From the president, I went to see Secretary Stanton. The manner of no

two men could be more widely different. I was introduced by Assistant

Secretary Dana, whom I had known many years before at “Brook Farm,”

Mass., and afterwards as managing editor of the New York _Tribune_.

Every line in Mr. Stanton’s face told me that my communication with him

must be brief, clear, and to the point; that he might turn his back

upon me as a bore at any moment; that politeness was not one of his

weaknesses. His first glance was that of a man who says, “Well, what

do you want? I have no time to waste upon you or any body else, and I

shall waste none. Speak quick, or I shall leave you.” The man and the

place seemed alike busy. Seeing I had no time to lose, I hastily went

over the ground I had gone over to President Lincoln. As I ended, I was

surprised by seeing a changed man before me. Contempt and suspicion,

and brusqueness, had all disappeared from his face and manner, and

for a few minutes he made the best defense that I had then heard from

any body of the treatment of colored soldiers by the government. I

was not satisfied, yet I left in the full belief that the true course

to the black man’s freedom and citizenship was over the battle-field,

and that my business was to get every black man I could into the

Union armies. Both the President and Secretary of War assured me that

justice would ultimately be done my race, and I gave full faith and

credit to their promise. On assuring Mr. Stanton of my willingness

to take a commission, he said he would make me assistant adjutant to

General Thomas, who was then recruiting and organizing troops in the

Mississippi valley. He asked me how soon I could be ready. I told him

in two weeks, and that my commission might be sent me to Rochester.

For some reason, however, my commission never came. The government, I

fear, was still clinging to the idea that positions of honor in the

service should be occupied by white men, and that it would not do to

inaugurate just then the policy of perfect equality. I wrote to the

department for my commission, but was simply told to report to General

Thomas. This was so different from what I expected and from what I had

been promised, that I wrote to Secretary Stanton that I would report to

General Thomas on receipt of my commission, but it did not come, and

I did not go to the Mississippi valley as I had fondly hoped. I knew

too much of camp life and the value of shoulder straps in the army to

go into the service without some visible mark of my rank. I have no

doubt that Mr. Stanton in the moment of our meeting meant all he said,

but thinking the matter over he felt that the time had not then come

for a step so radical and aggressive. Meanwhile my three sons were in

the service. Lewis and Charles, as already named, in the Massachusetts

regiments and Frederick recruiting colored troops in the Mississippi

valley.

CHAPTER XII.

HOPE FOR THE NATION.

Proclamation of emancipation--Its reception in Boston--Objections

brought against it--Its effect on the country--Interview with

President Lincoln--New York riots--Re-election of Mr. Lincoln--His

inauguration, and inaugural--Vice-President Johnson--Presidential

reception--The fall of Richmond--Fanueil Hall--The assassination--

Condolence.

The first of January, 1863, was a memorable day in the progress of

American liberty and civilization. It was the turning-point in the

conflict between freedom and slavery. A death blow was then given to

the slaveholding rebellion. Until then the federal arm had been more

than tolerant to that relict of barbarism. It had defended it inside

the slave States; it had countermanded the emancipation policy of John

C. Fremont in Missouri; it had returned slaves to their so-called

owners; and had threatened that any attempt on the part of the slaves

to gain their freedom by insurrection, or otherwise, would be put

down with an iron hand; it had even refused to allow the Hutchinson

family to sing their anti-slavery songs in the camps of the Army of the

Potomac; it had surrounded the houses of slaveholders with bayonets for

their protection; and through its secretary of war, William H. Seward,

had given notice to the world that, “however the war for the Union

might terminate, no change would be made in the relation of master and

slave.” Upon this pro-slavery platform the war against the rebellion

had been waged during more than two years. It had not been a war of

conquest, but rather a war of conciliation. McClellan, in command

of the army, had been trying, apparently, to put down the rebellion

without hurting the rebels, certainly without hurting slavery, and

the government had seemed to coöperate with him in both respects.

Charles Sumner, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit

Smith, and the whole anti-slavery phalanx at the North, had denounced

this policy, and had besought Mr. Lincoln to adopt an opposite one,

but in vain. Generals, in the field, and councils in the Cabinet, had

persisted in advancing this policy through defeats and disasters, even

to the verge of ruin. We fought the rebellion, but not its cause. The

key to the situation was the four million of slaves; yet the slave

who loved us, was hated, and the slaveholder who hated us, was loved.

We kissed the hand that smote us, and spurned the hand that helped

us. When the means of victory were before us,--within our grasp,--

we went in search of the means of defeat. And now, on this day of

January 1st, 1863, the formal and solemn announcement was made that

thereafter the government would be found on the side of emancipation.

This proclamation changed everything. It gave a new direction to the

councils of the Cabinet, and to the conduct of the national arms. I

shall leave to the statesman, the philosopher, and historian, the

more comprehensive discussion of this document, and only tell how it

touched me, and those in like condition with me at the time. I was in

Boston, and its reception there may indicate the importance attached to

it elsewhere. An immense assembly convened in Tremont Temple to await

the first flash of the electric wires announcing the “new departure.”

Two years of war prosecuted in the interests of slavery, had made free

speech possible in Boston, and we were now met together to receive and

celebrate the first utterance of the long-hoped-for proclamation, _if_

it came, and, if it did _not_ come, to speak our minds freely; for, in

view of the past, it was by no means certain that it would come. The

occasion, therefore, was one of both hope and fear. Our ship was on the

open sea, tossed by a terrible storm; wave after wave was passing over

us, and every hour was fraught with increasing peril. Whether we should

survive or perish, depended in large measure upon the coming of this

proclamation. At least so we felt. Although the conditions on which

Mr. Lincoln had promised to withhold it, had not been complied with,

yet, from many considerations, there was room to doubt and fear. Mr.

Lincoln was known to be a man of tender heart, and boundless patience:

no man could tell to what length he might go, or might refrain from

going in the direction of peace and reconciliation. Hitherto, he had

not shown himself a man of heroic measures, and, properly enough, this

step belonged to that class. It must be the end of all compromises with

slavery--a declaration that thereafter the war was to be conducted on

a new principle, with a new aim. It would be a full and fair assertion

that the government would neither trifle, or be trifled with any

longer. But would it come? On the side of doubt, it was said that Mr.

Lincoln’s kindly nature might cause him to relent at the last moment;

that Mrs. Lincoln, coming from an old slaveholding family, would

influence him to delay, and give the slaveholders one other chance.[C]

Every moment of waiting chilled our hopes, and strengthened our fears.

A line of messengers was established between the telegraph office and

the platform of Tremont Temple, and the time was occupied with brief

speeches from Hon. Thomas Russell of Plymouth, Miss Anna E. Dickinson

(a lady of marvelous eloquence), Rev. Mr. Grimes, J. Sella Martin,

William Wells Brown, and myself. But speaking or listening to speeches

was not the thing for which the people had come together. The time for

argument was passed. It was not logic, but the trump of jubilee, which

everybody wanted to hear. We were waiting and listening as for a bolt

from the sky, which should rend the fetters of four million of slaves;

we were watching, as it were, by the dim light of the stars, for the

dawn of a new day; we were longing for the answer to the agonizing

prayers of centuries. Remembering those in bonds as bound with them,

we wanted to join in the shout for freedom, and in the anthem of the

redeemed.

[C] I have reason to know that this supposition did Mrs. Lincoln

great injustice.

Eight, nine, ten o’clock came and went, and still no word. A visible

shadow seemed falling on the expecting throng, which the confident

utterances of the speakers sought in vain to dispel. At last, when

patience was well-nigh exhausted, and suspense was becoming agony, a

man (I think it was Judge Russell) with hasty step advanced through

the crowd, and with a face fairly illumined with the news he bore,

exclaimed in tones that thrilled all hearts, “It is coming!” “It is

on the wires!!” The effect of this announcement was startling beyond

description, and the scene was wild and grand. Joy and gladness

exhausted all forms of expression from shouts of praise, to sobs and

tears. My old friend Rue, a colored preacher, a man of wonderful vocal

power, expressed the heartfelt emotion of the hour, when he led all

voices in the anthem, “Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea,

Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free.” About twelve o’clock,

seeing there was no disposition to retire from the hall, which must

be vacated, my friend Grimes (of blessed memory), rose and moved that

the meeting adjourn to the Twelfth Baptist church, of which he was

pastor, and soon that church was packed from doors to pulpit, and

this meeting did not break up till near the dawn of day. It was one

of the most affecting and thrilling occasions I ever witnessed, and a

worthy celebration of the first step on the part of the nation in its

departure from the thraldom of ages.

There was evidently no disposition on the part of this meeting to

criticise the proclamation; nor was there with any one at first. At

the moment we saw only its anti-slavery side. But further and more

critical examination showed it to be extremely defective. It was not

a proclamation of “liberty throughout all the land, unto all the

inhabitants thereof,” such as we had hoped it would be; but was one

marked by discriminations and reservations. Its operation was confined

within certain geographical and military lines. It only abolished

slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.

It was a measure apparently inspired by the low motive of military

necessity, and by so far as it was so, it would become inoperative and

useless when military necessity should cease. There was much said in

this line, and much that was narrow and erroneous. For my own part,

I took the proclamation, first and last, for a little more than it

purported; and saw in its spirit, a life and power far beyond its

letter. Its meaning to me was the entire abolition of slavery, wherever

the evil could be reached by the Federal arm, and I saw that its moral

power would extend much further. It was in my estimation an immense

gain to have the war for the Union committed to the extinction of

Slavery, even from a military necessity. It is not a bad thing to have

individuals or nations do right though they do so from selfish motives.

I approved the one-spur-wisdom of “Paddy” who thought if he could get

one side of his horse to go, he could trust the speed of the other side.

The effect of the proclamation abroad was highly beneficial to the

loyal cause. Disinterested parties could now see in it a benevolent

character. It was no longer a mere strife for territory and dominion,

but a contest of civilization against barbarism.

