FURTHER EVIDENCES OF POPULAR ESTEEM, WITH GLIMPSES INTO THE PAST
The foregoing chapters contain the important incidents and events in the
life of Frederick Douglass. He lived in a great transitional period,
and, in his struggle to gain his own freedom, he personified the
historic events which took place during that time. His life was so
wholly under the public eye, and what he did and stood for during more
than fifty years, were so much an integral portion of these years, that
it is impossible to obtain an estimate of the man apart from the history
of slavery. Frederick Douglass and Anti-slavery, are almost
interchangeable terms. In himself he was both the argument and
demonstration of the things that gave interest and meaning to his life
and times. Yet he had another side not exhibited in the history of which
he was a part and which he helped to make. Much of a personal nature
that would add interest to his life and partly explain the sources of
his strength as a leader of men, can be added to the portrait.
The limitations of this volume will permit only a brief outline of some
of the things that Frederick Douglass said and did during the last
thirty years of his life, which chronologically belonged to previous
chapters, but which for the sake of their peculiar significance are
reserved for this.
As may be inferred from what has appeared in the course of this
narrative, Frederick Douglass was a more than ordinarily interesting
personality. He was a figure to attract attention anywhere, and
especially so during the last twenty-five years of his life. He was over
six feet in height, broad-shouldered, well-proportioned, and his
movements had all the directness and grace of a man who had been bred a
prince rather than a slave. His features were broad, strong, and
impressive. His complexion was that of a mulatto. His head was
strikingly large, and crowned with an abundant crop of white hair of
almost silken fineness. His eyes were brown and mildly animated. His
voice was strong, but of mellow tone. When he was aroused, however, it
would fairly thunder with the passionate earnestness of the man. In
conversation he was delightful. His manner was graceful and wholly free
from personal mannerisms. His mental and moral faculties were well
balanced. He was a man without technical education, yet he had more than
ordinary learning. All that he knew was acquired outside of schoolrooms
and without school teachers. His great library bore witness to his love
of books. In the history of governments and of races, and in mental
philosophy and poetry, he found special delight. No trained elocutionist
could recite verse with better effect. He was especially fond of Byron,
Burns, Coleridge, and Pierpont.
He was always quick to recognize ability in one of his race, and so had
a peculiar fondness and interest in Paul Laurence Dunbar, who, at his
death, was just beginning to be known as a poet, and who received his
first real encouragement from Frederick Douglass.
He had an unfailing memory, and consequently a good command of
everything he ever saw, heard, or read. He was liked and honored by men
and women, not only because he was interesting, but also because he was
singularly free from crotchets, idiosyncrasies, and ill-temper. He was
of a lovable disposition, and especially so in the latter days of his
life. The all too common character blemishes of selfishness, envy, and
jealousy were never charged against him. His whole nature was keyed to
high, generous impulses. He loved the right, and hated wrong in any
form.
No man of his prominence was freer from vices: he was of temperate
habits, clean speech, and personal rectitude. His sense of honor was not
partial, but a controlling force in all of his relationships to men and
things.
He was also fortunately free from family troubles, except the loss by
death of a beloved little daughter, whose few gentle and beautiful years
had been his delight, a sorrow which deeply shadowed the earlier period
of his public career. His wife, who had helped him to gain his freedom,
devoted her life to his comfort and to the happiness of his home. His
three stalwart sons, Lewis, Charles, and Frederick, Jr., honored him by
lives of usefulness, and there was always the closest intimacy between
him and them. His oldest girl, named Rosa, was very dear to him. She
grew up by his side as a faithful helper in his work as well as a
devoted daughter. She is widely known and loved for her culture and
unselfish disposition. In short, Frederick Douglass’s family was worthy
of him. If by his deeds he brought to them honor and opportunity, he
lived long enough to see his example and precepts honored again in them.
His home in Cedar Hill, overlooking the Capitol, was a delightful spot.
Everything about it bespoke the character of the man. The broad grounds,
shaded with trees, the well-cultivated garden, all told of his love of
nature. Within the ample house there was a quiet, restful refinement,
revealing the taste and habits of the scholar. Books, busts, and
pictures all bore witness to that instinctive thirst for culture which
no one who knew him well could fail to recognize. He had an
extraordinary passion for the violin, and, although he did not place a
very high estimate upon his own ability, yet he, as well as his nearest
friends, received much enjoyment from his knowledge of the use of this
instrument.
In later years he found a special delight in the fact that his grandson,
Joseph Douglass, exhibited a decided taste and a real genius for the
violin. A more affecting picture of the power of music could scarcely be
imagined than that of the old man sitting and listening with rapt and
tearful attention when this boy played for him some of his favorite
tunes.
