Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence
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Title: Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence
Editor: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson
Release date: August 4, 2007 [eBook #22240]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASTERPIECES OF NEGRO ELOQUENCE ***
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[Illustration: Frederick Douglass]
MASTERPIECES OF NEGRO ELOQUENCE
THE BEST SPEECHES DELIVERED BY
THE NEGRO FROM THE DAYS OF
SLAVERY TO THE PRESENT TIME
EDITED BY
ALICE MOORE DUNBAR
Copyright, 1914, by ROBERT JOHN NELSON
Printed in the United States of America
_TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF THE NEGRO RACE, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH
THE HOPE THAT IT MAY HELP INSPIRE THEM WITH A BELIEF IN THEIR OWN
POSSIBILITIES_
PREFACE
It seems eminently fitting and proper in this year, the fiftieth
anniversary of the Proclamation of Emancipation that the Negro should
give pause and look around him at the things which he has done, those
which he might have done, and those which he intends to do. We pause,
just at the beginning of another half century, taking stock of past
achievements, present conditions, future possibilities.
In considering the literary work of the Negro, his pre-eminence in the
field of oratory is striking. Since the early nineteenth century until
the present time, he is found giving eloquent voice to the story of his
wrongs and his proscriptions. Crude though the earlier efforts may be,
there is a certain grim eloquence in them that is touching, there must
be, because of the intensity of feeling behind the words.
Therefore, it seems appropriate in putting forth a volume commemorating
the birth of the Negro into manhood, to collect some few of the speeches
he made to help win his manhood, his place in the economy of the nation,
his right to stand with his face to the sun. The present volume does not
aim to be a complete collection of Negro Eloquence; it does not even aim
to present the best that the Negro has done on the platform, it merely
aims to present to the public some few of the best speeches made within
the past hundred years. Much of the best is lost; much of it is hidden
away in forgotten places. We have not always appreciated our own work
sufficiently to preserve it, and thus much valuable material is wasted.
Sometimes it has been difficult to obtain good speeches from those who
are living because of their innate modesty, either in not desiring to
appear in print, or in having thought so little of their efforts as to
have lost them.
The Editor is conscious that many names not in the table of contents
will suggest themselves to the most casual reader, but the omissions are
not intentional nor yet of ignorance always, but due to the difficulty
of procuring the matter in time for the publication of the volume before
the golden year shall have closed.
In collecting and arranging the matter, for the volume, I am deeply
indebted first to the living contributors who were so gracious and
generous in their responses to the request for their help, and to the
relatives of those who have passed into silence, for the loan of
valuable books and manuscripts. I cannot adequately express my gratitude
to Mr. John E. Bruce and Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, President and
Secretary of the Negro Society for Historical Research, for advice,
suggestion, and best of all, for help in lending priceless books and
manuscripts and for aid in copying therefrom.
Again, we repeat, this volume is not a complete anthology; not the final
word in Negro eloquence of to-day, nor yet a collection of all the best;
it is merely a suggestion, a guide-post, pointing the way to a fuller
work, a slight memorial of the birth-year of the race.
THE EDITOR.
_October, 1913._
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
PRINCE SAUNDERS
The People of Hayti and a Plan of Emigration 13
JAMES MCCUNE SMITH
Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haytian Revolution 19
HILARY TEAGUE
Liberia: Its Struggles and Its Promises 33
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July 41
On the Unveiling of the Lincoln Monument 133
CHARLES H. LANGSTON
Should Colored Men be Subject to the Pains and Penalties
of the Fugitive Slave Law? 49
RICHARD T. GREENER
Young Men to the Front 63
ROBERT BROWNE ELLIOT
The Civil Rights Bill 67
JOHN R. LYNCH
Civil Rights and Social Equality 89
ALEXANDER DUMAS, FILS
On the Occasion of Taking His Seat in the French
Academy 95
JOHN M. LANGSTON
Centennial Anniversary of the Pennsylvania Abolition
Society 97
FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER
Centennial Anniversary of the Pennsylvania Abolition
Society 101
HENRY HIGHLAND GARNET
A Memorial Discourse 107
GEORGE L. RUFFIN
Crispus Attucks 125
P. B. S. PINCHBACK
Address During Presidential Campaign of 1880 151
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
The Black Woman of the South 159
JOSEPHINE ST. PIERRE RUFFIN
An Open Letter to the Educational League of Georgia 173
JAMES MADISON VANCE
In the Wake of the Coming Ages 177
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
At the Opening of the Cotton States and International
Exposition, Atlanta 181
Robert Gould Shaw 205
CHRISTIAN A. FLEETWOOD
The Negro as a Soldier 187
CHARLES W. ANDERSON
The Limitless Possibilities of the Negro Race 211
WILLIAM SANDERS SCARBOROUGH
The Party of Freedom and the Freedmen 219
NATHAN F. MOSSELL
The Teaching of History 227
GEORGE H. WHITE
A Defense of the Negro Race 233
LEVI J. COPPIN
The Negro's Part in the Redemption of Africa 243
FANNY JACKSON COPPIN
A Plea for Industrial Opportunity 251
WILLIAM J. GAINES
An Appeal to Our Brother in White 257
EDWARD WILMOT BLYDEN
The Political Outlook for Africa 263
W. JUSTIN CARTER
The Duty and Responsibility of the Anglo-Saxon 265
THEOPHILUS G. STEWARD
The Army as a Trained Force 277
D. WEBSTER DAVIS
The Sunday-School and Church as a Solution of the Negro
Problem 291
REVERDY C. RANSOM
William Lloyd Garrison 305
JAMES L. CURTIS
Abraham Lincoln 321
ABRAHAM WALTERS
Abraham Lincoln and Fifty Years of Freedom 337
ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE
On the Presentation of a Loving Cup to Senator Foraker 337
FRANCIS H. GRIMKE
Equality of Rights for All Citizens 347
JAMES E. SHAPARD
Is the Game Worth the Candle? 357
ROBERT RUSSA MOTON
Some Elements Necessary to Race Development 367
GEORGE WILLIAM COOK
The Two Seals 379
J. MILTON WALDRON
A Solution of the Race Problem 389
J. FRANCIS GREGORY
The Social Bearings of the Fifth Commandment 397
WILLIAM C. JASON
Life's Morn 403
WILLIAM H. LEWIS
Abraham Lincoln 409
ALICE M. DUNBAR
David Livingstone 425
KELLY MILLER
Education for Manhood 445
ROBERT T. JONES
On Making a Life 455
ERNEST LYON
Emancipation and Racial Advancement 461
JOHN C. DANCY
The Future of the Negro Church 475
W. ASHBIE HAWKINS
The Negro Lawyer 483
W. E. B. DUBOIS
The Training of Negroes for Social Reform 491
THE PEOPLE OF HAYTI AND A PLAN OF EMIGRATION[1]
BY PRINCE SAUNDERS
[Note 1: Extracts from an address delivered at the American
Convention for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and Improving the
Condition of the African Race, Philadelphia, Pa., December 11, 1818.]
_Respected Gentlemen and Friends_:
At a period so momentous as the present, when the friends of abolition
and emancipation, as well as those whom observation and experience might
teach us to beware to whom we should apply the endearing appellations,
are professedly concerned for the establishment of an Asylum for those
Free Persons of Color, who may be disposed to remove to it, and for such
persons as shall hereafter be emancipated from slavery, a careful
examination of this subject is imposed upon us.
So large a number of abolitionists, convened from different sections of
the country, is at all times and under any circumstances, an interesting
spectacle to the eye of the philanthropist, how doubly delightful then
is it, to me, whose interests and feelings so largely partake in the
object you have in view, to behold this convention engaged in solemn
deliberation upon those subjects employed to promote the improvement of
the condition of the African race.
* * * * *
Assembled as this convention is, for the promotion and extension of its
beneficent and humane views and principles, I would respectfully beg
leave to lay before it a few remarks upon the character, condition, and
wants of the afflicted and divided people of Hayti, as they, and that
island, may be connected with plans for the emigration of the free
people of color of the United States.
God in the mysterious operation of his providence has seen fit to permit
the most astonishing changes to transpire upon that naturally beautiful
and (as to soil and productions) astonishingly luxuriant island.
The abominable principles, both of action and belief, which pervaded
France during the long series of vicissitudes which until recently she
has experienced, extended to Hayti, or Santo Domingo have undoubtedly
had an extensive influence upon the character, sentiments, and feelings
of all descriptions of its present inhabitants.
This magnificent and extensive island which has by travellers and
historians been often denominated the "paradise of the New World," seems
from its situation, extent, climate, and fertility peculiarly suited to
become an object of interest and attention to the many distinguished and
enlightened philanthropists whom God has been graciously pleased to
inspire with a zeal for the promotion of the best interests of the
descendants of Africa. The recent proceedings in several of the slave
States toward the free population of color in those States seem to
render it highly probable that that oppressed class of the community
will soon be obliged to flee to the free States for protection. If the
two rival Governments of Hayti were consolidated into one well-balanced
pacific power, there are many hundred of the free people in the New
England and Middle States who would be glad to repair there immediately
to settle, and believing that the period has arrived, when many zealous
friends to abolition and emancipation are of opinion that it is time for
them to act in relation to an asylum for such persons as shall be
emancipated from slavery, or for such portion of the free colored
population at present existing in the United States, as shall feel
disposed to emigrate, and being aware that the authorities of Hayti are
themselves desirous of receiving emigrants from this country, are among
the considerations which have induced me to lay this subject before the
convention.
The present spirit of rivalry which exists between the two chiefs in the
French part of the island, and the consequent belligerent aspect and
character of the country, may at first sight appear somewhat
discouraging to the beneficent views and labors of the friends of peace;
but these I am inclined to think are by no means to be considered as
insurmountable barriers against the benevolent exertions of those
Christian philanthropists whose sincere and hearty desire it is to
reunite and pacify them.
There seems to be no probability of their ever being reconciled to each
other without the philanthropic interposition and mediation of those who
have the welfare of the African race at heart. And where, in the whole
circle of practical Christian philanthropy and active beneficence, is
there so ample a field for the exertion of those heaven-born virtues as
in that hitherto distracted region? In those unhappy divisions which
exist in Hayti is strikingly exemplified the saying which is written in
the sacred oracles, "that when men forsake the true worship and service
of the only true God, and bow down to images of silver, and gold, and
four-footed beasts and creeping things, and become contentious with each
other," says the inspired writer, "in such a state of things trust ye
not a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide; keep the doors of thy
mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom; for there the son dishonoreth
the father, and the daughter riseth up against her mother, the
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies shall be
those of his own house."
Had the venerable prophet in the foregoing predictions alluded expressly
and entirely to the actual moral, political, and above all, to the
religious character and condition of the Haytians, he could scarcely
have given a more correct description of it.
For there is scarcely a family whose members are not separated from each
other, and arrayed under the banners of the rival chiefs, in virtual
hostility against each other. In many instances the husband is with
Henry, and the wife and children with Boyer, and there are other
instances in which the heads of the family are with Boyer, and the other
members with Henry.
Let it be distinctly remembered, that these divided and distressed
individuals are not permitted to hold any intercourse with each other;
so that it is only when some very extraordinary occurrence transpires,
that persons in the different sections of the country receive any kind
of information from their nearest relatives and friends.
"Blessed are the peacemakers," is the language of that celestial
law-giver, who taught as never man taught; and his religion uniformly
assures the obedient recipients of his spirit, that they shall be
rewarded according to the extent, fidelity, and sincerity of their works
of piety and beneficence.
And if, according to the magnitude of the object in all its political,
benevolent, humane, and Christian relations, the quantum of recompense
is to be awarded and apprised to the just, to how large a share of the
benediction of our blessed Savior to the promoters of peace shall those
be authorized to expect who may be made the instruments of the
pacification and reunion of the Haytian people? Surely the blessings of
thousands who are, as it were, ready to perish, must inevitably come
upon them.
When I reflect that it was in this city that the first abolition society
that was formed in the world was established, I am strongly encouraged
to hope, that here also there may originate a plan, which shall be the
means of restoring many of our fellow beings to the embraces of their
families and friends, and place that whole country upon the basis of
unanimity and perpetual peace.
If the American Convention should in their wisdom think it expedient to
adopt measures for attempting to affect a pacification of the Haytians,
it is most heartily believed, that their benevolent views would be
hailed and concurred in with alacrity and delight by the English
philanthropists.
It is moreover believed that a concern so stupendous in its relations,
and bearing upon the cause of universal abolition and emancipation, and
to the consequent improvement and elevation of the African race, would
tend to awaken an active and a universally deep and active interest in
the minds of that numerous host of abolitionists in Great Britain, whom
we trust have the best interests of the descendants of Africa deeply at
heart.
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE AND THE HAYTIAN REVOLUTIONS[2]
BY JAMES MCCUNE SMITH, M. A., M. D.
[Note 2: Extracts from a lecture delivered at the Stuyvesant
Institute, New York, for the benefit of the Colored Orphan Asylum,
February 26, 1841.]
_Ladies and Gentlemen:_
Whilst the orgies of the French revolution thrust forward a being whose
path was by rivers of blood, the horrors of Santo Domingo produced one
who was pre-eminently a peacemaker--TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
In estimating the character of Toussaint L'Ouverture, regard must be
paid, not to the enlightened age in which he lived, but to the rank in
society from which he sprang--a rank which must be classed with a remote
and elementary age of mankind.
Born forty-seven years before the commencement of the revolt, he had
reached the prime of manhood, a slave, with a soul uncontaminated by the
degradation which surrounded him. Living in a state of society where
worse than polygamy was actually urged, we find him at this period
faithful to one wife--the wife of his youth--and the father of an
interesting family. Linked with such tender ties, and enlightened with
some degree of education, which his indulgent master, M. Bayou, had
given him, he fulfilled, up to the moment of the revolt, the duties of
a Christian man in slavery.
At the time of the insurrection--in which he took no part--he continued
in the peaceable discharge of his duties as coachman; and when the
insurgents approached the estate whereon he lived, he accomplished the
flight of M. Bayou, whose kind treatment (part of this kindness was
teaching this slave to read and write) he repaid by forwarding to him
produce for his maintenance while in exile in these United States.
Having thus faithfully acquitted himself as a slave, he turned towards
the higher destinies which awaited him as a freeman. With a mind stored
with patient reflection upon the biographies of men, the most eminent in
civil and military affairs; and deeply versed in the history of the most
remarkable revolutions that had yet occurred amongst mankind, he entered
the army of the insurgents under Jean Francois. This chief rapidly
promoted him to the offices of physician to the forces, aid-de-camp, and
colonel. Jean Francois, in alliance with the Spaniards, maintained war
at this time for the cause of royalty.
Whilst serving under this chief, Toussaint beheld another civil war
agitating the French colony. On one side, the French Commissioners, who
had acknowledged the emancipation of the slaves, maintained war for the
Republic; on the other side, the old noblesse, or planters, fought under
the royal banner, having called in the aid of the British forces in
order to re-establish slavery and the ancient regime.
In this conflict, unmindful of their solemn oaths against the decree of
the 15th of May, 1791, the whites of both parties, including the
planters, hesitated not to fight in the same ranks, shoulder to
shoulder, with the blacks. Caste was forgotten in the struggle for
principles!
At this juncture Jean Francois, accompanied by his principal officers,
and possessed of all the honors and emoluments of a captain-general in
the service of his Catholic Majesty, retired to Spain, leaving Toussaint
at liberty to choose his party. Almost immediately joining that standard
which acknowledged and battled for equal rights to all men, he soon
rendered signal service to the Commissioners, by driving the Spaniards
from the northern, and by holding the British at bay in the eastern part
of the island. For these services he was raised to the rank of general
by the French commander at Porte-aux-Paix, General Laveaux, a promotion
which he soon repaid by saving that veteran's life under the following
circumstances: Villate, a mulatto general, envious of the honors
bestowed on Toussaint, treacherously imprisoned General Laveaux in Cape
Francois. Immediately upon hearing this fact, Toussaint hastened to the
Cape at the head of 10,000 men and liberated his benefactor. And, at the
very moment of his liberation, a commission arrived from France
appointing General Laveaux Governor of the Colony; his first official
act was to proclaim Toussaint his lieutenant. "This is the black," said
Laveaux, "predicted by Raynal, and who is destined to avenge the
outrages committed against his whole race." A remark soon verified, for
on his attainment of the supreme power, Toussaint avenged those
injuries--by forgiveness!
As an acknowledgment for his eminent services against the British, and
against the mulattoes, who, inflamed with all the bitterness of _caste_,
had maintained a sanguinary war under their great leader Rigaud, in the
southern part of the colony, the Commissioners invested Toussaint with
the office and dignity of general-in-chief of Santo Domingo.
From that moment began the full development of the vast and versatile
genius of this extraordinary man. Standing amid the terrible, because
hostile, fragments of two revolutions, harassed by the rapacious greed
of commissioners upon commissioners, who, successively dispatched from
France, hid beneath a republican exterior a longing after the spoils;
with an army in the field accustomed by five years' experience to all
the license of civil war, Toussaint, with a giant hand, seized the reins
of government, reduced these conflicting elements to harmony and order,
and raised the colony to nearly its former prosperity, his lofty
intellect always delighting to effect its object rather by the tangled
mazes of diplomacy than by the strong arm of physical force, yet
maintaining a steadfast and unimpeached adherence to truth, his word,
and his honor.
General Maitland, commander of the British forces, finding the reduction
of the island to be utterly hopeless, signed a treaty with Toussaint for
the evacuation of all the posts which he held. "Toussaint then paid him
a visit, and was received with military honors. After partaking of a
grand entertainment, he was presented by General Maitland, in the name
of His Majesty, with a splendid service of plate, and put in possession
of the government-house which had been built and furnished by the
English."
