EARLY PROBLEMS OF FREEDOM
The close of the Civil War left many of the agencies of emancipation
without a cause. The anti-slavery publications, the state and national
anti-slavery societies, “vigilance committees,” and the vast Underground
Railroad system, saw their purposes accomplished in the terms of peace.
The American Anti-Slavery Society, which had been the longest in
existence, and which, under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison,
had done more for freedom than any other single agency, was now ready to
wind up its affairs. When a proposition was made for its dissolution,
Frederick Douglass opposed it, giving his reasons in these words: “I
felt that the work of the society was not done, that it had not
fulfilled its mission, which was not merely to emancipate but to elevate
the enslaved class ... that the Negro still had a cause and that he
needed my pen and voice to plead for it.”
In taking this position, he showed that he had a clear and far-reaching
comprehension of the many and serious problems and obligations that
would in time result from the enforced emancipation of his people. He
clearly foresaw that these problems were of a kind which had never
before come within the range and scope of our national experience, and
that if the country were to make the most of the good results of the
war, and minimize its evils, the machinery of liberation and destruction
must somehow be converted to the service of peace and construction. Two
great questions had been settled, that the United States was to remain
an indivisible nation, and that slavery was henceforth impossible in
this nation.
The problems growing out of these achievements are still difficult.
Before the Civil War, the people of the United States might have been
classified as non-slave-holding and slave-holding white people; enslaved
and free Negroes. Now, two of these classes, the slave-holders and the
enslaved Negroes, disappeared and in the latter’s stead, a new element
was injected into the population, the freedmen, 4,000,000 souls, utterly
destitute, without learning, without experience, and without traditions;
dependent for their guidance, and almost for bare existence, upon the
direction and good-will of the older elements. If, after the war, the
South and the North could have united to repair the damages and solve
the problems the conflict had left behind it, the history of the colored
people in America, as well as their present condition, might have been
different from what it is.
In facing the problems of reconstruction, the people of the North had no
precedents and little knowledge of the Negro’s character to guide them.
The men who had the responsibility of providing for the present and
future, of rehabilitating the South on the basis of freedom, were
trained to treat every question, social and political, from the
standpoint of party politics. But reconstruction needed the services of
the sociologist more than of the party leader. There were but few in
public life capable of treating these matters in a non-partisan, a
non-sectional, and a scientific spirit. Men could not so quickly
overcome the animosities engendered by the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln,
who alone seemed to have a spirit large enough to be the President of
all the people, even to the least of them, was gone, and there was none
in public service to take his place. While others acted in the spirit of
war, he acted in the spirit of peace. In managing large questions, he
had a wonderful insight into the things that would aggravate conditions
and a fine courage in avoiding them, until they had spent their force
with as little harm as possible. His penetrative powers, the contagion
of his kindly spirit, his unswerving love for what was just, were needed
quite as much after as before and during the civil strife. Had Mr.
Lincoln lived, his clear vision, it is safe to say, would have avoided
many of the evils to which the country has since fallen heir. As it was,
however much the white people in slavery’s former domain may have
suffered, the Negro has borne the brunt of every mistake of the period
of Reconstruction.
The Southern people had lost (so it seemed at the time at least)
everything that was worth having and fighting for,—their “cause,” their
property in slaves, their prestige, and their political supremacy. Their
homes were devastated and their plantations ravaged by the conquering
Yankees. Their task was not to build up what had been destroyed, but to
begin anew. It is asking too much to expect that they could have faced
these conditions with a cheerful spirit. The slaves, as property, were
now free, and this freedom was regarded as a punishment visited upon
their former masters.
Free labor was new, and apart from this there was none of it to take the
place of that of the liberated slaves. Furthermore, the white people had
little or no faith in their possible usefulness. They feared that the
Negro as a free man would not work, would not honor his contracts, and
would use his liberty to commit all sorts of crimes against society.
They could not, at once, rid themselves of the feeling that physical
compulsion was the only way to keep the Negro within the bounds of law
and labor. Carl Schurz, who, under the authority of the President, made
a very thorough and statesman-like investigation of conditions, issued
an official report of his findings, and it is clear from this paper
that, if the Southern people could have overcome their fears of Negro
freedom, the work of reconstruction would have been greatly simplified.