But perhaps these glimpses of the personality of Frederick Douglass are
sufficient to suggest that, behind the great orator, the active
politician, the anxious leader in a critical period, there was a real
man, whose domestic tastes and disciplined heart give an added value to
his public life. It is not at all surprising that one thus gifted should
have had many intimates among the best people of his generation. The
leading statesmen, educators, and literary men were counted as his close
and personal friends. Behind the respect that was felt for his natural
talents and his unusual achievements was a sincere admiration and even
fondness for the large and warmhearted nature which could laugh and cry
and be touched by the social delights of home and fireside. He was a man
of opinions, of ideals, of imagination, and had the gift of adequate
expression for every thought and emotion.
After the death of his first wife, Mr. Douglass married again, in 1884,
and for this step he was severely criticised. The fact that his second
wife, Miss Helen Pitts, was a white woman caused something like a
revulsion of feeling throughout the entire country. His own race
especially condemned him, and the notion seemed to be quite general that
he had made the most serious mistake of his life. Just how deep-seated
was the sentiment of white and black people alike against amalgamation
has never been so clearly demonstrated as in this case. Douglass was
sorely hurt by the many unkind things said about his marriage by members
of his own race.
The woman whom he married he had known and admired for many years. She
had helped him in various ways in his literary work. She belonged to one
of the best families in western New York, and in following the natural
impulse of his attachment, he failed to take into consideration the
offense his act might give to public feeling. The resentment felt by the
people because of his disregard of its unwritten law never entirely died
out in his lifetime, but he himself got over the personal discomfiture
of it. In addressing a large audience of white and colored people in
Springfield, Mo., in the fall of 1893, he referred to this incident in
the following words: “I am strongly of the opinion that you will want me
to say something concerning my second marriage. I will tell you: My
first wife, you see, was the color of my mother, and my second wife the
color of my father; you see I wanted to be perfectly fair to both
races.” This clever bit of raillery on a very delicate subject put him
on good terms with his audience and if any were inclined to think the
less of him because of his marriage the fact did not then appear.
In the period from 1865 to the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, in 1893,
Mr. Douglass was interested in many things. He made various addresses
outside of the range of politics, and was busy to the limit of his
waning strength. What he wrote found ready acceptance in important
publications, and his absence from any great national gathering was a
matter of regret.
Among the many tokens of respect that continued to come to him from all
parts of the country, he cherished none so much as the tribute paid to
him by the city of Rochester, his home during the twenty-five formative
years of his career. In the name of the city, some of its leading
citizens caused to be placed in Sibley’s Hall, at Rochester University,
a noble bust of Frederick Douglass. It was a gracious recognition of the
esteem in which he was held by the people who had had the best
opportunity of knowing him. The Rochester _Democrat and Chronicle_
expressed the sentiment of the city in the following eulogy written at
the time:
“Frederick Douglass can hardly be said to have risen to greatness on
account of the opportunities which the republic offers to self-made
men, and concerning which we are apt to talk with an abundance of
self-gratulation. It sought to fetter his mind equally with his body.
For him it builded no schoolhouse, and for him it erected no church.
So far as he was concerned, freedom was mockery, and law was the
instrument of tyranny. In spite of law and gospel, despite of statutes
which enthralled him and opportunities which jeered at him, he made
himself, by trampling on the laws and breaking through the thick
darkness that encompassed him. There is no sadder commentary upon
human slavery than the life of Frederick Douglass. He put it under his
feet and stood erect in the majesty of his intellect; but how many
intellects, brilliant and powerful as his, it stamped upon and
crushed, no mortal can tell until the secret of its terrible despotism
is fully revealed. Thanks to the conquering might of American freedom,
such sad beginnings of such illustrious lives as that of Frederick
Douglass are no longer possible; and that they are no longer possible,
is largely due to him, who when his lips were unlocked, became a
deliverer of his people. Not alone did his voice proclaim
emancipation. Eloquent as was that voice, his life in its pathos and
in its grandeur, was more deeply eloquent still; and where shall be
found, in the annals of humanity, a sweeter rendering of poetic
justice than that he, who has passed through such vicissitudes of
degradation and exaltation, has been permitted to behold the
redemption of his race?
“Rochester is proud to remember that Frederick Douglass was, for many
years, one of her citizens. He who pointed out the house where
Douglass lived, hardly exaggerated when he called it the residence of
the greatest of our citizens, for Douglass must rank as among the
greatest men, not only of this city, but of the nation as well—great
in gifts, greater in utilizing them, great in the persuasion of his
speech, greater in the purpose that informed it.
“Rochester could do nothing more graceful than to perpetuate in marble
the features of this citizen in her hall of learning; and it is
pleasant for her to know that he so well appreciates the esteem in
which he is held here. It was a thoughtful thing for Rochester to do,
and the response is as heartfelt as the tribute is appropriate.”