The Proclamation itself was like Mr. Lincoln throughout. It was

framed with a view to the least harm and the most good possible in

the circumstances, and with especial consideration of the latter. It

was thoughtful, cautious, and well guarded at all points. While he

hated Slavery, and really desired its destruction, he always proceeded

against it in a manner the least likely to shock or drive from him any

who were truly in sympathy with the preservation of the union, but who

were not friendly to Emancipation. For this he kept up the distinction

between loyal and disloyal slaveholders, and discriminated in favor

of the one, as against the other. In a word, in all that he did, or

attempted, he made it manifest that the one great and all commanding

object with him, was the peace and preservation of the Union, and

that this was the motive and main spring of all his measures. His

wisdom and moderation at this point were for a season useful to the

loyal cause in the border states, but it may be fairly questioned,

whether it did not chill the union ardor of the loyal people of the

north in some degree, and diminish rather than increase the sum of

our power against the rebellion: for moderate cautions and guarded

as was this proclamation it created a howl of indignation and wrath

amongst the rebels and their allies. The old cry was raised by the

copperhead organs of “an abolition war,” and a pretext was thus found

for an excuse for refusing to enlist, and for marshaling all the negro

prejudice of the north on the rebel side. Men could say they were

willing to fight for the union, but that they were not willing to

fight for the freedom of the negroes; and thus it was made difficult

to procure enlistments or to enforce the draft. This was especially

true of New York, where there was a large Irish population. The

attempt to enforce the draft in that city was met by mobs, riot, and

bloodshed. There is perhaps no darker chapter in the whole history of

the war, than this cowardly and bloody uprising in July, 1863. For

three days and nights New York was in the hands of a ferocious mob,

and there was not sufficient power in the government of the country

or of the city itself, to stay the hand of violence, and the effusion

of blood. Though this mob was nominally against the draft which had

been ordered, it poured out its fiercest wrath upon the colored people

and their friends. It spared neither age nor sex; it hanged negroes

simply because they were negroes, it murdered women in their homes, and

burned their homes over their heads, it dashed out the brains of young

children against the lamp posts, it burned the colored orphan asylum, a

noble charity on the corner of 5th ave., and scarce allowing time for

the helpless two hundred children to make good their escape, plundering

the building of every valuable piece of furniture; and colored men,

women, and children were forced to seek concealment in cellars or

garrets or wheresoever else it could be found until this high carnival

of crime and reign of terror should pass away.

In connection with Geo. L. Stearns, Thomas Webster, and Col. Wagner,

I had been at Camp William Penn, Philadelphia, assisting in the work

of filling up the colored regiments, and was on my way home from

there just as these events were transpiring in New York. I was met by

a friend at Newark who informed me of this condition of things. I,

however, pressed on my way to the Chambers street station of the Hudson

River Railroad in safety, the mob being in the upper part of the city,

fortunately for me, for not only my color, but my known activity in

procuring enlistments would have made me especially obnoxious to its

murderous spirit. This was not the first time I had been in imminent

peril in New York city. My first arrival there, after my escape from

slavery, was full of danger. My passage through its borders after

the attack of John Brown on Harper’s Ferry was scarcely less safe. I

had encountered Isaiah Rynders and his gang of ruffians in the old

Broadway Tabernacle at our Anti-slavery anniversary meeting, and I knew

something of the crazy temper of such crowds; but this anti-draft--

anti-negro mob was something more and something worse--it was a part

of the rebel force, without the rebel uniform, but with all its deadly

hate; it was the fire of the enemy opened in the rear of the loyal

army. Such men as Franklin Pierce and Horatio Seymour had done much in

their utterances to encourage resistance to the drafts. Seymour was

then Governor of the State of New York, and while the mob was doing its

deadly work he addressed them as “My friends,” telling them to desist

then, while he could arrange at Washington to have the draft arrested.

Had Governor Seymour been loyal to his country, and to his country’s

cause, in this her moment of need, he would have burned his tongue with

a red hot iron sooner than allow it to call these thugs, thieves, and

murderers his “friends.”

My interviews with President Lincoln and his able Secretary, before

narrated, greatly increased my confidence in the anti-slavery integrity

of the government, although I confess I was greatly disappointed at my

failure to receive the commission promised me by Secretary Stanton. I,

however, faithfully believed, and loudly proclaimed my belief, that

the rebellion would be suppressed, the Union preserved, the slaves

emancipated, and the colored soldiers would in the end have justice

done them. This confidence was immeasurably strengthened when I saw

Gen. George B. McClellan relieved from the command of the army of the

Potomac and Gen U. S. Grant placed at its head, and in command of all

the armies of the United States. My confidence in Gen. Grant was not

entirely due to the brilliant military successes achieved by him, but

there was a moral as well as military basis for my faith in him. He had

shown his single mindedness and superiority to popular prejudice by his

prompt co-operation with President Lincoln in his policy of employing

colored troops, and his order commanding his soldiers to treat such

troops with due respect. In this way he proved himself to be not only

a wise General, but a great man--one who could adjust himself to new

conditions, and adopt the lessons taught by the events of the hour.

This quality in General Grant was and is made all the more conspicuous

and striking in contrast with his West Point education and his former

political associations; for neither West Point nor the Democratic party

have been good schools in which to learn justice and fair play to the

negro.

It was when General Grant was fighting his way through the Wilderness

to Richmond, on the “line” he meant to pursue “if it took all summer,”

and every reverse to his arms was made the occasion for a fresh demand

for peace without emancipation, that President Lincoln did me the

honor to invite me to the Executive Mansion for a conference on the

situation. I need not say I went most gladly. The main subject on which

he wished to confer with me was as to the means most desirable to be

employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the rebel States to

come within the Federal lines. The increasing opposition to the war,

in the north, and the mad cry against it, because it was being made an

abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that

a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery

all who had not come within our lines. What he wanted was to make his

proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace. He

said in a regretful tone, “The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so

numerously to us as I had hoped.” I replied that the slaveholders knew

how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew

of his proclamation. “Well,” he said, “I want you to set about devising

some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them

into our lines.” He spoke with great earnestness and much solicitude,

and seemed troubled by the attitude of Mr. Greeley, and the growing

impatience there was being manifested through the north at the war. He

said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate

object, and of failing to make peace, when he might have done so to

advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints,

but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short

of absolute submission on the part of the rebels, and he was not for

giving them rest by futile conferences at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere,

with unauthorized persons. He saw the danger of premature peace, and,

like a thoughtful and sagacious man as he was, he wished to provide

means of rendering such consummation as harmless as possible. I was the

more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said,

in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to _save the Union_,

and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed

a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had even seen before

in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest

interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed

to undertake the organizing a band of scouts, composed of colored men,

whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John

Brown, to go into the rebel States, beyond the lines of our armies, and

carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our

boundaries.

This plan, however, was very soon rendered unnecessary by the success

of the war in the Wilderness and elsewhere, and by its termination in

the complete abolition of slavery.

I refer to this conversation because I think it is evidence conclusive

on Mr. Lincoln’s part that the proclamation, so far at least as he was

concerned, was not effected merely as a “necessity.”

An incident occurred during this interview which illustrates the

character of this great man, though the mention of it may savor a

little of vanity on my part. While in conversation with him his

Secretary twice announced “Governor Buckingham of Connecticut,” one

of the noblest and most patriotic of the loyal Governors. Mr. Lincoln

said, “Tell Governor Buckingham to wait, for I want to have a long

talk with my friend Frederick Douglass.” I interposed, and begged him

to see the Governor at once, as I could wait; but no, he persisted he

wanted to talk with me, and Governor Buckingham could wait. This was

probably the first time in the history of this Republic when its chief

magistrate found occasion or disposition to exercise such an act of

impartiality between persons so widely different in their positions and

supposed claims upon his attention. From the manner of the Governor,

when he was finally admitted, I inferred that he was as well satisfied

with what Mr. Lincoln had done, or had omitted to do, as I was.

I have often said elsewhere what I wish to repeat here, that Mr.

Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to

be small in anything. In his company I was never in any way reminded

of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color. While I am, as it may

seem, bragging of the kind consideration which I have reason to believe

that Mr. Lincoln entertained towards me, I may mention one thing

more. At the door of my friend John A. Gray, where I was stopping in

Washington, I found one afternoon the carriage of Secretary Dole, and

a messenger from President Lincoln with an invitation for me to take

tea with him at the Soldiers Home, where he then passed his nights,

riding out after the business of the day was over at the Executive

Mansion. Unfortunately I had an engagement to speak that evening, and

having made it one of the rules of my conduct in life never to break

an engagement if possible to keep it, I felt obliged to decline the

honor. I have often regretted that I did not make this an exception to

my general rule. Could I have known that no such opportunity could come

to me again, I should have justified myself in disappointing a large

audience for the sake of such a visit with Abraham Lincoln.

It is due perhaps to myself to say here that I did not take Mr.

Lincoln’s attentions as due to my merits or personal qualities. While

I have no doubt that Messrs. Seward and Chase had spoken well of me to

him, and the fact of my having been a slave, and gained my freedom,

and of having picked up some sort of an education, and being in some

sense a “self-made man,” and having made myself useful as an advocate

of the claims of my people, gave me favor in his eyes; yet I am quite

sure that the main thing which gave me consideration with him was

my well known relation to the colored people of the Republic, and

especially the help which that relation enabled me to give to the work

of suppressing the rebellion and of placing the Union on a firmer basis

than it ever had or could have sustained in the days of slavery.

So long as there was any hope whatsoever of the success of Rebellion,

there was of course a corresponding fear that a new lease of life

would be granted to slavery. The proclamation of Fremont in Missouri,

the letter of Phelps in the Department of the Gulf, the enlistment of

colored troops by Gen. Hunter, the “Contraband” letter of Gen. B. F.

Butler, the soldierly qualities surprisingly displayed by colored

soldiers in the terrific battles of Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Morris

Island, and elsewhere, the Emancipation proclamation by Abraham Lincoln

had given slavery many and deadly wounds, yet it was in fact only

wounded and crippled, not disabled and killed. With this condition of

national affairs came the summer of 1864, and with it the revived

Democratic party, with the story in its mouth that the war was a

failure, and with Gen. George B. McClellan, the greatest failure of the

war, as its candidate for the Presidency. It is needless to say that

the success of such a party, on such a platform, with such a candidate,

at such a time would have been a fatal calamity. All that had been done

towards suppressing the rebellion and abolishing slavery would have

proved of no avail, and the final settlement between the two sections

of the Republic, touching slavery and the right of secession, would

have been left to tear and rend the country again at no distant future.

It was said that this Democratic party, which under Mr. Buchanan had

betrayed the Government into the hands of secession and treason, was

the only party which could restore the country to peace and union.

No doubt it would have “patched up” a peace, but it would have been

a peace more to be dreaded than war. So at least I felt and worked.

