and 
 plundered, his whole duty would not be performed simply by 
 taking the long-boat and singing out, ' No union with pirates.' 
 His duty would be to restore the stolen property. The 
 American people in the Northern States have helped to enslave 
 the black people. Their duty will not have been done until 
 they give them back their plundered rights. Reference was 
 made at the -City Hall to my having once held other opinions, 
 and very different opinions to those I have now expressed. An 
 old speech of mine, delivered fourteen years ago, was read to 
 show, I know not what, that I am not infallible. If so, Thave 
 to say in defense that I never pretended to be. Although I 
 cannot accuse myself of being remarkably unstable, I do not 
 pretend that I have never altered my opinion both in respect to 
 men and things. Indeed, I have been very much modified both 
 in feeling and opinion within the last fourteen years. When I 
 escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, 
 I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just 
 as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but 
 little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent 
 experience and reading have led me to examine for myself. 
 This has brought me to other conclusions. When I was a 
 
WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. I99 
 
 child, I thought and spoke like a child. But the question is not 
 as to what were my opinions fourteen years ago, but what they 
 are now. If I am right now, it really does not matter what I 
 was fourteen years ago. My position now is one of reform, not 
 of revolution ; I would act for the abolition of slavery through 
 the Government — not over its ruins. If slave-holders have 
 ruled the American Government for the last fifty years, let the 
 anti-slavery men rule for the next fifty years. If the South has 
 made the Constitution bend to the purposes of slavery, let the 
 North now make that instrument bend to the cause of freedom 
 and justice. If three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders 
 have, by devoting their energies to that single end, been able to 
 make slavery the vital and animating spirit of the American 
 Confederacy for the last seventy-two years, now let the freemen 
 of the North, who have the power in their own hands, and who 
 can make the American Government just what they think fit, 
 resolve to blot out forever the foul and haggard crime, which is 
 the blight and mildew, the curse and the disgrace of the whole 
 United States.'' 
 
 Douglass said, in March, i860, what was not 
 admitted even then by the Garrisonians, although 
 it had been ut^ed repeatedly during the previous 
 twenty years, first by the Liberty party men, then by 
 the Free Soilers, and finally by the Republicans. 
 The Constitution was no finality, but merely an 
 instrument for enabling the majority to carry out its 
 will with due respect for individual rights. If the 
 Constitution seemed pro-slavery, it was only because 
 that was the opinion of the majority. There never 
 was any reason to doubt that, as soon as slavery 
 should be condemned by the people, the Constitu- 
 tion would either be acknowledged to be anti-slavery 
 or else would be made so. The Abolitionists would 
 not have been prevented by it from adopting measures 
 
200 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 which would ultimately have put an end to slavery. 
 All they needed was a continual gain in strength ; and 
 it was the probability that the Constitution would 
 soon be interpreted in their favor, which caused the 
 Southerners to acknowledge its anti-slavery tenden- 
 cies by seceding. 
 
 The fact that secession led to emancipation is 
 sometimes brought up as proof that the Garrisonians 
 were right. But secession would not have destroyed 
 slavery, if the seceders had not been slave-holders. 
 If it had been the Abolitionists who seceded, it would 
 have been their cause which was lost. What actually 
 destroyed slavery was that feeling which Garrison 
 and Phillipshad done their best to root out, that love 
 for the Union which insisted on preserving it at any 
 cost, even that of resorting to emancipation as a war 
 measure. Most of the men who fought to free the 
 slave would' have fought against any attempt to 
 break up the Union for his benefit. Suppose New 
 England had seceded because of the Fugitive Slave 
 Bill. Attempts would certainly have been made to 
 execute it, and would have been resisted sternly. 
 The conflict would soon have become bloody, and 
 there would have been an uprising of the people, like 
 that in 1861. The only difference is that the Southern 
 soldiers would have been supported by those of the 
 Western and Middle States, as well as by the regular 
 army ; the anti-slavery Confederacy would have 
 fallen ; abolitionism would have been suppressed as 
 treason ; and slavery would have gained a new lease 
 of life. Or if we suppose simply that all the anti- 
 slavery men had become non-voting disunionists, but 
 had never been able to persuade a single State to 
 
WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. iOt 
 
 secede, it is by no means improbable that there would 
 be a slave-holder in the White House to-day. In 
 order to do full justice to the men who kept abolition- 
 ism sufficiently on constitutional ground to secure a 
 final triumph, I must take the liberty of comparing 
 those who would not even acknowledge them as fel- 
 low-soldiers in the army of freedom, to the old man 
 who is said to have been so much annoyed by the 
 howling of a dog on his door-step, one winter's night, 
 that he jumped out of bed and rushed into the snow. 
 By and by his wife called out to know what he was 
 doing. " Only trying to freeze this blamed dog to 
 death.'' 
 
 The facts of history justified Douglass in saying 
 what he did, in 1882, of the movement with which he 
 refused to work in 1848 : 
 
 "Anti-slavery thus far had been only sheet lightning; the 
 
 Buffalo convention sought to make it a thunderbolt." 
 
 "This Buffalo convention of Free Soilers, however low was 
 their standard, did lay the foundation of a grand superstructure. 
 It was a powerful link in the chain of events by which the slave 
 system has been abolished, the slave emancipated, and the 
 country saved from dismemberment." ("Life and Times," 
 pp. 314,315.) 
 
 He says, in a letter not before printed : 
 
 " I was a non-voter in 1848, though deeply interested in the 
 Free Soil movement, inaugurated in the Buffalo convention in 
 tfiat year. Before 1852 I became a sound convert to the doc- 
 trine of the unconstitutionality of slavery and the duty of voting 
 against slavery." 
 
 He adds that he gave " active support to all the 
 candidates nominated thereafter, from Hale to 
 Lincoln." 
 
202 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 The " North Star" changed its name at the time 
 that its editor changed his views. He says that there 
 were " I know not how many other stars in the news- 
 paper firmament," and in order to avoid confusion, 
 the name of " Frederick Douglass's Paper " was 
 adopted at- the beginning of the fourth volume, in 
 December, 1850. In 1852 it contained more news, 
 more poetry, more humor, more about politics, and 
 more about Woman's Rights and other new reforms 
 than had been found in the " North Star." Mr. Ward 
 was prominent among the colored contributors, and 
 among the white ones were J. G. Birney and Gerrit 
 Smith. The friend last named was president of the 
 New York State Anti-Slavery Society, which Doug- 
 lass helped to revise and served as corresponding 
 secretary. Its platform declares that slavery cannot 
 be made legal, and its first meeting was at Rochester, 
 on March 18, 1852, two days before the publication of 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin." That city was chosen as the 
 place for the subsequent meetings, which were not 
 numerous. 
 
 The Free Soilers gave a cordial welcome to their 
 new ally at the meeting of the Ohio Anti-Slavery 
 Society, on May 5, at Cincinnati, where he was made 
 vice-president ; and there Burleigh argued for dis- 
 union, while Julian defended the men who made him 
 one of their candidates in this year's campaign. Our 
 Douglass devoted himself mainly to exposing the 
 short-comings of the Church, and his speech con- 
 tained the following characteristic passage : 
 
 " In this connection I am always forcibly reminded of the 
 incomparable illustration of the principle of brotherly love in 
 the New Testament. When the stranger fell among thieves, 
 
WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. 203 
 
 and was left alone on the highways to perish, there came along 
 three persons, severally representing the classes in society. 
 First came the priest — evidently all priest and no humanity — 
 who passed by entirely ' on the other side,' and his successors 
 appear to have remained on the other side to this time. 
 [Laughter.] Then came another, a deacon, probably; he 
 seemed half-man and half-priest, for he took a middle course, 
 and seemed wavering ; but, unfortunately, the priest predom- 
 inated, and he followed ' in the footsteps of his illustrious pre- 
 decessor' on the other side. [Great laughter.] But, my 
 friends, there next came that way a man, nothing but a man ; 
 yes, a regular human ; [renewed laughter] and he went 
 straight up to the suffering stranger, bound up his wounds, 
 and attended to all his wants. [Laughter.] [The peculiar and 
 inimitable facial contortions setting off this narrative, can only 
 be imagined by those who have listened to Tom Corwin.] I 
 can always distinguish the class of time-serving clergymen, 
 wherever I meet them, in the railroad car or steamboat — that 
 is, when they condescend to occupy the same car and cabin — 
 if they approach one of my color at all, the first question is — 
 not ' Do you love your neighbor, your brother man ? ' But, 
 ' do you love God ? ' [Another unreportable expression of 
 countenance.] But, my friends, let me be understood. It is 
 tiie faithless and recreant priesthood I would hold up ; not 
 the true servants of an impartial God, who created us all in 
 his likeness. I will never be driven off the platform of the 
 Christian religion in fighting slavery. [Great applause.] But 
 my heart goes out only to a practical religion. I see in 
 this convention an exhibition of adherence to the vitality of 
 religion. Christianity works thus, not alone with the rich and 
 strong, but it reaches its long, beneficent arm down to seize 
 and bear up the last link of humanity. [Applause.] Such 
 Christianity is embodied in the great anti-slavery movement 
 of the nineteenth century — it is expressed in the resolution 
 before us. I am heartily in favor of it." 
 
 It is sad to see that after this eulogy upon the Good 
 
204 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Samaritan, he failed to meet him at the convention of 
 the A. A. S. S. one week later in Rochester. There 
 he had to defend his change of views, and hear him- 
 self denounced as a deserter by Garrison, Phillips, 
 Remond, Mrs. Abby Kelley Foster, and her husband, 
 Stephen. Among other offenses were his advocating 
 the Homestead Bill and his praising Kossuth. He 
 was so provoked at Remond's thanking God for not 
 being the son of a slave, that he made this allusion 
 to the occupation of his critic's father, " I thank God 
 that I am neither a barber nor the son of a barber." 
 Another colored man compared him to a castaway, 
 who had been picked up by the ship of which Garri- 
 son was captain, had tried in vain to get himself into 
 command, and then had stolen a boat and fled. Garri- 
 son believed so firmly in disunionism, that it seemed 
 to him impossible that any of his disciples had found 
 a single error in the creed. He thought it his con- 
 scientious duty to bring a charge of mercenary 
 motives against the friend, who had founded the 
 " North Star " with money which he might honorably 
 have invested for the benefit of his family; who sank 
 in the enterprise, before 1856, at least twelve thousand 
 dollars of his own earnings, according to the testi- 
 mony of a competent and trustworthy writer, in the 
 Introduction to "My Bondage and my Freedom;" 
 and who had made his house not only a refuge for 
 fugitives, but a free boarding-house for poor colored 
 boys who were invited there to learn the trade of 
 printing. No wonder that an exile from Hungary 
 said to one of my friends with uplifted hands, " If I 
 attend any more of your anti-slavery meetings they 
 will make me a pro-slavery man." 
 
WITH THE MEN WHO ABOLISHED SLAVERY. 205 
 
 Douglass said some years later, in his reply to 
 George Thompson : 
 
 " No personal assaults shall ever lead me to forget that some 
 who in America have often made me the subject of personal 
 abuse, are at the same time, in their own way, earnestly work- 
 ing for the abolition of slavery. They are men who thoroughly 
 understand the principle that he who is not for them is against 
 them ; but unfortunately they do not seem to understand that 
 he who is not against them is on their side." 
 
 He has since remarked, that " Mr. Garrison sent a 
 great many people to perdition who obstinately 
 refused to go." Among them, by the way, were 
 Longfellow, Sumner, and Channing. The columns of 
 " Frederick Douglass's Paper," for 1852 and 1853, are 
 entirely free from any bitterness against his assail- 
 ants ; and in the latter year he said, at the May meet- 
 ing, held at New York by the Tappans and other 
 non-Garrisonian Abolitionists : 
 
 " I honor and respect Lewis Tappan ; I love and honr^- 
 William Lloyd Garrison ; and may God have mercy upon me 
 when I refuse to strike a blow against slavery in connection 
 with either gentleman. I will work with either ; and if the one 
 discards me because I work with the other, the responsibility is 
 not mine." 
 
 The Garrisonians, however, continued to attack 
 him so fiercely that there seemed likely, as the " Syra- 
 cuse Journal " said, "To be a war between the white 
 and black roses." Mrs. Swisshelm, who was in 
 hearty sympathy with the anti-slavery movement, as 
 well as with that in behalf of her sex, says in her own 
 paper, the " Saturday Visitor : " " We do believe that 
 the ' Liberator,' ' Standard ' and ' Freeman ' might be 
 better employed than in black-balling a black man." 
 
2o6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 She adds, in reference to a charge about neglecting 
 Mrs. Douglass, which drew out an indignant letter of 
 denial from the latter, and is fully refuted by one 
 quoted at the close of the next chapter : " In all our 
 experience of very bitter newspaper warfare, we never 
 saw the equal of this ; and for all we can see, the three 
 able papers that have united to crush Mr. Douglass, 
 have failed to bring a particle of proof that he is not 
 as good and true as he is eloquent and energetic." 
 He finally found it due to his family as well as to 
 himself, that he should reply once for all. Twelve 
 columns of his paper are occupied with an answer 
 which meets all the charges, and declares that this is 
 done "not to re-open, but if possible to close up our 
 account with these anti-slavery journals. For our- 
 selves," he adds, " we have not now, as we had not 
 in the beginning, the slightest wish to be enibroiled 
 in personal conflict with anti-slavery men of any sort. 
 Jrie is better work for all of us to do than to keep 
 ^'^ a warfare against each other." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " THE MAN WHO IS RIGHT IS A MAJORITY." 
 
 The kidnapper's dogma, that the Constitution is 
 pro-slavery, was carried out by both of the great 
 parties, in June, 1852, to its logical results, namely, 
 that hunting after fugitives ought to be kept up, and 
 agitation against slavery ought to be put down. It 
 was these collars, showing ownership by the South, 
 that were clasped about the necks of both of the 
 favorite runners in the race to the White Ho^-" 
 Pierce and Scott. Scarcely had this been done, when 
 Douglass said, at the celebration of the Declaration of 
 Independence : 
 
 " Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear 
 the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous 
 yesterday, are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant 
 shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully 
 remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, ' may my 
 right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the 
 roof of my mouth ! ' To forget them, to pass lightly over their 
 wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be 
 treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a 
 reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow- 
 citizens, is "American Slavery.' I shall see this day and its 
 popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Stand- 
 207 
 
2o8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 ing there, identified with the American bondman, making his 
 wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that 
 the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to 
 me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the 
 declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the 
 conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. 
 America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly 
 binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and 
 the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the 
 name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty 
 which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the 
 Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare call in 
 question and denounce with all the emphasis I can command, 
 everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and 
 shame of America ! ' I will not equivocate ; I will not excuse ; ' 
 I will use the severest language I can command ; and yet not one 
 word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not 
 blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall 
 not confess to be right and just. 
 
 " But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in 
 this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to 
 make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you 
 argue more and denounce lesSj would you persuade more and 
 rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. 
 But, I submit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. 
 What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue ? 
 On what branch of the subject do the people of this country 
 need light ? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man ? 
 That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The 
 slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of 
 laws for their government. They acknowledge it, when they 
 punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy- 
 two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a 
 black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the 
 punishment of death ; while only two of these same crimes will 
 subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but 
 the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and 
 
"the man who is right is a majority." 209 
 
 responsible being. The manhood of the slave is conceded. It 
 is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered 
 with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, 
 the teaching of the slave to read or write. When you can point 
 to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I 
 may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the 
 dogs in your streets, when the fowls in the air, when the cattle 
 on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that 
 crawl shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, 
 then will I argue with you that the slave is a man. 
 
 " For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood 
 of the negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are 
 plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical 
 tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, 
 working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold ; that, 
 while we are reading, writing, and 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, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, 
 moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as hus- 
 bands, wives, and children, and, above all, confessing and 
 worshiping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life 
 and immortality beyond the grave — ^we are called upon to prove 
 that we are men ? 
 
 " Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty ? 
 That he is the rightful owner of his own body ? You have 
 already declared it. Must I argue the wrong^alness of slavery ? 
 Is that a question for republicans ? Is it to be settled by the 
 rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with g^eat 
 difficulty, involving a doubtful application of justice, hard to be 
 understood ? How shguld I look to-day in the presence of 
 Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse to show that 
 men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively 
 and positively, negatively and affirmatively ? To do so would 
 be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your 
 
210 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of 
 heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. . 
 
 " What ! am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, 
 to rob them of their Uberty, to work them without wages, to 
 keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellowmen, to 
 beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load 
 their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at 
 auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to 
 burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission 
 to their masters ? Must I argue that a system, thus marked 
 with blood and stained with pollution, is wrong ? No ; I will 
 not. I have better employment for my time and strength than 
 such arguments would imply. 
 
 What, then, remains to be argued ? Is it that slavery is not 
 divine ; that God did not establish it ; that our doctors of divin- 
 ity are mistaken ? There is blasphemy in the thought. That 
 which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such 
 a proposition .' They that can, may ; I cannot. The time for 
 such argument is past. 
 
 At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, 
 is needed. Oh ! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's 
 ear, I would to-day pour out a stream of biting ridicule, blast- 
 ing reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is 
 not light that is needed, but fire ; it is not the gentle shower, 
 but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the 
 earthquake ! " 
 
 On August II, 1852, the Free Soil convention met 
 at Pittsburgh ; "and Rochester sent a colored delegate 
 who was obliged, both in going and returning, to 
 take a steamboat between Buffalo and Cleveland, and 
 each time to pass the night on deck. On his way 
 back he tried to get breakfast in the cabin ; but his 
 chair was pulled out from under him by the captain, 
 who had already collected the full fare for berth and 
 meal and would refund nothing. The train for 
 
"the man who is right is a majority. 211 
 
 Pittsburgh stopped for dinner at a hotel where he was 
 not allowed to eat, on which many of the other dele- 
 gates rose from the table and refused to return. On 
 their way back not one of them entered the hall — 
 dinner had been prepared for three hundred guests, 
 but it was left on the landlord's hands. 
 
 One of the first steps taken in the convention was 
 to make Douglass a secretary by acclamation; and no 
 sooner did he enter the hall than he was invited to 
 speak by so many enthusiastic voices, that the white 
 man, who had the floor, was obliged to surrender it 
 at once to his dusky superior. The latter was dressed 
 like Daniel Webster — in white trowsers and a blue 
 coat with brass buttons, "indicative," says an 
 unfriendly reporter, "of the bronze in his face." 
 There was a great deal more of iron in his blood than 
 in Webster's that summer. There he stood, holding 
 in his hand a pamphlet, by Gerrit Smith, which he 
 was about to recommend to his audience, taken, as he 
 said, wholly by surprise, but bringing down the 
 house repeatedly, as he spoke thus : 
 
 " I am, of course, for circumscribing and damaging slavery 
 in every way. But my motto is extermination." ..." The 
 slave-holders not only forfeit their right to liberty, but to life 
 itself. The earth is God's ; and it ought to be covered with 
 righteousness, not slavery.'' 
 
 Of the Fugitive Slave Bill he said, suiting the action 
 to the word : 
 
 " It is too bad to be repealed, a law fit only to be trampled 
 under foot. The only way to make the Fugitive Slave Law a 
 dead letter is to make half a dozen or more dead kidnappers." 
 ..." The man who takes the office of a bloodhound ought to 
 be treated as a bloodhound ; and I believe that the lines of 
 
212 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 eternal justice are sometimes so obliterated that it is necessary 
 to revive them by deepening their traces with the blood of a 
 tyrant." ..." This vile, infernal law does not interfere with 
 singing of psalms, or anything of that kind, but with the 
 weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith." . . . 
 " Had it been a law to strike at baptism, for instance, it would 
 have been denounced from a thousand pulpits ; and woe to the 
 politician who did not come to the rescue." ..." It has been 
 said that this law is constitutional. If it were, .it would be 
 equally the legitimate sphere of government to repeal it. I am 
 proud to be one of the disciples of Gerrit Smith, and this is his 
 doctrine ; and he only utters what all law writers have said, 
 who have risen to any eminence. Human government is for 
 the protection of rights, and not for the destruction of rights. 
 Suppose you and I made a deed to -give away two or three 
 acres of blue sky, would the sky fall ? " . . . " The binding 
 quality of law is its reasonableness. I am safe, therefore, in 
 saying that slavery cannot be legalized." ..." You are about 
 to have a party ; but I hope not such a party as will gather up 
 the votes here and there, in order to be swallowed up at a 
 meal by the great parties." ..." I want to be always inde- 
 pendent, and not hurried to and fro into the ranks of Whigs 
 and Democrats. It has been said that we ought to take the 
 position of the greatest number of voters. That is wrong. It 
 was said, in 1848, that Martin Van Buren would carry a strong 
 vote in New York. He did, but he almost ruined us. He 
 merely looked into the pig-pen to see how the animal grew, 
 but the table was the final prospect he had in view. He 
 regarded the colored population as fatlings to be devoured. 
 Numbers should not be looked to so much as right. The man 
 who is right is a majority. We, who have God and conscience 
 on our side, have a majority against the universe." 
 
 It will be noticed that this speech contains, an idea 
 which was also put into the words, " One with God 
 is a majority." In both forms it was, I think, original 
 with Mr. Douglass. 
 
"THE MAN WHO IS RIGHT IS A MAJORITY. 213 
 
 He is said to have made " The one aggressive 
 speech in the convention ; " but it is to be remembered 
 that Gerrit Smith also advocated resisting the wicked 
 law by force. The suggestion of this veteran of the 
 war against slavery, in favor of declaring that 
 political rights are "irrespective of sex or color," 
 was not incorporated in the platform ; but the con- 
 vention did agree that Christianity and humanity 
 alike demanded the abolition of slavery. Of the 
 Fugitive Slave Bill they spoke thus. We " demand 
 its immediate and total repeal," and "We deny its 
 binding force." The motto adopted for the cam- 
 paign was, '' Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, 
 Free Men." It was in full conformity with these 
 principles that Hale was nominated for President, 
 and JuUan for Vice-President, without opposition ; 
 and the men were worthy of the cause. 
 
 Such a nomination for President, and such a plat- 
 form, were too good to be popular in 1852. Neither 
 the Fugitive Slave Bill, nor " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
 could overcome the determination of the North to 
 make every sacrifice then demanded for the preserva- 
 tion of the Union. The Democrats, who had bolted 
 four years before, now went back so generally that 
 New York gave Hale but little more than one-fifth as 
 many votes as had been given to Van Buren. The 
 Whigs stood firmer, but even in New England the 
 Free Soil vote was less in 1852 than in 1848. The 
 sum total of 290,000, obtained by Van Buren, shrank 
 to 156,000, which was only about five per cent, of the 
 whole number of votes. The little band of anti- 
 slavery Congressmen did, however, receive some 
 important accessions ; and among them was Gerrit 
 
214 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Smith, who owed his election very largely to the 
 efforts of the Rochester editor. The latter's relations 
 with Garrison were still friendly enough for them to 
 appear together as speakers, at the meeting held at 
 Syracuse, October i, 1852, with Gerrit Smith in the 
 chair, to commemorate the rescue, one year previous, 
 of a fugitive slave named Jerry McHenry. Rev. S. 
 J. May has given, in his " Recollections of the Anti- 
 Slavery Conflict," a vivid account of the exploit, in 
 which he and Gerrit Smith took prominent parts. 
 The celebration in 1852 was in the engine-house, just 
 completed by the New York Central Railroad. 
 
 What Douglass said about Garrisdn among his 
 opponents, on May 11, 1853, has been given in the 
 last chapter ; and on that same day we find him once 
 more on the platform of the A. A. S. S., in New York 
 City. Henry Ward Beecher said there, that he had 
 rather wait seventy-five years for slavery to be 
 abolished by Christianity, than have emancipation 
 decreed in only fifty years from mere motives of a 
 selfish commercial interest. The next speaker was 
 Douglass, and he began by saying that, " If the 
 reverend gentleman had worked on plantations 
 where I have been, he would have met with overseers 
 who would have whipped him in five minutes out ol 
 all his willingness to wait for liberty." The boldness 
 of this rebuke is all the more remarkable, because the 
 man who gave it continued in these words : 
 
 " No colored man with any nervous sensibility can stanc 
 before an American audience, without an intense and painfu 
 sense of the disadvantages imposed by his color. He feels littl( 
 borne up by the brotherly sympathy and generous enthusiasn 
 which give wings to the eloquence and sti ength to the hearts 
 
"the man who is right is a majority. 215 
 
 other men, who advocate other and more popular causes. The 
 ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every 
 inch of it, sternly disputed. Sir, were I a white man speaking 
 for the rights of white men, I would in this country have a 
 smooth sea and a fair wind. It is perhaps creditable to the 
 American people (and I am not tlie man to detract from their 
 credit), that they listen eagerly to the report of wrongs endured 
 by distant nations. The Hungarian, the Italian, the Irishman, 
 the Jew and Gentile, all find in this goodly land a horfie ; and 
 when any of them or all of them desire to speak, they find 
 willing ears, warm hearts, and open hands. For these people, 
 the American people have principles of justice, maxims of 
 mercy, sentiments of religion, and feelings of brotherhood in 
 abundance. But for my poor people (alas, how poor), enslaved, 
 scourged, blasted, overwhelmed, and ruined, it would appear 
 that America had neither justice, mercy, nor religion. She has 
 no scales in which to weigh our wrongs, and no standard by 
 which to measure our rights. Just here lies the grand difficulty 
 of the colored man's cause. It is found in the fact that we may 
 not avail ourselves of the just force of admitted American princi- 
 ples. If I do not misinterpret the feelings and philosophy of 
 my white fellow-countrymen generally, they wish us to under- 
 stand distinctly and fully, that they have no other use for us 
 whatever than to coin dollars out of our blood. Our position 
 here is anomalous, unequal, and extraordinary. It is a position 
 to which the most courageous of our race cannot look without 
 deep concern. Sir, we are a hopeful people, and in this we are 
 fortunate ; but for this trait of our character we should have, 
 long before this seemingly unpropitious hour, sunk down under 
 a sense of utter despair. Look at it, sir, here upon the soil of 
 our birth, in a country which has known us for two centuries, 
 among people who did not wait for us to seek them, but who 
 sought and found us, and brought us to their own chosen land, a 
 people for whom we have performed the humblest services, and 
 whose greatest comforts and luxuries have been won from the 
 soil by our sable and sinewy arms. I say, sir, among such a 
 people and with such obvious recommendations to favor, we 
 
2l6 PRECERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 are far less esteemed than the veriest stranger and sojourner. 
 Aliens are we in our native land. The fundamental princi- 
 ples of the Republic, to which the humblest white man, whether 
 born here or elsewhere, may appeal with confidence in the hope 
 of awakening a favorable response, are held inapplicable to us. 
 The glorious doctrines of your Revolutionary fathers, and the 
 more glorious teachings of the Son of God are construed and 
 applied against us. We are literally scourged beyond the 
 beneficent range of both authorities — human and divine. We 
 plead for our rights in the name of the immortal Declaration of 
 Independence and of the written Constitution of government; 
 and we are answered with imprecations and curses. In the 
 sacred name of Jesus we beg for mercy ; and the slave-whip, red 
 with blood, cracks over us in mockery. We invoke the aid of 
 the minister of Him who came ' to preach deliverance to the 
 captive,' and to set at liberty them that are bound, and from the 
 loftiest summits of this ministry comes the inhuman and blasphe- 
 mous response, saying, if one prayer would move the Almighty 
 arm in mercy to break our galling chains, that prayer would be 
 withheld. We cry for help to humanity, a common humanity ; 
 and here, too, we are repulsed. American humanity hates us, 
 scorns us, disowns and denies in a thousand ways our very per- 
 sonality. The outspread wing of American Christianity, appar- 
 ently broad enough to give shelter to a perishing world, refuses 
 to cover us. To us its bones are brass, and its feathers iron. 
 In running thither for succor and shelter, we have only fled from 
 the hungry bloodhound to the devouring wolf, from a corrupt 
 and selfish world to a hollow and hypocritical church.'' 
 
 This passage was selected by th,e author as his con- 
 tribution to " Autographs for Freedom," Volume ii., 
 1854. Miss Griffiths included in this year's collection 
 a speech of Theodore Parker's, and also the poem on 
 " Freedom," by Emerson. Each selection was 
 accompanied by a fac-Tsimile of the signature, and 
 the book was handsomely bound and printed. 
 
"the man who is right is a majority. 2fJ 
 
 Among other portions of the address by Douglass, 
 on May ii, 1853, are these : 
 
 " I have thus briefly given my view of one aspect of the 
 present condition and future prospects of the colored people of 
 the United States. And what I have said is far from encourag- 
 ing to my afflicted people. I have seen the cloud gather upon 
 the sable brows of some who hear me. I confess the case 
 looks black enough. Sir, I am not a hopeful man. I think I 
 am apt even to undercalculate the benefits of the future. Yet, 
 sir, in this seemingly desperate case, I do not despair for my 
 people. There is a bright side to almost every picture of this 
 kind ; and ours is no exception to the general rule. If the 
 influences against us are strong, those for us are also strong. 
 But the inquiry, will our enemies prevail in the execution of 
 their designs ? In my God and in my soul I believe they will 
 not. Let us look at the first object sought for by the slavery 
 party of the country, viz., the suppression of anti-slavery dis- 
 cussion. They desire to suppress discussion on this subject, 
 with a view to the peace of the slave-holder and the security of 
 slavery. Now, sir, neither the principal nor the subordinate 
 objects here declared, can be at all gained by the slave-power, 
 and for this reason : it involves the proposition to padlock the 
 lips of the whites, in order to secure the fetters on the limbs of 
 the blacks. The right of speech, precious and priceless, can- 
 not, will not, be surrendered to slavery. Its suppression is 
 asked for, as I have said, to give peace and security to slave- 
 holders. Sir, that thing cannot be done. God has interposed 
 an insuperable obstacle to any such result. ' There can be no 
 peace,' saith my God, ' to the wicked.' Suppose it were pos- 
 sible to put down this discussion, what would it avail the guilty 
 slave-holder, pillowed as he is upon the heaving bosoms of 
 ruined souls ? He could not have a peaceful spirit. If every 
 anti-slavery tongue in the nation were silent, every anti-slavery 
 organization dissolved, every anti-slavery press demolished, 
 every anti-slavery periodical, paper, book, pamphlet, or what not, 
 were searched out, gathered together, deliberately burned to 
 
2l8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 ashes, and their ashes given to the four winds of heaven, still, 
 still the slave-holder could have ' no peace.' In every pulsation 
 of his heart, in every throb of his life, in every glance of his eye, 
 in the breeze that soothes, and in the thunder that startles, 
 would be waked up an accuser, whose cause is, ' Thou art 
 verily guilty concerning thy brother.' . . . 
 
 " Slavery has no means within itself of perpetuation or per- 
 manence. It is a huge lie. It is of the devil, and will go to its 
 place. It is against nature, against progress, against improve- 
 ment, and against the government of God. It cannot stand. It 
 has an enemy in every bar of railroad iron, in every electric 
 wire, in every improvement in navigation, in the growing inter- 
 course of nations, in cheap postage, in the relaxation of tariffs, 
 in common schools, in the progress of education, the spread of 
 knowledge, in the steam engine, and in the World's Fair, now 
 about to assemble in New York, and in everything that will be 
 exhibited there. 
 
 " About making slavery respectable in the North, laws have 
 been made to accompHsh just that thing; the law of 1850 and 
 the law of 1793. And those laws, instead of getting respect 
 for slavery, have begot distrust and abhorrence. Congress 
 might pass fugitive slave laws every day in the year, for all 
 time, if each one should be followed by such publications as 
 ' Uncle Tom ' and the ' Key." It is not in the power of human 
 law to make men entirely forget that the slave is a man. The 
 freeman of the North can never be brought to look with the 
 same feeling upon a man escaping from his claimants as upon 
 a horse running from his owner. The slave is a man, and no 
 slave. Now, sir, I had more to say on the encouraging aspects 
 of the times, but the time fails me, I will only say in • conclu- 
 sion, greater is He that is for us, than they that are against 
 us ; and though labor and peril beset the anti-slavery move- 
 ments, so sure as that a God of mercy and justice is enthroned 
 above all created things, so sure will that cause gloriously 
 triumph." 
 
 This meeting was as remarkable for tranquillity as' 
 
"the man who is right is a majority." 219 
 
 that in 1850 had been for disturbance. The anti- 
 slavery cause was gaining in favor, though still under 
 the ecclesiastical ban. Douglass set himself, in his 
 paper, decidedly against giving any, unnecessary ex- 
 cuse for such censures ; but when he found himself 
 branded as an infidel, which was the case down to the 
 outbreak of the war, he said : " If the glory of Ameri- 
 can emancipation is to be given to infidels, it will be 
 a killing sentence against the American Church." 
 The best words I know of on this subject, however, 
 were those which Lucy Stone, in her speech this very 
 day, quoted from Sally HoUey : " Let them call us 
 infidels, if they please ; but, oh ! don't let them call 
 themselves Christians." 
 
 The following description of the oratorical power 
 of Douglass at this time was given by another colored 
 man. Professor W. J. Wilson, in " Autographs for 
 Freedom:'' 
 
 " In his very look, his gesture, his whole manner, there is so 
 much of genuine, earnest eloquence, that they leave no time for 
 reflection. Now you are reminded of one rushing down 'some 
 fearful steep, bidding you follow ; now of some delightful 
 stream, still beckoning you onward. In either case, no matter 
 what your prepossessions or oppositions, you, for the moment 
 at least, forget the justness or unjustness of his cause, and 
 obey the summons ; and loath, if at all, you return to your 
 former post. Not always, however, is he successful ip retain- 
 ing you. Giddy as you may be with the descent you have 
 made, delighted as you are with the pleasure afforded, with the 
 Elysium to which he has wafted you, you return too often dis- 
 satisfied with his and your own impetuosity and want of firm- 
 ness. You feel that you had only a dream, a pastime — not a 
 reality. This great power of momentary captivation consists 
 in his eloquence of manner, his just appreciation of words. In 
 
220 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 listening to him, your whole soul is fired, every nerve strung, 
 every passion inflated, and every faculty you possess ready to 
 perforip at a moment's bidding. You stop not to ask why 
 or wherefore. 'Tis a unison of mighty yet harmonious sounds 
 that play upon your imagination ; and you give yourself up for 
 a time to their irresistible charm. At last, the cataract which 
 roared around you is hushed, the tornado is passed, and you 
 find yourself sitting upon a bank (at whose base roll but tranquil 
 waters), quietly asking yourself, why, amid such a display of 
 power, no greater effect had really been produced. After all, it 
 must be admitted there is a power in Mr. Douglass rarely to 
 be found in any other man." 
 
 Early in 1853 he published in his own paper a 
 highly wrought story, which had already appeared 
 in "Autographs for Freedom," entitled "The Heroic 
 Slave." It is based on actual adventures of Madison 
 Washington, who set himself free by his own courage 
 some ten years before. 
 
 The colored national convention, which met that 
 year in Rochester, on July 6, adopted an address, 
 written by their champion, and containing this pas- 
 sage : " We are, and by right we ought to be Ameri- 
 can citizens. We claim this right ; and we claim all 
 the rights, privileges, and duties which properly attach 
 to it." A resolution was also passed in favor of 
 establishing an Industrial College, with an agricul- 
 tural professor, and instructors- " To superintend the 
 practical application of natural philosophy to general 
 smithing, turning, and cabinet making." 
 
 The author of this plan had written, four months 
 before, a letter to Mrs. Stowe, which may be found 
 in his "Life and Times" (pp. 323-327). He had 
 been invited by her to a visit at her house, where he 
 
"the man who is right is a majority." 221 
 
 met a little girl who must, he thinks, have been the 
 model for Eva in " Uncle Tom's Cabin ;" and during 
 :he interview he persuaded her to promise to use 
 money, which she hoped to collect in Europe for the 
 benefit of his race, in establishing what he calls, " A 
 college where colored youth can be instructed to use 
 their hands as well as their heads ; where they can 
 be put in possession of the means of getting a liv- 
 ing." One of his editorials, on March i8, was headed 
 ' Make your Sons Mechanics and Farmers, not Wait- 
 srs. Porters, and Barbers." One passage, which may 
 still be recommended to the attention of all men and 
 women who send their children to our public schools, 
 runs thus : " It' is cruel, unnatural, brutal, and scand- 
 alous for parents to cast their offspring upon a selfish 
 world without using every means in their power to 
 give them useful trades." Our public schools are 
 Qot yet fully up to the suggestions which he made 
 nearly forty years ago, when he said in the number of 
 [lis paper just referred to, " The education of the 
 tiands must precede that of the head." 
 
 It is also pleasant to find that he spoke strongly in 
 favor of female compositors, in the Woman's Rights 
 Convention, held in Rochester, November 30 and 
 December i, 1853, presided over by Rev. S. J. May, 
 ind attended by Rev. W. H. Channing, Rev. Antoin- 
 ette L. Brown, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Bloomer, Mrs. Lucy 
 M. Colman, and Miss Anthony. He also said, "Some 
 )ne whispers in my ear, that as teachers, women get 
 3ne-fourth the pay men do, while a girl's tuition is 
 he same as a boy's." 
 
 Mrs. Colman, who did good work for abolitionism 
 IS well as for woman's rights, has kindly furnished 
 
222 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 me with a letter of recollections, which has direct re- 
 ference to this period : 
 
 " My intimate acquaintance with Frederick Douglass com- 
 menced in 1853; and, if we except the following year, 1854, 
 continued until the close of the war. Mr. Douglass was entirely 
 disfellowshiped by the Garrisonian party soon after his return 
 from England ; the establishing of a paper published and edited 
 by him, somehow, did not meet with Mr. Garrison's approval ; 
 and never did any party follow its leader more closely than the 
 Garrisonians followed him. Mr. Garrison did not allow a dif- 
 ference of opinion ; in his eyes such difference was not possible 
 in a true Abolitionist. The bitterness engendered by this 
 division had a marked effect upon Mr. Douglass's disposition ; 
 he is a man of very strong feeling ; and he had been petted and 
 almost owned by the prominent members of that class of Abol- 
 itionists. To find himself treated as though he had been false 
 to his race, because he had broken loose from leading strings, 
 and chose to work in his own way, was very hard ; but he was 
 equal to the situation, though his spirit was somewhat em- 
 bittered. 
 
 " There was in one of those years, when the Unitarian Society 
 in Rochester was without a settled pastor, an attempt to hold 
 a series of Sunday meetings by one of the agents of the Aboli- 
 tionists. Mr. Douglass did not attend these Sunday meetings ; 
 and we all knew that his absence was a great loss, as his popu- 
 larity was such, that his presence, if advertised, would always 
 insure a large audience ; but he had a personal grievance with 
 the getter-up of these meetings, and was in no mood to go. A 
 murder had been committed some Httle time previous ; and 
 the guilty man (not a man in age), was condemned to the 
 gallows. Some of us, wholly opposed to capital punishment, 
 concluded to call a public meeting, and try to act upon the 
 people by the presence of extenuating circumstances, which 
 were many, so as to get our petition, for a change to imprison- 
 ment for life, largely signed. I went to Mr. Douglass, and suc- 
 ceeded in getting his name to the call, and a promise that he 
 
" THE MAN WHO IS RIGHT IS A MAJORITY." 223 
 
 would attend. Our advertisement was followed by a call of the 
 largest kind to the people to go and take the meeting from the 
 callers, and prevent any presentation of sympathy with a 
 murderer. We, the callers of the meeting, came together at 
 the hour and succeeded in appointing the officers, making Mr. 
 Douglass president, when the house filled with a mob of men 
 so violent that it seemed as though there might be murder 
 there. Frederick Douglass then and there showed himself a 
 man of almost superhuman power. His loud but melodious 
 voice rose above the wild howl of those enraged men, and 
 quieted them for some few moments (they would hear no other 
 one), though they frequently threw at him the most insulting 
 epithets ; but they had come to break up the meeting and they 
 succeeded. The Mayor, instead of protecting the meeting, 
 ordered the lights in the hall put out and the meeting proper 
 to disperse. Thus was free speech protected in those pro- 
 slavery days ; but good came to Mr. Douglass through that 
 disgraceful mob. His name (that had been ignored for some 
 years) found its way into the ' Liberator ' and ' Anti-Slavery 
 Standard ' in words that gave him true honor ; and many old 
 friends forgot their animosity and greeted him as of old. 
 
 " Mr. Douglass had a fund of humor that, whatever the 
 emergency, he could call upon ; and he had a kind of venom so 
 cruel, that I would feel for my bitterest enemy that was being 
 stung by it. 
 
 " He was once invited to speak in a village west of Rochester, 
 the place a Baptist church. After he had ascended the pulpit, 
 the deacon of the church went to him and told him ' There was 
 an unpleasant rumor abroad in that region concerning him, 
 that he ought to clear up.' Mr. Douglass asked to be informed 
 what it was, and the deacon said ' It is that you have married a 
 white wife ! ' So when Mr. Douglass rose, he repeated what the 
 deacon had told him and proceeded to ' clear it up.' He said 
 he had been invited to give an anti-slavery lecture there, and 
 had come prepared to do so ; and he could not see in what way 
 the color of his wife affected the subject. If his wife had chosen 
 to marry him, he being colored, it was her business. The 
 
2 24 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 audience at this point were very sure that they would hear the 
 confession from his own lips, that his wife was white. They 
 were all excitement. ' Now,' said Mr. Douglass, ' If my wife 
 could see, she could not help knowing that I was not a white 
 man ; and yet she married me. Pray tell me what has her 
 color to do with a lecture against slavery ? ' So he tantalized 
 . his audience with the subject till they supposed his next utter- 
 ance would be an announcement that his wife was white, and 
 then he would return to the subject and argue it out again, 
 showing that his color, or that of his wife, had nothing to do 
 with the subject that he came to discuss. At length, after the 
 large audience wearied of the delay, Mr. Douglass decided that 
 the color of his wife was not the business of the meeting, and 
 dropped it without telling them ; and so they supposed his wife 
 was white. The truth was, she was black as night ; but the 
 audience forgot to be angry as they listened to his lecture, so 
 thrilling, so grand that even our Wendell Phillips, silver- 
 tongued and graceful beyond description, ' the World's Orator,' 
 could not more than equal it. 
 
 " I have heard Mr. Douglass tell a story in which his color 
 was no longer of any use. Said he, ' I used to find myself 
 favored with a double seat in the cars, very convenient when 
 one is traveling at night ; but recently I had an all-night ride 
 before me, and prepared my bag for a pillow, covered my head 
 with my shawl, and was about falling to sleep ; when some one 
 shook me, saying at the same time, " Move along and give me a 
 seat." I roused myself, took my cap as well as my shawl from 
 my head, so that my hair would be observable, thinking that 
 would be sufficient to insure me my resting place ; but a more 
 severe shaking came and a peremptory command to move and 
 give up one seat. Then I said very meekly ' I am a nigger.' 
 
 " Go to with your nigger, move along and give me a seat ! " 
 
 ' So,' said he, ' My color is no longer of any use.' " 
 
 Another lady answered my questions thus : 
 
 " I wish I had more facts of Frederick Douglass's life than I 
 
THE MAN WHO IS RIGHT IS A MAJORITY." 225 
 
 have. I knew him when he had just escaped from slavery, in 
 Syracuse, where he first attracted immensely as a speaker. He 
 was full of wit, humor, and satire, somewhat bitter at times, of 
 commanding presence, and a magnificent voice, unsurpassed as 
 an orator, especially when a little bit angry. ' One with God is 
 a majority,' was said by him after a taunt from an opponent 
 on the weakness of numbers and power of the Abolitionists. You 
 know he went to England, and was bought and presented to 
 himself by the English people. He was converted from the 
 Garrisonians to the political party of anti-slavery by Gerrit 
 Smith, who was always a firm friend. His recent autobio- 
 graphy will give you all the information there is about his public 
 career, written in excellent taste. The paper you speak of I 
 tried to subscribe for, but, owing to bad arrangements in the 
 office, did not succeed. In fact, he was not methodical, or very 
 practical. Susan B. Anthony used to say, ' He had a great deal 
 of uncommon sense, but his wife more than her share of common 
 sense.' Nothing that he has ever done or said is more admir- 
 able than the respect he always showed her, and his undeviating 
 exaction of the same from others. She was an excellent 
 house-wife and manager. I have been to his house in Roch- 
 ester, saw her and the children. They are more like their 
 mother as I remember them. The daughter. Rose, married a 
 fugitive slave. A younger daughter died broken hearted during 
 the John Brown raid ; her father being obliged to fly to Europe, 
 you remember, and Brown himself, who had been at his house, 
 and to whom the child had become much attached, being 
 hung, and the illustrated papers being scattered about so 
 excited the child, that she drooped and died ; and he had only 
 the grave to look upon when he returned. Douglass is a man 
 of great natural refinement, perhaps from his white father, 
 perhaps from a freak of nature. I think very little of heredity 
 myself. Certainly the best in society and in life was what he 
 liked best, and was always seeking. I think many colored 
 people did not feel fully assured of his friendship to them, which 
 was a great mistake. The wholesome truths he uttered seemed 
 harsh, but he was and is a true friend to his race," 
 
226 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 A pathetic circumstance ab.out his child's grave is 
 mentioned by Miss HoUey, in the valuable letter from 
 which I make another extract. The lines, there quoted 
 from Campbell, are given precisely as they were 
 afterward written out by Mr. Douglass, who has 
 improved them greatly. 
 
 " Years went by, and the next meeting I recall with this heroic 
 fugitive slave, whose romantic fortunes are indeed a miracle, 
 was in the city of Rochester. He had a respectable residence 
 in spacious grounds in the country, near the beautiful Mount 
 Hope. I called on |vlr. D. and his family whenever I visited 
 Mount Hope, and well remember the tidiness and taste of the 
 little parlor, the quiet, handsome library, with its attractive 
 books and pictures — his daughters, Rosa, an intelligent school- 
 girl, and the gentle, darling, little Anna, with her winning, 
 modest shyness, but happy to trust the friendly face of the lady 
 who held her small, soft, velvety hand kindly, while talking 
 with her father and mother. Perhaps these were rare occa- 
 sions to the little girl, for we never met any white lady caller ; 
 and the social isolation of Mr. Douglass — man of genius as he 
 was, of distinguished presence and gracious manners, fit^to 
 adorn any circle — must have been torture. He told us sadly 
 once, ' I live the life of a hermit here in Rochester.' Illustrious 
 strangers', like James Russell Lowell and Frederika Bremer, 
 traveling through Rochester, always called on Douglass, but 
 Rochester people didn't. He was fortunate in the comfort of 
 his home, made so by the nice and able house-keeping of Mrs. 
 Douglass, who kept an inviting table, and the wardrobe of her 
 family neat and presentable. She was ever attentive to warding 
 off attacks of colds and rheumatism with warm changes of cloth- 
 ing for Mr. D., at home and on his travels. But the anti-slaveiy 
 families of Rochester, who formed, in those days, a superior 
 and attractive circle (that included the Rev. Wm. H. Channing, 
 and the new university professors), held shy from incur- 
 ring popular gdiun; by asking a black man to their social even- 
 
"the man who is right is a majority. 227 
 
 ing parties. I remember when Hon. George Thompson, of 
 England, was in Rochester, a round of evening parties was 
 given in his honor. Mr. and Mrs. Wilder gave the most ele- 
 gant one in their large, handsome house. Mr. Thompson was 
 in brilliant mood, sang delightful songs, told merry anec- 
 dotes, and talked charmingly. Still, I thought the company 
 incomplete without the presence of Frederick Douglass. I 
 was ashamed of the stupid prejudice that excluded him. A 
 lively young gentleman said to me, ' To have Douglass here 
 this evening might strangle the young infant University to 
 death.' And yet the time may come when Rochester will be 
 only known as the place where Frederick Douglass once lived. 
 This color exclusion was keenly felt by so sensitive a nature as 
 F. D.'s, admirably suited to enjoy and reciprocate the genial 
 flow and glow of cultured society, by his rare innate refine- 
 ment and the glimpses his peculiar experience had gained 
 from association with our true American noblesse, who had 
 thrown all their advantages of birth, wealth, and social position 
 into the scale of humanity against the prevalent spirit of caste 
 and prejudice. 
 