Among his notable addresses during the period under review was one
delivered on Decoration Day in 1871 at Arlington. His theme was “The
Unknown Loyal Dead.” President Grant, the members of the Cabinet, and a
large number of the most prominent people of Washington were present,
and the occasion was unusually impressive. He rose grandly to the need
of the hour. The oration was in his best vein and is in part as
follows:—
“Friends and Fellow Citizens:—Tarry here for a moment. My words shall
be few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place call for no
lengthened speech. There is, in the very air of this resting-ground of
the unknown dead, a silent, subtle and all-pervading eloquence, far
more touching, impressive, and thrilling, than living lips have ever
uttered. Into the measureless depths of every loyal soul it is now
whispering lessons of all that is precious, priceless, holiest and
most enduring in human existence.
“Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay
grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring
to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers, dead, and their noble
comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead, whether in time
or in eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for country and
freedom are one and inseparable.
“These unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered
here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful
flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits,
reached in their glorious career that last highest point of nobleness
beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country.
“No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the
benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers when
we write above their graves this shining epitaph.
“When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious,
preferring ‘to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven’ fired the
southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord; when
our great republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout
the world, had reached the point of supreme peril; when the union of
the states was torn and rent asunder at the centre, and the armies of
a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to
destroy the very foundation of American society, the unknown braves
who flung themselves into the yawning chasm, where cannon roared and
bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for their country.
“We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the
merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration
those who struck at the nation’s life and those who struck to save it;
those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and
justice.
“I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would
not repel the repentant; but may my right hand forget her cunning and
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I forget the difference
between the parties to that terrible, protracted and bloody conflict.
“If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and
orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth;
which has sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed
and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of
gold, swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves and planted
agony at a million hearthstones—I say, if this war is to be forgotten,
I ask in the name of things sacred, what shall men remember?”
Five years later Mr. Douglass was again honored with an invitation to
deliver the address in memory of Abraham Lincoln, at Lincoln Park, in
Washington. The occasion and the man were happily blended. No orator
ever had a more inspiring theme. The rulers of the nation in the persons
of President Grant and his Cabinet advisers, members of the United
States Senate, Justices of the Supreme Court, and a great many high
officials were present to evidence the importance of the day; and in
such a company of distinguished people Douglass delivered what many call
his supreme effort as an orator. The speech later was printed as a
pamphlet, and extensively read throughout the country.
His closing words addressed to his own people, prescient, as they seemed
to be of days and dangers as yet but vaguely understood, made an
ineffaceable impression upon men of his color who heard him:
“We have done a great work for our race to-day. In doing honor to the
memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honor to
ourselves and those who are to come after us. We have been attaching to
ourselves a name and fame imperishable and immortal. We have also been
defending ourselves from a blighting scandal, when now it shall be said
that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of
benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled
at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human
brotherhood, we may calmly point to this monument we have this day
erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”
In his address before the Tennessee Colored Agricultural and Mechanical
Association at Nashville, September 18, 1873, he furnished the country
new evidence of his ability to give instruction, to inspire hope and
ambition, and to encourage thrift. Though not an agriculturist by
occupation, his speech can still be used as a manual for the young
farmer. It, like his other addresses, is full of practical and useful
maxims. His quotation from Theodore Parker, “All the space between man’s
mind and God’s mind is crowded with truths which wait to be discovered
and organized into law for the practice of men,” indicates the tone of
high hopefulness that ran through all his appeals to the people. “If we
look abroad over our country and observe the condition of the colored
people,” he said, “we shall find their greatest want to be regular and
lucrative employment for their energies. They have secured their
freedom, it is true, but not the friendship and favor of the people
around them.... On account of bad treatment, great numbers are driven
from the country to the larger cities where they quickly learn to
imitate the vices and follies of the least exemplary whites. Under these
circumstances, I hail agriculture as a refuge for the oppressed.”
Insisting that the condition of the Negro in this country is
exceptional, he reminded his hearers that “the farm is our last resort,
and if we fail here, I do not see how we can succeed elsewhere. We are
not like the Irish, an organized political power; we are not shrewd like
the Hebrews, capable of making fortunes by buying and selling old
clothes.”
The address is rich with maxims that are good to remember and to use as
rules of conduct; such as:
“Emancipation has liberated the land as well as the people.”
“It is not fertility, but liberty that cultivates a country.”
“The state of Tennessee is now to be cultivated by liberty, by
knowledge which comes of liberty, by the respectability of labor.”
“Neither the slave nor his master can abandon all at once the deeply
entrenched errors and habits of centuries.”
“There is no work that men are required to do, which they cannot
better and more economically do with education than without it.”
“Muscle is mighty but mind is mightier, and there is no field for the
exercise of mind other than is found in the cultivation of the soul.”