When we were thus asked to exchange Abraham Lincoln for McClellan--a

successful Union President for an unsuccessful Union General--a party

earnestly endeavoring to save the Union, torn and rent by a gigantic

rebellion, I thought with Mr. Lincoln, that it was not wise to “swap

horses while crossing a stream.” Regarding, as I did, the continuance

of the war to the complete suppression of the rebellion, and the

retention in office of President Lincoln as essential to the total

destruction of slavery, I certainly exerted myself to the uttermost, in

my small way, to secure his re-election. This most important object was

not attained, however, by speeches, letters, or other electioneering

appliances. The staggering blows dealt upon the rebellion that year

by the armies under Grant and Sherman, and his own great character,

ground all opposition to dust, and made his election sure, even before

the question reached the polls. Since William the Silent, who was the

soul of the mighty war for religious liberty against Spain and the

Spanish inquisition, no leader of men has been loved and trusted in

such generous measure as Abraham Lincoln. His election silenced, in

a good degree, the discontent felt at the length of the war, and the

complaints of its being an Abolition war. Every victory of our arms,

on flood and field, was a rebuke to McClellan and the Democratic

party, and an endorsement of Abraham Lincoln for President, and his

new policy. It was my good fortune to be present at his inauguration

in March, and to hear on that occasion his remarkable inaugural

address. On the night previous I took tea with Chief Justice Chase,

and assisted his beloved daughter, Mrs. Sprague, in placing over her

honored father’s shoulders the new robe, then being made, in which

he was to administer the oath of office to the re-elected President.

There was a dignity and grandeur about the Chief Justice which marked

him as one born great. He had known me in early anti-slavery days, and

had conquered his race-prejudice, if he ever had any; at any rate, he

had welcomed me to his home and his table, when to do so was a strange

thing in Washington; and the fact was by no means an insignificant one.

The inauguration, like the election, was a most important event. Four

years before, after Mr. Lincoln’s first election, the pro-slavery

spirit determined against his inauguration, and it no doubt would have

accomplished its purpose had he attempted to pass openly and recognized

through Baltimore. There was murder in the air then, and there was

murder in the air now. His first inauguration arrested the fall of the

Republic, and the second was to restore it to enduring foundations.

At the time of the second inauguration the rebellion was apparently

vigorous, defiant, and formidable; but in reality weak, dejected, and

desperate. It had reached that verge of madness when it had called upon

the negro for help to fight against the freedom which he so longed to

find, for the bondage he would escape--against Lincoln the Emancipator

for Davis the enslaver. But desperation discards logic as well as law,

and the South was desperate. Sherman was marching to the sea, and

Virginia with its rebel capital was in the firm grip of Ulysses S.

Grant. To those who knew the situation it was evident that unless some

startling change was made the confederacy had but a short time to live,

and that time full of misery. This condition of things made the air

at Washington dark and lowering. The friends of the confederate cause

here were neither few nor insignificant. They were among the rich and

influential. A wink or a nod from such men might unchain the hand of

violence and set order and law at defiance. To those who saw beneath

the surface it was clearly perceived that there was danger abroad; and

as the procession passed down Pennsylvania Avenue, I for one felt an

instinctive apprehension that at any moment a shot from some assassin

in the crowd might end the glittering pageant, and throw the country

into the depths of anarchy. I did not then know, what has since

become history, that the plot was already formed and its execution

contemplated for that very day, which though several weeks delayed,

at last accomplished its deadly work. Reaching the Capitol, I took

my place in the crowd where I could see the Presidential procession

as it came upon the east portico, and where I could hear and see all

that took place. There was no such throng as that which celebrated the

inauguration of President Garfield, nor that of President Rutherford B.

Hayes. The whole proceeding was wonderfully quiet, earnest, and solemn.

From the oath, as administered by Chief Justice Chase, to the brief but

weighty address delivered by Mr. Lincoln, there was a leaden stillness

about the crowd. The address sounded more like a sermon than a state

paper. In the fewest words possible it referred to the condition of the

country four years before, on his first accession to the presidency--

to the causes of the war, and the reasons on both sides for which

it had been waged. “Neither party,” he said, “expected for the war

the magnitude or the duration which it had already attained. Neither

anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even

before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier

triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.” Then in a few

short sentences, admitting the conviction that slavery had been the

“offense which, in the providence of God, must needs come, and the war

as the woe due to those by whom the offense came,” he asks if there

can be “discerned in this, any departure from those Divine attributes

which the believers in a loving God always ascribe to him? Fondly do

we hope,” he continued, “fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge

of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until

all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of

unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with

the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said

three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of

the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the

right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the

work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who

shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to

do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among

ourselves and with all nations.”

I know not how many times, and before how many people I have quoted

these solemn words of our martyred president; they struck me at the

time, and have seemed to me ever since to contain more vital substance

than I have ever seen compressed in a space so narrow; yet on this

memorable occasion when I clapped my hands in gladness and thanksgiving

at their utterance, I saw in the faces of many about me expressions of

widely different emotion.

On this inauguration day, while waiting for the opening of the

ceremonies, I made a discovery in regard to the Vice-President--Andrew

Johnson. There are moments in the lives of most men, when the doors

of their souls are open, and unconsciously to themselves, their true

characters may be read by the observant eye. It was at such an instant

I caught a glimpse of the real nature of this man, which all subsequent

developments proved true. I was standing in the crowd by the side

of Mrs. Thomas J. Dorsey, when Mr. Lincoln touched Mr. Johnson, and

pointed me out to him. The first expression which came to his face,

and which I think was the true index of his heart, was one of bitter

contempt and aversion. Seeing that I observed him, he tried to assume a

more friendly appearance; but it was too late; it was useless to close

the door when all within had been seen. His first glance was the frown

of the man, the second was the bland and sickly smile of the demagogue.

I turned to Mrs. Dorsey and said, “Whatever Andrew Johnson may be, he

certainly is no friend of our race.”

No stronger contrast could well be presented between two men than

between President Lincoln and Vice-President Johnson on this day. Mr.

Lincoln was like one who was treading the hard and thorny path of duty

and self-denial; Mr. Johnson was like one just from a drunken debauch.

The face of the one was full of manly humility, although at the topmost

height of power and pride, the other was full of pomp and swaggering

vanity. The fact was, though it was yet early in the day, Mr. Johnson

was drunk.

In the evening of the day of the inauguration, another new experience

awaited me. The usual reception was given at the executive mansion,

and though no colored persons had ever ventured to present themselves

on such occasions, it seemed now that freedom had become the law of

the republic, now that colored men were on the battle-field mingling

their blood with that of white men in one common effort to save the

country, it was not too great an assumption for a colored man to offer

his congratulations to the President with those of other citizens.

I decided to go, and sought in vain for some one of my own color

to accompany me. It is never an agreeable experience to go where

there can be any doubt of welcome, and my colored friends had too

often realized discomfiture from this cause to be willing to subject

themselves to such unhappiness; they wished me to go, as my New

England colored friends in the long ago liked very well to have me

take passage on the first-class cars, and be hauled out and pounded

by rough-handed brakemen, to make way for them. It was plain, then,

that some one must lead the way, and that if the colored man would

have his rights, he must take them; and now, though it was plainly

quite the thing for me to attend President Lincoln’s reception, “they

all with one accord began to make excuse.” It was finally arranged

that Mrs. Dorsey should bear me company, so together we joined in

the grand procession of citizens from all parts of the country, and

moved slowly towards the executive mansion. I had for some time looked

upon myself as a man, but now in this multitude of the élite of the

land, I felt myself a man among men. I regret to be obliged to say,

however, that this comfortable assurance was not of long duration, for

on reaching the door, two policemen stationed there took me rudely by

the arm and ordered me to stand back, for their directions were to

admit no persons of my color. The reader need not be told that this

was a disagreeable set-back. But once in the battle, I did not think

it well to submit to repulse. I told the officers I was quite sure

there must be some mistake, for no such order could have emanated from

President Lincoln; and if he knew I was at the door he would desire

my admission. They then, to put an end to the parley, as I suppose,

for we were obstructing the door way, and were not easily pushed

aside, assumed an air of politeness, and offered to conduct me in. We

followed their lead, and soon found ourselves walking some planks out

of a window, which had been arranged as a temporary passage for the

exit of visitors. We halted so soon as we saw the trick, and I said

to the officers: “You have deceived me. I shall not go out of this

building till I see President Lincoln.” At this moment a gentleman who

was passing in, recognized me, and I said to him: “Be so kind as to

say to Mr. Lincoln that Frederick Douglass is detained by officers at

the door.” It was not long before Mrs. Dorsey and I walked into the

spacious East Room, amid a scene of elegance such as in this country

I had never witnessed before. Like a mountain pine high above all

others, Mr. Lincoln stood, in his grand simplicity, and _home-like

beauty_. Recognizing me, even before I reached him, he exclaimed, so

that all around could hear him, “Here comes my friend Douglass.” Taking

me by the hand, he said, “I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd

to-day, listening to my inaugural address; how did you like it?” I

said, “Mr. Lincoln, I must not detain you with my poor opinion, when

there are thousands waiting to shake hands with you.” “No, no,” he

said, “you must stop a little, Douglass; there is no man in the country

whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think

of it?” I replied, “Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort.” “I am glad

you liked it!” he said, and I passed on, feeling that any man, however

distinguished, might well regard himself honored by such expressions,

from such a man.

It came out that the officers at the White House had received no orders

from Mr. Lincoln, or from any one else. They were simply complying

with an old custom, the outgrowth of slavery, as dogs will sometimes

rub their necks, long after their collars are removed, thinking they

are still there. My colored friends were well pleased with what had

seemed to them a doubtful experiment, and I believe were encouraged by

its success to follow my example. I have found in my experience that

the way to break down an unreasonable custom, is to contradict it in

practice. To be sure in pursuing this course I have had to contend not

merely with the white race, but with the black. The one has condemned

me for my presumption in daring to associate with them, and the other

for pushing myself where they take it for granted I am not wanted. I

am pained to think that the latter objection springs largely from a

consciousness of inferiority, for as colors alone can have nothing

against each other, and the conditions of human association are founded

upon character rather than color, and character depends upon mind and

morals, there can be nothing blame-worthy in people thus equal in

meeting each other on the plain of civil or social rights.

A series of important events followed soon after the second

inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, conspicuous amongst which was the fall

of Richmond. The strongest endeavor, and the best generalship of

the Rebellion was employed to hold that place, and when it fell the

pride, prestige, and power of the rebellion fell with it, never to

rise again. The news of this great event found me again in Boston. The

enthusiasm of that loyal City cannot be easily described. As usual

when anything touches the great heart of Boston, Faneuil Hall became

vocal and eloquent. This Hall is an immense building, and its history

is correspondingly great. It has been the theatre of much patriotic

declamation from the days of the “Revolution” and before; as it has

since my day been the scene, where the strongest efforts of the most

popular orators of Massachusetts have been made. Here Webster the

great “expounder” addressed the “sea of upturned faces.” Here Choate,

the wonderful Boston barrister, by his weird, electric eloquence,

enchained his thousands; here Everett charmed with his classic periods

the flower of Boston aristocracy; and here, too, Charles Sumner, Horace

Mann, John A. Andrew, and Wendell Phillips, the last superior to most,

and equal to any, have for forty years spoken their great words for

justice, liberty, and humanity, sometimes in the calm and sunshine of

unruffled peace, but oftener in the tempest and whirlwind of mobocratic

violence. It was here that Mr. Phillips made his famous speech in

denunciation of the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837, which changed

the whole current of his life and made him preëminently the leader of

anti-slavery thought in New England. Here too Theodore Parker, whose

early death not only Boston, but the lovers of liberty throughout the

world, still mourn, gave utterance to his deep and lifegiving thoughts

in words of fullness and power. But I set out to speak of the meeting

which was held there, in celebration of the fall of Richmond, for it

was a meeting as remarkable for its composition, as for its occasion.