* * * * *
Buonaparte, on becoming First Consul, sent out the confirmation of
Toussaint as commander-in-chief, who, with views infinitely beyond the
short-sighted and selfish vision of the Commissioners, proclaimed a
general amnesty to the planters who had fled during the revolutions,
earnestly invited their return to the possession of their estates, and,
with a delicate regard to their feelings, decreed that the epithet
"emigrant" should not be applied to them. Many of the planters accepted
the invitation, and returned to the peaceful possession of their
estates.
In regard to the army of Toussaint, General Lacroix, one of the planters
who returned, affirms "that never was a European army subjected to a
more rigid discipline than that which was observed by the troops of
Toussaint." Yet this army was converted by the commander-in-chief into
industrious laborers, by the simple expedient of _paying them for their
labor_. "When he restored many of the planters to their estates, there
was no restoration of their former property in human beings. No human
being was to be bought or sold. Severe tasks, flagellations, and scanty
food were no longer to be endured. The planters were obliged to employ
their laborers on the footing of hired servants." "And under this
system," says Lacroix, "the colony advanced, as if by enchantment
towards its ancient splendor; cultivation was extended with such
rapidity that every day made its progress more perceptible. All
appeared to be happy, and regarded Toussaint as their guardian angel. In
making a tour of the island, he was hailed by the blacks with universal
joy, nor was he less a favorite of the whites."
Toussaint, having effected a bloodless conquest of the Spanish
territory, had now become commander of the entire island. Performing all
the executive duties, he made laws to suit the exigency of the times.
His Egeria was temperance accompanied with a constant activity of body
and mind.
The best proof of the entire success of his government is contained in
the comparative views of the exports of the island, before the
revolutions, and during the administration of Toussaint. Bear in mind
that, "before the revolution there were 450,000 slave laborers working
with a capital in the shape of buildings, mills, fixtures, and
implements, which had been accumulating during a century. Under
Toussaint there were 290,000 free laborers, many of them just from the
army or the mountains, working on plantations that had undergone the
devastation of insurrection and a seven years' war."
* * * * *
In consequence of the almost entire cessation of official communication
with France, and for other reasons equally good, Toussaint thought it
necessary for the public welfare to frame a new constitution for the
government of the island. With the aid of M. Pascal, Abbe Moliere, and
Marinit, he drew up a constitution, and submitted the same to a General
Assembly convened from every district, and by that assembly the
constitution was adopted. It was subsequently promulgated in the name
of the people. And, on the 1st of July, 1801, the island was declared to
be an independent State, in which _all men_, without regard to
complexion or creed, possessed _equal rights_.
This proceeding was subsequently sanctioned by Napoleon Buonaparte,
whilst First Consul. In a letter to Toussaint, he says, "We have
conceived for you esteem, and we wish to recognize and proclaim the
great services you have rendered the French people. If their colors fly
on Santo Domingo, it is to you and your brave blacks that we owe it.
Called by your talents and the force of circumstances to the chief
command, you have terminated the civil war, put a stop to the
persecutions of some ferocious men, and restored to honor the religion
and the worship of God, from whom all things come. The situation in
which you were placed, surrounded on all sides by enemies, and without
the mother country being able to succor or sustain you, has rendered
legitimate the articles of that constitution."
Although Toussaint enforced the duties of religion, he entirely severed
the connection between Church and State. He rigidly enforced all the
duties of morality, and would not suffer in his presence even the
approach to indecency of dress or manner. "Modesty," said he, "is the
defense of woman."
The chief, nay the idol of an army of 100,000 well-trained and
acclimated troops ready to march or sail where he wist, Toussaint
refrained from raising the standard of liberty in any one of the
neighboring island, at a time when, had he been fired with what men
term ambition, he could easily have revolutionized the entire
archipelago of the west. But his thoughts were bent on conquest of
another kind; he was determined to overthrow an _error_ which designing
and interested men had craftily instilled into the civilized world,--a
belief in the natural inferiority of the Negro race. It was the glory
and the warrantable boast of Toussaint that he had been the instrument
of demonstrating that, even with the worst odds against them, this race
is entirely capable of achieving liberty and of self-government. He did
more: by abolishing caste he proved the artificial nature of such
distinctions, and further demonstrated that even slavery cannot unfit
men for the full exercise of all the functions which belong to free
citizens.
"Some situations of trust were filled by free Negroes and mulattoes, who
had been in respectable circumstances under the old Government; but
others were occupied by Negroes, and even by Africans, who had recently
emerged from the lowest condition of slavery."
But the bright and happy state of things which the genius of Toussaint
had almost created out of elements the most discordant was doomed to be
of short duration. For the dark spirit of Napoleon, glutted, but not
satiated with the glory banquet afforded at the expense of Europe and
Africa, seized upon this, the most beautiful and happy of the
Hesperides, as the next victim of its remorseless rapacity.
With the double intention of getting rid of the republican army, and
reducing back to slavery the island of Hayti, he sent out his
brother-in-law, General Leclerc, with 26 ships of war and 25,000 men.
Like Leonidas at Thermopylae, or the Bruce at Bannockburn, Toussaint
determined to defend from thraldom his sea-girt isle, made sacred to
liberty by the baptism of blood.
On the 28th of January, 1802, Leclerc arrived off the bay of Samana,
from the promontory of which Toussaint, in anxious alarm, beheld for the
first time in his life so large an armament. "We must all perish," said
he, "all France has come to Santo Domingo!" But this despondency passed
away in a moment, and then this man, who had been a kindly-treated
slave, prepared to oppose to the last that system which he now
considered worse than death.
It is impossible, after so long a tax on your patience, to enter on a
detailed narration of the conflict which ensued. The hour of trial
served only to develop and ennoble the character of Toussaint, who rose,
with misfortune, above the allurements of rank and wealth which were
offered as the price of his submission; and the very ties of parental
love he yielded to the loftier sentiment of patriotism.
On the 2d of February, a division of Leclerc's army, commanded by
General Rochambeau, an old planter, landed at Fort Dauphin, and
ruthlessly murdered many of the inhabitants (freedmen) who, unarmed, had
been led by curiosity to the beach, in order to witness the
disembarkation of the troops.
Christophe, one of the generals of Toussaint, commanding at Cape
Francois, having resisted the menaces and the flattery of Leclerc,
reduced that ill-fated town to ashes, and retired with his troops into
the mountains, carrying with him 2,000 of the white inhabitants of the
Cape, who were protected from injury during the fierce war which ensued.
Having full possession of the plain of the Cape, Leclerc, with a
proclamation of liberty in his hand, in March following re-established
slavery with all its former cruelties.
This treacherous movement thickened the ranks of Toussaint, who
thenceforward so vigorously pressed his opponent, that as a last resort,
Leclerc broke the shackles of the slave, and proclaimed "Liberty and
equality to all the inhabitants of Santo Domingo."
This proclamation terminated the conflict for the time. Christophe and
Dessalines, general officers, and at length Toussaint himself,
capitulated, and, giving up the command of the island to Leclerc, he
retired, at the suggestion of that officer, to enjoy rest and the sweet
endearments of his family circle, on one of his estates near Gonaives.
At this place he had remained about one month, when, without any
adequate cause, Leclerc caused him to be seized, and to be placed on
board of a ship of war, in which he was conveyed to France, where,
without trial or condemnation, he was imprisoned in a loathsome and
unhealthy dungeon. Unaccustomed to the chill and damp of this
prison-house, the aged frame of Toussaint gave way, and he died.
In this meagre outline of his life I have presented simply facts,
gleaned, for the most part, from the unwilling testimony of his foes,
and therefore resting on good authority. The highest encomium on his
character is contained in the fact that Napoleon believed that by
capturing him he would be able to re-enslave Hayti; and even this
encomium is, if possible, rendered higher by the circumstances which
afterward transpired, which showed that his principles were so
thoroughly disseminated among his brethren, that, without the presence
of Toussaint, they achieved that liberty which he had taught them so
rightly to estimate.
The capture of Toussaint spread like wild-fire through the island, and
his principal officers again took the field. A fierce and sanguinary war
ensued, in which the French gratuitously inflicted the most awful
cruelties on their prisoners, many of whom having been hunted with
bloodhounds, were carried in ships to some distance from the shore,
murdered in cold blood, and cast into the sea; their corpses were thrown
by the waves back upon the beach, and filled the air with pestilence, by
which the French troops perished in large numbers. Leclerc having
perished by pestilence, his successor, Rochambeau, when the conquest of
the island was beyond possibility, became the cruel perpetrator of these
bloody deeds.
Thus it will be perceived that treachery and massacre were begun on the
side of the French. I place emphasis on these facts in order to endeavor
to disabuse the public mind of an attempt to attribute to emancipation
the acts of retaliation resorted to by the Haytians in _imitation_ of
what the enlightened French had taught them. In two daily papers of this
city there were published, a year since, a series of articles entitled
the "Massacres of Santo Domingo."
The "massacres" are not attributable to emancipation, for we have proved
otherwise in regard to the first of them. The other occurred in 1804,
twelve years after the slaves had disenthralled themselves. Fearful as
the latter may have been, it did not equal the atrocities previously
committed on the Haytians by the French. And the massacre was restricted
to the white French inhabitants, whom Dessalines, the Robespierre of the
island, suspected of an attempt to bring back slavery, with the aid of a
French force yet hovering in the neighborhood.
And if we search for the cause of this massacre, we may trace it to the
following source: Nations which are pleased to term themselves civilized
have one sort of faith which they hold to one another, and another sort
which they entertain towards people less advanced in refinement. The
faith which they entertain towards the latter is, very often, treachery,
in the vocabulary of the civilized. It was treachery towards Toussaint
that caused the massacre of Santo Domingo; it was treachery towards
Osceola that brought bloodhounds into Florida!
General Rochambeau, with the remnant of the French army, having been
reduced to the dread necessity of striving "to appease the calls of
hunger by feeding on horses, mules, and the very dogs that had been
employed in hunting down and devouring the Negroes," evacuated the
island in the autumn of 1803, and Hayti thenceforward became an
independent State.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have now laid before you a concise view of the
revolutions of Hayti in the relation of cause and effect; and I trust
you will now think, that, so far from being scenes of indiscriminate
massacre from which we should turn our eyes in horror, these revolutions
constitute an epoch worthy of the anxious study of every American
citizen.
Among the many lessons that may be drawn from this portion of history is
one not unconnected with the present occasion. From causes to which I
need not give a name, there is gradually creeping into our otherwise
prosperous state the incongruous and undermining influence of _caste_.
One of the local manifestations of this unrepublican sentiment is, that
while 800 children, chiefly of foreign parents, are educated and taught
trades at the expense of all the citizens, colored children are excluded
from these privileges.
With the view to obviate the evils of such an unreasonable proscription,
a few ladies of this city, by their untiring exertions, have organized
an "Asylum for Colored Orphans." Their zeal in this cause is infinitely
beyond all praise of mine, for their deeds of mercy are smiled on by Him
who has declared, that "Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these
little ones a cup of cold water, shall in no wise lose her reward." Were
any further argument needed to urge them on in their blessed work, I
would point out to them the revolutions of Hayti, where, in the midst of
the orgies and incantations of civil war, there appeared, as a spirit of
peace, the patriot, the father, the benefactor of mankind--Toussaint
L'Ouverture, a freedman, who had been taught to read while in slavery!
LIBERIA: ITS STRUGGLES AND ITS PROMISES[3]
BY HON. HILARY TEAGUE
_Senator at Monrovia, Liberia_
[Note 3: A speech delivered in 1846, on the anniversary of the
founding of the Republic of Liberia.]
As far back towards the infancy of our race as history and tradition are
able to conduct us, we have found the custom everywhere prevailing among
mankind, to mark by some striking exhibition, those events which were
important and interesting, either in their immediate bearing or in their
remote consequences upon the destiny of those among whom they occurred.
These events are epochs in the history of man; they mark the rise and
fall of kingdoms and of dynasties; they record the movements of the
human mind, and the influence of those movements upon the destinies of
the race; and whilst they frequently disclose to us the sad and
sickening spectacle of innocence bending under the yoke of injustice,
and of weakness robbed and despoiled by the hand of an unscrupulous
oppression, they occasionally display, as a theme for admiring
contemplation, the sublime spectacle of the human mind, roused by a
concurrence of circumstances, to vigorous advances in the career of
improvement.
The utility of thus marking the progress of time--of recording the
occurrence of events, and of holding up remarkable personages to the
contemplation of mankind--is too obvious to need remark. It arises from
the instincts of mankind, the irrepressible spirit of emulation, and the
ardent longings after immortality; and this restless passion to
perpetuate their existence which they find it impossible to suppress,
impels them to secure the admiration of succeeding generations in the
performance of deeds, by which, although dead, they may yet speak. In
commemorating events thus powerful in forming the manners and sentiments
of mankind, and in rousing them to strenuous exertion and to high and
sustained emulation, it is obvious that such, and such only, should be
selected as virtue and humanity would approve; and that, if any of an
opposite character be held up, they should be displayed only as beacons,
or as towering Pharos throwing a strong but lurid light to mark the
melancholy grave of mad ambition, and to warn the inexperienced voyager
of the existing danger.
Thanks to the improved and humanized spirit--or should I not rather say,
the chastened and pacific civilization of the age in which we
live?--that laurels gathered upon the field of mortal strife, and
bedewed with the tears of the widow and the orphan, are regarded now,
not with admiration, but with horror; that the armed warrior, reeking in
the gore of murdered thousands, who, in the age that is just passing
away, would have been hailed with noisy acclamation by the senseless
crowd, is now regarded only as the savage commissioner of an unsparing
oppression, or at best, as the ghostly executioner of an unpitying
justice. He who would embalm his name in the grateful remembrance of
coming generations; he who would secure for himself a niche in the
temple of undying fame; he who would hew out for himself a monument of
which his country may boast; he who would entail upon heirs a name which
they may be proud to wear, must seek some other field than that of
battle as the theatre of his exploits.
We have not yet numbered twenty-six years since he who is the oldest
colonist amongst us was the inhabitant--not the citizen--of a country,
and that, too, the country of his birth, where the prevailing sentiment
is, that he and his race are incapacitated by an inherent defect in
their mental constitution, to enjoy that greatest of all blessings, and
to exercise that greatest of all rights, bestowed by a beneficent God
upon his rational creatures, namely, the government of themselves by
themselves. Acting upon this opinion, an opinion as false as it is
foul--acting upon this opinion, as upon a self-evident proposition,
those who held it proceeded with a fiendish consistency to deny the
rights of citizens to those whom they had declared incapable of
performing the duties of citizens. It is not necessary, and therefore I
will not disgust you with the hideous picture of that state of things
which followed upon the prevalence of this blasphemous theory. The bare
mention that such an opinion prevailed would be sufficient to call up in
the mind, even of those who had never witnessed its operation, images of
the most sickening and revolting character. Under the iron reign of this
crushing sentiment, most of us who are assembled here to-day drew our
first breath, and sighed away the years of our youth. No hope cheered
us; no noble object looming in the dim and distant future kindled our
ambition. Oppression--cold, cheerless oppression, like the dreary region
of eternal winter,--chilled every noble passion and fettered and
paralyzed every arm. And if among the oppressed millions there were
found here and there one in whose bosom the last glimmer of a generous
passion was not yet extinguished--one, who, from the midst of inglorious
slumberers in the deep degradation around him, would lift up his voice
and demand those rights which the God of nature hath bestowed in equal
gift upon all His rational creatures, he was met at once, by those who
had at first denied and then enforced, with the stern reply that for him
and for all his race, liberty and expatriation are inseparable.
Dreadful as the alternative was, fearful as was the experiment now
proposed to be tried, there were hearts equal to the task; hearts which
quailed not at the dangers which loomed and frowned in the distance, but
calm, cool, and fixed in their purpose, prepared to meet them with the
watchword, "Give me liberty or give me death."
Passing by intermediate events, which, did the time allow, it would be
interesting to notice, we hasten to the grand event--the era of our
separate existence, when the American flag first flung out its graceful
folds to the breeze on the heights of Mesurado, and the pilgrims,
relying upon the protection of Heaven and the moral grandeur of their
cause, took solemn possession of the land in the name of Virtue,
Humanity, and Religion.
It would discover an unpardonable apathy were we to pass on without
pausing a moment to reflect upon the emotions which heaved the bosoms of
the pilgrims, when they stood for the first time where we now stand.
What a prospect spread out before them! They stood in the midst of an
ancient wilderness, rank and compacted with the growth of a thousand
years, unthinned and unreclaimed by a single stroke of the woodman's
axe. Few and far between might be found inconsiderable openings, where
the ignorant native erected his rude habitation, or savage as his
patrimonial wilderness, celebrated his bloody rites, and presented his
votive gifts to demons. The rainy season--that terrible ordeal of
foreign constitutions--was about setting in; the lurid lightning shot
its fiery bolts into the forest around them, the thunder muttered its
angry tones over their head, and the frail tenements, the best which
their circumstances could afford, to shield them from a scorching sun by
day and drenching rains at night, had not yet been completed. To suppose
that at this time, when all things above and around them seemed to
combine their influence against them; to suppose they did not perceive
the full danger and magnitude of the enterprise they had embarked in,
would be to suppose, not that they were heroes, but that they had lost
the sensibility of men. True courage is equally remote from blind
recklessness and unmanning timidity; and true heroism does not consist
in insensibility to danger. He is a hero who calmly meets, and
fearlessly grapples with the dangers which duty and honor forbid him to
decline. The pilgrims rose to a full perception of all the circumstances
of their condition. But when they looked back to that country from
which they had come, and remembered the degradations in that house of
bondage out of which they had been so fortunate as to escape, they
bethought themselves; and, recollecting the high satisfaction with which
they knew success would gladden their hearts, the rich inheritance they
would entail upon their children, and the powerful aid it would lend to
the cause of universal humanity, they yielded to the noble inspiration
and girded them to the battle either for doing or for suffering.