 " Of these conspicuously was the ' noblest name in the Empire 
 State,' Hon. Gerrit Smith — that peerless philanthropist, whose 
 princely fortune was devoted, beyond precedent, to the service 
 of humanity, as simple, transparent and unaffectedly devout a 
 follower of the Christian precepts of human brotherhood as 
 Count Tolstoi, from whose table and delightful drawing-room 
 Frederick Douglass was never made to feel the ban of color. 
 That charming Peterboro' mansion dispensed generous and 
 unique hospitality — alike to the beauty and chivalry of the city 
 and the State, and to the lowly fugitive slave and his advo- 
 cates, who stood nowhere else on such footing as in that 
 splendid domain, inherited from the partner of John Jacob 
 Astor. " Gerrit Smith ever welcomed Douglass ' as a brother 
 beloved.' 
 
 " So in Boston did the highest and proudest in family distinc- 
 tion, Wendell Phillips, condescend to him of low estate. His 
 invalid, but magnificent-hearted wife, a cousin of Copley, the 
 
228 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 painter, precluded domestic entertainment. But on every 
 steamboat, in every omnibus, railroad car, where Douglass was 
 tabood, solely because of color, there was Wendell Phillips 
 ready to take his seat beside his ' despised and rejected ' 
 brother, vastly to the annoyance of conductors and agents, 
 who couldn't help feeling the scandal and disgrace of the 
 miserable colorphobia, so pointedly rebuked. To crown all 
 the rest, once in an anti-slavery family — too poor to offer two 
 beds to their guests of a night — Wendell Phillips so far forgot 
 the hateful proscription as to share the bed of Frederick 
 Douglass. Mr. P. may have had this in his mind when later, 
 in his exquisite addresses, he used to tell the anecdote of 
 Washington making the chilled and sleepy negro servant of 
 Colonel Pickering, watching with him in the same tent, lie 
 down beside him and sleep out the night under the same 
 blanket. 
 
 " I once heard Douglass in a speech in Rochester, in a 
 strain of subdued yet powerful eloquence, say : ' I sometimes 
 forget the color of my skin, and remember that I am a man. 
 I sometimes forget that I am hated of men, and remember I 
 am loved of God. Has the white man religious aspirations ? 
 So have I. Thoughts that wander through eternity, affections 
 that climb up and twine around the Universal Father.' 
 
 " While the Mite of Rochester shrank from the social equality, 
 implied in an invitation to its table, there were households, like 
 Miss Porter's, that keenly enjoyed a chance call, or interview, 
 with one known then to be ' a lion ; ' and its diverse members 
 would quickly assemble in the parlor to bask in the inimitable 
 play and sparkle of his wit and fancy, or to be thrilled by his 
 indignant and caustic allusions to passing events at home and 
 abroad, whenever it was noised through the house that Fred- 
 erick Douglass was calling on his friends. Chief of all these 
 triumphs over ' race, color and previous condition of servitude ' 
 was that in the superb Corinthian Hall, then the handsomest 
 audience chamber in all that part of the State. Its brilliantly- 
 hghted interior was an enchantment to everybody, with the 
 delicate and dainty white lilies pouring out of their lovely 
 
"the man who is right is a majority." 229 
 
 chalices the blazing gas-jets, upon rich and poor, white and 
 black, high and low, assembled to hear the unsurpassed elo- 
 quence of Frederick Douglass, on the crime and shame of our 
 country, which permitted, sanctioned, and defended, with all its 
 machinery of government and religion, the horrible merchan- 
 dise in men, women and children — himself but lately redeemed 
 from the clutches of the foul demon of slavery by the philan- 
 thropy of English friends, who admiringly placed his bust in 
 white marble on its grand Merchant's Exchange in London. 
 Where could Campbell's stinging satire sound so impressively 
 as from those lips in Corinthian Hall in 1850 ? 
 
 " ' United States, your banner wears 
 Two emblems — one of fame ; 
 Alas ! the other that it bears 
 Reminds us of your shame. 
 
 " ' The white man's liberty in types 
 Is blazoned by your stars ; 
 But what's the meaning of your stripes ? 
 They mean your negro's scars.' 
 
 " One incident of that Rochester life is indelibly engraved on 
 my mind. My dear friend, Maria Porter, took me with her to 
 ever holy Mount Hope. Her valued sister Jane's was the new 
 grave we were visiting. As we stood there by it, I saw a small, 
 newly-made mound, and knowing of no child's death in their 
 circle, I asked in surprise whose grave is that ? ' Why that is 
 httle Anna Douglass's. Mr. Douglass had selected no lot — 
 and poor, dear, little Anna grieved herself to death with fright 
 and terror over her father's flight to England, to escape the fate 
 of old John Brown. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 
 
 Fortunate is the biographer whose hero supplies 
 such headings for chapters. No words could better 
 indicate the quarter from which suddenly came rein- 
 forcements that completely changed the position of 
 the Abolitionists. Previous to 1854 they were like 
 the rebel Jews who resisted Titus, shut up in their 
 holy city, surrounded by an overwhelming army of 
 the heathen, fighting fiercely against the besiegers 
 and even more fiercely among themselves. The 
 parallel would be a closer one, if Jerusalem had held 
 out long enough to find a friendly emperor mount 
 the throne. Hitherto we have looked only at the 
 little anti-slavery bands and the great pro-slavery 
 host. We have not yet had much occasion to notice 
 the existence of the neutral North. The number of 
 Northerners who were in favor of slavery was small 
 compared to that of the men who regretted its 
 existence, but saw no w^ay of getting rid of it ; who 
 found little fault with the Garrisonian principle, but 
 much with the method ; who kept aloof from the Free 
 Soil party, because they were afraid of throwing 
 away their votes ; and who tried to elect one pro- 
 slavery candidate after another, partly because he 
 seemed less pro-slavery than his opponent, and partly 
 230 
 
"beware op a YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING.'' 231 
 
 because they liked subordinate features of the plat- 
 form. This neutral position was the most advanced 
 one which had yet been taken, except by isolated indi- 
 viduals, in the Northwest ; and this was the attitude 
 of the vast majority of the clergy, even in New 
 England where most of the ministers really sympa- 
 thized with the slave, but not so warmly as to over- 
 come the combined influence of dislike at those inno- 
 vations which were allied with Garrisonianism, of 
 mdignation at the censures which the Church 
 received from Abolitionists, and of deference to the 
 conservatism, not only of wealthy laymen, but of 
 leading divines. It was not because the Southerners 
 had so much cordial support, but because they had 
 so little active opposition at the North, that they were 
 able to pass the Fugitiye Slave Bill, to recover hun- 
 dreds of bondmen under it, and to elect a President 
 who wished to have it " respected cheerfully," with a 
 vote so large as seemed to have swept not only the 
 hostile Free Soilers out of existence as a party, but 
 also the lukewarm Whigs. 
 
 This victory of 1852 emboldened the South to 
 insist that slavery should be carried beyond the 
 boundary to which it had been restricted by the 
 Missouri Compromise of 1820, and should take 
 possession of a new region ten times as large as 
 Massachusetts, with a much less severe climate, and 
 with a soil fertile beyond comparison. Before the 
 close of 1853 it was proposed in Congress that the 
 compromise should be set aside, that settlers should 
 be allowed to bring their slaves into the Territories, 
 about to be organized under the names of Kansas 
 and Nebraska, and that the final decision, whether 
 
232 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 these should form free or slave States, should be left 
 to be settled by the inhabitants. This last principle, 
 known as that of " Squatter Sovereignty," had Senator 
 Douglas for a prominent advocate. Opposition was 
 promptly made, not only by Sumner, Gerrit Smith, 
 and other anti-slavery Congressmen, but also by 
 Edward Everett, who had hitherto been on the other 
 side. He now gave a strong indication of what a 
 change was going on in New England, by presenting 
 a remonstrance signed by more than three thousand 
 of her clergymen. How large, a part of these 
 petitioners were now opposing the slave power for 
 the first time may be imagined from the fact that the 
 indignation meeting, which was held in Faneuil 
 Hall, on the afternoon of February 23, 1854, had a 
 member of Congress, who had voted for the Fugitive 
 Slave Bill, in the chair, and all the speakers, as well 
 as some of the vice-presidents, had earned a place on 
 the " Liberator's " blackest list. Similar meetings 
 were held so freely all over the North, that Senator 
 Douglas declared, some years later, that he could have 
 traveled from Boston to Chicago by the light of his 
 own burning effigies. One half of the Northern Demo- 
 crats voted with all the Northern Whigs and the 
 Free Soilers against the Kansas and Nebraska Bill in 
 the House of Representatives ; but it became a law, 
 at the same time that Anthony Burns was sent back 
 to slavery from Boston, and carried through the 
 streets by soldiers and armed policemen in open day. 
 All the appeals of Garrison, Phillips, Douglass, 
 Beecher, and Mrs. Stowe, in behalf of the negro, had 
 awakened but little interest compared with that 
 called out by the attempts of the South to prevent 
 
" BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING. 233 
 
 Northern white men from settling Kansas, and to 
 drive them out by inroads of border-ruffians frorn 
 Missouri, backed by federal troops. Public senti- 
 ment sanctioned not only the supply of rifles to 
 emigrants, who flocked in from Massachusetts, Ohio, 
 and other Northern States, but the formation of 
 guerrilla bands under John Brown and other 
 captains. The Fugitive Slave Bill was decided to be 
 unconstitutional in Wisconsin ; and laws to hinder 
 its execution were passed by Michigan, as well as by 
 the New England States. The Whigs united with 
 the Free Soilers, and the new party took the name 
 Republican in July, 1854. The outrages upon Free 
 State settlers in that year and the next caused the 
 anti-slavery vote of New England to rise from 57,143, 
 in 1852, to 184,850 in 1855, and 307,417 in 1856. The 
 figures for New York are 25,359, 136,698, and 276,004. 
 The change throughout the Union was from 156,149 
 votes in 1852 to 1,341,264 in 1856. Eleven States 
 were then carried for Fremont, whereas not a single 
 electoral vote had ever been cast for any of the Free 
 Soil or Liberty party candidates. The neutral North 
 became anti-slavery, because it was not allowed to 
 feed peaceably in Kansas. 
 
 How earnestly, and at the same time how sensibly, 
 Douglass took part in this great struggle, may be 
 judged from the speech which he delivered before a 
 great audience in Chicago, early in September, 1854. 
 I have taken care to copy all the boldest portions ; 
 and there is also a cordial eulogium on Senator Doug- 
 las, closing with the remark that no one would think 
 any the less of that name if it should be placed by 
 the nation upon the scroll of Presidents. He begins 
 
234 I-REGeRICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 by claiming to be an American citizen, and declaring 
 that : 
 
 " The Constitution knows no man by the color of his skin. 
 The men who made it were too noble for any such limitation 
 of humanity and human rights. The word ' white ' is a mod- 
 ern term in the legislation of this country. It was never used 
 in the better days of our Republic, but has sprung up within 
 the period of our national degeneracy." ..." I am here simply 
 as an American citizen, having a stake in the weal or woe of 
 the nation in common with other citizens. I am not even here 
 as the agent of any sect or party. Parties are too politic and 
 sects are too sectarian, to select one of my odious class, and of 
 my radical opinions, at this important time and place to repre- 
 sent them. Nevertheless, I do not stand alone here. There 
 are noble-minded men in Illinois who are neither ashamed of 
 their cause nor their company. Some of them are here to- 
 night, and I expect to meet with them in every part of the 
 State where I may travel. But, I pray, hold no man or party , 
 responsible for my words, for I am no man's agent, and I am 
 no party's agent." ..." It is alleged that I am come to this 
 State to insult Senator Douglas. Among gentlemen that is 
 only an insult which is intended to be such, and I disavow all 
 such intention. I am not even here with the desire to meet in 
 public debate that gentleman. I am here precisely as I was in 
 this State one year ago — with no other change in my relations 
 to you, or to the great question of human freedom, than time 
 and circumstances have brought about. I shall deal with the 
 subject with the same spirit now as then, approving such men 
 and such measures as look to the security of liberty in the land, 
 and with my whole heart condemning all such men and 
 measures, as serve to subvert or endanger it. If Hon. S. A. 
 Douglas, your beloved and highly gifted Senator, has design- 
 edly, or through mistaken notions of public policy, ranged him- 
 self on the side of oppressors and the deadliest enem.'es of 
 liberty, I know of no reason, either in this world or in any other 
 
" BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 235 
 
 world, which should prevent me, or prevent any one else, from 
 thinking so, or from saying so. 
 
 " The people in whose cause I come here to-night are not 
 among those whose right to regulate their own domestic con- 
 cerns is so feelingly, and earnestly, and eloquently contended 
 for in certain quarters. They have no Stephen Arnold Doug- 
 las — no General Cass, to contend at North Market Hall for their 
 popular sovereignty. They have no national purse, no offices, no 
 reputation, with which to corrupt Congress, or to tempt men, 
 mighty in eloquence and influence, into their service. Oh, no ! 
 They have nothing to commend them but their unadorned 
 humanity. They are human — that's all-^only human. Nature 
 owns them as human — God owns them as human ; but men own 
 them as property, and only as property. Every right of human 
 nature, as such, is denied them ; they are dumb in their 
 chains. To utter one groan or scream for freedom in the 
 presence of the Southern advocate of popular sovereignty, is 
 to bring down the frightful lash upon their quivering flesh. 
 I know this suffering people ; I am acquainted with their sor- 
 rows ; I am one with them in experience ; I have felt the lash 
 of the slave-driver, and stand up here with all the bitter recol- 
 lection of its horrors vividly upon me. 
 
 " There are special reasons why I should speak, and speak 
 freely. The right of speech is a very precious one. I under- 
 stand that Mr. Douglas regards himself as the most abused 
 man in the United States ; and that the greatest outrage ever 
 committed upon him was in the case in which your indignation 
 raised your voices so high that his could not be heard. No 
 personal violence, as I understand, was offered him. It seems 
 to have been a trial of vocal powers between the individual and 
 the multitude ; and, as might have been expected, the voice of 
 one man was not equal in volume to the voices of five thousand. 
 I do not mention this circumstance to approve it; I do not 
 approve it. I am for free speech, as well as for free men and 
 free soil ; but how ineffably insignificant is this wrong done in 
 a single instance, compared to the stupendous iniquity perpet- 
 uated against more than three millions of the American people, 
 
236 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 who are struck dumb by the very men in whose cause Mr. Sen- 
 ator Douglas was here to plead ! While I would not approve 
 the silencing of Mr. Douglas, may we not hope that this slight 
 abridgment of his rights may lead him to respect in some 
 degree the rights of other men, as good in the eye of rieaven as 
 himself ? 
 
 " Let us now consider the great question of the age, the only 
 great national question which seriously agitates the public mind 
 at this hour. It is called the vexed question, and excites alarm 
 in every quarter of the country. . . . 
 
 " The proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise, was a 
 stunning one. It fell upon the nation like a bolt from a cloud- 
 less sky. The thing was too startling for belief. You believed 
 in the South ; and you believed in the North ; and you knew 
 that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a breach of 
 honor ; and, therefore, you said that the thing could not be 
 done. Besides, both parties had pledged themselves directly, 
 positively, and solemnly against re-opening in Congress the 
 agitation on the subject of slavery ; and the President himself 
 had declared his intention to maintain the national quiet. 
 Upon these assurances you rested, and rested fatally. But you 
 should have learned long ago that men do not ' gather grapes 
 of thorns, or figs of thistles.' It is folly to put faith in men 
 who have broken faith with God. When a man has brought 
 himself to enslave a child of God, to put fetters on his brother, 
 he has qualified himself to disregard the most sacred of com- 
 pacts : beneath the sky there is nothing more sacred than man, 
 and nothing can be properly respected when manhood is 
 despised and trampled upon. ... 
 
 " It is said that slavery is the creature of positive law, and 
 that it can only exist where it is sustained by positive law — that 
 neither in Kansas nor Nebraska is there any law establishing 
 slavery and that, therefore, the moment a slave-holder carries 
 his slave into those territories, he is free and restored to the 
 rights of human nature. This is the ground taken by General 
 Cass. He contended for it in the North Market Hall, with 
 much eloquence and skill. I thought, while I was hearing him 
 
"BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 237 
 
 on this point, that slave-holders would not be likely to thank 
 him for the argument. Theoretically the argument is good ; 
 practically the argument is bad. It is not true that slavery 
 cannot exist without being established by positive law. The 
 instance cannot be shown where a law was ever made estab- 
 lishing slavery, where the relation of master and slave did not 
 previously exist. The law is always an after-coming consider- 
 ation. Wicked men first overpower, and subdue their fellow- 
 men to slavery, and then call in the law to sanction the deed. 
 Even in the slave States of America, slavery has never been 
 established by positive law. It was not established under the 
 colonial charters of the original States, nor the constitutions of 
 the States. It is now, and has always been, a system of lawless 
 violence. On this proposition I hold myself ready and willing 
 to meet any defender of the Nebraska Bill. 1 would not even 
 hesitate to meet the author of that bill himself. . . . 
 
 " He says he wants no broad, black line across this Continent. 
 Such a line is odious, and begets unkind feelings between 
 the citizens of a common country. Now, fellow-citizens, why is 
 the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, a broad black 
 line ? What is it that entitles it to be called a black line ? It is 
 the fashion to call whatever is odious in this country, black. 
 You call the devil black, and he may be ; but what is there in 
 the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, which makes it 
 blacker than the line which separates Illinois from Missouri, or 
 Michigan from Indiana ? I can see nothing in the line itself 
 which should make it black or odious. It is a line, that's all. 
 If it is black, black and odious, it must be so, not because it is 
 a line, but because of the things it separates. If it keeps asunder 
 what God has joined together — or separates what God intended 
 should be fused, then it may be called an odious line, a black 
 line ; but if, on the other hand, it marks only a distinction 
 natural and eternal, a distinction fixed in the nature of things 
 by the eternal God, then I say, withered be the arm and blasted 
 be the hand that would blot it out. . . . 
 
 " Nothing could be further from the truth, than to say that 
 popular SQvereignty is E^ccorded to the people who may settle 
 
238 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The three great 
 cardinal powers of government are the executive, legislative, and 
 judicial. Are these powers secured to the people of Kansas and 
 Nebraska ? You know they are not. That bill places the people 
 of that territory as completely under the powers of the federal 
 government as Canada is under the British crown. By this 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill the federal government has the substance 
 of all governing power, while the people have the shadow. The 
 judicial power of the territories is not from the people of the 
 territories, who are so bathed in the sunlight of popular sover- 
 eignty by stump eloquence, but from the federal government. 
 The executive power of the territories derives its existence not 
 from the overflowing fountain of popular sovereignty, but from 
 the federal government. The secretaries of the territories are 
 not appointed by the sovereign people of the territories, but are 
 appointed independently of popular sovereignty. 
 
 " But is there nothing in this bill which justifies the supposi- 
 tion that it contains the principle of popular sovereignty ? No, 
 not one word. Even the territorial counsels, elected, not by 
 the people who may settle in the territories, but by only certain 
 descriptions of people, are subject to a double veto power, 
 vested first in a governor, whom they did not elect, and second 
 in the President of the United States. The only shadow of 
 popular sovereignty is the power giv.en to the people of the 
 territories by this bill to have, hold, buy, and sell human beings. 
 The sovereign right to make slaves of his fellow-men if they 
 choose, is the only sovereignty that the bill secures. In all 
 else, popular sovereignty means only what the boy meant, when 
 he said he was going to live with his uncle Robert. He said 
 he was going there, and that he meant while there to do just 
 what he pleased, if his uncle Robert would let him. . . . 
 
 " But it may be said that Congress has the right to allow the 
 people of the territories to hold slaves. The answer is, that 
 Congress is made up of men, and possesses only the right of men; 
 and unless it can be shown that some men have a right to hold 
 their fellow-men as property. Congress has no such right. 
 There is not a man within the sound of my voice, who has not 
 
"beware of a YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 239 
 
 as good a right to enslave a brother man, as Congress has. 
 This will not be denied even by slave-holders. Then I put the 
 question to you, each of you, all of you, have you any such 
 right ? To admit such a right is to charge God with folly, to 
 substitute anarchy for order, and to turn earth into a hell. And 
 you know better. Now, friends and fellow-citizens, I am utter- 
 ing no new sentiments at this point, and am making no new 
 argument. In this respect there is nothing new under the sun. 
 " Error may be new, or it may be old, since it is founded in a 
 misapprehension of what truth is. It has its be|;innings ; and 
 it has its endings. But not so with truth. Truth is eternal. 
 Like the great God, from whose throne it emanates, it is from 
 everlasting unto everlasting, and can never pass away. Such a 
 truth is a man's right to freedom. He was born with it. It 
 was his before he comprehended it. The title-deed to it is 
 written by the Almighty on his heart ; and the record of it is in 
 the bosom of the Eternal ; and never can Stephen A. Douglas 
 efface it, unless he can tear from the great heart of God this 
 truth ; and this mighty government of ours will never be at 
 peace with God, unless it shall, practically and universally, 
 embrace this great truth as the foundation of all its institutions, 
 and the rule of its entire administration. Now, gentlemen— I 
 have done. I have no fear for the ultimate triumph of free 
 principles in this country. The signs of the times are propi- 
 tious. Victories have been won by slavery ; but they have never 
 been won against the onward march of anti-slavery principles. 
 The progress of these principles has been constant, steady, 
 strong, and certain. Every victory won by slavery has had the 
 effect to fling our principles more widely and favorably among 
 the people. The annexation of Texas — the Florida war — the 
 war with Mexico — the compromise measures, and the repeal of 
 the Missouri Compromise have all signally vindicated the wis- 
 dom of the great God, who has promised to over-rule the 
 wickedness of men for his own glory — to confound the wisdom 
 of the crafty, and bring to naught the counsels of the ungodly." 
 
 Mr. Douglass tells me that during the tour through 
 
240 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Illinois which began thus, his namesake, whom he 
 calls " an undersized Daniel Webster," refused to 
 speak at Rockford, because he did not wish to en- 
 counter that " negro impostor who had been called in 
 to hunt him down." They did finally meet at Free- 
 port, where the Senator was " very courteous both in 
 public and in private." 
 
 Our orator had hitherto trusted entirely to his gift 
 for extempore speech, and had become so famous for 
 his power of thinking on his legs, that Wendell Phil- 
 lips spoke of him to a friend of mine, as " possessed 
 of more genius than any other man in the anti-slavery 
 ranks." When he assumed the responsibilities of 
 editing the " North Star," he gave up parodies, used 
 mimicry more sparingly, and began to write out 
 portions of his addresses. After one of these experi- 
 ments, in Western New York, he went home to spend 
 the night with a Quaker, named Pliny Sexton. Anx- 
 ietj'' to find out how well he had succeeded made him 
 keep silent, and wait for his host to say something. 
 There was nothing more than a Quaker meeting, 
 however, until they were about to bid each other 
 " Good-night." Then Pliny, who, by the way, was 
 a Garrisohian, said, " Frederick, the poorest part of 
 thy lecture was the written part." 
 
 On July 12, 1854, he took part, for the first time in 
 his life, in the exercises of a college commencement. 
 An invitation to deliver an address had come from a 
 literary society in the Western Reserve College, then 
 at Hudson, Ohio, but now at Cleveland. The Presi- 
 dent and the rest of the Faculty were much distressed 
 at the invitation, as he found out afterwards ; and he 
 did right in taking for his subject, the Claims of th? 
 
" BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 24I 
 
 Negro. Unfortunately, however, he treated of the 
 question ethnologically, and tried to prove, not only 
 that the negro sprang from the same original ancestry 
 as other men, but that he had a peculiarly close rela- 
 tionship with the ancient Egyptians. Neither of 
 these opinions is now held by Douglass ; but he did 
 not change his mind about the builders of the pyra- 
 mids, until he had made a journey to Egypt in order 
 to satisfy himself on this point. He also made the 
 mistake of merely reading his address ; and it had 
 much less effect than his extempore remarks at the 
 collation afterwards. There is at least one fine pas- 
 sage, which ought still to be kept fresh in our re- 
 membrance, where he says, in regard to the supposi- 
 tion that the colored people may ultimately die out 
 from among us : 
 
 " The statistics of the country afford no encouragement for 
 such a conjecture. The history of the negro race proves them 
 to be wonderfully adapted to all countries, all climates, all 
 conditions." ... " The poor bondman lifts a smiling face 
 above the surface of a sea of agonies, hoping on, hoping ever. 
 His tawny brother, the Indian, dies under the flashing glance of 
 the Anglo-Saxon. Not so the negro ; civilization cannot kill 
 him. He accepts it, becomes a part of it." ... ' All the facts 
 in his history mark out for him a destiny united to America 
 and Americans. Now, whether this population shall, by free- 
 dom, industry, virtue, and intelligence be made a blessing to 
 the country and the world, or whether their multiplied wrongs 
 shall kindle the vengeance of an offended God, will depend upon 
 the conduct of no class of men so much as upon the scholars of 
 the country." 
 
 His most important publication previous to 1882 
 was the enlarged edition of the " Narrative,'' which 
 appeared in 1855, under the title " My Bondage and 
 
242 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 My Freedom," with an Introduction by Dr. James 
 M'Cune Smith. There is a portrait, taken from a 
 daguerreotype, and showing much sterner features 
 than those which usher in the volumes of 1845 and 
 1882. The signature below indicates that his hand- 
 writing had become less delicate and feminine than 
 it was ten years before, and had acquired its present 
 manly vigor. The dedication is to Gerrit Smith. 
 The preface by Garrison, which had appeared in 
 1845, is omitted, with the letter from Phillips and 
 the appendix about religion. The publishers were 
 Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, in New York and Auburn; 
 the volume contains nearly five hundred pages, in- 
 cluding the Introduction and appendix ; and the 
 latter gives extracts from seven speeches, and also 
 a letter to Thomas Auld. The account in the 
 " Narrative," of the author's life up to 1841, was re- 
 written, with frequent additions of graphic details, 
 so as to be enlarged to a size almost three times as 
 great as before, and to occupy about fifty per cent, 
 more space in this version of 1855 than in that of 
 1882, which did not, I think, gain by abridgment. 
 The period from 1841 to 1855 is given at much greater 
 length in the version of 1882, however, than any part 
 of it had ever been before ; and described on the 
 whole with greater vigor, although many character- 
 istic passages have been omitted. This much has 
 been said about " My Bondage and My Freedom," 
 because it seems to have become rather a rare book, 
 and its disappearance would be a great loss. 
 
 The most curious thing about this book is an 
 opinion which was passed upon it by Garrison, and 
 which is here quoted as an act of justice to those 
 
" BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 243 
 
 philanthropic people who differed from him. George 
 Thompson gave " My Bondage and My Freedom " a 
 friendly notice in his own organ, but this led Garri- 
 son to write him a letter, part of which soon found 
 its way into the " Liberator," for January 18, 1856. 
 It is a protest against this " panegyric upon Frederick 
 Douglass's new volume, ' My Bondage and My Free- 
 dom,' a volume remarkable, it is true, for its thrilling 
 sketches of a slave's life and experience, and for the 
 ability displayed in its pages, but which, in its second 
 portion, is reeking with the virus of personal malig- 
 nity towards Wendell Phillips, myself, and the old 
 organizationists generally, and full of ingratitude and 
 baseness towards as true and disinterested friends as 
 any man ever yet had upon earth." The only pages 
 which could possibly be referred to, acknowledge 
 that he went to Rochester " from motives of peace," 
 say nothing about Phillips, speak of Garrison as " the 
 known and distinguished advocate " of the non-voting 
 principle, mention that " To abstain from voting was 
 to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means 
 for abolishing slavery," and say, finally, " To those 
 with whom I had been in agreement and sympathy, 
 I was now in opposition. What they held to be a 
 great and important truth, I now looked upon as a 
 dangerous error. A very painful, and yet a very 
 natural thing now happened. Those who could not 
 see any honest reasons for changing their views, as I 
 had done, could not easily see any such reasons for my 
 change ; and the common punishment of apostates 
 was mine. The opinions first entertained were 
 naturally derived, and honestly entertained ; and I 
 trust that my present opinions have the same title to 
 
244 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 respect." If there is any "virus" in these words it 
 is only such as has always been greatly needed for 
 the inoculation of reformers. 
 
 I am not aware that Douglass ever spoke more 
 severely of Garrison than in 1879, when he said this : 
 
 " Massachusetts is a great State ; she has clone many great 
 things ; she has given to our country many scholars and states- 
 men, many poets and philosophers, many discoverers and 
 inventors ; but no son of hers has won for her a more enduring 
 honor, or for himself a more enduring fame, than William Lloyd 
 Garrison. No one of her sons has stamped his convictions in 
 lines so clear, deep, and ineffaceable into the very life and future 
 of the Republic. Of no man is it more true than of him — that 
 being dead he yet speaketh. The lessons he taught fifty years 
 ago from his garret in Boston are only yet half learned by the 
 nation. His work will not stop at his grave. Our general has 
 fallen ; but his army will march on. His words of wisdom, 
 justice, and truth will be echoed by the voices of the millions, 
 till every jot and tittle of all his prophecies shall be fulfilled. 
 Mr. President, this is not the time and place for a critical and 
 accurate measurement of William Lloyd Garrison ; but when 
 it comes, no friend of his has need to fear the application to him 
 of the severest test of honest and truthful criticism. He never 
 refused to see, nor allow his readers to see, in the ' Liberator,' 
 the worst that was thought, felt, and said of him. A candid 
 examination of his character and his work in the world may 
 disclose some things we would have had otherwise. Speaking 
 for myself, I must frankly say I have sometimes thought him 
 uncharitable to those who differed from him. Honest himself, 
 he could not always see how men could differ from hira.and 
 still be honest. To say this of him is simply to say that he was 
 human ; and it may be added that when he erred here, he erred 
 in the interest of truth. He revolted at halfness, abhorred com- 
 promise, and demanded that men should be either hot or cold. 
 This great quality of the man, though sometimes in excess, is 
 
"BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 245 
 
 one explanation of his wonderful and successful leadership. 
 What it cost him in breadth and numbers, it gained him in 
 condensation and intensity. He held his little band well in 
 hand all the time, and close to his person ; no leader was ever 
 more loved by the circle about him. Absolute in his faith, no 
 sect could proselyte him ; inflexible in his principles, no party 
 could use him ; content with the little circle about him, he did 
 not mingle directly and largely with the great masses of men. 
 By one simple principle he tried all men, all parties, and all 
 sects. They that were not for him, were against him. What 
 his name stood for in the beginning, it stands for now, and will 
 so stand forever. It is said that the wicked shall not live out 
 half their days. This is true in more senses than one ; for ' The 
 coward and the small in soul scarce do live.' Mr. Garrison 
 lived out his whole existence. For to live is to battle ; and he 
 battled from first to last. Although he had reached a good 
 old age, time had not dimmed his intellect, nor darkened his 
 moral vision, nor quenched the ardor of his genius. His letter, 
 published three weeks before his death, on the exodus from 
 Mississippi and Louisiana, had in it all the energy and fire of 
 his youth. Men of three score and ten are apt to live in the 
 past. It was not so with Mr. Garrison. He was during his 
 latest years fully abreast with his times. No event or circum- 
 stance bearing upon the cause of justice and humanity escaped 
 his intelligent observation. His letter written a few months 
 ago upon the Chinese question was a crowning utterance. It 
 was in harmony with the guiding sentiment of his life, ' My 
 country is the world ; and all mankind are my countrymen.' 
 With him it was not race or color, but humanity." 
 
 One result of the publication of " My Bondage 
 and My Freedom," was that a bookseller in Mobile, 
 who had been a slave-holder, bought not only a 
 copy which had been ordered but two others to 
 supply possible customers. A clergyman in the 
 city heard of this, sent his son to buy the books. 
 
246 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 and stirred up such an excitement against the 
 bookseller that he was glad to steal away in a little 
 sail-boat. 
 
 While still busy with the composition of this work, 
 its author was invited by the members of the Legisla- 
 ture to address them, in March, 1855, in the Assembly 
 Chamber at Albany. There he denounced not only 
 the Nebraska and Fugitive Slave Bills, but also the 
 indifference of the North to his people's wrongs. An 
 eye-witness describes the rapt attention of the 
 crowded audience for two hours and a half as the 
 grandest scene he ever saw in the capital ; and the 
 Lieutenant-Governor said he would give twenty 
 thousand dollars to be able to speak as powerfully. 
 The May meeting of the A. A. S. S. in New York 
 gave the orator an opportunity to defend a proposi- 
 tion which he had already submitted to them in 
 writing, namely that, " The Garrisonian views of 
 disunion, if carried to a successful issue, would only 
 place the people of the North in the same relation to 
 American slavery which they now bear to the slavery 
 of Cuba or Brazil." He defended this proposition on 
 May 10, in reply to the assertion of another fugitive 
 from slavery, that the Union was of no value to 
 colored people. Then, according to the " New York 
 Daily News," " A grand and terrific set-to came off 
 between Abby Kelley Foster, Garrison, and Frederick 
 Douglass, who defended the Union while claiming 
 rights for his people. He was insulted, interrupted, 
 and denounced by the Garrison Cabinet, but stood 
 amid them and overtopped them like a giant among 
 pigmies." One thing said against him was, that he 
 had no more right to call himself anti-slavery, than a 
 
" BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 247 
 
 moderate drinker has to try to pass himself off for a 
 friend of temperance. 
 
 Soon after this debate, he told the colored men, 
 with whom he was holding a council to prepare for a 
 national convention in October, that he knew that his 
 plan of an industrial college was opposed by some of 
 the Abolitionist organs : 
 
 " But if the colored people would ever arrive at a respectable 
 place in society, they must do their own thinking. The colored 
 people are now the ' sick man ' of America ; those who pretend 
 to be their friends measure their places and pat them on the 
 back; but when they step beyond that narrow place, their 
 friends become villifiers and enemies." 
 
 On June 26, 27, 28, there was a convention in Syra- 
 cuse of men who had agreed, a year or two before, to 
 call themselves Radical Political Abolitionists. The 
 editor of " My Bondage and My Freedom," Dr. Smith, 
 presided ; and among other speakers were Douglass, 
 Gerrit Smith, Lewis Tappan, and Rev. S. J. May. Ten 
 States were represented, besides New York and 
 Canada. It was unanimously resolved that the mem- 
 bers should do what they could to prevent the return 
 of fugitives ; but there was some difference of 
 opinion in consequence of a proposal to raise money 
 to enable John Brown, who was going out that fall to 
 join his sons in Kansas, to take out a good supply of 
 weapons. Douglass, who had known him well for 
 eight years, spoke earnestly in his behalf ; Tappan 
 and others were unwilling to encourage violence ; but 
 as a Letter recently received from Hayti says : " The 
 collection was taken up with much spirit, neverthe- 
 less ; for Captain Brown was present and spoke for 
 
248 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 himself ; and when he spoke, men believed in the 
 man." 
 
 The national colored convention came off, as pro- 
 posed, in Philadelphia, and on the first day, October 
 16, there, was an evident repugnance to the admission 
 of the only delegate from Canada, Miss Shadd. Her 
 sex was so much against her that Remond thought 
 it best to make . a compromise, which would give 
 her a seat as a corresponding member. Douglass 
 insisted on having this vote reconsidered ; and his 
 speech caused her to be recognized, by a majority 
 vote, as a member in full standing. The " New York 
 Tribune " had endorsed his plan for an industrial 
 college as " the greatest and most comprehensive for 
 elevating the colored race in this country yet pro- 
 posed." Some members of the convention saw little 
 need of such an institution, at a time when more 
 than thirty per cent, of those of their brethren in the 
 North who were trained in trades and professions 
 were prevented, as Douglass himself had been, by 
 the color prejudice from carrying them on. It was 
 also urged that a college in one place would do little 
 good at a distance ; and much was said in favor of a 
 mechanical bureau, which should employ teachers of 
 special trades wherever such instruction might be 
 demanded. There was also quite a controversy as to 
 whether slavery could be abolished constitutionally ; 
 but here Douglass triumphed, with the aid of his 
 friend. Dr. Smith, and his paper was formally 
 acknowledged to be " our organ." 
 
 A long quotation has already been made from his 
 pamphlet on " the Anti-Slavery Movement ; " it also 
 contains an expression of dissatisfaction with the 
 
" BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 249 
 
 newly organized Republican party, of which he 
 says : 
 
 " It aims to limit and denationalize slavery, and to relieve the 
 Federal Government from all responsibility for slavery. Its 
 motto is, ' Slavery, Local ; Liberty, National.' The objection 
 to this movement is the same as that against the American 
 Anti-Slavery Society. It leaves the slave in his fetters, in the 
 undisturbed possession of his master, and does not grapple with 
 the question of emancipation in the States." 
 
 His own preference, in 1855, was for the Liberty 
 party, which was " pledged to continue the struggle 
 while a bondman in his chains remains to weep. 
 Upon its platform must the great battle of freedom 
 be fought out, if upon any short of the bloody field. 
 It must be under no partial cry of ' No union with 
 slave-holders,' nor selfish cry of ' No more slavery 
 extension,' but it must be, ' No slavery for man under 
 the whole heavens.' " 
 
 His opinion of the Republican party was fully 
 justified in 1856, when its convention, at Philadelphia, 
 adopted a platform which had nothing to say against 
 the Fugitive Slave Bill, or in favor of emancipation 
 in the States ; while its candidate, Fremont, Was 
 selected with no more reference to his record as an 
 Abolitionist than to his experience as a statesman. 
 So far at least as the conventions of 1852 and 1856 
 could be compared, there was perfect truth in the 
 statement of our editor in i860 -. " The national 
 conventions, held successively in Pittsburgh, Philadel- 
 phia, and Chicago, have formed a regular descent 
 from the better utterances of 1848 at Buffalo." No 
 colored man spoke at Philadelphia, and but little 
 was said by Abolitionists. The candidates of the 
 
250 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Other parties, however, for President were Fillmore, 
 who had signed the Fugitive Slave Bill, and Buchanan, 
 who was pledged to sustain it as well as to hinder 
 Kansas from entering the Union as a Free State. 
 Garrison acknowledged that if he could vote for any- 
 one, it would be for Fremont ; and Douglass did all 
 he could to elect him. 
 
 Among the pilgrims to Rochester, in 1856, was Miss 
 Ottilia Assing, who afterwards published a German 
 translation of " My Bondage and My Freedom." 
 She says in her preface, dated 1858, that twenty 
 thousand copies of the original had already been 
 sold ; and she also praises the author for " his brill- 
 iancy, cheerfulness, and refinement in conversation," 
 as well as for " his success in calling out others and 
 elevating them to his own height." His oratory was 
 " remarkable for complete mastery of his subject, 
 keenness in argument, and perfect moderation amid 
 all his passion. Often he will rise to a tragic grand- 
 eur, and then he will illuminate his position, as with 
 soldiers' torches, by brilliant flashes of wit. He will 
 speak to the heart of his hearer, and then divert him 
 with gay humor. All is fresh, original, and attract- 
 ive. All these advantages are increased by a perfect 
 command of English, and a voice as tender, pleasing, 
 and flexible as any I ever heard.'' 
 
 The poor success of his lecture on Ethnology had 
 stimulated him to make another trial of his strength, 
 and his second attempt was a completesuccess. The 
 lecture on " Self-Made Men," which he wrote in 1855, 
 was in great demand at Lyceums, especially in the 
 West ; and he thus found himself eminent in a lucra- 
 tive and honorable profession. It has not yet been 
 
"beware of a YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 25 1 
 
 published, and the manuscript has undergone various 
 changes in successive years of use. Among the most 
 interesting passages are these : 
 
 " On the first point, I may say, that by self-made men, I 
 mean precisely what the phrase itself imparts to the popular 
 mind. They are the men who, without the ordinary helps of 
 favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, 
 power, position, and fame in the world. They are the men 
 who owe nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings, 
 wealth inherited, or to early and approved means of educa- 
 tion ; who are what they are, without any of the conditions by 
 which other men usually achieve the same results. In fact, 
 they are the men who come up, not only without the voluntary 
 assistance or friendly co-operation of society, but often in open 
 and derisive defiance of all the efforts of society to repress, 
 retard, and keep them down. In a world of schools, academies, 
 and other institutions of learning, they manage in some way to 
 get an education elsewhere, and in other conditions hew out a 
 way for themselves and become the architects of their own 
 fortunes. In a peculiar sense they are indebted to themselves 
 for themselves. If they have traveled far, they have made the 
 road on which they traveled. If they have ascended high, they 
 have built their own ladder. It is hard to fathom the depths 
 from which some of these men have come. From the heart- 
 less pavements of the large and crowded cities — barefooted, 
 homeless, and friendless — they have come. From hunger, 
 rags, and destitution — -motherless and fatherless — they come. 
 From prisons, slavery, and the depths of infamy— they come. 
 Flung overboard in the midnight storm, on the broad and 
 tempest-tossed ocean of life, without oars, ropes, or life-pre- 
 servers, they are the men who have bravely buffeted the frown- 
 ing billows with their own sinewy arms, and have risen in 
 safety, where other men, well supplied with the best appli- 
 ances of safety and success have fainted, despaired, and gone 
 down. Such men as these, whether we find them in one posi- 
 tion or another, whether in the college or the factory, whether 
 
252 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 professors or plowmen, whether of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo- 
 African origin, are self-made men, and are entitled to a cer- 
 tain measure of respect for their success. Though a man of 
 this class may not claim to be a hero, and to be worshiped as 
 such, there is genuine heroism in his struggle, and something 
 of sublimity and glory in his triumph. Every instance of this 
 kind is an example and a help to the race. It assures us of the 
 latent powers and resources of simple and unaided manhood. 
 It robs labor of pain and depression, dispels gloom from the 
 brow of destitution, and enables men to take hold of the 
 roughest and flintiest hardships, incident to the battle of life, 
 with lighter hearts, higher hopes, and with larger courage. . . . 
 " When we find a man who has ascended high beyond our- 
 selves, who has a broader range of vision than we, and a hori- 
 zon with more stars in it than we have, we may know that he 
 has worked harder, better, and more wisely than we have. He 
 was awake while we slept, was busy while we were idle, and 
 wisely improved his time while we wasted ours. There is 
 nothing good, great, or desirable in this world which man can 
 possess, that does not come by labor, either physical, or men- 
 tal. A man may, at times, get something for nothing, but in 
 his hands it will amount to nothing. What is true in the 
 world of matter is equally true in the world of mind. There is 
 no growth without exertion, no polish without friction, no 
 knowledge without labor, no progress without motion, no vic- 
 tory without conflict. The man who lies dovvn a fool at night, 
 hoping that he will awake wise in the morning, will rise up in 
 the morning as he laid down in the evening. Faith itself 
 does not seem worth much, if anything, in the absence of 
 work. The preacher who finds it easier to pray for know- 
 ledge than to tax his brain with study, will find his congrega- 
 tion growing beautifully less, and his flock looking elsewhere 
 for the mental food. Our colored ministers are somewhat 
 remarkable for the fervor with.which they pray for knowledge ; 
 but, thus far, they are not remarkable for any wonderful suc- 
 cess ; in fact, they who pray loudest seem to get least. They 
 are able to give us abundance of sound for destitution of sense. 
 
" BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 253 
 
 In every view we catch of the perfection of the universe, 
 whether we look to the stars in the peaceful blue dome above 
 us, or to the long line where land and water maintain eternal 
 confhct^the lesson is the same. It is labor, movement, earnest 
 work. These beautifully rounded pebbles which you hold in 
 your hand, and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were 
 chiselled into their varied and graceful forms by the ceaseless 
 action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker, 
 and tolerates no contradictions to her wise example without cer- 
 tain rebuke. She follows inaction by stagnation, stagnation is 
 •followed by pestilence, and pestilence by death. General But- 
 ler, busy with his broom, could sweep yellow-fever out of New 
 Orleans ; but this dread destroyer returned when Butler and 
 his broom were withdrawn, and the people piously ascribed to 
 Divinity, what was simply due to dirt. From these remarks it 
 will be seen that, allowing only ordinary natural ability and 
 opportunity, we explain success by one word, and that is 
 'Work.' .... 
 
 " America, not without reason, is said to be pre-eminently the 
 home and patron of self-made men. All doors fly open to them. 
 They may aspire to any position. Courts, Senates, Cabinets, 
 spread their rich carpets for their feet, and they stand among 
 our foremost men in every honorable service. Many causes 
 have made it possible and easy for this class to rise and flour- 
 ish here, and first among these is the general respectability of 
 labor. Search where you will, there is no country on the globe 
 where labor is more respected, and the laborer more honored, 
 than in this country. The conditions in which American so- 
 ciety originated, the free spirit that framed its independence 
 and created its government, based upon the will of the people, 
 exalted both labor and the laborer." ..." The principle of 
 measuring and valuing men, according to their respective 
 merits, is better established and more generally enforced and 
 observed here than in any other country. In Europe, a king 
 can make a belted knight, a marquis, duke, and a' that ; but 
 here, wealth and greatness are forced by no such capricious 
 
254 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 and arbitrary power. Equality of rights brings equality of 
 dignity. . . . 
 
 " By these remarks, however, no disparagement of institutions 
 of learning is intended. With all my admiration for self-made 
 men, I am far from considering them the best made men. 
 Their symmetry is often marred by the effects of their extra 
 exertion. The hot rays of the sun and the long and rugged 
 road in which they were compelled to travel have left their 
 marks sometimes quite visibly and unpleasantly upon them. 
 While the world values skill and power, it values beauty and 
 polish as well. It was not alone the hard good-sense and hon- 
 est heart of Horace Greeley, the self-made man, that made the 
 ' New York Tribune," but likewise the brilliant and thoroughly 
 educated men silently associated with him. There was never 
 a self-educated man, however well educated, who, with the 
 same exertion, would not have been better educated by the aid 
 of schools. It must be admitted that self-made men are not 
 generally over-modest or self-forgetful men. Perhaps the pe- 
 culiar resistance they meet in asserting their pretentions, may 
 account for the loudness of their self-assertion. The country 
 knows the story of Andrew Johnson by heart, and from his 
 own lips. The very energies employed, the obstacles overcome, 
 the heights to which some men rise, and the broad contrasts 
 which life forces upon them at every step tend to make them 
 egotistical. A man indebted to himself for himself, may natur- 
 ally think well of himself. But this thing may be far overdone. 
 That a man has been able to make his own way in the world, 
 is an humble fact as well as an honorable one. It is, however, 
 possible to state a very humble fact in a very haughty manner, 
 and self-made men are, as a class, much addicted to this vice. 
 In this respect they make themselves much less agreeable to 
 society than they might otherwise be. One other criticism is 
 often very properly made upon these men. Never having en- 
 joyed the benefits of schools, colleges, and other institutions of 
 learning, they display a contempt for them which is quite ridic- 
 ulous. A man may know much about educating himself, and 
 
" BEWARE OF A YANKEE WHEN HE IS FEEDING." 255 
 
 little about the proper means of educating others. He may 
 be remarkably large but somewhat awkward ; swift but 
 ungraceful ; a man of power but deficient in the polish and 
 amiable proportions of the affluent and regularly educated man. 
 Generally, I think, self-made men answer this description.'' 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 " IS GOD DEAD?" 
 
 Mr. Douglass, himself, suggested this title for the 
 chapter about a time when' such a question might 
 have been asked by many an Abolitionist besides 
 Sojourner Truth. She interrupted him with it, as he 
 was dwelling upon the darkness of the hour ; and he 
 replied : " No, God is not dead ; and therefore it is 
 that slavery must end in blood ! " The warmth with 
 which the South sanctioned the outrages in Kansas, 
 applauded the striking down of Sumner in the Senate, 
 threatened to secede in case Fremont was elected, 
 and demanded the re-opening of the slave-trade, 
 showed plainly that war might soon break out ; and 
 the failure of the Republicans to carry Pennsylvania, 
 New Jersey, Illinois, Indiana, and California, even on 
 these plain and urgent issues, made it seem not un- 
 likely that the contest would be between a united 
 South and a divided North. War must come ; but 
 would it abolish or perpetuate slavery? This ques- 
 tion could not always be answered confidently ; and 
 Douglass was once hard at work in his sanctum in 
 Rochester, mailing copies of his paper, and thinking 
 gloomily of the future, when Beecher came in and 
 asked him, what he thought of the prospects of the 
 cause. " All is lost," was the reply. " No," said the 
 preacher, " God reigns ! Sit down beside me, and let 
 256 
 
" IS GOD DEAD ? " 
 
 257 
 
 me talk to you." Talk he did for twenty minutes, 
 about what might yet be hoped from the divine jus- 
 tice ; and when he went away, he left his friend so 
 much encouraged as to be almost a new creature. 
 