They, however, were in no frame of mind to accept and honor any program
for reconstruction emanating from the North. They insisted that they
alone knew the Negro and what was best to be done for him and with him.
Between the North and the South, stood the ex-slave, free and that was
all. His situation was anomalous. As Mr. Douglass aptly says, “He was
free from individual masters, but the slave of society.” Yet, because of
his long service to the country, either as a slave or a freeman, he
deserved more than he could possibly have been paid in terms of law,
defining and defending his rights. He was without power and, as Mr.
Douglass in describing him, said, “a man without force, is without the
essential dignity of human nature.”
In this almost totally helpless condition, the North expected too much
of him and the ex-masters too little. It required more than the shock of
four years of internecine war to change the solidarity of slavery into a
society of organized self-helpfulness. A people who had been so long
enslaved could not help being slavish in habits and instincts. They had
little family life, no society, no institution except the church, a
rudimentary conception of common interests, and very few traditions and
ideals. No race ever came into the domain of freedom, independence, and
democracy so little furnished with the elements of self-protection and
self-determining purpose, as did the emancipated slaves forty years ago.
Yet there were everywhere in the South important exceptions to this
condition of race helplessness. Many free colored people, especially in
the cities, were not hopelessly behind in the procession of progress.
They fully understood the meaning of the war and its results. When the
last gun was fired and they saw emancipation as a reality, their joy was
unbounded. In many of the Southern cities, thousands of them gathered in
the open streets and commons, where they shouted and prayed with full
hearts, voicing in songs of jubilee and thanksgiving their gratitude for
their great deliverance. There has been nothing like these
demonstrations in the history of American liberty. No one who saw them
could have any doubt whatever as to the Negro’s appreciation of his
freedom. It is a notable fact that in none of them was ever heard a word
of hatred or revenge toward those who had been responsible for their
long enslavement. Their gratitude was too great to leave room for
resentment. God, Lincoln, and Freedom formed a mysterious trinity in the
new awakening of these emancipated people.
All this was perfectly natural and hopeful, so far as it went, but it
was not long before exultation gave way to the consciousness that this
dearly bought liberty was a serious thing. The Negro capacity for
happiness was large, but he could not live and sustain himself by this
alone. Owning nothing, he had no place to live. Having nothing, he could
get nothing. In addition to the ex-slaves, who were still fastened to
the places where slavery left them and freedom found them, a great
multitude, known as refugees, after emancipation made their way into the
Union lines. When the war closed these were still with the Union army
and dependent upon it for rations. It soon became apparent to those in
authority, that something must be done in a large way by the Federal
government itself to provide for this unorganized horde. To meet this
serious condition, Congress, in the spring of 1865, passed an act
establishing the “Freedmen’s Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and
Refugees.” Its main provisions were as follows:
The Bureau was to have supervision and management of abandoned lands.
It was to look after all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen.
It was to be under the control of a commission appointed by the
President and to continue its labors for one year after the close of
the war.
The Secretary of War was given authority to issue provisions,
clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary needs of freedmen
and their wives and children.
The War Department was to set apart for the use of loyal refugees and
freedmen abandoned lands under the control of the United States Army
and assign to such freedmen, not more than forty acres of land, and to
protect such persons in the possession of such land for at least three
years at an annual rent, not to exceed six per cent. upon the
appraised value of the land. At the end of that time, the tenant was
allowed to purchase it and receive therefor from the government a
certificate of purchase.
In addition to these provisions, the Freedmen’s Bureau was intended to
be a “friendly intermediary” between the ex-masters and ex-slaves.
Nothing could have been done more surely to smooth the way for a kindly
relationship between the two parties in question, if such a relationship
had been possible. General O. O. Howard was the first commissioner of
that Bureau. He had made a record as a soldier in the Union Army, but,
better still, he was a man of humane impulses, without sectional bias,
and of exalted Christian character. The value of his services in the
work of Reconstruction can be easily seen by a glance at some of his
reports made to Congress in 1865–1870.