Let it not be supposed, because I have laid universal humanity under a
tribute of gratitude to the founders of Liberia, that I have attached to
their humble achievements too important an influence in that grand
system of agencies which is now at work, renovating human society, and
purifying and enlarging the sources of its enjoyment. In the system of
that Almighty Being, without whose notice not a sparrow falls to the
ground,
"Who sees, with equal eye as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble-burst, and now a world."
"Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people."
All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay the headlong
propensity to vice, to abate the madness of ambition, will be found
deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the restrictions and the
tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound regard and deference for
religion, a constant recognition of our dependence upon God, and of our
obligation and accountability to Him; an ever-present, ever-pressing
sense of His universal and all-controlling providence, this, and only
this, can give energy to the arm of law, cool the raging fever of the
passions, and abate the lofty pretensions of mad ambition. In
prosperity, let us bring out our thank-offering, and present it with
cheerful hearts in orderly, virtuous, and religious conduct. In
adversity, let us consider, confess our sins, and abase ourselves before
the throne of God. In danger, let us go to Him, whose prerogative it is
to deliver; let us go to Him, with the humility and confidence which a
deep conviction that the battle is not to the strong nor the race to the
swift, is calculated to inspire.
Fellow citizens! we stand now on ground never occupied by a people
before. However insignificant we may regard ourselves, the eyes of
Europe and America are upon us, as a germ, destined to burst from its
enclosure in the earth, unfold its petals to the genial air, rise to the
height and swell to the dimensions of the full-grown tree, or
(inglorious fate) to shrivel, to die, and to be buried in oblivion.
Rise, fellow citizens, rise to a clear and full perception of your
tremendous responsibilities! Upon you, rely upon it, depends in a
measure you can hardly conceive the future destiny of your race.
You--you are to give the answer, whether the African race is doomed to
unterminable degradation, a hideous blot on the fair face of Creation, a
libel upon the dignity of human nature, or whether it is capable to take
an honorable rank amongst the great family of nations! The friends of
the colony are trembling: The enemies of the colored man are hoping.
Say, fellow citizens, will you palsy the hands of your friends and
sicken their hearts, and gladden the souls of your enemies, by a base
refusal to enter upon a career of glory which is now opening so
propitiously before you? The genius of universal emancipation, bending
from her lofty seat, invites you to accept the wreath of national
independence. The voice of your friends, swelling upon the breeze, cries
to you from afar--Raise your standard! Assert your independence! throw
out your banners to the wind! And will the descendants of the mighty
Pharaohs, that awed the world; will the sons of him who drove back the
serried legions of Rome and laid siege to the "eternal city"--will they,
the achievements of whose fathers are yet the wonder and admiration of
the world--will they refuse the proffered boon? Never! never!! never!!!
Shades of the mighty dead! spirits of departed great ones! inspire us,
animate us to the task; nerve us for the battle! Pour into our bosom a
portion of that ardor and patriotism which bore you on to battle, to
victory, and to conquest. Shall Liberia live? Yes; in the generous
emotions now swelling in your bosom; in the high and noble purpose--now
fixing itself in your mind, and referring into the unyieldingness of
indomitable principle, we hear the inspiring response--Liberia shall
live before God and before the nations of the earth!
The night is passing away; the dusky shades are fleeing and even now
"Jocund day stands tiptoe
On the misty mountain top."
WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY?[4]
BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS
[Note 4: Extract from an oration delivered by Frederick Douglass at
Rochester, N. Y., July 5, 1852.]
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, _the greatest of Negro orators, though born and
reared a slave, attained great eminence in the world. After a successful
career as lecturer and editor and author, he held successively the
positions of Secretary to the Santo Domingo Commission, 1871;
Presidential Elector for the State of New York, 1872; United States
Marshal for the District of Columbia, 1876-81; Recorder of Deeds for the
District, 1881-86; Minister to Hayti, 1889-91._
_Fellow Citizens:_
Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here
to-day? What have I or those I represent to do with your national
independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of
natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended
to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to
the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout
gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer
could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be
light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that
a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the
claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such
priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his
voice to swell the halleluiahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of
servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case
like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap like
a hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of
disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious
anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable
distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not
enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity,
and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me.
The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes
and death to me. This Fourth of July is _yours_, not _mine_. _You_ may
rejoice, _I_ must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand
illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous
anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean,
citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a
parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to
copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were
thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in
irrecoverable ruin. I can to-day take up the lament of a peeled and
woe-smitten people.
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes! We wept when we
remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst
thereof. For there they that carried us away captive, required of us a
song; and they who wasted us, required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one
of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If
I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
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 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. Standing here, 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 to call in question and to 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 less, 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 like punishment. What is this but the
acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and 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 of 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
cyphering, 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 hillside, living, moving,
acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and
children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian 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 wrongfulness 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 great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the
principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should 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 understanding. There
is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who 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 liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of
their relations to their fellow men, 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 that 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 divinity 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 fiery streak of biting ridicule, blasting
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. The feeling of the nation
must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the
propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation
must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that
reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross
injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your
celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your
national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty
and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence;
your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and
hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade
and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and
hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation
of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practises more
shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this
very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies
and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search
out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the
side of the every-day practises of this nation, and you will say with me
that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns
without a rival.
SHOULD COLORED MEN BE SUBJECT TO THE PAINS AND PENALTIES OF THE FUGITIVE
SLAVE LAW?[5]
BY CHARLES H. LANGSTON
CHARLES H. LANGSTON, _a native of Ohio, was the first to counsel
resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, and lost no opportunity
himself to disobey it. He was found guilty of violating the law in
rescuing John Price, an alleged fugitive from service in Kentucky.
This speech is his answer to the question of the judge why the
sentence should not be pronounced upon him. He was sentenced to one
hundred and twenty days' imprisonment, and fined $100.00 and costs,
amounting to $872.72._
[Note 5: Speech of Charles H. Langston before the United States
District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, May 12, 1859.
Delivered when about to be sentenced for rescuing a man from slavery.]
After a trial of twenty-three days in the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Ohio, Hiram V. Willson presiding, and at a
cost to the United States Government of more than two thousand dollars,
C. H. Langston was found guilty of violating the Fugitive Slave Law, by
rescuing John Price, an alleged fugitive from service in Kentucky, from
the custody of one, Anderson Jennings, at Wellington, on the 13th day of
September, 1858.
Mr. Langston was sentenced to twenty days' imprisonment in the jail of
Cuyahoga county, and also to pay a fine of one hundred dollars and a
portion of the costs of prosecution, amounting to nine hundred and
seventy-two dollars and seventy cents.
BILL OF COSTS
Fine and bill of costs as copied from the Journal of the Court:
Fine $100.00
Clerk's fees 32.10
Marshal's fees 30.40
United States' witnesses 131.10
Docket fees 20.00
-------
Total $972.70
On the morning of the 12th of May, 1859, C. H. Langston was brought into
court to receive his sentence.
The judge, having entered the "oyez, oyez" of the crier, announced the
opening of the court, and the rattling of the gavel of the bailiff soon
brought the immense crowd to silence. The business then proceeded as
follows:
THE COURT.--Mr. Langston, you will stand up, sir.
Mr. Langston arose.
THE COURT.--You have been tried, Mr. Langston, by a jury, and convicted
of a violation of the criminal laws of the United States. Have you or
your counsel anything to say why the sentence of the law should not be
pronounced upon you?
MR. LANGSTON.--I am for the first time in my life before a court of
justice, charged with the violation of law, and am now about to be
sentenced. But before receiving that sentence I propose to say one or
two words in regard to the mitigation of that sentence, if it may be so
construed. I can not, of course, and do not expect that what I may say
will in any way change your predetermined line of action. I ask no such
favor at your hands.
I know that the courts of this country, that the laws of this country,
that the governmental machinery of this country are so constituted as to
oppress and outrage colored men, men of my complexion. I cannot then, of
course, expect, judging from the past history of the country, any mercy
from the laws, from the Constitution, or from the courts of the country.
Some days prior to the 13th of September, 1858, happening to be in
Oberlin on a visit, I found the country round about there, and the
village itself, filled with alarming rumors as to the fact that
slave-catchers, kidnappers, and Negro stealers were lying hidden and
skulking about, awaiting some opportunity to get their bloody hands on
some helpless creature, to drag him back,--or for the first time,--into
helpless and lifelong bondage.
These reports becoming current all over that neighborhood, old men and
innocent women and children became exceedingly alarmed for their safety.
It was not uncommon to hear mothers say that they dare not send their
children to school, for fear that they would be caught up and carried
off by the way. Some of these people had become free by long and patient
toil at night, after working the long, long day for cruel masters, and
thus at length getting money enough to buy their liberty.
Others had become free by means of the good will of their masters. And
there were others who had become free--to their everlasting honor, I say
it--by the intensest exercise of their own God-given powers;--by
escaping from the plantations of their masters, eluding the
blood-thirsty patrols and sentinels so thickly scattered all along their
path, outrunning blood-hounds and horses, swimming rivers and fording
swamps, and reaching at last, through incredible difficulties, what
they, in their delusion, supposed to be free soil. These three classes
were in Oberlin, trembling alike for their safety because they well knew
their fate should these men-hunters get their hands on them.
In the midst of such excitement, the 13th day of September was ushered
in--a day ever memorable in the history of Oberlin, and I presume also,
in the history of this court. These men-hunters had, by lying devices,
decoyed into a place, where they could get their hands on him--I will
not say a slave, for I do not know that--but a _man_, _a brother_, who
had the right to his liberty under the laws of God, under the laws of
nature, and under the Declaration of American Independence.
In the midst of all this excitement the news came to us like a flash of
lightning that an actual seizure under and by means of fraudulent
pretenses, had been made! Being identified with that man by color, by
race, by manhood, by sympathies, such as God has implanted in us all, I
felt it my duty to go and do what I could towards liberating him. I had
been taught by my Revolutionary father--and I say this with all due
respect to him--and by his honored associates, that the fundamental
doctrine of this Government was, that _all_ men have a right to life and
liberty, and coming from the Old Dominion I had brought into Ohio these
sentiments deeply impressed upon my heart. I went to Wellington, and
hearing from the parties themselves by what authority the boy was held
in custody, I conceived from what little knowledge I had of law that
they had no right to hold him. And as your Honor has repeatedly laid
down the law in this court, a man is free until he is proven to be
legally restrained of his liberty. I believed that upon that principle
of law those men were bound to take their prisoner before the very first
magistrate they found and there establish the facts set forth in their
warrant, and that until they did this every man should presume that
their claim was unfounded, and to institute such proceedings for the
purpose of securing an investigation as they might find warranted by the
laws of this State.
Now, sir, if that is not the plain common sense and correct view of the
law, then I have been misled, both by your Honor and by the prevalent
received opinion. It is said that they had a warrant. Why then, should
they not establish its validity before the proper officers? And I stand
here to-day, sir, to say that with an exception, of which I shall soon
speak, _to procure such a lawful investigation of the authority under
which they claimed to act, was the part I took in that day's
proceedings, and the only part_. I supposed it to be my duty as a
citizen of Ohio--excuse me for saying that, sir,--as an _outlaw of the
United States_, (much sensation) to do what I could to secure at least
this form of justice to my brother, whose liberty was at
peril.--_Whatever more than that has been sworn to on this trial, as act
of mine, is false, ridiculously false._ When I found these men refusing
to go, according to the law, as I apprehended it, and subject their
claim to an official inspection, and that nothing short of a _habeas
corpus_ would oblige such an inspection, I was willing to go even thus
far, supposing in that county a sheriff might, perhaps, be found with
nerve enough to serve it. In this again, I failed. Nothing then was left
to me, nothing to the boy in custody, but the confirmation of my first
belief that the pretended authority was worthless, and the employment of
those means of liberation which belong to us. With regard to the part I
took in the forcible rescue, which followed, I have nothing to say,
further than I have already said. The evidence is before you. It is
alleged that I said "_We_ will have him anyhow." _This I NEVER said._ I
did say to Mr. Lowe, what I honestly believe to be the truth, that the
crowd was very much excited, many of them averse to longer delay and
bent upon a rescue at all hazards; and that he being an old acquaintance
and friend of mine, I was anxious to extricate him from the dangerous
position he occupied, and therefore advised Jennings to give the boy up.
Further than this I did not say, either to him or to anyone else.
The law under which I am arraigned is an unjust one, one made to crush
the colored man, and one that outrages every feeling of humanity, as
well as every rule of Right.
With its constitutionality I have nothing to do; about that I know but
little and care much less. But suppose it is constitutional, what then?
To tell me a law is constitutional which robs me of my _liberty_ is
simply ridiculous. I would curse the constitution that authorized the
enactment of such a law; I would trample the provisions of such a law
under my feet and defy its pains and penalties. I would respect and obey
such an inhuman law no more than OUR revolutionary fathers did the
odious and absurd doctrine that kings and tyrants reign and rule by
divine _right_. But it has often been said by learned and good men that
this law is unconstitutional. I remember the excitement that prevailed
throughout all the free States when it was passed; I remember, too, how
often it has been said by individuals, conventions, legislatures, and
even _Judges_ that it is not only unconstitutional, but that it never
could be, never should be, and never was meant to be enforced. I had
always believed, until the contrary appeared in the actual institution
of proceedings, that the provisions of this odious statute would never
be enforced within the bounds of this State.
But I have another reason to offer why I should not be sentenced, and
one that I think pertinent to the case. The common law of England--and
you will excuse me for referring to that, since I am not a lawyer, but a
private man--was that every man should be tried by a jury of men
occupying the same political and legal status _with himself_. Lords
should be tried before a jury of lords; peers of the realm should be
tried before peers of the realm; vassals before vassals. And even "where
an _alien_ was indicted, the jury _shall be demenietate_, or _half
foreigners_"; and a jury thus constituted were sworn "well and truly to
try and true deliverance make between the sovereign lord, the king, and
the prisoner whom they have in charge; and a true verdict to give
according to the evidence and without prejudice." The Constitution of
the United States guarantees--not merely to its citizens, but to _all
persons_--a trial before an impartial jury. I have had no such trial.
The colored man is oppressed by certain universal and deeply fixed
prejudices. Those jurors are well known to have shared largely in these
prejudices, and I therefore consider that they were neither impartial,
nor were they a jury of my peers. Politically and legally they are not
my equals. They have aided to form a State constitution which denies to
colored men citizenship, and under that constitution laws have been
enacted withholding from us many of our most valuable rights. These
unjust laws exclude colored men from the jury box and force us to be
tried in every case by jurors, not only filled with prejudices against
us, but far above us politically and legally, made so both by the
statute laws and by the Constitution. The prejudices which white people
have against colored men grow out of the fact that we have, as a people,
_consented_ for two hundred years to be _slaves_ of the whites. We have
been scourged, crushed, and cruelly oppressed, and have submitted to it
all tamely, meekly, peaceably; I mean, as a people, with rare individual
exceptions,--and to-day you see us thus meekly submitting to the
penalties of an infamous law. Now the Americans have this feeling, and
it is an honorable one, that they will respect those who rebel at
oppression, but despise those who tamely submit to outrage and wrong;
and while our people as a people submit, they will as a people be
despised. Why, they will hardly meet on terms of equality with us in a
whiskey shop, in a car, at a table, or even at the altar of God, so
thorough and hearty a contempt have they for those who _lie still_ under
the heel of the oppressor. The jury came into the box with that feeling.
They knew that they had that feeling, and so the Court knows now, and
knew then. The gentlemen who prosecuted me, the Court itself, and even
the counsel who defended me, have that feeling.
I was tried by a jury which was prejudiced; before a Court that was
prejudiced; prosecuted by an officer who was prejudiced, and defended,
though ably, by counsel who were prejudiced. And therefore it is, your
Honor, that I urge by all that is good and great in manhood, that I
should not be subjected to the pains and penalties of this oppressive
law, when I have not been tried, either by a jury of my peers, according
to the principles of the common law, or by an impartial jury according
to the Constitution of the United States.
One more word, sir, and I have done. I went to Wellington, knowing that
colored men have no rights in the United States which white men are
bound to respect; that the Courts had so decided; that Congress had so
enacted; that the people had so decreed.
There is not a spot in this wide country, not even by the altars of God,
nor in the shadow of the shafts that tell the imperishable fame and
glory of the heroes of the Revolution; no, nor in the old Philadelphia
Hall, where any colored man may dare to ask mercy of a white man. Let me
stand in that Hall and tell a United States marshal that my father was a
Revolutionary soldier; that he served under Lafayette, and fought
through the whole war, and that he fought for my freedom as much as for
his own; and he would sneer at me, and clutch me with his bloody
fingers, and say he has a _right_ to make me a slave! and when I appeal
to Congress, they say he has a right to make me a slave, and when I
appeal to your Honor, _your Honor_ says he has a right to make me a
slave. And if any man, white or black, seeks an investigation of that
claim, he makes himself amenable to the pains and penalties of the
Fugitive Slave Act, for BLACK MEN HAVE NO RIGHTS WHICH WHITE MEN ARE
BOUND TO RESPECT. (Great applause.) I, going to Wellington with the full
knowledge of all this, knew that if that man was taken to Columbus he
was hopelessly gone, no matter whether he had ever been in slavery
before or not. I knew that I was in the same situation myself, and that
by the decision of your Honor, if any man whatever were to claim me as
his slave and seize me, and my brother, being a lawyer, should seek to
get out a writ of _habeas corpus_ to expose the falsity of the claim, he
would be thrust into prison under one provision of the Fugitive Slave
Law, for interfering with the man claiming to be in pursuit of a
fugitive, and I, by the perjury of a solitary wretch, would by another
of its provisions be helplessly doomed to lifelong bondage, without the
possibility of escape.
