# Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)/Chapter 39

CHAPTER XVIII.
"HONOR TO WHOM HONOR."
GRATITUDE to benefactors is a well recognized virtue, and to express it in some form or other, however imperfectly, is a duty to ourselves as well as to those who have helped us. Never reluctant or tardy, I trust, in the discharge of this duty, I have seldom been satisfied with the manner of its performance. When I have made my best effort in this line, my words have done small justice to my feelings. And now, in mentioning my obligations to my special friends, and acknowledging the help I received from them in the days of my need, I can hope to do no better than give a faint hint of my sense of the value of their friendship and assistance. I have sometimes been credited with having been the architect of my own fortune, and have pretty generally received the title of a "self-made man;" and while I cannot altogether disclaim this title, when I look back over the facts of my life, and consider the helpful influences exerted upon me, by friends more fortunately born and educated than myself, I am compelled to give them at least an equal measure of credit, with myself, for the success which has attended my labors in life. The little energy, industry, and perseverance which have been mine, would hardly have availed me, in the absence of thoughtful friends, and highly favoring circumstances. Without these, the last forty years of my life might have been spent on the ​ wharves of New Bedford, rolling oil casks, loading ships for whaling voyages, sawing wood, putting in coal, picking up a job here and there, wherever I could find one, and in the race for life and bread, holding my own with difficulty against gauntsided poverty. I never see one of my old companions of the lower strata, begrimed by toil, hard handed and dust covered, receiving for wages scarcely enough to keep the "wolf" at a respectful distance from his door and hearthstone, without a fellow feeling and the thought that I have been separated from him only by circumstances other than those of my own making. Much to be thankful for, I find here but little room for boasting. It was mine to take the "Tide at its flood." It was my good fortune to get out of slavery at the right time, and to be speedily brought into contact with that circle of highly cultivated men and women, banded together for the overthrow of slavery, of which Wm. Lloyd Garrison was the acknowledged leader. To these friends, earnest, courageous, inflexible, ready to own me as a man and brother, against all the scorn, contempt, and derision of a slavery-polluted atmosphere, I owe my success in life. The story is simple, and the truth plain. They thought that I possessed qualities that might be made useful to my race, and through them I was brought to the notice of the world, and gained a hold upon the attention of the American people, which I hope remains unbroken to this day. The list of these friends is too long certainly to be inserted here, but I cannot forbear to recall in this connection the names of Francis Jackson, Joseph Southwick, Samuel E. Sewell, Samuel J. May, John Pierpont, Henry I. Bowditch, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, Isaac T. Hopper, James N. Buffum, Ellis Gray Loring, Andrew Robeson, Seth Hunt, Arnold Buffum, Nathaniel B. Borden, Boone Spooner, William Thomas, John Milton Earle, John ​Curtis, George Foster, Clother Gifford, John Bailey, Nathaniel P. Rodgers, Stephen S. Foster, Parker Pillsbury, the Hutchinson family, Dr. Peleg Clark, the Burleigh brothers, William Chase, Samuel and Harvey Chase, John Brown, C. C. Eldredge, Daniel Mitchell, William Adams, Isaac Kenyon, Joseph Sisson, Daniel Goold, Kelton brothers, Geo. James Adams, Martin Cheeney, Edward Harris, Robert Shove, Alpheus Jones, Asa Fairbanks, Gen. Sam'l Fessenden, William Aplin, John Clark, Thomas Davis, George L. Clark; these all took me to their hearts and homes, and inspired me with an incentive which a confiding and helpful friendship can alone impart.
Nor were my influential friends all of the Caucasian race. While many of my own people thought me unwise and somewhat fanatical in announcing myself a fugitive slave, and in practically asserting the rights of my people, on all occasions, in season and out of season, there were brave and intelligent men of color all over the United States who gave me their cordial sympathy and support. Among these, and foremost, I place the name of Doctor James McCune Smith; educated in Scotland, and breathing the free air of that country, he came back to his native land with ideas of liberty which placed him in advance of most of his fellow citizens of African descent. He was not only a learned and skillful physician, but an effective speaker, and a keen and polished writer. In my newspaper enterprise, I found in him an earnest and effective helper. The cause of his people lost an able advocate when he died. He was never among the timid who thought me too aggressive and wished me to tone down my testimony to suit the times. A brave man himself, he knew how to esteem courage in others.
Of David Ruggles I have already spoken. He gave me my send off from New York to New Bedford, and when I came into public life, he was among the first with words ​of cheer. Jehiel C. Beman too, a noble man, kindly took me by the hand. Thomas Van Ranselear was among my fast friends. No young man, starting in an untried field of usefulness, and needing support, could find that support in larger measure than I found it, in William Whipper, Robert Purvis, William P. Powell, Nathan Johnson, Charles B. Ray, Thomas Downing, Theodore S. Wright or Charles L. Reason. Notwithstanding what I have said of my treatment, at times, by people of my own color, when traveling, I am bound to say that there is another and brighter side to that picture. Among the waiters and attendants on public conveyances, I have often found real gentlemen; intelligent, aspiring, and who fully appreciated all my efforts in behalf of our common cause. Especially have I found this to be the case in the East. A more gentlemanly and self-respecting class of men it would be difficult to find, than those to be met on the various lines between New York and Boston. I have never wanted for kind attention, or any effort they could make to render my journeying with them smooth and pleasant. I owe this solely to my work in our common cause, and to their intelligent estimate of the value of that work. Republics are said to be ungrateful, but ingratitude is not among the weaknesses of my people. No people ever had a more lively sense of the value of faithful endeavor to serve their interests than they. But for this feeling towards me on their part, I might have passed many nights hungry and cold, and without any place to lay my head. I need not name my colored friends to whom I am thus indebted. They do not desire such mention, but I wish any who have shown me kindnes, even so much as to give me a cup of cold water, to feel themselves included in my thanks.