 There was not a bit of cowardice in the spirit in 
 which the champion of his race took the heavy blow 
 dealt at it in the Dred Scott decision. In the speech 
 which was prepared for the meeting at New York, in 
 May, 1857, of those Abolitionists who held slavery un- 
 constitutional, and was published that year in a 
 pamphlet, he says : 
 
 " I own myself not insensible to the many difficulties and dis- 
 couragements that beset us on every hand. They fling their 
 broad and gloomy shadows across the pathway of every thought- 
 ful colored man in this country. For one, I see them clearly 
 and feel them sadly. Standing, as it were, barefoot, and 
 treading upon the sharp and flinty rocks of the present, and 
 looking out upon the boundless sea of the future, I have sought 
 in my humble way to penetrate the intervening mists and clouds, 
 and perchance to descry in the dim and shadowy distance the 
 white flag of freedom, the precise speck of time at which the 
 cruel bondage of my people should end, and the long entombed 
 millions rise from the foul grave of slavery and death. But 
 of that time I can know nothing, and you can know nothing. 
 All is uncertain at that point." . . . " We are told, in tones 
 of lofty exultation, that the day is lost, all lost ; and that we 
 might as well give up the struggle. The highest authority has 
 spoken. The voice of the Supreme Court has gone out over 
 the troubled waves of the national conscience, saying, ' Peace, 
 be still ! ' This infamous decision of the slave-holding wing of 
 the Supreme Court maintains " . . . " that slaves are property 
 in the same sense that horses, sheep, and cattle are property ; " 
 . . . "that the right of the slave-holder to his slave does not 
 depend upon the local law, but is secured wherever the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States extends ; that Congress has no power to 
 
258 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 prohibit slavery anywhere; that slavery may go in safety anywhere 
 under the star-spangled banner ; that colored persons of African 
 descent have no rights that white men are bound to respect." 
 
 He might be asked how he is affected by " this 
 judicial incarnation of wolfishness ; " and he would 
 answer : 
 
 " My hopes were never brighter than now. I have no fear 
 that the national conscience will be put to sleep by such an 
 open, glaring, and scandalous tissue of lies as that is, and has 
 been, over and over again, shown to be. The Supreme Court 
 of the United States is not the only power in this world. It is 
 very great ; but the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. 
 Judge Taney may do many things, but he cannot perform 
 impossibilities. He cannot bail out the ocean, annihilate this 
 firm, old earth, or pluck the silvery star of liberty from our 
 Noi-thern sky. He may decide, and decide again ; but he can- 
 not reverse the decision of the Most High." ... " Man's 
 right to liberty is self-evident." ... " To decide against this 
 right in the person of Dred Scott "... " is to decide against 
 God." ... " It is an attempt to undo what God has done, 
 to blot out the broad distinction instituted by the AUwise, be- 
 tween men and things, and to change the image and superscrip- 
 tion of the ever living God into a speechless piece of merchan- 
 dise." ... "In one point of view, we, the Abolitionists and 
 colored people, should meet this decision, uncalled for and 
 monstrous as it seems, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt 
 to blot out forever the hope of an enslaved people may be one 
 necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the down- 
 fall and complete overthrow of the whole slave system. The 
 whole history of the anti-slavery movement is studded with 
 proof, that all measures, devised and executed with a view to 
 allay and diminish the anti-slavery agitation, have only served 
 to increase, embolden, and intensify that agitation." ... "It 
 was so with the Fugitive Slave Bill ; it was so with the Kansas- 
 Nebraska Bill ; and it will be so with this last and most shock- 
 
" IS GOD DEAD ? " 259 
 
 ing of all pro-slavery devices, this Taney decision." . . . 
 " Come what will, I hold it to be morally certain that, sooner or 
 later, by fair means, or foul means, in peace or in blood, in judg- 
 ment or in mercy, slavery is doomed to cease out of this other- 
 wise goodly land, and liberty is destined to become the settled 
 law of this Republic." 
 
 As a justification for this view he appeals to the 
 tendencies of thg age, and the character of the Ameri- 
 can people, and also to the fact that colored people 
 were citizens of several of the States which formed 
 the Constitution, and were therefore entitled to the 
 protection which it confers. He insists on the anti- 
 slavery character of the Constitution, when rightly 
 interpreted, and challenges any one who differs from 
 him to say in what particular that instrument sanc- 
 tions oppression : 
 
 " Where will he find a guarantee for slavery ? Will he find 
 it in the declaration that no person shall be deprived of life, 
 liberty, or property, without due process of law ? Will he find 
 it in the declaration that the Constitution was established to 
 secure the blessings of liberty ? Will he find it in the right of 
 the people to be secure in their persons, and papers, and houses, 
 and effects ? Will he find it in the clause, prohibiting the enact- 
 ment by any State of a bill of attainder ? These all strike at 
 the root of slavery, and any one of them, but faithfully carried 
 out, would put an end to slavery in every State in the Ameri- 
 can Union." 
 
 This speech also contains the only verses of his 
 which I have read ; but they are not so good as his 
 prose. There is power, though, in this line : 
 " The pathway of tyrants lies over volcanoes." 
 
 On August 4, he spoke at Canandaigua, as he had 
 
26o FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 done there ten years and three days before, at the 
 celebration of Emancipation in the West Indies. This 
 speech was published in the same pamphlet with that 
 on the Dred Scott decision. He complains justly 
 that the white people in the United States had never 
 shown any general appreciation of the grandeur of 
 this act, and did not even then appear to care any- 
 thing for the improvement of the morality, intelli- 
 gence, and happiness of the freedman. The only 
 question asked, even at the North, was still, " Did it 
 pay?" He left the task of answering that question 
 to Dr. Garnett, who was on the platform, and himself 
 took the opportunity to give his hearers some timely 
 advice, as follows : 
 
 " I know, my friends, that in some quarters the efforts of col- 
 ored people meet with very little encouragement. We may fight ; 
 but we must fight like the Sepoys of India, under the white 
 officers. This class of Abolitionists don't like colored anti- 
 slavery fairs for the support of colored newspapers. They 
 don't like any demonstrations whatever in which colored men 
 take a leading part. They talk of the proud Anglo-Saxon 
 blood as flippantly as those who profess to believe in the 
 natural inferiority of races.- Your humble speaker has been 
 branded as an ingrate, because he has ventured to stand up on 
 his own right and to plead our common cause as a colored 
 man, rather than as a Garrisonian. I hold it to be no part of 
 gratitude to allow our white friends to do all the work, while 
 we merely hold their coats. Opposition of the sort now re- 
 ferred to, is partisan opposition ; and we need not mind 
 it. The white people at large will not be largely influenced by 
 it. They will see and appreciate all honest efforts on our part 
 to improve our condition as a people. Let me give you a 
 word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the 
 progress of human liberty shows that all concessions, yet made 
 
"is god dead?" 261 
 
 to her augfust claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The 
 conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the 
 time being putting all other tumults to silence. It must do 
 this, or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no prog- 
 ress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate 
 agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the 
 ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They 
 want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. 
 This struggle may be a moral one ; or it may be a physical one ; 
 or it may be both moral and physical ; but it must be a struggle. 
 Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and 
 it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and 
 you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong 
 which will be imposed upon them ; and these will continue till 
 they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. 
 The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those 
 whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, negroes will 
 be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South, so 
 long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no 
 resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they 
 pay for in this world ; but they must certainly pay for all they 
 get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs 
 heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do 
 this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our 
 lives and the lives of others." 
 
 I cannot say precisely what he did in 1858 to justify 
 Miss Assing's statement that he " has spoken for sev- 
 enteen years, but never repeated himself, nor lost his 
 hold upon his audience. In all the North there is no 
 city or village where the announcement of his name 
 will not fill every place in the hall." Neither the 
 woman's cause nor the slave's found in him a luke- 
 warm advocate, however ; and it was in this year 
 that a little magazine, called " Douglass's Monthly," 
 and designed especially for circulation in England, 
 
262 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 made its first appearance. The first number was that 
 for June ; the price was five shillings a year ; and Miss 
 Griffiths, then in England, where she was married to 
 Dr. Crofts, was a valuable contributor. The weekly 
 paper, it may here be added, was merged in the 
 " Monthly " in August, i860. 
 
 The most important events in the life of Douglass 
 in 1858 were not publicly known before October, 
 1859. During the latter part of 1847 he had spent a 
 night in Springfield, Massachusetts, as the guest of 
 John Brown, of whom there is a graphic account in 
 the "Life and Times," (pp. 309-311). The conver- 
 sation which then took place is related thus in an 
 unpublished lecture by Douglass : 
 
 " He touched my vanity at the outset, in this wise : ' I have,' 
 he said, ' been looking over your people during the last twenty 
 years, watching and waiting for heads to rise above the surface, 
 to whom I could safely impart my views and plans. At times 
 I have been most discouraged, but lately I have seen a good 
 many heads popping up, and whenever I see them, I try to put 
 myself in communication with them.' John Brown's plan, as it 
 was then formed in his mind, was very simple, and had much 
 to commend it. It did not, as some suppose, directly contem- 
 plate a general uprising among the slaves, and a general slaugh- 
 ter of the slave-masters, but it did contemplate the creation of an 
 armed force, which should constantly act against slavery in the 
 heart of the South. He called my attention to a large map upon 
 the wall, and pointed out to me the far-reaching AUeghanies, 
 stretching away from New York into the Southern States. 
 ' These mountains,' he said, ' are the basis of ray plan. God 
 has given the strength of these hills to freedom. They were 
 placed here by the Almighty for the emancipation of your race. 
 They are full of natural forts, where one man for defense will 
 be equal to a hundred for attack. They are full of good hiding 
 
"is god dead?" 263 
 
 places, where a large number of brave men could be concealed 
 and for a long time bafHe and elude pursuit. I know these 
 mountains well, and could take a body of men into them, and 
 keep them there, despite all the efforts Virginia could make to 
 dislodge and drive me out of them. My plan, then, is this : to 
 take about twenty-five brave men into those mountains, and 
 begin my work on a small scale, supply them with arms and 
 provisions, and post them in companies of fives on a line of 
 twenty-five miles. These shall for a time busy themselves 
 in gathering recruits from the neighboring farms, seeking and 
 selecting the most daring and restless spirits first.' In this 
 part of the work, he said, the utmost care was to be taken to 
 avoid treachery and discovery. Only the most conscientious 
 and skillful of his men were to be detailed for this perilous 
 duty. With care and enterprise, he thought, he could soon 
 gather a force of one hundred hardy men, who would be con- 
 tent to lead the free and adventurous life to which he proposed 
 to train them. When once properly drilled, and each man had 
 found the place for which he was best suited, they would begin 
 the work in earnest. They would run off the slaves in large 
 numbers. They would retain the strong and brave, and send 
 the weak ones to the North by the underground railroad. His 
 operations would be enlarged with the increasing number of his 
 men, and they would not be confined to one locality. He would 
 approach the slave-holders in some cases at midnight, and tell 
 them they must give up their slaves, and also let them have 
 their best horses upon which to ride away. Slavery, he said, 
 was a state of war, in which the slaves were unwilling parties, 
 and that they, therefore, had a right to anything necessary to 
 their peace and freedom. He would shed no blood, and would 
 avoid a fight, except when he could not escape from it and was 
 compelled to do it in self-defense. He would then, of course, 
 do his best. This movement, he said, would weaken slavery in 
 two ways. First, by making slave property insecure, it would 
 make such property undesirable. Secondly ,'it would keep the 
 anti-slavery agitation alive, and public attention fixed upon the 
 subject, and thus finally lead to the adoption of measures for 
 
264 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 abolishing the slave system altogether. He held that the anti- 
 slavery agitation was in danger of dying out, and' that it needed 
 some such startling measures,-as he proposed, to keep it alive 
 and effective. Slavery, he said, had nearly been abolished in 
 Virginia by the Nat. Turner insurrection ; and he thought' his 
 plan of operation would speedily abolish it in both Maryland 
 and Virginia. He said his trouble was to get the right kind of 
 men with which to begin the work, and the means necessary 
 to equip them. And here he explained the reason for his sim- 
 ple mode of living, his plain dress, his leather stock. He had 
 adopted this economy in order to save money with which to 
 arm and equip men to carry out his plan of liberation. This 
 was said by him in no boastful terms; On the contrary, he said 
 he had already delayed his work too long, and that he had no 
 room to boast either his zeal or his self-denial. From eight 
 o'clock in the evening till three o'clock in the morning. Captain 
 John Brown and I sat face to face, he arguing in favor of his 
 plan, and I finding all the objections I could against it. Now 
 mark ! This conversation took place fully twelve years before 
 the blow was struck at Harper's Ferry, and his plan was even 
 then more than twenty years old. He had, therefore, been 
 watching and waiting all these years for suitable heads to rise 
 up, or ' pop up,' to use his expression, among the sable millions, 
 to whom he could safely confide his plan, and thus nearly forty 
 years had passed between this man's thoughts and his act." 
 
 One of the objections then made by Douglass 
 seems very shrewd, namely, that it would be difficult 
 for the band to find provisions. A somewhat similar 
 attempt, made in the Alps by JDolcino, during the 
 Middle Ages, failed from just this cause. The fa- 
 natics cut all who first met them to pieces ; but they 
 could not collect food enough to save themselves 
 from being ultimately so reduced by starvation, as to 
 fall an easy prey. This would, I fear, have been the 
 fate of John Brown, if he had not been crushed by 
 
"is god dead?" 265 
 
 superior numbers at once, as actually took place. 
 The plan which he finally adopted was far worse than 
 the original one ; but I do not think that he would, 
 under any circumstances, have been able to gather 
 recruits among the slaves fast enough to prevent be- 
 ing captured by the masters ; and if he had succeeded 
 in making his mountain-camp strong enough to resist 
 all other enemies, he would certainly have been con- 
 quered by famine. It is by no means strange that 
 Brown and other Northerners, who judged of the 
 slaves mainly from fugitives like Douglass and 
 Craft, imagined they would be more willing to rise in 
 revolt than proved to be the case, either at Harper's 
 Ferry or during the war ; but Douglass himself must 
 have understood the temper of the men among whom 
 he had been brought up. I suspect that in his relations 
 with Brown, as well as those previously with O'Con- 
 nell, and afterwards with Butler, he allowed his sym- 
 pathy with a benefactor of his race to carry him 
 beyond what would have been approved by his own 
 impartial judgment. 
 
 One of Brown's objects,' it should be remembered, 
 was to increase the agitation about slavery ; and this 
 was much more desirable in 1847 than in 1859. 
 Almost anything would have been allowable to 
 arouse the North, while it remained in apathy ; but the 
 aggressions of the South had, before 1859, stirred up 
 so much opposition as to make nothing more neces- 
 sary than that the Republican President should be 
 elected by an overwhelming majority, and that any 
 attempt at secession should be put down by a united 
 North. That no such attempt as was first planned, 
 or ultimately made, by John Brown could then have 
 
266 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 promoted the attainment of these objects will, I hope, 
 be plain enough as we go on. Let me only add that 
 I go thus fully into the matter, because it is due to 
 Mr. Douglass that he should be freed from blame 
 which has been cast upon him, for not going to Har- 
 per's Ferry. 
 
 He did assent to the original plan, proposed by a 
 man, " whose mission seemed to him the only apology 
 for his existence," and whose conviction was that 
 " He had no better use for his life." "I have talked 
 with many men upon the subject of slavery," says our 
 lecturer, " but I remember no one who seemed so 
 deeply excited upon that subject as Captain John 
 Brown. He would walk the room with agitation at 
 the mention of slavery. He saw the evil through no 
 mist, haze, or clouds, but in a broad light of infinite 
 brightness, which left no line of its ten thousand 
 horrors out of sight." ... " His zeal in the cause of 
 freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was 
 as the taper light : his was as the burning sun. Mine 
 was bounded by time : his stretched away to the 
 silent shores of eternity. I could speak for the slave : 
 John Brown could fight for the slave. I could live 
 for the slave : John Brown could die for the slave." 
 
 " I not only did not aspire to the crown of martyr- 
 dom ; but I never prompted such aspirations on his 
 part," adds Mr. Douglass. He was much more fully 
 in sympathy with the struggle in Kansas, and often 
 got up public meetings which sent out money to help 
 Captain Brown fight against border-ruffians. Their 
 defeat made it possible for the hero to get the men 
 and money he needed for Virginia ; and in January, 
 1858, he came to his friend in Rochester, and told 
 
" IS GOD DEAD ? " 267 
 
 him that he wanted to spend several weeks with him, 
 but would not stop unless he could be allowed to pay 
 board. Douglass was glad to have him there, but 
 had to take him on his ow^n terms. There he stayed 
 until late in February, employing part of his time in 
 making out a constitution for the mountain-camp, 
 and part in writing letters to Gerrit Smith, Mr. 
 George L. Stearns, of Boston, and other friendly Abol- 
 itionists. His men were already drilling in Iowa ; 
 but he was in urgent need of money. He spoke now 
 and then of the government arsenal at Harper's Ferry 
 as a place where he could get weapons ; but he 
 seemed much more intent on plans for fortifications 
 in the Alleghanies. He had so much to say about 
 his plans, that they soon ceased to interest any one in 
 the house, except the children, one of whom now 
 says : " The sun seemed to rise and set to me in John 
 Brown." 
 
 From Rochester he went to Peterboro, where he 
 met Gerrit Smith, Mr. Sanborn, and Mr. Morton, on 
 February 22. His friends tried to shake his purpose, 
 but found him bent upon it, and finally concluded 
 that, as the attempt would probably be made at all 
 events, they had better have it a success. Stearns, 
 Parker, Dr. Howe, and Higginson were of the same 
 opinion in Boston ; but Brown could get nothing 
 more than a positive refusal out of Phillips and Garri- 
 son ; and these latter seem to me to have taken the 
 wisest and kindest course. From Boston the Captain 
 went on to Philadelphia, where, on March 10, he 
 met several leaders of the colored people, including 
 Douglass, who had, I presume, made an engagement 
 to lecture as a pretext for the journey. That winter. 
 
268 FREDERICK. COUGLASS. 
 
 Brown led the most successful of his many expedi- 
 tions, that which set free eleven slaves in Missouri 
 and carried them to Canada. On July 4, 1859, he w^s 
 at Harper's Ferry, where he hired the farm to which 
 his men and weapons were soon brought. 
 
 Douglass, meantime, had been hard at work as 
 editor and lecturer. That spring he spoke in about 
 twenty cities in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. 
 A reception was given him, on February i, in 
 Chicago, where he told about " Self-made Men ; " and 
 his whole trip was a pleasant one, except at Janes- 
 ville. There he and the two colored men who accom- 
 panied him were put at a table by themselves, in full 
 view of all the rowdies in the bar-room. Douglass 
 soon said, loud enough to be heard by all the crowd, 
 that he had. made a great discovery in the stable. 
 " I saw black and white horses eating there in peace, 
 out of the same trough ; and I infer that the horses 
 in Janesville are more civilized than the people." 
 The by-standers laughed good-naturedly ; and there 
 was no color-line across that dining-room afterwards. 
 
 May 12, 1859, we find him delivering a eulogy on 
 Judge William Jay, an early advocate of immediate 
 emancipation in the District of Columbia. This ad- 
 dress, which was prepared by the invitation of the 
 colored citizens of New York City, was printed that' 
 year in pamphlet form, and seems to me his most 
 scholarly production. The amount of information is 
 ample and the arrangement judicious, while the ele- 
 vation of the author's views at this time appears in 
 the following passage : 
 
 " The subject of slavery is an exciting one. Oppression is 
 apt even to make a wise man mad. The bare relation of 
 
" IS GOD DEAD ?" 269 
 
 master and slave, unaccompanied by its grosser manifestations 
 of ignorance, depravity, cruelty, and blood, shocks and stuns the 
 mind by its deformity. O'Connell used to say, that when he 
 first heard the idea of property in man, it sounded to him as if 
 some one was stamping upon the grave of his mother. The very 
 thought chills the blood in the veins of the strong man, and 
 stirs a fever in the blood of the age. The heart becomes sick 
 and the spirit frantic with horror over its brutal atrocities and 
 crimes. In writing upon a system of such boundless and start- 
 ling enormity, where the wildest fancy is overmatched by the 
 terrible reality, it is not easy to steer clear of exaggeration in 
 individual cases. Some extravagance may, indeed be looked 
 for and excused in treating of such a subject ; but such extrava- 
 gance will be looked for in vain in the writings of Judge Jay on 
 slavery. As a writer that can be said of him, which can be 
 said of but few reformatory writers in any age : he not only re- 
 lied implicitly upon and believed in the simple, undistorted 
 truth, as the safest and best means of accomplishing his benev- 
 olent purposes, but was never, to the knowledge of any, tempted 
 or driven by eager anxiety for immediate results into distor- 
 tion or exaggeration. He had an earnest heart. It was al- 
 ways alive with the fires of justice and liberty ; but with all, 
 he possessed that accurate and well-balanced judgment which 
 controlled and directed wisely and discreetly all his writings on 
 the subject of slavery. No fact, no statement of Judge Jay, 
 how fiercely soever his opini;-ns may have been combated, has 
 ever been called in question." . . . 
 
 Douglass spoke this year on the anniversary of 
 emancipation in the West Indies, at Geneva, New 
 York, in company with Dr. Cheever, whose attempt 
 to start a movement within the Church against slav- 
 ery, was cordially praised in "Douglass's Monthly." 
 A few days later came a summons which brought 
 Douglass to his last meeting with John Brown, on 
 Saturday, August 20, It was, as the lecturer says : 
 
270 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 " In an old stone quarry on the Conecochege, near the town 
 of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. His arms and ammunition 
 were stored in that town, and were to be moved on the night 
 of our meeting to Harper's Ferry. In company with Shields 
 Green, I obeyed the summons. Prompt to the hour we met the 
 old Captain at the appointed time and place. He was accom- 
 panied by Mr. Kagai, his secretary. Our meeting was, in some 
 sense, a council of war. Until that night I did not know that 
 Captain Brown meant to depart from his old plan, already 
 explained. We spent that night and the succeeding Sunday 
 in conference on the question, whether the meditated blow at 
 Harper's Ferry should be struck, or whether the old plan before 
 described should be the one pursued. Captain Brown was for 
 boldly striking Harper's Ferry at once, and running the risk of 
 getting into the mountains afterward. Shields Green, who 
 had come down with me, and Mr. Kagai remained silent and 
 continued listeners to the discussion throughout, never ventur- 
 ing a word. It is needless to repeat here what was said — after 
 what has happened. Suffice it to say that, notwithstanding all 
 I could urge, my old friend Brown had resolved upon his course ; 
 and it was idle to parley longer. I told him at last, that he was 
 going into a steel trap, and that it was impossible for me to 
 join him. He regretted my decision ; and we parted, he going 
 to Harper's Ferry, and I going to Rochester. Thus far I have 
 spoken exclusively of Captain Brown. Let me say a word now 
 of his brave and devoted followers. Time fails me to do more 
 than this. And first, a word of Shields Green, the young man 
 who accompanied me to meet John Brown in the old stone 
 quarry at Chambersburg. This man was, at that time, only a 
 year from slavery in South Carolina. His love of liberty and 
 hatred of slavery were attested by his escape frorfi Charleston, 
 and finding his way through innumerable dangers, to Rochester, 
 where he lived in my family, and where he met the man with 
 whom he bravely went to the scaffold. I said to him, when 
 about to leave Captain Brown, ' Now, Shields, you have heard 
 our discussion. If, in view of it, you do not wish to go to Har- 
 per's Ferry, you have but to say so, and you may go back with 
 
" IS GOD DEAD?" 27 1 
 
 me to Rochester.' He answered ; ' I believe I will go with 
 the old man ; ' and go with the old man he did, and bore him- 
 self as bravely and grandly as any of the number. He went 
 with him into the fight, and to the gallows, without a murmur. 
 When Captain Brown was surrounded and at the mercy of the 
 enemy, and all chances of escape were cut off, this man. 
 Green, was already free and abroad in the mountains, with 
 Osborn Anderson, and could, like Anderson, have made his 
 escape. When asked to do so, however, he said, ' No ! I will 
 go down to the old man.' When in prison in Charleston, he 
 could not see his old friend, but to those who spoke to him of 
 the trouble brought upon him, he repeatedly said, ' I have no 
 complaint to make against the old man.' If a monument is 
 erected to John Brown, and one ought to be, the name and fig- 
 ure of Shields Green should have a conspicuous place upon 
 that monument, for he was true to the 'old man,' when his cause 
 was most desperate, and in the face of a death upon the gal- 
 lows." 
 
 We also read that, at parting, John Brown " put 
 his arms around me, in a manner more than friendly, 
 and said : ' Come with me, Douglass, I will defend 
 you with my life. I want you for a special purpose. 
 When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm ; and I 
 shall want you to help me hive them.' " He had 
 already insisted that " The capture of Harper's Ferry 
 would serve as notice to the slaves, that their friends 
 had come, and as a trumpet to rally them to his 
 standard." One of the prisoners, confined by him 
 in the armory. Captain Dangerfield, says he was sure 
 that " by twelve o'clock he would have fifteen hun- 
 dred men with him, ready armed." He stated him- 
 self during the examination by Governor Wise, the 
 day after his capture, that, " He confidently expected 
 large reinforcements." Writers have wondered why 
 
272 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 he Stayed at Harper's Ferry for twelve hours after 
 taking the town, with his forces badly scattered, and 
 without making any preparations for a retreat. It 
 has also been asked, why he was thereat all,- espe- 
 cially as the mountains in the neighborhood are not 
 particularly fit for guerrilla warfare. The best ex- 
 planation, I think, is that he thought this stroke 
 would set the bees swarming ; and he was waiting to 
 hive them. Alas, few bees would quit the old hive ; 
 and when great swarms did darken the sky, they 
 were furious wasps and deadly hornets. 
 
 His heroism in the fight and the prison, at the trial 
 and on the scaffold, are beyond all praise. No man 
 ever died more nobly. But morality is no respecter 
 of persons. Her authority ought not to be thrust 
 aside in order to set up heroes for worship. Just 
 before the anarchists were hung at Chicago, I was 
 urged to defend their conduct, and told that they 
 were no worse than John Brown, and every one ap- 
 proved of what he did. Let us see what was thought 
 of it at the time. Mrs. Child wrote to Governor 
 Wise, that no one in her " large circle of abolition 
 acquaintances " expected the attack on Harper's 
 Ferry ; " nor do I know of a single person who would 
 have approved of it." Garrison pronounced it " well 
 intended, but sadly misguided." Whittier spoke, 
 after the execution, of the " guilty means " and " the 
 folly which seeks through evil, good." The "Inde- 
 pendent " called John Brown "a lawless brigand." 
 The " New York Tribune's " opinion about him and his 
 companions was that : " They dared and died for 
 what they felt to be the right, though in a manner 
 that seems to us fatally wrong." This was said at 
 
" IS GOD DEAD ? " 
 
 273 
 
 the first ; and an editorial after the execution runs 
 thus : " Of course, we regard Brown's raid as utterly 
 mistaken, and in its direct consequences pernicious," 
 " a wrong way to rid his country of the curse," etc. 
 Henry Wilson wrote at this time to the " Liberator," 
 from Natick, in reply to Henry G. Wright, that : 
 
 " Pending the recent election in New York, I addressed thou- 
 sands of people in Brooklyn, Syracuse, Rome, Watertown, 
 Auburn, Geneva, and other places, and during the canvass of 
 two weeks everywhere expressed my ' regret and condemna- 
 tion ' of his armed invasion of Virginia ; and, during that time, 
 I conversed with no one who did not regret and deplore it. 
 And in this State, and in this town, where you declare the peo- 
 ple approve of Brown's lawless act, I have met few, very few 
 indeed, who approve that act. My conviction is that, while the 
 people of Massachusetts are nearly unanimous in their sympa- 
 thy for the fate of Brown, and in their admiration of his per- 
 sonal heroism, they are quite unanimous in their regret and 
 condemnation of his lawless raid at Harper's Ferry." 
 
 Wilson stated afterward, in his " History of the 
 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power" (Vol. ii, p. 587), 
 that " Anti-slavery men generally regretted and con- 
 demned the invasion." The Republican platform of 
 i860 declares that, " We denounce the lawless invasion 
 by armed force of the soil of any _State or Territory, 
 no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest 
 of crimes;" and the candidate, Abraham Lincoln, 
 said, in his famous Cooper Institute speech, that the 
 Harper's Ferry affair " corresponds with the many 
 attempts related in history at the assassination of 
 kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the 
 oppression of a people, till he fancies himself com- 
 missioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures 
 
2 74 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 the attempt, which ends in little else than his own 
 execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and 
 John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their 
 philosophy, precisely the same." John Brown gave 
 up his life gladly in hope of freeing the oppressed ; 
 so did the men who slew the Czar, Alexander II. He 
 thought he was doing God service ; and Paul thought 
 the same while he was persecuting Christianity. 
 Persecutors have usually fancied themselves in the 
 right, but they have always been in the wrong ; the 
 motives of the revolutionist are nobler than those of the 
 persecutor, but no individual motives have as high 
 authority as the eternal and universal principles of 
 morality. It is b)'^ the standard of these principles that 
 we must judge whether it was right or wrong to set 
 peaceable citizens of our country in deadly conflict 
 amongthemselvesand finally against our government's 
 soldiers, to slay an unarmed colored man for trying 
 to give the alarm, and to sacrifice twenty-five other 
 victims. Who can tell how many happy homes would 
 have been made desolate, if John Brown could have 
 had any part of the success he expected ? His attempt 
 is all the less excusable, because it was made at a 
 time when the interest of the anti-slavery cause de- 
 manded that nothing should be done to repel the 
 crowds of new recruits, who had hitherto been neu- 
 tral or hostile, and that no occasion should be given 
 for pretending that Abolitionism was dangerous to 
 the country's permanent peace and welfare. Nothing 
 could have better suited the purpose, either of the 
 Northerners who were hoping to defeat the anti-slav- 
 ery candidates, or of the Southerners who were plot- 
 ting secession. The John Brown pike was never flour- 
 
"is god dead?" 275 
 
 ished so vigorously as by Democratic stump-speakers. 
 Meeting after meeting of the Abolitionists was broken 
 up by such mobs as had not been met there since 
 1850. Emerson was silenced in Boston for opinions 
 which had already caused the withdrawal of an in- 
 vitation to lecture in Philadelphia. How Douglass 
 and Sanborn suffered will have to be told more at 
 length. Among other results of the Harper's Ferry 
 tragedy were the expulsion of Northern business men 
 by the dozen from Southern cities, and the with- 
 drawal of Southern students by the hundred from 
 Northern schools and colleges. What sympathy was 
 expressed for John Brown served to bring undeserved 
 blame upon the champions against slavery, and to 
 exasperate their enemies. The elections in the fall 
 of 1859, and the spring of i860, showed a serious check 
 in the growth of the party by which slavery was to 
 be abolished. 
 
 One of John Brown's many mistakes was his leaving 
 for capture by the Virginians, at the farm-house 
 where he had been living, a carpet-bag containing 
 letters implicating his Northern friends, and among 
 them was Douglass, who says that, " When that bag 
 was opened, there we were all sprawling." He had 
 gone to Philadelphia to lecture ; and he hurried by 
 night to Hoboken, where Miss Assing telegraphed to his 
 son to secure his papers. It was not safe for him to 
 take a train in New York City, but he was driven over 
 to Patterson, a station on the Erie Railroad ; and thus 
 he was able to return to Rochester in disguise. 
 Scarcely had he entered his house, when his friends 
 urged him to go to Canada, lest there should be a 
 bloody conflict in his defense against the officers of 
 
276 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 the law. Buchanan's marshals are said to have been 
 in Rochester within six hours after he left ; and Gov- 
 ernor Wise made requisition on the executive, not 
 only of New York but also of Michigan, where he 
 hoped to be able to find his pre);-, and make the cap- 
 ture by means of agents who professed to be traveling 
 in the interest of the Post-office Department. How 
 thoroughly in earnest he was, may be judged from a 
 speech which he made in Richmond, on December 21, 
 at a reception given to two hundred medical students, 
 who had just left the school at Philadelphia. The 
 applause was tremendous as he said : 
 
 " Oh if I had had one good, long, low, black, rakish, well- 
 armed steamer in Hampton Roads, I would have placed her 
 on the Newfoundland Banks, with orders, if she found a British 
 packet with that negro on board, to take him. And by the 
 eternal gods he should have been taken — taken with very par- 
 ticular instructions not to hang him before I had the privilege 
 of seeing him well hung." 
 
 Such was the danger which Douglass escaped by 
 going to England. He took the steamer at Quebec, 
 on November 12 ; and the place which he was to have 
 occupied as a lecturer in the Parker Fraternity Course 
 in Boston, had to be filled by Thoreau. who spoke 
 enthusiastically of John Brown. 
 
 The passage across the ocean occupied fourteen 
 stormy days ; and the fugitive feared that he was 
 going into life-long exile. John Brown's attack on 
 the slave-power showed that it held full possession of 
 the national government, as it seemed likely to do for 
 years to come. Public opinion was so much against 
 the Abolitionists, that scarcely any one could see how 
 
"IS GOD DEAD?" 277 
 
 brief would be the time, before they would have full 
 justice. England was much more eager than Amer- 
 ica to hear about Harper's Ferry ; and our lecturer 
 found himself in great demand. On giving an account 
 of the affair at Newcastle, on February 23, i860, he de- 
 clared that " Slavery might be put down by honestly 
 carrying out the provisions of the Constitution." 
 This great charter was then assailed as pro-slavery 
 by George Thompson, in Glasgow, where Douglass 
 replied on March 26, with arguments already quoted. 
 He desired at this time to visit France ; but the Amer- 
 ican minister, Dallas, who had been Vice-President, 
 refused his application for a passport, and told him 
 that he was not a citizen of the United States. The 
 French minister at London granted a permit at once. 
 Before the visit could be made news came of the 
 death, on March 13, ''of my beloved daughter, Annie, 
 the light and life of my house." 
 
 The bereaved father returned at once, and found 
 that he was in no particular danger at the North, 
 where there had been a great change in public opin- 
 ion about Harper's Ferry. The John Brown song 
 was now sung in all the free States ; and anti-slavery 
 men were busy organizing the campaign in which 
 they were to elect their President. The South hated 
 the Abolitionists as bitterly as ever, and there was an 
 armed riot at Knoxville, Tennessee, against a colored 
 man, who was supposed to be Frederick Douglass. 
 No notice of his return was taken, however, either by 
 Wise or Buchanan. On August i, i860, he spoke at 
 Geneva, New York, as he had done the year before. 
 The Republicans had already adopted a platform 
 which was sufficiently outspoken about the refusal to 
 
278 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 admit Kansas, the slave-trade, the Dred Scott decision, 
 and the other attempts to carry slavery into the ter- 
 ritories. John Brown was censured, as we have seen ; 
 and nothing was said about the Fugitive Slave Bill, 
 or the abolition of slavery, not even in the District of 
 Columbia. Lincoln owed his nomination largely 
 to not having gone so far in opposition to slavery as 
 Seward ; and the spirit of the convention was so cau- 
 tious as to cause Giddings to retire in disgust. 
 Douglass pronounced this convention even more un- 
 satisfactory than that of 1856, and joined with others 
 of the Radical Political Abolitionists in nominating 
 Gerrit Smith, for President. The little band soon 
 received an important ally. Stephen S. Foster had 
 been for more than twenty years denouncing all 
 churches and parties with a vigor which had made 
 him suffer more persecutions than any other of the 
 Abolitionists. His influence among the Garrisonians 
 had been nearly equal to that of the leader whose 
 name they bore. The old Berserker now made his 
 first appearance as a politician, and, I think, his last 
 one. He actually started a movement which held a 
 convention at Worcester, on September 19 and 20, in 
 order " to organize a political party upon an anti- 
 slavery interpretation of the Constitution, with the 
 avowed purpose of abolishing slavery in the States as 
 well as the territories." Garrison called the whole 
 business " a farce," and Phillips " a nuisance." Lucy 
 Stone and Higginson spoke at Worcester, but in 
 opposition to Foster ; and his only supporter of much 
 importance was Douglass, who succeeded in carrying 
 a resolution endorsing the nomination of Gerrit 
 Smith. His language about the Garrisonians seems 
 
"is god dead?" 279 
 
 to have been misunderstood ; and he gave an account 
 of his speech as follows, in the " Liberator," for Octo- 
 ber 26 : 
 
 " My objection to the American Anti-Slavery Society respected 
 its plan, not its life. So far from working for the annihilation 
 of that Society, I never failed, even in the worst times of my 
 controversy with it, to recognize that organization as the most 
 efficient generator of anti-slavery sentiment in the country." 
 . . . What had I said ? Why ; in substance this : That 
 the plan of operation adopted by the American Anti-Slavery 
 Society did not embrace the abolition of slavery by means of 
 the government, and that the Radical Abolition party was the 
 only organization which proposed such abolition. This is what 
 I said, and meant to say.'' 
 
 At the very time he wrote this letter, he received 
 one containing a proposition which I copy literally : 
 
 " I have been informed that you had an onely daughter, and 
 that you desire her to marry a whight man ; whereupon you 
 giv $1 5,000 or $20,000 dollars to any respectabl whight man 
 that would marry her and cherish her through life. If there is 
 any truth in this report, P. S. let me know and I will marry 
 your daughter on these conditions, and will endeavor to make 
 myself, agreeable." 
 
 Douglass, in reply, remarks, that a man who was a 
 total stranger, ought to have given at least one refer- 
 ence, and then says : 
 
 " You date from Auburn, and tell me to direct to Auburn, 
 but do not name the street. Pardon me for regarding this as 
 a suspicious circumstance. You may be an inmate of the State 
 Prison, or on your way there, a fact which, you see, would in- 
 terfere with the fulfillment of your part of the proposed bargain, 
 even if I could fulfill the part you assign to me. You want 
 $1 S.ooo or $20,000. This is a common want ; and you are not 
 
28o FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 to blame for using all- honorable means to obtain it. But candor 
 requires me to state, that if you were in every respect a suitable 
 person to be bought for the purpose you name, I have not the 
 money to buy you. I have no objection to your complexion ; 
 but there are certain little faults of grammar and spelling as well 
 as other little points in your letter, which compel me to regard 
 you as a person, by education, manners, and morals, wholly unfit 
 to associate with my daughter in any capacity whatever. You 
 evidently think your white skin of great value. I don't dispute 
 it : it is probably the best thing about you. Yet not even that 
 valuable quality can commend you sufficiently to induce even 
 so black a negro as myself to accept you as his son-in-law." 
 
 I presume it was about this time that Mrs. Doug- 
 lass had occasion to engage a servant, and said to her : 
 " I hope you have no prejudices about color. I have 
 none myself." 
 
 Even friendship for Gerrit Smith did not prevent 
 Douglass from finally deciding to do what he could, 
 in his " Monthly " and on the platform, to elect 
 Lincoln ; and he then threw himself into the contest 
 " with firmer faith and more ardent hope than ever 
 before." 
 
 The triumph of the Republicans provoked a move- 
 ment toward secession ; and conservative people in 
 the North were hoping to avert the danger by new 
 compromises, when an Abolitionist meeting " to mark 
 the anniversary of the Martyrdom of John Brown," 
 was summoned to meet on December 3, in Tremont 
 Temple, Boston. F. B. Sanborn was about to take 
 the chair, when some well-dressed men, who wished 
 to break up the meeting, insisted on having their own 
 leader, a Mr. Fay, made president. This man pro- 
 ceeded to read resolutions denouncing John Brown, 
 but had some trouble, either with his voice or his 
 
"is god dead?" 281 
 
 conscience, whereupon a glass oif water was handed 
 him by Douglass, who said, " If thine enemy thirst, 
 give him drink." He was to have been the orator of 
 the day, and he insisted on his right to the floor. At 
 length he got a chance to say, amid constant inter- 
 ruption : 
 
 " This is one of the most impudent, barefaced outrages on 
 free speech I ever witnessed in Boston or elsewhere. I can 
 make myself heard. I know your masters. I have served the 
 same master that you are serving. You are in the service of 
 the slave-holders. The freedom of all mankind was written 
 upon the heart by the finger of God. It is said that the best 
 way to abolish slavery is to obey the law. Shall we obey the 
 blood-hounds of the law, who do the dirty work of the slave- 
 catchers ? If so then you are fit for your work. Mr. Norris, of 
 New Hampshire asked Wade, of Ohio, in the Senate of the 
 United States, if he would render his personal assistance to the 
 execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill ; and that noble-hearted 
 
 man and Christian gentleman replied ' I will see you d d 
 
 first.' Sir, there is a law which we are bound to obey, and the 
 Abolitionists are most prompt to obey it. It is that law written 
 in the Constitution of the United States, which includes all 
 colors." 
 
 Here there was a long disturbance, ending with g 
 cry of " Go on, nigger ! " " If I were a slave-driver," 
 said Douglass, " and had hold of that man for five 
 minutes, I would let more daylight through his skin 
 than ever got there before." " He has said the truth," 
 interposed Fay; " for a negro slave-drivei is the most 
 cruel in the world." "Yes," said Douglass, "just as 
 a northern dough-face is more contemptible than a 
 southern slave-holder." Here the meeting was 
 thoroughly broken up, but it was finally reorganized 
 with another friend of the South, named Howe, in the 
 
282 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 chair. Douglass tried repeatedly to speak, but was 
 interrupted by cheer after cheer, sometimes for the 
 Union, sometimes for himself, and sometimes for South 
 Carolina. He called himself for three cheers for 
 liberty ; and they were given unanimously ; but three 
 more followed for Governor Wise, who had threatened 
 to hang him, as he did John Brown. At last his at- 
 tempt to prevent his chair from being taken away for 
 Mr. Howe brought about so much confusion that the 
 hall was cleared by the police. 
 
 The next Sunday he gave his lecture on " Self- 
 Made Men " before Theodore Parker's Society in the 
 Music Hall, and before he closed, he said : 
 
 " The mortifying and disgraceful fact stares us in the face, 
 that though Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill Monument stand, free- 
 dom of speech is struck down.'' ..." Even here in Boston, 
 and among the friends of freedom, we hear two voices, one 
 denouncing the mob that broke up our meeting on Monday 
 as a base and cowardly outrage, and another deprecating and 
 regretting the holding of such a meeting by such men at such 
 a time. We are told that the meeting was ill-timed, and the 
 parties to it unwise. Why, what is the matter with us ? Are 
 we going to palliate and excuse a palpable and flagrant outrage 
 on the right of speech, by implying that only a particular 
 description of person should exercise that right ? Are we at 
 such a time, when a great principle has been struck down, to 
 quench the moral indignation which the deed excites by casting 
 reflections upon those on whose persons the outrage has been 
 committed .' After all the arguments for liberty to which Boston 
 has listened for more than a quarter of a century, has she yet 
 to learn that the time to assert a right is when that right is 
 called in question, and that the men of all others to assert it are 
 the men to whom the right has been denied ? " 
 
 Similar outrages took place soon after at the Janu- 
 
" IS GOD DEAD?" 283 
 
 ary meeting of the M. A. S. S., and at other anti-slav- 
 sry conventions, for instance at Syracuse, and at 
 Albany, where Douglass was in serious danger, 
 and the Mayor had to call out the militia. John 
 Brown had given the North two songs, one saying 
 that his soul was marching on, and another, which I 
 heard sung in Boston by rioters, who would not let 
 Emerson speak, and which spoke thus of the anti- 
 slavery governor of Massachusetts : 
 
 " Tell John A. Andrew, John Brown 's dead ! " 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 UNION FOREVER ! 
 
 State after State was now seceding, to the open 
 delight, not only of Phillips and Garrison but of 
 Beecher and James Freeman Clark. Here, as well as 
 in canonizing John Brown, the Abolitionists naturally 
 made themselves obnoxious to the great majority of 
 Northerners, who were determined that the Union 
 should be preserved and the laws enforced. The 
 loyalty, which hissed at disunionism in the North, 
 soon found itself much better employed in shooting 
 at it in the South. The capture of Fort Sumter 
 brought about a great popular uprising, in which all 
 differences between Republican and Democrat, 
 Unionist and Abolitionist disappeared. The North 
 was united at last against the slave-holders f and the 
 end of slavery was near. 
 
 Douglass had tried, in the April number of his 
 " Monthly," to convince other Abolitionists, that disso- 
 lution of the Union would not help their cause. He 
 was preparing to sail on the 25th of that month to 
 Hayti, in whose condition he has always taken great 
 interest. But when the great news came, he gave up 
 the trip. His May number came out with the figures 
 of the American eagle and the star-spangled banner, 
 placed at the head of the first column, and accom- 
 panied by the motto, " Freedom for all, or Chains for 
 284 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 285 
 
 all." Even then he told the colored men to form 
 militia companies at once, and make ready to obey 
 the summons to enlist. He spoke in favor of the war 
 on April 27, in Rochester, and often afterward in vari- 
 ous parts of the North. He warned his hearers from 
 the first, that the contest would be long and bloody. 
 In his " Monthly " for October he says : " Our first 
 business is to save our Government from destruction." 
 He felt satisfied from first to last, that the mission of 
 the war was not only the salvation of the Union, but the 
 liberation of the slave ; though he " trusted less to 
 the virtue of the North than to the villany of the 
 South." 
 
 He was not repelled either by the outrages upon 
 fugitives to Union camps, or by occasional insults to 
 himself. When he was announced to lecture m Syra- 
 cuse on Thursday, November 14, on " The Rebellion, 
 its Cause and its Remedy," placards were posted up, 
 headed, "Nigger Fred Coming," and evidently meant 
 to stir up a mob against " This reviler of the Consti- 
 tution," " Traitor to his country," and " Arch-fugitive 
 to Europe." The Mayor called out not only the 
 entire police force, but also seventy special officers 
 and forty-five cadets with bayonets. There was no 
 disturbance either that night or the next, when Doug- 
 lass delivered a lecture which was repeated that win- 
 ter in Boston, in the Parker Fraternity Course, and 
 entitled " Life Pictures." 
 
 Early in the year 1862 he gave a lecture in the 
 Music Hall, Boston, in a course arranged by the 
 Emancipation League, recently formed to agitate for 
 abolition as a military necessity. Among the other 
 speakers were Conway,Greeley, Boutwell, and Phillips. 
 
286 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Douglass was also employed for some weeks by the 
 League as a lecturer in various parts of New England. 
 The tenor of his remarks is shown in an address, which 
 was given on January 14, in Philadelphia, and began 
 thus : " He is the best friend of his country, who at 
 this tremendous crisis dares to tell his country-men 
 the truth, however disagreeable that truth maybe." He 
 then spoke of the duty of the North to arm its strong, 
 black hand, as well as its soft, white one, against 
 the rebels. He added : " I believed ten years ago, that 
 liberty was safer in the Union than out of the Union ; 
 but my Garrisonian friends could not see it, and in 
 consequence dealt me some heavy blows. My crime 
 was in being ten years in advance of them." He 
 ended by saying : " I am for the war, for the Union, 
 in any and every event." 
 
 On February 12, he made this protest in the Cooper 
 Institute, against the talk about sending his people 
 back to Africa : 
 
 " For a nation to drive away its laboring population is to 
 commit political suicide." ..." It is affirmed that the 
 negro, if emancipated, could not take care of himself. My 
 answer to this is, let him have a fair chance to try it. For two 
 hundred years he has taken care of himself and his master into 
 the bargain." 
 
 "Douglass's Monthly" was now published mainly 
 for American readers, at the price of $1 a year, but 
 still had agents in Great Britain. The reading mat- 
 ter was almost entirely about the war ; but the last of 
 the sixteen pages was regularly occupied with circu- 
 lars designed to encourage emigration to Hayti. In 
 the number for May, 1862, however, the editor spoke 
 with regret of a petition of colored people in Wash- 
 
UNION forever! 287 
 
 ington for aid to form colonies in Central America, 
 and declared that " The estimate which shall be 
 formed of the negro, and the place which he shall 
 hold in the world's esteem, is to be decided here." 
 . . . "The colored race never can be respected 
 anywhere, till they are respected in America." " The 
 true policy of the colored American is to make him- 
 self, in every way open to him, an American citizen, 
 bearing with proscription and insult till these things 
 disappear." The leading topic in the " Monthly " 
 this summer was the duty of allowing the negro to 
 fight in his own cause ; much is said about what had 
 been done by colored soldiers under Jackson and 
 Washington ; and the progress of the first experiment 
 in South Carolina is recounted with eager interest. 
 