In these five years of work on the part of the Bureau to bring order out
of chaos, there had been established over 4,000 schools, employing 9,000
teachers and giving instruction to about a quarter of a million pupils
of all ages. In 1870 the school attendance in the old slave-states
amounted to nearly eighty per cent. of the enrollment. The demand for
learning on the part of the colored people, as shown by the Bureau’s
work, was amazing, and afforded a gratifying evidence of their sense of
responsibility as freedmen. The Negroes themselves made a good showing
of what they were able to do by their own efforts in creating the means
for their instruction. They sustained over 1,300 schools and built over
500 school buildings, contributing more than $200,000 out of their
earnings to further the cause of education.
The value of the Freedmen’s Bureau in thus stimulating an interest in
this important subject and in developing a serious sense of
responsibility on the part of the freedmen cannot well be overestimated.
Carl Schurz in his report says:
“The Freedmen’s Bureau would have been an institution of the greatest
value, under competent leadership, had not its organization, to some
extent, been invaded by mentally and morally unfit persons.... Nothing
was needed at this time so much as an acknowledged authority, standing
guard between the master and the ex-slave, commanding and possessing the
confidence and respect of both, to aid the emancipated black man to make
the best possible use of his unaccustomed freedom, and to aid the white
man to whom free Negro labor was a well-nigh incurable idea, in meeting
the difficulties, partly real and partly conjured up by the white man’s
prejudiced imagination.”
The lack of fit men, in sufficient numbers, to continue the good work
inaugurated by the Freedmen’s Bureau was the cause, in great part, of
the failure of Reconstruction methods of helpfulness. There were
employed men of partisan spirit whose vision was clouded by political
aspirations, and thus the future well-being of both races in the South
was not kept paramount. The cause of most of the evils that in a few
years followed and overwhelmed the colored people in the South, was lack
of men strong in character, patriotism, justice, and understanding for
the work in hand. This is true, in spite of the fact that there were
those who were equal to the occasion, but who alone had not the power to
perform the tasks set for them. No greater injury has been done the
colored people of this country than that which resulted from putting
them in a position of political antagonism to their former masters.
But the purposes of this biography do not require a full statement of
the causes that led to the overthrow of the temporary supremacy held by
the freedmen and their Northern allies. A careful reading of the history
of the Southern states since the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to
the Constitution of the United States in 1865, must convince the
impartial reader that the Negroes were less the instigators than the
victims of the mistakes of Reconstruction. Many of those who played the
false rôle of friends and leaders left the freedmen to bear the brunt of
the punishment which they have since suffered patiently, heroically, and
alone. The Negroes of the South during the Reconstruction period were
always amenable to wise direction. Those who were on hand to guide them,
easily won their favor. There seems to be no reason to doubt that, had
it been offered, the freedmen would have followed the leadership of the
best elements in the South as willingly, if not more willingly, than
that which they did accept.
The difficulty was that the Southern people could not in a day, or in a
decade, change their inborn conviction that emancipation was forced upon
them as a punishment. They accepted this punishment in a spirit in which
injured pride, the sense of loss of property, loss of “cause,” and
revenge were elements. But with all these losses and defeats, the
imperious temper of the Southern people suffered no impairment, and they
were in no mood to take hold of the work of Reconstruction in the spirit
of the victorious North.
The South hesitated to act, and the ex-slave had no power to do so. As a
result, the responsibility for movements for the protection of the
Negroes fell to the North. It sought to accomplish this object by giving
freedmen all the rights of citizenship. Under the presuppositions upon
which our government was founded, this step was logical, even though it
may have been, and indeed seems to have been, at that time unwise.
What has been said in the foregoing pages indicates what may be called
the new field of labor for Frederick Douglass after emancipation. When
the great war came to an end and the object for which he had so long
labored was indeed an accomplished fact, he confessed that his great joy
was somewhat tinged with a feeling of sadness. He said, “I felt that I
had reached the end of the noblest part of my life.” He was still in his
prime, and all his faculties were clear and ready for action. He had no
occupation, no business, no profession. His training and associations,
during the previous thirty years, had unfitted him for manual labor, and
he had no fortune that would enable him to live without exertion of some
kind. But thoughts and feelings of this sort were soon swept aside by
new interests and anxieties of the most absorbing character.
In the first place, fresh evidences of his popularity began to manifest
themselves. His struggle for emancipation had been so conspicuous, his
eloquence so stirring, and his participation in all the great questions
of the day so earnest and compelling, that his vogue continued as
before.