“As a race we have suffered from two very opposite causes,
disparagement on the one hand and undue praise on the other.”
“An important question to be answered by evidences of our progress is:
Whether the black man will prove a better master to himself than the
white master was to him.”
“Accumulate property. This may sound to you like a new gospel. No
people can ever make any social and mental improvement whose exertions
are limited. Poverty is our greatest calamity.... On the other hand,
property, money, if you please, will produce for us the only condition
upon which any people can rise to the dignity of genuine manhood.”
“Without property there can be no leisure. Without leisure there can
be no invention, without invention there can be no progress.”
“We can work, and by this means we can retrieve all our losses.”
“Knowledge, wisdom, culture, refinement, manners, are all founded on
work and the wealth which work brings.”
“In nine cases out of ten a man’s condition is worse by changing his
location. You would better endeavor to remove the evil from your door
than to move and leave it there.”
“If you have a few acres, stick to them.”
“Life is too short, time is too valuable, to waste in the experiment
of seeking new homes. People are about as good in your neighborhood as
anywhere else in the world, and may need you to make them better.”
The foregoing extracts sufficiently indicate the character and
importance of this Nashville address. It was quite unlike speeches that
had been made by most of the colored leaders to their people. While
emphasizing the importance of hard work, of duties, and patience, he
indulged in no false hopes and made no extravagant claims. The every-day
facts, needs, and responsibilities of the people on the soil were, he
held, the paramount things for men who were beginning their social
development. In short, it was a strong and stirring call to the Negroes
to look about them, and not afar, for the instruments and forces that
must be utilized for their salvation.
Belonging to this latter period of his life, another address, in
character quite different from the one just referred to, illustrates how
the colored people have been carried from one extreme of hopefulness to
the other of despair and uncertainty by the changes in public sentiment
concerning them.
In 1883 the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision
declaring unconstitutional what was known as the “Civil Rights Bill.”
This was one of the Reconstruction measures, championed by Senator
Sumner, and, when brought forward it was regarded by the colored people
and their friends as a sort of charter of liberty. It undertook to
prevent discriminations against Negroes in hotels, restaurants, and
other places of public accommodation. At the time of its enactment it
was considered a necessary appendage to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments, and the colored people everywhere felt a strong sense of
protection in its provisions.
When the Supreme Court’s opinion declaring the law, outside of the
District of Columbia and other national territory, to be null and void,
was made known, it produced a sensation of alarm and almost despair
among Negroes everywhere. They saw in this decision a complete reversal
of the public sentiment that a few years before was so strongly
favorable to them. They began to lose faith in the potency of the letter
of the law, either to define or protect their rights. It was a sort of
rude reminder that, if they would be secure in their rights, they must
rely upon something else than mere statutes. Here was an apt
illustration of the maxim that what the law gives, the law can take
away. In relying upon only this for his salvation, the Negro had been
suspended between hope and despair, until it seemed to him that there
was no such thing as stability of sentiment toward him. The first
impulse was to protest, in the name of all the colored people, not only
against the letter of the decision, but also against haunting
implications that they had no rights which the law of the land was bound
to respect.
The spirit of resentment found adequate expression in a great
mass-meeting arranged for and held in the city of Washington in 1883.
Frederick Douglass was selected, as a matter of course, as the one
colored man in the country who could best voice the feelings of the
people affected by the decision. The other speaker was the eloquent
Robert G. Ingersoll. The meeting was a notable one in every respect. The
most distinguished leaders of the race were there, and the audience was
large and earnest. There were present, too, a great number of prominent
white people who sympathized with the colored race. The address of Mr.
Douglass was one of the most interesting ever made by him. In it he
showed his ability to put into the most telling form the arguments with
which it seemed possible at that time to counteract, to some extent, the
moral effect of the decision upon the colored and the white communities.
His speech showed a wide acquaintance with the principles of the law and
more than usually profound knowledge of the philosophy of democracy. The
following extracts will indicate its character, and reflect, no doubt,
the opinions and sentiments of the meeting and the time:
“It makes us feel as if some one was stamping on the graves of our
mothers, or desecrating our sacred temples.”
“We have been, as a class, grievously wounded in the house of our
friends.”
“This decision has swept over the land like a cyclone, leaving moral
desolation in its track.”
“Inasmuch as the law in question is in favor of liberty and justice,
it ought to have had the benefit of any doubt which could arise as to
its strict constitutionality.”
“If any man has come in here with his breast heaving with passion and
expecting to hear violent denunciation of the Supreme Court on account
of this decision, he has mistaken the object of this meeting. Its
judges live, and ought to live, an eagle’s flight beyond the reach of
fear or favor, praise or blame, profit or loss.”
“In humiliating the colored people of this country, this decision has
humbled this nation.”
“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow-men without at
least finding the other end of it about his own neck.”