Among the speakers by whom it was addressed, and who gave voice to the

patriotic sentiments which filled and overflowed each loyal heart, were

Hon. Henry Wilson, and Hon. Robert C. Winthrop. It would be difficult

to find two public men more distinctly opposite than these. If any one

may properly boast an aristocratic descent, or if there be any value or

worth in that boast, Robert C. Winthrop may without undue presumption,

avail himself of it. He was born in the midst of wealth and luxury,

and never felt the flint of hardship or the grip of poverty. Just the

opposite to this was the experience of Henry Wilson. The son of common

people, wealth and education had done little for him; but he had in him

a true heart, and a world of common sense; and these with industry,

good habits, and perseverance, had carried him further and lifted

him higher, than the brilliant man with whom he formed such striking

contrast. Winthrop, before the war, like many others of his class, had

resisted the anti-slavery current of his state, had sided largely with

the demands of the slave power, had abandoned many of his old whig

friends, when they went for free soil and free men in 1848, and gone

into the democratic party.

During the war he was too good to be a rebel sympathizer, and not quite

good enough to become as Wilson was--a power in the union cause.

Wilson had risen to eminence by his devotion to liberal ideas, while

Winthrop had sunken almost to obscurity from his indifference to such

ideas. But now either himself or his friends, most likely the latter,

thought that the time had come when some word implying interest in the

loyal cause should fall from his lips. It was not so much the need

of the union, as the need of himself, that he should speak; the time

when the union needed him, and all others, was when the slaveholding

rebellion raised its defiant head, not when as now, that head was in

the dust and ashes of defeat and destruction. But the beloved Winthrop,

the proud representative of what Daniel Webster once called the “solid

men of Boston,” had great need to speak now. It had been no fault of

the loyal cause that he had not spoken sooner. Its “gates like those

of Heaven stood open night and day.” If he did not come in, it was

his own fault. Regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, had

passed over Boston Common to endure the perils and hardships of war;

Governor Andrew had poured out his soul, and exhausted his wonderful

powers of speech in patriotic words to the brave departing sons of old

Massachusetts, and a word from Winthrop would have gone far to nerve up

those young soldiers going forth to lay down their lives for the life

of the republic; but no word came. [See Note on page 413.] Yet now in

the last quarter of the eleventh hour, when the days’ work was nearly

done, Robert C. Winthrop was seen standing upon the same platform with

the veteran Henry Wilson. He was there in all his native grace and

dignity, elegantly and aristocratically clothed, his whole bearing

marking his social sphere as widely different from many present. Happy

for his good name, and for those who shall bear it when he is no longer

among the living, that he was found even at the last hour, in the right

place--in old Faneuil Hall--side by side with plain Henry Wilson--

the shoemaker senator. But this was not the only contrast on that

platform on that day. It was my strange fortune to follow Mr. Winthrop

on this interesting occasion. I remembered him as the guest of John H.

Clifford of New Bedford, afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, when

twenty-five years before, I had been only a few months from slavery--

I was behind his chair as waiter, and was even then charmed by his

elegant conversation--and now after this lapse of time, I found myself

no longer behind the chair of this princely man, but announced to

succeed him in the order of speakers, before that brilliant audience.

I was not insensible to the contrast in our history and positions, and

was curious to observe if it effected him, and how. To his credit I am

happy to say he bore himself grandly throughout. His speech was fully

up to the enthusiasm of the hour, and the great audience greeted his

utterances with merited applause. I need not speak of the speeches

of Henry Wilson and others, or of my own. The meeting was every way

a remarkable expression of popular feeling, created by a great and

important event.

After the fall of Richmond the collapse of the rebellion was not long

delayed, though it did not perish without adding to its long list of

atrocities one which sent a thrill of horror throughout the civilized

world, in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; a man so amiable,

so kind, humane, and honest, that one is at a loss to know how he

could have had an enemy on earth. The details of his “taking off” are

too familiar to be more than mentioned here. The recently attempted

assassination of James Abraham Garfield has made us all too painfully

familiar with the shock and sensation produced by the hell-black crime,

to make any description necessary. The curious will note that the

Christian name of both men is the same, and that both were remarkable

for their kind qualities, and for having risen by their own energies

from among the people, and that both were victims of assassins at the

beginning of a presidential term.

Mr. Lincoln had reason to look forward to a peaceful and happy term

of office. To all appearance, we were on the eve of a restoration of

the union, and a solid and lasting peace. He had served one term as

President of the Disunited States, he was now for the first time to be

President of the United States. Heavy had been his burden, hard had

been his toil, bitter had been his trials, and terrible had been his

anxiety; but the future seemed now bright and full of hope. Richmond

had fallen, Grant had General Lee and the army of Virginia firmly in

his clutch; Sherman had fought and found his way from the banks of

the great river to the shores of the sea, leaving the two ends of the

rebellion squirming and twisting in agony, like the severed parts

of a serpent, doomed to inevitable death; and now there was but a

little time longer for the good President to bear his burden, and be

the target of reproach. His accusers, in whose opinion he was always

too fast or too slow, too weak or too strong, too conciliatory or

too aggressive, would soon become his admirers; it was soon to be

seen that he had conducted the affairs of the nation with singular

wisdom, and with absolute fidelity to the great trust confided in him.

A country, redeemed and regenerated from the foulest crime against

human nature that ever saw the sun! What a bright vision of peace,

prosperity, and happiness must have come to that tired and over-worked

brain, and weary spirit. Men used to talk of his jokes, and he no doubt

indulged them, but I seemed never to have the faculty of calling them

to the surface. I saw him oftener than many who have reported him, but

I never saw any levity in him. He always impressed me as a strong,

earnest man, having no time or disposition to trifle; grappling with

all his might the work he had in hand. The expression of his face was

a blending of suffering with patience and fortitude. Men called him

homely, and homely he was; but it was manifestly a human homeliness,

for there was nothing of the tiger or other wild animal about him.

His eyes had in them the tenderness of motherhood, and his mouth

and other features the highest perfection of a genuine manhood. His

picture, now before me in my study, by Marshall, corresponds well with

the impression I have of him. But, alas! what are all good and great

qualities; what are human hopes and human happiness to the revengeful

hand of an assassin? What are sweet dreams of peace; what are visions

of the future? A simple leaden bullet, and a few grains of powder, in

the shortest limit of time, are sufficient to blast and ruin all that

is precious in human existence, not alone of the murdered, but of the

murderer. I write this in the deep gloom flung over my spirit by the

cruel, wanton, and cold-blooded attempted assassination of Abraham

Garfield, as well as that of Abraham Lincoln.

I was in Rochester, N. Y., where I then resided, when news of the death

of Mr. Lincoln was received. Our citizens, not knowing what else to do

in the agony of the hour, betook themselves to the City Hall. Though

all hearts ached for utterance, few felt like speaking. We were stunned

and overwhelmed by a crime and calamity hitherto unknown to our

country and our government. The hour was hardly one for speech, for no

speech could rise to the level of feeling. Doctor Robinson, then of

Rochester University, but now of Brown University, Providence, R. I.,

was prevailed upon to take the stand, and made one of the most touching

and eloquent speeches I ever heard. At the close of his address, I was

called upon, and spoke out of the fullness of my heart, and, happily, I

gave expression to so much of the soul of the people present, that my

voice was several times utterly silenced by the sympathetic tumult of

the great audience. I had resided long in Rochester, and had made many

speeches there which had more or less touched the hearts of my hearers,

but never till this day was I brought into such close accord with them.

We shared in common a terrible calamity, and this “touch of nature,

made us,” more than countrymen, it made us “kin.”[D]

[D] I sincerely regret that I have done Mr. Winthrop great

injustice. This Faneuil Hall speech of his was not the

first manifestation of his zealous interest in the loyal

cause during the late war. While it is quite true that Mr.

Winthrop was strongly against the anti-slavery movement at

the North, his addresses and speeches delivered during the

war, as they have come to my knowledge since writing the

foregoing chapter, prove him to have been among the most

earnest in his support of the National Government in its

efforts to suppress the rebellion and to restore the Union.

FREDERICK DOUGLAS.

CHAPTER XIII.

VAST CHANGES.

Satisfaction and anxiety--New fields of labor opening--Lyceums and

colleges soliciting addresses--Literary attractions--Pecuniary

gain--Still pleading for human rights--President Andy Johnson--

Colored delegation--Their reply to him--National Loyalist

Convention, 1866, and its procession--Not wanted--Meeting with

an old friend--Joy and surprise--The old master’s welcome,

and Miss Amanda’s friendship--Enfranchisement discussed--its

accomplishment--The negro a citizen.

When the war for the union was substantially ended, and peace had

dawned upon the land as was the case almost immediately after the

tragic death of President Lincoln; when the gigantic system of American

slavery which had defied the march of time, resisted all the appeals

and arguments of the abolitionists, and the humane testimonies of good

men of every generation during two hundred and fifty years, was finally

abolished and forever prohibited by the organic law of the land; a

strange and, perhaps, perverse feeling came over me. My great and

exceeding joy over these stupendous achievements, especially over the

abolition of slavery (which had been the deepest desire and the great

labor of my life), was slightly tinged with a feeling of sadness.

I felt I had reached the end of the noblest and best part of my

life; my school was broken up, my church disbanded, and the beloved

congregation dispersed, never to come together again. The anti-slavery

platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.

“Othello’s occupation was gone.” The great happiness of meeting with

my fellow-workers was now to be among the things of memory. Then,

too, some thought of my personal future came in. Like Daniel Webster,

when asked by his friends to leave John Tyler’s Cabinet, I naturally

inquired: “Where shall I go?” I was still in the midst of my years,

and had something of life before me, and as the minister urged by my

old friend George Bradburn to preach anti-slavery, when to do so was

unpopular, said, “It is necessary for ministers to live,” I felt it

was necessary for me to live, and to live honestly. But where should I

go, and what should I do? I could not now take hold of life as I did

when I first landed in New Bedford, twenty-five years before: I could

not go to the wharf of either Gideon or George Howland, to Richmond’s

brass foundry, or Richetson’s candle and oil works, load and unload

vessels, or even ask Governor Clifford for a place as a servant.