In the great diversity of distinguished men and women who figured in the
history of the quarter of a century immediately preceding the Civil War,
Frederick Douglass was in the fullest sense of the word, a “self-made
man.” All kinds of persons were interested in him. His authority on
every matter that concerned the Negro, North or South, was seldom
questioned. His leadership, up to this time, was not often disputed. The
American people manifested greater desire to hear him than ever before
and invitations to lecture began to pour in upon him from colleges,
lyceums, literary societies, and churches. It is scarcely too much to
say that he was one of the most popular men on the lecture platform, and
at a time when such illustrious personages as Henry Ward Beecher,
Wendell Phillips, Theodore Tilton, Anna Dickinson, and Mary A. Livermore
gave to the American lyceum its highest distinction. His themes were no
longer anti-slavery in character. His new lectures bore such titles as,
“Self-made Men,” “The Races of Men,” “William, the Silent,” “John
Brown,” etc., all of which showed a wide reading, and a mastery of the
art of eloquence. In addition to these lectures, he was called upon from
every direction for informal talks on an almost endless variety of
subjects.
But whatever might be the theme or the occasion, he could not get away
from the Negro problem. As he said, “I never rise to speak before any
American audience, without a feeling that my failure or success will
bring harm or benefit to my whole race.” When the all-important question
of reconstruction came to be considered, Mr. Douglass was found to be
fully conversant with the progress of events, prepared to say his word,
and play his part. While other men were uncertain, confused, and timid,
Douglass’s stand was bold, direct, and fearless. When it was time for
him to speak and act, his words attracted wide attention and many
persons in and out of Congress were willing to follow his leading. He
had always been frank, honorable, and resourceful on the question of
just treatment for his race and he was so far in advance of most of the
men who had it in their power to make and unmake the laws, that it would
have been a decided misfortune for the colored people to have been
without his guidance. He had a wide acquaintance among men in public
life. No other Negro in this country, at the time, knew political
leaders in and out of Congress so intimately. His qualities of prudence
and sagacity, as well as his great personal charm, made him welcome in
the councils of his party. He was the soul of honor. Being thus gifted,
Douglass was able to be as much for his people in a personal as in a
public capacity. He had a way of getting close to the men in power and
of reaching their hearts and enlisting their sympathies for the objects
in whose service he was engaged. This was most fortunate. His race was
without official connection with the government, without experience, and
with no clearly defined status as citizens. If ever the colored people
needed a strong man capable in every way to represent them, it was now,
when the war was over and the question, what to do with the free Negro,
must be answered in definite terms of law and governmental policy. Aside
from his commanding abilities, and his personal attractiveness to men,
Mr. Douglass had lived through the very experiences that fitted him to
know and feel what the Negro needed and ought to have. He had been a
slave, a fugitive slave, and a freedman, at a time, too, when Negro
freedom was most despaired of. No white man could appreciate, as he
could and did, the sweetness of the terms, Freedom and Liberty. One of
his earliest utterances on this subject indicates his feeling at this
period. “I saw no chance,” he said, “of bettering the condition of the
freedman, until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should
become a citizen, and that there was no safety for him or for anybody
else in America, outside of the American government.”
At the time when Mr. Douglass publicly took this position, he was far
more radical than some of the most ardent of his anti-slavery
associates. This declaration was then regarded as a challenge to the
sense of justice of the American people. Many earnest friends of the
Negro thought it was asking too much, even though the race deserved the
franchise. Others argued that the Negro was unfit for the suffrage and
that it would aggravate the already strained relations between the two
races in the South. Opposition was expected by Mr. Douglass and he was
ready to meet it. No one understood better than he that his people had
had no training for citizenship, but he was accustomed to say, that “if
the Negro knows enough to fight for his country, he knows enough to
vote; if he knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he
knows enough to vote; if he knows as much when sober as an Irishman
knows when he is drunk, he knows enough to vote.” He anticipated the
evils that would follow the enfranchisement of the ex-slaves, but
insisted that such evils would be temporary and that the good would be
permanent. He further insisted that it was worth all the suffering
endured by his race to have that principle established; that the right
of suffrage would be an incentive to arouse the latent energies of the
Negro to become worthy of full citizenship, and that such impulse was
imperatively needed. He always declared that political equality was a
widely different thing from social equality. He vigorously protested
that the right of suffrage did not mean Negro domination in the
slave-states, if the best white people would wisely assume the
leadership of the blacks. He believed in the domination of the fittest,
and insisted that the white people of the South, because of their
superiority in intelligence and in all the forces that make for
supremacy, were in no danger of being overwhelmed by the new voters. He
believed in the rule of the competent and that in the long run
intelligent supremacy would be tempered with justice and the true spirit
of democracy. He believed that those who were strong enough, either to
help the ex-slave to get upon his feet or to crush him in his efforts to
rise, would choose the more generous course.