Some may say that there is no danger of free persons being seized and
carried off as slaves. No one need labor under such a delusion. Sir,
_four_ of the eight persons who were first carried back under the act of
1850 were afterwards proved to be _free men_. They were free persons,
but wholly at the mercy of the oath of one man. And but last Sabbath
afternoon a letter came to me from a gentleman in St. Louis informing me
that a young lady, who was formerly under my instructions at Columbus, a
free person, is now lying in jail at that place, claimed as the slave of
some wretch who never saw her before, and waiting for testimony of
relatives at Columbus to establish her freedom. I could stand here by
the hour and relate such instances. In the very nature of the case, they
must be constantly occurring. A letter was not long since found upon the
person of a counterfeiter, when arrested, addressed to him by some
Southern gentleman, in which the writer says:
"Go among the niggers, find out their marks and scars; make good
descriptions and send to me, and I'll find masters for 'em."
That is the way men are carried _back_ to slavery.
But in view of all the facts, I say that, if ever again a man is seized
near me, and is about to be carried southward as a slave before any
legal investigation has been had, I shall hold it to be my duty, as I
held it that day, to secure for him, if possible, a legal inquiry into
the character of the claim by which he is held. And I go farther; I say
that if it is adjudged illegal to procure even such an investigation,
then we are thrown back upon those last defenses of our rights which
cannot be taken from us, and which God gave us that we need not be
slaves. I ask your Honor, while I say this, to place yourself in my
situation, and you will say with me that, if your brother, if your
friend, if your wife, if your child, had been seized by men who claimed
them as fugitives, and the law of the land forbade you to ask any
investigation, and precluded the possibility of any legal protection or
redress--then you will say with me that you would not only demand the
protection of the law, but you would call in your neighbors and your
friends, and would ask them to say with you, that, these, your friends,
_could not_ be taken into slavery.
And now, I thank you for this leniency, this indulgence, in giving a man
unjustly condemned, by a tribunal before which he is declared to have no
rights, the privilege of speaking in his own behalf. I know that it will
do nothing toward mitigating your sentence, but it is a privilege to be
allowed to speak, and I thank you for it. I shall submit to the penalty,
be it what it may. But I stand up here to say that if for doing what I
did on that day at Wellington, I am to go to jail for six months, and
pay a fine of a thousand dollars, according to the Fugitive Slave Law,
and if such is the protection the laws of this country afford me, I must
take upon myself the responsibility of self-protection; when I come to
be claimed by some perjured wretch as his slave, I shall never be taken
into slavery. And in that trying hour, I would have others do to me, as
I would call upon my friends to help me; as I would call upon you, your
Honor, to help me, as I would call upon you (to the District Attorney)
to help me, and upon you (to Judge Bliss), and you (his counsel) _so
help me God_! I stand here to say that I will do all I can for any man
thus seized and held, though the inevitable penalty of six months'
imprisonment and one thousand dollars fine for each offense hang over
me! We have all a common humanity, and that humanity will, if rightly
exercised, compel us to aid each other when our rights are invaded. The
man who can see a fellow man wronged and outraged without assisting him
must have lost all the manly feelings of his nature. You would all
assist any man under such circumstances; your manhood would require it;
and no matter what the laws might be, you would honor yourself for doing
it, while your friends and your children to all generations would honor
you for doing it, and every good and honest man would say you had done
_right_! (Great and prolonged applause, in spite of the efforts of the
Court and marshal.)
Judge Willson remarked: Mr. Langston, you do the Court injustice in
supposing the remarks were called out as a mere idle form, or would not
get a respectful consideration from the Court.
It is not the duty of the Court to make the laws--that is left to other
tribunals; but our duty, under an official oath, is to administer the
laws, good or bad, as we find them.
I find many mitigating circumstances in your case, and the sentence will
therefore be, that you pay a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs
of suit, and be imprisoned in jail for twenty days, and it shall be the
duty of the Marshal to see the imprisonment carried out in this or some
other county jail in this district.
YOUNG MEN, TO THE FRONT!
BY HON. RICHARD T. GREENER, LL. D.
RICHARD T. GREENER, _as far as is known, was the first Negro to be
graduated from Harvard University with the degree of Bachelor of Arts.
He received the degree of LL.D. both from Howard University and from
Liberia College, Monrovia, of which he was the dean for some time. In
1897 he was appointed United States Consul to Vladivostok, and served
through the Russian-Japanese War. While in this official capacity he was
decorated by the Chinese Government with the order of the "Double
Dragon," the only Negro ever so honored._
The adage which was once so common, if not so thoroughly axiomatic as to
gain universal credence--"Old men for council and young men for
war"--assumes additional notoriety to-day, when the old men are
quarreling in the council chamber and the young men are kept outside the
door. While the young men are willing to allow much to the school of
experience, many of them are the followers of Locke, and believe in the
doctrine of innate ideas. They believe, to continue the comparison, that
experience and wisdom do not always spring from length of years, nor
does ignorance appertain to youth as a necessity. They dare assert that,
as there are those who would never be men, lived they to be as old as
Methuselah, so there are some whose minds are as well filled, whose
judgments are as mature at twenty-five and eight, and their energy as
decisive as though they were in their tenth lustrum. Conscious of this
fact, it is the absurdity of folly for the young colored men of the
country to sit idly by and see the grandest opportunities slipping away,
the best cases lost by default because of the lack of energy displayed
by many of our so-called leaders who have been longer on the field. With
some very few exceptions, honorable as they are rare, they have done
well for their day and generation; but with regard to the needs and
policy of the Negroes of the present hour they are as innocent as babes.
Men for the most part of excellent temper and good working capacity,
they lack that which is the handmaid and often the indispensable
auxiliary of knowledge and all effective work--judgment. Unconscious
puppets often, they dance to unseen music, moved themselves by hidden
wires.
The convention was the favorite resort of the leading Negro of ten years
ago. He convened and resolved, resolved and unconvened--read his own
speeches, was delighted with his own frothy rhetoric, and really
imagined himself a great man. He talked eloquently then, it must be
granted, because he spoke of his wrongs; but when the war overturned the
edifice of slavery "Othello's occupation" was "gone," indeed. The number
who have survived and held their own under the new order of things may
be counted upon one hand. They survive through that grand old law so
much combated but ever true--the survival of the fittest. They alone
give character and reputation to the Negro. They make for him a fame
which begets respect where his wrongs only excited pity. The field is
comparatively clear now some of the older hacks have fallen by the way
or lie spavined at the roadside. The question is, Will the young men of
color throughout the country resolve to begin now to take part in public
affairs, asserting their claim wherever it is denied, maintaining it
wherever contested, and show that the young may be safe in counsel as
well as good for war?
There are some who arrogate to themselves wisdom because of their years,
just as some equally absurd people think they are wise because they
never went to a high school or an academy--men, Heaven save the mark!
who pride themselves on having never slaked their thirst at the fount of
knowledge. It is not our purpose to disparage age. We remember what
Cicero has written, so delightfully, of its pleasures; what Cephalus and
Socrates thought of it in the Republic. We look "toward sunset" with
reverence and respect; but it is with a reverence that makes us
conscious of our own duty. The young men are now studying, working,
some, alas! idling away their time who ought to be the active, earnest
men in the next Presidential campaign; young men who are to control the
destinies of the race. Many of them are of marked ability and decidedly
energetic in character. Not so fluent, perhaps, as their fathers, they
are more thoughtful. They are found throughout the country. We feel
that, if like Roderick Dhu, we should put the whistle to our lips and
blow a stirring blast, they would spring up in every part of the country
ready with voice, pen, or muscle to do their share in any honorable
work. In spirit we do this, as young men ourselves, willing to blow a
blast which, would that the young men of the country would hear and
heed! Young men, to the front! Young men, rouse yourselves! Take the
opportunities; make them where they are denied! "Quit you like men; be
strong."
_Young men, to the front!_
THE CIVIL RIGHTS' BELL[6]
BY ROBERT BROWNE ELLIOT
_Representative from South Carolina_
[Note 6: Extracts from a speech delivered in the House of
Representatives, January 6, 1874.]
_Mr. Speaker:_
While I am sincerely grateful for this high mark of courtesy that has
been accorded to me by this House, it is a matter of regret to me that
it is necessary at this day that I should rise in the presence of an
American Congress to advocate a bill which simply asserts equal rights
and equal public privileges for all classes of American citizens. I
regret, sir, that the dark hue of my skin may lend a color to the
imputation that I am controlled by motives personal to myself in my
advocacy of this great measure of national justice. Sir, the motive that
impels me is restricted by no such narrow boundary, but is as broad as
your Constitution. I advocate it, sir, because it is right. The bill,
however, not only appeals to your justice, but it demands a response
from your gratitude.
In the events that led to the achievement of American independence the
Negro was not an inactive or unconcerned spectator. He bore his part
bravely upon many battlefields, although uncheered by that certain hope
of political elevation which victory would secure to the white man. The
tall granite shaft, which a grateful State has reared above its sons who
fell in defending Fort Griswold against the attack of Benedict Arnold,
bears the name of Jordan, Freeman, and other brave men of the African
race, who there cemented with their blood the corner-stone of the
Republic. In the State which I have the honor in part to represent
(South Carolina) the rifle of the black man rang out against the troops
of the British Crown in the darkest days of the American Revolution.
Said General Greene, who has been justly termed the "Washington of the
North," in a letter written by him to Alexander Hamilton, on the 10th of
January, 1781, from the vicinity of Camden, South Carolina: "There is no
such thing as national character or national sentiment. The inhabitants
are numerous, but they would be rather formidable abroad than at home.
There is a great spirit of enterprise among the black people, and those
that come out as volunteers are not a little formidable to the enemy."
At the battle of New Orleans under the immortal Jackson, a colored
regiment held the extreme right of the American line unflinchingly, and
drove back the British column that pressed upon them at the point of the
bayonet. So marked was their valor on that occasion that it evoked from
their great commander the warmest encomiums, as will be seen from his
dispatch announcing the brilliant victory.
As the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Beck), who seems to be the leading
exponent on this floor of the party that is arrayed against the
principle of this bill, has been pleased, in season and out of season,
to cast odium upon the Negro and to vaunt the chivalry of his State, I
may be pardoned for calling attention to another portion of the same
dispatch. Referring to the various regiments under his command, and
their conduct on that field which terminated the second war of American
Independence, General Jackson says. "At the very moment when the entire
discomfiture of the enemy was looked for with a confidence amounting to
certainty, the Kentucky reinforcements, in whom so much reliance had
been placed, ingloriously fled."
In quoting this indisputable piece of history, I do so only by way of
admonition and not to question the well-attested gallantly of the true
Kentuckian, and to the gentleman that it would be well that he should
not flaunt his heraldry so proudly while he bears this bar-sinister on
the military escutcheon of his State--a State which answered the call of
the Republic in 1861, when treason thundered at the very gates of the
Capital, by coldly declaring her neutrality in the impending struggle.
The Negro, true to that patriotism and love of country that have ever
marked and characterized his history on this continent, came to the aid
of the Government in its efforts to maintain the Constitution. To that
Government he now appeals; that Constitution he now invokes for
protection against outrage and unjust prejudices founded upon caste.
But, sir, we are told by the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Stephens) that Congress has no power under the Constitution to pass such
a law, and that the passage of such an act is in direct contravention
of the rights of the States. I cannot assent to any such proposition.
The Constitution of a free government ought always to be construed in
favor of human rights. Indeed, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
amendments, in positive words, invest Congress with the power to protect
the citizen in his civil and political rights. Now, sir, what are civil
rights? Rights natural, modified by civil society. Mr. Lieber says: "By
civil liberty is meant, not only the absence of individual restraint,
but liberty within the social system and political organism--a
combination of principles, and laws which acknowledge, protect, and
favor the dignity of man * * * civil liberty is the result of man's two
fold character as an individual and social being, so soon as both are
equally respected."[7]
[Note 7: Lieber on Civil Liberty, page 25.]
Alexander Hamilton, the right-hand man of Washington in the perilous
days of the then infant Republic; the great interpreter and expounder of
the Constitution, says: "Natural liberty is the gift of a beneficent
Creator to the whole human race; civil liberty is founded on it, civil
liberty is only natural liberty modified and secured by civil
society."[8]
[Note 8: Hamilton's History of the American Republic, Vol. I, page
70.]
* * * * *
Are we then, sir, with the amendments to our constitution staring us in
the face; with these grand truths of history before our eyes; with
innumerable wrongs daily inflicted upon five million citizens demanding
redress, to commit this question to the diversity of legislation? In the
words of Hamilton--"Is it the interest of the Government to sacrifice
individual rights to the preservation of the rights of an artificial
being called the States? There can be no truer principle than this, that
every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the
protection of Government. Can this be a free Government if partial
distinctions are tolerated or maintained?"
The rights contended for in this bill are among "the sacred rights of
mankind, which are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty
records; they are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human
nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or
obscured by mortal power."
But the Slaughter-house cases!--The Slaughter-house cases!
The honorable gentleman from Kentucky, always swift to sustain the
failing and dishonored cause of proscription, rushes forward and flaunts
in our faces the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
the Slaughter-house cases, and in that act he has been willingly aided
by the gentleman from Georgia. Hitherto, in the contests which have
marked the progress of the cause of equal civil rights, our opponents
have appealed sometimes to custom, sometimes to prejudice, more often to
pride of race, but they have never sought to shield themselves behind
the Supreme Court. But now for the first time, we are told that we are
barred by a decision of that court, from which there is no appeal. If
this be true we must stay our hands. The cause of equal civil rights
must pause at the command of a power whose edicts must be obeyed till
the fundamental law of our country is changed.
Has the honorable gentleman from Kentucky considered well the claim he
now advances? If it were not disrespectful I would ask, has he ever read
the decision which he now tells us is an insuperable barrier to the
adoption of this great measure of justice?
In the consideration of this subject, has not the judgment of the
gentleman from Georgia been warped by the ghost of the dead doctrines of
States-rights? Has he been altogether free from prejudices engendered by
long training in that school of politics that well-nigh destroyed this
Government?
Mr. Speaker, I venture to say here in the presence of the gentleman from
Kentucky, and the gentleman from Georgia, and in the presence of the
whole country, that there is not a line or word, not a thought or dictum
even, in the decision of the Supreme Court in the great Slaughter-house
cases, which casts a shadow of doubt on the right of Congress to pass
the pending bill, or to adopt such other legislation as it may judge
proper and necessary to secure perfect equality before the law to every
citizen of the Republic. Sir, I protest against the dishonor now cast
upon our Supreme Court by both the gentleman from Kentucky and the
gentleman from Georgia. In other days, when the whole country was bowing
beneath the yoke of slavery, when press, pulpit, platform, Congress and
courts felt the fatal power of the slave oligarchy, I remember a
decision of that court which no American now reads without shame and
humiliation. But those days are past; the Supreme Court of to-day is a
tribunal as true to freedom as any department of this Government, and I
am honored with the opportunity of repelling a deep disgrace which the
gentleman from Kentucky, backed and sustained as he is by the gentleman
from Georgia, seeks to put upon it.
* * * * *
The amendments in the Slaughter-house cases one and all, are thus
declared to have as their all-pervading design and ends the security of
the recently enslaved race, not only their nominal freedom, but their
complete protection from those who had formerly exercised unlimited
dominion over them. It is in this broad light that all these amendments
must be read, the purpose to secure the perfect equality before the law
of all citizens of the United States. What you give to one class you
must give to all, what you deny to one class you shall deny to all,
unless in the exercise of the common and universal police power of the
State, you find it needful to confer exclusive privileges on certain
citizens, to be held and exercised still for the common good of all.
Such are the doctrines of the Slaughter-house cases--doctrines worthy of
the Republic, worthy of the age, worthy of the great tribunal which thus
loftily and impressively enunciates them. Do they--I put it to any man,
be he lawyer or not; I put it to the gentleman from Georgia--do they
give color even to the claim that this Congress may not now legislate
against a plain discrimination made by State laws or State customs
against that very race for whose complete freedom and protection these
great amendments were elaborated and adopted? Is it pretended, I ask the
honorable gentleman from Kentucky or the honorable gentleman from
Georgia--is it pretended anywhere that the evils of which we complain,
our exclusion from the public inn, from the saloon and table of the
steamboat, from the sleeping-coach on the railway, from the right of
sepulture in the public burial-ground, are an exercise of the police
power of the State? Is such oppression and injustice nothing but the
exercise by the State of the right to make regulations for the health,
comfort, and security of all her citizens? Is it merely enacting that
one man shall so use his own as not to injure anothers? Is the colored
race to be assimilated to an unwholesome trade or to combustible
materials, to be interdicted, to be shut up within prescribed limits?
Let the gentleman from Kentucky or the gentleman from Georgia answer.
Let the country know to what extent even the audacious prejudice of the
gentleman from Kentucky will drive him, and how far even the gentleman
from Georgia will permit himself to be led captive by the unrighteous
teachings of a false political faith.
If we are to be likened in legal view to "unwholesome trades," to "large
and offensive collections of animals" to "noxious slaughter-houses," to
"the offal and stench which attend on certain manufactures" let it be
avowed. If that is still the doctrine of the political party, to which
the gentlemen belong, let it be put upon record. If State laws which
deny us the common rights and privileges of other citizens, upon no
possible or conceivable ground save one of prejudice, or of "taste" as
the gentleman from Texas termed it, and as I suppose the gentlemen will
prefer to call it, are to be placed under the protection of a decision
which affirms the right of a State to regulate the police power of her
great cities, then the decision is in conflict with the bill before us.