 The expectation that the Union would be restored 
 by a single battle was wofuUy disappointed ; our 
 progress during the first year was slight ; the repulse 
 of our best army before Richmond, in June, 1862, 
 showed the Confederacy to be still formidable ; and 
 the North was so unwilling to free the slaves, as to 
 give rise to fears that peace might yet be made at 
 their expense. Such was the state of things when 
 Douglass gave a Fourth of July oration at Himrod's 
 Corners, a village in Western New York, which then 
 consisted, he says, of " two taverns, one church, six 
 neat, little cottages, one store, a huge pile of sawed 
 wood for railroad purposes, and a celebration." An 
 audience of two thousand people was soon collected 
 in a pine grove, where he told them that all talk 
 about the war's having any other cause than slavery 
 was like " the Irishman's gun, aimed at nothing and 
 hitting it every time." He then complained that the 
 
288 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Administration was fighting the rebels With the olive 
 branch, instead of the sword, and that McClellan, who 
 had wasted six precious months needlessly, and then 
 allowed himself to be defeated by inferior forces, 
 must be either a traitor or a military impostor. Lin- 
 coln he blamed for not adopting a decidedly anti-slav- 
 ery policy ; and his language was so severe as to call 
 out a protest from one of his hearers. The audience 
 was with the orator, however ; and he had the pleas- 
 ure of finding it wholly due to his own request, that 
 the critic was patiently heard, and not handled 
 roughly. Among the concluding passages of his ora- 
 tion are these : 
 
 " The only choice left to this nation is abolition or destruc- 
 tion. You must abolish slavery, or abandon the Union. It is 
 plain that there can never be any Union between the North 
 and the South, while the South values slavery more than nation- 
 ality. A union of interest is essential to a union of ideas ; and 
 without this union of ideas the outer form of the Union will be 
 but as a rope of sand." ..." There is plausibility in the 
 argument that we cannot reach slavery until we have sup- 
 pressed the rebellion. Yet it is far more true to say that we 
 cannot reach the rebellion, until we have suppressed slavery. 
 For slavery is the life of the rebellion. Let the loyal army but 
 inscribe upon its- banner, Emancipation and protection to all 
 who will rally under it ; and no power could prevent a stam- 
 pede from slavery, such as the world has not witnessed since 
 the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea. I am convinced that this 
 rebellion and slavery are twin monsters ; that they must fall or 
 flourish together, and that all attempts at upholding one, while 
 putting down the other, will be followed by continued trains of 
 darkening calamities, such as make this anniversary of our 
 national independence a day of mourning instead of a day of 
 transcendent joy and gladness." ..." I have told you of 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 289 
 
 great national opportunities in tlie past, a greater than any in 
 the past is the opportunity of the present. If now we omit the 
 duty it imposes, steel our hearts against its teachings, or shrink 
 in cowardice from the work of to-day, your fathers will have 
 fought and bled in vain to establish free institutions, and Amer- 
 ican republicanism will become a hissing and a by-word to a 
 mocking earth." 
 
 On the following Monday he took part in a cele- 
 bration, held by colored people, at Ithaca, in memory 
 of the recent abolition of slavery in the District of 
 Columbia. The day selected, July 8, 1862, was that 
 on which New York decreed emancipation, sixty-three 
 years before. The whole surrounding country, within 
 a radius of a hundred miles, was nobly represented ; 
 the procession, with bands of both colors, won the ad- 
 miration of all beholders ; and the orator of the day 
 was delighted with the change " since our first anti- 
 slavery meeting there twenty years ago, when violence 
 met us at every turn." 
 
 The preliminary declarations of the Administration, 
 that the war was not against slavery, had been too 
 literally taken in Great Britain ; her Abolitionists 
 now out-garrisoned Garrison, and still thought our 
 Union and slavery so closely incorporated, that they 
 must survive or perish, be restored or abolished, to- 
 gether ; and her manufacturers could ill afford to 
 be without American cotton. Her government had 
 been too friendly to the rebels, especially in letting 
 loose the Alabama ; and their recent victories made 
 their recognition seem near at hand. To avert it, 
 Beecher crossed the ocean in 1863. Douglass sent his 
 protest in 1862. Immediately after Lincoln's first 
 proclamation of emancipation on September 22, ap- 
 
290 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 peared " The Slave's Appeal to Great Britain, by Fred- 
 erick Douglass." The most important paragraphs 
 of the little pamphlet are as follows : 
 
 " Hear, I beseech you, my humble appeal, and grant this, 
 my earnest request. I know your power, I know your justice, 
 and, better still, I know your mercy ; and with the more confi- 
 dence I, in my imperfect speech, venture to appeal to you. 
 Your benevolent sons and daughters, at great sacrifice of time, 
 labor, and treasure, more than a quarter of a century ago, 
 under the inspiration of an enlightened Christianity, removed 
 the yoke of cruel bondage from the long bowed-down necks of 
 eight-hundred thousand of my race in your West India Islands ; 
 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. I am now 
 fulfilling my appointed mission by making, on the slave's behalf, 
 this appeal to you. I am grateful for your benevolence, zealous 
 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 would defeat the now proposed 
 emancipation of my people, and forge new fetters of slavery 
 for unborn generations 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. 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 of January, 1863. 
 The hopes of millions, long meted out and 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 honored and potent hand to the blood-stained fingers of 
 the impious slave-holding Confederate States of America. . . . 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 
 
 291 
 
 " I have no hesitation in saying that if you. Great Britain, had, 
 at the outset of this terrible war, sternly frowned upon the con- 
 spirators, and given your earnest and unanimous sympathy and 
 moral support to the loyal cause, to-day might have seen 
 America enjoying security and peace, and you would not have 
 been the sufferer that, in all your commercial and manufactur- 
 ing interests, you now are. . . . 
 
 " Wanting a slave-holding constitution, the Southern States 
 have undertaken to make one, and establish it upon the ruins 
 of the one under which slavery can be discouraged, crippled, 
 and abolished. The war, therefore, for maintaining the old 
 against the new constitution, even though no proclamation of 
 emancipation had been issued by the loyal government, under 
 the old constitution, is essentially an anti-slavery war, and 
 should command the ardent support of good men in all countries. 
 What though our timid administration at Washington, shrink- 
 ing from the logical result of their own natural position, did, 
 at the first, refuse to recognize the real character of the war, 
 and vainly attempted to conciliate, by walking backward to 
 cast a mantle over the revolting origin of the rebellion ? What 
 though they instructed their foreign agent to conceal the moral 
 deformity of the rebels ? You could not fail to know that the 
 primal causes of this war rested in slavery and a determination 
 on the part of the rebels to make that stupendous crime and 
 curse all controlling and perpetual in America. But I will not 
 weary you with argument. The case is plain. The North is 
 fighting on the side of liberty and civilization, and the South for 
 slavery and barbarism. . . . 
 
 " No excuses, however plausible ; no distances of time, how- 
 ever remote ; no. line of conduct, 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 the emanci- 
 pation of the American slaves. If at any time you could have 
 intervened honorably in American affairs, it was when the 
 Federal government was vainly endeavoring to put down the 
 rebellion without hurting slavery. That gloomy period ended on 
 the 22d of September, 1862. From that day our war has been 
 
292 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 invested with a sanctity which will smite as with death even 
 the mailed hand of Britain, if outstretched to arrest it. Let this 
 conflict go on ; there is no doubt of the final result ; and though 
 it is a dreadful scourge, it will make justice, humanity, and 
 liberty permanently possible in this country." 
 
 To his own fellow-citizens he wrote, about this 
 time, as follows : 
 
 " What shall be done with the four million slaves, if they are 
 emancipated ? This question has been answered, and can be 
 answered in many ways. Primarily, it is a question less for 
 man than for God, — less fo. human intellect than for the laws 
 of nature to solve. It assumes that nature has erred ; that the 
 law of liberty is a mistake ; that freedom, though a natural 
 want of the human soul, can only be enjoyed at the expense of 
 human welfare, and that men are better off in slavery than they 
 would be in freedom ; that slavery is the natural order of human 
 relations, and that liberty is an experiment. — What shall be 
 done with them ? 
 
 " Our answer is. Do nothing with them ; mind your business 
 and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is the great- 
 est misfortune. They have been undone by your doings ; and 
 all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just 
 to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and suc- 
 ceed best by being let alone. The negroes should have been let 
 alone in Africa, let alone when the pirates and robbers offered 
 them for sale in our Christian slave-markets, (more cruel and 
 inhuman than the Mohammedan slave-markets,) let alone by 
 courts, judges, politicians, legislators, and slave-drivers, let 
 alone altogether, and assured that they were thus to be let 
 alone forever, and that they must now make their own way in 
 the world, just the same as any and every other variety of the 
 human family. As colored men we only ask to be allowed to 
 do with ourselves, subject only to the same great laws for the 
 welfare of human society which apply to other men, Jews, gen- 
 tiles, barbarian, Scythian. Let us stand upon our own legs, 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 293 
 
 work with our own hands, and eat bread in the sweat of our 
 own brows. When you, our white countrymen, have attempted 
 to do anything for us, it has generally been to deprive us of some 
 right, power, or privilege, which you yourselves would die 
 before you' would submit to have taken from you. When the 
 planters of the West Indies used to attempt to puzzle the pure- 
 minded ^^'ilberforce with the question, ' How shall we get rid 
 of slavery ? ' his simple answer was, ' Quit stealing.' In like 
 manner we answer those who are perpetually puzzling their 
 brains with questions as to what shall be done with the negro, 
 ' Let him alone, and mind your own business.' If you see him 
 ploughing in the open field, leveling the forest, at work with ' a 
 spade, a rake, a hoe, a pickaxe, or a bill,' let him alone : he has 
 a right to work. If you see him on his way to school, with 
 speUing-book, geography, and arithmetic in his hands, let him 
 alone. Don't shut the door in his face, or bolt your gates 
 against him ; he has a right to learn ; let him alone. Don't pass 
 laws to degrade him. If he has a ballot in his hand, and is on 
 his way to the ballot-box to deposit his vote for the man who, 
 he thinks, will most justly and wisely administer the govern- 
 ment which has the power of life and death over him, as well 
 as others, let him alone ; his right of choice desferves as 
 . much respect and protection as your own. If you see him on 
 his way to church, exercising religious liberty in accordance 
 with this or that religious persuasion, let him alone. Don't 
 meddle with him, nor trouble yourselves with any questions as 
 to what shall be done with him. 
 
 " What shall be done with the negro, if emancipated ? Deal 
 justly with him. He is a human being capable of judging be- 
 tween good and evil, right and wrong, liberty and slavery, and 
 is as much a subject of law as any other man ; therefore deal 
 justly with him. He is, like other men, sensible of the motives 
 of reward and punishment. Give him wages for his work, and 
 let hunger pinch him if he don't work. He knows the differ- 
 ence between fullness and famine, plenty and scarcity. ' But 
 will he work .' ' Why should he not ? He is used to it, and is 
 not afraid of it. His hands are already hardened by toil ; and 
 
294 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 he has no dreams of ever getting a Hving by any other means 
 than by hard work. ' But would you turn them all loose ? ' 
 Certainly. We are no better than our Creator. He has turned 
 them loose, and why should not we ? ' But would you let 
 them all stay here ? ' Why not ? What better if here than 
 there ? Will they occupy more room as freeman than as slaves ? 
 Is the presence of a black freeman less agreeable than that of a 
 black slave ? Is the object of your injustice and cruelty a more 
 ungrateful sight than one of your justice and benevolence? 
 You have borne the one more than two hundred years. Can't 
 you bear the other long enough to try the experiment ? " 
 (" The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His 
 Achievements, by William Wells Brovvn, 1863," pp. 184-7.) 
 
 When the first of January dawned, it seemed still 
 doubtful whether emancipation would really be pro- 
 claimed, as promised. The Tremont Temple, in Bos- 
 ton, was occupied all day by Abolitionists, who waited, 
 hour after hour, hoping that the news would come. 
 Among the speakers in the afternoon was Frederick 
 Douglass, who declared that if free discussion of 
 slavery had been allowed thirty years before, it would 
 long ago have been abolished as peaceably as in the 
 West Indies. He thanked God that he had lived to 
 see the beginning of the end of the abomination. 
 Emancipation might not seem a success at first ; but 
 he was sure it would be so in the end. Laughter and 
 applause accompanied his declarations of the capacity 
 of his race. When the people met again in the even- 
 ing, they were very anxious ; for nothing had been 
 heard of the proclamation. Would it come ? Why 
 was it delayed ? He did his best to cheer the audi- 
 ence ; and so did Miss Anna E. Dickinson, then at the 
 beginning of her great career. There was only one 
 voice that any one really wished to hear ; and that 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 
 
 295 
 
 was silent. Hour after hour came and went ; and the 
 shadows grew deeper and deeper around every heart. 
 At last, a man hurried in, his face glorious with tri- 
 umph, shouting : " It is coming ! It is on the wires ! " 
 
 All the audience were shouting or weeping for joy. 
 Soon the proclamation was read aloud from the plat- 
 form ; and then Douglass led in singing a hymn with 
 the chorus, " This is the year of jubilee ! " The peo- 
 ple were unwilling to leave the hall at midnight, when 
 it was to be vacated according to agreement ; so they 
 adjourned to the church belonging to the colored 
 Baptists. There they stayed, and he among them, 
 until day broke. Their day of independence had 
 dawned at last. 
 
 His position, during the past ten years, that slavery 
 was not to be abolished by denouncing but by enforc- 
 ing the Constitution, was fully justified by the word- 
 ing of both proclamations. The September one 
 declared that the war had been and would be " prose- 
 cuted for the object of practically restoring" the 
 Union ; and in January, emancipation was announced 
 " as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing 
 said rebellion,." and as " an act of justice, warranted by 
 the Constitution upon military necessity." Lincoln's 
 paramount object was still " to save the Union, and 
 not either to save or destroy slavery ;" but in order to 
 keep the Union alive he had to strike slavery dead. 
 Mr. Douglass has recently been told "that he was 
 wrong and Mr. Garrison right ; that the dissolution 
 of the Union was the only way to free his race." His 
 answer is : " Had the Union been dissolved, the col- 
 ored people of the South would now be in the hateful 
 chains of slavery. No, no, it was not the destruction 
 
2^6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 but the salvation of the Union that save^ the slave." 
 It was that very determination to keep up the Union, 
 whatever else might go down, which Garrison and 
 Phillips had for so many years been trying to get out 
 of their way. The stone which they rejected became 
 the head of the corner. Whosoever fell upon it was 
 broken ; and it ground slavery to powder. 
 
 McClellan's disasters were largely due to his refus- 
 ing to shelter fugitive slaves, or even to pay proper 
 attention to their reports. Similar unwillingness to 
 take any steps toward emancipation, made the North 
 long delay to follow the example promptly set by the 
 South in enlisting colored soldiers. Nothing shows 
 more clearly the unreasonableness of the color-prej- 
 udice than its standing in the way of calling upon 
 the free negroes in loyal States to help crush the re- 
 bellion. No one who knew anything about the Revolu- 
 tionary War, or that of 1812, to say nothing of the Ma- 
 roons in Jamaica, could deny the ability of negroes to 
 fight ; they were much better fitted to withstand the 
 Southern climate, than any other men who could be en- 
 listed ; and the need of more troops soon became so 
 urgent that those Northerners who were not Abolition- 
 ists might reasonably have been expected to say, as 
 " Punch " thinks they did: " It's better using niggers 
 up than citizens like us." 
 
 Conscription of whites had actually been resorted 
 to by Ohio, and was about to be imposed upon all 
 delinquent States by Congress, when, in January, 1863, 
 a permission to raise colored regiments was given to 
 Massachusetts, which had offered them in vain five 
 months before. Too many fugitives had been returned 
 by our army to make their brethren eager to enlist. 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 297 
 
 Only a hundred recruits were obtained during the 
 first six weeks ; and Governor Andrew said to Mr, 
 Stearns, " I am afraid we shall have to give up our 
 colored regiments." " I will raise one for you," was 
 the reply, " if you will authorize it." " And when will 
 you set about it ? " " To-morrow morning ! " It was 
 ten degrees below zero, when Mr. Stearns started 
 before day-break, and went straight to Rochester. 
 The first man whom he enlisted was Charles Douglass, 
 and the latter's father promptly published in his 
 " Monthly " an address, which is dated March 2, and 
 runs thus : 
 
 •• Men of Color to Anns." ... " Action ! Action ! not 
 criticism, is the plain duty of this hour. Words are now 
 useful, only as they stimulate to blows." ... " There is no 
 time to delay. The tide is at its flood that leads on to for- 
 tune. From East to West, from North to South, the sky is 
 written all over, ' Now or Never.' Liberty won by white men 
 would lose half its lustre. ' Who would be free, themselves must 
 strike the blow.' ' Better even die free than live slaves.' This is 
 the sentiment of every brave colored man amongst us." . . . 
 " I have not thought lightly of the words I am now addressing 
 you. The counsel I give comes of close observation of the 
 great struggle now in progress, and of the deep conviction that 
 this is your hour and mine. In good earnest then, and after the 
 best deliberation, I now, for the first time during this war, feel 
 at liberty to call and counsel you to arms. By every considera- 
 tion which binds you to your enslaved fellow-countrymen," . . . 
 " by every aspiration which you cherish for the freedom and 
 equality of yourselves and your children, by all the ties of blood 
 and identity which make us one with the brave hlack men now 
 fighting our battles in Louisiana and South Carolina, I urge 
 you to fly to arms, and smite with death the power which would 
 bury the government and your liberty in the same hopeless 
 grave." ... " We can get at the throat of treason and 
 
2g8 FREDERICK. DOUGLASS. 
 
 slavery through the State of Massachusetts. She was first 
 in the War of Independence," ... " first to make the black 
 Jnan equal before the law, first to admit colored children to 
 her common schools; and she was first to answer with her 
 blood the alarm-cry of the nation, when its capital was menaced 
 by rebels. You know her patriotic Governor ; and you know 
 Charles Sumner. I need not add more. 
 
 " Massachusetts now welcomes you to arms as soldiers. She 
 has but a small colored population from which to recruit.'' . . . 
 " Go quickly, and help fill up the first colored regiment from the 
 North.". . . " I will not argue. To do so implies hesitation and 
 doubt ; and you do not hesitate : you do not doubt. The day 
 dawns : the morning-star is bright upon the horizon. The iron 
 gate of our prison stands half open, one gallant rush from the 
 North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers 
 and sisters shall march out into liberty. The chance is now given 
 you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one 
 bound from social degradation to the plain of common equality 
 with all other varieties of men. Remember Denmark Vesey, 
 of Charleston : remember Nathaniel Turner, of Southampton : 
 remember Shields Green and Copeland, who followed noble 
 John Brown and fell as martyrs for the cause of the slave. 
 Remember that in a contest with oppression, the Almighty has 
 no attribute which can take sides with oppressors. The case 
 is before you. This is our golden opportunity. Let us accept 
 it, and forever wipe out the dark reproaches unsparingly 
 hurled against us by our enemies. Let us win for ourselves 
 the gratitude of our country, and the best blessing of our pos- 
 terity through all time." 
 
 It was largely due to this appeal, and those made 
 by its author to individuals, that Massachusetts was 
 able to send out the regiment which Colonel Shaw 
 led to plant our flag upon Fort Wagner, first in the 
 attack. Among the foremost who mounted upon the 
 rampart was Sergeant-Major Lewis H. Douglass, 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 
 
 299 
 
 shouting, " Come on boys, and fight for God and 
 Governor Andrew ! " His sword was shot from his 
 side ; but both he and his brother Charles hav? sur- 
 vived the contest. 
 
 Their father was on the wharf when they left Boston; 
 and he did his best to help them and their comrades 
 depart in a spirit worthy of the cause. As he spoke 
 in public, a day or two before, he actually chuckled 
 with delight at the thought that men of his color, 
 and even of his own blood, were at last going to 
 stand equal with the whites on the field of honor. It 
 was anniversary week ; and he had been regularly 
 invited in company with Senator Wilson, to address 
 the Emancipation League at a meeting where he was 
 chief speaker. On the evening after the regiment 
 had departed, Thursday, May 28, he came without 
 special invitation to the annual convention of the 
 Garrisonians, where he was recognized by the audi- 
 ence, who called him out. He said he felt inexpres- 
 sible pleasure in taking his place once more on the 
 freest platform in the world, and added : 
 
 " Emancipation is coming ; and another question appears. 
 What shall be done with the slaves .' Where shall we, the 
 colored people, stand ? Shall we be wholly free, and equal at 
 the ballot-box, at the jury-box, and at the cartridge-box ? The 
 negro may at first be better able to do justice to himself under 
 white officers ; but there are men in the Fifty-fourth capable of 
 command ; and promotion should be opened to them. " 
 
 Some of the other members of the convention 
 thought he ought to have insisted on having colored 
 officers from the start. His own view was the wiser 
 one, as may be seen from a more deliberate state- 
 ment. 
 
3°° 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 On June 17, 1863, the citizens of Philadelphia 
 obtained leave to raise colored regiments under the 
 supervision of Major Stearns ; and a mass meeting 
 was held in that city on July 6, when urgent calls 
 for volunteers were made by Judge Kelley and Miss 
 Anna E. Dickinson. Then Douglass came forward 
 to meet the objection made by his people, that they 
 ought first to be put on terras of equality with the 
 whites, as regarded pay, bounty, rations, and right to 
 choose officers out of the ranks. 
 
 " There is " [said he,] " something deep down in the soul of 
 every man present, which assents to the justice of the claim 
 thus made, and honors the manhood and self-respect which 
 insists upon it. I say at once, in peace and in war, I am con- 
 tent with nothing for the black man short of equal and exact 
 justice. The only question I have, and the point on which I 
 differ from those who refuse to enlist, is whether the colored 
 man is more likely to obtain justice and equality, while refusing 
 to assist in putting down this tremendous rebellion, than he 
 would be if he should promptly, generously, and earnestly give 
 his hand and heart to the salvation of the country in this its 
 day of calamity and peril. Nothing can be more plain, nothing 
 more certain, than that the speediest and best possible way 
 open to us to manhood, is that we enter this service. For 
 my own part, I hold that if the Government of the United 
 States offered nothing more as an inducement to colored, men 
 to enlist than bare subsistence and armS, considering the moral 
 effects of compliance upon ourselves, it would be the wisest and 
 best thing for us to enhst." 
 
 He then compared the attitude of the Jefferson 
 Davis administration toward the negro with that 
 then taken by the Government with which his hear- 
 ers were " called upon to co-operate in burying rebel- 
 lion and slavery in a common ground." 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 
 
 301 
 
 "Never since the world began was there a better chance 
 offered to a long enslaved and oppressed people. The oppor- 
 tunity is g^ven us to be men. With one courageous resolution, 
 we may blot out the handwriting of ages against us. Once let 
 the black man get upon his person the brass letters U. S., let 
 him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, 
 and bullets in his pocket ; and' there is no power on the earth, 
 or under the earth, which can deny that he has earned the right 
 of citizenship in the United States." . . . " Do not flatter your- 
 selves, my friends, that you are more important to the Govern- 
 ment than the Government is to you. You stand but as the 
 plank to the ship. This rebellion can be put down without 
 your help. Slavery can be abolished by white men ; but liberty 
 so won for the black man, while it may leave him an object of 
 pity, can never make him an object of respect. Depend upon 
 it, this is no time for hesitation. Do you say you want the 
 same pay that white men get ? I believe that the justice and 
 magnanimity of your country will speedily grant it. But will 
 you be over-nice about this matter ? Do you get , as good 
 wages now as white men get, by staying out of the service ? 
 Don't you work for less every day than white men get ? You 
 know you do. But I hear you say you want black ofificers ? 
 Very well ; and I have not the slightest doubt, that in the prog- 
 ress of this war we shall see black officers, black colonels, and 
 generals even. But is it not ridiculous of us, in all at once 
 refusing to be commanded by white men in time of war, when 
 we are everywhere commanded by white men in time of peace ? " 
 
 Within a week after speaking thus, he was obliged, 
 on his return home, to pass through the city of New 
 York, while a mob of rioters against the conscription 
 were murdering little children because they belonged 
 to his race. On the first of August he wrote and pub- 
 lished E^etter to Major Stearns, which may be found 
 in the^Life and Times" (pp. 382-4). Here he 
 states that he had been obliged to decline an invita- 
 
302 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 tion to speak at a meeting for promoting enlistments 
 at Pittsburgh : 
 
 " I must for the present leave to others the work of persuad- 
 ing colored men to join the Union army. I owe it to my long- 
 abused people, arid especially to those already in the army, to 
 expose their wrongs and plead their cause. I cannot do that 
 in connection with recruiting. When I plead for recruits, I 
 want to do it with all my heart, without qualification. I cannot 
 do that now." 
 
 The original plan of using colored troops to garri- 
 son forts in unhealthy places, had not been followed. 
 They had been exposed in the open field to capture 
 by enemies, who had thus been enabled to carry out 
 the threat that negro prisoners should be sold into 
 slavery, if not slaughtered in cold blood. No attempt 
 at retaliation had been made by our Government ; 
 and it looked as if, " The confiding colored soldiers 
 had been betrayed into bloody hands." He was soon 
 able to make this complaint at the White House, 
 where he also remonstrated against the delay in 
 rewarding colored soldiers with commissions, as well 
 as in making their pay equal to that of the whites. 
 In this last respect, justice was not done to the negro 
 even by a Republican Congress, until the Fort Wag- 
 ner heroes had been more than a year under arms. 
 Douglass was so far satisfied with the goodness of 
 Lincoln's intentions, that he once more made up his 
 mind to get every black man he could into the army ; 
 and he accepted the offer of Secretary Stanton to 
 make him assistant to General Lorenzo Thomas, who 
 was recruiting troops on the lower Missis^pi. A 
 commission as adjutant was promised, but it was 
 waited for in vain. Major Stearns went from his 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 303 
 
 work in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to raise ten 
 regiments in Tennesee ; but he resigned his commis- 
 sion, because, as he stated in March, 1864, " The Gov- 
 ernment has not kept its faith with the colored man 
 anywhere." Early that year, Douglass wrote him a 
 letter in which he speaks thus of his not having 
 joinedGeneral Thomas, the preceding fall : " I con- 
 sider myself trifled with and deceived. How basely 
 have the black troops of Massachusetts been treated 
 by the General Government. The dead heroes at Fort 
 Wagner brought in debt for the shoes in which they 
 fought and fell ! " 
 
 A full account of his interview with Lincoln is given 
 in his " Life and Times " (pp. 384-7): but it is inter- 
 esting also to read what he said about it a few months 
 afterward. On Friday, December 4, 1863, he was 
 present at the Thirtieth Anniversary of the A. A. 
 S. S., which was held in Philadelphia, in a hall orna- 
 mented with the American flag and the motto, " Union 
 and Liberty.'' Many familiar speakers were heard 
 from the platform, and several comparatively new 
 ones. Among the latter was Senator Wilson, whose 
 speech was so well suited to the times that a demand 
 for three cheers was made by a colored man who had 
 sat hitherto silent on the platform. He was now rec- 
 ognized ; and as soon as the Senator had finished, 
 there were cries from different parts of the hall of 
 "Douglass ! Douglass ! " Then he spoke on the right 
 of the Southern negro to the ballot. During his 
 speech he referred to the time when he felt, on reach- 
 ing Philadelphia, that he was rubbing against the wall 
 of his prison and could go no farther. Now he was 
 able to go back to Maryland, and even to Washington. 
 
304 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 " I have been down there to see the President ; and as you 
 were not there, perhaps you may like to know how the President 
 of the United States received a black man at the White House! 
 I will tell you how he received me — just as you have seen one 
 gentleman receive another " (great applause); " with a hand and 
 a voice well-balanced between a kind cordiality and a respect- 
 ful reserve. I tell you I felt big there." (Laughter.) " Let me 
 tell you how I got to him ; because everybody can't get to him. 
 He has to be a little guarded in admitting spectators. The 
 manner of getting to him gave me an idea that the cause was 
 rolling on. The stair-way was crowded with applicants. Some 
 of them looked eager ; and I have no doubt some of them had 
 a purpose in being there, and wanted to see the President for 
 the good of the country. They were white ; and as I was the 
 only dark spot among them, I expected to have to wait at least 
 half a day ; I had heard of men waiting a week ; but in two min- 
 utes after I sent in my card, the messenger came out, and re- 
 spectfully invited ' Mr. Douglass ' in. I could hear, in the eager 
 multitude outside as they saw me pressing and elbowing my 
 
 way through, the remark, ' Yes, d n it, I knew they would let 
 
 the nigger through,' in a kind of despairing voice — a Peace Derti- 
 ocrat, I suppose." (Laughter.) " When I went in, the President 
 was sitting in his usual position, I was told, with his feet in 
 different parts of the room, taking it easy." (Laughter.) " Don't 
 put this down, Mr. Reporter, I pray you ; for I am going down 
 there again to-morrow." (Laughter.) " As I came in and ap- 
 proached him, the President began to rise " (laughter), " and 
 he continued rising, until he stood over me" (laughter); "and 
 reaching out his hand, he said, ' Mr. Douglass, I know you ; I 
 have read about you, and Mr. Seward has told me about you ; ' 
 putting me quite at ease at once. 
 
 " Now, you will want to know how I was impressed by him. 
 I will tell you that, too. He impressed me as being just what 
 every one of you have been in the habit of calling him — an 
 honest man." (Applause.) " I have never met with aijnan 
 who, on the first blush, impressed me more entirely with his 
 sincerity, with his devotion to his country, and with his determin- 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 305 
 
 ation to save it at all hazards." (Applause.) " He told me, 
 (I think he did me m.ore honor than I deserve,) that I had made 
 a little speech somewhere in New York and it had got into 
 the papers, and among the things I had said was this: that 
 if I were called upon to state what I regarded as the" most sad 
 and most disheartening feature in our present political and mil- 
 itary situation, it would not be the various disasters experienced 
 by our armies and our navies, on flood and field, but it would 
 be the tardy, hesitating, vacillating policy of the President 
 of the United States. And the President said to me, ' Mr. 
 Douglass, I have been charged with being tardy, and the like ; ' 
 and he went on, and partly admitted that he might seem slow ; 
 but he said : ' I am charged with vacillating ; but, Mr. Doug- 
 lass, I do not think that charge can be sustained ; I think it 
 cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position I 
 have ever retreated from it.' " (Applause.) " That I re- 
 garded as the most significant point in what he said during 
 our interview. I told him that he had been somewhat slow 
 in proclaiming equal protection to our colored soldiers and pris- 
 oners ; and he said that the country needed talking up to that 
 point. He hesitated in regard to it, when he felt that the 
 country was not ready for it. He knew that the colored 
 man throughout this country was a despised man, a hated 
 man, and that if he at first came out with such a procla- 
 mation, all the hatred which is poured on the head of the negro 
 race would be visited on his administration. He said that 
 there was preparatory work needed, and that that preparatory 
 work had now been done. And he said, ' Remember this, Mr. 
 Douglass ; remember that Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson, and 
 Fort Wagner are recent events ; and that these were necessary 
 to prepare the way for this very proclamation of mine.' I 
 thought it was reasonable, but came to the conclusion that 
 while Abraham Lincoln will not go down to posterity as Abra- 
 ham the Great, or as Abraham the Wise, or as Abraham the 
 Eloquent, although he is all three— wise, great, and eloquent, he 
 will go down to posterity if the country is saved, as Honest 
 Abraham " (Applause) ; " and going down thus, his name may 
 
3o6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 be written anywhere in this wide world of ours, side by side 
 with that of Washington, without disparaging the latter." 
 (Renewed Applause.) 
 
 In speaking of this interview, at the Abolitionist 
 Reunion, in 1890, Douglass said that Lincoln was 
 plainly aching to get hold of slavery, and that after 
 asking, " Who is this Phillips who has been pitching 
 into me ? " he added, " Well, tell him to go on. Let 
 him make the people willing to go in for emancipa- 
 tion ; and I'll go with them." 
 
 About this time he delivered, in the hall where the 
 anniversary was celebrated, a lecture which was 
 repeated in Boston, on February 10, 1864, and else- 
 where during the winter. His subject was, " The 
 Mission of the War ;" and among the opening sen- 
 tences are these : 
 
 " I look for no miracle to abolish slavery. The war looras 
 before me simply as a grand national opportunity, which may 
 be improved to national salvation or neglected to national 
 destruction." ..." Our destiny is not taken out of our own 
 hands ; and it will not do to shuffle off our responsibilities upon 
 the shoulders of Proxidence." ..." We seem to have been 
 especially-chosen to strike this last blow to relieve the world of 
 slavery-. We stand in our lot to-day and wage war, not merely 
 for ourselves but for the whole world, for unborn generations 
 and for all time." 
 
 His hearers ought to make up their minds that this 
 " shall be, and of right ought to be an abolition war ;" 
 that there shall be no talk of any but " an abolition 
 peace;" that all the slaves, even in loyal States, " shall 
 be at once declared unconditionally and forever free;" 
 that they " shall enjoy the most perfect civil and 
 political equality, including the right of voting and 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 307 
 
 being voted for ; that this Government shall oppose 
 all schemes for colonizing colored Americans;" that 
 the people ought to pay them equal wages and give 
 them "an equal chance to rise;" and "that the free- 
 dom and elevation of white men are neither subserved 
 nor purchased by the degradation of black men, but 
 the contrary." ..." I warn the Union party now, 
 as at the beginning of the war, that if they win they 
 are to do so with the aid of their black cards." 
 
 Two colored men who had been free before the 
 war, in New Orleans, and had rendered much aid to 
 the Union cause, were sent as delegates in behalf of 
 their race to Washington, and were invited to a din- 
 ner at the Parker House, in Boston, on April 12. 
 About eighty leading merchants and lawyers met 
 them there ; Governor Andrew was in the chair ; the 
 John Brown song was sung; and Garrison spoke of 
 the nearness of the time when the equality of blacks 
 and whites would be fully recognized. Then the 
 chairman said, " There is one man here who recog- 
 nized that equality for himself more than twenty-five 
 years ago. And now here sits ' the Douglass in his 
 hall.' " Three cheers were then given for Douglass ; 
 and he made a speech in which he used the words, 
 "We Anglo-Saxons," and added : 
 
 " I see there is some smiling at my placing myself so con- 
 spicuously among the Anglo-Saxon race ; but I do it on the 
 best Copper-head authority. I was down in Maine not long 
 ago, and made a speech there, which some of the Republican 
 papers thought very good to prove that the negro had some 
 ideas as well as other men ; whereupon the Copper-head jour- 
 nal came out—' Douglass ? Why that proves nothing for the 
 negro race ; his speech proves nothing ; Douglass is a white 
 man. ' Since then I have sat on the other side of the house." 
 
308 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 He took no part in the attempt, made soon after, to 
 set up Fremont as the anti-slavery candidate, but 
 did his utmost to secure the re-election of Lincoln. 
 The latter sent for him that summer to help organize 
 a plan, somewhat like that first proposed by John 
 Brown, for persuading the slaves to come more rap- 
 idly into the Union lines ; but such schemes were 
 soon rendered unnecessary by the progress of the 
 war 
 
 On the evening of the day, when he voted for Lin- 
 coln and Johnson, he was passing through the streets 
 of Rochester, when he met four half-drunken rowdies 
 
 who knew him, and shouted, " Here he is, the d n 
 
 nigger." One of them caught hold of him ; but the 
 Douglass flung him off, and then said, with uplifted 
 arm, " Come on. I am ready to settle this thing with 
 you, now and here." They slunk away ; and he went 
 on to hear the news about the election. He was 
 asked for a speech ; and he made merely this refer- 
 ence to what had just taken place : " The returns indi- 
 cate that Lincoln is elected, and I am sure he is ; for 
 I judge by the behavior of some men, on the other 
 side, who met me a few minutes ago." 
 
 He had already declared that he " had rather be 
 the most whip-scarred slave in all the South, than the 
 haughtiest master," and in the lecture which he deliv- 
 ered that winter on " William the Silent," he said: 
 
 " The Red Sea ever lies between the pilgrim and the prom- 
 ised land. War, war, grim, stem, and terrible, seems to be the 
 inexorable condition exacted for every considerable addition 
 to the liberties of mankind. The world moves, but only by 
 fighting every inch of its disputed way. Right and wrong seem 
 equally endowed with fighting qualities ; and if one does not 
 
UNION FOREVER ! 309 
 
 prevail, the other will." ..." The line over which oppression 
 may not go must be marked with blood, first or last, to be re- 
 spected." 
 
 He went on to Washington to see the inauguration, 
 in 1865, and was sitting in the Senate Gallery near 
 the close of the session, w^hen a white man came in 
 behind him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said 
 roughly, " What is your name ? " His first impulse 
 was to reply sternly ; but after a glance at the ques- 
 tioner, he said, " as gently as any sucking dove," 
 " Fred Douglass, Sir." " What ! the original Fred 
 Douglass ? " " The original Fred Douglass, Sir." 
 " Oh," faltered the would be negro-driver, and sneaked 
 out, amid a general titter. 
 
 As he said in his speech about Lincoln, in 1888 : 
 
 " I felt at that time, there was the spirit of murder here in 
 the District of Columbia " ..." I kept close to the carriage 
 nearly up to the hub in mud, for I was afraid, every step we 
 took, that something would happen to that good and glorious 
 man. Well, when we got to the east portico of the Capitol, 
 there I saw Mr. Lincoln in his true light." 
 
 It is to his confession, that it would have been just 
 and righteous for God to permit the war " to continue 
 till all the wealth piled up bj' 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," that our orator refers, as 
 he goes on to say: " Those words rang out over that 
 throng ; and they went over the country as never words 
 went before ; and they silenced all murmurs. They 
 came down on the land like the summer's thunder- 
 shower on'the parched ground ; and a new life began." 
 
310 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Just before the ceremony, he was pointed out by- 
 Lincoln to Andrew Johnson, who gave liim a look 
 which was plainly, as he said on the spot, not that of 
 a friend of the colored race. No one of that raCe had 
 ever ventured to attend a reception at the White 
 House, and no one would accompany hin. there the 
 evening after the inauguration. He made up his 
 mind to see that the rights of his race were recog- 
 nized, and took his place in the long column which 
 entered the White House. At the door were two 
 policemen who seized him rudely by the arm, and 
 told him to stand aside, for their orders were to let 
 no one of his color in. It seemed to be only the 
 White House still. He assured them that he was 
 personally known to the President ; and then they 
 offered to lead him in ; but he was led into a pas- 
 sage by which visitors were moving out. As soon as 
 he saw the trick, he halted, and declared that he 
 should not leave until he saw the President. He was 
 soon able to send in word, and was admitted. Long 
 before he reached Lincoln, the latter, recognizing him, 
 said, in a loud voice, " Here comes my friend Doug- 
 lass," and asked his opinion of the inaugural address, 
 which Douglass pronounced "a sacred effort." It 
 turned out that no such orders had been given : the 
 officers were merely following the old usage. "I 
 have found in my experience," says our author in 
 relating this incident, " that the way to break down 
 an unreasonable custom, is to contradict it in prac- 
 tice." ("Life and^ Times," pp. 405-7.) 
 
 Richmond was soon taken ; and there was a jubilee 
 meeting in Faneuil Hall, on Tuesday afternoon, April 
 4. Among the speakers were Robert C. Wihthrop and 
 
UNION forever! 311 
 
 also the colored man, who twenty-five years before, 
 while waiting behind his chair in New Bedford, had 
 been so entranced by his brilliant conversation as 
 almost to forget his duties. Now he had his full 
 share of the applause as he said : 
 
 " I tell you the negro is coming up. He is rising, rising. 
 Why, only a little while ago, we were the Lazarus of the South ; 
 the Dives of the South was the slave-holder. But now a 
 change has taken place. That rich man is lifting up his eyes 
 in torments down there, and seeing Lazarus in Abraham's 
 bosom ; and he is all the time calling on Father Abraham to 
 send Lazarus back. But Father Abraham says, ' If they hear 
 not Grant and Sherman, neither will they be persuaded, though 
 I send Lazarus unto them ; ' I say, we are 'way up yonder now, 
 no mistake." 
 
 Eleven days later, he spoke at another meeting of a 
 very different character, under circumstances which a 
 friend who was present relates thus : 
 
 " Rochester Court-house never held a larger crowd than was 
 gathered to mourn over the martyred Lincoln. The meeting 
 was opened by the most eloquent men in the bar and the pulpit 
 with carefully prepared and earnestly uttered addresses. All 
 the time the people were not aroused. Douglass, who told me 
 he should not speak because he was not invited, sat crowded in 
 the rear. At last the feeling could be restrained no more ; and 
 his name burst upon the air from every side, and filled the 
 house. The dignified gentlemen who directed had to surren- 
 der. Then came the finest appeal in behalf of the father of 
 his people, who had died for them especially, and would be 
 mourned by them as long as one remained in America who had 
 been a slave. I have heard Webster and Clay in their best 
 moments, Channing and Beecher in their hightest inspirations ; 
 I never heard truer eloquence ! I never saw profounder impres- 
 sion. When he finished, the meeting was done." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE LEADER IN POLITICS. 
 
 Much as the colored man was talked about by 
 members of all parties, he was not allowed to say mu-ch 
 for himself until after the war. Then the negro vote 
 became vitally important, not only for restoring the 
 South to the Union, but for maintaining the supremacy 
 of the Republicans. They have had no more loyal 
 adherents than the followers of Douglass. Hitherto 
 he had been nothing more than a corporal in a for- 
 lorn hope ; but now he was the general in command 
 of a great army of voters. He was right in saying 
 that Andrew Johnson was not the Moses of the 
 colored people, as he called himself, but only a would- 
 be Pharaoh. Their real Moses had carried them safe 
 through the Red Sea, and is still leading them to and 
 fro in the wilderness. 
 
 His possession of this foremost place is largely due, 
 of course, to his oratory, in regard to which Colonel 
 T. W. Higginson, who owes to him, in great meas- 
 ure, his defeat as candidate for a seat in the present 
 Congress, writes me thus : " I have hardly heard his 
 equal, in grasp upon an audience, in dramatic pres- 
 entation, in striking at the pith of an ethical ques- 
 tion, and in single illustrations and images, as 'For 
 the negro the Republican party is the deck ; all else 
 313 
 
THE LEADER tiJ POLltlCS. Jt^ 
 
 Is the sea.' " He had shown himself a statesman 
 also, by choosing the very path which finally led to 
 emancipation. His firmness in this course, in spite of 
 the opposition of those who had been his best friends, 
 displayed such an independence of character as made 
 it impossible for him to be contented with merely fol- 
 lowing any one. His advice on practical matters has 
 been sound ; his treatment of difficult questions has 
 been so thorough, that a legal friend thinks he would, 
 with special training, have made an excellent judge ; 
 and he has never let any thought of personal risk or 
 loss come between him and his people's cause. 
 
 He proved himself fully aware of what that cause 
 really demanded, when he took part with Phillips, 
 Foster, Anna E. Dickinson, and Remond, in defeating, 
 by a vote of more than two to one, the attempt made 
 by Garrison, in New York, on May 9 and 10, 1865, to 
 dissolve the American Anti-Slavery Society. Its 
 object could not be said to have been attained, even 
 in the narrowest sense, until the adoption of the 
 Thirteenth Amendment seven months later ; and 
 nothing would have been better for the colored 
 people than to have had their champions keep up an 
 organization without political bias or party limits. 
 
 Three months later he wrote a letter, published in 
 the " Liberator " for September 29, and giving his 
 reasons for declining to act as an officer of the 
 " Educational Monument Association." This was a 
 plan for collecting money from white people, as well 
 as colored, to build a college exclusively for colored 
 people as a Lincoln memorial. He is decidedly in 
 favor of having his people show their gratitude to 
 Lincoln by erecting a monument with their own 
 
314 FREDERICK DOUGLASS 
 
 money ; but this scheme looks to him " like an 
 attempt to wash the black man's face in the nation's 
 tears." ..." I am for washing the black man's 
 face, that is educating his mind," he says, but not for 
 " sending around the hat to a mourning public." 
 And then, again, " I am not for building up perma- 
 nent separate institutions for colored people of any 
 kind," but "am opposed to doing anything looking to 
 the perpetuity of prejudice." . . . "When I go for 
 anything, I like to go strong ; and when I cannot go 
 thus, I had better not go at all." 
 
 The willingness of the whites to allow the colored 
 people to continue in a degraded condition soon 
 became so apparent, as to make him withdraw his 
 opposition to associated efforts by his people under 
 temporary emergencies. This change of view is 
 expressly stated in his address on October i, at the 
 dedication of the Douglass Institute, in Baltimore. 
 He could not but be grateful for having his own 
 name given to a hall opened at the cost of $16,000, in 
 the city where he had been a slave, by an association 
 of colored men for the intellectual culture of their 
 race and his. Such institutions were peculiarly 
 needed ; because : 
 
 " It is the misfortune of our class, that it fails to derive due 
 advantage from the achievements of its individual members." 
 . . . " Wealth, learning, and ability made an Irishman an Eng- 
 lishman. The same metamorphosing power converts a negro 
 into a white man in this country. When prejudice cannot deny 
 the black man's ability, it denies his race and claims him as a 
 white man." ..." The public has sternly denied the represen- 
 tative character of our distinguished men. This makes it nec- 
 essary for the credit of the colored people that they should keep 
 
THE LEADER IN POLITICS. 
 
 315 
 
 up institutions, like tiiis one, where they may feel themselves 
 limited by ' no caste, or sect, or color,' where their souls may 
 be thrilled with heavenly music and lifted to the skies on the 
 wings of poetry and song. Here we can assemble and have 
 our minds enlightened upon the whole circle of social, moral, 
 political, and educational duties.". . .- "Here may come all who 
 have a new and unpopular truth to unfold and enforce "... 
 " Here, from this broad hall, shall go forth an influence which 
 shall at last change the current of public contempt." 
 
 This wicked feeling was encountered in the White 
 House, on February 7, 1866, when a committee, 
 appointed by a colored convention of delegates from 
 twenty States, attempted to persuade Johnson to 
 withdraw his opposition against granting the suffrage 
 to freedmen, or even giving persons of every race and 
 color full protection from the laws, especially in the 
 form of power to enforce contracts, to inherit prop- 
 erty, and to testify in court. Frederick Douglass, 
 who appeared that day in company with his son, 
 Lewis, reminded Johnson that he had power to bless 
 or blast a whole race, and said : " Your noble and 
 humane predecessor placed in our hands the sword 
 to assist in saving the nation ; and we do hope that 
 you, his able successor, will favorably regard the 
 placing in our hands the ballot with which to save 
 ourselves." The ex-slave-holder replied by compar- 
 ing himself to Moses, and complaining of so great a 
 hostility between the poor whites and the negroes as 
 to make it impossible to let " both be thrown together 
 at the ballot-box." . . " The query comes right there, 
 whether we don't commence a war of races." He 
 also recommended the colored people to leave the 
 country. His unwillingness to let any one talk but 
 
3i6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 himself, was so great as to oblige the delegation to 
 make their reply in print. They ask him : " How 
 can you, in view of your professed desire to promote 
 the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all 
 means of defense ? " . . . " Can it be that you recom- 
 mend a policy which would arm the strong and cast 
 down the defenseless ? Experience proves that those 
 are most abused who can be abused with the greatest 
 impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are 
 whipped easiest. Peace between races is not to be 
 secured by giving power to one race and withholding^ 
 it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal 
 justice." It is also shown that the blacks can never 
 " be removed from this country without a terrible' 
 shock to its prosperity and peace," and that it would 
 be a national infamy for them to be '' driven into exile, 
 for no other cause than having been freed from their 
 chains." ("Life and Times," pp. 426-8.) 
 