At any rate, he deemed the time ripe to claim for the freedmen full
citizenship and equality before the law. When the question came forward
for discussion, the people of the North were filled with enthusiasm over
the results of the war and for the great objects they believed to have
been achieved by it. It was the occasion to make a hero of every one who
had taken part in the civil contest on the side of the Union. Even the
Negro, for the first time, became the recipient of more than respectful
consideration. The people of the North were as proud of his freedom as
he was himself. If to give the Negro the franchise, and laws to protect
him in the exercise of it as a citizen, would make more lasting the
results of the war, the North was now in a mood to grant it to him,
since it seemed to add to the significance of the great struggle which
had just been so victoriously concluded. Douglass took advantage of this
condition of things to advocate suffrage for his people. By speech and
print and personal appeals to the leaders of public opinion, he urged
this cause upon them in and out of season. There was no lack of evidence
that it was gaining in every direction. The number of those who thought
the suffrage ought to be granted, because it was right; those who
thought it a good thing from a partisan standpoint, and those who
thought the results of the war would be lost unless the Negro were given
the privilege, increased rapidly.
What Douglass calls one of the first steps in the direction of popular
favor for universal suffrage, was an interview that he had with
President Johnson on the 7th of March, 1866. He headed a delegation of
prominent colored men, including George T. Downing, Lewis H. Douglass,
William E. Matthews, John Jones, John F. Cook, Joseph E. Otis, A. W.
Ross, William Whipper, John M. Brown, and Alexander Dunlop. The visit of
these black men to the President for the purpose of urging upon the
government the policy of the franchise for the freedmen, attracted the
attention of the entire nation. Nothing better could have been devised
to bring the whole question before the people and obtain a hearing for
it.
The delegation soon found that Mr. Johnson was not in sympathy with
their plans for Negro enfranchisement. The President had evidently
anticipated their purpose in calling upon him and he was fully prepared
to answer their arguments. He spoke to them at great length and left no
ground for them to doubt his position in the matter. He also gave them
no opportunity to reply. On returning from the White House, his
colleagues empowered Mr. Douglass to prepare an address to the public,
to be printed simultaneously with Mr. Johnson’s address to them. Mr.
Douglass’s paper was in the form of a reply to the President’s arguments
against the suffrage proposition, and was as follows:
“Mr. President:—In consideration of a delicate sense of propriety as
well as of your own repeated intimations of indisposition to discuss
or listen to a reply to the views and opinions you were pleased to
express to us in your elaborate speech to-day, the undersigned would
respectfully take this method of replying thereto.
“Believing as we do that the views and opinions you expressed in that
address are entirely unsound and prejudicial to the highest interest
of our race, as well as to our country at large, we cannot do other
than expose the same and, as far as may be in our power, arrest their
dangerous influence. It is not necessary at this time to call
attention to more than two or three features of your remarkable
address. The first point to which we feel especially bound to take
exception, is your attempt to found a policy opposed to our
enfranchisement, upon the alleged ground of an existing hostility on
the part of the former slaves to the poor white people of the South.
We admit the existence of this hostility, and hold that it is entirely
reciprocal. But you obviously commit an error by drawing an argument
from an incident of slavery, and making it a basis for a policy
adapted to a state of freedom. The hostility between the whites and
blacks of the South is easily explained. It has its root and sap in
the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the cunning
of the slave-masters. These masters secured their ascendency over both
the poor whites and blacks by putting enmity between them.
