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.