On being introduced by Hon. B. K. BRUCE, on the occasion of the
twenty-third anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia, FREDERICK DOUGLASS spoke as follows:
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: Your committee of arrangements were pleased
to select me as your orator of the day, on an occasion similar to this,
two years ago. At that time, while appreciating the honor conferred upon
me, I ventured to express the wish that some one of the many competent
colored young men of this city and District had been chosen to discharge
this honorable duty in my stead. There were excellent reasons for that
wish then, and there are even much better reasons for the same wish now.
Time and cultivation have largely added to the number of those from whom
a suitable selection might have been made, and one of these silent, yet
powerful, agents whose mission it is to create and destroy all things
mortal has left me much less desire for such distinguished service now
than two years ago. Happily, however, the burden is not heavy or
grievous, and the proper story of this occasion is simple, familiar, and
easily told. In observing the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in
the District of Columbia, we attract the attention of the American
people to one of the most important and significant events in their
national history, and at the same time evince a grateful and proper
sense of the wonderful changes for the better that have taken place in
our condition, and in that of the country generally. Though in its
immediate and legal operation this act of emancipation was local in its
range as to territory, and limited in its application as to the number
of persons liberated by it, morally it looms upon us as a grand,
comprehensive, and far-reaching measure.
To appreciate its importance we must not consider it as a single
independent act standing alone, nor as one pertaining to this District
only, nor to the colored people only. We must regard it as a part of a
series of splendid public measures, as one of so many steps in the
national progress looking to one beneficent and glorious result, a large
contribution to the honor and welfare of the whole country. It was the
auspicious beginning of a great movement in the councils of the nation,
made necessary by the war, and one which finally culminated in the
complete and permanent abolition of slavery, not only in the District of
Columbia, but in every part of the Republic. Thus viewed it was the one
act which broke the gloomy spell that bound the nation in the bonds of
servile, unnatural reverence and awe for slavery. It withdrew the
sympathy of European nations from the rebellion; it brought the moral
support of the civilized world to the loyal cause; it erased the foulest
blot that ever stained our national escutcheon; it gave to the war for
the Union a logical, humane, and consistent purpose; it solved a problem
which was the standing grief of good men, and the perplexity of
statesmen for ages; it gave courage and hope to our armies in the field;
it weakened the rebellion; it raised the whole nation to a higher and
happier plane of civilization, and placed the American people where they
never were before, in a position where they could consistently and
effectively preach liberty to all the nations of the world.
The 16th of April, the anniversary of this great act of the nation,
strangely and erroneously enough has been considered simply as the
colored man’s day only. The business of consecrating and preserving its
memory has been, by common consent, relegated to him exclusively. But,
in this, our fellow-citizens have been more generous to us than just to
themselves. Colored men have very little more reason to hallow this day
than have white men. If it brought freedom to us, it brought peace and
safety to them, and hence they may well enough unite in this and similar
celebrations, and regard the day as theirs as well as ours. No truth
taught by our national history is more evident than this, that while
slavery dominated the southern half of the Republic, and free
institutions prevailed in the northern half, peace and harmony between
the two sections were utterly and forever impossible. No man can serve
two masters, and the attempt of our Government to do this was a
stupendous failure. The union between liberty and slavery was a marriage
without love, a house divided against itself; a couple unequally yoked
together, held together by external force, not by moral cohesion; it
brought happiness to neither, and misery to both.
Like any other embodiment of social and material interest peculiar to a
given community, slavery generated its own sentiments, its own morals,
manners, and religion; and begot a character in all around it in favor
of its own existence.
In nearly everything indigenous and peculiar to society in the two
sections, they were as separate and distinct as are any two nations on
the globe. The longer they were thus linked together in the bonds of
outward union, the more palpable became their points of difference, and
the more passionate became their hostility to each other. Liberty became
more and more the glory of the North, and slavery more and more the idol
of the South. Not even the bonds of Christian fellowship were strong
enough to hold together the churches of the two sections.
In view of this settled and growing antagonism, only one of three
courses was opened to the nation: The first was to make the country all
slaves, the second was to make it all free, and the third was to divide
the Union, and let each section set up a government of its own--the one
based upon the system of slavery, and the other based upon the
principles of the Declaration of American Independence.
Thanks to the wisdom, loyalty, patriotism, courage, and statesmanship
developed by the crisis, the nation rejected equally the idea of making
the country all slaves, and permitting two separate nations, with
hostile civilizations, side by side, with a chafing, bloody border
between them, but chose to give us one country, one citizenship, and one
liberty for all the people, and hence we are here this evening. There
was never any physical reason for the dissolution of the Union. The
geographical and topographical conditions of the country all served to
unite rather than to divide the two sections. It was moral not physical
dynamite that blew the two sections asunder.