“They divided both to conquer each. There was no earthly reason why
the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state
of slavery, for it was from this class that their masters received
their slave-catchers and slave-drivers and overseers. They were the
men called in upon all occasions by the masters whenever any fiendish
outrage was to be committed upon the slaves. Now, sir, you cannot but
perceive that, the cause of this hatred removed, the effect must be
removed also. Slavery is abolished. The cause of this antagonism is
removed, and you must see that it is altogether illogical to legislate
from slave-holding and slave-driving premises for a people, whom you
have repeatedly declared it your purpose to maintain in freedom.
“Besides, if it were true, as you allege, that the hostility of the
blacks toward the whites must necessarily project itself into a state
of freedom, and that this enmity between the two races is even more
intense in a state of freedom than in a state of slavery, in the name
of Heaven, we reverently ask, how can you, in view of your proffered
desire to promote the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all
means of defense, and clothe him, whom you regard as his enemy, in the
panoply of political power? Can it be that you recommend a policy
which would arm the strong and cast down the defenseless? Can you, by
any possibility of reasoning, regard this as just, fair, or wise?
Experience proves that those are most abused who can be abused with
the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped
easiest. Peace between races is not to be secured by degrading one
race and exalting another, by giving power to one and withholding from
another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all
classes. First pure, then peaceable.
“On the colonization theory you were pleased to broach, very much
could be said. It is impossible to suppose, in view of the usefulness
of the black man in time of peace as a laborer in the South and in
time of war as a soldier in the North, and a growing respect for his
rights among the people and his increasing adaptation to a high state
of civilization in his native land, that there can ever come a time
when he can be removed from this country without a terrible shock to
its prosperity and peace. Besides, the worst enemy of the nation could
not cast upon its fair name a greater infamy than to admit that
Negroes could be tolerated among them in a state of the most degrading
slavery and oppression, and must be cast away, driven to exile, for no
other cause than having been freed from their chains.”
When the question reached Congress, the Negro was not lacking in friends
who were willing to go the full length of the Frederick Douglass program
of Reconstruction. The first step taken was a report made to the Senate
by a committee having the subject in charge. This report in effect
provided that the whole matter of franchise be left to the option of the
several states concerned. Mr. Douglass believed he saw in this
proposition the continued political enslavement of his people, and he
was on his guard. The following communication written and sent to the
Senate by the delegation which had visited President Johnson speaks for
itself:
“To the Honorable, the Senate of the United States:—The undersigned,
being a delegation representing the colored people of the several
states, and now sojourning in Washington, charged with the duty to
look after the best interests of the recently emancipated, would most
respectfully, but earnestly, pray your honorable body to favor no
amendment of the Constitution of the United States which will grant
any one or all of the states of this Union to disfranchise any class
of citizens on the ground of race or color, for any consideration
whatever. They would further respectfully represent that the
Constitution as adopted by the Fathers of this Republic in 1789
evidently contemplated the result which has now happened, to wit, the
abolition of slavery. The men who framed it, and those who adopted it,
framed and adopted it for the people, and the whole people, colored
men being at the time legal voters in most of the states. In that
instrument as it now stands, there is not a sentence or a syllable
conveying any shadow of right or authority by which any State may make
color or race a disqualification for the exercise of the right of
suffrage, and the undersigned will regard as a real calamity the
introduction of any words expressly or by implication, giving any
state or states such power; and we respectfully submit that if the
amendment now pending before your honorable body shall be adopted, it
will enable any state to deprive any class of citizens of the elective
franchise, notwithstanding it was obviously framed with a view to
affect the question of Negro suffrage only.
“For these and other reasons the undersigned respectfully pray that
the amendment to the Constitution recently passed by the House and now
before your body, be not adopted. And as in duty bound,” etc.
In addition to this letter addressed to the United States Senate, Mr.
Douglass and his associates saw and argued the matter with every member
of that body who would grant them an audience. The “Option Measure” was
defeated and to a considerable extent through Mr. Douglass’s influence.
By this time the question of Negro suffrage had become a leading issue.
For the purpose of obtaining the sense of the country on this subject,
there was arranged what was known at the time as the “National
Loyalists’ Convention,” to be held at Philadelphia in September, 1866.
It was made up of delegates from all parts of the Union, including many
influential men in and out of public life. Rochester elected Mr.