“Prejudice is a spirit infernal, against which enlightened men should
wage perpetual war.”
“We want no black Ireland in America. We want no aggrieved class in
America. Strong as we are without the Negro, we are stronger with him
than without him.”
“Our legislators, our President, and the judges should have a care
lest by forcing these people outside the law, they destroy that love
of country, which in the day of trouble is needful to the nation’s
defense.”
“Oh, for a Supreme Court of the United States which shall be as true
to the claims of humanity as the Supreme Court formerly was to the
demand of slavery.”
“What is a state in the absence of the people who compose it?”
“Land, air, and water do not discriminate. What does it matter to the
colored citizen that a state may not insult him if the citizen of the
state may? The decision is a concession to race pride, selfishness,
and meanness, and will be received with joy by every upholder of caste
in the land, and for this I deplore and denounce the decision.”
The few addresses just referred to are, in point of the subject-matter
and the occasions that called them forth, the most important and able
made by Frederick Douglass after emancipation. On each occasion there
was a call for the supreme man of the Negro race and there were few,
except a small group of colored people, to question his right to be so
regarded.
Frederick Douglass, however, was something more than a “race leader”; he
was always an eminent citizen of the republic, and as such his interests
were not wholly rimmed about by the sorrows and aspirations of his own
people. He was a careful student of his times and had an intelligent
concern in all the great questions that arose and called for an opinion.
It was quite in keeping with his cosmopolitan spirit that he should be
opposed to the policy of our government in excluding the Chinese from
American shores because, as he said, “I know of no rights of race
superior to the rights of humanity.” His views on the question, which
twenty-five years ago was an urgent one, are more fully expressed in the
following extract from one of his addresses on the subject of the
“Composite Nation”:—
“Our republic itself is a strong argument in favor of cosmopolitan
nationality.... Let the Chinaman come; he will help to augment the
national wealth. He will help to develop our boundless resources; he
will help to pay off our national debt. He will help to lighten the
burden of our national taxation. He will give us the benefit of his
skill as a manufacturer, and as a tiller of the soil in which he is
unsurpassed. Even the matter of religious liberty, which has cost the
world more tears, more blood, and more agony than any other interest,
will be helped by his presence. I know of no church more tolerant, of no
priesthood, however enlightened, which could safely be trusted with the
tremendous power which universal conformity would confer. We should
welcome all men of every shade of religious opinion, as among the best
means of checking the arrogance and intolerance which are the almost
inevitable concomitants of general conformity. Liberty always flourishes
best amid the clash and competition of rival religious creeds.”
Reference has already been made to Douglass’s services to the cause of
female suffrage. His presence at nearly all of the anniversaries and
other important gatherings of those who advocated the enfranchisement of
women was expected and his utterances were warmly received.
In the matter of religion, Mr. Douglass was not strictly orthodox in his
beliefs, although it will be remembered that during his enslavement he
found much consolation in the Bible, and was for a time a Methodist
exhorter. His religious views, as he grew older, underwent a radical
change. He had no patience with hypocrites. He had seen and heard so
much that was cruel, unjust, and almost fiendish under the name of
religion, that his faith in sectarianism was badly shaken. In his early
anti-slavery addresses, he indulged in many absurd parodies of the pious
frauds whom he had known. However, he was not an atheist. He had a deep
religious sense, but was more fully under the influence of the
theological opinions of Theodore Parker than of any other school of
religious thought. His best friends and associates were among the
Unitarians, the Quakers, and others of liberal faith. His views on
religion are finely expressed in a bit of correspondence published by
Mr. Holland in his biography. In response to a cordial invitation to
speak before the “Free Religious Association” in Boston, in 1874, he
wrote:
“I cannot be present at your Free Religious Convention in Boston. This
is, of course, of smaller consequence to others than to myself, for I
should come more to hear than to be heard. Freedom is a word of
charming sound, not only to the tasked and tortured slaves, who toil
for an earthly master, but for those who would break the galling
chains of darkness and superstition. Regarding the Free Religious
movement as one for light, love, and liberty, limited only by reason
and human welfare, and opposed to those who convert life and death
into enemies of human happiness, who people the invisible world with
ghastly taskmasters, I give it hearty welcome. Only the truth can make
men free, and I trust that your convention will be guided in all its
utterances by its light and feel its power. I know many of its good
men and women, who are likely to assemble with you, and I would gladly
share with them the burden of reproach which their attacks upon
popular error will be sure to bring upon them.”
Extracts from letters to friends indicate still more clearly the deeper
currents of his thought.