No man will dare maintain such a doctrine. It is as shocking to the
legal mind as it is offensive to the heart and conscience of all who
love justice or respect manhood. I am astonished that the gentleman from
Kentucky or the gentleman from Georgia should have been so grossly
misled as to rise here and assert that the decision of the Supreme Court
in these cases was a denial to Congress of the power to legislate
against discriminations on account of race, color, or previous
conditions of servitude because that Court has decided that exclusive
privileges conferred for the common protection of the lives and health
of the whole community are not in violation of the recent amendments.
The only ground upon which the grant of exclusive privileges to a
portion of the community is ever defended is that the substantial good
of all is promoted; that in truth it is for the welfare of the whole
community that certain persons should alone pursue certain occupations.
It is not the special benefit conferred on the few that moves the
legislature, but the ultimate and real benefit of all, even of those who
are denied the right to pursue those specified occupations. Does the
gentleman from Kentucky say that my good is promoted when I am excluded
from the public inn? Is the health or safety of the community promoted?
Doubtless his prejudice is gratified. Doubtless his democratic instincts
are pleased; but will he or his able coadjutor say that such exclusion
is a lawful exercise of the police power of the State, or that it is not
a denial to me of the equal protection of the laws? They will not so
say.
But each of these gentlemen quote at some length from the decision of
the court to show that the court recognizes a difference between
citizenship of the United States and citizenship of the States. That is
true and no man here who supports this bill questions or overlooks the
difference. There are privileges and immunities which belong to me as a
citizen of the United States, and there are other privileges and
immunities which belong to me as a citizen of my State. The former are
under the protection of the Constitution and laws of the United States,
and the latter are under the protection of the Constitution and laws of
my State. But what of that? Are the rights which I now claim--the right
to enjoy the common public conveniences of travel on public highways, of
rest and refreshment at public inns, of education in public schools, of
burial in public cemeteries--rights which I hold as a citizen of the
United States or of my State? Or, to state the question more exactly, is
not the denial of such privileges to me a denial to me of the equal
protection of the laws? For it is under this clause of the fourteenth
amendment that we place the present bill, no State shall "deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." No
matter, therefore, whether his rights are held under the United States
or under his particular State he is equally protected by this amendment.
He is always and everywhere entitled to the equal protection of the
laws. All discrimination is forbidden; and while the rights of citizens
of a State as such are not defined or conferred by the Constitution of
the United States, yet all discrimination, all denial of equality before
the law, all denial of equal protection of the laws whether State or
national laws, is forbidden.
The distinction between the two kinds of citizenship is clear, and the
Supreme Court has clearly pointed out this distinction, but it has
nowhere written a word or line which denies to Congress the power to
prevent a denial of equality of rights whether those rights exist by
virtue of citizenship of the United States or of a State. Let honorable
members mark well this distinction. There are rights which are conferred
on us by the United States. There are other rights conferred on us by
the states of which we are individually the citizens. The fourteenth
amendment does not forbid a state to deny to all its citizens any of
those rights which the state itself has conferred with certain
exceptions which are pointed out in the decision which we are examining.
What it does forbid is inequality, is discrimination or, to use the
words of the amendment itself, is the denial "to any person within its
jurisdiction, the equal protection of the laws." If a State denies to me
rights which are common to all her other citizens, she violates this
amendment, unless she can show, as was shown in the Slaughter-house
cases, that she does it in the legitimate exercise of her police power.
If she abridges the rights of all her citizens equally, unless those
rights are specifically guarded by the Constitution of the United
States, she does not violate this amendment. This is not to put the
rights which I hold by virtue of my citizenship of South Carolina under
the protection of the national Government; it is not to blot out or
overlook in the slightest particular the distinction between rights held
under the United States and rights held under the States; but it seeks
to secure equality to prevent discrimination, to confer as complete and
ample protection on the humblest as on the highest.
The gentleman from Kentucky, in the course of the speech to which I am
now replying, made a reference to the State of Massachusetts which
betrays again the confusion which exists in his mind on this precise
point. He tells us that Massachusetts excludes from the ballot-box all
who cannot read and write, and points to that fact as the exercise of a
right which this bill would abridge or impair. The honorable gentleman
from Massachusetts (Mr. Dawes) answered him truly and well, but I submit
that he did not make the best reply, why did he not ask the gentleman
from Kentucky if Massachusetts had ever discriminated against any of her
citizens on account of color, or race, or previous condition of
servitude? When did Massachusetts sully her proud record by placing on
her statute-book any law which admitted to the ballot the white man and
shut out the black man. She has never done it; she will not do it; she
cannot do it so long as we have a Supreme Court which reads the
Constitution of our country with the eyes of Justice; nor can
Massachusetts or Kentucky deny to any man on account of his race,
color, or previous condition of servitude, that perfect equality of
protection under the laws so long as Congress shall exercise the power
to enforce by appropriate legislation the great and unquestionable
securities embodied in the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution.
* * * * *
Now, sir, having spoken of the prohibition imposed by Massachusetts, I
may be pardoned for a slight inquiry as to the effect of this
prohibition. First, it did not in any way abridge or curtail the
exercise of the suffrage by any person who enjoyed such right. Nor did
it discriminate against the illiterate native and the illiterate
foreigner. Being enacted for the good of the entire commonwealth, like
all just laws, its obligations fell equally and impartially on all its
citizens. And as a justification for such a measure, it is a fact too
well known almost for mention here that Massachusetts had, from the
beginning of her history, recognized the inestimable value of an
educated ballot, by not only maintaining a system of free schools, but
also enforcing an attendance thereupon, as one of the safeguards for the
preservation of a real republican form of government. Recurring then,
sir, to the possible contingency alluded to by the gentleman from
Kentucky, should the State of Kentucky, having first established a
system of common schools whose doors shall swing open freely to all, as
contemplated by the provisions of this bill, adopt a provision similar
to that of Massachusetts, no one would have cause justly to complain.
And if in the coming years the result of such legislation should produce
a constituency rivaling that of the Old Bay State, no one would be more
highly gratified than I. Mr. Speaker, I have neither the time nor the
inclination to notice the many illogical and forced conclusions, the
numerous transfers of terms, or the vulgar insinuations which further
encumber the argument of the gentleman from Kentucky. Reason and
argument are worse than wasted upon those who meet every demand for
political and civil liberty by such ribaldry as this--extracted from the
speech of the gentleman from Kentucky: "I suppose there are gentlemen on
this floor who would arrest, imprison, and fine a young woman in any
State of the South if she were to refuse to marry a Negro man on account
of color, race, or previous condition of servitude, in the event of his
making her a proposal of marriage, and her refusing on that ground. That
would be depriving him of a right he had under the amendment, and
Congress would be asked to take it up and say, 'This insolent white
woman must be taught to know that it is a misdemeanor to deny a man
marriage because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,'
and Congress will be urged to say after a while that that sort of thing
must be put a stop to, and your conventions of colored men will come
here asking you to enforce that right."
Now, sir, recurring to the venerable and distinguished gentleman from
Georgia (Mr. Stephens) who has added his remonstrance against the
passage of this bill, permit me to say that I share in the feeling of
high personal regard for that gentleman which pervades this House. His
years, his ability, and his long experience in public affairs entitle
him to the measure of consideration which has been accorded to him on
this floor. But in this discussion I cannot and will not forget that the
welfare and rights of my whole race in this country are involved. When,
therefore, the honorable gentleman from Georgia lends his voice and
influence to defeat this measure, I do not shrink from saying that it is
not from him that the American House of Representatives should take
lessons in matters touching human rights or the joint relations of the
State and national governments. While the honorable gentleman contented
himself with harmless speculations in his study, or in the columns of a
newspaper, we might well smile at the impotence of his efforts to turn
back the advancing tide of opinion and progress; but, when he comes
again upon this national arena, and throws himself with all his power
and influence across the path which leads to the full enfranchisement of
my race, I meet him only as an adversary; nor shall age or any other
consideration restrain me from saying that he now offers this Government
which he has done his utmost to destroy, a very poor return for its
magnanimous treatment, to come here and seek to continue, by the
assertion of doctrines obnoxious to the true principles of our
Government, the burdens and oppressions which rest upon five millions of
his countrymen who never failed to lift their earnest prayers for the
success of this Government when the gentleman was seeking to break up
the union of these States and to blot the American Republic from the
galaxy of nations.
Sir, it is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the
civilized world by announcing the birth of a government which rested on
human slavery as its corner-stone. The progress of events has swept away
that pseudo-government which rested on greed, pride, and tyranny; and
the race whom he then ruthlessly spurned and trampled on is here to meet
him in debate, and to demand that the rights which are enjoyed by its
former oppressors--who vainly sought to overthrow a Government which
they could not prostitute to the base uses of slavery--shall be accorded
to those who even in the darkness of slavery kept their allegiance true
to freedom and the Union. Sir, the gentleman from Georgia has learned
much since 1861; but he is still a laggard. Let him put away entirely
the false and fatal theories which have so greatly marred an otherwise
enviable record. Let him accept, in its fullness and beneficence, the
great doctrine that American citizenship carries with it every civil and
political right which manhood can confer. Let him lend his influence
with all his masterly ability, to complete the proud structure of
legislation which makes this nation worthy of the great declaration
which heralded its birth and he will have done that which will most
nearly redeem his reputation in the eyes of the world, and best
vindicate the wisdom of that policy which has permitted him to regain
his seat upon this floor.
To the diatribe of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Harris) who spoke
yesterday, and who so far transcended the limits of decency and
propriety as to announce upon this floor that his remarks were addressed
to white men alone, I shall have no word of reply. Let him feel that a
Negro was not only too magnanimous to smite him in his weakness, but was
even charitable enough to grant him the mercy of his silence. I shall,
sir, leave to others less charitable the unenviable and fatiguing task
of sifting out of that mass of chaff the few grains of sense that may,
perchance deserve notice. Assuring the gentleman that the Negro in this
country aims at a higher degree of intellect than that exhibited by him
in this debate, I cheerfully commend him to the commiseration of all
intelligent men the world over--black men as well as white men.
Sir, equality before the law is now the broad, universal, glorious rule
and mandate of the Republic. No State can violate that. Kentucky and
Georgia may crowd their statute-books with retrograde and barbarous
legislation; they may rejoice in the odious eminence of their consistent
hostility to all the great steps of human progress which have marked our
national history since slavery tore down the stars and stripes on Fort
Sumter; but, if Congress shall do its duty, if Congress shall enforce
the great guarantees which the Supreme Court has declared to be the one
pervading purpose of all the recent amendments, then their unwise and
unenlightened conduct will fall with the same weight upon the gentlemen
from those States who now lend their influence to defeat this bill, as
upon the poorest slave who once had no rights which the honorable
gentlemen were bound to respect.
But, sir, not only does the decision in the Slaughter-house cases
contain nothing which suggests a doubt of the power of Congress to pass
the pending bill, but it contains an express recognition and affirmance
of such power. I quote from page 81 of the volume: "Nor shall any State
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws."
In the light of the history of these amendments, and the pervading
purpose of them which we have already discussed, it is not difficult to
give a meaning to this clause. The existence of laws in the States where
the newly emancipated Negroes resided, which discriminated with gross
injustice and hardship against them as a class, was the evil to be
remedied by this clause, and by it such laws are forbidden.
If, however, the States did not conform their views to its requirements,
then, by the fifth section of the article of amendment, Congress was
authorized to enforce it by suitable legislation. We doubt very much
whether any action of a State not directed by way of discrimination
against the Negroes as a class, or on account of their race, will ever
be held to come within the purview of this provision. It is so clearly a
provision for that race and that emergency, that a strong case would be
necessary for its application to any other. But as it is a State that is
to be dealt with, and not alone the validity of its laws, we may safely
leave that matter until Congress shall have exercised its power, or some
case of State oppression, by denial of equal justice in its courts,
shall have claimed a decision at our hands.
No language could convey a more complete assertion of the power of
Congress over the subject embraced in the present bill than is here
expressed. If the States do not conform to the requirements of this
clause, if they continue to deny to any person within their jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws, or as the Supreme Court had said "deny
equal justice in its Courts" then Congress is here said to have power to
enforce the Constitutional guarantee by appropriate legislation. That is
the power which this bill now seeks to put in exercise.
It proposes to enforce the Constitutional guarantee against inequality
and discrimination by appropriate legislation. It does not seek to
confer new rights, nor to place rights conferred by State citizenship
under the protection of the United States, but simply to prevent and
forbid inequality and discrimination on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude. Never was there a bill which appealed
for support more strongly to that sense of justice and fair play which
has been said, and in the main with justice, to be a characteristic of
the Anglo-Saxon race. The Constitution warrants it; the Supreme Court
sanctions it; justice demands it.
Sir, I have replied to the extent of my ability to the arguments which
have been presented by the opponents of this measure. I have replied
also to some of the legal propositions advanced by gentlemen on the
other side; and now that I am about to conclude, I am deeply sensible of
the imperfect manner in which I have performed the task. Technically,
this bill is to decide upon the civil status of the colored American
citizen; a point disputed at the very formation of our present form of
government, when by a short-sighted policy, a policy repugnant to true
republican government, one Negro counted as three-fifth of a man. The
logical result of this mistake of the framers of the Constitution
strengthened the cancer of slavery, which finally spread its poisonous
tentacles over the southern portion of the body politic. To arrest its
growth and save the nation we have passed through the harrowing
operation of intestine war, dreaded at all times, resorted to at the
last extremity, like the surgeon's knife, but absolutely necessary to
extirpate the disease which threatened with the life of the nation the
overthrow of civil and political liberty on this continent. In that dire
extremity the members of the race which I have the honor in part to
represent--the race which pleads for justice at your hands
to-day,--forgetful of their inhuman and brutalizing servitude at the
South, their degradation and ostracism at the North, flew willingly and
gallantly to the support of the national Government.
Their sufferings, assistance, privations, and trials in the swamps and
in the rice-fields, their valor on the land and on the sea, form a part
of the ever-glorious record which makes up the history of a nation
preserved, and might, should I urge the claim, incline you to respect
and guarantee their rights and privileges as citizens of our common
Republic. But I remember that valor, devotion, and loyalty are not
always rewarded according to their just deserts, and that after the
battle some who have borne the brunt of the fray may, through neglect
or contempt, be assigned to a subordinate place, while the enemies in
war may be preferred to the sufferers.
The results of the war, as seen in reconstruction, have settled forever
the political status of my race. The passage of this bill will determine
the civil status, not only of the Negro, but of any other class of
citizens who may feel themselves discriminated against. It will form the
cap-stone of that temple of liberty, begun on this continent under
discouraging circumstances, carried on in spite of the sneers of
monarchists and the cavils of pretended friends of freedom, until at
last it stands, in all its beautiful symmetry and proportions, a
building the grandest which the world has ever seen, realizing the most
sanguine expectations and the highest hopes of those who, in the name of
equal, impartial, and universal liberty, laid the foundation-stone.
The Holy Scriptures tell us of an humble handmaiden who long,
faithfully, and patiently gleaned in the rich fields of her wealthy
kinsman, and we are told further that at last, in spite of her humble
antecedents she found favor in his sight. For over two centuries our
race has "reaped down your fields," the cries and woes which we have
uttered have "entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth" and we are
at last politically free. The last vestiture only is needed--civil
rights. Having gained this, we may, with hearts overflowing with
gratitude and thankful that our prayer has been answered, repeat the
prayer of Ruth: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou
lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
God; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord
do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me."
CIVIL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL EQUALITY[9]
BY HON. JOHN R. LYNCH
[Note 9: A speech delivered in the House of Representatives,
February 3, 1875.]
The House having under consideration the civil-rights bill, Mr. Lynch
said:
_Mr. Speaker:_
I will now endeavor to answer the arguments of those who have been
contending that the passage of this bill is an effort to bring about
social equality between the races. That the passage of this bill can in
any manner affect the social status of any one seems to me to be absurd
and ridiculous. I have never believed for a moment that social equality
could be brought about even between persons of the same race. I have
always believed that social distinctions existed among white people the
same as among colored people. But those who contend that the passage of
this bill will have a tendency to bring about social equality between
the races virtually and substantially admit that there are no social
distinctions among white people whatever, but that all white persons,
regardless of their moral character, are the social equals of each
other; for if by conferring upon colored people the same rights and
privileges that are now exercised and enjoyed by whites indiscriminately
will result in bringing about social equality between the races, then
the same process of reasoning must necessarily bring us to the
conclusion that there are no social distinctions among whites, because
all white persons, regardless of their social standing, are permitted to
enjoy these rights. See then how unreasonable, unjust, and false is the
assertion that social equality is involved in this legislation. I cannot
believe that gentlemen on the other side of the House mean what they say
when they admit as they do that the immoral, the ignorant, and the
degraded of their own race are the social equals of themselves and their
families. If they do, then I can only assure them that they do not put
as high an estimate upon their own social standing as respectable and
intelligent colored people place upon theirs; for there are hundreds and
thousands of white people of both sexes whom I know to be the social
inferiors of respectable and intelligent colored people. I can then
assure that portion of my Democratic friends on the other side of the
House whom I regard as my social inferiors that if at any time I should
meet any one of you at a hotel and occupy a seat at the same table with
you, or the same seat in a car with you, do not think that I have
thereby accepted you as my social equal. Not at all. But if any one
should attempt to discriminate against you for no other reason than
because you are identified with a particular race or religious sect, I
would regard it as an outrage; as a violation of the principles of
republicanism; and I would be in favor of protecting you in the exercise
and enjoyment of your rights by suitable and appropriate legislation.
No, Mr. Speaker, it is not social rights that we desire. We have enough
of that already. What we ask is protection in the enjoyment of _public_
rights. Rights which are or should be accorded to every citizen alike.
Under our present system of race distinctions a white woman of a
questionable social standing, yea, I may say, of an admitted immoral
character, can go to any public place or upon any public conveyance and
be the recipient of the same treatment, the same courtesy, and the same
respect that is usually accorded to the most refined and virtuous; but
let an intelligent, modest, refined colored lady present herself and ask
that the same privileges be accorded to her that have just been accorded
to her social inferior of the white race, and in nine cases out of ten,
except in certain portions of the country, she will not only be refused,
but insulted for making the request.