Douglass as its sole representative, which was a great tribute to him,
giving new recognition to the Negro race. The entire country was quick
to take notice of the city’s action, in so important a gathering, and
there was not only objection but open opposition to Mr. Douglass’s
taking a seat in the convention. Some of the leading delegates united in
an effort to persuade him not to go.
Speaking of the situation, Mr. Douglass says that at Harrisburg, there
was attached to his train cars loaded with representatives from some of
the western states.
“When my presence became known to these gentlemen,” he continues, “a
consultation was immediately held among them upon the question of what
was best to be done with me. It seems strange, in view of all the
progress which had been made, that such a question should arise. But
the circumstances of the times made me the Jonah of the Republican
ship, and responsible for the contrary winds and misbehaving weather.
I was duly waited upon by a committee of my brother delegates to
represent to me the undesirableness of my attendance upon the National
Loyalists’ Convention. The spokesman of these sub-delegates was a
gentleman from New Orleans.... He began by telling me that he knew my
history and my works and that he entertained no very slight degree of
respect for me; that both himself and the gentlemen who sent him, as
well as those who accompanied him, regarded me with admiration; that
there was not among them the remotest objection to sitting in the
convention with me, but their personal wishes in the matter they felt
should be set aside for the sake of our common cause; that whether I
should or should not go in the convention was purely a matter of
expediency; that I must know that there was a very strong and bitter
prejudice against my race in the North as well as in the South and
that the cry of social and political equality would not fail to be
raised against the Republican party if I should attend this loyal
National convention.... I listened very attentively to the address,
uttering no word during its delivery; but when it was finished, I said
to the speaker and the committee, with all the emphasis I could throw
into my voice and manner, ‘Gentlemen, with all respect, you might as
well ask me to put a loaded pistol to my head and blow my brains out,
as to ask me to keep out of this convention to which I have been duly
elected. Then, gentlemen, what would you gain by the exclusion? Would
not the charge of cowardice, certain to be brought against you, prove
more damaging than that of amalgamation; would you not be branded all
over the land as dastardly hypocrites, professing principles which you
have no wish or intention of carrying out? As a matter of policy or
expediency, you will be wise to let me in. Everybody knows that I have
been duly elected as a delegate by the city of Rochester. This fact
has been broadly announced and commented upon all over the country. If
I am not admitted, the public will ask, “Where is Douglass? Why is he
not seen in the convention?” and you would find that inquiry more
difficult to answer than any charge brought against you for favoring
political or social equality; but ignoring the question of policy
altogether and looking at it as one of right and wrong, I am bound to
go into that convention; not to do so would be to contradict the
principles and practice of my life.’”
The delegates withdrew from the car in which Mr. Douglass was riding
without accomplishing their purpose. It was soon made evident to him
that his argument had not changed the prejudices of his visitors. When
he reached Philadelphia and learned of the plans of the convention, he
easily detected a concerted scheme to ignore him altogether. “I was,” he
says, “the ugly and deformed child of the family and to be kept out of
sight as much as possible, while there was company in the house.”
It had been arranged that the delegates should assemble at Independence
Hall and from there march in a body through the streets to the building
where the convention was to be held. Mr. Douglass was present at
Independence Hall at the appointed time, but he at once realized the
situation. Only a few of the delegates, like General B. F. Butler, had
the courage even to greet him. He was not only snubbed generally, but it
was hinted to him that if he attempted to walk in the procession through
the streets of a city where but a few years ago Negroes had been
assaulted and their houses and schools burned down, he would be jeered
at, insulted, and perhaps mobbed. It required no little courage to act
in the face of these conditions, but Douglass never wavered. He was
strong enough not to falter even at the desertion of men whom he had a
right to regard as his friends.
When the procession was formed, the delegates were to march two abreast.
By this arrangement, the man who would have the hardihood to walk beside
the only Negro in line would be an easy mark for scorn and contempt if
not bodily attack. It was believed that no white man, under these
conditions, would dare to march with Douglass. One delegate after
another, those who had formerly taken counsel with him, passed him by.