“I once had a large stock of hope on hand, but like the sand in the
glass, it has about run out. My present solace is in the cultivation
of religious submission to the inevitable, in teaching myself that I
am but a breath of the infinite, perhaps not so much. I was very sorry
not to be able to attend the Free Religious Convention. I shall,
hereafter, try to know more of these people.... I sometimes, at long
intervals, try my old violin; but after all the music of the past and
of imagination is sweeter than any my unpracticed and unskilled bow
can produce. So I lay my dear old fiddle aside, and listen to the
soft, silent, distant music of other days which, in the hush of my
spirit, I still find lingering somewhere in the mysterious depths of
my soul.”
“I do not know that I am an evolutionist, but to this extent, I am
one. I certainly have more patience with those who trace mankind
upward from a low condition, even from the lower animals, than with
those who start him at a point of perfection and conduct him to a
level with the brutes. I have no sympathy with a theory that starts
man in Heaven, and stops him in Hell.... An irrepressible conflict,
grander than that described by the late William H. Seward, is
perpetually going on. Two hostile and irreconcilable tendencies, broad
as the world of man, are in the open field; good and evil, truth and
error, enlightenment and superstition.”
One of the stirring incidents of this post-slavery period was the
“exodus movement.” In the summer of 1879, great numbers of Negroes, as
if by concerted action, began to emigrate from the South and the
southwestern states toward the North and West. This movement was the
first manifestation of discontent ever made by the colored people on a
large scale. It was in no way due to politics, but was rather an effort
to free themselves from the conditions under which they were compelled
to work and live. Their economic state was bad, and there seemed to be
little hope of improvement. The exodus grew to such an extent that it
produced something like national alarm and there were grave
apprehensions that much suffering would attend the efforts of the
Negroes to escape from poverty and dependence. Mr. Douglass has given
the following reasons for the dissatisfaction:
“Work as hard, faithfully, and constantly as they may, live as plainly
and as sparingly as they may, they are no better off at the end of the
year than at the beginning. They say that they are the dupes and victims
of cunning and fraud in signing contracts which they cannot read and
cannot fully understand; that they are compelled to trade at stores
owned in whole or in part, by their employers; and that they are paid
with orders and not with money. They say that they have to pay double
the value of nearly everything they buy; that they are compelled to pay
a rental of ten dollars a year for an acre of ground that will not bring
thirty dollars under the hammer; that land-owners are in league to
prevent land owning by Negroes; that when they work the land on shares,
they barely make a living; that outside the towns and cities no
provision is made for education, and, ground down as they are, they
cannot themselves employ teachers to instruct their children.”
As a general rule, the colored people in the North looked upon the
exodus hopefully. To them it was a sign of courage on the part of their
Southern brethren, and a protest against bad treatment. Frederick
Douglass, however, who was always expected to have an opinion and
express it, deplored the “unintelligent and somewhat aimless running
away from the ills they have to others they know not of.” He could see
no salvation for the Negro in the Northern states. “For him, as a
Southern laborer,” he said, “there is no competition or substitute,” and
he insisted that the freedman is always to be “the arbiter” of Southern
“destiny.” He held that the best place for the Negro to work out his
salvation was at home. His arguments are condensed in the following
extracts from his published views:
“It may well enough be said that the Negro question is not so
desperate as the advocates of this exodus would have the public
believe; that there is still hope that the Negro will ultimately have
his rights as a man, and be fully protected in the South; that in
several of the old slave-states his citizenship and his right to vote
are already respected and protected; that the same, in time, will be
secured by the Negro in other states.... The Fourteenth Amendment
makes him a citizen, and the Fifteenth Amendment makes him a voter.
With power behind him, at work for him, and which cannot be taken from
him, the Negro, at the South may wisely bide his time.
“As an assertion of power hitherto held in bitter contempt; as an
emphatic and stinging protest against high-handed, greedy, and
shameless injustice to the weak and defenseless; as a means of opening
the blind eyes of oppressors to their folly and peril, the exodus has
done valuable service. Whether it has accomplished all of which it is
capable in this particular direction for the present, is a question
which may well be considered. With a moderate degree of intelligent
leadership among the laboring classes at the South, properly handling
the justice of their cause, and wisely using the exodus example, they
can easily exact better terms for their labor than ever before. Exodus
is medicine, not food; it is for disease, not health; it is not to be
taken from choice, but necessity. In anything like a normal condition
of things, the South is the best place for the Negro. Nowhere else is
there for him a promise of a happier future.
“Let him stay there if he can, and save both the South and himself to
civilization. The American people are bound, if they are or can be
bound to anything, to keep the north gate of the South open to black
and white and to all people. The time to assert a right, Webster says,
is when it is called into question. If it is attempted by force or
fraud, to compel the colored people to stay, then they should by all
means go; go quickly and die if need be in the attempt. Thus far and
to this extent any man may be an ‘emigrationist.’ In no case must the
Negro be bottled up or caged up. He must be left free like any other
American citizen, to choose his own habitation, and to go where he
shall like. Though it may not be for his interest to leave the South,
his right and power to leave it may be his best means of making it
possible for him to stay there in peace. Woe to the oppressed and
destitute of all countries and races, if the rich and powerful are to
decide when and where they shall go or stay.”