Rolling oil casks and shoveling coal were all well enough when I was

younger, immediately after getting out of slavery. Doing this was a

step up, rather than a step down; but all these avocations had had

their day for me, and I had had my day for them. My public life and

labors had unfitted me for the pursuits of my earlier years, and yet

had not prepared me for more congenial and higher employment. Outside

the question of slavery my thoughts had not been much directed, and

I could hardly hope to make myself useful in any other cause than

that to which I had given the best twenty-five years of my life. A

man in the situation I found myself, has not only to divest himself

of the old, which is never easily done, but to adjust himself to the

new, which is still more difficult. Delivering lectures under various

names, John B. Gough says, “whatever may be the title, my lecture is

always on Temperance;” and such is apt to be the case with any man who

has devoted his time and thoughts to one subject for any considerable

length of time. But what should I do, was the question? I had a few

thousand dollars (a great convenience, and one not generally so highly

prized by my people as it ought to be) saved from the sale of “my

bondage and my freedom,” and the proceeds of my lectures at home and

abroad, and with this sum I thought of following the noble example

of my old friends Stephen and Abby Kelley Foster, purchase a little

farm and settle myself down to earn an honest living by tilling the

soil. My children were all grown up, and ought to be able to take

care of themselves. This question, however, was soon decided for

me. I had after all acquired (a very unusual thing) a little more

knowledge and aptitude fitting me for the new condition of things

than I knew, and had a deeper hold upon public attention than I had

supposed. Invitations began to pour in upon me from colleges, lyceums,

and literary societies, offering me one hundred, and even two hundred

dollars for a single lecture.

I had, sometime before, prepared a lecture on “Self-made men,” and

also one upon Ethnology, with special reference to Africa. The latter

had cost me much labor, though as I now look back upon it, it was a

very defective production. I wrote it at the instance of my friend

Doctor M. B. Anderson, President of Rochester University, himself a

distinguished Ethnologist, a deep thinker and scholar. I had been

invited by one of the literary societies of Western Reserve College

(then at Hudson, but recently removed to Cleveland, Ohio), to address

it on Commencement day; and never having spoken on such an occasion,

never, indeed, having been myself inside of a school-house for the

purpose of an education, I hesitated about accepting the invitation,

and finally called upon Prof. Henry Wayland, son of the great Doctor

Wayland of Brown University, and on Doctor Anderson, and asked their

advice whether I ought to accept. Both gentlemen advised me to do

so. They knew me, and evidently thought well of my ability. But the

puzzling question now was, what shall I say if I do go there? It won’t

do to give them an old-fashioned anti-slavery discourse. (I learned

afterwards that such a discourse was precisely what they needed, though

not what they wished; for the faculty, including the President, was in

great distress because I, a colored man, had been invited, and because

of the reproach this circumstance might bring upon the College.) But

what shall I talk about? became the difficult question. I finally hit

upon the one before mentioned. I had read, when in England a few years

before, with great interest, parts of Doctor Pritchard’s “Natural

History of Man,” a large volume marvelously calm and philosophical

in its discussion of the science of the origin of the races, and was

thus in the line of my then convictions. I sought this valuable book

at once in our bookstores, but could not obtain it anywhere in this

country. I sent to England, where I paid the sum of seven and a half

dollars for it. In addition to this valuable work, President Anderson

kindly gave me a little book entitled, “Man and His Migrations,” by

Dr. R. G. Latham, and loaned me the large work of Dr. Morton the

famous Archaeologist, and that of Messrs. Nott and Glidden, the latter

written evidently to degrade the negro and support the then prevalent

Calhoun doctrine of the rightfulness of slavery. With these books,

and occasional suggestions from Dr. Anderson and Prof. Wayland, I set

about preparing my Commencement address. For many days and nights I

toiled, and succeeded at last in getting something together in due

form. Written orations had not been in my line. I had usually depended

upon my unsystematized knowledge, and the inspiration of the hour

and the occasion; but I had now got the “scholar bee in my bonnet,”

and supposed that inasmuch as I was to speak to college professors

and students, I must at least make a show of some familiarity with

letters. It proved, as to its immediate effect, a great mistake, for

my carefully studied and written address, full of learned quotations,

fell dead at my feet, while a few remarks I made extemporaneously at

collation, were enthusiastically received. Nevertheless, the reading

and labor expended were of much value to me. They were needed steps

preparatory to the work upon which I was about to enter. If they failed

at the beginning, they helped to success in the end. My lecture on

“The Races of Men” was seldom called for, but that on “Self-made Men”

was in great demand, especially through the West. I found that the

success of a lecturer depends more upon the quality of his stock in

store, than the amount. My friend, Wendell Phillips (for such I esteem

him), who has said more cheering words to me, and in vindication of my

race, than any man now living, has delivered his famous lecture on the

“Lost Arts” during the last forty years; and I doubt if among all his

lectures, and he has many, there is one in such requisition as this.

When Daniel O’Connell was asked why he did not make a new speech he

playfully replied, that “it would take Ireland twenty years to learn

his old ones.” Upon some such consideration as this, I adhered pretty

closely to my old lecture on “Self-made Men,” retouching and shading it

a little from time to time as occasion seemed to require.

Here, then, was a new vocation before me, full of advantages, mentally

and pecuniarily. When in the employment of the American Anti-Slavery

Society, my salary was about four hundred and fifty dollars a year, and

I felt I was well paid for my services; but I could now make from fifty

to a hundred dollars a night, and have the satisfaction, too, that I

was in some small measure helping to lift my race into consideration;

for no man who lives at all, lives unto himself; he either helps or

hinders all who are in anywise connected with him. I never rise to

speak before an American audience without something of the feeling

that my failure or success will bring blame or benefit to my whole

race. But my activities were not now confined entirely to lectures

before lyceums. Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs of my people

were not ended. Though they were not slaves they were not yet quite

free. No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the

thought, feeling, and action of others; and who has himself no means

in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending, and maintaining

that liberty. Yet the negro after his emancipation was precisely in

this state of destitution. The law on the side of freedom is of great

advantage only where there is power to make that law respected. I know

no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which

can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any

other class. Protestants are excellent people, but it would not be wise

for Catholics to depend entirely upon them to look after their rights

and interests. Catholics are a pretty good sort of people (though

there is a soul-shuddering history behind them), yet no enlightened

Protestants would commit their liberty to their care and keeping. And

yet the government had left the freedmen in a worse condition than

either of these. It felt that it had done enough for him. It had made

him free, and henceforth he must make his own way in the world, or

as the slang phrase has it, “Root, pig, or die”; yet he had none of

the conditions for self-preservation or self-protection. He was free

from the individual master, but the slave of society. He had neither

property, money, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation,

but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet. He was free

from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave to the

rains of summer and the frosts of winter. He was in a word literally

turned loose naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky. The first

feeling towards him by the old master classes, was full of bitterness

and wrath. They resented his emancipation as an act of hostility

towards them, and since they could not punish the emancipator, they

felt like punishing the object which that act had emancipated. Hence

they drove him off the old plantation, and told him he was no longer

wanted there. They not only hated him because he had been freed as a

punishment to them, but because they felt that they had been robbed

of his labor. An element of greater bitterness still came into their

hearts: the freedman had been the friend of the Government, and many

of his class had borne arms against them during the war. The thought

of paying cash for labor that they could formerly extort by the lash

did not in anywise improve their disposition to the emancipated slave,

or improve his own condition. Now, since poverty has, and can have

no chance against wealth, the landless against the land owner, the

ignorant against the intelligent, the freedman was powerless. He had

nothing left him but a slavery-distorted and diseased body, and lame

and twisted limbs with which to fight the battle of life. I, therefore,

soon found that the negro had still a cause, and that he needed my

voice and pen with others to plead for it. The American Anti-Slavery

Society, under the lead of Mr. Garrison, had disbanded, its newspapers

were discontinued, its agents were withdrawn from the field, and

all systematic efforts by abolitionists were abandoned. Many of the

Society, Mr. Phillips and myself amongst the number, differed from Mr.

Garrison as to the wisdom of this course. 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; but

against Mr. Garrison’s leadership and the surprise and joy occasioned

by the emancipation, it was impossible to keep the association alive,

and the cause of the freedmen was left mainly to individual effort and

to hastily extemporized societies of an ephemeral character, brought

together under benevolent impulse, but having no history behind them,

and being new to the work, they were not as effective for good as the

old society would have been had it followed up its work and kept its

old instrumentalities in operation.

From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the

freedman, until he should cease to be merely a freedman, and should

become a citizen. I insisted that there was no safety for him, or for

any body else in America, outside the American Government: that to

guard, protect, and maintain his liberty, the freedman should have the

ballot; that the liberties of the American people were dependent upon

the Ballot-box, the Jury-box, and the Cartridge-box, that without these

no class of people could live and flourish in this country, and this

was now the word for the hour with me, and the word to which the people

of the north willingly listened when I spoke. Hence regarding as I did,

the elective franchise as the one great power by which all civil rights

are obtained, enjoyed, and maintained under our form of government,

and the one without which freedom to any class is delusive if not

impossible, I set myself to work with whatever force and energy I

possessed to secure this power for the recently emancipated millions.

[Illustration: Wendell Phillips]

The demand for the ballot was such a vast advance upon the former

objects proclaimed by the friends of the colored race, that it startled

and struck men as preposterous and wholly inadmissible. Anti-slavery

men themselves were not united as to the wisdom of such demand. Mr.

Garrison himself, though foremost for the abolition of slavery, was

not yet quite ready to join this advanced movement. In this respect

he was in the rear of Mr. Phillips; who saw not only the justice, but

the wisdom and necessity of the measure. To his credit it may be said,

that he gave the full strength of his character and eloquence to its

adoption. While Mr. Garrison thought it too much to ask, Mr. Phillips

thought it too little. While the one thought it might be postponed to

the future, the other thought it ought to be done at once. But Mr.

Garrison was not a man to lag far in the rear of truth and right, and

he soon came to see with the rest of us that the ballot was essential

to the freedom of the freedman. A man’s head will not long remain

wrong, when his heart is right. The applause awarded to Mr. Garrison by

the conservatives, for his moderation both in respect of his views on

this question, and the disbandment of the American Anti-Slavery Society

must have disturbed him. He was at any rate soon found on the right

side of the suffrage question.

The enfranchisement of the freedmen was resisted on many grounds,

but mainly these two: first the tendency of the measure to bring the

freedmen into conflict with the old master-class, and the white people

of the South generally. Secondly, their unfitness, by reason of their

ignorance, servility, and degradation, to exercise so great a power as

the ballot, over the destinies of this great nation.