But to use his own words: “There was one man present who was broad
enough to take in the whole situation and brave enough to meet the duty
of the hour; one who was neither afraid nor ashamed to own me as a man
and a brother. One man of the purest Caucasian type, a poet, a scholar,
brilliant as a writer, eloquent as a speaker, and holding a high
influential position, the editor of a weekly journal having the largest
circulation of any weekly paper in the state of New York, and that man
was Theodore Tilton. He came to me in my isolation, seized me by the
hand in a most brotherly way, and proposed to walk with me in the
procession.”
The delegates marching through the streets of Philadelphia met with a
great ovation, and Mr. Douglass was singled out for special marks of
favor. Along the entire way he was loudly cheered, applauded, and
congratulated by the multitude. Those who had misjudged the sentiments
of the Philadelphians were ashamed of themselves when they saw that he
was apparently the most popular man in the procession.
A very pleasing incident occurred on the line of march that day which
served to call special attention to him. As his eyes caught a glimpse of
a beautiful young woman among the spectators, he was seen suddenly to
leave his place and fervently greet her. She was a member of the Auld
family, and Mr. Douglass, recognizing her at once, paid her homage
publicly. It appears that she had come to Philadelphia from her home in
Baltimore when she heard that the ex-slave was to be there and walk in
the procession as one of the great men of the occasion, and had been
following the line for over an hour with the hope of catching a view of
the man who, but for his desire for freedom, might still have been a
servant in her family. The newspapers made much of the incident, and
described it as one of the most dramatic features of the day.
By the time the marchers had reached the hall, the fear of Mr.
Douglass’s presence, as a delegate, had given way to a feeling of
respect, pride, and comradeship. He threw off all restraint, and went in
to win from this body a resolution in favor of the franchise for his
people. He delivered one of those powerful and convincing addresses that
he was well able to make when aroused. As a result, he quite captured
and controlled the sentiment of the convention in favor of his
resolution, and when it adjourned Mr. Douglass was congratulated for
having achieved a personal triumph that was remarkable for its
completeness.
After the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments, there was some curious speculation as to what place
Frederick Douglass would take in this larger world of citizenship that
he had helped to create. A number of his friends and admirers thought
that he had led his people so successfully out of the wilderness of
slavery that he should now put himself into a position where he could
guide them further in the proper use of their rights and privileges as
citizens of the republic. Many urged that the South was the right place
for one of his power and standing. No colored man in this country had
such training for large responsibilities as Mr. Douglass had had, during
the previous thirty years of service. It was also feared that, without
such leadership as he could bring to the South, small men, of mere
political training and of partisan methods and ambitions, would assume
the direction of the newly-made citizens, and, by their selfishness and
greed, bring down upon these poor people more miseries than could be
cured in many generations. Everything seemed to invite Frederick
Douglass to these new duties and new responsibilities. It was pointed
out to him how easily he could become a pioneer by being elected to the
House of Representatives, or even to the Senate, from some of the
reconstructed states of the South.
He thought long and seriously over the project, but finally concluded
not to change his habitation for the sake of gaining political power. He
expressed his conclusions on the matter as follows:
“That I did not yield to this temptation was not entirely due to my
age, but the idea did not entirely square well with my better judgment
and sense of propriety. The thought of going to live among a people in
order to gain their votes and acquire official honors was repugnant to
my sense of self-respect, and I had not lived long enough in the
political atmosphere of Washington to have this feeling blunted so as
to make me indifferent to its suggestions.... I had small faith in my
aptitude as a politician, and could not hope to cope with rival
aspirants. My life and labors in the North had in a measure unfitted
me for such work, and I could not have readily adapted myself to that
peculiar oratory found to be most effective with the newly
enfranchised class. Upon the whole, I have never regretted that I did
not enter the arena of Congressional honors to which I was invited.
Outside of mere personal considerations, I saw, or thought I saw,
that, in the nature of the case, the sceptre of power had passed from
the old slave-states to the free and loyal states, and that hereafter,
at least for some time to come, the loyal North, with its advanced
civilization, must dictate the policy and control the destiny of the
republic. I had an audience ready made in the free-states, one which
the labors of thirty years had prepared for me, and before this
audience the freedmen needed an advocate as much as they needed a
member in Congress. I think that in this I was right, for thus far our
colored members in Congress have not largely made themselves felt in
the legislation of this country, and I have little reason to think
that I could have done better than they.”