 The House of Representatives had already pro- 
 posed an Amendment to the Constitution, providing 
 that if any State should refuse to grant the ballot to 
 colored citizens, its number of Congressmen should 
 be reduced proportionately. Douglass and the other 
 delegates published a formal protest against the 
 language, as implying the right of a State to dis- 
 franchise on account of color ; and they labored indi- 
 vidually to impress this view upon the Senators. 
 Sumner and others declared that the Amendment did 
 not go far enough ; while all the Democrats thought 
 it went too far. As first drafted, it was voted down 
 in the Senate, but was subsequently revived with an 
 introductory section which guaranteed full protection 
 to all persons, and forbade that the privileges of 
 
THE LEADER IN POLITICS. 317 
 
 citizens of the United States should be abridged by 
 any State. This was all the people were then willing 
 to grant ; and it was not until after violent opposi- 
 tion in New Jersey and Ohio, -as well as in the White 
 House, that the Fourteenth Amendment became 
 part of the Constitution. The -guarantee of the 
 suffrage had to be left for the Fifteenth, which was 
 adopted in 1870 ; but care was taken from the first, 
 that no State which had seceded should be allowed 
 to resume its functions until it had effaced the color- 
 line from its constitution. 
 
 The fitial adoption of the suffrage amendment was 
 largely due to the action of the National Loyalist's 
 Convention, which met in Philadelphia in September, 
 1866. Douglass was appointed as a delegate by his fel- 
 low-citizens of Rochester, almost all of whom were 
 white. They had previously offered to nominate him for 
 Congress ; and Theodore D. Weld had. come to the 
 city to urge him to accept the honor ; but he had 
 refused, on the ground that he should probably be 
 defeated and his failure would injure the cause. He 
 did, however, set out for Philadelphia ; but other 
 delegates on the same train sent a committee to 
 represent to him that his recognition, as a member, 
 would fatally injure the Republican party at the elec- 
 tions for Congress that fall, and the good of his 
 people's cause required him to give up going. He 
 replied that they might as well ask him to blow out 
 his own brains. The only result of his staying away, 
 to the party, would be its condemnation for hypoc- 
 risy and cowardice. " But ignoring the question of 
 policy entirely, and looking at it as one of right and 
 wrong, I am bound to go into that convention ; not to 
 
3l8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 do SO would contradict the principle and practice of 
 my life." 
 
 When he met with the other members at Indepen- 
 dence Hall, where they were to organize for marching 
 two by two through Philadelphia, he was very coldly 
 received by most of the delegates ; but General But- 
 ler and a few others were cordial. He had been told 
 the night before that he would not be allowed in the 
 procession, lest it should be mobbed ; he was the 
 only colored member, and it seemed likely that he 
 must walk alone if he went at all. Theodore Tilton, 
 then an influential editor, volunteered to take his 
 arm ; and his presence in the procession called out 
 nothing but applause. During the march he received 
 a cordial greeting from the daughter of his former 
 mistress, Mrs. Lucretia Auld. The convention was 
 soon found to be fatally divided on the suffrage 
 question, and the president finally declared it ad- 
 journed. It was at once re-organized, however, and 
 earnest speeches in favor of enfranchisement were 
 made by Miss Dickinson as well as by Douglass. 
 
 What the latter thought about the questions of the 
 hour, may be judged from the following account by 
 Miss Holley, of his speech the next summer : 
 
 " The first day of August, 1867, 1 joined a party of ladies and 
 gentlemen to hear Frederick Douglass speak at Watkins, N. Y. 
 It was an open air meeting, with an audience of two thousand 
 people. When Douglass was demanding for the negro equality 
 before the law, that government should know no distinction of 
 color, no white, no black man, a man in the audience cried out, 
 ' That's a damnable sentiment.' To which Douglass replied, 
 ' Take care ; lest it damn you ! ' The negro had been thought 
 ' a natural bom Christian,' " " ' If you smite him on one cheek, 
 
THE LEADER IN POLITICS. 319 
 
 he will turn the other also ; ' but the war had shown he would 
 fight. He was philosopher enough not to fight when he had 
 no reasonable prospect of whipping anybody. Douglass liked 
 people who would fight — didn't admire sheep-like natures. 
 Fighting was the most respectable thing in the country. The 
 man who could fight the best was most likely to be President. 
 " The Copper-heads were saying all over the country that he 
 was no negro. ' Then,' said he, ' as a white man I have no 
 objection to negro equality before the law.' He did not believe 
 it would lessen his chances for the Presidency ! The negro 
 would not refuse him his vote on account of his complexion. 
 The negro race were in this country, and here they would re- 
 main ; it was inevitable. They would not wear out ; they would 
 not die out ; and, now slavery is abolished, they would not fade 
 out. The question was, should they remain as a blessing or a 
 curse .' Those Democrats in the Constitutional Convention at 
 Albany, laboring to keep equal rights from the negro by urging 
 a separate vote on the suffrage amendment, were trying to pre- 
 serve the accursed system of slavery. He spoke of white-coated 
 Greeley and the noble character of Gerrit Smith being thrust be- 
 tween miserable Jeff. Davis and the honest, hot indignation of 
 the North. Douglass did not like it ; did not think we ought 
 to forget what Jeff. Davis had done ; his release was an out- 
 rage. Douglass believed the Almightly gave us memory for a 
 purpose — to remember just such things. Even Christianity 
 did not ask us to forgive without repentance. Douglass didn't 
 wish to forget Andersonville, Belle Isle, Libby Prison. All 
 over the country, on the cars and in steamboats, in city streets, 
 in private homes, he met wounded and crippled soldiers, maimed 
 and marred, armless, legless men, marks of Jeff. Davis's crime 
 and malignant character. A government that don't hate trait- 
 ors, can't love loyal men. This Government does not know how 
 to punish traitors. A man who loves liberty strongest and 
 best is the one who hates and detests slavery and treason the 
 worst. The negro owes nothing to the Republican party, 
 nothing to the popular religion of this country. Douglass 
 thought this Government had as much reason to be grateful to 
 
320 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 the negro, as the negro had to be grateful to this Government- 
 Abraham Lincoln did not let the oppressed go free until the 
 safety of this Government demanded it. Like Pharaoh of old, 
 it was the awful suffering that came upon him. Emancipation 
 was owing to the irresistible logic of events. The negro owed 
 gratitude and thanks to Almighty God. 
 
 " Douglass then introduced his newly arrived, dear brother, 
 Perry, from whom he had been separated forty years. He had 
 often tried to find him ; had sent agents down South again and 
 again, but never could get any trace of him. Slavery hid him 
 away forty years — whelmed him in its loathsome, bitter floo'd. 
 He spoke of his unspeakable joy in his being restored to him 
 again. The sight of those two long-parted brothers standing 
 side by side — one with his culture and • courage, the other in 
 his truth and affection — moved the audience to tears. It seemed 
 a picture for an artist. It was the first time Perry ever heard 
 Frederick make a public speech ; it was a great event to him. 
 Perry said he was in Texas when emancipation was proclaimed, 
 and overheard his master say he had run his property into 
 Texas and then he could run it into Cuba. Then Perry said 
 he knew something was wrong about master, and he made 
 up his ' mind never to go on the water.' Perry was older 
 than Frederick, and smaller and darker. He went to reside in 
 Rochester near his brother. His honest face won interest and 
 confidence at first sight, which his good-sense and religious 
 trust confirmed." 
 
 Earnestly as the Douglass threw himself into the 
 battle for the ballot, he was . not indifferent to the 
 sight of injustice anywhere. The outrages upon the 
 Chinese made him accept them as sufferers from the 
 same prejudices as his own people ; and he under- 
 took to defend both races by the same noble argu- 
 ments. The lecture which he delivered in 1867 before 
 the Parker Fraternity, in Boston, is entitled " The 
 Composite Nation ;" and he maintains that our ca- 
 
THE LEADER IN POLITICS. 32I 
 
 pacity to become " the most perfect national illustra- 
 tion of the unity and dignity of the human family," is 
 largely due to our being " the most conspicuous 
 example of composite nationality in the world." In 
 Wales and the Highlands of Scotland, the people 
 boast that they are of pure blood and were never 
 conquered ; " but no man can contemplate them 
 without wishing that they had been conquered." 
 Only one-fifth of the population of the globe are 
 white, and are they to turn out the other four-fifths 
 everywhere ? "I know of no rights of race superior 
 to the rights of humanity." The Chinese are likely 
 to be even more difficult to deal with than the negro. 
 The latter " took his pay in religion and the lash. The 
 Chinaman is a different article, and will want the 
 cash." He " has notions of justice that are not to be 
 confused or bewildered by any of our ' Cursed be 
 Canaan ' religion." 
 
 " Chattel-slavery, kingcraft, priestcraft, pious frauds, intoler- 
 ance, persecution, suicide, assassination, repudiation, and a 
 thousand other errors and crimes have all had their defenses 
 and apologies. Prejudice of race and color has been equally 
 fortunate. The two best arguments in its defense are, first, the 
 worthlessness of the classes against which it is directed, and, 
 second, that the feeHng itself is entirely natural. The way for 
 any people to overcome the first argument is, to begin to work 
 for the elevation of those they have deemed worthless, and thus 
 make them worthy of regard ; and they will soon become 
 worthy and not worthless. As to the natural argument it may 
 be said that nature has many sides. Many things are, in a 
 certain sense, natural, which are neither wise nor best. It is 
 natural to walk ; but should men, therefore, refuse to ride ? It 
 is natural to ride on horseback; shall men, therefore, refuse 
 steam and rail? Civilization is itself a constant war upon 
 
32 2 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 some forces in nature ; shall we, therefore, abandon civilization 
 and go back to savage life ? Nature has two voices : the one 
 is high, the other low ; one is in sweet accord with reason and 
 justice, the other is apparently at war with both. The more 
 men really know of the essential nature of things, and of the 
 true relation of mankind, the freer they are from prejudices of 
 every kind. The child is afraid of the giant form of his own 
 shadow ; it is natural ; but he will part with his fears when he is 
 older and wiser. So ignorance is full of prejudice, but it will 
 disappear with enlightenment. But I pass on. I have said 
 that the Chinese will come, and have given some reasons why 
 we may expect them in very large numbers in no very distant 
 future. Do you ask if I would favor such immigration ? I 
 answer, I would. Would you admit them as witnesses in our 
 courts of law ? I would. Would you have them naturcdized, 
 and have them invested with all the rights of American citizen- 
 ship ? I would. Would you allow them to vote ? I would. 
 Would you allow them to hold office ? I would. . . . 
 
 " Our Republic is itself a strong argument in favor of cosmop- 
 olite nationality. It is no disparagement to Americans of 
 English descent, to affirm that much of the wealth, leisure, cul- 
 ture, refinement, and civilization of the country are due to the 
 arm of the negro and the muscle of the Irishman. Without 
 these races, and the wealth created by their sturdy toil, English 
 civilization had still lingered this side of the AUeghanies, and 
 the wolf would still be howling on their summits. To no class 
 of oun population are we more indebted for valuable qualities 
 of head, heart, and hand than to the Germans. Say what we 
 will of their lager, their smoke, and their metaphysics, they 
 have brought to us a fresh, vigorous, and child-like nature, a 
 boundless faculty in the acquisition of knowledge, a subtle and 
 far-reaching intellect, and a fearless love of truth. Though 
 remarkable for patient and laborious thought, the true German 
 is a joyous child of freedom, fond of manly sports, a lover of 
 music, and a happy man generally. Though he never forgets 
 that he is a- German, he never fails to remember that he is an 
 ^nierican, , , , 
 
THE LEADER IN POLITICS. 323 
 
 " But it is said that the Chinaman is a heathen, and that he 
 will introduce his heathen rights and superstitions here. This 
 is the last objection which should come from those who profess 
 the all conquering power of Christian religion. If that religion 
 cannot stand contact with the Chinese religion, or no religion, 
 so much the worse for those who have adopted it. It is the 
 Chinaman, not the Christian, who should be alarmed for his 
 faith. He exposes that faith to great dangers by exposing it to 
 the freer air of America. But shall we send missionaries to the 
 heathen, and yet deny the heathen the -right to come to us ? I 
 think that a few honest believers in the teachings of Confucius 
 would be well employed in expounding his doctrines amongst 
 us. ... 
 
 " Let the Chinaman come ; he will help to-aug^ent the na- 
 tional wealth. He will help to develop our boundless resources ; 
 he will help to pay off our national debt. He will help to lighten 
 the burden of our national taxation. He will give us the bene- 
 nt of his skill as a manufacturer and as a tiller of the soil, in 
 which he is unsurpassed. Even the matter of religious liberty, 
 which has cost the world more tears, more blood, and more 
 agony than any other interest, will be helped by his presence. 
 I know of no church, however tolerant, of no priesthood, how- 
 ever enlightened, which could be safely trusted with the tremen- 
 dous power which universal conformity would confer. We 
 should welcome all men of every shade of religious opinion, as 
 among the best means of checking the arrogance and intoler- 
 ance which are the almost inevitable concomitants of general 
 conformity. Liberty always flourishes best amid the clash and 
 competition of rival religious creeds." 
 
 Active support was given in 1868 by Douglass and 
 other colored men to General Grant, not merely be- 
 cause he had been a firm friend to their race, but 
 because his opponent had failed to put down the 
 draft-riot, in which their orphan asylum was burned. 
 A friend of mine was sitting in a parlor-car when the 
 
324 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 porter came by, offering to embellish the boots of the 
 passengers with either a Grant polish or a Seymour 
 shine, whichever they might prefer. " No," said she, 
 " when the colored orphan asylum was burned in 
 New York, that was a Seymour shine !" 
 
 How fully Douglass shared this view may be judged 
 from the speech he made the year previous at Wat- 
 kins, as well as from that which was delivered at 
 Arlington on Decoration Day, 187 1, and which is 
 printed in his " Life and Times" (pp. 461-3). It was 
 then that he said, "We are not here to applaud 
 manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a 
 noble cause." 
 
 In 1869 he left Rochester, where he had resided 
 since 1847, and became editor of a Washington 
 weekly, the " New National Era," started for the 
 especial benefit of the colored people. Their ablest 
 men contributed to it ; but it was not a pecuniary 
 success, either under his management or that of his 
 sons, to whom he handed it over in 1872. It was 
 discontinued in 1875, after it had cost him nearly ten 
 thousand dollars. Subsequent investments have 
 been more fortunate. 
 
 During his three years of editorship. Grant at- 
 tempted to annex San Domingo ; and Charles Sum- 
 ner maintained that the President had violated the 
 Constitution, by using our navy to keep in power a 
 usurper who wanted to sell his country, and also by 
 threatening to make war upon Hayti, which opposed 
 the scheme as dangerous to its own independence. 
 The measure failed to secure the support of our peo- 
 ple, and our politics would certainly not have been 
 made any purer by the imposition upon Congress of 
 
THE LEADER IN fOLltlCS. 32$ 
 
 the task of governing a province in which there was 
 scarcely a single native who could speak English or 
 read any language. Douglass has favored the scheme 
 as necessary to ensure a good government there ; and 
 this he found, as he states in an unpublished lecture, 
 to be " the opinion of the most intelligent men in the 
 island." His visit wasmade'on board t)f our man-of- 
 war, the Tennessee, as secretary to a Commission 
 composed of Senator Wade, Dr. S. G. Howe, and ex- 
 President White, of Cornell. He was treated, as Mr. 
 White informs me, with every honor by the Com- 
 missioners as well as by the naval officers ; but as 
 they returned to Washington by a Potomac steamer, 
 on March 27, 1871, he was forbidden a place at the 
 supper-table, whereupon Mr. White and Dr. Howe 
 refused to take one. This made it unfortunate 
 that he was not invited to dinner with the Com- 
 missioners at the White House, though the omis- 
 sion did not seem to him so important as it did to 
 Sumner. 
 
 He was appointed a councillor or member of the 
 upper house of the legislature of the District of 
 Columbia, soon after by Grant, who was indebted to 
 him for the colored vote in 1872. He met the repre- 
 sentations of Sumner and other friends of liberty, 
 that Grantism had become synonymous not only 
 with despotism but with corruption, by asserting that 
 the Democratic party was still the negro's enemy. In 
 the speech with which he opened' the campaign in 
 April, at New Orleans, he told a story of a man who 
 was riding a mule that put its foot into the stirrup 
 in its efforts to throw him. Then he said : " Faith, 
 and if you are a trying to get on, it is time for me to 
 
326 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 get off." Thus Greeley was the saddle into which the 
 Democratic party was trying to climb, and it seemed 
 time to jump off. 
 
 The national colored convention at New Orleans 
 " pretty largely agreed with me ; " and he continued 
 to take an active part in the campaign until its close. 
 His activity was not seriously interrupted by the burn- 
 ing, early in June, of the house which he still retained 
 in Rochester — a loss especially to be regretted, because 
 it involved that of the only complete files in existence 
 of his "Weekly" and "Monthly." Many other materials 
 which would have been of great value to history as well 
 as biography, perished in the flames. Among the States 
 where he appeared on the stump, that summer or fall, 
 were North Carolina, Virginia, and Maine. New 
 York put his name, as Elector at large, at the head of 
 her ticket ; and the honor of carrying the electoral 
 vote of the State to Washington was given soon after 
 to a member of the race which had once been forbid- 
 den by law to handle an ordinary mail-bag. 
 
 Unwilling as Douglass was to follow even Sumner 
 blindly, he never ceased to be grateful to the Senator 
 who had been foremost in the battle for the oppressed. 
 They dined together at least once a week, and were 
 often seen walking arm-in-arm in the Senate Chamber. 
 One man, who was sent there by Rhode Island, used 
 to say, "When I see Fred Douglass come in among 
 us, I am ashamed to be sitting in my place ; and it is 
 not because I care anything for Sambo either." No 
 white man at Washington cared more for Sambo 
 then the Senator whom Douglass defended to the face 
 of a President who called Sumner mad. He delights 
 still to remember how his " No " in the Senate, " went 
 
THE LEADER IN POLITICS. 327 
 
 Up to the dome : " and, even while opposing his views 
 in the New Orleans convention, he said : 
 
 " There is now a man at Washington who represents the fu- 
 ture, and is a majority in himself — a man at whose feet Grant 
 learns wisdom. That man is Charles Sumner. I know them 
 both. They are great men ; but Sumner is steady as the North 
 Star : he is no flickering light. For twenty-five years he has 
 worked for the Republican party, and I hope I may cease for- 
 ever, if I cease to give all honor to Charles Sumner." 
 
 He has also said that, " As a man of integrity and 
 truth, Charles Sumner was high above suspicion ; 
 and not all the Grants in Christendom will rob him 
 of this well-earned character." 
 
 The colored people of Tennessee now invited their 
 leader to tell them what he knew about farming ; and 
 he began his speech at their fair, at Nashville, Sep- 
 tember 18, 1873, by saying, " I have been all my life 
 long doing extraordinary things for the first time 
 some of which had been better undone." He pro- 
 ceeded to make many practical suggestions : for 
 instance, that " the primary conditions of peace, pu- 
 rity, and order in your household," consisted in an 
 " ample supply of wood and water." He reminded his 
 brethren that the pressing question was " whether 
 the black man will prove a better master to himself 
 than his white master was to him." ..." We are 
 to prove that we can better our own condition." One 
 way to do this is, " Accumulate property. This may 
 sound to you like a new gospel. You have been 
 accustomed to hear that money is the root of all 
 evil, etc." ... "On the other hand, property, 
 money if you please, will purchase for us the only 
 
328 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 condition upon which any people can rise to the dig- 
 nity of genuine manhood, for without property, there 
 can be no leisure : without leisure, there can be no 
 thought : without thought, there can be no invention : 
 without invention there can be no progress." 
 
 On his way back from speaking thus, he and his 
 son, Frederick, resisted an attempt to order them out 
 of the cars ; and their success justified his words at 
 the fair, " Our destiny is in our own hands." 
 
 His exhortations to his people to save money lost' 
 much of their effect in consequence of the failure, 
 that fall, of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Com- 
 pany. This bank had been established in 1865 at 
 Washington, for the benefit of the colored people, 
 under the supervision of Congress. In 1872 it had 
 thirty-four branches in various States, and had re- 
 ceived more than as many millions of dollars in 
 deposits. It had, however, made some bad loans ; 
 and its president, Frederick Douglass, had said in a 
 letter, dated April 30, 1871, " I have married a corpse." 
 He finally felt it his duty to impart his suspicions to 
 the Finance Committee of the Senate ; and they 
 agreed with him that it was better to close the bank. 
 I have heard that it might have weathered the sform, 
 if no shock had been thus openly given to its credit. 
 There is no doubt that Douglass acted to the best of 
 his judgment in the interest of the depositors, whom 
 he was bound to protect ; and it is difficult to see 
 whether they would have lost more or less if he had 
 acted otherwise. The result was unfortunate, not 
 only to his own influence, but to that of the Repub- 
 lican party over the freedmen ; and these latter 
 suffered by the conversion of an encouragement to 
 
THE LEADER iN POLITICS. 3^9 
 
 industry and economy into a temptation to idleness 
 and extravagance. 
 
 It is pleasant to turn from this disaster, and re- 
 meiliber that this was the year in which he was 
 elected a member of the lower branch of the District 
 Legislature, and in which he first told how he had 
 escaped from slavery. The story was going the 
 rounds of the press in April, and that summer he 
 wrote the John Brown lecture, which was delivered 
 for the first time in Charlestown, Mass., on Decem- 
 ber 9, 1873. Six days later he was one of the 
 speakers at the meeting held by the Woman Suffrage 
 Association of New England, in Faneuil Hall, on the 
 one hundredth anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. 
 
 The victory of the Republicans in 1872 was the 
 most sweeping they have ever gained. Since then 
 they have had only a small majority, or none, in the 
 popular vote for President ; but that year their 
 majority of votes was about one-ninth. Grant carried 
 thirty-one States, out of which only nineteen went 
 for Garfield in 1880 ; and the change in the number 
 of electors was from 286 in 1872 to the 185 of whom 
 some were claimed by the Democrats in 1876. This 
 falling off was largely due to losing most of the negro 
 vote ; and it is worth while to remember that this loss 
 took place immediately after a great Republican 
 victory, while not only the White House but the 
 Capitol was in full possession of a party which had 
 been doing its utmost to protect the freedmen against 
 the Ku Klux, and while federal troops were upholding 
 the candidates supported for governor and members 
 of the legislature by the colored people of Louisiana, 
 against the nominees of the "white man's party." 
 
330 fBEDEkICK DOUGLASS, 
 
 Why the negro lost the franchise, while his own party 
 was at the height of power and doing its utmost 
 to sustain him, may easily be imagined from what is 
 said by the " first colored member of the Ohio Legis- 
 lature and late Judge Advocate of the Grand Army 
 of the Republic," Mr. G. W. Williams, in his " History 
 of the Negro Race in America." Vol. ii, pp. 527-8. 
 
 " It was to be regretted that the negro had been so uncere- 
 moniously removed from Southern politics ; but such a result 
 was inevitable. The Government gave him the statute-book 
 when he ought to have had the spelling-book, placed him in the 
 legislature when he ought to have been in the school-house. 
 In the great revolution that followed the war, the heels were put 
 where the brains ought to have been. An ignorant majority, 
 without competent leaders, could not rule an intelligent Cauca- 
 sian minority. Ignorance, vice, poverty, and superstition could 
 not rule intelligence, experience, wealth, and organization." . . . 
 " It was an immutable and inexorable law which demanded the 
 destruction of those governments. It was a law that knows no 
 country, no nationality." ..." But a lesson was taught the 
 colored people that is invaluable. Let them rejoice that they 
 are out of politics." 
 
 Douglass admits in the " North American Review," 
 for July, 1884, that the colored voter had been car- 
 ried " to an altitude unsuited to his attainments," 
 and General S. C. Armstrong declares of the people 
 for whom he is laboring that " Their present unfit- 
 ness, as a class, to use their power is such that they 
 will not be allowed, even in the States in which they 
 have the majority, to assume political control." It 
 was found necessary by a Republican Congress to 
 disfranchise them, in company with the other inhabi- 
 tants of the District of Columbia in 1874, and the 
 
THE LEADER IN POLITICS. 331 
 
 suffrage has not been restored there. Men who had 
 helped the freed men to the ballot were bitterly dis- 
 appointed at finding it used by unscrupulous white 
 adventurers, as a weapon for robbing tax-payers in- 
 discriminately. It is certainly a great pity that Con- 
 gress did not keep within the line drawn by President 
 Lincoln three days before his death, when he sug- 
 gested that " The elective franchise might be con- 
 ferred on the very intelligent of the colored men, and 
 on those who served in our cause as soldiers." It is 
 particularly unfortiinate to have had the power of 
 Mr. Douglass as a political leader weakened by dis- 
 regard of his own principle, "The true basis of 
 rights is the capacity of individuals." 
 
 He did not falter in the faith declared in a letter 
 which was the only one selected to be read aloud at 
 the Centennial Celebration of the Concord Fight, on 
 April 19, 1875, ^nd which rejoiced in our possession 
 of "a liberty in presence of which no privileged 
 classes of wealth or religion, race or color can long 
 endure." When he spoke soon afterward at the one 
 hundredth anniversary of the formation of the Aboli- 
 tion Society of Pennsylvania, he said : " I know of no 
 one period in the world's history for which I would 
 exchange the present." And he urged the need of 
 giving to the black man " knowledge to use his suf- 
 frage in such a manner as to preserve his own liberty 
 and the highest welfare of the Government." In a 
 speech to his own people on July 5, 1875, at Hills- 
 dale, near Washington, he warns them " to be on their 
 guard against the swarm of white beggars who 
 sweep the country in the name of the colored race." 
 
 A few months earlier, he and other colored men 
 
2^2 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 passed a resolution threatening that the South would 
 be full of " rapine, blood, and fire," if the Senate did 
 not pass the Civil Rights Bill, since found by the 
 Supreme Court to violate the Constitution in giving 
 to the national Government functions which belong 
 to the States. 
 
 March, 1876, he spoke at a meeting got up nomin- 
 ally for serenading Senator Morton, of Indiana, but 
 really for rebuking those Republicans who had re- 
 fused to give a seat in either House of Congress to a 
 mulatto, whose title and character were severely criti- 
 cized by the independent press. That June the 
 committee on credentials of the Republican National 
 Convention reported against recognizing what was 
 called " the Boss Shepherd and Fred Douglass 
 delegation." His wish to have either Morton or 
 Conkling nominated was not fulfilled ; and the zeal 
 with which he took part in sending Butler to fight 
 for negro suffrage in Congress, was soon repaid by the 
 General's getting himself made Democratic governor 
 of Massachusetts. Whatever we may think about the 
 purity and wisdom of the Stalwarts, we must honor the 
 motives which have made the Douglass follow their 
 banner no less loyally after it ceased to float over 
 White House and Capitol, or even to lead the march. 
 And we can all agree with him " that person is at 
 least as sacred as its incident, property." The only 
 question about either is to what extent protection is 
 the business of Congress. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 
 
 No politician, who aimed at keeping the colored 
 people subservient to his ambition, would venture to 
 show as much dissatisfaction with their religious 
 views, as was expressed at this time by Douglass. It 
 is impossible to realize how independently he has 
 thought, and how disinterestedly he has spoken, un- 
 less this point is made duly prominent. Before look- 
 ing at him as a holder of office, we must know how 
 high he stands above such a readiness to conform to 
 received opinions, as has always been the shortest 
 and easiest way to promotion and patronage. 
 
 Sympathy with recent movements in theology has 
 deepened the impression made by what he calls the 
 " pregnant and striking fact that American slavery 
 never was afraid of American religion." We have 
 seen how he treated some well-known texts at Nash- 
 ville ; and in a lecture on " William the Silent," writ- 
 ten near the close of the war, he said : " For what- 
 ever else we may be indebted to religion, we owe it 
 nothing for the idea of religious toleration. Nothing 
 IS so imperious, exacting, unreasoning, and intolerant 
 IS faith, when it takes full possession of the human 
 mind." His speaking of the passage of the Fifteenth 
 Amendment, as due to " our common humanity," 
 333 
 
334 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 rather than to divine grace, called out so much 
 censure that he wrote in a letter to the " Washington 
 Republican," in June, 1870 : 
 
 " If the instigator of this sham trial, in place of getting- up 
 these church meetings to try distant heretics like myself, would 
 honestly go to work, and endeavor to reform the character, man- 
 ners, and habits of the infestering thousands of colored people, 
 who live in the utmost misery and destitution in the immediate 
 vicinity of Big Bethel, he would do more to prove his church 
 sound than by passing any number of wordy resolutions about 
 thanking God." 
 
 Early in 1874 he took part in dedicating the hall 
 of the Free Congregational Society in Florence, 
 Massachusetts, and spoke very plainly about the faith 
 in which he had lived while a slave. Soon after, he 
 was invited to speak before the Free Religious Associ- 
 ation in Boston, in company with its president. Rev. 
 O. B. Frothingham, Mr. F. E. Abbot, of the " Index," 
 Colonel Higginson, Dr. Bartol, and Rabbi Sonne- 
 schein. His letter, which was published in company 
 with one from the founder of the Brahmo Somaj, is 
 as follows : 
 
 "Washington, D. C, May 15, 1874. 
 " Dear Mr. Potter : — 
 
 " I have delayed attention to your kind invitation thus long in 
 the hope of being able at last to return you an affirmative 
 answer, but circumstances are against me. I cannot be present 
 at your Free Religious Convention in Boston. This is, of course, 
 of smaller consequence to others than to myself, for I should 
 come more to hear than be heard. Freedom is a word of 
 charming sound, not only to the tasked and tortured slaves who 
 toil for an earthly master, but for those who would break the 
 galling chains of darkness and superstition. Regarding the 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 335 
 
 Free Religious movement as one for light, love, and liberty, 
 limited only by reason and human welfare, and opposed to the 
 works of those who convert life and death into enemies of human 
 happiness, who people the invisible world with ghastly task- 
 masters, I give it hearty welcome. Only the truth can make 
 men free, and I trust that your convention will be guided in all 
 its utterances by its light and feel its power. I know many of 
 the good men and women who are likely to assemble with you, 
 and I would gladly share with them the burden of reproach 
 which their attacks upon pppular error will be sure to bring 
 upon them. Very truly yours, 
 
 " Frederick Douglass." 
 
 His letters to friends furnish these passages : 
 " I once had a large stock of hope on hand, but like the sand 
 in the glass, it has about run out. My present solace is in the 
 cultivation of religious submission to the inevitable, in teaching 
 myself that I am but a breath of the Infinite, perhaps not so 
 much. I was very sorry not to be able to attend the Free Relig- 
 ious Convention in Boston last week. I shall hereafter try to 
 know more of these people." ..." I sometimes (at long inter- 
 vals) try my old violin ; but after all, the music of the past and 
 of imagination is sweeter than any my unpracticed and unskilled 
 bow can produce. So I lay my dear, old fiddle aside, and listen 
 to the soft, silent, distant music of other days, which, in the 
 hush of my spirit, I still find lingering somewhere in the mysteri- 
 ous depths of my soul." 
 
 The most complete utterance of his views is a lec- 
 ture which was delivered before the Bethel Literary 
 and Historical Society in Washington, and has not 
 been published. The subject is the saying, incor- 
 rectly credited to Galileo, " It Moves." Among the 
 opening sentences are these : 
 
 " I do not know that I am an evolutionist, but to this extent 
 I am one, I certainly have more patience with those who trace 
 
336 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 mankind upward from a low condition, even from the lower 
 animals, than with those who start him at a high point of per- 
 fection and conduct him to a level with the brutes. I have no 
 sympathy with a theory that starts man in heaven, and stops 
 him in hell." ... " An irrepressible conflict, grander than 
 that described by the late William H. Seward, is perpetually 
 going on. Two hostile and irreconcilable tendencies, broad as 
 the world of man, are in the open field ; good and evil, truth 
 and error, enlightenment and superstition." 
 
 Another passage I quote at some length, because 
 it is decidedly the ablest I know of on this side. 
 
 " It may not be a useless speculation to inquire whence comes 
 the disposition or suggestion of reform, whence that irresistible 
 power that impels men to brave all the hardships and dangers 
 involved in pioneering an unpopular cause. Has it a natural or 
 a celestial origin ? Is it human, or is it divine, or is it both ? 
 I have no hesitation in stating where I stand in respect of these 
 questions. It seems to me that the true philosophy of reform 
 is not found in the clouds, in the stars, nor anywhere else out- 
 side of humanity itself. So far as the laws of the universe have 
 been discovered and understood, they seem to teach that the 
 mission of man's improvement and perfection has been wholly 
 committed to man himself. He is to be his own savior or his 
 own destroyer. He has neither angels to help him, nor devils 
 to hinder him. It does not appear from the operation of these 
 laws, nor from any trustworthy data, that divine power is ever 
 exerted to remove any evil from the world, how great soever 
 it may be. Especially does it never appear to protect the weak 
 against the strong, the simple against the cunning, the oppressed 
 against the oppressor, the slave against his master, the subject 
 against his king, or one hostile army against another, although it 
 is usual to pray for such interference, and also for the conquer- 
 ors to thank God for the victory, though such thanksgiving 
 assumes that the Heavenly Father is always with the strong 
 and against the weak, and with the victors against the van- 
 quished. No power in nature asserts itself to save even inno- 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 337 
 
 cence from the consequences of violated law. The babe and 
 the lunatic perish alike when they throw themselves down, or 
 by accident fall, from a sufficient altitude upon sharp and flinty 
 rocks beneath, for this is the fixed and unalterable penalty for 
 the transgression of the law of gravitation. The law in all di- 
 rections is imperative and inexorable, but beneficial with all. 
 Though it accepts no excuses, grants no prayers, heeds no 
 tears, but visits all transgressors with cold and iron-hearted 
 impartiality, its lessons, on this very account, are all the more 
 easily and certainly learned. If it were not thus fixed, in- 
 flexible, and immutable, it would always be a trumpet of un- 
 certain sound, and men could never depend upon it, nor hope 
 to attain complete and perfect adjustment to its requirements, 
 because what might be in harmony with it at one time, would 
 be discordant with it at another. Or if it could be propitiated 
 by prayers or other religious offermgs, the ever shifting sands 
 of piety or impiety would take the place of law, and men 
 would be destitute of any standard of right, any test of obedi- 
 ence, or any stability of moral government. 
 
 The more thoughtful among orthodox believers concede that 
 the laws appertaining to matter are unchangeable and eternal. 
 They have ceased to pray for rain or for clear weather, but to 
 save something from the wreck which this admission must make 
 in their theological system, they except the spiritual nature of 
 man from the operation of fixed and unchangeable law. But, 
 plainly enough, they gain nothing by this distinction. If the 
 smallest particle of matter in any part of the universe is subject 
 to law, it seems to me that a thing so important as the moral 
 nature of man cannot be less so. It may be further objected 
 to the orthodox view of this question, that, in effect, it does 
 away with moral and spiritual law altogether, and leaves man 
 without any rule of moral and spiritual life. For where there is 
 no law, there can be no transgression, and hence no penalty. 
 This is not the only difficulty in the way of our acceptance of 
 the common theology, and where it manifestly stands in con- 
 tradiction to sound reason. If they admit that there are moral 
 laws, but affirm that the consequences of their violation may all 
 
338 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 be removed by a prayer, a sigh, or a tear, the result is about 
 the same as if there were no law. Faith, in that case, takes the 
 place of law, and belief, the place of life. A man, on this theory, 
 has only to believe himself pure and right, a subject of special 
 divine favor, and he is so. Absurd as this position is to some 
 of us, it is, in some vague way, held by the whole Christian 
 world about us, and Christians niust cling to it, or give up the 
 entire significance of their prayers and worship. I discard 
 this office of faith for many reasons. It seems to me that it 
 strikes at the fundamental principle of all real progress, and 
 ought, by some means or other, to be removed from the minds 
 of men. I think it will be found that all genuine reform must 
 rest on the assumption that man is a creature of absolute, in- 
 flexible law, moral and spiritual ; and that his happiness and 
 well-being can only be secured by discovery and perfect obe- 
 dience to such laws." 
 
 In 1875 hs protested against making a wTiite man, 
 who was secretary of the American Missionary Asso- 
 ciation, president of Howard University, in place of 
 some black man who would keep the institution un- 
 sectarian ; and five years later he spoke thus to his 
 own people, as may be seen from the last page of his 
 " Life and Times : " " My hope for the future of my 
 race is further supported by the rapid decline of an 
 emotional, shouting, and thoughtless religion. Scarcely 
 in any direction can there be found a less favorable 
 field for mind or morals than where such a religion 
 prevails." . . . "Its tendency is to substitute 
 faith for virtue, and is a dead.ly enemy to our prog- 
 ress." He spoke at the May meeting of the F. R. 
 A., in 1883, when he remarked that he supposed he 
 had been invited merely to give a color to the occasion. 
 In "Harper's Weekly," that year, for December 8, there 
 is an article in which he speaks of " The Condition of 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 339 
 
 the Freedmen," in language which he had also used 
 in a speech at Topeka, Kansas. He is satisfied of the 
 existence of " a visible and growing improvement," 
 both as to honesty and chastity ; and this he attrib- 
 utes largely to the fact that " The old, emotional 
 camp-meeting religion is subsiding among them, and' 
 thought is taking the place of feeling." " These old- 
 fashioned preachers," he adds, " minister to passion, 
 decry the intellect, and induce contentment in ignor- 
 ance and stupidity, and hence are a hinderance to prog- 
 ress." The young people who have learned to read 
 and write have no further use for " the old, cast-off, 
 theological hats and coats of fifty years ago." . . . 
 " It is evident that morals and manners have gained 
 by the change, and will continue to gain as the lamp 
 of knowledge grows bright among them." Busts of 
 Strauss and Feuerbach ornament his study ; and 
 when, as he was about to go to Hayti, in 1889, a 
 handsome Bible was presented to him by a colored 
 congregation in Washington, he took care, while re- 
 ceiving the gift with the utmost cordiality, not to 
 touch on topics which he had been able to handle in 
 the orthodox way, on a similar occasion forty-two 
 years before. 
 
 Nothing which he said about theology or politics 
 seems to have created so much excitement in Wash- 
 ington, as a lecture delivered there in 1875, '^^^ d- 
 titled " Our National Capital." He begins by refer- 
 ring to the ill success of his " William the Silent," as 
 a reason for speaking of what he knows from obser- 
 vation. Then come amusing pictures of the native- 
 born Washingtonian gentleman, the local white 
 trash, the spoilsmen from abroad, and the member of 
 
340 
 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Congress, who "has two cats in his room and only 
 one mouse in his closet, who gives a constituent a 
 letter of recommendation for a position, and then runs 
 ahead of him by another street to say that what he 
 has written was only for buncombe and should re- 
 ceive no attention." He himself has been " usually 
 approached by the dark side of our fellow-citizens," 
 or else by white men who tell wonderful things about 
 what they or their fathers did when it cost something 
 to be known as an Abolitionist. "Through this class 
 I have learned that there were a great many more 
 underground-railroad stations at the North, than I 
 ever dreamed of in the time of slavery, and when I 
 sorely needed one myself." " Every man in Wash- 
 ington," he says, " is assigned to one of two classes: 
 the class which is used by everybody, or the class 
 that uses everybody." He also complains of the lack 
 of business energy, which has made this perhaps the 
 only city in the United States, where land has been 
 worth no more for fronting on a navigable river. But 
 his severest censures fall upon the cruelty with 
 which horses and mules are treated by negro drivers 
 without rebuke. He concludes by acknowledging 
 that, besides improving in many other ways, " Wash- 
 ington, from being one of the most oppressive and 
 illiberal cities of the Union toward the colored race, 
 has now become one of the most enlightened and 
 liberal." 
 
 Nothing in this lecture prevented the people of the 
 District from coming by the thousand to hear the 
 oration which he delivered, in the presence of the 
 President, the Cabinet, Judges of the Supreme Court, 
 Senators and Representatives, at Washington, on April 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 34I 
 
 14, 1876, at the unveiling of the freedmen's statue of 
 Lincoln. This has been called his ablest work. It 
 is printed in full in the appendix to " Life and Times," 
 as well as in a separate pamphlet, and is more remark- 
 able for uniform elevation of view and impartiality 
 of judgment, than for exceptionally brilliant passages. 
 According to the system of rewarding fidelity to 
 party with appointment to office, his claim was strong; 
 and a letter of April 2, 1873, mentions the possibility, 
 but remarks that, " The honor would be the main 
 consideration in any case, for it is not likely that any 
 salary would be paid me as far above my expenses 
 as I can make my income by lecturing." Hayes had 
 scarcely been counted in and inaugurated, when he 
 withdrew the federal troops from South Carolina and 
 Louisiana. Public opinion has sanctioned this meas- 
 ure; but there was danger that the colored people 
 might think their interests overlooked ; and their- fore- 
 most representative was accordingly given the hon- 
 orable and lucrative office of marshal of the District. 
 The " Nation " speaks of the appointment as "pictur- 
 esque but not reformatory." The local lawyers tried 
 to have it rejected by the Senate ; but a confirmation 
 was promptly secured by Conkling, on March 18. The 
 opposition revived a month or two later, when the 
 marshal ventured, while complying with an invitation 
 to be present at the opening of the international 
 exhibition, which followed the Centennial one in 
 Philadelphia, to deliver the lecture on Washington in 
 Douglass Hall, Baltimore. The news, that they had 
 been made fun of before a negro audience in Balti- 
 more, was too much for the Washingtonians. Their 
 papers were in " a tempest of passion," as may be 
 
342 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 seen from the letter, in justification of the lecture, in 
 the Autobiography (pp. 469-71). Very few of either 
 the white or the colored people of the District dared 
 to say a word for the lecturer ; his bondsmen were 
 urgently solicited to withdraw their names, and thus 
 disqualify him ; President Hayes received petition 
 after petition for removal ; but the Marshal retained 
 his place. 
 
 He was not allowed to introduce guests at the 
 White House on state occasions, which had been done 
 by his predecessors under Grant and Lincoln ; and 
 he was urged by some colored friends to resign on 
 this account ; but he refused to do so. He has, I 
 think, fully justified himself by urging that the priv- 
 ilege was no part of the functions and duties con- 
 ferred upon him by law, but merely a usage of so 
 recent origin, that a President might alter it without 
 giving offense ; and he does not consider that he was 
 personally slighted by Mr. or Mrs. Hayes. 
 
 He had found himself on his appointment " in a per- 
 fect snow-storm of letters of congratulation." Then 
 came a swarm of applicants for office ; and a son of 
 his old master was among the seekers for a place 
 under him. He writes that, " I have more than fifty 
 cats for one mouse, and I am tired of saying ' no.' " 
 One of his deputies, Colonel Perry H. Carson, tells 
 me that he worked like a tiger, and was on the spot 
 early and late. He kept the office long enough to be 
 present at Garfield's inauguration ; but not long 
 enough to have Guiteau in custody ; and he did not 
 take part in putting any one to death. 
 
 Early in 1878 he was invited by a colored friend to 
 revisit St. Michael's, where he had been a slave. His 
 
Marshal and recorder. 343 
 
 old master, Thomas Auld, was then very sick, but 
 sent a messenger for him. As he came to the 
 bedside and was addressed as " Marshal Douglass," 
 he replied, " not Marshal, but Frederick to you as 
 formerly." They shook hands ; the sick man burst 
 into tears ; and both were for a while speechless. 
 Then it was that Douglass asked what he now thought 
 of his slave's running away. After a moment's hesita- 
 tion, the answer came, " Frederick, I always knew 
 you were too smart to be a slave, and in your place 
 I should have done as you did." " Captain Auld," 
 was the reply, " I am glad to hear you say this. I did 
 not run away from you, but from slavery." He also 
 admitted, as already mentioned, that he had been 
 mistaken in one of the charges made in his first book ; 
 but not that he had done him injustice knowingly. 
 
 This visit to St. Michael's took place shortly before 
 Decoration Day, 1878, when he spoke from the Stal- 
 wart standpoint in Union Square, New York City, 
 and did not forget to refer to " the old Bay State, the 
 heart and brain of New England, the home of Sum- 
 ner, Andrew, and Wilson." Passages have been 
 alread}' quoted from his addresses at a meeting held in 
 Washington, on June 3, 1879, in memory of William 
 Lloyd Garrison. During that same month the people 
 of Rochester placed a marble bust of " her most dis- 
 tinguished citizen," in the hall of her University. 
 
 A serious difference in opinion among leading 
 colored men was brought about by a general emigra- 
 tion of their people in Mississippi, Louisiana, and 
 other States, Northward and Westward. The fact 
 that this exodus began in February, 1879, when there 
 was peculiarly little excitement about politics, shows 
 
344 
 
 FREDERICK OOOGtASS. 
 
 that the chief cause was not Democratic intimidation, 
 but financial distress. The freed man found, after 
 settling accounts with planters and store- keepers at 
 the end of the year, that he was not getting fair pay 
 for his work. The emigrants testified, to quote the 
 words of Marshal Douglass, that : 
 
 "Work as hard, faithfully, and constantly as they may, Uveas 
 plainly and as sparingly as they may, they are no better off at 
 the end of the year than at the beginning. They say that they 
 are the dupes and victims of cunning and fraud in signing con- 
 tracts which they cannot read and cannot fully understand ; that 
 they are compelled to trade at stores owned in whole or in part 
 by their employers ; and that they are paid with orders and not 
 with money. They say that they have to pay double the value 
 of nearly everything they buy ; that they are compelled to pay a 
 rental of ten dollars a year for an acre of ground that will not 
 bring thirty dollars under the hammer ; that land-owners are in 
 league to prevent land-owning by negroes ; that when they work 
 the land on shares they barely make a living ; that outside the 
 towns and cities no provision is made for education, and, ground 
 down as they are, they cannot themselves employ teachers to 
 instruct their children." 
 
 How much poverty had to do with this emigration 
 is plain from such facts as that thousands landed from 
 steamers at St. Louis without any money for going 
 further, and that two-thirds of the sixty thousand, 
 who reached Kansas during twelve months, were piti- 
 ably destitute, and had to have an association organ- 
 ized for their relief. There were comparatively few 
 of these refugees at Washington ; but their condition 
 was so deplorable, that Douglass lost no time in 
 appealing to his friends for nioney. Among those 
 who responded liberally was Mrs. Elizabeth Thomp- 
 son, who has presented our nation with Carpenter's 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 345 
 
 picture of the " Signing of the Emancipation Procla- 
 mation," and expended large sums for many other 
 worthy objects. 
 
 The same spirit of philanthropy, which made 
 Marshal Douglass quick to relieve the sufferings of 
 the emigrants, made him slow to recommend those 
 who remained behind to foJlow them. Other colored 
 orators expatiated on the advantages of just laws, im- 
 partial tribunals, free suffrage, high wages, and ad- 
 vanced civilization at the North. How he replied in 
 half a dozen speeches, may be seen from the paper 
 which was read at Saratoga, on September 12, 1879, 
 before the American Social Science Association. It 
 is reprinted fully in their journal, for May, 1880, and 
 with some omissions in his " Life and Times." He 
 begins by stating the great fact that, " The prosperity 
 and civilization of the South are at the mercy of the 
 hated and despised negro." He is so perfectly adapted 
 to the climate that " For him, as a Southern 
 laborer, there is no competitor or substitute." Social 
 prejudices, as well as climate, keep whites from work- 
 ing in the South ; and the black man must always be 
 " the arbiter of her destiny." He has begun to emi- 
 grate under circumstances described in a passage 
 already quoted in part. But, when his friends at the 
 North are called upon to contribute funds for increas- 
 ing the number of emigrants : 
 
 " It may well enough be said that the negro question is not 
 so desperate as the advocates of this exodus would have the 
 public believe ; that there is still hope that the negro will ulti- 
 mately have his rights as a man, and be fully protected in the 
 South ; that in several of the old slave States his citizenship and 
 his right to vote are already respected and protected ; that the 
 
J46 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 same, in time, will be secured for the negro in other States. 
 ..." The Fourteenth Amendment makes him a citizen, 
 and the Fifteenth makes him a voter. With power behind him 
 at work for him, and which cannot be taken from him, the negro 
 sf the South may wisely bide his time." 
 
 It is unfortunate for the colored people of the South 
 to have the North begged to give money to help them 
 emigrate ; for this encourages the belief that they are 
 not able to take care of themselves. It involves a 
 surrender of their right to be protected where they 
 are ; it encourages a restlessness which would keep 
 them poor ; and it tempts them into regions where 
 they would have to compete with laborers much 
 better adapted to the climate as well as to the state 
 of society. It is also to be remembered that " In the 
 South the negro has at least the possibility of power ; 
 in the North he has no such possibility." 
 