These reasons against the measure which were supposed to be

unanswerable, were in some sense the most powerful arguments in its

favor. The argument that the possession of suffrage would be likely

to bring the negro into conflict with the old master-class at the

South, had its main force in the admission that the interests of the

two classes antagonized each other and that the maintenance of the

one would prove inimical to the other. It resolved itself into this,

if the negro had the means of protecting his civil rights, those who

had formerly denied him these rights would be offended and make war

upon him. Experience has shown in a measure the correctness of this

position. The old master was offended to find the negro whom he lately

possessed the right to enslave and flog to toil, casting a ballot equal

to his own, and resorted to all sorts of meanness, violence, and crime,

to dispossess him of the enjoyment of this point of equality. In this

respect the exercise of the right of suffrage by the negro has been

attended with the evil, which the opponents of the measure predicted,

and they could say “I’ve told you so,” but immeasurably and intolerably

greater would have been the evil consequences resulting from the denial

to one class of this natural means of protection, and granting it to

the other, and hostile class. It would have been, to have committed the

lamb to the care of the wolf--the arming of one class and disarming

the other--protecting one interest, and destroying the other--making

the rich strong, and the poor weak--the white man a tyrant, and the

black man a slave. The very fact therefore that the old master-classes

of the South felt that their interests were opposed to those of the

freedmen, instead of being a reason against their enfranchisement, was

the most powerful one in its favor. Until it shall be safe to leave

the lamb in the hold of the lion, the laborer in the power of the

capitalist, the poor in the hands of the rich, it will not be safe

to leave a newly emancipated people completely in the power of their

former masters, especially when such masters have not ceased to be such

from enlightened moral convictions but by irresistible force. Then on

the part of the Government itself, had it denied this great right to

the freedmen, it would have been another proof that “Republics are

ungrateful”. It would have been rewarding its enemies, and punishing

its friends--embracing its foes, and spurning its allies,--setting

a premium on treason, and degrading loyalty. As to the second point,

viz.: the negro’s ignorance and degradation, there was no disputing

either. It was the nature of slavery from whose depths he had arisen

to make him so, and it would have kept it so. It was the policy of the

system to keep him both ignorant and degraded, the better and more

safely to defraud him of his hard earnings; and this argument never

staggered me. The ballot in the hands of the negro was necessary to

open the door of the school house, and to unlock the treasures of

knowledge to him. Granting all that was said of his ignorance, I used

to say, “if the negro knows enough to fight for his country he knows

enough to vote; if he knows enough to pay taxes for the support of the

government, he knows enough to vote; if he knows as much when sober, as

an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote.”

And now while I am not blind to the evils which have thus far attended

the enfranchisement of the colored people, I hold that the evils

from which we escaped, and the good we have derived from that act,

amply vindicate its wisdom. The evils it brought are in their nature

temporary, and the good is permanent. The one is comparatively small,

the other absolutely great. The young child has staggered on his little

legs, and he has sometimes fallen and hurt his head in the fall, but

then he has learned to walk. The boy in the water came near drowning,

but then he has learned to swim. Great changes in the relations of

mankind can never come, without evils analogous to those which have

attended the emancipation and enfranchisement of the colored people

of the United States. I am less amazed at these evils, than by the

rapidity with which they are subsiding and not more astonished at the

facility with which the former slave has become a free man, than at the

rapid adjustment of the master-class to the new situation.

Unlike the movement for the abolition of Slavery, the success of the

effort for the enfranchisement of the freedmen was not long delayed.

It is another illustration of how any advance in pursuance of a right

principle, prepares and makes easy the way to another. The way of

transgression is a bottomless pit, one step in that direction invites

the next, and the end is never reached; and it is the same with the

path of righteous obedience. Two hundred years ago, the pious Doctor

Godwin dared affirm that it was “not a sin to baptize a negro,” and

won for him the rite of baptism. It was a small concession to his

manhood; but it was strongly resisted by the slaveholders of Jamaica,

and Virginia. In this they were logical in their argument, but they

were not logical in their object. They saw plainly that to concede the

negro’s right to baptism was to receive him into the Christian Church,

and make him a brother in Christ; and hence they opposed the first step

sternly and bitterly. So long as they could keep him beyond the circle

of human brotherhood, they could scourge him to toil, as a beast of

burden, with a good Christian conscience, and without reproach. “What!”

said they, “baptize a negro? preposterous!” Nevertheless the negro was

baptized and admitted to church fellowship; and though for a long time

his soul belonged to God, his body to his master, and he poor fellow

had nothing left for himself, he is at last not only baptized, but

emancipated and enfranchised.

In this achievement, an interview with President Andrew Johnson, on

the 7th of February, 1866, by a delegation consisting of George T.

Downing, Lewis H. Douglass, Wm. E. Matthews, John Jones, John F. Cook,

Joseph E. Otis, A. W. Ross, William Whipper, John M. Brown, Alexander

Dunlop, and myself, will take its place in history as one of the first

steps. What was said on that occasion brought the whole question

virtually before the American people. Until that interview the country

was not fully aware of the intentions and policy of President Johnson

on the subject of reconstruction, especially in respect of the newly

emancipated class of the South. After having heard the brief addresses

made to him by Mr. Downing and myself, he occupied at least three

quarters of an hour in what seemed a set speech, and refused to listen

to any reply on our part, although solicited to grant a few moments for

that purpose. Seeing the advantage that Mr. Johnson would have over

us in getting his speech paraded before the country in the morning

papers, the members of the delegation met on the evening of that day,

and instructed me to prepare a brief reply which should go out to the

country simultaneously with the President’s speech to us. Since this

reply indicates the points of difference between the President and

ourselves, I produce it here as a part of the history of the times, it

being concurred in by all the members of the delegation.

Both the speech and the reply were commented upon very extensively.

MR. PRESIDENT: In consideration of a delicate sense of propriety as

well as 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 interests of

our race as well as 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:

1. 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, toward 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 master. Those 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, 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 slave. 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 (and “putting new wine into old bottles”) to legislate

from slaveholding and slave driving premises for a people whom you

have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in freedom.

2. Besides, even if it were true as you allege, that the hostility

of the blacks toward the poor 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 professed desire to promote the welfare of the

black man, deprive him of all means of defence, 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 defenceless? 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 race and withholding it from another, but

by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes. First

pure, then peaceable.

3. 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 at the North, and the

growing respect for his rights among the people, and his increasing

adaptation to a high state of civilization in his native land,

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 into exile, for no other cause than

having been freed from their chains.

WASHINGTON, February 7th, 1866.

From this time onward, the question of suffrage for the freedmen, was

not allowed to rest. The rapidity with which it gained strength, was

something quite marvelous and surprising even to its advocates. Senator

Charles Sumner soon took up the subject in the Senate and treated

it in his usually able and exhaustive manner. It was a great treat

to listen to his argument running through two days, abounding as it

did in eloquence, learning, and conclusive reasoning. A committee of

the Senate had reported a proposition giving to the States lately in

rebellion in so many words complete option as to the enfranchisement

of their colored citizens: only coupling with that proposition the

condition that, to such States as chose to enfranchise such citizens,

the basis of their representation in Congress should be proportionately

increased; or, in other words, only three-fifths of the colored

citizens should be counted in the basis of representation in States

where colored citizens were not allowed to vote, while in the States

granting suffrage to colored citizens, the entire colored people should

be counted in the basis of representation. Against this proposition,

myself and associates addressed to the Senate of the United States the

following memorial:

“_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 the 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 that 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.”

It was the opinion of Senator Wm. Pitt Fessenden, Senator Henry

Wilson, and many others, that the measure here memorialized against

would, if incorporated into the Constitution, certainly bring about

the enfranchisement of the whole colored population of the South. It

was held by them to be an inducement to the States to make suffrage

universal, since the basis of representation would be enlarged or

contracted, according as suffrage should be extended or limited; but

the judgment of these leaders was not the judgment of Senator Sumner,

Senator Wade, Yates, Howe, and others, or of the colored people. Yet,

weak as this measure was, it encountered the united opposition of

Democratic senators. On that side, the Hon. Thomas H. Hendricks of

Indiana, took the lead in appealing to popular prejudice against the

negro. He contended that among other objectionable and insufferable

results that would flow from its adoption, would be, that a negro would

ultimately be a member of the United States Senate. I never shall

forget the ineffable scorn and indignation with which Mr. Hendricks

deplored the possibility of such an event. In less, however, than a

decade from that debate, Senators Revels and Bruce, both colored men,

had fulfilled the startling prophecy of the Indiana senator. It was

not, however, by the half-way measure, which he was opposing for its

radicalism, but by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, that these

gentlemen reached their honorable positions.

In defeating the option proposed to be given to the States, to extend

or deny suffrage to their colored population, much credit is due to the

delegation already named as visiting President Johnson. That delegation

made it their business to personally see and urge upon leading

Republican statesmen the wisdom and duty of impartial suffrage. Day

after day, Mr. Downing and myself saw and conversed with such members

of the Senate, whose advocacy of suffrage would be likely to insure its

success.

The second marked step in effecting the enfranchisement of the negro,

was made at the “National Loyalist’s Convention,” held at Philadelphia

in September, 1866. This body was composed of delegates from the

South, North, and West. Its object was, to diffuse clear views of the

situation of affairs at the South, and to indicate the principles

deemed advisable by it to be observed in the reconstruction of society

in the Southern States.

This convention was, as its history shows, numerously attended by the

ablest and most influential men from all sections of the country, and

its deliberations participated in by them.

The policy foreshadowed by Andrew Johnson (who, by the grace of the

assassin’s bullet, was then in Abraham Lincoln’s seat)--a policy based

upon the idea that the rebel States were never out of the union, and

hence had forfeited no rights which his pardon could not restore--

gave importance to this convention, more than anything which was then

occurring at the South; for through the treachery of this bold, bad

man, we seemed then about to lose nearly all that had been gained by

the war.

I was residing in Rochester at the time, and was duly elected as a

delegate from that city to attend this convention. The honor was a

surprise and a gratification to me. It was unprecedented for a city of

over sixty thousand white citizens and only about two hundred colored

residents, to elect a colored man to represent them in a national

political convention, and the announcement of it gave a shock to the

country of no inconsiderable violence. Many Republicans, with every

feeling of respect for me personally, were unable to see the wisdom

of such a course. They dreaded the clamor of social equality and

amalgamation which would be raised against the party, in consequence

of this startling innovation. They, dear fellows, found it much

more agreeable to talk of the principles of liberty as glittering

generalities, than to reduce those principles to practice.