These sentiments of Mr. Douglass are interesting, not only as having a
bearing on a question still vital to the South, but also as showing the
orator’s secret affection for the land of his birth and early struggles.
In spite of his fifty years of life and triumphs in the North, he was
still a Southerner in spirit and in his primary attachments. His
imagination and memory still traveled back to the associations that
contained more of bitterness than joy,—yet some joy. There seemed to be
in the depths of his soul a living sympathy for those who were enslaved
with himself, and who were still wearing the scars of servitude. The
land that was worked by the toil and sweat of generation after
generation of his people, and the land in which they were still laboring
and hoping on, he loved in spite of himself. He believed in the race in
spite of its apparent helplessness, and he believed in the South in
spite of all that he had suffered. It pained him to see his people flee
from the land of their birth, of their sorrows, but also the land of
their better destiny. He would not have them abandon what would some day
be theirs if they could but endure, and work, and wait.
With this sort of attachment to the South, it is not strange that, even
after fifty years of complete separation, he still cherished the hope
and eagerly welcomed an opportunity when it was offered him, to return
to Talbot County, Md., his birthplace.
The time of his visit to the land upon which he had formerly been held
as a slave, was happily chosen so as to heighten the contrast between
the past and present, for he was now United States Marshal of the
District of Columbia. It required a vivid imagination to see anything in
common between the barefooted, half-naked, half-starved, and penniless
slave boy of fifty years ago and the stately-mannered gentleman and high
government official of this day.
The man whose misfortune it was at that time to have been Douglass’s
master, lay on a bed of sickness with little hope of recovery. Thomas
Auld had passed the allotted three score years and ten. When he learned
that Marshal Douglass was actually on his ground as a visitor, he at
once sent for him. The name of Thomas Auld was made noted all over the
land wherever Douglass had spoken concerning slavery and slave-holders,
and because of this he had for several years harbored a strong
resentment against his one-time runaway slave. Now all was wonderfully
changed, and each was in a mood to make amends for the wrongs he was
impelled to commit against the other. Mr. Douglass feelingly says:
“Had I been asked, in the days of slavery to visit this man ... it would
have been an invitation to the auction block; now he was to me no longer
a slave-holder, either in fact or spirit, and I regarded him as I did
myself, as a victim of circumstances of birth and education, law and
custom. Our courses had been determined for us and not by us. We had
both been flung by powers that did not ask our consent, upon a mighty
current of life which we could neither resist nor control.... Now as our
lives were verging toward a point where differences disappear, even the
constancy of hate breaks down and the clouds of pride, passion and
selfishness vanish before the brightness of infinite light.”
The meeting between the ex-master and ex-slave was impressive and
beautiful. They were both so overcome with emotion for some moments that
neither could speak. Tears dimmed their eyes and the silence was more
eloquent than words. As soon as he regained his power of speech, Mr.
Douglass, with that instinctive politeness which was characteristic of
him, made apology to his former master for the many harsh accusations
uttered in the days of slavery, when passion was in the ascendency. The
old master was equally frank and said: “I always thought, though, that
you were too smart to be a slave, and had I been in your place, I should
have done as you did.”
“Captain Auld,” replied Douglass, “I did not run away from you, but from
slavery. It was not that I loved Cæsar less, but Rome more.”
With this exchange of apologies and expressions of mutual good-will, the
visit came to an end. If Mr. Douglass had any lingering bitterness in
his soul, on account of the past, this face-to-face meeting, after so
many years and so many changes, had now forever removed it. The laws and
customs that so often made it impossible for good men, standing in the
intimate relation of master and slave, to understand and respect each
other, no longer existed.
Shortly after this interview Mr. Auld passed away, and the fact that the
Marshal of the District of Columbia had once been the property of the
dead man became a matter of wide comment.
Two years later, Mr. Douglass was again a visitor to Talbot County. He
now went on the private yacht of John L. Thomas, United States Collector
of Customs at the port of Baltimore. This time he returned to the scenes
of his early life on the Lloyd plantation. It will be remembered that it
was here the boy was separated from his grandmother, and left the only
home he ever had before he became free. His master, Captain Anthony,
lived on the Lloyd estate. It was at this place, too, that he was cuffed
and half-starved by the hated Aunt Katy, and saw his own loving mother
for the last time. Standing amid the scenes of his childhood miseries,
looking in vain for faces that he once saw or knew in the long ago, he
embodied in himself, perhaps, more changes than have been experienced in
the life of any other American.