 " As an assertion of power by a people hitherto held in bitter 
 contempt ; as an emphatic and stinging protest against high- 
 handed, greedy, and shameless injustice to the weak and de- 
 fenseless ; as a means of opening the blind eyes of oppressors 
 to their folly and peril, the exodus has done valuable service. 
 Whether it has accomplished all of which it is capable in this 
 particular direction for the present, is a question which may well 
 be considered. With a moderate degree of intelligent leader- 
 ship among the laboring class at the South, properly handling 
 the justice of their cause, and wisely using the exodus example, 
 they can easily exact better terms for their labor than ever 
 before. Exodus is medicine, not food ; it is for disease, not 
 health ; it is not to be taken from choice, but necessity. In 
 anything like a normal condition of things, the South is the best 
 place for the negro. Nowhere else is there for him a promise 
 of a happier future. Let him stay there if he can, and save both 
 the South and himself to civilization. While, however, it may 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 347 
 
 be the highest wisdom under the circumstances for the freedmen 
 to stay where they are, no encouragement should be given to 
 any measures of coercion to keep them there. The American 
 people are bound, if they are or can be bound to anything, to 
 keep the north gate of the South open to black and white, and 
 to all the people. The time to assert a right, Webster says, is 
 when it is called in question." If it is attempted by force or fraud 
 to compel the colored people to stay, then they should by all 
 means go ; go quickly, and die, if need be, in the attempt. Thus 
 far and to this extent any man may be an emigrationist, and thus 
 far and to this extent I certainly am an emigrationist. In no 
 case must the negro be " bottled up " or " caged up." He must 
 be left free, like every other American citizen, to choose his own 
 local habitation, and to go where he shall like. Though it may 
 not be for his interest to leave the South, his right and power to 
 leave it may be his best means of making it possible for him to 
 stay there in peace. Woe to the oppressed and destitute of all 
 countries and races, if the rich and powerful are to decide when 
 and where they shall go or stay."' 
 
 This address was read at Saratoga, but not by its 
 author, who thus lost the opportunity to defend 
 himself against some criticisms which were made by 
 Professor Greener, upon the views, as he says, of " the 
 greatest negro whom America has ever produced." 
 
 The members of the Association agreed, for the 
 most part, with the essayist. The exodus did not last 
 long ; and whatever attempts are made to renew it 
 will be regulated by due attention to considerations 
 which have been summed up thus by Douglass. " A 
 negro in a snow-bank makes a ridiculous picture ; 
 the colors don't blend." 
 
 His efforts in the interest of all classes at the South 
 were badly repaid by fire on October 14, 1879, when 
 the barn on the estate to which he had just removed, 
 
34$ FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 on a hill over-looking Washington, was burned by 
 some white trash, jealous of negro superiority. He 
 felt for some time too insecure to sleep at night ; but 
 he held his ground, and has long since ceased to be 
 molested. 
 
 He was still popular enough among his own people 
 to be chosen president of their convention at Louis- 
 ville, in July, 1880, and he was prominent in that 
 year's campaign, although his health had been bad 
 ever since his return from San Domingo in 187 1. 
 On August 4, 1880, he made an effective speech at 
 Rochester for Garfield against Hancock, who had, 
 he said, promised more than he could perform, in 
 pledging himself to execute the great amendments. 
 " He has stolen our thunder, but will find it too 
 heavy for him." The best thing in this speech is the 
 hint to the colored people that, " With money and 
 property comes knowledge and power ; what we call 
 money is only stored labor ; a poverty stricken class 
 will be an ignorant and despised class ; and no 
 amount of sentiment can make it otherwise." He 
 had given the same advice, three days before in that 
 city, to a great concourse of his own people, met on 
 what he rightly calls " the colored man's day," to 
 remember gratefully how Great Britain became, " the 
 mother of our abolition movement." This speech is, 
 in great part, given at the end of " Life and Times," 
 and the extract closes with his " hopes that that bet- 
 ter day for which the more thoughtful amongst us 
 have long labored, and the millions of our people 
 have sighed for centuries, is near at hand." 
 
 He made a visit the next winter to Florida ; and 
 there was such a rush of even the poorest members of 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 349 
 
 his race to see him that a hotel-keeper at Jackson- 
 ville asked him to use his influence to keep them out 
 of the parlor. "No," was the reply; "wherever I 
 am, they can come." On February 23, 1881, he was 
 back in Washington, delivering a magnificent eulo- 
 gium on the star-spangled banner, as he presented the 
 flag given to the Roscoe Conkling Club of Boys in 
 Blue by the Senator whose name they bore. 
 
 The " North American Review," for April, 1881, has 
 an article on " The Color-line," by Marshal Doug- 
 lass, who appeals, not only to his own experience in 
 Europe, but to that of Remond, Ward, Garnett, Bruce, 
 and others, in proof of the fact that there is " no 
 color-prejudice in Europe, except among the Ameri- 
 cans who reside there." He saw none of it in our 
 own great men, like Lincoln, Seward, Chase, Hale, 
 Wilson, and Sumner ; its existence in this country 
 may be fully accounted for by the previous enslave- 
 ment of the negro ; and the hatred against him is so 
 much like that against the Jews in Berlin, Irishmen 
 in London, Christians in Constantinople, and China- 
 men in San Francisco, or like the intolerance once 
 felt by Catholics against Protestants, that " We may 
 well enough affirm that this prejudice really has 
 nothing whatever to do with race or color." "The 
 color is innocent enough," he adds, "but things 
 coupled with it make it hated. Slavery, ignorance, 
 stupidity, servility, poverty, dependence, are undesir- 
 able conditions. When these cease to be coupled 
 with color, there will be no color-line drawn." . . . 
 "Prejudice of race and color is only natural in the 
 sense that ignorance, superstition, bigotry, and vice 
 are natural." ... "It has no better defense than 
 
350 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 they, and should be despised and put away from 
 human relations as an enemy to the peace, good 
 order, and happiness of human society." 
 
 His term as marshal expired in 1881, and in May 
 of that year he was appointed to a lucrative office, 
 exacting but little personal labor, that of Recorder 
 of Deeds for the District of Columbia. On decora- 
 tion day soon after, he delivered an address on John 
 Brown, at Harper's Ferry before the members of the 
 colored college in that town. On the platform sat 
 the attorney who led the prosecution. " What an 
 overturning, what wonderful progress, that I should 
 be called upon to deliver such an address at Harper's 
 Ferry," says an unpublished letter. On June 12, he 
 revisited the Lloyd plantation in a revenue cutter, 
 as is related very touchingly in the " Life and Times " 
 (pp. 492-500) ; and in November he spoke at Easton, 
 the county seat where he had been imprisoned in 
 1836, when he was led into town, with his hands tied, 
 by the mounted constable who had arrested him for 
 trying to run away. He presided on September 26, 
 i88i, at a meeting of colored people held in Wash- 
 ington in honor of the President who was buried 
 that day while the nation mourned. In his brief 
 speech he mentioned as an instance of the greatness 
 of the loss to his race, the fact that the assassination 
 had prevented the fulfilment of a plan for " sending 
 some colored representatives abroad to other than 
 colored nations." He had himself been invited to 
 take an important position of this kind, but had pre- 
 ferred to remain at home. 
 
 In January, 1882, the Park Publishing Company, 
 of Hartford, issued the " Life and Times of Frederick 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 35 1 
 
 Douglass," written by himself, with an introduction 
 by Judge Ruffin, of Boston. It contains a fine por- 
 trait, but the other illustrations are of little value. 
 This book does not give so full an account of his 
 life before 1843 as " My Bondage and My Freedom," 
 but it is our chief authority for subsequent years. It 
 is very interesting throughout and contains several 
 recent speeches ; but the arrangement is not sys- 
 tematic. 
 
 In this year, on August 4, he lost his wife, and wrote 
 to one of his friends, " The main pillar of my house 
 has fallen." 
 
 We have seen him working with Father Mathew ; 
 but he said this year at Providence, " While as a tem- 
 perance man, I should be glad to see every grogshop 
 in the land abolished, I am not inclined to adopt the 
 prohibition doctrine." Of one of the leading organi- 
 zations which support it, he said, on September i, 
 1884 : " Though, as I think, it is manifestly wrong 
 and abundant in mischief, its members are among 
 the most conscientious and philanthropic of the 
 American people." As he was going to one of the 
 many places where he has been received with public 
 honors, a colored man, who talked as fast as Dickens's 
 Mr. Jingle, forced himself into his company and went 
 with him to the house where he was to be the guest 
 of a graduate of Oberlin. This must, he thought, be 
 one of the committee ; but they supposed him to be 
 some personal friend of their visitor. While the lat- 
 ter was brushing his hair, the Oberlin man came in 
 with a bottle, saying : " I know nothing about brandy 
 myself, but your friend says this is excellent." " Now, 
 what do you suppose I want of brandy ? I never use 
 
352 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 it." " Why, your friend said you always did when you 
 had been travelling." Exit Jingle. 
 
 The twentieth anniversary of Lincoln's proclama- 
 tion was celebrated in Washington, on January i, 
 1883, by a banquet given to Douglass' by colored 
 citizens of the United States. His speech dwelt on 
 the great improvement made by the race in those 
 twenty years ; and he acknowledged this in the 
 address which he made on the twenty- first anniver- 
 sary of Emancipation in the District, April 16. On 
 the latter occasion, he also declared that the colored 
 people " cannot remain half slave and half free." 
 " You must give them all, or take from them all. 
 Discussion of their wrongs must go on until the 
 public schools shall cease to be caste schools ;" . . . 
 " until the colored man's pathway to the ballot-box 
 North and South, shall be as smooth and as safe as 
 the same is for the white citizen ;" . . . " until the 
 courts of the country shall grant the colored man a 
 fair trial and a just verdict ;" . . . "until color shall 
 cease to be a bar to equal participation in the offices 
 and honors of .the country ;''... " until the trades- 
 unions, and the workshops of the country shall cease 
 to proscribe the colored man, and prevent his children 
 from learning useful trades ;" . . . " until the Ameri- 
 can people shall make character, and not color, the 
 criterion of respectability." In closing he said : 
 " There is but one destiny, it seems to me, left for us, 
 and that is to make ourselves, and be made by others, 
 a part of the American people, in every sense of the 
 word. Assimilation, and not isolation is our true 
 policy." . . . "We cannot afford to set up for our- 
 selves a separate political party, or adopt for our- 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 353 
 
 selves a political creed apart from the rest of our 
 fellow-citizens. Our own interests will be subserved 
 by a generous care for the interests of the nation at 
 large. All the political, social, and literary forces 
 around us tend to unification." 
 
 He took the same hopeful tone as he began his 
 address on September 24, to the National Convention 
 of Colored Men, at Louisville, where he presided ; 
 but he went on to say that such conventions are 
 needed, because the colored man " is still surrounded 
 by an adverse sentiment which fetters all his move- 
 ments." ..." His course upward is resented and re- 
 sisted at every step of his progress." ..." The color- 
 line meets him everywhere, and, in a measure, shuts 
 him out from all respectable and profitable trades and 
 callings." . . . "He is rejected by trades-unions of 
 every trade, and refused work." ..." Not even our 
 churches have yet conquered this feeling of color- 
 madness." ..." What is called lynch-law is peculi- 
 arly the law for colored people, and for nobody 
 else." ..." Our meeting here was opposed by some 
 of our members, because it would disturb the peace 
 of the Republican party." . . . "Depend upon it, 
 men will not care much for a people whcr do not care 
 for themselves." He then went on to recommend 
 that Congress should investigate the working of the 
 shop-order system, should aid common schools and 
 endow colored colleges, should reimburse the losers 
 by the Freedman's Bank, should do full justice to 
 colored claiments of bounties and pensions, should 
 enforce the Civil Rights Bill, and should protect 
 colored voters at the polls. He added that in making 
 these demands, "We leave social equality where it 
 
354 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 should be, with each individual man and woman. 
 No law can regulate it." But he did call attention 
 to the fact, that " We shall never cease to be a despised 
 and persecuted class, while we are known to be ex- 
 cluded by our color from all important positions 
 under government." In conclusion he said : "We 
 hold it to be self-evident that no class or color should 
 be the exclusive rulers of this country. If there is 
 such a ruling class, there must of necessity be a sub- 
 ject class, and when this condition is once established, 
 this government of the people, by the people and for 
 the people, will have perished from the earth." 
 
 Scarcely had this address been delivered, when the 
 Civil Rights Bill was pronounced unconstitutional 
 by the Supreme Court, on the ground that Congress 
 had no power to forbid discriminations, in public 
 conveyances, inns, or theatres, on account of color, 
 unless made in consequence of State legislation. Such 
 legislation may be counteracted by Congress ; but 
 where the laws are just it must be left to each State 
 to carry them out, unless rebellion justifies federal 
 interference. Douglass left points of law to be dis- 
 cussed by his friend, Colonel Ingersoll, and pleaded 
 against the injustice of denouncing the measure as a 
 " Social Rights Bill." . . . 
 
 " To say that because a man rides in the same car with an- 
 other, he is therefore socially equal, is one of the wildest ab- 
 surdities." ..." Social equality is a matter between individ- 
 uals. It is a reciprocal understanding. I don't think, when I 
 ride with an educated, polished rascal, that he is thereby made 
 my equal." ..." If it is a bill for social equality, so is the 
 Declaration of Independence ; " . . . " so is the Sermon on the 
 Mount; so is the Golden Rule ; " . . . " so is the Constitution of 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 355 
 
 the United States ; and so are the laws and customs of every 
 civilized country in the world ; for nowhere, outside of the 
 United States, is any man denied civil rights on account of his 
 color." 
 
 His marriage with Miss Helen Pitts, early in 1884, 
 has done much to make his later years bright and 
 happy. It was in her company that he attended the 
 funeral of Wendell Phillips, on Wednesday forenoon, 
 February 6, in the Hollis Street Church, where Miss 
 Louisa Alcott sat between them ; and that afternoon 
 he saw the eloquent champion of all the oppressed 
 lie in state, guarded by colored soldiers, in Faneuil 
 Hall. He had made a special journey in order to 
 take part in paying these last honors ; and whatever 
 differences in opinion had existed between them were 
 entirely forgotten as he poured out his gratitude, in 
 behalf of his race as well as of himself, in the address 
 which was delivered soon after at Washington, and 
 has been printed in the " Life and Times of Wendell 
 Phillips," by George Lowell Austin, 1884. He has 
 not lost sight of either the merits or the defects of 
 Garrison. Never, from first to last, did he speak of 
 Phillips except in a love too deep and warm to make 
 criticism possible. 
 
 During the political campaign of 1884, the Jerry 
 Rescue celebration was revived at Syracuse, in order 
 to give a good opportunity for a Blaine speech by 
 Douglass. The defeat of his party that year was 
 afterward attributed by him to the fact, that, " It 
 made national help more important and prominent 
 than national purity ;" "appealed to the pocket and 
 not to the heart of the nation," and was " loud for the 
 protection of things, but silent for the protection of 
 
356 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 men." While speaking thus, on April 16, 1885, the 
 anniversary of Emancipation in the District, he 
 said: "The inaugural address of President Cleveland 
 was all that any friend of liberty and justice could 
 reasonably ask for the freedmen." ... "No better 
 words have dropped from the east portico of the 
 Capitol, since the inauguration days of Abraham 
 Lincoln and General Grant." Whether the party was 
 as good as the President was another question ; but 
 " Let it do justice to the negro, and it will certainly 
 succeed itself in power four years hence and long 
 years after." He added, however, that the Repub- 
 lican party was still that of the colored man ; and 
 that their right to the franchise would be the chief 
 issue in the campaign of 1888, unless full justice was 
 done them previously. He spoke as a leader of his 
 people at the dedication, in February, 1886, of a mem- 
 orial to General Hunter, who had been one of the 
 first to give them a place among our nation's defend- 
 ers. The short article which he contributed to the 
 " North American Review " for April in that year, on 
 " The Future of the Colored Race," is delightfully 
 hopeful and confident. 
 
 What his own relations were with Mr. Cleveland, is 
 shown by a letter important enough to be given in 
 full: 
 
 " Washington, D. C, April 6, 1886. 
 " Hon. F. W. Bird. 
 
 " My Dear Sir : — I am obliged by your note of yesterday, 
 requesting me to state the facts connected with my removal 
 from the office of Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. 
 I assure you that there was nothing summary or unpleasant about 
 it. I am a Republican, and did all I could to defeat the election of 
 
MARSHAL AND RECORDER. 357 
 
 Mr. Cleveland. He was under no political obligation to me 
 whatever ; yet I held the office of Recorder nearly a whole year 
 under his Administration, an office by law held not for any term 
 but solely at the pleasure of the President. He could have 
 removed me at his pleasure at any time after his inauguration. 
 When he asked for my resignation, he simply asked me to 
 set a time when it would be agreeable to me to tender it. I did 
 set the time, and when that time arrived I sent in my resigna- 
 tion. His manner toward me was in every way courteous, and 
 I have nothing whatever to complain of. While in office. 
 President Cleveland treated me as he treated other office-hold- 
 ers in the District. He was brave enough to invite Mrs. 
 Douglass and myself to all his grand receptions, thus rebuking 
 the timidity — I need not say cowardice or prejudice — of his pre- 
 decessor. I am a Republican, and if living shall do all I can 
 to elect a Republican in 1888 ; but I know manliness wherever 
 I find it ; and I have found it in President Cleveland, and I 
 should despise myself if I should let any one think otherwise. 
 Whatever else he may be, he is not a snob ; and he is not a 
 coward. Yours very truly, 
 
 " Fred'k Douglass." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE NATION S PROBLEM. 
 
 Release from the cares of office enabled Douglass 
 to give his thoughts more fully than had recently 
 been possible to such questions as, how his brethren 
 are prospering at the South ; what they^ have a right 
 to ask from the national Government for their more 
 complete protection and education ; which party is 
 doing them the best service ; and what steps ought to 
 be taken for their relief by individuals outside of 
 politics. 
 
 In the address which he made on April i6, 1886, in 
 memory of the abolition of slavery in the District of 
 Columbia, he mentioned the significant fact that the 
 occasion was celebrated for the first time by the col- 
 ored people in two rival gatherings. His own hope 
 that negroes would be better treated after they had 
 ceased to help the Republican party rule at the 
 South, had been sadly disappointed. "Their condi- 
 tion seems no better and not much worse than under 
 previous administrations. Lynch law, violence, and 
 murder have gone on about the same as formerly, and 
 without the least show of federal interference or 
 popular rebuke." ..." There have also been 
 the usual number of outrages committed against the 
 civil rights of colored citizens on highways and by- 
 358 
 
tHE nation's problem. 359 
 
 ways, by land and by water ; and the courts of the 
 country, under the decision of the Supreme Court of 
 the United States, have shown the same disposition 
 to punish the innocent and shield the guilty, as dur- 
 ing the presidency of Mr. Arthur." . . . "The 
 truth is that neither the Republican party nor the 
 Democratic party has yet complied with the solemn 
 oath taken by their respective representatives to sup- 
 port the Constitution and execute the laws enacted 
 under its provisions." ..." Has any of our Re- 
 publican presidents since Grant earnestly endeavored 
 to establish justice in the South ? " 
 
 Referring to the charge that " Negroes are by na- 
 ture the criminal class of America," he said : 
 
 " I admit the charge, but deny that nature, race, or color has 
 anything to do with the fact. Any other race, with the same 
 antecedents and the same conditions, would show a similar 
 thieving propensity. The American people have this lesson to 
 learn, that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, 
 where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to 
 feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and 
 degrade them, neither persons nor property would be safe." 
 . . . " While I hold now, as I held years ago, that the South 
 is the natural home of the colored race, and that there must the 
 destiny of that race be mainly worked out, I still believe that 
 means can be and ought to be adopted, to assist in the emigra- 
 tion of such of their number as may wish to change their resi- 
 dence to parts of the country, where their civil and political 
 rights are better protected than at present they can be at the 
 South." 
 
 He had no sympathy with those colored men who 
 wished to take an independent position in politics. 
 "The Republican party is not perfect ; it is cautious 
 
^6o Frederick Douglass. 
 
 even to the point of timidity ; but it is the best friend 
 we have." 
 
 He took the same ground on revisiting Boston, 
 where, on Saturday, May 22, two days after deliver- 
 ing the John Brown lecture in the Music Hall, he was 
 the guest of those leading Republicans who compose 
 the Massachusetts Club. The dinner was at Young's 
 Hotel, and he said : 
 
 " I have so seldom dined in my life, that I am at a loss to 
 know how to make an after-dinner speech. I have heard say 
 that such speeches should be witty ; and I am no wit. I have 
 heard say that they should be short. I never made a short 
 speech in my life with which I was satisfied ; and I don't know 
 that I ever made a long speech with which anybody else was 
 satisfied." 
 
 After expressing his wonder at finding himself in 
 such company, and hearing no one say " Douglass, 
 get out," he continued thus : 
 
 " I am sometimes asked ' How are your people getting along 
 at the South ?' I am at a loss sometimes to know to whom they 
 refer. Who are my people at the South ? I am in a position 
 to speak more impartially, perhaps, than any man in this room 
 as regards the merits of the two races, for I occupy a middle 
 position." . . . "It would be as appropriate to ask, ' How 
 are the white people of the South getting along ? ' as to ask how 
 the colored people are getting along. The two should go to- 
 gether : one cannot get along without the other." ..." Men 
 ask me if I don't think that the condition of the freedmen is 
 hopeless. I tell them ' Never ! ' I have seen too much progress." 
 
 After referring to what had been suffered by his 
 people and also by himself, he said, " Now, I look 
 around in vain for anybody to insult me." He was, 
 however, very desirous that much more stress should 
 
THE nation's problem. 3d 
 
 be laid, in the campaign of 1888, on the duty of tt 
 nation toward the freedman, than was actually tl: 
 case. He deeply regretted the decision against th 
 constitutionality of the Civil Rights Bill, and said 
 " I am one of those who pray to my God every da 
 for a Supreme Court of the United States that sha 
 be as true to liberty as ever Judge Taney was t 
 slavery." 
 
 On Monday evening. May 24, he spoke at th 
 Woman Suffrage meeting in Tremont Temple, an 
 began with the words, " It is a long time since it W£ 
 my privilege to address a convention of reformers i 
 Boston." After referring to the opposition, whic 
 had been made to the speaking of women in publi 
 he said : 
 
 " In bearing this cross, and maintaining this conflict, womj 
 has risen in grandeur and glory, like the rainbow above tl 
 storm. In securing the right to think and speak, the right 
 use her voice and her pen, she has secured the means of victo: 
 in all other right directions ; for speech is the lever that mov( 
 the world." He rejoiced in her attainment of a higher educ; 
 tion and larger opportunities for supporting herself; and 1 
 held that " There is not one reason, not one consideration of ju 
 tice and expediency, upon which man can claim the right 
 vote, which does not equally apply to woman." ... " If tl 
 law takes no thought of sex when it accuses her of crime, wl 
 • should it take thought of sex when it bestows its privileges ? 
 ... "If man could represent woman, it follows that wom. 
 could represent man, but no opponent of woman suffrage wou 
 admit that woman could represent him in the government 
 ... " Believing, as I firmly do believe, that human nature ; 
 a whole, contains more good than evil, I am willing to trust tl 
 whole, rather than a part, in the conduct of human affairs 
 ... " What could be more absurd upon the face of it, than 
 
362 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 pretend that to put woman on a plane of political equality with 
 man, is to degrade her, when the whole argument for making 
 man the exclusive possessor of the ballot is based upon his 
 superiority to woman ? Does the possession of the suffrage 
 degrade man ? If not, it will not degrade woman." He also 
 remarked that if those people, who say women do not wish to 
 vote, really felt sure of it, they would not take so much pains 
 to prevent them from having the opportunity; and he also 
 showed that two other objections, namely, that wives would 
 quarrel with their husbands about politics, and that wives 
 would merely follow their husbands, really answer each other. 
 In conclusion, he urged that the suffrage would be " a vast 
 advantage to woman herself. Her dignity and importance, as 
 a member of society, would be greatly augmented. She would 
 be brought into responsible and honorable relations with the 
 government ; her citizenship would be full and complete ; and 
 instead of being merely a subject, she would be a sovereign. 
 And now I ask, what right have I, what right have you, what 
 right has anybody who believes in government of the people, 
 by the people and for the people, to deny to woman this full 
 and complete citizenship ? What right have I, what right have 
 you, what right has anybody thus to humiliate one-half of the 
 human family ? " 
 
 Douglass now made up his mind to carry out pur- 
 poses formed long ago, and visit not only France and 
 Italy, but Egypt. Shortly before he left, he came to 
 Boston as the guest of the Wendell Phillips Club, 
 who gave him a dinner at the Revere House on Sat- 
 urday evening, September 11, 1886. Among the other 
 guests were those veteran Abolitionists, Dr. Bowditch, 
 Oliver Johnson, and James M. Buffum ; and there, 
 too, was the Democratic Mayor of Boston, in company 
 with Judge RufRn, Lewis Hayden, and other leading 
 colored men. The chief guest opened his speech 
 thus : 
 
THE nation's problem. 363 
 
 " If I have done anything for the colored people, it is in a 
 great measure due to my having had the good-fortune, when I 
 escaped from slavery, to become acquainted with William Lloyd 
 Garrison, and with Wendell Phillips, and with our friend Oliver 
 Johnson, and with Dr. Bowditch. The home of Dr. Bowditch, 
 I may say, gave me the first shelter I received in this city. I 
 have often been asked where I got my education. I have an- 
 swered, from the Massachusetts Abolition University, Mr. Gar- 
 rison, president." 
 
 He went on to say : 
 
 " I have been grieved at one thing, and I think we should set 
 our faces against it. We are imitating the extravagancies of 
 the white people among whom we are : and it is going on at a 
 fearful rate. I meet with colored men on all sides smoking, 
 and sometimes drinking. That is not the way to rise in the 
 world. For my own part, I neither smoke, nor chew tobacco, 
 nor take snuff, nor drink whiskey ; and I should be delighted if 
 I could make the same statement with regard to my whole 
 people." 
 
 In conclusion, he said : 
 
 " I shall take this demonstration of your club with me abroad, 
 and if I have occasion to speak in England, (I am not going as 
 an advocate,) I shall remember your injunction to extend your 
 sympathy to all men oppressed ; and I shall not hesitate to de- 
 clare my own entire sympathy with that grand old man, Mr. 
 Gladstone, in his endeavors to remove the reproach of oppres- 
 sion from England and to extend the desired liberty to Ireland." 
 
 " My year's trip abroad," as he calls it in an unpub- 
 lished lecture, led him, after looking once more at 
 the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, to 
 France, where impatience at the way his baggage 
 was treated " made me for the moment a free-trader." 
 He spent two months in Paris, " a city of taste and 
 
364 F&EDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 terrors, of heroes and horrors, of beauty, barricades, 
 and bottles." He was shocked at the non-observance 
 of Sunday ; but he never met a single drunken or 
 disorderly person on that day, which fact he attributes 
 to the national character. No building impressed 
 him so deeply as the church whose bell was the signal 
 for the massacre of Saint Bartholomew ; and nothing 
 gave him such pleasure as that utter absence of. color- 
 prejudice,, which had surprised Dr. Bowditch more 
 than fifty years ago. This Douglass says is " in 
 part, because the negro has never been seen there as 
 a degraded slave, but often as a gentleman and a 
 scholar." He visited the grave of " a man whose 
 great heart was broad enough to take in the whole 
 world, and who, in my estimation ranks among the 
 greatest of the human race," Victor Hugo. He praises 
 the fine appearance of the law-makers, as well as the 
 courtesy with which the members of that Senate treat 
 each other. He was also pleased to see the horses 
 driven without check-rein or blinders. He often 
 heard Father Hyacinthe, and " was deeply impressed 
 by his character and preaching," although he could 
 not " understand all his words." 
 
 He was much struck by the relics, at Avignon, of 
 the time when " Religion stood no such nonsense as 
 what we call free thought." ..." A difference of 
 religion, in the days of this old palace, was sufficient 
 to justify the utmost cruelty ; and difference of color 
 to-day, in some quarters, is about the same thing. 
 But light has dawned upon the papal palace of Avig- 
 non." ..." It is no longer the home of saints, but 
 the home of soldiers." ..." Martial law has taken 
 the place of ecclesiastical law ; and there is no doubt 
 
THE nation's problem. 365 
 
 as to which is the more merciful of the two." So, on 
 reaching Rome, he found it "neither pleasant to the 
 eye nor to the thought," to meet " the vacant, bare- 
 legged, grimy monks, who have taken avow neither 
 to work nor to wash ;" and he was much more inter- 
 ested in the ruins of the past than in the ecclesiastical 
 splendors of the present. Not one of the beautiful 
 objects in Genoa held him so long as an old violin, 
 that with which Paganini had played on the hearts of 
 thousands as never man had played before. It was 
 precious to Douglass, because it had been " the 
 favorite instrument of the most famous musical genius 
 of his time," and, " though silent and motionless now, 
 could once, under the wonderful touch and skill of 
 its master, fill the largest halls of Europe with a con- 
 cord of sweet sounds, and cause even the dull hearts 
 of courts, kings, and princes, to own their kinship 
 to common mortals." 
 
 Egypt was a disappointment in some respects. 
 He had to admit that her temples and pyramids were 
 not built by negro kings ; and it took him two weeks 
 to recover from the terrible strain of climbing to the 
 great pyramid's top. The grandeur of the prospect 
 went far to repay him, however ; especially the view 
 over " the silent, solemn, measureless desert." He 
 had already felt, in travelling along the Suez canal, 
 ''such a deep sense of unearthly silence, such a sense 
 of vast, profound, unbroken sameness and solitude," 
 as enabled him to understand how it was that Moses 
 and the prophets, John, the Baptist, Paul, and Mahom- 
 et thought God peculiarly near them in the desert, 
 and became founders of new religions. 
 
 He also visited Athens, and had pleasant meetings 
 
366 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 with his old friends in England and their children, 
 before returning to Washington, where we find him 
 on February 12, 1888, the seventy-ninth anniversary 
 of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, telling how " he 
 went up before his Maker with four millions of broken 
 fetters in his arms." Of himself, he spoke thus: 
 
 " I came down here from the North ; I was not born in the 
 North ; but I went North on a mission some fifty years ago. It 
 was not healthy for me to come down here for some twenty-five 
 years after I went North." In going on to describe his first 
 interview with Lincoln he said : " I was a little disturbed, and 
 a great deal agitated ; but there was no real cause for trepida- 
 tion or for alarm. I was going to see a great man." . ' . . 
 " I have noticed that the higher we go up, in the gradations of 
 humanity and moral greatness, the further we get from prej- 
 udices.'' 
 
 Soon afterward, on Saturday, March 31, he spoke 
 before the International Council of Women, who had 
 set that day apart in order to hear from the pioneers 
 in their cause. A portion of this speech has been al- 
 ready quoted. Other passages run thus : 
 
 " One year ago I stood on the Pincio in Rome, and witnessed 
 the unveiling of the statue of Galileo. It was an imposing sight. 
 At no time before had Rome been free enough to permit such 
 a statue to be placed within her walls. It is now there, not 
 with the approval of the Vatican. No priest took part in the 
 ceremonies. It was all the work of laymen. One or two priests 
 passed the statue with averted eyes, but the great truths of the 
 solar system were not angry at the sight, and the same will be 
 true when woman shall be clothed, as she will yet be, with all 
 'the rights of American citizenship." ..." Whatever the 
 future may have in store for us, one thing is certain — this new 
 revolution in human thought will never go backward. When a 
 great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth 
 
THE nation's problem. 367 
 
 can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is 
 bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world. Such 
 a truth is woman's right to equal liberty with man. She was 
 born with it. It was hers before she comprehended it. It is 
 inscribed upon all the powers and faculties of her soul, and no 
 custom, law, or usage can ever destroy it. Now that it has got 
 fairly fixed in the minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed 
 in the miijds of the many, and be supported at last by a great 
 cloud of witnesses, which no man can number and no power 
 can withstand." 
 
 On Monday evening, May 28, he spoke before the 
 New England Woman Suffrage Association, in Tre- 
 mont Temple, Boston, where he argued that the 
 question, why woman is forbidden to vote, is not an- 
 swered by pleading that the suffrage is not a right 
 but a privilege. In conclusion, he said that " If the 
 whole is greater than a part, if the sense and sum of 
 human goodness in man and woman combined is 
 greater than that of either alone and separate, then 
 the government that excludes women from all par- 
 ticipation in its creation, administration, and perpetu- 
 ation maims itself." His zeal in this cause has not 
 carried him so far as to approve of the formation of 
 separate suffrage associations by colored women. 
 He holds that real reforms must keep themselves 
 above the color-line. 
 
 Earlier in 1888, he had made a journey through 
 the South, and had been escorted into Charleston by 
 a company of soldiers whose name was brighter than 
 their complexion, the Douglass Light Infantry. 
 Soon after returning, he wrote to one of the leaders 
 in a movement for encouraging emigration of colored 
 people to the North-west, a letter which is dated 
 April 10, and runs thus : ■ 
 
368 - FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 " I have long hesitated to give my endorsement to any move- 
 ment looking to the removal of considerable numbers of the 
 colored people of the South, to the North and West. I have 
 felt that it was better that they should endure, and patiently 
 wait for better conditions of existence where they are, than to 
 \ take the chance of seeking them in the cold North, or in Africa, 
 or elsewhere. I had hoped that the relations subsisting be- 
 I tween the former slaves and the old master class would gradu- 
 ' ally improve ; but while I believed this, and still have some such 
 r weak faith, I have of late seen enough, heard enough, and 
 I learned enough of the condition of these people in South Caro- 
 lina and Georgia, to make me welcome any movement which 
 will take them out of the wretched condition in which I now 
 know them to be. While I shall continue to labor for increased 
 justice to those who stay in the South, I give you my hearty 
 ' God-speed ' in your emigration schenie. I believe you are 
 '■ doing a good work." I • »,V'|-.^ 
 
 -~ < ' v^^ 
 
 Ten days later, at the emancipation celebration in 
 Washington, he spoke thus, in answer to the charge 
 that the negro is a failure as a citizen and is in every 
 way doing badly : 
 
 " I admit that the negro, and especially the plantation negro, 
 the tiller of the soil, has made little progress from the barba- 
 rism of slavery to the civiUzation of freedom ; that he is in a 
 deplorable condition since his emancipation ; and that he is 
 physically worse off in many respects as a freeman than he was 
 when a slave . But I contend that the fault was not his, but the 
 j fault is with his heartless accusers. The explanation is easily 
 ' given ; he is the victim of a cunningly devised swindle — one 
 which paralyzes his energies, suppresses his ambition, blasts his 
 hope, and leaves him crushed and helpless. In fact, though he 
 is nominally free, he is still actually a slave. I here and now 
 denounce his so-called emancipation as practically a stupen- 
 dous fraud ; — a fraud upon him, a fraud upon the country, a 
 fraud upon the world, and a reproach upon the American 
 
THE nation's problem. 369 
 
 people. It was not so meant by the great-hearted Abraham 
 Lincoln. It was not so meant by the Republican party ; but 
 whether so meant or not, I contend that this so-called emanci- 
 pation is practically a lie of the worst kind, keeping the word of 
 promise to the ear and breaking it to the heart. Do you ask a 
 more particular ahswer to the question, why the negro of the 
 plantation has made so little progress, why his cupboard 
 is empty, why he flutters in rags, why his children run naked, 
 and his wife is barefooted and hides herself behind the hut 
 when a stranger is passing ? I will tell you. It is because the 
 husband and father is systematically and almost universally"! 
 cheated out of his hard earnings. The same class that once 1 
 extorted his labor under the lash, now extorts his labor by a < 
 mean, sneaking, and fraudulent device, which is more effective \ 
 than the lash. That device is the trucking system, a system '■, 
 which never permits him to see or save a dollar of his hard i 
 earnings. He struggles from year to year, but like a man in a 
 morass, the more he struggles, the deeper he sinks. The 
 highest wages paid him are eight dollars a month, and this he 
 receives only in orders on a store, which, in many cases, is 
 owned by his employer. This_scrig^ has a purchasing power on 
 that one store, and that one store only. A blind man can see that 
 by this arrangement the laborer is bound hand and foot, and is 
 completely in the power of his employer. He can charge the7 
 poor fellow just what he pleases and give him what kind of / 
 goods he pleases, and he does both. His victim cannot go to 1 
 another store and buy, and this the storekeep'er knows. The 
 only security the wretched negro has under this arrangement is i 
 the conscience of the storekeeper — a conscience educated in the \ 
 school of slavery, where the idea prevailed in theory and prac- 
 tice ^that the negro had no rights which white men were bound 
 to respect, an arrangement in which everything in the way of 
 food or clothing, whether tainted meat or damaged cloth, is 
 deemed good enough for the neg^o. For these he is often made 
 to pay a double price. But this is not all, or the worst result of 
 the system. It puts it out of the power of the negro to save 
 anything of what he earns. If a man gets an honest dollar for 
 
370 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 his day's work, he has a motive for laying it by and saving it for 
 
 future emergency. It will be as good for use in the future, and 
 
 'perhaps better a year hence than now ; but this miserable scrip 
 
 has in no sense the quality of a dollar. It is only good at one 
 
 store and for a limited period. Thus the man who has it is 
 
 1 tempted to get rid of it as soon as possible. It may be out of 
 
 i date before he knows it, or the storekeeper may move away and 
 
 ^^may be left worthless on his hands." . . . " In England, to 
 
 her credit let it be spoken, this trucking system is abolished by 
 
 law. It is a penal offense there ; and it should be here. It 
 
 should be made a crime to pay any man for his honest labor in 
 
 any other than lawful money." 
 
 Copious quotations are then given from the tenant 
 laws of the South ; and the orator proceeds thus : 
 
 " Now let us sum up some of the points in the situation of the 
 freedman. You will have seen how he is paid for his labor — 
 how a full-grown man gets only eight dollars a month, out of 
 which he must feed, clothe, and educate his children. You have 
 seen how even this sum is reduced by means of an infamous 
 truck system of payment. You have seen how easily he may be 
 charged with a price one-third higher than the value of the 
 goods that he buys. You have seen how easily he may be 
 compelled to receive the poorest and most worthless commodi- 
 ties at the highest prices. You have seen how he is never 
 allowed to see, save, or handle a dollar. You have seen how 
 impossible for him to accumulate money or property. You have 
 ^een how completely he is chained to the locality in which he 
 lives. You have seen, therefore, that having no money, he can- 
 not travel or go anywhere to better his condition. You have 
 seen by these laws that, even on the premises which he rents, 
 he can own nothing, possess nothing, but what must belong to 
 the landlord. You have seen that he cannot sell a sheep, a pig, 
 a goat, or even a chicken, without the consent of the landlord, 
 whose claim to all he has is superior and paramount to all other 
 clainis whatspever. You have seen that he works for the land- 
 
THE nation's problem. 37 1 
 
 lord rg ther than f or hin^plf. — You have seen all this and moreT^ 
 and I ask again, in view of it all, how in the name of human 
 reason could the negro be expected to make progress, or rise / 
 higher in the scale of morals, manners, religion, and civilization! 
 than he has done during the twenty years of his so-called free- 
 dom ? Shame ! Eternal shame on those writers and speakers 
 who taunt, denounce, and disparage the negro, because he is to- 
 day found in poverty, rags, and wretchedness ! " 
 
 It is further complained that our National Govern- 
 ment allows him to be disfranchised, while " His 
 color exposes him to be treated as a criminal ;" and 
 that by this neglect, as well as by the decision of 
 1883, he is "swindled of his citizenship." The 
 best remedy would have been to make Logan or 
 Conkling President ; but, as neither was living, and 
 there was no probability of the nomination of Judge 
 Harlan, the only member of the Supreme Court who 
 thought the Civil Rights Bill constitutional, the pref- 
 erence of Douglass in April, 1888, was for Senator 
 Sherman. 
 
 He was present at the convention which nominated 
 Harrison and Morton, that June ; and soon after he 
 made an address to his brethren, in which he remon- 
 strated earnestly against joining the newly-organized 
 ''colored Democratic party." The leaders in that 
 movement asserted that " The Republican party has 
 failed to protect negro suffrage at the South ; " and 
 Douglass replied that : 
 
 " It is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored 
 to protect the negro in his right to vo"te. The whole moral 
 power of the party has been, from first to last, on the side of 
 justice to the negro ; and it has only been baffled, in its efforts 
 to protect the negro in his vote, by the Democratic party." 
 
372 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Of another argument, brought up by the black 
 Democrats, the black Republican spoke thus : 
 
 " Suppose it be granted that Mr. Cleveland is a just man, and 
 ^^esires to protect colored citizens in the exercise of their con- 
 I stitutional rights. What is he, and what is any man in the 
 
 1 Presidential chair, without the support of his party? As 
 
 I against his party, he is only as a feather against a whirlwind. 
 
 I In the hands of his party, Mr. Cleveland is as clay in the hands 
 
 I — ^of the potter." 
 
 The address is long enough to occupy about ten 
 fpages of this volume, but it does not make the slight- 
 est allusion to a question which, as Douglass said in 
 I another of his campaign speeches " has been the lead- 
 I ing topic, and undoubtedly will continue to be the 
 ' leading topic of this canvass." This, of course, is the 
 : tariff ; and when he does take it up, he makes no at- 
 '. tempt to prove that colored people have any large 
 ; share in the protected industries. He does maintain 
 LLhat the tariff keeps all wages up ; and he says : 
 
 " Suppose the American manufacturers do derive larger gains 
 than any other class, suppose protection does support manufac- 
 turing monopolies in America, is it not obvious that free trade 
 will build up similar monopolies abroad ? " ... " Let the 
 American people turn their attention to raising cotton, cattle, 
 and grain for Europe, and how long do you think it would be 
 before the manufacturers of Europe would put up the prices of 
 all their articles .'' " 
 
 What is the exclusive topic of one address is, how- 
 ever, the main theme of the other. Both insist on the 
 fduty of electing a Republican President, in order to 
 \ re store suffrage to the freedman. One speech dates 
 his disfranchisement from 1877, but the other says of 
 
THE nation's problem. 375 
 
 Georgia that " Under the shot-gun rule, the Demo- 
 crats carried the State against Grant and Colfax," 
 who were candidates in i868. Both addresses con- 
 sider the character of the parties more important than~~] 
 that of the candidates ; but it is said, on the basis of/ 
 personal knowledge of President Harrison : 
 
 " He embodies and illustrates the highest and best elements 
 of American character." ... " During the last few weeks, 
 Mr. Harrison has surprised those of his countrymen, who did 
 not as I did, know him, by the fertility of his mind, the breadth 
 and comprehensiveness of his statesmanship. His more than 
 half a hundred speeches stand like a wall of granite, and utterly 
 defy assault." 
 
 Perhaps the most important contribution made by- 
 Douglass to this campaign was a letter, written in 
 October, to oppose one of the best nominations made 
 that year by either party for Congress, that of Col- 
 onel T. W. Higginson. His brilliant services, not 
 only as a speaker but as a soldier, to the slave, only 
 brought out a declaration that his " election, consid- 
 ering his antecedents, would be much more detri- 
 mental to our cause than would be the election of an 
 old-time pro-slavery Democrat." ... " Of course, if 
 I had a thousand votes, I would give them all to 
 General Banks, the nominee of the Republican party." 
 
 Before writing thus, he had been obliged, by pre- 
 vious engagements, to decline an invitation to deliver 
 an oration in Faneuil Hall, on November 13, the day 
 when the monument to Crispus Attuckswas unveiled 
 on Boston Common. In this letter, written on Octo- 
 ber 5, 1888, he says he is " happy in the thought, that 
 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is about to com- 
 
374 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 memorate an act of heroism in a race seldom credited 
 with heroic quahties." He did speak at the celebra- 
 tion in Philadelphia, on December 6, of the fifty-fifth 
 anniversary of the settlement of Rev. Dr. Furness ; he 
 was able to compare his recollections with Whittier's 
 on the poet's birthday, December 17 ; and he con- 
 tributed to the " Cosmopolitan," for August, 1889, a 
 paper entitled " Reminiscences," and forming part of 
 a series about " The Great Agitation." 
 
 The last speech which Douglass has published, so 
 
 far as I know, and certainly one of the most irngo^- 
 
 tant, was delivered in Washington on April idliSSg) 
 
 ! at the invitation of the Bethel Literary and Histori- 
 
 ' cal Society, which, as he says, " comprises the most 
 
 cultivated class of our people." He begins by saying : 
 
 " At no period since the abolition of slavery in the District of 
 Columbia, have the moral, social, and political surroundings of 
 the colored people of this country been more solemn and fore- 
 boding than they are this day." ..." Nature has given 
 me a buoyant disposition." ..." No man can see the sil- 
 ver lining of a black cloud more joyfully than I. But he is a 
 ' more hopeful man than I am, who will tell you that the rights _ 
 and liberties of the colored people in this country have passed 
 beyond the danger-line." . . . " It is an ominous fact, that 
 at no time in the history of the conflict between slavery and 
 freedom in this country, has the character of the negro, as a 
 man, been made the subject of a fiercer and more serious dis- 
 rcussion in all the avenues of debate, than during the past and 
 present year." ..." When the negro was a slave, he was 
 almost as completely outside of the nation's thought, as he was 
 outside of the nation's law and the nation's religion. But now 
 all is changed. His freedom makes him discussed on every 
 hand. The platform, the pulpit, the press, and the legislative 
 hall regard him, and struggle with him, as a great and difficult 
 problem, one that requires almost divine wisdom to solve, Men 
 
THE NATION S PROBLEM. 375 
 
 are praying over it. It is always a dangerous symptom when 
 men pray to know what is their duty.'' 
 
 Douglass then protests against representing his 
 race as a cause of discord : 
 
 " I deny and utterly scout the idea, that there is now, properly 
 speaking, any such thing as a negro problem before the Ameri- 
 can people. It is not the negro, educated or illiterate, intelli- 
 gent or ignorant, who is on trial, or whose qualities are giving 
 - trouble to the nation." ..." The real question, the all-com- 
 manding question, is whether American justice, American 
 liberty, American civilization, American law, and American 
 Christianity can be made to include and protect, alike and for- 
 ever, all American citizens.'' ... " It is whether this great 
 nation shall conquer its prejudices, rise to the dignity of its pro- 
 fessions, and proceed in the sublime course of truth and liberty 
 marked out for itself during the late war, or shall swing back to 
 its ancient moorings of slavery and barbarism. The trouble is 
 that the colored people have still to contend against ' a fierce 
 and formidable foe,' the ghost of a by-gone, dead and buried 
 institution. 
 
 "One thing which they ought to do, in order to hold their 
 own against this enemy, is to give up cultivating what they call 
 ' race pride,' a sentiment too much like that which is ' the lion 
 in the way ' of our progress." ..." Do we not know that 
 every argument we make, and every pretension we set up in 
 favor of race pride, is giving the enemy a stick to break our own 
 heads?" ... "You will, perhaps, think this criticism uncalled 
 for. My answer is that truth is never uncalled for." ..." In 
 some of our colored public journals I have seen myself charged 
 with a lack of race pride. I am not ashamed of that charge. I 
 have no apology or vindication to offer. If fifty years of un- 
 compromising devotion to the cause of the colored jnan in this 
 country does not vindicate- me, I am content to live without 
 vindication. While I have no more reason to be proud of one 
 race than another, I dare to say, and I fear no contradiction, 
 
3^6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 that there is no other man in the United States prouder than 
 ./myself of any great achievement, mental or mechanical, of which 
 i jany colored man or woman is the author. This not because I 
 
 lam a colored man, but because I am a manj_and because color 
 
 (is a misfortune, and is treated as a crime by the American 
 
 Ipeople.'' 
 