When the train on which I was going to the convention reached

Harrisburgh, it met and was attached to another from the West crowded

with Western and Southern delegates on the way to the convention, and

among them were several loyal Governors, chief among whom was the loyal

Governor of Indiana, Oliver P. Morton, a man of Websterian mould in all

that appertained to mental power. When my presence became known to

these gentlemen, a consultation was immediately held among them, upon

the question as to what was best to do with me. It seems strange now,

in view of all the progress which has been made, that such a question

could arise. But the circumstances of the times made me the Jonah

of the Republican ship, and responsible for the contrary winds and

misbehaving weather. Before we reached Lancaster, on our eastward bound

trip, I was duly waited upon by a committee of my brother delegates,

which had been appointed by other honorable delegates, to represent to

me the undesirableness of my attendance upon the National Loyalist’s

Convention. The spokesman of these sub-delegates was a gentleman from

New Orleans with a very French name, which has now escaped me, but

which I wish I could recall, that I might credit him with a high degree

of politeness and the gift of eloquence. He began by telling me that

he knew my history and my works, and that he entertained a very high

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 into 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 at 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. He insisted that it was a time for the sacrifice

of my own personal feeling, for the good of the Republican cause;

that there were several districts in the State of Indiana so evenly

balanced that a very slight circumstance would be likely to turn the

scale against us, and defeat our Congressional candidates, and thus

leave Congress without a two-thirds vote to control the headstrong and

treacherous man then in the presidential chair. It was urged that this

was a terrible responsibility for me or any other man to take.

I listened very attentively to this 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 this 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 mere 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. The 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 enquiry 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 contradict the principle and practice

of my life.” With this answer, the committee retired from the car in

which I was seated, and did not again approach me on the subject; but

I saw plainly enough then, as well as on the morning when the Loyalist

procession was to march through the streets of Philadelphia, that

while I was not to be formally excluded, I was to be ignored by the

Convention.

I was 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.

Especially was it the purpose to offer me no inducement to be present

in the ranks of the procession of its members and friends, which was to

start from Independence Hall on the first morning of its meeting.

In good season, however, I was present at this grand starting point. My

reception there confirmed my impression as to the policy intended to

be pursued towards me. Few of the many I knew were prepared to give me

a cordial recognition, and among these few I may mention Gen. Benj. F.

Butler, who, whatever others may say of him, has always shown a courage

equal to his convictions. Almost everybody else on the ground whom I

met seemed to be ashamed or afraid of me. On the previous night I had

been warned that I should not be allowed to walk through the city in

the procession; fears had been expressed that my presence in it would

so shock the prejudices of the people of Philadelphia, as to cause the

procession to be mobbed.

The members of the convention were to walk two abreast, and as I was

the only colored member of the convention, the question was, as to who

of my brother members would consent to walk with me? The answer was

not long in coming. 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 and a

scholar, brilliant as a writer, eloquent as a speaker, and holding a

high and influential position--the editor of a weekly journal having

the largest circulation of any weekly paper in the city or State of

New York--and that man was _Mr. 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.

I have been in many awkward and disagreeable positions in my life, when

the presence of a friend would have been highly valued, but I think I

never appreciated an act of courage and generous sentiment more highly

than I did of this brave young man, when we marched through the streets

of Philadelphia on this memorable day.

Well! what came of all these dark forebodings of timid men? How was my

presence regarded by the populace? and what effect did it produce? I

will tell you. The fears of the loyal Governors who wished me excluded

to propitiate the favor of the crowd, met with a signal reproof, their

apprehensions were shown to be groundless, and they were compelled, as

many of them confessed to me afterwards, to own themselves entirely

mistaken. The people were more enlightened and had made more progress

than their leaders had supposed. An act for which those leaders

expected to be pelted with stones, only brought to them unmeasured

applause. Along the whole line of march my presence was cheered

repeatedly and enthusiastically. I was myself utterly surprised by the

heartiness and unanimity of the popular approval. We were marching

through a city remarkable for the depth and bitterness of its hatred of

the abolition movement; a city whose populace had mobbed anti-slavery

meetings, burned temperance halls and churches owned by colored people,

and burned down Pennsylvania Hall because it had opened its doors to

people of different colors upon terms of equality. But now the children

of those who had committed these outrages and follies, were applauding

the very principles which their fathers had condemned. After the

demonstrations of this first day, I found myself a welcome member of

the convention, and cordial greeting took the place of cold aversion.

The victory was short, signal, and complete.

During the passage of the procession, as we were marching through

Chestnut street, an incident occurred which excited some interest in

the crowd, and was noticed by the press at the time, and may perhaps

be properly related here as a part of the story of my eventful life.

It was my meeting Mrs. Amanda Sears, the daughter of my old mistress,

Miss Lucretia Auld, the same Lucretia to whom I was indebted for so

many acts of kindness when under the rough treatment of Aunt Katy, on

the “old plantation home” of Col. Edward Lloyd. Mrs. Sears now resided

in Baltimore, and as I saw her on the corner of Ninth and Chestnut

streets, I hastily ran to her, and expressed my surprise and joy at

meeting her. “But what brought you to Philadelphia at this time?” I

asked. She replied, with animated voice and countenance, “I heard you

were to be here, and I came to see you walk in this procession.” The

dear lady, with her two children, had been following us for hours. Here

was the daughter of the owner of a slave, following with enthusiasm

that slave as a free man, and listening with joy to the plaudits he

received as he marched along through the crowded streets of the great

city. And here I may relate another circumstance which should have

found place earlier in this story, which will further explain the

feeling subsisting between Mrs. Sears and myself.

Seven years prior to our meeting, as just described, I delivered a

lecture in National Hall, Philadelphia, and at its close a gentleman

approached me and said, “Mr. Douglass, do you know that your once

mistress has been listening to you to-night?” I replied that I did

not, nor was I inclined to believe it. The fact was, that I had four

or five times before had a similar statement made to me by different

individuals in different states, and this made me skeptical in this

instance. The next morning, however, I received a note from a Mr. Wm.

Needles, very elegantly written, which stated that she who was Amanda

Auld, daughter of Thomas and Lucretia Auld, and granddaughter to my

old master, Capt. Aaron Anthony, was now married to Mr. John L. Sears,

a coal merchant in West Philadelphia. The street and number of Mr.

Sears’s office was given, so that I might, by seeing him, assure myself

of the facts in the case, and perhaps learn something of the relatives

whom I left in slavery. This note, with the intimation given me the

night before, convinced me there was something in it, and I resolved to

know the truth. I had now been out of slavery twenty years, and no word

had come to me from my sisters, or my brother Perry, or my grandmother.

My separation had been as complete as if I had been an inhabitant of

another planet. A law of Maryland at that time visited with heavy fine

and imprisonment any colored person who should come into the State; so

I could not go to them any more than they could come to me.

Eager to know if my kinsfolk still lived, and what was their condition,

I made my way to the office of Mr. Sears, found him in, and handed

him the note I had received from Mr. Needles, and asked him to be so

kind as to read it and tell me if the facts were as there stated.

After reading the note, he said it was true, but he must decline any

conversation with me, since not to do so would be a sacrifice to the

feelings of his father-in-law. I deeply regretted his decision, and

spoke of my long separation from my relations, and appealed to him to

give me some information concerning them. I saw that my words were not

without their effect. Presently he said, “You publish a newspaper, I

believe?” “I do,” I said, “but if that is your objection to speaking

with me, no word shall go into its columns of our conversation.”

To make a long story short, we had then quite a long conversation,

during which Mr. Sears said that in my “Narrative” I had done his

father-in-law injustice, for he was really a kind-hearted man, and a

good master. I replied that there must be two sides to the relation of

master and slave, and what was deemed kind and just to the one was the

opposite to the other. Mr. Sears was not disposed to be unreasonable,

and the longer we talked the nearer we came together. I finally asked

permission to see Mrs. Sears, the little girl of seven or eight years

when I left the eastern shore of Maryland. This request was a little

too much for him at first, and he put me off by saying that she was

a mere child when I last saw her, and she was now the mother of a

large family of children, and I would not know her. He could tell me

everything about my people as well as she. I pressed my suit, however,

insisting that I could select Miss Amanda out of a thousand other

ladies, my recollection of her was so perfect, and begged him to test

my memory at this point. After much parley of this nature, he at length

consented to my wishes, giving me the number of his house and name of

street, with permission to call at three o’clock P. M. on the next

day. I left him delighted, and prompt to the hour was ready for my

visit. I dressed myself in my best, and hired the finest carriage I

could get to take me, partly because of the distance, and partly to

make the contrast between the slave and the free man as striking as

possible. Mr. Sears had been equally thoughtful. He had invited to his

house a number of friends to witness the meeting between Mrs. Sears and

myself.

I was somewhat disconcerted when I was ushered into the large parlors

occupied by about thirty ladies and gentlemen, to all of whom I was

a perfect stranger. I saw the design to test my memory by making it

difficult for me to guess who of the company was “Miss Amanda.” In her

girlhood she was small and slender, and hence a thin and delicately

formed lady was seated in a rocking chair near the center of the room

with a little girl by her side. The device was good, but it did not

succeed. Glancing around the room, I saw in an instant the lady who

was a child twenty-five years before, and the wife and mother now.

Satisfied of this, I said, “Mr. Sears, if you will allow me, I will

select Miss Amanda from this company.” I started towards her, and she,

seeing that I recognized her, bounded to me with joy in every feature,

and expressed her great happiness at seeing me. All thought of slavery,

color, or what might seem to belong to the dignity of her position

vanished, and the meeting was as the meeting of friends long separated,

yet still present in each other’s memory and affection.

Amanda made haste to tell me that she agreed with me about slavery,

and that she had freed all her slaves as they had become of age. She

brought her children to me, and I took them in my arms, with sensations

which I could not if I would stop here to describe. One explanation

of the feeling of this lady towards me was, that her mother, who died

when she was yet a tender child, had been briefly described by me in a

little “Narrative of my life,” published many years before our meeting,

and when I could have had no motive but the highest for what I said

of her. She had read my story, and learned something of the amiable

qualities of her mother through me. She also recollected that as I

had had trials as a slave, she had had her trials under the care of a

stepmother, and that when she was harshly spoken to by her father’s

second wife she could always read in my dark face the sympathy of one

who had often received kind words from the lips of her beloved mother.

Mrs. Sears died three years ago in Baltimore, but she did not depart

without calling me to her bedside, that I might tell her as much as I

could about her mother, whom she was firm in the faith that she should

meet in another and better world. She especially wished me to describe

to her the personal appearance of her mother, and desired to know if

any of her own children then present resembled her. I told her that

the young lady standing in the corner of the room was the image of her

mother in form and features. She looked at her daughter and said, “Her

name is Lucretia--after my mother.” After telling me that her life

had been a happy one, and thanking me for coming to see her on her

death-bed, she said she was ready to die. We parted to meet no more

in life. The interview touched me deeply, and was, I could not help

thinking, a strange one--another proof that “Truth is often stranger

than Fiction.”