Mr. Speaker, I ask the members of this House in all candor, is this
right? I appeal to your sensitive feelings as husbands, fathers, and
brothers, is this just? You who have affectionate companions, attractive
daughters, and loving sisters, is this just? If you have any of the
ingredients of manhood in your composition you will answer the question
most emphatically, No! What a sad commentary upon our system of
government, our religion, and our civilization! Think of it for a
moment; here am I, a member of your honorable body, representing one of
the largest and wealthiest districts in the State of Mississippi, and
possibly in the South; a district composed of persons of different
races, religions, and nationalities and yet, when I leave my home to
come to the capital of the nation, to take part in the deliberations of
the House and to participate with you in making laws for the government
of this great Republic, in coming through the God-forsaken States of
Kentucky and Tennessee, if I come by the way of Louisville or
Chattanooga, I am treated, not as an American citizen, but as a brute.
Forced to occupy a filthy smoking-car both night and day, with
drunkards, gamblers, and criminals; and for what? Not that I am unable
or unwilling to pay my way; not that I am obnoxious in my personal
appearance or disrespectful in my conduct; but simply because I happen
to be of a darker complexion. If this treatment was confined to persons
of our own sex we could possibly afford to endure it. But such is not
the case. Our wives and our daughters, our sisters and our mothers, are
subjected to the same insults and to the same uncivilized treatment. You
may ask why we do not institute civil suits in the State courts. What a
farce! Talk about instituting a civil-rights suit in the State courts of
Kentucky, for instance, where decision of the judge is virtually
rendered before he enters the court-house, and the verdict of the jury
substantially rendered before it is impaneled. The only moments of my
life when I am necessarily compelled to question my loyalty to my
Government or my devotion to the flag of my country is when I read of
outrages having been committed upon innocent colored people and the
perpetrators go unwhipped of justice, and when I leave my home to go
traveling.
Mr. Speaker, if this unjust discrimination is to be longer tolerated by
the American people, which I do not, cannot, and will not believe until
I am forced to do so, then I can only say with sorrow and regret that
our boasted civilization is a fraud; our republican institutions a
failure; our social system a disgrace; and our religion a complete
hypocrisy. But I have an abiding confidence--(though I must confess that
that confidence was seriously shaken a little over two months ago)--but
still I have an abiding confidence in the patriotism of this people, in
their devotion to the cause of human rights, and in the stability of our
republican institutions. I hope that I will not be deceived. I love the
land that gave me birth; I love the Stars and Stripes. This country is
where I intend to live, where I expect to die. To preserve the honor of
the national flag and to maintain perpetually the Union of the States
hundreds, and I may say thousands, of noble, brave, and true-hearted
colored men have fought, bled, and died. And now, Mr. Speaker, I ask,
can it be possible that that flag under which they fought is to be a
shield and a protection to all races and classes of persons except the
colored race? God forbid!
* * * * *
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I say to the Republican members of the House
that the passage of this bill is expected of you. If any of our
Democratic friends will vote for it, we will be agreeably surprised. But
if Republicans should vote against it, we will be sorely disappointed;
it will be to us a source of deep mortification as well as profound
regret. We will feel as though we are deserted in the house of our
friends. But I have no fears whatever in this respect. You have stood by
the colored people of this country when it was more unpopular to do so
than it is to pass this bill. You have fulfilled every promise thus far,
and I have no reason to believe that you will not fulfill this one. Then
give us this bill. The white man's government Negro-hating democracy
will, in my judgment, soon pass out of existence. The progressive spirit
of the American people will not much longer tolerate the existence of an
organization that lives upon the passions and prejudices of the hour.
I appeal to all the members of the House--Republicans and Democrats,
conservatives and liberals--to join with us in the passage of this bill,
which has its object the protection of human rights. And when every man,
woman, and child can feel and know that his, her, and their rights are
fully protected by the strong arm of a generous and grateful Republic,
then we can all truthfully say that this beautiful land of ours, over
which the "Star-Spangled Banner" so triumphantly waves, is, in truth and
in fact, the "land of the free and the home of the brave."
ALEXANDER DUMAS, FILS[10]
_The following public tribute was paid to his father by the younger
Dumas on the occasion of taking his seat in the French Academy (February
11, 1875)._
[Note 10: From "The Life of A. Dumas," by Arthur E. Davidson, (p.
356).]
"The fact," said he, "that so many men superior to me have had to knock
many times at your door before it was opened to them would fill me with
pride, did I not know the real reason of your sympathy. In order to
reach my place among you, gentlemen, I have employed magical spells, I
have used witchcraft. Standing on my own merits alone I should not have
dared to face your judgment, but I knew that a good genius--that is the
right word--was fighting on my behalf, and that you were determined to
offer no defense. I have sheltered myself under a name which you would
have wished long ago to honor in itself, and which you are now able to
honor only in me. Believe me, gentlemen, it is with the greatest modesty
that I come to-day to accept a reward which has been so easily granted
to me only because it was reserved for another. I cannot--I may
not--receive it except in trust; allow me then, at once and publicly, to
make restitution of it to the man who, unhappily, can no longer receive
it himself. Thus you will be granting me the highest honor which I can
covet, and the only one _to which_ I have any real right."
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY[11]
BY JOHN MERCER LANGSTON
[Note 11: Philadelphia, Wednesday, April 14, 1875.]
_Ladies and Gentlemen:_
The history of this Association, owing to its objects and achievements,
sweep in an interest that is not confined to any class: an interest that
is not confined to any people, and whose scope and consequences cannot
be foretold by human inspiration. It affects the emancipation of a whole
race; and in that it touches the progress and character of all who are
brought in contact with that race, the forms of government over the
world and the world's progress in all departments. There was a recent
time in American history when no man, in all its length and breadth,
could read the Declaration of Independence and say that he possessed all
of his civil and political liberties. Garrison could not speak in New
Orleans, nor could the silver-tongued Phillips address an audience south
of Mason and Dixon's line. Nor was it expedient for John C. Calhoun to
address his arguments in Independence Hall, or for Davis and Yulee and
Mason to propound theirs in Faneuil Hall. Speech was itself in thrall,
and bound to the section in which it found voice. When Garrison and
Phillips had been invited to speak in Cincinnati, they were counseled by
their friends not to do so. There was danger that the mobs of Covington
and Cincinnati would assassinate them publicly; and it is notorious that
the opposing arguments that reached Washington from the North and from
the South advanced no further in either direction. This impugned and
belied the very freedom declared in the Declaration and Constitution;
and made both the mockery of Europe. The contradiction is reconciled;
the taunt is silenced; speech is legally free and protected over all the
Union, and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society has done more than any
other agency--more than all other agencies combined--to vitalize the
Constitution and give being to the Declaration. This society fought for
the glowing assertion of all the centuries: That men are born free and
equal, and are endowed with inalienable right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. It kept the contrast between the declaration and
its practise in a clear light. It repeated the assertion and reasserted
it. It argued the justice with the very facts and reasons that had been
presented to the Congress by whom the Declaration was framed.
Undisturbed by ridicule, unchecked by hostility, undaunted by
persecution, it has kept the law in the van of the fight; sustained it
by reserves of humane reason; by appeals to national strength and
welfare, and growth, and influence, and wealth; it disseminated the
truth in churches, at the polls, in lyceums, by the press; it was
unanswerable because its claim was founded in equity, and recognized in
religion, and had ineradicable place in the great muniment of national
being. It appealed to the individual conscience as well as to pride,
patriotism, piety, and interest, and it won, and now celebrates a
victory immeasurably greater than that of Yorktown or Waterloo or
Marathon. Those were the victories of nation over nation, or at the
utmost of a principle of limited application. We celebrate the
successful battle of the grandest principle in human organization; that
is confined to no race, limited to no country, cramped by no
restriction, but is as broad as the world, as applicable as humanity
itself and as enduring as time. The sentiment which elected Abraham
Lincoln was contained in an address delivered before the Pennsylvania
Abolition Society by Benjamin Rush, one of its earliest and most honored
members. It was: "Freedom and slavery cannot long exist together!"
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Abolition Society, those who see the
American citizens of African descent one hundred years hence will be
proud of them, and convinced that the great century struggle that won
their enfranchisement was worth infinitely more than it cost. We are now
leaving politics. We have gained through them the rights and
opportunities they conferred, that could be secured in no other way. We
are devoting ourselves to learning and industry; the attainment of
wealth and manufacture of character. We shall never leave our home.
There are but two facts to be recognized. We are here. The white race is
here. Both share the same rights; make and obey the same laws; struggle
for progress under the same conditions. The logical conclusion of our
birthright and of our proclaimed and perfected equality before the law
is that we shall remain, and remaining strive with equal advantages with
our white fellow citizens for our own good and the nation's welfare.
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY[12]
BY MRS. FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER
FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER _was a distinguished anti-slavery lecturer,
writer and poet, born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1825, of free parents.
After the close of the Civil War she went South and worked as a teacher
and lecturer, but later returned to Philadelphia, where she devoted her
time to lecturing and writing for the temperance cause, having charge,
for a number of years, of the W. C. T. U. work among Negroes. "Iola
Leroy, or the Shadows Uplifted," is her best-known work, besides which
she published a number of small books of verses._
[Note 12: Philadelphia, Wednesday, April 14, 1875.]
_Ladies and Gentlemen:_
The great problem to be solved by the American people, if I understand
it, is this: Whether or not there is strength enough in democracy,
virtue enough in our civilization, and power enough in our religion to
have mercy and deal justly with four millions of people but lately
translated from the old oligarchy of slavery to the new commonwealth of
freedom; and upon the right solution of this question depends in a large
measure the future strength, progress, and durability of our nation. The
most important question before us colored people is not simply what the
Democratic party may do against us or the Republican party do for us;
but what are we going to do for ourselves? What shall we do towards
developing our character, adding our quota to the civilization and
strength of the country, diversifying our industry, and practising those
lordly virtues that conquer success, and turn the world's dread laugh
into admiring recognition? The white race has yet work to do in making
practical the political axiom of equal rights, and the Christian idea of
human brotherhood; but while I lift mine eyes to the future I would not
ungratefully ignore the past. One hundred years ago and Africa was the
privileged hunting-ground of Europe and America, and the flag of
different nations hung a sign of death on the coasts of Congo and
Guinea, and for years unbroken silence had hung around the horrors of
the African slave-trade. Since then Great Britain and other nations have
wiped the bloody traffic from their hands, and shaken the gory
merchandise from their fingers, and the brand of piracy has been placed
upon the African slave-trade. Less than fifty years ago mob violence
belched out its wrath against the men who dared to arraign the
slaveholder before the bar of conscience and Christendom. Instead of
golden showers upon his head, he who garrisoned the front had a halter
around his neck. Since, if I may borrow the idea, the nation has caught
the old inspiration from his lips and written it in the new organic
world. Less than twenty-five years ago slavery clasped hands with King
Cotton, and said slavery fights and cotton conquers for American
slavery. Since then slavery is dead, the colored man has exchanged the
fetters on his wrist for the ballot in his hand. Freedom is king, and
Cotton a subject.
It may not seem to be a gracious thing to mingle complaint in a season
of general rejoicing. It may appear like the ancient Egyptians seating a
corpse at their festal board to avenge the Americans for their
shortcomings when so much has been accomplished. And yet with all the
victories and triumphs which freedom and justice have won in this
country, I do not believe there is another civilized nation under Heaven
where there are half so many people who have been brutally and
shamefully murdered, with or without impunity, as in this Republic
within the last ten years. And who cares? Where is the public opinion
that has scorched with red-hot indignation the cowardly murderers of
Vicksburg and Louisiana? Sheridan lifts up the vail from Southern
society, and behind it is the smell of blood, and our bones scattered at
the grave's mouth; murdered people; a White League with its "covenant of
death and agreement with hell." And who cares? What city pauses one hour
to drop a pitying tear over these mangled corpses, or has forged against
the perpetrator one thunderbolt of furious protest? But let there be a
supposed or real invasion of Southern rights by our soldiers, and our
great commercial emporium will rally its forces from the old man in his
classic shades, to clasp hands with "dead rabbits" and "plug-uglies" in
protesting against military interference. What we need to-day in the
onward march of humanity is a public sentiment in favor of common
justice and simple mercy. We have a civilization which has produced
grand and magnificent results, diffused knowledge, overthrown slavery,
made constant conquests over nature, and built up a wonderful material
prosperity. But two things are wanting in American civilization--a
keener and deeper, broader and tenderer sense of justice--a sense of
humanity, which shall crystallize into the life of the nation the
sentiment that justice, simple justice, is the right, not simply of the
strong and powerful, but of the weakest and feeblest of all God's
children; a deeper and broader humanity, which will teach men to look
upon their feeble brethren not as vermin to be crushed out, or beasts of
burden to be bridled and bitted, but as the children of the living God;
of that God whom we may earnestly hope is in perfect wisdom and in
perfect love working for the best good of all. Ethnologists may differ
about the origin of the human race. Huxley may search for it in
protoplasms, and Darwin send for the missing links, but there is one
thing of which we may rest assured,--that we all come from the living
God and that He is the common Father. The nation that has no reverence
for man is also lacking in reverence for God and needs to be instructed.
As fellow citizens, leaving out all humanitarian views--as a mere matter
of political economy it is better to have the colored race a living
force animated and strengthened by self-reliance and self-respect, than
a stagnant mass, degraded and self-condemned. Instead of the North
relaxing its efforts to diffuse education in the South, it behooves us
for our national life, to throw into the South all the healthful
reconstructing influences we can command. Our work in this country is
grandly constructive. Some races have come into this world and
overthrown and destroyed. But if it is glory to destroy, it is
happiness to save; and Oh! what a noble work there is before our nation!
Where is there a young man who would consent to lead an aimless life
when there are such glorious opportunities before him? Before our young
men is another battle--not a battle of flashing swords and clashing
steel--but a moral warfare, a battle against ignorance, poverty, and low
social condition. In physical warfare the keenest swords may be blunted
and the loudest batteries hushed; but in the great conflict of moral and
spiritual progress your weapons shall be brighter for their service and
better for their use. In fighting truly and nobly for others you win the
victory for yourselves.
Give power and significance to your own life, and in the great work of
upbuilding there is room for woman's work and woman's heart. Oh, that
our hearts were alive and our vision quickened, to see the grandeur of
the work that lies before. We have some culture among us, but I think
our culture lacks enthusiasm. We need a deep earnestness and a lofty
unselfishness to round out our lives. It is the inner life that develops
the outer, and if we are in earnest the precious things lie all around
our feet, and we need not waste our strength in striving after the dim
and unattainable. Women, in your golden youth; mother, binding around
your heart all the precious ties of life,--let no magnificence of
culture, or amplitude of fortune, or refinement of sensibilities, repel
you from helping the weaker and less favored. If you have ampler gifts,
hold them as larger opportunities with which you can benefit others. Oh,
it is better to feel that the weaker and feebler our race the closer we
will cling to them, than it is to isolate ourselves from them in
selfish, or careless unconcern, saying there is a lion without. Inviting
you to this work I do not promise you fair sailing and unclouded skies.
You may meet with coolness where you expect sympathy; disappointment
where you feel sure of success; isolation and loneliness instead of
heart-support and co-operation. But if your lives are based and built
upon these divine certitudes, which are the only enduring strength of
humanity, then whatever defeat and discomfiture may overshadow your
plans or frustrate your schemes, for a life that is in harmony with God
and sympathy for man there is no such word as fail. And in conclusion,
permit me to say, let no misfortunes crush you; no hostility of enemies
or failure of friends discourage you. Apparent failure may hold in its
rough shell the germs of a success that will blossom in time, and bear
fruit throughout eternity. What seemed to be a failure around the Cross
of Calvary and in the garden has been the grandest recorded success.
A MEMORIAL DISCOURSE[13]
BY REV. HENRY HIGHLAND GARNET
HENRY HIGHLAND GARNET, _who at the time of the delivery of this speech
was in charge of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington,
D. C., was one of the foremost figures in the great anti-slavery
movement in New York. He was the first colored man to speak in the
National Capitol._
Matthew xxiii-4. "For they bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be
borne, and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will
not move them with one of their fingers."
[Note 13: Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C., at the request of the Chaplain, Rev. William H.
Channing.]
In this chapter, of which my text is a sentence, the Lord Jesus
addressed his disciples, and the multitude that hung spell-bound upon
the words that fell from his lips. He admonished them to beware of the
religion of the Scribes and Pharisees, which was distinguished for great
professions, while it succeeded in urging them to do but a little, or
nothing that accorded with the law of righteousness.
In theory they were right; but their practices were inconsistent and
wrong. They were learned in the law of Moses, and in the traditions of
their fathers, but the principles of righteousness failed to affect
their hearts. They knew their duty but did it not. The demands which
they made upon others proved that they themselves knew what things men
ought to do. In condemning others they pronounced themselves guilty.
They demanded that others should be just, merciful, pure, peaceable, and
righteous. But they were unjust, impure, unmerciful--they hated and
wronged a portion of their fellowmen, and waged a continual war against
the government of God.
* * * * *
Such was their conduct in the Church and in the State. We have modern
Scribes and Pharisees, who are faithful to their prototypes of ancient
times.
With sincere respect and reverence for the instruction, and the warning
given by our Lord, and in humble dependence upon him for his assistance,
I shall speak this morning of the Scribes and Pharisees of our times who
rule the State. In discharging this duty, I shall keep my eyes upon the
picture which is painted so faithfully and life-like by the hand of the
Saviour.