 He also protests against the preference shown by 
 the colored people for dwelling by themselves, and 
 carrying on separate churches, schools, benevolent 
 and literary societies : 
 
 " There are buildings which will hold a few, but which will 
 
 break down under the weight of a crowd. The ice of the river 
 
 may be strong enough to bear a man, but would break through 
 
 "iinder the weight of an elephant. The ice under us in this 
 
 ;•- country is very thin, and is made very weak by the warm fogs 
 
 1 of prejudice." ..." Our policy should be to unite with the 
 
 , great mass of the American people in all their activities, and 
 
 I resolve to fall or flourish with our common country. We cannot 
 
 I afford to draw the color-line in politics, trade, education, man- 
 
 • ners, religion, fashion, or civilization. Especially we cannot 
 
 j afford to draw the color-line in politics. No folly could be 
 
 greater. A party acting on that basis would be not merely a 
 
 1 misfortune, but a dire calamity to our people." 
 
 It is admitted that the terror excited among the 
 blacks by Cleveland's election " turned out to be 
 groundless ; " but it is complained that after the in- 
 auguration, 
 
 " He said no word and did no act, expressed no desire to 
 arrest the hand of violence, to stay the effusion of innocent 
 blood, or to vindicate in any manner the negro's constitutional 
 right to vote." ..." Well, now the American people have re- 
 turned the Republican party to power ; and the question is, what 
 will it do ? "... " For a dozen years and more the Republican 
 party has seemed in a measure paralyzed in the presence of 
 
THE nation's problem. 377 
 
 high-handed fraud and brutal violence toward its newly-made 
 citizens. The question now is, will it regain its former health, 
 activity, and power ? Will it be as true to its friends in the 
 South as the Democratic party has been to its friends in that 
 section, or will it sacrifice its friends to conciliate its enemies ? " 
 ..." Not only the negro but all honest men, north and south, 
 must hold the Republican party in contempt, if it fails to do its 
 whole duty at this point. The Republican party has made the 
 colored man free ; and the Republican party must make him 
 secure in his freedom, or abandon its pretensions. 
 
 " It was once said by Abraham Lincoln that this Republic 
 could not long endure half slave and half free ; and the same 
 may be said with even more truth of the black citizens of this 
 country. They cannot remain half slave and half free. They 
 must be one thing or the other. And this brings me to consider 
 the alternative now presented between slavery and freedom in 
 this country. From my outlook, I am free to affirm that I sef~ 
 nothing for the negro of the South but a condition of absolute 
 freedom, or of absolute slavery. I see no half-way place for 
 him. One or the other of these conditions is to solve the so- 
 called negro problem. There are forces at work in both of 
 these directions, and for the present that which aims at the re- 
 enslavement of the negro seems to have the advantage. Let it 
 be remembered that the labor of the negro is his only capital. 
 Take this from him, and he dies from starvation. The present 
 mode of obtaining his labor in the South gives the old master- 
 class a complete mastery over him. I showed this in my last 
 annual celebration address, and I need not go into it here. The" 
 payment of the negro by orders on stores, where the store- 
 keeper controls price, quality, and quantity, and is subject to no 
 competition, so that the negro must buy there and nowhere else 
 — an arrangement by which the negro never has a dollar to lay 
 by, and can be kept in debt to his employer, year in and year 
 out — puts him completely at the mercy of the old master-class. 
 He who could say to the negro, when a slave, you shall work 
 for me or be whipped to death, can now, say to him with equal 
 emphasis, you shall work for me, or I will starve you to death. 
 
378 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 This is the plain, matter-of-fact, and unexaggerated condition 
 of the plantation negro in the Southern States to-day." 
 
 He is further wronged, it is said, by being pre- 
 vented from emigrating as well as from keeping weap- 
 
 (!^ ons in his cabin. If he becomes a criminal, " The 
 1, law puts him on the auction block and sells him to 
 the highest bidder." ..." No adequate means 
 of education has been provided for him ; his vote 
 avails him nothing ; he, of all men is easiest con- 
 victed of crime ; he does not see or receive a dollar 
 in payment of wages ; and, by the opinion of the 
 Supreme Court, the Fourteenth Amendment affords 
 him no protection." 
 
 "^ But (JfreTiatioi^ is stronger than the oppressors. 
 
 " They may rob the negro of his vote to-day, but the 
 negro will have his vote to-morrow. The spiot-oi 
 the .age is with him." . . . "If the Republican 
 party shall fail to carry out this purpose, God will 
 raise up another party that will be faithful." 
 
 " There is still another ground for hope for the freedom of 
 
 the Southern States. It is that the good citizens of these 
 
 States cannot afford and will not consent always, to lag far be- 
 
 __hind the old free States in all the ele ments of civilization. " . . . 
 
 ( " They have rich resources to be developed, and they want both 
 
 '. men and money to develop them and enhance their prosperity. 
 
 ^" The wise and loyal people in these States know very well that 
 
 they can never be prosperous, that they can never have their 
 |share of emigration, from at home or abroad, while they are 
 I known and distinguished for intolerance, fraud, violence, and 
 jlynch law. They know that while this character attaches to 
 ' them, capital will hold aloof from them, and population will 
 'shun them, as it would shun a land blasted by pestilence." . . . 
 , " They know that industrious and enterprising men, searching 
 j for homes, will turn their backs upon the South, and make their 
 
THE NATION S PROBLEM. 379 
 
 way to the West and North, where they can hold and express 
 their opinions without fear of the bowie-knife and shot-gun of 
 the assassin. Thus the^g elf-interest of the people of these 
 States will yet teach them justice, humanity, and civilization." 
 ..." The spirit of justice, liberty, and fair play is abroad in 
 the land." ..." It has an agent in every bar of railroad iron, 
 a servant in every electric wire, a missionary in every traveller." 
 ..." States, parties, and leaders must, and will in the end, ad- 
 just themselves to this overwhelming and irresistible tendency.'' 
 
 These last words indicate the true solution of a 
 problem, which we know to be both difficult and ur- 
 gent. Its importance is manifest, even in the com- 
 paratively simple form in which it meets us at the 
 North. Here at least, there is no conceivable reason 
 why all colored people should not be treated accord- 
 ing to the merits of each individual. It is not onl)^ 
 the plain duty, but also the interest of us all, to have 
 every colored man take the place for which he is best 
 fitted by education, character, ability, manners, and 
 culture. If others insist on keeping him in any lower 
 and poorer place, it is not only his injury, but our 
 universal loss. Yet which of our white congrega- 
 tions would take a colored pastor ? How many of 
 our New England villages would like to have colored 
 postmasters, or doctors, or lawyers, or teachers in the 
 public schools ? A very slight difference in com- 
 plexion suffices to keep a young man from getting a 
 place as policeman, or fireman, or conductor, even on 
 the horse cars. The trades-unions are closed against 
 him, and so are many of our stores ; while those 
 which admit him are obliged to refuse him promo- 
 tion on account of the unwillingness of white men to 
 serve under him. Colored girls find dressmakers 
 
jgo Frederick bouGLASS. 
 
 who would employ them to be "as scarce as hens' 
 teeth." It is hard for them to get places behind 
 counters or in factories : and there is some prejudice 
 against them as domestic servants. One poor girl in 
 Iowa, who had been highly educated, could get no 
 employment except in a drudgery under which she 
 speedily died. Rich people who wish to hire suita- 
 ble houses in Boston find the color-line drawn against 
 them. A candidate for office in the capital city of 
 Kansas found seven-eights of the white Republicans 
 desert him, because his skin was darker than theirs ; 
 and a Philadelphia writer on this subject, Mr. A. K. 
 McClure, declares that such prejudice was much 
 stronger in his own State, in 1886, than in South 
 Carolina. The recent refusal of the Episcopal Con- 
 vention to recognize negro ministers as equal to their 
 brethren, has called out far too little protest in 
 Northern churches ; and there are frequent instances 
 of denial of civil rights in our Western cities. We 
 see, however, that there has been great improvement 
 throughout the North during the last fifty years. 
 
 May we not hope, that there has been some fm- 
 provement in the South also, and that Charles Dudley 
 Warner is right in saying that " There is generally 
 good-will " toward the negro, " desire that he shall 
 be educated and become thrifty." The South has 
 not yet wholly ceased to be unjust. Many freedmen 
 are lynched, or sentenced to excessively long terms 
 of suffering under the atrocious system of farming 
 out convicts. Laborers continue to be swindled, 
 travellers to be molested, and ballot-boxes to be kept 
 out of reach. The extent to which these abuses pre- 
 vail is often exaggerated, however ; the condition of 
 
THE nation's problem. 381 
 
 the freedmen has, I think, on the whole, improved 
 greatly since they were emancipated ; and I believe 
 that many of their white neighbors and employers 
 would say, with Mr. Grady, " We want to bar thern^ 
 from no avenue in which their feet are fitted to 
 tread." The sincerity of such language is proved by 
 the fact, stated by Dr. Haygood as well as by the 
 National Bureau of Education, that every southern 
 State now provides as liberally for educating colored 
 children as white. The schools are separate ; and ' 
 this gives employment to thousands of colored teach- 
 ers. The South will undoubtedly continue to edu- 
 cate and elevate the freedman ; for he will always ' 
 form so large and so necessary a part of her popu- ; 
 lation, that he cannot safely be left in ignorance. * 
 Her need of skilled labor is increasing rapidly ; and 
 even the field-hand would be much more valuable if 
 he could be taught to treat animals more kindly, 
 remember orders more faithfully, and abstain entirely 
 from pilfering. The health of the white people re- 
 quires that the negro cabin be kept clean ; and the 
 maintenance of chastity there is necessary for the 
 protection of woman throughout the land. The need 
 of making the black man more intelligent and con- 
 scientious has already been so far recognized by the 
 South, that s hejias remodelled her entire school system 
 for This benefit ;^ and her desire to make him more 
 valuable as a member of the community, cannot long 
 permit him to be lynched or otherwise maltreated. 
 Her memory of the misrule of the carpet-baggers 
 will grow fainter ; and she will finally be able to see 
 that even the illiterate voter is not so dangerous a 
 citizen in a republic as the man who has not this 
 
382 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 reason to interest himself in its welfare. The South 
 may be much slower than we could wish in reaching 
 these conclusions- ; but no others will be found per- 
 manently satisfactory to her ; and it is by no means 
 certain that her pace will be quickened by a display 
 of federal bayonets. 
 
 This is substantially the view " of many thoughtful 
 colored men, who care more for race than for party, 
 and more for country than for race." These last 
 words are quoted from a letter, in the " Boston 
 Post" of August 17, 1889, by Mr. Archibald H. 
 Grimkd, who is confident that the old regime under 
 which his brethren now suffer at the South, "is 
 crumbling under the action of new moral ideas," and 
 " new industrial forces." These are creating " a 
 nobler public opinion ;" and " The New South is in 
 very truth the CEdipus who is destined to solve the 
 southern riddle." Both the New South and the Old 
 are determined not to let outsiders interfere, nor to 
 suffer "a return of negro domination." "Between 
 the existing order and that terrible disorder, no sane 
 man would hesitate to choose the existing order with 
 all its evils. For myself, I would prefer the existing 
 order a thousand times, to that swarm and saturnalia 
 of fools and scamps which the appalling ignorance 
 and poverty of the blacks made possible fifteen 
 years ago." 
 
 The first duty of the North is to purify herself 
 from those prejudices which now encourage oppres- 
 sion at the South. The need of industrial education 
 among the freedmen is still so great that institutions 
 which furnish it deserve liberal endowments, not only 
 from rich individuals but from the Government, 
 
THE nation's problem. 383 
 
 though we need not think of offering charity to 
 States which have doubled their school funds since 
 1880. The interests of the colored laborer should be 
 considered in revising the tariff. The only way of 
 solving the color-problem is by the cordial co-opera- 
 tion of all classes and races at the South. Any 
 attempt to set race against race will injure the blacks 
 even more than the whites. They have interests 
 enough in common to insure the ultimate elevation 
 of the negro to the high place necessary for the com- 
 mon welfare. 
 
 An opportunity to study the negro character from 
 a new standpoint was given to Douglass, as he was 
 appointed Minister to a country in which he has 
 always felt deep interest. As he wrote to his friend, 
 Dr. Bowditch, on July 4, 1889, "With many misgiv- 
 ings, I accepted the mission to Hayti. I distrusted 
 my qualifications for the office ; but coming to me as 
 it did, unasked, unsought, and unexpected, and with 
 the earnest wish of the President that I would accept 
 it in the interest of the peace, welfare, and prosperity 
 of Hayti, I felt I could not decline it. I shall leave a 
 comfortable house and a healthy climate, and shall 
 probably have to occupy trying positions ; but I go 
 forth hopefully." ... " Hayti is but a child in na- 
 tional life, and though she may often stumble and 
 fall, I predict that she will yet grow strong and 
 bright." 
 
 Just as he was about to leave Washington, he wrote 
 a letter which was read in the Tremont Temple, Bos- 
 ton, at the Reunion of the Abolitionists, on Monday, 
 September 23, to celebrate Lincoln's first proclama- 
 tion of emancipation. " You meet '' he says, " in Bos- 
 
384 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 ton, at a time still critical if not alarming. Slavery 
 has left behind it a spirit that still delights in human 
 blood. Outrage, murder, and assassination are the 
 inheritance of the freed men and women of the 
 South. Neither our government nor our civilization 
 seems able to stop the flow of blood. As in the time 
 of slavery, the Church is silent." 
 
 The sensational stories, set afloat soon after, about 
 the unwillingness of naval officers to take a colored 
 passenger, are proved to be false by the testimony 
 of Secretary Tracy and Mr. Walter Blaine, as well as 
 of Douglass himself in a letter from Port au Prince. 
 He arrived there, on October 8th, after a smooth pas- 
 sage, which was made very pleasant for his compan- 
 ions by his animated accounts of his early life. On 
 being asked why he left his comfortable home for a 
 benighted and turbulent country, he said : " I am 
 tired of having Hayti thrown in my face : I am going 
 now to see for myself." Four days after landing, he 
 was able so far to carry out his plans as to take pos- 
 session of the Villa Tivoli, which, according to the 
 " New York Evening Post " is " an unpretentious res- 
 idence on the heights overlooking the lower town 
 and the bay, and like all these villas, even the best of 
 them, rather dilapidated, and enclosed by a jungle 
 of tropical growth aflame with gorgeous blossoms ; 
 palms shading the avenue between the gateway and 
 the wide veranda, before which is a little fountain, 
 the soothing fall of whose water is suggestive of cool- 
 ness and shade." The Haytian Minister at Washing- 
 ton, Mr. Preston, says that the rumors which have 
 been circulating about the unwillingness of the rulers 
 of the black republic to receive Douglass cordially, 
 
THE nation's problem. 385 
 
 had no foundation, except in the disappointment of 
 certain New York merchants, who had tried in vain 
 to hire him to act as their agent in pressing claims 
 upon the Haytian Government. I have heard that 
 they offered him heavy bribes, soon after his appoint- 
 ment ; but he answered, that all proposals, for his 
 undertaking any kind of business in Hayti, must be 
 sent to him through the State Department. 
 
 The new President, Hyppolite, said in his inaugu- 
 ral address, that " Hayti ought to be proud of the 
 sympathy with this administration, which has been 
 shown so abundantly by the United States," and that 
 " The greatest proof of regard which that country 
 has given us, is unquestionably her sending to Port 
 au Prince, as Minister Resident and Consul General, 
 Hon. Frederick Douglass, that illustrious champion 
 of all men of African descent, himself one of the 
 most remarkable scions of that race whose represen- 
 tatives in America we are proud to be." 
 
 While spending his vacation in this country, last 
 summer, Mr. Douglass told me that he had found 
 everything in Hayti delightful, except the climate ; 
 and on September lo, he sent me the following letter : 
 
 "Dear Mr. Holland: — 
 
 " In answer to your question in respect of my relations with 
 the government of Hayti and whether they were cordial or 
 otherwise, I have to^tate that, while. the ofRce of United States 
 Minister Resident and Consul General to Hayti was vacant, 
 and prior to my nomination to that position by President Har- 
 rison, an honor accorded to me without any solicitation on my 
 part or on that of my friends, the policy of sending a colored 
 citizen to represent our country at that important post was ser- 
 iously discussed, and such appointment condemned in the col- 
 
386 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 umns of certain papers published in New York City and else- 
 where. After 1 was appointed, the subject was continued and 
 discussed with even more emphasis and bitterness. Notwith- 
 standing the fact that Hayti is known as the ' Black Republic ' 
 and that her people are of the African race, it was contended 
 that she did not want a colored representative in her capital in 
 the high quality of Minister Resident and Consul General of the 
 United States, but that she very much preferred to have a white 
 man sent to her in that quality. ' As for me, personally, it was 
 contended that I was especially objectionable ; and that I was 
 so, not only on account of my color, but on account also of my 
 political opinions. It was given out that I had at one time 
 (that is twenty years ago) favored the annexation of Santo 
 Domingo to the United States, a measure to which Hayti was 
 strenuously opposed, and that the latter would be likely to re- 
 sent the presence in her capital of a Minister who had supported 
 a policy which she deemed offensive and dangerous. It made 
 no difference to these writers^ that annexation had ceased to 
 be a living question, and that it had long since been abandoned 
 both by the Government of the United States and by Santo Do- 
 mingo. It was found to be a convenient circumstance by which 
 to stir up bad feeling in Hayti against me, and it was no 
 fault of theirs if it did not succeed. Some of these papers 
 went so far as to intimate very unpatriotically, that I was 
 especially sent to Hayti for the purpose of advancing some 
 scheme of annexation, not only of Santo Domingo but of 
 Hayti. They were not troubled in these utterances by the 
 absurdity of the pretence, that color would be an objection 
 to me in a black or colored republic. They took no note 
 that, at the time I favored the annexation of Santo Domingo, 
 it was only because that country was supposed to desire 
 it. They could not see that being herself pretty deeply col- 
 ored, and her citizens considerably under the ban on account 
 of color in the United States, Hayti would naturally be pleased 
 to see one of her own complexion honored by the appointment 
 to the Haytian Mission. All that they seemed to aim at, or to 
 desire, was to create the impression that a white man, and not 
 
THE nation's problem. 387 
 
 a colored man, was the proper description of man to be sent to 
 Hayti. It was. amusing to witness the high professions of 
 respect on the part of these journals for the feelings and pref- 
 erences of Hayti, professions that struck me, considering 
 their source, to be too vehement to be sincere, and too un- 
 usual to be ascribed to nature. There was ample room to sus- 
 pect a motive for this opposition less creditable and generous 
 than any wholesome concern for either the interest or the feel- 
 ings of Hayti. Quite a flood of light fell upon the whole sub- 
 ject, when it was said that the New York merchants were unan- 
 imously opposed to sending a colored representative of the 
 United States to Hayti. It at once became plain that an Amer- 
 ican and not a Haytian motive was at the bottom of this color 
 opposition. 
 
 " But whatever may have been the motive, whether it arose 
 from my color, my character, or my known record as a public 
 man, the opposition was spirited, vigorous, persistent, and mis- 
 chievous ; for nothing was said against me that was not repro- 
 duced and repeated in Hayti. A people less generous and in- 
 telligent than those who control affairs there might have been 
 made to feel that the United States had designedly insulted 
 them by sending me to their country. But, fortunately, they 
 did not so think or act. Having, however, predicted that I 
 would be unacceptable to the people and Government of Hayti, 
 it was perhaps natural that these prophets of evil should en- 
 deavor to create the impression that their predictions had been 
 realized. Hence it was said in the same papers, that I was 
 having a hard time in Hayti, that I had been ' snubbed ' by that 
 Government, that I was about to resign, and much else of the 
 same sort. Undue advantage was taken after my arrival in 
 Hayti, of the fact that some delay occurred in my presen- 
 tation to President Hyppolite. The facts in the case will 
 explain all this. I arrived in Hayti on the 8th of October, 
 1889. At that time the country was just emerging from 
 one of the most exciting revolutions which had occurred 
 there in many years. The government of General Solomon 
 had been overthrown the year before; and there had sue- 
 
388 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 ceeded to it the government of General Legitime, which 
 was never recognized by the United States. This gov- 
 ernment had lasted but a few months, when its President was 
 driven from power and banished from the country. The city 
 of Port au Prince was under martial law ; and sixteen thousand 
 troops were in its streets. The Government I found there was 
 simply titular and provisional ; but a convention to frame a new 
 constitution was in progress in the neighboring city of Gonaives. 
 This convention was charged with the duty of electing a Presi- 
 dent of the Republic and thus inaugurating a permanent gov- 
 ernment. This they did by electing General Florvil Hyppolite 
 President for a term of seven years. Even after this election, 
 the necessary delay in receiving my letter of credence hindered 
 my prompt presentation to the newly elected President, to whom 
 I was subsequently accredited. During the interim between 
 my arrival in Hayti and my presentation to President Hyppolite, 
 Mr. Thompson, my predecessor, who had long before sent in 
 his letter of resignation (which had been accepted by our Gov- 
 ernment), and who, as I had supposed, had previously to my 
 arrival departed from Hayti, as he had requested permission to 
 do, still remained, and for a time, in view of the fact that I 
 had not presented my letter of credence, nor been formally 
 received by the Government, allowed himself to be con- 
 sidered as the then present representative of the United States 
 Government, notwithstanding my presence in the Haytian cap- 
 ital and my assumption there of the duties and control of the 
 United States Legation. This circumstance, no doubt, gave 
 rise to the rumor in the United States of unpleasant relations 
 between myself and the Government of Hayti. The delay in 
 my reception was just long enough to be used in New York, 
 with all proper exaggeration, to create the impression that my 
 relations with the Haytian Government were not cordial, and 
 to justify the conclusion to which those papers had already 
 come, that a white man should have been sent to Hayti in my 
 stead. Happily, this embarrassment did not last long. As 
 soon as my letter of credence arrived, I was duly presented to 
 His Excellency, President Hyppolite, and fron; that time on- 
 
THE nation's problem. 389 
 
 ward my relations with the Haytian Government were entirely 
 cordial, and no respect due to my person or to my country was 
 ever afterward withheld by the Government or by the people of 
 Hayti. Frederick Douglass." 
 
 Shortly before sending the above letter, Douglass 
 visited a camp-meeting near Baltimore, on Sunday, 
 September 7, and made a speech in which, after re- 
 ferring to the time when " The American eagle laid 
 bad eggs," he said : 
 
 " Our American friends are apt, when they want to say any- 
 thing against us, to remark : ' Look at Hayti ; these negroes 
 cannot govern themselves there ; why here ? ' There is some- 
 thing about Hayti which we have to deplore, and so there is 
 about the United States. Let us go back 100 years and look 
 at Hayti, and we find it surrounded by slavery and the whole 
 Caribbean Sea reddened by the curse. The negro was a slave 
 everywhere, under every nation in the islands of the West Indies. 
 , But in the midst of that slavery, in the midst of that doom and 
 despair, they had the manhood to rise from the dust and shake 
 off the fetters and drive out the men who tyrannized them. 
 Since then Napoleon, with his 30,000 invaders and troops from 
 England, have tried to throw them back ; but, with the help of 
 ' Yellow Jack,' they have held their ground. These degraded, 
 stupid negroes were able not only to assert their liberty, but to 
 organize a government which they have carried on for eighty- 
 seven years. They have sent their Ministers to all Christian 
 lands, and Hayti has never been known to break a treaty. 
 Some of the papers said, not long since : ' Send a white man 
 as Minister to Hayti, for the people of that country would re- 
 sent a negro.' Well, there is always a demand made for a white 
 man, when there is $5000 attached to the office. I have been 
 shown every courtesy and I have not the slightest reason to 
 complain. I believe the press has become reconciled to my 
 presence in the office, except those that have a candidate for it, 
 and they give out that I am going to resign. At them I fling 
 
390 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 the old adage, ' Few die, and none resign,' and that I am going 
 back about Oct. i." 
 
 In speaking at the Abolitionist Reunion in Boston, 
 on September 22, 1890, Douglass said : 
 
 " A word about Hayti. We are not to judge her by the 
 height which the Anglo-Saxon has reached. We are to judge 
 by the depths from which she has come. We are to lodk at the 
 relation she sustained to the outside world, and the outside 
 world sustained to her. One hundred years ago every civilized 
 nation was slave-holding. Yet these negroes, ignorant, down- 
 trodden, had the manhood to arise and drive off their masters 
 and assert their liberty. Her government is not so unsteady as 
 we think." 
 
 He also, that morning, defended our pension 
 system, which had been criticised by a previous 
 speaker; and he added: " The Abolitionists were right 
 in their attitude to the Church. Slavery and the 
 Church were side by side : the Church was at peace 
 with slavery : men were sold to build churches, women 
 sold to pay missionaries, and children sold to buy 
 Bibles. We did right to oppose it." 
 
 The great event of the occasion was his speech that 
 evening, in Tremont Temple. The immense audience 
 greeted him with round after round of applause. 
 Then followed a general laugh, as he held up a trig 
 packet of manuscript and dropped it, with the words : 
 "All my thunder has been stolen by the friends who 
 have already spoken ; so I lay this thunderbolt 
 aside." He then insisted that " There is no race prob- 
 lem before the country, but only a political one, the 
 question whether a Republican has any right to exist 
 south of Mason and Dixon's line." There is still a 
 great deal of prejudice, even in the North, against 
 
THE NATION S PROBLEM. 39 1 
 
 colored people ; but he has found out that the only- 
 way to cure it, is to treat them kindly. This he proved 
 by the fact that at Pittsfield, Ne'v Hampshire, forty- 
 eight years before, Mrs. Norris had been helped, by 
 doing him a kindness, to shake off her prejudice 
 against his color and his views so thoroughly as to be 
 the first to shake hands with him after his lecture. It 
 had been said, by the clergyman who preceded him, 
 that it was not the Garrisonians who abolished 
 slavery, nor the Republicans either, but Almighty 
 God. " The good Lord had had a chance for a long 
 time before the abolition. I believe that there is a 
 moral government ; and that God reigns. I am no 
 pessimist ; I give thanks to the good Lord, and also 
 to the good men through whom He has worked. 
 Prominent among them was Garrison, and scarcely 
 less so was Phillips. It was they and their asso- 
 ciates who made Abraham Lincoln and the Republi- 
 can party possible. What abolished slavery was the 
 moral sentiment which had been created, not by the 
 pulpit, but by the Garrisonian platform. The 
 churches did not do much to abolish slavery ; but 
 they did much to keep the agitation down." He saw 
 no danger of negro supremacy at the South, nor any 
 cause of alarm to the white people " who have a 
 thousand years of civilization piled up in their three- 
 story heads." "lam just as white myself as I am 
 black ; and I am not afraid of the negro getting the 
 upper hand in me." Finally he rose to a power of 
 pathos, which carried away the whole audience, as he 
 said, in pleading for the Blair and Lodge bills, "If 
 you build the negro a church on every hill, and a 
 schoolhouse in every valley, and endow them all for 
 
392 t&EDERiCK DOUGLASS. 
 
 a hundred years, you will not make up for the wrongs 
 you have done him. Who is it that asks for protection 
 at the polls and for equal education ? The men who 
 came forth to clutch with iron fingers your faltering 
 flag, and shed their blood for you, who protected the 
 women and children of the South during the war, 
 who have tilled your soil with their horny hands, and 
 watered it with. their tears ! " 
 
 Four weeks later he made an address to the Bethel 
 Literary and Historical Association, in Washington, 
 and, after asserting the right of colored men to vote 
 and marry as they choose, closed with noble words 
 which we may accept as his farewell before departing 
 once more to Hayti, on December 7 : 
 
 " I have no doubt whatever of the future. I know there are 
 times in the history of all reforms, when the future looks dark." 
 ... "I, for one, have gone through all this. I have had 
 fifty years of it, and yet I have not lost either heart or hope." 
 ... "I have seen dark hours in my life, and I have seen 
 the darkness gradually disappearing, and the light gradually 
 increasing. One by one, I have seen obstacles removed, errors 
 corrected, prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and 
 my people advancing in all the elements that make up the sum 
 of general welfare. And I remember that God reigns in eter- 
 nity, and that, whatever delays, disappointments, and discour- 
 agements may come, truth, justice, liberty, and humanity will 
 ultimately prevail," 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 How and why the Minister to Hayti failed to ob- 
 tain one of the objects of his mission, the cession of 
 the M61e St. Nicholas to the United States, has been 
 fully explained by him in the " North American Re- 
 view" for September and October, 1891; and the arti- 
 cles have since been republished in the second edition 
 of his " Life and Times." One of the reasons why 
 Hayti refused us even a lease of the harbor, which 
 he calls her Gibraltar, was resentment at our national 
 prejudice against the color of her citizens. " Hayti 
 is black,*' said he at Chicago, "and we have not yet 
 forgiven Hayti for being black, or forgiven the Al- 
 mighty for making her black." The fleet which was 
 sent by our Government to frighten the Haytians ex- 
 cited only their indignation; as it did that of Doug- 
 lass, who resigned accordingly, on July 30, 1891. 
 
 While the first edition of this biography was in 
 press, Douglass wrote me thus about the meeting of 
 Abolitionists in September, 1890, " I am very glad 
 to find that I did not appear at the late reunion in 
 Boston as a worn-out and broken-down public speaker, 
 tolerated rather than desired by the thousands as- 
 sembled, though the time is at hand, when, like the 
 thousands who have gone before me, I must cease to 
 
 393 
 
'394 
 
 FREDERICK DOtfGLASS. 
 
 disturb the public eye and ear. The reunion wag 
 both a pleasure and a disappointment. There were 
 many old friends I was delighted to see, but more 
 absent that I wanted mucli to see once more in this 
 life. But what a meeting it was ! White heads, 
 wrinkled faces, dim eyes, trembling limbs, bent 
 forms, turned downward towards the earth! Such is 
 the complexion to which we all come at last. Yet 
 the meeting was to me a soul-reviving feast." 
 
 Of the severity with which Garrison blamed his 
 giving up disunionism (see p. 204), Douglass wrote 
 me thus: 
 
 " The first remark with which my statement was met 
 by Mr. Garrison was this, ' There is roguery somewhere.' 
 There was no mistaking the meaning ; and, coming from any 
 one else, it would have been resented on the spot. ... I 
 do not think that the grand, old anti slavery pioneer went 
 to his grave thinking there was any ' roguery ' in me. If 
 he did, I was not alone in this bad opinion of his. No 
 man who ever quitted the Garrisonian denomination was per- 
 mitted to leave without a doubt being cast upon his honesty. 
 That was one of the Liberator's weapons of war ; and it was a 
 weapon which never rusted for want of using. There are spots 
 on the sun ; but it shines for all that ; and Garrison with all his 
 harshness of judgment is Garrison still, and one of the best 
 men of mothers born." 
 
 Signs of decaying physical vigor were to be plainly 
 seen on March 16, 1892, when he lectured to an im- 
 mense audience on Hayti, in the Tremont Temple in 
 Boston. He began by showing the value to this 
 country of an alliance with the Black Republic. Her 
 greatest curses are the frequent revolutions ;, but 
 these are constantly encouraged by residents of the 
 United States, who want to sell worthless ships and 
 
Conclusion. 39^ 
 
 weapons. The foreign legations are allowed to shelter 
 defeated leaders; and " This right is merciful to the 
 few, but cruel to the many." President Hyppolite 
 was warmly praised by the orator, who admitted the 
 superstition of the Haytians, but urged that there are 
 many men in this country who, as he did, liked to 
 have the first sight of the new moon over the right 
 shoulder, and did not like to be one of thirteen at 
 table. The Haytians won freedom by fighting for it 
 as their right, and defended it against Napoleon. 
 They taught the world the danger of slavery; and 
 they struck for the freedom of every black. It was 
 Hayti's brave example that first of all startled the 
 Christian world into a sense of the negro's manhood. 
 Her progress during the last twenty years, for instance, 
 in founding hundreds of new schools, justifies belief 
 that " Whatever may happen of peace or war, Hayti 
 will remain in the firmament of nations, and, like the 
 star of the North, will shine on, and shine on for 
 ever.'' 
 
 Three months afterwards, he delivered his lecture 
 on " Self-Made Men " as a commencement address at 
 Tuskegee, Alabama. Among the new passages was""" 
 this statement of a complaint he had often made, 
 about the destitution into which the freedmen were 
 launched in 1865, "Even the Israelites were better off 
 than we. When they left Egypt, God told them to 
 spoil the Egyptians; and I believe the Jews have been 
 in the jewelry business ever since." He was delighted _, 
 at the classic culture he saw there, and had just seen 
 at Fiske University, Tennessee; but he took care to 
 remind his hearers how much their welfare, as well 
 as that of their race, would depend on their success. 
 
396 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 not in reading Greelc, but in working at trades and 
 on the soil. " Tlie earth has no prejudice against 
 color. Crops are yielded as readily to the touch of 
 the black man's hand as to that of his white brother." 
 He insisted that they must save their earnings, if they 
 would be respected, and closed thus: "Go on! I 
 shan't be with you long. You have heights to as- 
 cend, breadths to fill, such as I never could and never 
 can. Go on ! When you are working with your 
 hands, they grow larger; it is the same with your 
 heads. The negro's head is small now. Why, a 
 good-sized white man's hat will often slip right down 
 over a negro's shoulders. But by-and-by you will 
 develop great three-story heads with intelligence 
 
 ^looking out of the windows." He often told them 
 I that they must not look to prayer to save them from 
 jbeing lynched or banished. They must make them- 
 selves respected as a valuable part of the free popu- 
 ilation of the South. " Seek to acquire knowledge as 
 
 a/ well as property; and, in time, you may have the 
 
 ij honor of going to Congress; for if the negro can 
 . stand Congress, Congress ought to be able to stand 
 
 ^the negro." 
 
 The dedication of a statue to that leader of the 
 practical men, who really abolished slavery, John P. 
 Hale, on August 3d, brought Douglass to Concord, 
 New Hampshire. Weakness of body made him brief; 
 but he took particular pleasure in saying that his 
 friend's greatness and goodness were revealed in his 
 unusual attractiveness for children. It must have 
 been like his own. He also insisted that it was the 
 policy, as well as the duty, of the Republican party 
 to make the negro more prominent than the tariff in 
 
CONCLUSION. 397 
 
 the Presidential campaign ; and this position was fully 
 stated by him in " Zion's Herald " for September 28th.. 
 His protest against the lynching at the South had al- 
 ready appeared in the July " North American'' ; and 
 his l etter, published in the " Boston Herald. " August 
 22d, says: "Any part that I take in the discussion duF> 
 fng this campaign will be founded, not on hard money 
 or honest money, the tariff, the McKinley Bill or any 
 other kind of bill. I don't see anythingjoiiualiut^o "^ 
 make sentiment favwableto__the_xa££-J— and_lel_-lis_ 
 makeHESggfiisweiy::*^' In this letter, he blamed 
 James G. Blaine as " the marplot of his party," for 
 keeping the negro question in the background, in 
 1884, when the Blaine men tried, not only to check 
 his own sympathy with the oppressed, but " to tie the 
 tongue of that noble and brave woman, Anna Dickin- 
 son, one of the best and purest women this world has 
 ever had in it, and one of the truest at all times to 
 us." He was far enough above party prejudice to 
 admit, as soon as Cleveland was reelected, that the 
 country was not going to ruin, and that the condition 
 of the colored people was not likely to have "a vio- 
 lent change for the worse." His sagacity also led 
 him to predict that the victors would not give up 
 protection, or depreciate the currency. 
 
 He speaks of his campaign work in 1884 and 1888, 
 though not in 1892, in the edition of his autobiog- 
 raphy, published early in 1893 ; and here he says, 
 after lamenting Garfield's assassination, " The mad- 
 ness of Guiteau was but the exaggerated madness of 
 other men. It is impossible to measure the evil which 
 this craving madness may yet bring upon the country. 
 Any civil-service reform which will diminish it" 
 
3g8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 . . " should be supported by everv- patriotic citi- 
 
 zen." He tells us, that while marshal and recorder 
 he was not " less outspoken aigainst what I considered 
 the error of rulers " than before. " My cause, first, 
 midst, last, and always, whether in oflSce or out of 
 office, was and is that of the black man, not because 
 he is black, but because he is a man, and a man sub- 
 jected in this country to peculiar wrongs and hard- 
 ships." His account of his last visit to Europe con- 
 tains an interesting sketch of Gladstone in Parliament, 
 His visit to the grave of Theodore Parker reminded 
 him that he made his first speech in Roxbury against 
 slavery, in the pulpit of a lover of Garrison who was 
 not a Garrisonian, but the " generous brother " of all 
 Abolitionists. He felt some curiosity at seeing 
 ■• people going up to the black statue of St. Peter,— I 
 was glad to find him black — I have no prejudice 
 against his color, — and kissing the old fellow's big 
 toe." 
 
 The latest event mentioned in the book just quoted, 
 is the appointment of its author by President Hyp- 
 polite to represent Hayti as her commissioner at the 
 World's Fair. In that capacity he took the lead in 
 dedicating her tasteful pavilion, on the ninetieth 
 anniversary of her declaration of independence. Janu- 
 ary 2, 1893. That same day, the lecture on Hayti was 
 repeated to an audience of fifteen hundred, in a more 
 central part of Chicago. We also hear of his dancing 
 the Virginia reel, and playing '■ Home, Sweet Home " 
 on his beloved fiddle, at the hanging of the crane, 
 when the New England Log Cabin was opened on 
 the Midway Plaisance. On August 9th, he made an 
 impassioned protest, in the Suffrage Congress, against 
 
CONCLTJSION. 399 
 
 the objectioas of a professor from North Carolina to 
 allowing colored men to vote independently; on the 
 i6th, Hartian Day, he did the honors of her pavilion; 
 and on the ssth. Colored American Day, a hundred 
 and forty thousand of his friends followed his advice 
 by attending, instead of staying away as some dis- 
 appmnted seekers for offices at the Exposition desired. 
 Two thousand prosperous and intelligent colored 
 people listened eagerly to his oration. " Our presence 
 here in such numbers is a proof," said he, " of our 
 wisdom and our good-nature.** . . . "That we 
 are outadeof the World's Fair is only condstent with 
 the fact that we are excluded £rom every respectable 
 calling, from woilrshops, manufactories, and the 
 means of learning trades. It is consistent with the 
 foct that we are outside of the Church, and largely 
 outside of the State.** 
 
 The violin of his grandson, Joseph H. Douglass, 
 furnished some fine music that afternoon, and also 
 on the evening of May 9, 1S94, when the orator 
 spoke for the last time in Boston, to an audience 
 in which were many of the surviving Abolitionists. 
 Spcakii^ of the willingness of the slave-holder to 
 baptize, but not to emancipate, he said, "Well, the 
 poor n^ro wasn*t consulted; he looked around for 
 his body— Jiis master had it; for his soul, but the 
 Lord had it; for himself— he wasn't there." He 
 (^retted the habit of treating colored people as sub- 
 jects for ridicule, and protested against all attempts 
 to banish them from the South, which they had helped 
 to restore to the Union as well as reclaim for cultiva- 
 tion. He was busy to the last in plans for settling 
 them in a factory town in Virginia, and rebuilding 
 
400 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 an industrial school which had been burned at 
 Manassas. 
 
 The last scene was singularly characteristic. He 
 had spent most of Wednesday, February 20, 1895 in 
 the National Council of Women, at Washington, and 
 had been escorted to the platform by a committee 
 appointed in his honor. He had dined with his wife at 
 Cedar Hill, once the property of General Lee, and 
 was standing in Ihe hall, waiting for his carriage to 
 take him to lecture in one of the African churches, 
 and talking about the speakers he had just heard. 
 When he clasped his hands and dropped on his knees, 
 Mrs. Douglass thought he was only mimicking some- 
 body, as he had delighted to do. Suddenly he sank 
 down on the floor; and she saw that he was dying. 
 Il was heart disease. He passed away without pain, 
 at seven o'clock, aged seventy-eight. 
 
 He left two sons, Lewis Henry and Charles Re- 
 mond, a daughter, Mrs. Rosetta Sprague, her three 
 children, and the grandson whose musical skill has 
 been already mentioned. 
 
 The largest African church in Washington was 
 crowded for five hours, the next Monday, with col- 
 ored people, thronging to see their champion lie in 
 state. Beside him stood Hayti's coat of arms, in 
 palms, roses, lilies, and orchids, presented by her 
 minister. Baltimore and other cities sent delegations 
 to the funeral that afternoon. Among the bearers 
 were four Senators, an ex-Senator of Mississippi, and 
 an ex-Governor of Louisiana. The presidents of 
 Howard University and of the Woman's Council were 
 among the speakers, as were Miss Susan B. Anthony 
 and a colored bishop. The closing prayer was by 
 
CONCLUSION. 401 
 
 Rev. Anna H. Shaw. John W. Hutchinson, whose 
 singing worked powerfully against slavery, fifty years 
 ago, sang: 
 
 " As man may, he fought his fight. 
 Proved his truth by his endeavor. 
 Let his name in golden light 
 Live for ever and for ever ! 
 
 Refrain. 
 
 Lay him low, lay him low. 
 Under the clover or under the snow ; 
 How we loved him none can know ; 
 
 Lay him low. 
 
 Bend in love, O azure sky ! 
 Shine, O stars, at evening time. 
 Watch our Frederick calmly lie, 
 Clothed in faith and hope sublime." 
 
 The Mayor, ex-Mayors, and Aldermen of Rochester, 
 New York, helped to carry the body, next day, to 
 Mount Hope Cemetery, after the funeral sermon had 
 been preached in the Central Presbyterian Church 
 by the Unitarian pastor, Rev. Wm. C. Gannett, a 
 prominent member of the Free Religious Association, 
 which still numbered among its vice-presidents the 
 veteran who had been a mighty champion, not only 
 of freedom for the body, but of unrestricted liberty 
 for the soul. 
 
 His memory will live in many brilliant sentences, 
 some of which are: 
 
 "Speech is the lever that moves the world." "Enforced 
 morality is artificial morality." " A difference of opinion, like 
 a discord in music, sometimes gives the highest effects of 
 harmony." " The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the ea- 
 
|.02 FREDERICK DOITGLASS. 
 
 lurance of those whom they oppress." "Human government 
 s for the protection of rights, and not for the destruction of 
 ights." "The binding quality of law is its reasonableness." 
 ' The world moves, but only by fighting every inch of its dis- 
 puted way." " I know of no rights of race superior to the 
 ights of humanity." " The true basis of rights is the capacity 
 jf individuals." " Person is at least as sacred as its incident, 
 iroperty." "What we call money is only stored labor." "It 
 nay be with men as some one has said about tea : if you wish 
 ;o get its strength you must put it into hot water." 
 
 Looking at Douglass as an orator, his life may 
 be divided into four periods. 
 
 First come the twenty-four years of preparation, 
 before he mounted the platform in 1841. During 
 this time, he became familiar with slavery in its best 
 aspects, as well as in some of its worst. Only a 
 woman could have realized all its horrors ; but he 
 felt them keenly enough to be able to make their in- 
 iquity plain to his hearers ; and he had the great ad- 
 i^antage of knowing how bad the system was in its best 
 possible form. He also discovered that the only solid 
 foundations of liberty are knowledge and courage. 
 His last four years as a slave were made unusually 
 pleasant, because he had dared, at the risk of the 
 gallows, to fight hand to hand with his master ; and 
 promotion, from a field-hand to a city mechanic, re- 
 ivarded his first attempt to run away. He taught him- 
 self to read and write, and also to speak effectively. 
 His residence for almost three years at New Bedford 
 showed him how deeply the North was stained with 
 prejudices which would not let him enter a church 
 Dn equal terms with white worshipers, and which 
 prevented him from taking up the trade which he 
 lad followed successfully in Baltimore. In spite of 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 403 
 
 many hardships, he realized so fully the superioVl 
 advantages of working in free competition over labor / 
 under compulsion, that he was prepared to resist all | 
 the blandishments of socialism, even when presented I ' 
 by those white people who had been among the first 
 to recognize his rights. His joining the Garriso-J 
 nians enabled him to become prominent as a speaker 
 much earlier than would, in all probability, have been 
 the case if he had preferred the voting Abolition- 
 ists ; but he could not in any case have remained 
 very long unknown and silent in Massachuestts. 
 His education did not advance as rapidly as it would 
 have done if he had not been obliged to be his own 
 teacher, for the most part, even in New Bedford ; 
 but this isolation had some compensation in his 
 developing unusual capacity for thinking for himself. 
 This was plain during the second period of his life, 
 which began with his ranking himself among the 
 Garrisonians, in August, 1841, and closed with his 
 renouncing disunionism in May, 185 1. All these years 
 he was busy as a lecturer against slavery, and espec- 
 ially so during the first six. His first exploit was in 
 helping his people gain the suffrage in Rhode Island ; 
 and he next took part in that agitation against the 
 return of a fugitive named Latimer, which has em- 
 bodied itself permanently in our literature, in Whit- 
 tier's magnificent poem, " Massachusetts to Virginia." 
 For four years the black knight roamed to and fro, 
 from Maine to Indiana, always ready to break a lance 
 with any champion of slavery. Sometimes he had to 
 collect his audience by going through the town, ring- 
 ing a big bell, and crying the meeting. Or else he 
 would take his stand under a tree, or at the corner of 
 
404 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 a side-Street, and persuade people who had set out 
 for church to stop to hear him. Once, at least, he 
 fought for his life against an armed mob ; sometimes 
 he had the full sympathy of thousands of eager, list- 
 eners ; and sometimes he found only a handful of 
 timid adherents in the almost empty hall. Opposi- 
 tion and indifference could not lessen his zeal, but 
 only made him exert more eagerly his matchless 
 power of pathos mingled with ridicule. His parodies 
 of the slave-holders' cant had an effect which is not 
 to be revived by merely reprinting the words ; and it 
 is impossible to do any justice to his success in call- 
 ing forth tears of sympathy. His fiercest denuncia- 
 tions were provoked by a clerical conservatism, 
 largely due to the disunionism represented on the 
 banner which he and his frifends formally accepted, 
 at Boston, in 1844, and carried at the head of a great 
 procession through Hingham. While joining eagerly 
 in this agitation for a dissolution of the Union, he 
 I resisted the attempt of some leading Garrisonians to 
 j merge abolitionism in socialism ; and his boldness in 
 defying the authority of his superiors kept the great 
 reform true to its orignal aim. 
 
 His devotion to it made him, when challenged to 
 prove that he had really been a slave, tell the place 
 and his master's name. The little book was such a 
 great success that he could not be safe in the United 
 States. He crossed the ocean ; and found that the 
 color-prejudice was only an Americanism. Ireland 
 gave him one long ovation. He was at war for a year 
 with the Scotch clergy, on the question, whether slave- 
 holders ought to be fellowshiped ; and this gave him 
 a reputation which was increased by a single combat 
 
 ff 
 
tdnchvstoa. 405 
 
 in London, with a Doctor of Divinity from New York. 
 His English friends would have kept him among 
 them, but he preferred to fight in the forlorn hope ; 
 and so they bought his freedom. He was also enabled 
 by them to start a newspaper ; but this was opposed 
 by Garrison, and postponed for six months, part of 
 which were spent in a western tour, involving some 
 sharp debates with men who' appealed to the ballot- 
 box against slavery. Before the close of 1847, Doug- 
 lass made up his mind that it was his duty to publish 
 the " North Star ; " and he took up his residence at 
 Rochester, for there was much hostility in Boston, in 
 spite of his remaining for three years more, loyal to 
 Garrisonianism. He continued to lecture, though not 
 often in New England ; but his main strength was 
 given to the paper, which showed high ability and 
 was carried on for twelve years, in spite of occasional 
 pecuniary difficulties. The movement in behalf of 
 women found one of its earliest advocates in the " North 
 Star ; " much stress was laid on the need among the 
 blacks of industrial training ; and the editor's house 
 soon became one of the most useful stations on the 
 Under-ground Railroad. 
 
 He took less interest than many other colored men 
 in the organization of the Free Soil party ; and that 
 same year, 1848, he denounced all supporters of the 
 Constitution of the United States as enemies of God 
 and man. He found out gradually his error, as he 
 carried on controversies, first with a negro clergyman 
 named Ward, and then with the great philanthropist, 
 Gerrit Smith. Before finally casting in his lot with 
 the men who actually abolished slavery, he was able 
 to quell a pro-slavery riot in New York, with Ward's 
 
4o6 FREDERICK COUGLASS. 
 
 help ; but the united efforts of Phillips, Garrison, 
 Parker, and Douglass could not prevent Faneuil 
 Hall from being taken from them by a noisy 
 mob, soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave 
 Bill in 1850. 
 