Colonel Lloyd was away at the time, but every one on the estate was made
aware of the visit of Marshal Douglass. The place was rich in traditions
concerning this strange visitor, who had come out of a strange past, an
era known to but few now living, and he was treated with marked
deference by all.
He also visited Easton, which will be remembered as the county-seat of
Talbot County, where young Douglass, with his companions, was locked up
in jail on the charge of conspiracy to escape from slavery. The old
sheriff, who had placed him behind prison-bars, was still living, and
said that he was proud to shake hands across the chasm of nearly fifty
years. White and black crowded into the little court-house and listened
with profound interest to the address he was asked to deliver. The young
people, who belonged to the new era of freedom, wondered at his
eloquence, and the older ones heard with confused and bewildering
emotions.
There seemed to be more of romance than reality, more of apparition than
of real substance, in this man, for whom, at one time, the jail, and not
the court-house, would have been regarded as a more fitting place.
In the same year Frederick Douglass had another opportunity to revive
the memories of the days preceding the war. He was asked to deliver an
address on John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. He gladly accepted the
invitation, and spoke to an immense concourse of Virginians, white and
black, on the very spot where, less than twenty years before, he would,
very possibly, have been tried and hanged on the charge of high treason,
had he not escaped those who made efforts to arrest him. On the platform
close beside him sat the man who was the attorney for the commonwealth
of Virginia in the prosecution of Brown. Douglass spoke with boldness in
his eulogy of the old raider, and what he said was heartily cheered.
In 1859 Douglass had fled to England as a fugitive from justice because
of his presumed complicity in what was then called John Brown’s “crime.”
In less than twenty years he was honored by many of the same people who
had then hated his name and thirsted for his blood. He could rightly
claim to be a part both of the cause and the effect of this remarkable
revolution of public opinion. The possibilities of American life were,
perhaps, never better illustrated than in his person.
In the fall of 1886, Mr. Douglass, accompanied by his wife, made an
extensive tour of Europe and Egypt. He revisited some of the cities in
Italy, and crossed the Mediterranean to the land of the Pharaohs. He has
written most delightfully of his travels in his _Life and Times_.
Everything of historical value in Europe meant a great deal to him,
because he was so earnest a student of men and events. Of Victor Hugo,
he said, on seeing a memorial to him, that “he was a man whose heart was
broad enough to take in the whole world and to rank among the greatest
of the human race.”
Upon returning to this country, he had many pleasing evidences that he
was greatly missed in his absence, and that his opinions were as eagerly
sought as ever on any question that came within the range of his
interest.
One of the first public addresses made by him after his return from
abroad was in behalf of woman’s suffrage, in Washington, at a meeting of
the International Council of Women. He spoke ardently of the progress of
the human mind as evidenced by the unveiling of a statue to Galileo,
which he had witnessed in Rome. He said:
“Whatever revolutions may have in store for us, one thing is certain:
the new revolution in human thought will never go backward. When a great
truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison or
proscribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on until it
becomes the thought of the world. Such a truth is woman’s right to equal
liberty with man. She was born with it, it was hers before she
comprehended it. It is inscribed upon all powers and faculties of her
soul, and no custom, law, or usage can ever destroy it. Now that it has
got fairly fixed in the minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed in
the minds of the many, and be supported at last by a great cloud of
witnesses which no man can number and no power can withstand.”
In the same year, addressing a suffrage association in Boston, he said:
“If the whole is greater than a part; if the sense and sum of human
goodness in man and woman combined are greater than that of either alone
and separate, then this government that excludes women from all
participation in its creation, administration, and perpetuation demeans
itself.”
In the matter of the education of his people, Mr. Douglass had a deep
and abiding interest. It will be remembered that he believed in the
broadest and best possible schooling of the masses. He regarded it as
important to consider the Negro’s opportunity in planning for his
education. Hence it was that, in addressing the students of Tuskegee in
1892 on the subject of “Self-Made Men,” he laid special stress on the
necessity of the learning of trades in connection with other training.
Hence his saying that “the earth has no prejudice against color; crops
yield as readily to the touch of the black man’s hand as to that of his
white brother.”
“Go on,” he continued; “I shall not be with you long; you have heights
to ascend and breadths to fill such as I never could and never can. Go
on. When you are working with your hands they grow larger; the same is
true of your heads.... Seek to acquire knowledge as well as property,
and in time you may have the honor of going to Congress. Congress ought
to be able to stand a Negro, if the Negro can stand Congress.”
In these addresses before students in college or trade-schools, he took
pains to urge that the man with a trade, as well as the man with a
profession should be respected and honored, according to the amount of
character and intelligence he puts into his work. He insisted that there
was no such thing as servility or degradation for one who made his way
through the world with an honest heart and skilled hands.
His earnestness in this conviction is further evidenced by one of his
last acts in behalf of his people, when he helped to found the
Industrial School at Manassas, Va.