Allow me to describe them. They are intelligent and well-informed, and
can never say, either before an earthly tribunal or at the bar of God,
"We knew not of ourselves what was right." They are acquainted with the
principles of the law of nations. They are proficient in the knowledge
of Constitutional law. They are teachers of common law, and frame and
execute statute law. They acknowledge that there is a just and impartial
God, and are not altogether unacquainted with the law of Christian love
and kindness. They claim for themselves the broadest freedom. Boastfully
they tell us that they have received from the court of heaven the Magna
Charta of human rights that was handed down through the clouds, and
amid the lightnings of Sinai, and given again by the Son of God on the
Mount of Beatitudes, while the glory of the Father shone around him.
They tell us that from the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution they have obtained a guaranty of their political freedom,
and from the Bible they derive their claim to all the blessings of
religious liberty. With just pride they tell us that they are descended
from the Pilgrims, who threw themselves upon the bosom of the
treacherous sea, and braved storms and tempests, that they might find in
a strange land, and among savages, free homes, where they might build
their altars that should blaze with acceptable sacrifice unto God. Yes!
they boast that their fathers heroically turned away from the precious
light of Eastern civilization, and taking their lamps with oil in their
vessels, joyfully went forth to illuminate this land, that then dwelt in
the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death. With hearts
strengthened by faith they spread out their standard to the winds of
heaven, near Plymouth rock; and whether it was stiffened in the sleet
and frosts of winter, or floated on the breeze of summer, it ever bore
the motto, "Freedom to worship God."
But others, their fellow-men, equal before the Almighty, and made by him
of the same blood, and glowing with immortality, they doom to life-long
servitude and chains. Yes, they stand in the most sacred places on
earth, and beneath the gaze of the piercing eye of Jehovah, the
universal Father of all men, and declare, "that the best possible
condition of the Negro is slavery."
In the name of the Triune God I denounce the sentiment as unrighteous
beyond measure, and the holy and the just of the whole earth say in
regard to it, Anathema-maranatha.
What is slavery? Too well do I know what it is. I will present to you a
bird's-eye view of it; and it shall be no fancy picture, but one that is
sketched by painful experience. I was born among the cherished
institutions of slavery. My earliest recollections of parents, friends,
and the home of my childhood are clouded with its wrongs. The first
sight that met my eyes was a Christian mother enslaved by professed
Christians, but, thank God, now a saint in heaven. The first sounds that
startled my ear, and sent a shudder through my soul, were the cracking
of the whip and the clanking of chains. These sad memories mar the
beauties of my native shores, and darken all the slave-land, which, but
for the reign of despotism, had been a paradise. But those shores are
fairer now. The mists have left my native valleys, and the clouds have
rolled away from the hills, and Maryland, the unhonored grave of my
fathers, is now the free home of their liberated and happier children.
Let us view this demon, which the people have worshiped as a God. Come
forth, thou grim monster, that thou mayest be critically examined! There
he stands. Behold him, one and all. Its work is to chattelize man; to
hold property in human beings. Great God! I would as soon attempt to
enslave Gabriel or Michael as to enslave a man made in the image of God,
and for whom Christ died. Slavery is snatching man from the high place
to which he was lifted by the hand of God, and dragging him down to the
level of the brute creation, where he is made to be the companion of the
horse and the fellow of the ox.
It tears the crown of glory from his head, and as far as possible
obliterates the image of God that is in him. Slavery preys upon man, and
man only. A brute cannot be made a slave. Why? Because a brute has not
reason, faith, nor an undying spirit, nor conscience. It does not look
forward to the future with joy or fear, nor reflect upon the past with
satisfaction or regret. But who in this vast assembly, who in all this
broad land, will say that the poorest and most unhappy brother in chains
and servitude has not every one of these high endowments? Who denies it?
Is there one? If so, let him speak. There is not one; no, not one.
But slavery attempts to make a man a brute. It treats him as a beast.
Its terrible work is not finished until the ruined victim of its lusts,
and pride, and avarice, and hatred, is reduced so low that with tearful
eyes and feeble voice he faintly cries, "I am happy and contented--I
love this condition."
"Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began,
A mighty hunter he; his prey was man."
The caged lion may cease to roar, and try no longer the strength of the
bars of his prison, and lie with his head between his mighty paws and
snuff the polluted air as though he heeded not. But is he contented?
Does he not instinctively long for the freedom of the forest and the
plain? Yes, he is a lion still. Our poor and forlorn brother whom thou
hast labelled "slave," is also a man. He may be unfortunate, weak,
helpless, and despised, and hated, nevertheless he is a man. His God and
thine has stamped on his forehead his title to his inalienable rights in
characters that can be read by every intelligent being. Pitiless storms
of outrage may have beaten upon his defenseless head and he may have
descended through ages of oppression, yet he is a man. God made him
such, and his brother cannot unmake him. Woe, woe to him who attempts to
commit the accursed crime.
Slavery commenced its dreadful work in kidnapping unoffending men in a
foreign and distant land, and in piracy on the seas. The plunderers were
not the followers of Mahomet, nor the devotees of Hindooism, nor
benighted pagans, nor idolaters, but people called Christians, and thus
the ruthless traders in the souls and bodies of men fastened upon
Christianity a crime and stain at the sight of which it shudders and
shrieks.
It is guilty of the most heinous iniquities ever perpetrated upon
helpless women and innocent children. Go to the shores of the land of my
forefathers, poor bleeding Africa, which, although she has been
bereaved, and robbed for centuries, is nevertheless beloved by all her
worthy descendants wherever dispersed. Behold a single scene that there
meets your eyes. Turn not away neither from shame, pity, nor
indifference, but look and see the beginning of this cherished and
petted institution. Behold a hundred youthful mothers seated on the
ground, dropping their tears upon the hot sands, and filling the air
with their lamentations.
Why do they weep? Ah, Lord God, thou knowest! Their babes have been
torn from their bosoms and cast upon the plains to die of hunger, or to
be devoured by hyenas or jackals. The little innocents would die on the
"Middle Passage," or suffocate between the decks of the floating
slave-pen, freighted and packed with unparalleled human woe, and the
slavers in mercy have cast them out to perish on their native shores.
Such is the beginning, and no less wicked is the end of that system
which Scribes and Pharisees in the Church and the State pronounce to be
just, humane, benevolent and Christian. If such are the deeds of mercy
wrought by angels, then tell me what works of iniquity there remain for
devils to do?
* * * * *
It is the highly concentrated essence of all conceivable wickedness.
Theft, robbery, pollution, unbridled passion, incest, cruelty,
cold-blooded murder, blasphemy, and defiance of the laws of God. It
teaches children to disregard parental authority. It tears down the
marriage altar, and tramples its sacred ashes under its feet. It creates
and nourishes polygamy. It feeds and pampers its hateful handmaid,
prejudice.
It has divided our national councils. It has engendered deadly strife
between brethren. It has wasted the treasure of the Commonwealth, and
the lives of thousands of brave men, and driven troops of helpless women
and children into yawning tombs. It has caused the bloodiest civil war
recorded in the book of time. It has shorn this nation of its locks of
strength that was rising as a young lion in the Western world. It has
offered us as a sacrifice to the jealousy and cupidity of tyrants,
despots, and adventurers of foreign countries. It has opened a door
through which a usurper, a perjured, but a powerful prince, might
stealthily enter and build an empire on the golden borders of our
southwestern frontier, and which is but a stepping-stone to further and
unlimited conquests on this continent. It has desolated the fairest
portions of our land, "until the wolf long since driven back by the
march of civilization returns after the lapse of a hundred years and
howls amidst its ruins."
It seals up the Bible, and mutilates its sacred truths, and flies into
the face of the Almighty, and impiously asks, "Who art thou that I
should obey thee?" Such are the outlines of this fearful national sin;
and yet the condition to which it reduces man, it is affirmed, is the
best that can possibly be devised for him.
When inconsistencies similar in character, and no more glaring, passed
beneath the eye of the Son of God, no wonder he broke forth in language
of vehement denunciation. Ye Scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites! Ye
blind guides! Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he
is made ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Ye
are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful without,
but within are full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness!
Let us here take up the golden rule, and adopt the self-application mode
of reasoning to those who hold these erroneous views. Come, gird up thy
loins and answer like a man, if thou canst. Is slavery, as it is seen in
its origin, continuance, and end the best possible condition for thee?
Oh, no! Wilt thou bear that burden on thy shoulders, which thou
wouldest lay upon thy fellow-man? No. Wilt thou bear a part of it, or
remove a little of its weight with one of thy fingers? The sharp and
indignant answer is no, no! Then how, and when, and where, shall we
apply to thee the golden rule, which says, "Therefore all things that ye
would that others should do to you, do ye even so unto them, for this is
the law and the prophets."
Let us have the testimony of the wise and great of ancient and modern
times:
"Sages who wrote and warriors who bled."
Plato declared that "Slavery is a system of complete injustice."
Socrates wrote that "Slavery is a system of outrage and robbery."
Cyrus said, "To fight in order not to be a slave is noble."
If Cyrus had lived in our land a few years ago he would have been
arrested for using incendiary language, and for inciting servile
insurrection, and the royal fanatic would have been hanged on a gallows
higher than Haman. But every man is fanatical when his soul is warmed by
the generous fires of liberty. Is it then truly noble to fight in order
not to be a slave? The Chief Magistrate of the nation, and our rulers,
and all truly patriotic men think so; and so think legions of black men,
who for a season were scorned and rejected, but who came quickly and
cheerfully when they were at last invited, bearing a heavy burden of
proscriptions upon their shoulders, and having faith in God, and in
their generous fellow-countrymen, they went forth to fight a double
battle. The foes of their country were before them, while the enemies of
freedom and of their race surrounded them.
Augustine, Constantine, Ignatius, Polycarp, Maximus, and the most
illustrious lights of the ancient church denounced the sin of
slave-holding.
Thomas Jefferson said at a period of his life, when his judgment was
matured, and his experience was ripe, "There is preparing, I hope, under
the auspices of heaven, a way for a total emancipation."
The sainted Washington said, near the close of his moral career, and
when the light of eternity was beaming upon him, "It is among my first
wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country shall
be abolished by law. I know of but one way by which this can be done,
and that is by legislative action, and so far as my vote can go, it
shall not be wanting."
The other day, when the light of Liberty streamed through this marble
pile, and the hearts of the noble band of patriotic statesmen leaped for
joy, and this our national capitol shook from foundation to dome with
the shouts of a ransomed people, then methinks the spirits of
Washington, Jefferson, the Jays, the Adamses, and Franklin, and
Lafayette, and Giddings, and Lovejoy, and those of all the mighty, and
glorious dead, remembered by history, because they were faithful to
truth, justice, and liberty, were hovering over the august assembly.
Though unseen by mortal eyes, doubtless they joined the angelic choir,
and said, Amen.
Pope Leo X. testifies, "That not only does the Christian religion, but
nature herself, cry out against a state of slavery."
Patrick Henry said, "We should transmit to posterity our abhorrence of
slavery." So also thought the Thirty-Eighth Congress.
Lafayette proclaimed these words: "Slavery is a dark spot on the face of
the nation." God be praised, that stain will soon be wiped out.
Jonathan Edwards declared "that to hold a man in slavery is to be every
day guilty of robbery, or of man stealing."
Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing, in a Letter on the Annexation of Texas
in 1837, writes as follows: "The evil of slavery speaks for itself. To
state is to condemn the institution. The choice which every freeman
makes of death for his child and for every thing he loves in preference
to slavery shows what it is. * * * "Every principle of our government
and religion condemns slavery. The spirit of our age condemns it. The
decree of the civilized world has gone out against it."
* * * * *
Moses, the greatest of all lawgivers and legislators, said, while his
face was yet radiant with the light of Sinai: "Whoso stealeth a man, and
selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to
death." The destroying angel has gone forth through this land to execute
the fearful penalties of God's broken law.
The representatives of the nation have bowed with reverence to the
Divine edict, and laid the axe at the root of the tree, and thus saved
succeeding generations from the guilt of oppression, and from the wrath
of God.
Statesmen, jurists, and philosophers, most renowned for learning, and
most profound in every department of science and literature, have
testified against slavery; while oratory has brought its costliest,
golden treasures, and laid them on the altar of God and of freedom, it
has aimed its fiercest lightning and loudest thunder at the strongholds
of tyranny, injustice, and despotism.
From the days of Balak to those of Isaiah and Jeremiah, up to the times
of Paul, and through every age of the Christian Church, the sons of
thunder have denounced the abominable thing. The heroes who stood in the
shining ranks of the hosts of the friends of human progress, from Cicero
to Chatham, and Burke, Sharp, Wilberforce, and Thomas Clarkson, and
Curran, assaulted the citadel of despotism. The orators and statesmen of
our own land, whether they belong to the past, or to the present age,
will live and shine in the annals of history, in proportion as they have
dedicated their genius and talents to the defence of Justice and man's
God-given rights.
All the poets who live in sacred and profane history have charmed the
world with their most enchanting strains, when they have tuned their
lyres to the praise of Liberty. When the muses can no longer decorate
her altars with their garlands, then they hang their harps upon the
willows and weep.
From Moses to Terence and Homer, from thence to Milton and Cowper,
Thomson and Thomas Campbell, and on to the days of our own bards, our
Bryants, Longfellows, Whittiers, Morrises, and Bokers, all have
presented their best gifts to the interests and rights of man.
Every good principle, and every great and noble power, have been made
the subjects of the inspired verse, and the songs of poets. But who of
them has attempted to immortalize slavery? You will search in vain the
annals of the world to find an instance. Should any attempt the
sacrilegious work, his genius would fall to the earth as if smitten by
the lightning of heaven. Should he lift his hand to write a line in its
praise, or defence, the ink would freeze on the point of his pen.
Could we array in one line, representatives of all the families of men,
beginning with those lowest in the scale of being, and should we put to
them the question, Is it right and desirable that you should be reduced
to the condition of slaves, to be registered with chattels, to have your
persons, and your lives, and the products of your labor, subjected to
the will and the interests of others? Is it right and just that the
persons of your wives and children should be at the disposal of others,
and be yielded to them for the purpose of pampering their lusts and
greed of gain? Is it right to lay heavy burdens on other men's shoulders
which you would not remove with one of your fingers? From the rude
savage and barbarian the negative response would come, increasing in
power and significance as it rolled up the line. And when those should
reply, whose minds and hearts are illuminated with the highest
civilization and with the spirit of Christianity, the answer deep-toned
and prolonged would thunder forth, no, no!
With all the moral attributes of God on our side, cheered as we are by
the voices of universal human nature,--in view of the best interests of
the present and future generations--animated with the noble desire to
furnish the nations of the earth with a worthy example, let the verdict
of death which has been brought in against slavery, by the Thirty-Eighth
Congress, be affirmed and executed by the people. Let the gigantic
monster perish. Yes, perish now, and perish forever!
It is often asked when and where will the demands of the reformers of
this and coming ages end? It is a fair question, and I will answer.
When all unjust and heavy burdens shall be removed from every man in the
land. When all invidious and proscriptive distinctions shall be blotted
out from our laws, whether they be constitutional, statute, or municipal
laws. When emancipation shall be followed by enfranchisement, and all
men holding allegiance to the government shall enjoy every right of
American citizenship. When our brave and gallant soldiers shall have
justice done unto them. When the men who endure the sufferings and
perils of the battle-field in the defence of their country, and in order
to keep our rulers in their places, shall enjoy the well-earned
privilege of voting for them. When in the army and navy, and in every
legitimate and honorable occupation, promotion shall smile upon merit
without the slightest regard to the complexion of a man's face. When
there shall be no more class-legislation, and no more trouble
concerning the black man and his rights, than there is in regard to
other American citizens. When, in every respect, he shall be equal
before the law, and shall be left to make his own way in the social
walks of life.
We ask, and only ask, that when our poor frail barks are launched on
life's ocean--
"Bound on a voyage of awful length
And dangers little known,"
that, in common with others, we may be furnished with rudder, helm, and
sails, and charts, and compass. Give us good pilots to conduct us to the
open seas; lift no false lights along the dangerous coasts, and if it
shall please God to send us propitious winds, or fearful gales, we shall
survive or perish as our energies or neglect shall determine. We ask no
special favors, but we plead for justice. While we scorn unmanly
dependence; in the name of God, the universal Father, we demand the
right to live, and labor, and to enjoy the fruits of our toil. The good
work which God has assigned for the ages to come, will be finished, when
our national literature shall be so purified as to reflect a faithful
and a just light upon the character and social habits of our race, and
the brush, and pencil, and chisel, and lyre of art, shall refuse to lend
their aid to scoff at the afflictions of the poor, or to caricature, or
ridicule a long-suffering people. When caste and prejudice in Christian
churches shall be utterly destroyed, and shall be regarded as totally
unworthy of Christians, and at variance with the principles of the
gospel. When the blessings of the Christian religion, and of sound,
religious education, shall be freely offered to all, then, and not till
then, shall the effectual labors of God's people and God's instruments
cease.
If slavery has been destroyed merely from _necessity_, let every class
be enfranchised at the dictation of _justice_. Then we shall have a
Constitution that shall be reverenced by all: rulers who shall be
honored, and revered, and a Union that shall be sincerely loved by a
brave and patriotic people, and which can never be severed.
Great sacrifices have been made by the people; yet, greater still are
demanded ere atonement can be made for our national sins. Eternal
justice holds heavy mortgages against us, and will require the payment
of the last farthing. We have involved ourselves in the sin of
unrighteous gain, stimulated by luxury, and pride, and the love of power
and oppression; and prosperity and peace can be purchased only by blood,
and with tears of repentance. We have paid some of the fearful
installments, but there are other heavy obligations to be met.
The great day of the nation's judgment has come, and who shall be able
to stand? Even we, whose ancestors have suffered the afflictions which
are inseparable from a condition of slavery, for the period of two
centuries and a half, now pity our land and weep with those who weep.