 Our hero's life thus far is told in six chapters ; and 
 five more are given to the fourteen years, ending 
 with the complete conquest of slavery in 1865. This 
 third period is by far the most important in the light 
 of history; for Douglass was now working in har- 
 mony with Sumner, Wilson, Chase, Seward, Lincoln, 
 and other leaders of the party which actually freed 
 the slaves. His devotion to the cause of his race 
 was as pure and lofty as ever ; and he met the hostil- 
 ity of the disunionist Abolitionists, by saying: " I 
 would unite with anybody to do right, and with no- 
 body to do wrong." ... "I love and honor William 
 Lloyd Garrison," . . . and " have not the slightest 
 wish to be embroiled in personal controversy with 
 anti-slavery men of any sort." His reception by the 
 Free Soilers, in the convention of 1852, was enthusi- 
 astic ; but the people of Rochester forced him to live 
 year after year among them like a hermit ; and ten 
 years went by without his revisiting Boston. Ohio 
 and Illinois were more hospitable than Massachusetts, 
 and listened to him eagerly, when the attempt to en- 
 slave Kansas excited such indignation in the North 
 as suddenly transformed what had hitherto seemed 
 only an insignificant faction into a mighty party. 
 His newspaper went on under a new name until it 
 was merged in a " Monthly," which lasted almost to the 
 end of the war. He also published a number of 
 pamphlets at this period ; his Autobiography as- 
 
CONCLUSION. 407 
 
 sumed a new and highly interesting form ; and he 
 began to write out his lectures before delivery. His 
 style had always been powerful, as well as pictur- 
 esque; and it was now liable to little criticism, except 
 on account of repetitions. His mastery of English 
 was complete, in spite of lack of knowledge of other 
 languages, or perhaps in consequence of concentra- 
 tion upon one vocabulary. 
 
 The intimacy which he had formed, while still a 
 disunionist, with John Brown, continued until it was 
 broken off by a refusal to go to' Harper's Ferry ; and 
 discovery of the correspondence obliged Douglass to 
 make a brief visit to England, where he did much to 
 dispel the prejudices of Abolitionists against our Con- 
 stitution. The indignities inflicted on him in Boston 
 and Albany by mobs of would-be savers of the Union, 
 did not hinder him from taking sides with the Gov- 
 ernment as soon as war broke out ; and he published 
 a pathetic Appeal to Great Britain, against recogni- 
 tion of the Confederacy. Freely as he blamed Lin- 
 coln's tardiness, he was among the warmest admirers 
 of the proclamations of emancipation ; and the plan 
 of raising colored regiments was enthusiastically sup- 
 ported, in spite of occasional complaints that it was 
 not carried out in good faith. His personal relations 
 with our great President were friendly, and this 
 enabled him to break through the exclusiveness which 
 had hitherto stained the White House. The energy 
 with which he supported the war from the first, was 
 kept up until he was able to tell a delighted audi- 
 ence, in Faneuil Hall, that the parable of Dives and 
 Lazarus was all true. The rich man of the South 
 was in torments, and calling out in vain for the send- 
 
4o8 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 ing back of Lazarus, who was safe in Abraham's 
 bosom. 
 
 The twenty-five years after April 1865, occupy but 
 three chapters ; for this last period is by no means so 
 rich as its predecessor in great events. It has been 
 one of those happy times, when but little takes place 
 which is intensely interesting ; and Douglass has had 
 little chance to make history, though he has done 
 much ,to make presidents. It was largely due to him 
 that the freedmen secured the ballot and gave it 
 faithfully to the Republican party ; and their dis- 
 franchisement has called out his earnest but not very 
 successful protests. The questions about the annex- 
 ation of San Domingo, and the exposure of the 
 Freedman's Bank, have already ceased to be important; 
 his services as Marshal and Recorder belong, like his 
 reconciliation with his dying master, his last book, and 
 his journey to Europe, to biography, not history ; and 
 the negro exodus of 1879 would have little interest, if 
 there were not some danger of a second edition. His 
 denunciations of the store-order fraud, lynching, sale 
 of convict labor, and other wrongs upon the Southern 
 negro, ought not to be forgotten until all such abuses 
 are abolished ; but his most valuable suggestion is 
 that the white men of the South cannot afford, for 
 their own sakes, to let fraud and violence continue 
 unpunished ; and that the need of attracting capital 
 and immigration will yet teach justice and humanity. 
 It is by no means certain that his mission to Hayti 
 will do more good than his constant advice to his 
 brethren to give their children trades, to practice in- 
 dustry, and to avoid all extravagance, even in re- 
 ligion. 
 
CONCLUSION. 409 
 
 The five closing years, described in the first part of 
 this chapter, belong.with those just considered to that 
 golden period of his life, when he was not so ex- 
 clusively occupied as before with the defense of an 
 oppressed race. During these thirty years he spoke 
 even more impressively, though less and less passion- 
 ately; and his mighty eloquence poured forth freely 
 in behalf of the disfranchised sex, of down-trodden 
 Ireland, of the maltreated Chinese, and of dumb 
 animals. We even find him rising so far above party 
 prejudice as to write thus, in behalf of v/hat he calls 
 the cause of truth and justice. " It is my opinion that 
 but for the unwarrantable intermeddling of our citi- 
 zens_ Queen LiliuokalanrwoLn3"now be on TK"e thfOfieT 
 The stories afloat intended to blacken the character 
 of the Queen do not deceive me. The device is an 
 old one,^Tidnras been used with skill and effect ever 
 since Caleb and Joshua saw the grapes of Canaan. 
 We are the Jews of modern times, and when we want 
 the lands of other people such people are guilty of 
 every species of abomination and are not fit to live. 
 In our conduct to-day we are but repeating our treat- 
 ment towards Mexico in the case of Texas. Our citi- 
 zens settled in Texas under promise of obedience to 
 the laws of Mexico, but as soon as they were strong 
 enough they revolted and set up a government for 
 themselves to be ultimately added to the United 
 States. In whatever else President Cleveland may 
 have erred, history will ceedit his motive and com- 
 mend the object he has aimed to accomplish. I am 
 Republican, but I am not a ' Republican right or 
 wrong.' " 
 
 This letter goes with his outgrowing the orthodoxy 
 
416 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 which, while a slave, he had aspired to preach, with 
 his renouncing the disunionism, which he had learned 
 from the man he loved and honored most deeply, and 
 which he had himself advocated most earnestly, and 
 also with his discovering, while still suffering under 
 his master's cruelty, that the best way to save him- 
 self from being whipped again was to resist des- 
 perately. All this goes to prove that he had a white 
 man's independence and originality of intellect. He 
 was whiter than those who despised him on account 
 of the color of his skin. How much courage he in- 
 herited from fire-eaters, was manifest in the fierce- 
 ness with which he fought against white men at Bal- 
 timore. He owed his escape from slavery to his 
 steadiness of nerve; he charged, club in hand, against 
 a mob in Indiana; and he stayed three months within 
 reach of the Fugitive-Slave Law, after publishing a 
 narrative which made his capture probable. When 
 we also remember how passionately he loved knowl- 
 edge, and consider further that he amassed a hand- 
 some fortune by his foresight and economy, it is easy 
 to see that he had the best traits of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. He was born to be a great leader; and the bril- 
 liancy of his conversation was not more remarkable 
 than its perfect freedom from indecency or vulgarity. 
 It must have been from his mother's race that he 
 inherited his love of music and mimicry, his open- 
 handed generosity, his warmth of religious feeling, 
 his habitual courtesy, and that loyal gratitude in 
 which he readily overlooked defects in other cham- 
 pions of the oppressed. Few men have been so great 
 and at the same time so lovable, or have left behind 
 them so few enemies and so many friends. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 LIST OF PUBLICATIONS BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Letters in the "Liberator," 1842-7 and 1859. 
 
 " Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American 
 Slave, Written by Himself," Boston, 1845. (Various Editions 
 afterward.) 
 
 "Correspondence between Samuel H. Cox and Frederick 
 Douglass," New York, 1846. 
 
 Speech at Soiree at London Tavern, March 30, 1847, in 
 " Report of Proceedings," London, 1847. 
 
 "The North Star, " Rochester, 1847-50. 
 
 " Vie de Frederic Douglass, Traduite par S. K. Parkes," 
 Paris, Pagnerre, 1848. 
 
 " Letter to Thomas Auld," 1848. 
 
 "Lectures on American Slavery, Delivered at Corinthian 
 Hall, Rochester," Buffalo, 1851. 
 
 "Frederick Douglass's Paper," Rochester, 1850-60. 
 
 "The Heroic Slave," in "Autographs for Freedom," 1852 or 
 
 1853. 
 
 Extract from a Speech made at New York, May, 1853, in 
 ■■ Autographs for Freedom," 1854. 
 
 " The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered, an 
 Address at Western Reserve College," Rochester, 1854. 
 
 " My Bondage and My Freedom. Part I, Life as a Slave ; 
 Part II, Life as a Freeman," New York and Auburn, 1855. 
 
 " The Anti-Slavery Movement, a Lecture before the Roch- 
 ester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society." Rochester Daily American 
 Office, 1855. 
 
 " Two Speeches, one on West India Emancipation and the 
 411 
 
412 PREDfiRiCK DOUGLASS. 
 
 other on the Dred Scott Decision," Rochester, American 
 Office, 1857. 
 
 " Douglass's Monthly," Rochester, i8s8-64.(?) 
 " Eulogy of the late Hon. Wm. Jay," Rochester, 1859, 
 "Sclaverei und Freiheit. Autobiographie von Frederick 
 Douglass. Uebersetzung von Ottilie Assing," Hamburg, i860. 
 " The Slave's Appeal to Great Britain," 1862. 
 " What Shall be Done With Four Million Slaves, if they are 
 Emancipated ? " Essay quoted in " The Black Man, his Ante- 
 cedents, his Genius, and his Achievements," by W. W. Brown, 
 1863. 
 " Men of Color fo Arms,'' 1863. 
 
 " Speech before the American Anti-Slavery Society, at its 
 Third Decade, New York^ 1864. 
 
 Lecture at Dedication of the Douglass Institute, Baltimore, 
 in the " Liberator," for October 13, 1865. 
 
 Reply to President Johnson, 1866, also in " Life and Times,'' 
 1882. 
 " The New National Era,'' 1869-72. 
 
 Address at Arlington, on Decoration Day, 1 871, also in 
 " Life and Times," 1882. 
 
 " Oration at the Unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument to 
 Abraham Lincoln," Washington, 1876, also in "Life and 
 Times,'" 1882. 
 
 Letter in the "Washington Evening Star," 1877, also in 
 " Life and Times," 1882. 
 
 Address on Decoration Day in New York, 1878. 
 " The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States," in " Journal of 
 Social Science," No. XI, May, 1880, also in " Life and Times," 
 1882. 
 
 " The Color-line," in the " North American Review," April, 
 1881. 
 
 Addresses at Elmira, August 1, 1880, on" West India Eman- 
 cipation," and at Washington, September 26, 1881, on "Gar- 
 field," in " Life and Times," 1882. 
 
 " Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself," 
 Hartford, Confl., Park Publishing Co., 1882. 
 
APPENDIX. 413 
 
 Speech at the Civil Rights Mass-meeting, October 22, 1883, 
 Washington, C. P. Farrell, 1883. 
 
 " The Freedmen," in " Harper's Weekly," December 8, 1883. 
 
 " The Future of the Negro,'' in the " North American 
 Review," July, 1884. 
 
 Address on Wendell Phillips, in " Life and Times of Wendell 
 Phillips," by G. L. Austin,. Boston, 1884. 
 
 " Three Addresses on the Relations Subsisting Between the 
 White and Colored People of the United States," delivered 
 September 24, 1883, April 16, 1885, April 16, 1886, Washington, 
 Gibson Bros., 1886. 
 
 " The Future of the Colored Race," in the " North American - 
 Review " for April, 1886. 
 
 "Speech on the Seventy-ninth Anniversary of the Birth of 
 Lincoln," Washington, Gibson Bros., 1888. 
 
 Speech at the International Council of Women in Washington, 
 in the " Woman's Journal," April 14, 1888. 
 
 Speech before the N. E. Woman Suffrage Association, in the 
 " Woman's Journal," June 2, 1888. 
 
 " The Nation's Problem," a Speech delivered on April 16, 
 1889. 
 
 " Reminiscences," in the " Cosmopolitan " for August, 1889. 
 
 Among lectures and speeches which were, perhaps without 
 exception, reported more or less fully at the time of delivery, 
 and which may in some cases have been published in pamphlet 
 form, are the following : 
 
 Speech at Plymouth County Convention, Hingham, Novem- 
 ber 4, 1841. 
 
 Speech on Dorr Constitution at Providence, December, 1841. 
 
 Speeches against the Liberty Party, before M. A. S. S., Bos- 
 ton, January 26 and 27, 1842. 
 
 bpeeches at Latimer Meetings, New Bedford, November 6, 
 1842. 
 
 Disunionist Speech, before M. A. A. S., Boston, January 27, 
 
 1843. 
 
 Lecture on " Slavery as Actually Existmg in the South," Bos- 
 ton, March 6, 1843. 
 
414 FREDERTCK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Speech before A. A. S. S., New York, May lo, 1843. 
 Speech before M. A. S. S., Boston, January 24, 1844. 
 Speech at Hingham, August 2, 1844. 
 Speech against Annexation of Texas, Boston, January 26, 
 
 1845. 
 
 Speech in New York, May 8, 1845. 
 
 Speech before New England Convention, Boston, May, 1845. 
 
 Speech at Repeal Meeting, Dublin, September, 1845. 
 
 Speech in Glasgow, April 21, 1846. 
 
 Addresses in London on Slavery, May 18, on Peace, May 19, 
 on Manhood Suffrage, May 20, on Temperance, May 21, and at 
 the Douglass Reception, May 22, 1846. 
 
 Speech at World's Temperance Convention, London, Au- 
 gust 7, 1846. 
 
 Speech before Anti-Slavery League, London, September 14, 
 1846. 
 
 Speech before A. A. S. S., New York, May, 1847. 
 
 Speech before Western Anti-Slavery Society, New Lyme, O., 
 August 18, 1847. 
 
 Speech at Oberlin, O., August, 1847. 
 
 Speech before A. A. S. S., New York, May 9, 1848. 
 
 Address on Industrial Education at the Colored Conven- 
 tion, Cleveland, O., September, 1848. 
 
 Address before A. A. S. S., New York, May 9, 1849. 
 
 Defense of A. A. S. S., against a mob. New York, May 7, 
 1850. 
 
 Attack on Fugitive Slave Bill, Boston, October 14, 1850. 
 
 Speech at Cincinnati, May 5, 1852. 
 
 Debate with Garrisonians in A. A. S. S. Convention,Roches- 
 ter, N, Y., May 12, 1852. 
 
 Fourth of July Oration, Rochester, 1852. 
 
 Address to the Free Soil Convention, August 11, 1852. 
 
 Kansas Speech, in Chicago, September, 1854. 
 
 Address to the Legislature, at Albany, March, 1855. 
 
 Lecture on " Self-made Men." 
 
 " The Constitution of the United States : is it Pro-slavery, or 
 Anti-slavery ? " Glasgow, March 26, 1 860. 
 
APPENDIX. 415 
 
 War speeches, Rochester, April 27, i86r, and often after- 
 ward. 
 
 Lecture on " The Rebellion, its Cause and its Remedy," 
 Syracuse, November 14, 1861. 
 
 Lecture in behalf of the Emancipation League, Boston, 1862. 
 
 Protest against Sending Negroes back to Africa, Cooper 
 Institute, New York, February 12, 1862. 
 
 Fourth of July Oration, at Himrod's Corners, N. Y., 1862. 
 
 Emancipation Speech in Boston, January i, 1863. 
 
 Address Urging Colored Men to Enlist, Philadelphia, June 
 17, 1863. 
 
 Lecture on "The Mission of the War," Boston, February 10, 
 1864. 
 
 Lecture on " William the Silent." 
 
 Lecture on " The Composite Nation," Parker Fraternity 
 Course, Boston, 1867. 
 
 Address at Watkin's Glen, N. Y., August i, 1867. 
 
 Lecture on " Santo Domingo." 
 
 Address to Convention of Colored Citizens at New Orleans, 
 April, 1872. 
 
 Campaign Speeches during this and other Presidential Con- 
 tests. 
 
 Lecture on "John Brown," Charlestown, Mass., December 9, 
 1873. 
 
 Speech at Woman Suffrage Meeting, Faneuil Hall, Boston, 
 December 15, 1873. 
 
 Decoration Day Address, Rochester N. Y. 
 
 Lecture entitled " It Moves." 
 
 Speech at Centennial of the Abolition Society of Pennsyl- 
 vania, 1875. 
 
 Fourth of July Oration at Hillsdale, 1875. 
 
 Address at Pinchback Mass-meeting, Washington, March, 
 1876. 
 
 Lecture on " Our National Capital," Washington, 1876, and 
 Baltimore, 1877. 
 
 Speech on the Death of Garrison, Washington, June 2, 1879. 
 
 Address at Colored Convention, Louisville, July, 1880. 
 
4l6 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
 
 Campaign Address at Rochester, August 4, 1880. 
 
 Speech to ConkUng Club, Washington, February, 1881. 
 
 Speech on Twentieth Anniversary of Emancipation Procla- 
 mation, Washington, January i, 1883. 
 
 Address on Twenty-first Anniversary of Emancipation in 
 the District of Columbia, April 16, 1883. 
 
 Blaine Speech at Syracuse, October i, 1884. 
 
 " Thoughts and Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict," 
 a Lecture. 
 
 Address at Dedication of Hunter Memorial, Washington, 
 February, 1886. 
 
 Speech at Dinner of Massachusetts Club, Boston, May 22, 
 1886. 
 
 Woman Suffrage Address, Boston, May 24, 1-886. 
 
 Speech at Dinner of Wendell Phillips Club, Boston, Septem- 
 ber 11, 1886. 
 
 Two Lectures on his Trip to Europe and Egypt, one of 
 which is entitled, " Paris, Rome, and Cairo." 
 
 Address on Relations of White and Colored People, deliv- 
 ered at Washington, April 16, 1888. 
 
 Speech on the Issues of the Presidential Election, 1888. 
 
 Address to the Colored Citizens of the United States, 1888. 
 
 Two Speeches at Abolitionist Reunion, Boston, Septem- 
 ber 22, 1890. 
 
 Address before Bethel Association, Washington, October 21, 
 1890. 
 
 LATEST PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 " Haiti and the United States," in the " North American 
 Review," September and October, 1891. 
 
 " Lynch Law in the South," in the " North American Re- 
 view," July, 1892. 
 
 " The Negro in the Present Presidential Campaign," in 
 "Zion's Herald," September 28, 1892. 
 
 "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass." New Edition, 
 Boston : De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1892. 
 
 " Lecture on Haiti," Chicago, 1893. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abolitionism, its Condition in 1840, 44-55, and in 1852, 230. 
 
 Abolitionist Reunions, 306, 383, 390. 
 
 Abolitionists, 16, 44-56, 70, 79, 87, 89, 98, 100, 172, 181, 190- 
 
 193, 205, 230, 246, 247, 275-283, 362, 363, 390. 
 Adams, Hon. C. F., 77, 174, 187. 
 Adams, President J. Q., 75, 98. 
 Africa, Return of Negroes to, 286, 316, 368. 
 " Alida," The, 180. 
 
 Amendments to the Constitution, 195, 313, 316-319, 333, 353, 378. 
 American Anti-Slavery Society, 46, 48, 50, 51, 70, 79, 1 51-153, 
 
 167-169, 177, 181-185, 191-194, 214, 246, 248, 279, 303, 313. 
 Anarchism, 49, 50, 108, 109, 272. 
 Andersen, Hans Christian, 137, 167. 
 Andrew, Governor, 283, 297, 299, 307, 343. 
 " Anti-Slavery Conflict, Recollections of the," 43, 83, 84. 
 "Anti-Slavery Movement, The," 1 91-194, 248,249. 
 Arthur, President, 357, 359. 
 Assing, Miss Ottilia, 250, 261, 275. 
 Attucks, Crispus, 373. 
 
 Auld, Hugh, 15, 17, 29, 30, 33, 133, 138, 141, 153. 
 Auld, Mrs. Lucretia, 13, 14, 17, 318. 
 Auld, Mrs. Sophia, 14. 
 Auld, Thomas, 14-28, 125-127, 242, 343. 
 'Autographs for Freedom," 181, 216, 220, 
 Avignon, 364. 
 417 
 
4l8 INDEX. 
 
 Bailey, Original name of Frederick Douglass, 8, 34-36. 
 
 Bailey, Perry, 8, 320. 
 
 Ballot, vide Negro Suffrage and Woman Suffrage. 
 
 Baltimore, 14, 28-32, 42, 45, 314. 
 
 Banks, Hon. N. P., 373. 
 
 "Barnburners," 172, 173. 
 
 Beecher, Rev. Dr. Lyman, 135. 
 
 Beecher, Rev. H. W., 214, 256, 284, 289. 
 
 Bellamy, Edward, 88. 
 
 Bethel Literary and Historical Association, 335, 374, 392. 
 
 Bible, The, 14, 15, 16, 43, 48, 54, 89, 118, 119, 136, 177, 339. 
 
 Birhey, Hon. J. G., 47, 50, 51, 56, 98, 202. 
 
 Blaine, Hon. J. G., 355. 
 
 Boston, 45, 46, 66, 98, 100, 107, 108, 124, 187-189, 275,280-285, 
 
 307. 390. 
 " Boston Post," The, 151, 382. 
 Bowditch, Dr. H. L, 66, 77, 363. 
 Bowring, Sir John, 137. 
 Bradburn, George, 57, 92, 96, 108. 
 Bremer, Frederika, 226. 
 Bright, John, 128, 146. 
 Brougham, Lord, 127, 144. 
 Brown, " Box," 32. 
 Brown, John, 186, 225, 233, 247, 248, 262-277, 280-284, 298, 
 
 307. 308, 329, 350. 
 Bryant, Wm. C, 174. 
 Buchanan, President, 182, 250, 275. 
 Buffalo, 92-4, 173-175, 201, 249. 
 Buffum, J. N., 82, 112, 116, 122,363. 
 Burleigh, C. C, 53, 100, 185, 202. 
 Butler, B. F., 253, 265, 318, 332. 
 
 "Cambria," The, 112-114, 145-147. 
 Campbell, Thomas, 226, 229. 
 Capital Punishment, 222. 
 Cass, General, 172, 235. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 419 
 
 Cedar Hill, III, 12, 37, 347, 348, 400. 
 
 Chalmers, Rev. Dr. Thomas, 121. 
 
 Channing, Rev. Dr. W. E., 38, 55, 205. 
 
 Channing, Rev. W. H., 221, 226. 
 
 Chapman, Mrs. M. W., 49, 53, 89, 165. 
 
 Charleston, S. C, 367. 
 
 Chartists, 128, 130. 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., 174, 178, 349. 
 
 Cheever, Rev. Dr. George B., 269. 
 
 Chicago, 233-239, 398. 
 
 Child, Mrs. L. M., 49, 53, 100, 272. 
 
 Chinese, 245, 320-323, 
 
 Christianity, vide Douglass, Religious Views of, also Slavery 
 
 and the Church. 
 Cincinnati, 47, 202. 
 
 Civil Rights Bill, 332, 3S3-355, 361, 371, 378. 
 Civil Service Reform, 147, 172, 397. 
 Clarke, Rev. Dr. J. F., 74, loi, 284. 
 Cleveland, O., 160-164, I7S- 
 Cleveland, President, 356, 357, 372, 376, 409. 
 Clifford, Governor, 39, 84. 
 Collins, John A., 59, 71, 87-90. 
 Co'man, Mrs. Lucy N., 221-224. 
 Colored Troops, 285, 287, 296-305. 
 Color Prejudice, 28, 36, 39-42, 46, 66, 69, 71-76, 81-84, 96, 97, 
 
 no, 112, 120, 134, 142-147, 155-157, 176, 177, 180, 182-185, 
 
 203, 210, 211, 215, 223-229, 237, 248, 260, 268, 296, 305, 310, 
 
 314-321, 342, 348-355. 364. 379. 382, 390. 
 " Columbian Orator," The, 1 5, 26. 
 " Composite Nation, The," 320-323. 
 "Concihation Hall," 118. 
 Concord, Mass., loi, 331. 
 Concord, N. H., 63, 72, 85, 109. 
 Conkling, Hon. Roscoe, 332, 341, 349, 371. 
 Constitution of the United States Anti-Slavery, 193-197, 199, 
 
 201, 207, 208, 237, 248, 257-259, 277, 281, 286, 295, 296. 
 
420 INDEX. 
 
 Copper-heads, 307, 319. 
 
 " Cosmopolitan," The, 374. 
 
 Covey, Edward, ;9-25, 44, 106, 126. 
 
 Cox, Rev. Dr. S. H., 134, 141. 
 
 Craft, William, 187,265. 
 
 Cunard Company, The, 145, 146. 
 
 Dallas, George M., 277. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, 319. 
 
 Democrats, 61, 70, 95, 130, 158, 167, 172, 173, 181,231, 275, 284, 
 316, 319, 325, 344, 359, 371. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 166, 185. 
 
 Dickinson, Miss Anna E., 294, 300, 397. 
 
 Disunionism, 48, 49, 60, 66-70, 78, 97-101, 109, 122, 141, 153, 
 158, 160, 167-169, 174, 175, 177-180, 189-201, 204, 246, 280, 
 284, 289. 
 
 Dives and Lazarus, 311. 
 
 Dorr, T. W., 61, 65. 
 
 Douglas, Stephen A., 232-240. 
 
 Douglass, Anna F., 36, 225, 226, 277. 
 
 Douglass, Charles F., 36, 297, 299. 
 
 Douglass, Frederick, born in Slavery, 7 — Brought up on a plan- 
 tation, 9 — Teaches himself to read, 14 — Suffers cruelty, 21 — 
 Resists, 24 — Attempts to escape, 26 — Learns a trade, 28 — 
 Escapes, 32 — Marries and goes to New Bedford, 36 — ^Takes 
 the name of Douglass, 37 — Becomes an Abolitionist lecturer, 
 57 — Writes for the "Liberator,"' 75 — Removes to Lynn, 77 
 — Resists insult on the Eastern R. R., 81 — Tights against 
 a mob in Indiana, 96 — Publishes the narrative of his life, 102 
 — Visits Ireland, 115 — Scotland, 121 — London, 130 — Emanci- 
 pated, 138 — Returns from Europe, 147 — Out West with Gar- 
 rison, 154— Edits the "North Star" at Rochester, 161 — 
 Helps start the Woman Suffrage reform, i6g — Advocates 
 industrial education, 175 — Quells a mob inNew York, 181 — 
 Leaves the disunionists, 190 — Changes the name of his paper, 
 202 — Speaks at the Free Soil Convention in 1852, 210 — Pub- 
 
INDEX. 421 
 
 lishes a tale, 220 — Pleads for Kansas, 235 — Begins to write 
 his lectures, 240 — Publishes " My Bondage and My Free- 
 dom," 241 — Denounces Dred Scott decision, 257 — Publishes 
 " Douglass's Monthly,'' 261 — Confers with John Brown, 262 
 — Revisits Great Britain, 276 — Helps elect Lincoln, 280 — 
 Mobbed in Boston, 280 — Supports the war, 284 — Opposes 
 plans for sending colored people to Africa, 286 — Appeals to 
 public opinion in Great Britain, 289 — Welcomes emancipa- 
 tion, 294 — Urges colored men to enlist, 297 — Talks with 
 Lincoln, 303 — Supports him for re-election, 308 — Opposes 
 Johnson's policy, 315 — Attends the National Loyalists Con- 
 vention, 317 — Defends the Chinese, 320 — Edits the "New 
 National Era " at Washington, 324 — Sent to San Domingo, 
 325 — Appointed District Councillor, 325 — Supports Grant 
 against Greeley, 325 — ^Exposes Freedman's Bank, 328 — 
 Lectures on Washington City, 339 — Appointed Marshal, 
 341 — Reconciled to his former master, 343 — Speaks in 
 memory of Garrison, 343 — Opposes negro exodus, 345 — 
 Visits Florida, 348 — Appointed Recorder, 350 — Revisits the 
 old plantation, 350 — Presides at Garfield memorial meeting, 
 350 — Publishes his " Life and Times," 350 — Marries again, 
 355 — Supports Blaine against Cleveland, 355 — Resigns his 
 office, 356 — Travels in France and Egypt, 363 — Speaks on 
 wrongs of Freedmen, 368 — Supports Harrison against Cleve- 
 land, 371 — Accepts the mission to Hayti, 383 — Tells how he 
 was received there, 385 — Speaks at Abolitionist Reunion, 
 390 — Returns to Hayti, 392 — Busts of, 137, 229, 343 — Ora- 
 tory described, 60, 64, 71, 81, 82, 85, 95, loi, 160, 219, 220, 
 223, 224, 225, 250, 261, 311, 312, 390, 395 — Religious views, 
 12,16,26,30,34,40-42,67,76,98, 100, 104-106, 118, 119, 
 131-132, 160, 166, 177, 203, 208-210, 218, 219, 228, 241, 242, 
 252, 256-258, 269, 3o6j 327, 333-339, 390-392 — Speeches, ill, 
 57-58,60,85,93, 108, 113, 117-119, 122, 123, 130-137, 141- 
 H5. 153. 158, 167-170, 182, 183, 189, 191-199, 205, 207-218, 
 233-239, 242, 268, 277-289, 303-311, 318-329, 331-332, 338- 
 341, 343, 345, 348-356, 360-379, 389— Writings, ill, 41, 43, 57. 
 
42 2 INDEX. 
 
 75, 83, 98, io2\ii2-ii6, 119, 124-127, 133-13S. 138, 145. 
 152, 153, 165-167, 171, I9I-I94, 202, 205, 206, 214-216, 220. 
 
 221, 240-255, 257-262, 266, 268-271, 279, 280, 285-294, 301, 
 
 303. 306, 313-316. 324. 333-379. 383-389. 398-407- 
 
 Douglass, Frederick, Jr., iv, 36, 267, 328. 
 
 Douglass Hall, 314, 341. 
 
 Douglass, Lewis H., 36, 275, 298, 315. 
 
 Douglass Light Infantry, 367. 
 
 Douglass, Mrs. Anna, 30, 36, 206, 223, 226, 280, 351. ' 
 
 Douglass, Rosetta, 36, 176, 225, 226, 279, 280. 
 
 " Douglass's Monthly," 261, 262, 269, 280, 284, 285, 326. 
 
 Dred Scott Decision, 257-260, 278. 
 
 Dublin, 115, 116. 
 
 Easter, 27, 146. 
 
 Eastern R. R., 81-83. 
 
 Easton, Md., 27, 350. 
 
 Edinburgh, 123, 139. 
 
 Education, Industrial, 175, 220, 221, 247, 248, 382. 
 
 Egypt, 241,365. 
 
 Emancipation in the District of Columbia, 16, 66, 268, 278, 
 
 289, 352, 356. 
 Emancipation in the West Indies, loi, 130, 260, 269, 277, 290, 
 
 294. 318, 348. 
 Emancipation League, 285, 299. 
 
 Emancipation Proclamations, 289-295, 306, 320, 352, 383. 
 Emerson, R. W., 55, loi, 167, 216, 275, 283. 
 Ethnology, Lecture on, 240. 
 Evangelical Alliance, 135-137. 
 Evolutionism, 335. 
 Exodus, the Negro, 245, 286, 343-347, 368. 
 
 Fillmore, President, 250. 
 
 Florence, Mass., 334. 
 
 Folsom, Mrs. Abby, 53, 75, 108, 188. 
 
 Foster, S. S., 49, 54, 62, 98, 158-161, 204, 278, 313. 
 
 Fourierism, 88. 
 
INDEX. 423 
 
 France, 277, 363. 
 
 "Frederick Douglass's Paper," 202, 205,206, 220, 221,262,326. 
 
 Free Church of Scotland, 121-124, I44. I47- 
 
 Freedman'sBank, 328, 329, 353. 
 
 Freedmen's Wrongs, 344, 352-354, 368-372, 377, 378, 392. 
 
 Free Labor, 37, 90, 213. 
 
 Free Religious Association, 334, 338. 
 
 Free Soilers, 50, 172-175, 199, 201, 210-213, 231-233, 249. 
 
 Free Trade, 33, 128-130, 147, 363, 372. 
 
 Fremont, John C, 233, 249, 250, 308. 
 
 Fugitive Slave Bill, 74-78, 112, 118, 181, 185-188, 195,200, 
 
 211-213, 218, 231, 232, 233, 246, 249, 250, 258, 278, 281. 
 Fumess, Rev. Dr. Wm. H., 182, 374. 
 
 Galileo, 335, 366. 
 
 Garfield, President, 329, 342, 348, 350. 
 Gamett, Rev. Dr. H. H., 44, 94, 260, 349. 
 Garrisonians, 51-54,70, 89, 98, 100, 109, iii, 130, 173, 174, 178, 
 181, 190-193, 198-200, 222, 231, 245, 260, 278, 286, 289, 299, 
 
 313. 391. 394- 
 
 Garrison, Wm. L., Ill, 43, 45, 46, 48-53, 57-59, 66, 70, 78, 100, 
 102, 103, 115, 129, 133, 136-141, 150-152, 154-165, 182, 
 188, 191-193, 198, 200, 204-206, 214, 222, 242-245, 250, 
 267, 272, 278, 284, 295, 296, 307, 313, 343, 363, 391, 394. 
 
 Germans in America, 322. 
 
 Giddings, Hon. J. R., 95, 158, 174, 178, 278. 
 
 Gladstone, Wm. E., 363. 
 
 Glasgow, 121, 123, 124, 277. 
 
 Grant, President, 311, 323-329, 340. 
 
 " Great Britain, The Slave's Appeal to," 290. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 88, 183, 254, 285, 319, 326. 
 
 Green, Shields, 270, 271, 298. 
 
 Griffiths, Miss Julia, 180, 181, 216, 262. 
 
 Grimke, A. H., 382. 
 
 Grimke, Miss Angelina, 52, 169. 
 
 Grimke, Miss Sarah, 52, 53, 169. 
 
424 iNi)EX. 
 
 Hale, Hon. John P., i68, 174, 213, 349. 
 
 Harlan, Judge, 371. 
 
 Harper's Ferry, 264-277, 350. 
 
 Harrisburg, 155, 167. 
 
 Harrison, President B. F., 371, 373, 383. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 55, 88. 
 
 Hayden, Lewis, 364. 
 
 Hayes, President, 341, 342. 
 
 Hayti, 247, 284, 286, 324, 339, 383-398. 
 
 " Heavenly Union," Parody of Hymn about, 67-69, 77, 104, 24c 
 
 " Herald of Freedom," The, 63, 108, 109, 149. 
 
 " Heroic Slave, The," 220. 
 
 Higginson, Col. T. W., 267, 278, 313, 334, 373. 
 
 Himrod's Corners, 287. 
 
 Hingham, 60, loi, iii. 
 
 HoUey, Hon. Myron, 50, 93. 
 
 Holley, Miss Sally, 93, 219, 318-320. 
 
 Homestead Bill, 204. 
 
 Hopedale Community, 69, 88. > 
 
 Howard University, 338. 
 
 Howe, Dr. S. G., 267, 325. 
 
 Howitt, William and Mary, 137, 141, 167. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 364. 
 
 Hunter, General, 356. 
 
 Hutchinsons, The, 99, 112, 113. 
 
 Hyacinthe, Father, 364. 
 
 " Independent," The, 272. 
 
 Indian Blood of Douglass, 7, 8, 23, no. 
 
 Industrial Education, 175, 220, 221, 247, 248, 382, 
 
 IngersoU, Col. R. G., 354. 
 
 International Council of Women, 170, 366. 
 
 Ireland, 115-121, 363. 
 
 Irish Americans, 147, 322. 
 
 Jay, Judge William, 268, 269. 
 Jcrrold, Douglas, 137, 147, i66. 
 
INDEX. 425 
 
 " Jim Crow Car," 81-86. 
 
 Job, 14, 119. 
 
 Johnson, Oliver, 363. 
 
 Johnson, President, 254, 310, 312, 315, 317. 
 
 Julian, Hon. G. W., 202, 213. 
 
 Kansas, 180, 231-240, 246, 247, 250, 256, 258, 266, 278. 
 
 Kelley, Miss Abby, 49, 53, 62, 63, 67, 70, 71, 79, 80, 169, 204, 
 
 246. 
 Kelley, Wm. D., 300. 
 Kossuth, Lewis, 204. 
 
 " Lady of the Lake, The," 35, 190. 
 Latimer, George, 74, 394. 
 
 "Liberator," The, 43, 45,49-51, 53, 60,81, 98, 107, 113-116, 
 124-127, 151, 162-166, 205, 206, 223, 232, 243, 244, 273, 279, 
 
 313- 
 "Liberator, The," (not the newspaper,) 79, 95, 115, 116. 
 Liberty Party, The, 50, 51, 56, 66, 86, 92, 98, 109, 130, 158-160, 
 
 i68, 172-174, 178, 179, 199, 233, 249. 
 "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass," 43, 103, 126, 201, 
 
 220-242, 262, 301, 303, 310, 316, 324, 338, 341, 342, 348, 
 
 350. 351- 
 Lima, N. Y., 72. 
 Lincoln, President, 56, 201, 273, 278, 280, 288-290, 295, 302- 
 
 306-313. 320, 331, 341, 349, 366, 369, 377. 
 Liverpool, 115, 145, 146. 
 Logan, General, 371. 
 London, 130-139, 229, 363. 
 Lovett, William, 137. 
 Lowell, J. R., 88, 147, 149, 173, 175, 226. 
 Lynn, Mass., 52, 62, 77, 81, 83, 112, 152. 
 
 McClellan, General, 288, 296. 
 
 Maroons, 296. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 38, 45. 
 
 "Martyr Age of the United States, The," 45-48. 
 
426 INDEX. 
 
 Massachusetts, 79, 120, 273, 296-299, 343. 
 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 43, 59, 66, 98, 102, 283. 
 Mathew, Father, n6. 
 
 May, Rev. S. J., 45, 48, 49, 163, 214, 221, 247. 
 Methodists, 40, 62. 
 Mexican War, 149, 172, 239. 
 Mill, Mrs. J. S., 187. 
 " Mission of the War, The,'' 306. 
 "Miss Lucretia," 13, 14, 17, 318. 
 Missouri Compromise, 231, 236-239. 
 "Miss Sopha," 14, 15. 
 Morton, Hon. H. P., 332. 
 Moslemism, 108, 292. 
 
 Mott, Lucretia, 49, 51, 53, 154, 169, 170, 182. 
 Music, Taste of Douglass for, 26, 36, 37, 137, 339, 365. 
 "My Bondage and My Freedom," 25,84, 103, 112, 113, 126, 
 130, 204, 241-246, 250. 
 
 Nantucket, 57-59, 70, 107. 
 
 " Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," 36, 102-107, 
 
 112, 119, 124-127, 241, 242, 343. 
 Neal, John, 79. 
 
 Negro Exodus, 245, 286, 343-347, 368. 
 Negro Problem, vide Problem, the Nation's. 
 Negro Suffrage, 61-65, 293. 299- 303. 306, 307, 315, 330-332, 
 
 352-356, 392. 
 New Bedford, 36-44, 57, 76, 77, 83, 102. 
 New England Anti-Slavery Conventions, 70, 86, 100, 107, 153, 
 
 299. 
 New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society, 109. 
 " New National Era, The," 326. 
 
 New York City, 35, 46, 152, 168, 181-185, 246, 286, 301. 
 N. Y. State Anti-Slavery Society, 50, 202. 
 "N. Y. Sun," The, 152, 153. 
 
 "N. Y. Tribune," The, 88, 107, 124, 166, 248, 254, 272, 273. 
 Niagara Falls, 181, 
 
INDEX. 427 
 
 Non-Resistance, 23, 28, 43, 48, 90, 96. 
 Norris, Hon. Moses, 73, 281. 
 " North American Review," The, 330, 349, 356. 
 "North Star," The, 149, 150, 161-167, 172, 176-180, 202, 240, 
 326. 
 
 Oberlin College, 159, 160. 
 O'Connell, 115, u6, 121, 265, 269. 
 "One with God is a Majority," 212. 
 Owen, Robert, 107. 
 
 Paganini, 365. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 88, 166, 187, 188, 216, 267. 
 
 Parody of Hymn about " Heavenly Union," 67-69, 77, 104, 240, 
 
 404. 
 Parody of Slave-holder's Sermon, 58, 67, 93, 94, 139, 240. 
 Peabody, Rev. Ephraim, 38. 
 Peace, Cause of, 130, 132, 179. 
 Pendleton, Ind., 95, 96. 
 Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 44, 331. 
 Pennsylvania Hall, 47, 52. 
 Periodicals Edited by Colored Men, 149-152, 163-167, 178, 202, 
 
 205, 206, 220, 221, 260-262, 324, 326. 
 Philadelphia, 46,47, 97, 134, 136, 248, 249, 275, 286, 300, 303, 
 
 317, 318, 374. 
 Phillips, Wendell, 53, 66, 67, 70, 75, 78, 83, 84, 102, 103, 107-1 10, 
 
 178, 182-185, 187, 188, 191, 200, 204, 224, 227, 228, 240, 242, 
 
 243, 267, 278, 284, 285, 296, 306, 313, 355, 391. 
 Pierpont, Rev. John, 78. 
 Pillsbury, Parker, 56, 58, 59, 62, 108, 188. 
 Pittsburgh Convention, 210-213. 
 Pittsfield, N. H., 73, 391. 
 Problem, The Nation's, 241, 358-384, 390. 
 Prohibition, 351. 
 
 Quincy, Edmund, 49, 164, 166, 178. 
 
428 INDEX. 
 
 Radical Political Abolitionists, 247, 278, 279. 
 
 "Ram's Horn," The, 150, 152, 163. 
 
 Remond, Mr. C. L., 75, 76, 100, 102, 107, 204, 313, 349. 
 
 Republican Party, 50, 56, 2CX3, 249, 256, 273, 275, 277, 278, 280, 
 
 312, 319, 325, 328-332, 353-360, 369-380. 
 Rhode Island, 61-65. 
 Richardson, Mrs. Ellen, 138, 149, 161. 
 Rochester, N. Y., 71, 92, 117, 165, 176, 177, 186, 202, 204, 210- 
 
 230, 267, 311, 324, 343, 401. 
 Rogers, N. P., 63-65, 66, 85, 108, 109, 193. 
 Rome, 365, 366. 
 Rose, Mrs. E. L., 97, 169. 
 Ruggles, David, 36. 
 Rynders, Captain, 182-185. 
 
 Sabbath, The, 54, 89, 136. 
 
 St. Michael's, 18, 42, 125, 127, 342. 
 
 Sanborn, F. B., 267, 280-282. 
 
 San Domingo, 324, 325, 386. 
 
 Schools, Mixed, 38, 177, 293, 352, 381. 
 
 " Sclaverei und Freiheit," 250. 
 
 Scotland, 121, 139. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 37, 42. 
 
 "Self-Made Men," 250-255, 268, 282. 
 
 Sewall, Hon. S. E., 50, 75. 
 
 Sewaid, Hon. Wm. H., 174, 178, 278, 304, 336, 349. 
 
 Seymour, Hon. Horatio, 323. 
 
 Shakers, 91. 
 
 Sheridan, R. B. B., 15. 
 
 Sherman, Hon. John, 371. 
 
 Skaneateles, 89. 
 
 Slave-holder's Sermon, The, 58,67, 93, 94, 139, 240. 
 
 Slavery and the Church, 19, 23, 25, 40-42, 48, 52-54, 67-71, 74, 
 n> 79' 83, 85, 98-100, 104-106, 121-124, 130-132, 141, 144, 
 146, 147, 202, 203, 212, 214, 216, 231, 232, 269, 319, 333, 353, 
 374. 384. 390, 391. 
 
INDEX. 429 
 
 Slavery, Horrors of, 10, 11, 21, 23, 29, 47, 107, 108, 114, 117, 
 
 118, 121, 126, 127, 208,393. 
 Slavery Illegal, 193-200, 202, 207, 208, 237, 259. 
 " Slave's Appeal to Great Britain, The," 290. 
 " Slave, The Heroic," 220. 
 Smith, Dr. J. McC, 242, 247, 248. 
 Smith, Hon. Gerrit, 50, 53, 135, 178-180, 192, 202, 211-214, 
 
 227, 232, 242, 247, 267, 278, 280, 319. 
 Socialism, 88, 97, 107, 129. 
 
 Social Science Association, The American, 345-347. 
 South Carolina, 52, 121. 
 .Spartacus, 60. 
 Standard," The "National Anti-Slavery, 100, 163, 166, 205, 
 
 206, 223. 
 Stanton, Mrs. E. C, 169, 221. 
 Stearns, Major George L., 267, 297, 300-303. 
 Stone, Mrs. Lucy, 160, 219, 278. 
 Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 202, 220, 221. 
 Suffrage, vide Negro Suffrage and Woman Suffrage. 
 Sudbury, Mass., 99. 
 Suez Canal, 365. 
 Sumner, Charles, 166, 174, 178, 205,232, 256, 298,316,324-327, 
 
 343. 349- 
 Sunday, 19, 21, 23, 364. 
 Swisshelm, Mrs. J. G. C, 205. 
 Syracuse, N. Y., 86-90, 191, 192, 214, 225, 283, 285, 355. 
 
 Talbot County, Md., 9, 10, 37, 350. 
 Tappan, Lewis, 205, 247, 
 Tariff, 33, 86, 128-130, 181, 218, 372, 382. 
 Taylor, Father, 74. 
 Taylor, President, 173, 177, 182. 
 Temperance, 116, 130, 133-135, 179, 351, 363. 
 Texas, Annexation of, 78, loi, 102, 168, 172, 239,409. 
 Thompson, George, 123, 133, 137, 147. 188, 194. 205, 227, 243, 
 277. 
 
430 INDEX. 
 
 Thompson, Mrs. Elizabeth, 344. 
 Thoreau, Henry D., 276. 
 Tilton, Theodore, 318. 
 Toleration, 132, 323, 333, 364. 
 Truth, Sojourner, 187, 256. 
 Turner, Nat., 19, 264, 298. 
 Tyler, President, 65. 
 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 202, 221. 
 Underground Railroad, The, 186, 340. 
 Union, War for the, 2cx}, 284. 
 Utica, N. Y., 46, 1 10. 
 
 Van Buren, President, 50, 172-175, 212, 213. 
 
 Vermont, 44. 
 
 Vesey, Denmark, 298. 
 
 Victor, N. Y., 71. 
 
 " Vie de Frederic Douglass,'' 107. 
 
 Wade, Hon. B. F., 281, 325. 
 
 Wagner, Fort, 298, 303, 305. 
 
 Ward, Rev. S. R., 150, 178, 183-185, 202, 349. 
 
 Washington, D. C, 168, 309, 324, 339. 
 
 Washington, George, 228. 
 
 Washington, Madison, 220. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 81-2, 174, 181, 188, 211. 
 
 Webster's Spelling-book, 15. 
 
 Weld, Theodore D., 317. 
 
 Wendell Phillips Club, The, 362. 
 
 Western Anti-Slavery Society, 157-159. 
 
 Whigs, 86, 90, 95, 158, 172, 181, 231. 
 
 White, Andrew D., 325. 
 
 Whittier, J. G., 42, 49, 50, 52, 55, 70, 88, 149, 272, 374, 394. 
 
 " Who Reads an American Book ? " 54. 
 
 Wilberforce, 293. 
 
 William the Silent, 308, 333, 339. 
 
 Wilson, Hon. Henry, 173, 273, 299, 303, 343, 349. 
 
INDEX. 431 
 
 Winthrop, Hon. R. C, 39, 310. 
 
 Wise, Governor, 271, 272, 275, 282. 
 
 Woman Suffrage, 169-172, 179, 187, 202, 213, 221, 248, 329, 
 
 361, 366, 367. 
 Women Allowed to Write and Speak against Slavery, 48, 51-53. 
 Worcester, Mass., 174, 187, 278. 
 Wright, Elizur, 49, 188. 
 Wright, Frances, 169. 
 Wright, H. C, 49, 122, 137, 138, 168, 273. 
 
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