If any reader of this part of my life shall see in it the evidence of

a want of manly resentment for wrongs inflicted upon myself and race

by slavery, and by the ancestors of this lady, so it must be. No man

can be stronger than nature, one touch of which, we are told, makes all

the world akin. I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice

and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no

heart to visit upon children the sins of their fathers.

It will be noticed, when I first met Mr. Sears in Philadelphia, he

declined to talk with me, on the ground that I had been unjust to

Capt. Auld, his father-in-law. Soon after that meeting, Capt. Auld

had occasion to go to Philadelphia, and, as usual, went straight to

the house of his son-in-law, and had hardly finished the ordinary

salutations, when he said: “Sears, I see by the papers that Frederick

has recently been in Philadelphia. Did you go to hear him?” “Yes, sir,”

was the reply. After asking something more about my lecture, he said,

“Well, Sears, did Frederick come to see you?” “Yes, sir,” said Sears.

“Well, how did you receive him?” Mr. Sears then told him all about my

visit, and had the satisfaction of hearing the old man say that he had

done right in giving me welcome to his house. This last fact I have

from Rev. J. D. Long, who, with his wife, was one of the party invited

to meet me at the house of Mr. Sears, on the occasion of my visit to

Mrs. Sears.

But I must now return from this digression, and further relate my

experience in the Loyalist National Convention, and how from that time

there was an impetus given to the enfranchisement of the freedmen,

which culminated in the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of

the United States. From the first, the members of the convention were

divided in their views of the proper measures of reconstruction,

and this division was in some sense sectional. The men from the far

South, strangely enough, were quite radical, while those from the

border States were mostly conservative, and, unhappily, these last had

control of the convention from the first. A Kentucky gentleman was made

President, and its other officers were for the most part Kentuckians,

and all opposed to colored suffrage in sentiment. There was a “whole

heap” (to use a Kentucky phrase) of “halfness” in that State during

the war for the union, and there was much more there after the war.

The Maryland delegates, with the exception of Hon. John L. Thomas,

were in sympathy with Kentucky. Those from Virginia, except Hon. John

Miner Botts, were unwilling to entertain the question. The result was,

that the convention was broken square in two. The Kentucky President

declared it adjourned, and left the chair against the earnest protests

of the friends of manhood suffrage.

But the friends of this measure were not to be out-generaled and

suppressed in this way, and instantly reorganized, elected John M.

Botts of Virginia, President, discussed and passed resolutions in favor

of enfranchising the freedmen, and thus placed the question before the

country in such a manner that it could not be ignored. The delegates

from the Southern States were quite in earnest, and bore themselves

grandly in support of the measure; but the chief speakers and advocates

of suffrage on that occasion were Mr. Theodore Tilton and Miss Anna E.

Dickinson. Of course, on such a question, I could not be expected to be

silent. I was called forward, and responded with all the energy of my

soul, for I looked upon suffrage to the negro as the only measure which

could prevent him from being thrust back into slavery.

From this time onward the question of suffrage had no rest. The

rapidity with which it gained strength was more than surprising to me.

In addition to the justice of the measure, it was soon commended by

events as a political necessity. As in the case of the abolition of

slavery, the white people of the rebellious States have themselves

to thank for its adoption. Had they accepted, with moderate grace,

the decision of the court to which they appealed, and the liberal

conditions of peace offered to them, and united heartily with the

national government in its efforts to reconstruct their shattered

institutions, instead of sullenly refusing as they did, their counsel

and their votes to that end, they might easily have defeated the

argument based upon necessity for the measure. As it was, the question

was speedily taken out of the hands of colored delegations and mere

individual efforts, and became a part of the policy of the Republican

party; and President U. S. Grant, with his characteristic nerve and

clear perception of justice, promptly recommended the great amendment

to the Constitution by which colored men are to-day invested with

complete citizenship--the right to vote and to be voted for in the

American Republic.

CHAPTER XIV.

LIVING AND LEARNING.

Inducements to a political career--Objections--A newspaper

enterprise--The new National Era--Its abandonment--The Freedmen’s

Savings and Trust Company--Sad experience--Vindication.

The adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments and their

incorporation into the Constitution of the United States opened a very

tempting field to my ambition, and one to which I should probably have

yielded, had I been a younger man. I was earnestly urged by many of my

respected fellow-citizens, both colored and white and from all sections

of the country, to take up my abode in some one of the many districts

of the South where there was a large colored vote, and get myself

elected, as they were sure I easily could do, to a seat in Congress--

possibly in the Senate. That I did not yield to this temptation was not

entirely due to my age; for the idea did not 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 self-respect, and I had not lived long enough in the

political atmosphere of Washington to have this sentiment sufficiently

blunted to make me indifferent to its suggestions. I do not deny that

the arguments of my friends had some weight in them, and from their

stand-point it was all right; but I was better known to myself than

to them. 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 readily

have adapted myself to the peculiar oratory found to be most effective

with the newly enfranchised class. In the New England and Northern

atmosphere I had acquired a style of speaking which in the South would

have been considered tame and spiritless; and, consequently, he who

“could tear a passion to tatters and split the ear of groundlings,” had

far better chance of success with the masses there, than one so little

boisterous as myself.

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 and rebellious 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 of the South needed an advocate as much as they

needed a member of Congress. I think in this I was right; for thus far

our colored members of Congress have not largely made themselves felt

in the legislation of the country; and I have little reason to think I

could have done any better than they.

I was not, however, to remain long in my retired home in Rochester,

where I had planted my trees and was reposing under their shadows.

An effort was being made about this time to establish a large weekly

newspaper in the city of Washington, which should be devoted to the

defence and enlightenment of the newly emancipated and enfranchised

people; and I was urged by such men as George T. Downing, J. H.

Hawes, J. Sella Martin, and others, to become its editor-in-chief. My

sixteen years’ experience as editor and publisher of my own paper,

and the knowledge of the toil and anxiety which such a relation to a

public journal must impose, caused me much reluctance and hesitation:

nevertheless, I yielded to the wishes of my friends and counsellors,

went to Washington, threw myself into the work, hoping to be able

to lift up a standard at the national capital, for my people, which

should cheer and strengthen them in the work of their own improvement

and elevation.

I was not long connected with this enterprise, before I discovered

my mistake. The coöperation so liberally promised, and the support

which had been assured, were not very largely realized. By a series

of circumstances a little bewildering as I now look back upon them,

I found myself alone, under the mental and pecuniary burden involved

in the prosecution of the enterprise. I had been misled by loud talk

of a grand incorporated publishing company, in which I should have

shares if I wished, and in any case a fixed salary for my services;

and after all these fair-seeming conditions, I had not been connected

with the paper one year before its affairs had been so managed by the

agent appointed by this invisible company or corporate body, as to

compel me to bear the burden alone, and to become the sole owner of

the printing establishment. Having become publicly associated with the

enterprise, I was unwilling to have it prove a failure, and had allowed

it to become in debt to me, both for money loaned, and for services,

and at last it seemed wise that I should purchase the whole concern,

which I did, and turned it over to my sons Lewis and Frederic, who

were practical printers, and who, after a few years, were compelled to

discontinue its publication. This paper was the _New National Era_,

to the columns of which the colored people are indebted for some of

the best things ever uttered in behalf of their cause; for, aside from

its editorials and selections, many of the ablest colored men of the

country made it the medium through which to convey their thoughts to

the public. A misadventure though it was, which cost me from nine to

ten thousand dollars, over it I have no tears to shed. The journal was

valuable while it lasted, and the experiment was full of instruction to

me, which has to some extent been heeded, for I have kept well out of

newspaper undertakings since.

Some one has said that “experience is the best teacher.” Unfortunately

the wisdom acquired in one experience seems not to serve for another

and new one; at any rate, my first lesson at the National Capital,

bought rather dearly as it was, did not preclude the necessity of

a second whetstone to sharpen my wits in this my new home and new

surroundings. It is not altogether without a feeling of humiliation

that I must narrate my connection with the “Freedmen’s Savings and

Trust Company.”

This was an institution designed to furnish a place of security and

profit for the hard earnings of the colored people, especially at

the South. Though its title was “The Freedmen’s Savings and Trust

Company,” it is known generally as the “Freedmen’s Bank.” According to

its managers it was to be this and something more. There was something

missionary in its composition, and it dealt largely in exhortations as

well as promises. The men connected with its management were generally

church members, and reputed eminent for their piety. Some of its agents

had been preachers of the “Word.” Their aim was now to instil into

the minds of the untutored Africans lessons of sobriety, wisdom, and

economy, and to show them how to rise in the world. Circulars, tracts,

and other papers were scattered like snowflakes in winter by this

benevolent institution among the sable millions, and they were told to

“look” to the Freedman’s Bank and “live.” Branches were established in

all the Southern States, and as a result, money flowed into its vaults

to the amount of millions. With the usual effect of sudden wealth,

the managers felt like making a little display of their prosperity.

They accordingly erected one of the most costly and splendid buildings

of the time on one of the most desirable and expensive sites in the

national capital, finished on the inside with black walnut, and

furnished with marble counters and all the modern improvements.

The magnificent dimensions of the building bore testimony to its

flourishing condition. In passing it on the street I often peeped into

its spacious windows, and looked down the row of its gentlemanly and

elegantly dressed colored clerks, with their pens behind their ears

and button-hole bouquets in their coat-fronts, and felt my very eyes

enriched. It was a sight I had never expected to see. I was amazed

with the facility with which they counted the money; they threw off

the thousands with the dexterity, if not the accuracy, of old and

experienced clerks. The whole thing was beautiful. I had read of this

Bank when I lived in Rochester, and had indeed been solicited to become

one of its trustees, and had reluctantly consented to do so; but when

I came to Washington and saw its magnificent brown stone front, its

towering height, and its perfect appointments, and the fine display it

made in the transaction of its business, I felt like the Queen of Sheba

when she saw the riches of Solomon, “the half had not been told me.”

After settling myself down in Washington in the office of the _New

Era_, I could and did occasionally attend the meetings of the Board

of Trustees, and had the pleasure of listening to the rapid reports

of the condition of the institution, which were generally of a most

encouraging character. My confidence in the integrity and wisdom of

the management was such that at one time I had entrusted to its vaults

about twelve thousand dollars. It seemed fitting to me to cast in my

lot with my brother freedmen, and help to build up an institution which

represented their thrift and economy to so striking advantage; for the

more millions accumulated there, I thought, the more consideration and

respect would be shown to the colored people of the whole country.