Upon the total and complete destruction of this accursed sin depends the
safety and perpetuity of our Republic and its excellent institutions.
Let slavery die. It has had a long and fair trial. God himself has
pleaded against it. The enlightened nations of the earth have condemned
it. Its death warrant is signed by God and man. Do not commute its
sentence. Give it no respite, but let it be ignominiously executed.
Honorable Senators and Representatives! Illustrious rulers of this great
nation! I cannot refrain this day from invoking upon you, in God's name,
the blessings of millions who were ready to perish, but to whom a new
and better life has been opened by your humanity, justice, and
patriotism. You have said, "Let the Constitution of the country be so
amended that slavery and involuntary servitude shall no longer exist in
the United States, except in punishment for crime." Surely, an act so
sublime could not escape Divine notice; and doubtless the deed has been
recorded in the archives of heaven. Volumes may be appropriated to your
praise and renown in the history of the world. Genius and art may
perpetuate the glorious act on canvass and in marble, but certain and
more lasting monuments in commemoration of your decision are already
erected in the hearts and memories of a grateful people.
The nation has begun its exodus from worse than Egyptian bondage; and I
beseech you that you say to the people, "that they go forward." With the
assurance of God's favor in all things done in obedience to his
righteous will, and guided by day and by night by the pillars of cloud
and fire, let us not pause until we have reached the other and safe side
of the stormy and crimson sea. Let freemen and patriots mete out
complete and equal justice to all men, and thus prove to mankind the
superiority of our Democratic, Republican Government.
Favored men, and honored of God as his instruments, speedily finish the
work which he has given you to do. Emancipate, enfranchise, educate, and
give the blessings of the gospel to every American citizen.
Then before us a path of prosperity will open, and upon us will descend
the mercies and favors of God. Then shall the people of other countries,
who are standing tip-toe on the shores of every ocean, earnestly looking
to see the end of this amazing conflict, behold a Republic that is
sufficiently strong to outlive the ruin and desolations of civil war,
having the magnanimity to do justice to the poorest and weakest of her
citizens. Thus shall we give to the world the form of a model Republic,
founded on the principles of justice, and humanity, and Christianity, in
which the burdens of war and the blessings of peace are equally borne
and enjoyed by all.
CRISPUS ATTUCKS[14]
BY GEORGE L. RUFFIN
GEORGE L. RUFFIN _(1834-1885) the first Negro judge to be appointed in
Massachusetts, graduated in Law from Harvard, 1869. He served in the
legislature of Massachusetts two terms, and in the Boston Council two
terms._
[Note 14: Extracts from an address delivered before the Banneker
Literary Club, of Boston, Mass., on the occasion of the commemoration of
the "Boston Massacre," March 7, 1876.]
The fifth of March, 1770, had been a cold day, and a slight fall of snow
had covered the ground, but at nine o'clock at night it was clear and
cold, not a cloud to be seen in the sky, and the moon was shining
brightly. A British guard was patrolling the streets with clanking
swords and overbearing swagger. A sentry was stationed in Dock Square. A
party of young men, four in number, came out of a house in Cornhill. One
of the soldiers was whirling his sword about his head, striking fire
with it; the sentry challenged one of the four young men; there was no
good blood between them, and it took but little to start a disturbance.
An apprentice boy cried out to one of the guards, "You haven't paid my
master for dressing your hair!" A soldier said, "Where are the d---- d
Yankee boogers, I'll kill them!" A boy's head was split, there was more
quarrelling between the young men and the guard, great noise and
confusion; a vast concourse of excited people soon collected; cries of
"Kill them!" "Drive them out!" "They have no business here!" were
heard; some citizens were knocked down, as also were some soldiers.
Generally speaking, the soldiers got the worst of it; they were
reinforced, but steadily the infuriated citizens drove them back until
they were forced to take refuge in the Custom-House, upon the steps of
which they were pelted with snowballs and pieces of ice.
By this time the whole town was aroused; exaggerated accounts of the
event in Dock Square flew like wild-fire all over the settlement; the
people turned out _en masse_ in the streets and, to add to the general
din, the bells of the town were rung. The regiment which held the town
at that time was the 29th. Captain Preston seemed to have been in
command. He was sent for, went to the Custom-House, learned what had
occurred, and at once put troops in motion. On they came up King Street,
now State Street, with fixed bayonets, clearing everything before them
as they came. They had nearly reached the head of King Street, when they
met with opposition. A body of citizens had been formed nearby, and came
pushing violently through the street then called Cornhill, around into
King Street. They were armed only with clubs, sticks, and pieces of ice,
but on they came. Nothing daunted, they went up to the points of the
soldiers' bayonets. The long pent-up feeling of resentment against a
foreign soldiery was finding a vent. This was the time and the
opportunity to teach tyrants that freemen can at least strike back,
though for the time they strike in vain.
At the head of this body of citizens was a stalwart colored man, Crispus
Attucks. He was the leading spirit of their body, and their spokesman.
They pressed the British sorely on all sides, making the best use of
their rude arms, crying, "They dare not strike!" "Let us drive them
out!" The soldiers stood firm; the reach of their long bayonets
protected them from any serious injury for a while.
From time to time Attucks' voice could be heard urging his companions
on. Said he, "The way to get rid of these soldiers is to attack the main
guard; strike at the root! This is the nest!" At that time some one gave
the order to fire. Captain Preston said he did not; at any rate the
order was given. The soldiers fired. It was a death dealing volley. Of
the citizens three lay dead, two mortally wounded, and a number more or
less injured. Crispus Attucks, James Caldwell, and Samuel Gray were
killed outright. Attucks fell, his face to the foe, with two bullets in
his breast.
That night closed an eventful day. The first martyr-blood had reddened
the streets of Boston, and the commencement of the downfall of British
rule in America had set in. Said Daniel Webster, "From that moment we
may date the severance of the British Empire. The patriotic fires
kindled in the breasts of those earnest and true men, upon whose necks
the British yoke never sat easily, never were quenched after that
massacre, until the invader had been driven from the land and
independence had been achieved. The sight of the blood of their comrades
in King Street quickened their impulses, and hastened the day for a
more general outbreak, which we now call the Revolutionary War." This
was no mob, as some have been disposed to call it. They had not the low
and groveling spirit which usually incites mobs. This was resistance to
tyranny; this was striking for homes and firesides; this was the noblest
work which a patriot can ever perform. As well call Lexington a mob and
Bunker Hill a mob. I prefer to call this skirmish in King Street on the
5th of March, 1770, as Anson Burlingame called it, "The dawn of the
Revolution."
About that time the American people set out to found a government to be
dedicated to Freedom, which was to remain an asylum to the oppressed of
all lands forever. The central idea of this government was to be
Liberty, and a declaration was made by them to the world that all men
are created free and equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. This was the government to be established in the
land which had been fought for and won in the sacrifice of the blood of
both black and white men. Did they do it? Did they intend to do it? Did
they believe in and intend to carry out this magnificent declaration of
principles--a declaration which startled the crowned heads of Europe and
sent a thrill of delight to the hearts of the lovers of liberty through
Christendom? No, they did not do it, neither did they intend to do it!
This manifesto of July 4, 1776, was a fraud and a deception; it was the
boldest falsification known to history; it was a sham and a lie. Instead
of establishing freedom, they built, fostered and perpetuated slavery;
instead of equality, they gave us inequality; instead of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, they gave us death, bondage, and misery;
instead of rearing on these shores a beautiful temple to Liberty, they
made a foul den for slavery; and this country, which should have been
the garden-spot of the world, covered with a prosperous and happy
population of freemen, was, under the guidance of traitors to Liberty,
made the prison-house of slaves, and betrayed in the house of her
friends. The Goddess of Liberty, for nearly one hundred years after the
establishment of our Government, sat in chains.
Attucks was in feelings, sympathies, and in all other respects,
essentially an American, and so were the other colored patriots of the
Revolution, and why shouldn't they be? They were born and bred here, and
knew no other country; as was true of their fathers. They had been here
as long as the Puritans. They came here the same year, 1620; in fact,
had been here a little longer, for while Plymouth Rock was only reached
in December of that year, the blacks were at Jamestown in the early
spring. In every difficulty with the mother country, the colored men
took sides with the colonists, and on every battle-field, when danger
was to be met, they were found shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the
Republicans, sharing the burden of war. At Lexington, where the farmers
hastily seized their muskets and gathered on the plain, and at the
bridge, to resist with the sacrifice of their lives the approach of the
British forces, Prince Estabrook, "Negro man" as the _Salem Gazette_ of
that day called him, rallied with his neighbors and comrades in arms,
and fell on the field, a wounded man, fighting the foe. He, like
Attucks, was both of and with the people. Their cause was his cause,
their home was his home, their fight was his fight. At Bunker Hill, a
few months later, we know there was a goodly number of colored men;
history has saved to us the names of some of them; how many there were
whose names were not recorded, of course, we cannot now tell. Andover
sent Tites Coburn, Alexander Ames, and Barzilai Low; Plymouth sent Cato
Howe, and Peter Salem immortalized his name by leveling the piece in
that battle which laid low Major Pitcairn. It is fair to presume that
other towns, like Andover, sent in the ranks of their volunteers colored
Americans. In the town of Raynham, within forty miles of Boston, there
is now a settlement of colored people who have been there for three or
four generations, the founder of which, Toby Gilmore, was an old
Revolutionary veteran who had served his country faithfully. Stoughton
Corner contributed Quack Matrick to the ranks of the Revolutionary
soldiers; Lancaster sent Job Lewis, East Bridgewater Prince Richards. So
did many other towns and States in this Commonwealth. Rhode Island
raised a regiment which did signal service at Red Bank in completely
routing the Hessian force under Colonel Donop, but it was not in
distinctively colored regiments or companies that colored men chiefly
fought in the Revolution; it was in the ranks of any and all regiments,
and by the side of their white companions in arms they were mainly to be
found.
Attucks was born not a great way from Boston, at Farmingham, where his
brothers and sisters lived for a long time. At some time during his life
he was a slave; whether he was a slave at the time of the occurrence of
the events I am now relating is not so clear. One of the witnesses at
the trial of the soldiers testified that Attucks "belonged to New
Providence, and was here on his way to North Carolina." I am inclined to
think that at this time, in 1770, he was in the possession of his
liberty, having got it in the same manner that very many slaves since
obtained their freedom, by giving "leg-bail." Nearly twenty years before
he had run away from his master, as appears from an advertisement in the
_Boston Gazette_ of November 20, 1750. From this advertisement it would
appear that at the time of the engagement in King Street, Attucks was
about 47 years of age, a powerful man, and an ugly foe to encounter.
Twenty years of freedom, and moving from one part of the country to the
other as far away as North Carolina, must have enlarged his views and
given him the spirit of a free man. That he partook of the spirit which
animated those of his countrymen who would throw off the British yoke is
shown by the language used by him on this memorable occasion. "Let us
drive out the rebels; they have no business here!" said he, and they
re-echoed them. These words are full of meaning; they tell the story of
the Revolution.
One hundred and six years have passed away. King Street and Royal
Exchange Lane have lost their names. Cornhill has lost its identity. The
King's collectors no longer gather at the Custom-House, and epauletted
British officers no longer lounge away winter evenings in the
reading-room of Concert Hall; that once stately pile is no more. One
hundred and six years ago, George the Third was king, and these colonies
were British dependencies. Since that time marvelous changes have been
made in the world's history. Probably never before have so many and so
great changes taken place in the same space of time. Slavery then
existed in Massachusetts, as it did in the other colonies. It grew to
huge proportions, and dominated all other interests in the land, and for
years brought shame and disgrace upon us.
But our country now stands redeemed, disenthralled. The promises of 1776
are now realized. The immortal heroes of that age did not die in vain.
We have now, thanks to the Author of All Good, a free country, a
Republic of imperial proportions, a domain as extensive and a government
as powerful as that of the nations of antiquity, or of the present time,
and better than all over all this broad land there does not walk a
slave. In this centennial anniversary of the nation's existence it is
quite in order to suggest, and I do suggest that a monument be erected
to the memory of the first martyr of the Revolution--Crispus Attucks.
ORATION ON THE OCCASION OF THE UNVEILING OF FREEDMEN'S MONUMENT[15]
BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS
[Note 15: Oration delivered by Frederick Douglass on the occasion of
the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument, in memory of Abraham Lincoln,
in Lincoln Park, Washington, D. C., April 14, 1876.]
_Friends and Fellow Citizens:_
I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has
caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have to-day.
This occasion is, in some respects, remarkable. Wise and thoughtful men
of our race, who shall come after us and study the lesson of our history
in the United States; who shall survey the long and dreary spaces over
which we have traveled; who shall count the links in the great chain of
events by which we have reached our present position, will make a note
of this occasion; they will think of it and speak of it with a sense of
manly pride and complacency.
I congratulate you, also, upon the very favorable circumstances in which
we meet to-day. They are high, inspiring, and uncommon. They lend grace,
glory, and significance to the object for which we have met. Nowhere
else in this great country, with its uncounted towns and cities,
unlimited wealth, and immeasurable territory extending from sea to sea,
could conditions be found more favorable to the success of this occasion
than at this place.
We stand to-day at the national center to perform something like a
national act--an act which is to go into history; and we are here where
every pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt, and
reciprocated. A thousand wires, fed with thought and winged with
lightning, put us in instantaneous communication with the loyal and true
men over this country.
Few facts could better illustrate the vast and wonderful change which
has taken place in our condition as a people than the fact of our
assembling here for the purpose we have to-day. Harmless, beautiful,
proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that
no such demonstration would have been tolerated here twenty years ago.
The spirit of slavery and barbarism, which still lingers to blight and
destroy in some dark and distant parts of our country, would have made
our assembling here the signal and excuse for opening upon us the
flood-gates of wrath and violence. That we are here in peace to-day is a
compliment and a credit to American civilization, and a prophecy of
still greater enlightenment and progress in the future. I refer to the
past, not in malice, but simply to place more distinctly in front the
gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow
citizens and ourselves, and to congratulate all upon the contrast
between now and then; the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand
blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its
ten thousand evils to both races--white and black. In view, then, of the
past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our
bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before
us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour.
Friends and fellow citizens, the story of our presence here is soon and
easily told. We are here in the District of Columbia, here in the City
of Washington, the most luminous point of American territory, a city
recently transformed and made beautiful in its body and in its spirit;
we are here, in the place where the ablest and best men of the country
are sent to devise the policy, enact the laws, and shape the destiny of
the Republic; we are here, with the stately pillars and majestic dome of
the Capitol of the nation looking down upon us; we are here, with the
broad earth freshly adorned with the foliage and flowers of spring for
our church, and all races, colors, and conditions of men for our
congregation--in a word, we are here to express, as best we may, by
appropriate forms and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high,
and pre-eminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our
country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can
stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the
high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring
works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the
memories of great public men. It is the sentiment, which from year to
year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal,
brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and
Liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often,
in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of
Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of
poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the Republic
lives.
For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of
the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march
conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are
always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first
time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an
American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the
fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the Republic; let men of
all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less
than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of
liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by
everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the
amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with
the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives,
reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of
that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest
intelligence and the calmest judgment in the country; in the presence of
the Supreme Court and Chief Justice of the United States, to whose
decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the
steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States,
with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored
people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom,
near the close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have
now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring
granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men
of this generation may read, and those of after-coming generations may
read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham
Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.
Fellow citizens, in what we have said and done today, and in what we may
say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything like arrogance and
assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior devotion to the
character, history, and memory of the illustrious name whose monument we
have here dedicated to-day. We fully comprehend the relations of Abraham
Lincoln, both to ourselves and to the white people of the United States.
Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is
never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a
great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and
imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades--the silent
continents of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit,
even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory,
Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our
man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits
of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.
He was pre-eminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the
welfare of the white man. He was ready and willing at any time during
the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice
the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of
the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he
was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair
upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of
slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive
and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own
race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the States where it
existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to
draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed
constitutional guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of
the slave system anywhere inside of the slave States. He was willing to
pursue, re-capture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and
to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were
already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong was
not the special object of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to
you, my white fellow citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once
full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects
of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the
children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best, only his step-children;
children by adoption, children by force of circumstances and necessity.
To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and
perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures
high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great
and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at this
altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of
the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their
forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect; let their bases be upon
solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue,
overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while, in the
abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic
devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble
offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for
you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson,
one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers
rose in rebellion to oppose.
Fellow citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion--merely a thing
of the moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our
hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were
no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt and
defeat, than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory. Our
faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never
failed. When he tarried long in the mountains; when he strangely told us
that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us
to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our
arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as
colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as
colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union, if he could,
with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of
General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular Commander of the
Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was
more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress
rebellion; when we saw all this and more, we were at times grieved,
stunned, and greatly bewildered, but our hearts believed, while they
ached and bled. Nor was this, at that time, a blind and unreasoning
superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surround him; despite the
tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a
comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance
for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and
estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious
delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts, torn
from their connection; not by partial and imperfect glimpses caught at
inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern
logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which "shapes our
ends, rough hew them as we will," we came to the conclusion that the
hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of
Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ
on special occasions; it mattered little to us when we fully knew him,
whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that
Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living
and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things,
must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the
United States.
When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of
Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer
is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome,
though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under
his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously
pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of
prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our
whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon, after
all, as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our
brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being
clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United
States; under his rule, we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and
dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets
on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high
footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule,
we saw the independence of the black Republic of Haiti, the special
object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her
minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the City of
Washington; under his rule, we saw the internal slave-trade, which so
long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the
District of Columbia; under his rule, we saw, for the first time, the
law enforced against the foreign slave-trade, and the first slave-trader
hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by
the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the
Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves,
and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds;
under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln,
after giving the slave-holders three months' grace in which to save
their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though
special in it
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