It is also due to myself, to make some more emphatic mention than I have yet done, of the honorable women, ​ who have not only assisted me, but who according to their opportunity and ability, have generously contributed to the abolition of slavery, and the recognition of the equal manhood of the colored race. When the true history of the anti-slavery cause shall be written, women will occupy a large space in its pages; for the cause of the slave has been peculiarly woman's cause. Her heart and her conscience have supplied in large degree its motive and mainspring. Her skill, industry, patience, and perseverance have been wonderfully manifest in every trial hour. Not only did her feet run on "willing errands," and her fingers do the work which in large degree supplied the sinews of war, but her deep moral convictions, and her tender human sensibilities, found convincing and persuasive expression by her pen and her voice. Foremost among these noble American women, in point of clearness of vision, breadth of understanding, fullness of knowledge, catholicity of spirit, weight of character, and widespread influence, was Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia. Great as this woman was in speech, and persuasive as she was in her writings, she was incomparably greater in her presence. She spoke to the world through every line of her countenance. In her there was no lack of symmetry—no contradiction between her thought and act. Seated in an anti-slavery meeting, looking benignantly around upon the assembly, her silent presence made others eloquent, and carried the argument home to the heart of the audience.
The known approval of such a woman, in any cause, went far to commend it.
I shall never forget the first time I ever saw and heard Lucretia Mott. It was in the town of Lynn, Massachusetts. It was not in a magnificent hall, where such as she seemed to belong, but in a little hall over Jonathan Buffum's store, the only place then open, even in that ​so-called radical anti-slavery town, for an anti-slavery meeting on Sunday. But in this day of small things, the smallness of the place was no matter of complaint or murmuring. It was a cause of rejoicing that any kind of place could be had for such a purpose. But Jonathan Buffum's courage was equal to this and more.
The speaker was attired in the usual Quaker dress, free from startling colors, plain, rich, elegant, and without superfluity—the very sight of her, a sermon. In a few moments after she began to speak, I saw before me no more a woman, but a glorified presence, bearing a message of light and love from the Infinite to a benighted and strangely wandering world, straying away from the paths of truth and justice into the wilderness of pride and selfishness, where peace is lost and true happiness is sought in vain. I heard Mrs. Mott thus, when she was comparatively young. I have often heard her since, sometimes in the solemn temple, and sometimes under the open sky, but whenever and wherever I have listened to her, my heart has always been made better and my spirit raised by her words; and in speaking thus for myself I am sure I am expressing the experience of thousands.
Kindred in spirit with Mrs. Mott was Lydia Maria Child. They both exerted an influence with a class of the American people which neither Garrison, Phillips nor Gerrit Smith could reach. Sympathetic in her nature, it was easy for Mrs. Child to "remember those in bonds as bound with them;" and her "appeal for that class of Americans called Africans," issued, as it was, at an early stage in the anti-slavery conflict, was one of the most effective agencies in arousing attention to the cruelty and injustice of slavery. When, with her husband, David Lee Child, she edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard, that paper was made attractive to a broad circle of readers, from the circumstance that each issue contained a "Letter ​from New York," written by her on some passing subject of the day, in which she always managed to infuse a spirit of brotherly love and good will, with an abhorrence of all that was unjust, selfish and mean, and in this way won to anti-slavery many hearts which else would have remained cold and indifferent.
Of Sarah and Angelina Grimke I knew but little personally. These brave sisters from Charleston, South Carolina, had inherited slaves, but in their conversion from Episcopacy to Quakerism, in 1828, they became convinced that they had no right to such inheritance. They emancipated their slaves and came North and entered at once upon pioneer work in advancing the education of woman, though they saw then in their course only their duty to the slave. They had "fought the good fight" before I came into the ranks, but by their unflinching testimony and unwavering courage, they had opened the way and made it possible, if not easy, for other women to follow their example.
It is memorable of them that their public advocacy of anti-slavery was made the occasion of the issuing by the evangelical clergy of Boston, of a papal bull, in the form of a "pastoral letter," in which the churches and all God-fearing people were warned against their influence.
For solid, persistent, indefatigable work for the slave Abby Kelley was without a rival. In the "History of Woman Suffrage," just published by Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, and Mrs. Joseph Gage, there is this fitting tribute to her: "Abby Kelley was the most untiring and most persecuted of all the women who labored throughout the anti-slavery struggle. She traveled up and down alike in winter's cold and summer's heat, with scorn, ridicule, violence and mobs accompanying her, suffering all kinds of persecutions, still speaking whenever and ​wherever she gained an audience—in the open air, in school house, barn, depot, church, or public hall, on week day or Sunday, as she found opportunity." And, incredible as it will soon seem, if it does not appear so already, "for listening to her on Sunday many men and women were expelled from their churches."
When the abolitionists of Rhode Island were seeking to defeat the restricted constitution of the Dorr party, already referred to in this volume, Abby Kelley was more than once mobbed in the old town hall in the city of Providence, and pelted with bad eggs.
And what can be said of the gifted authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Harriet Beecher Stowe? Happy woman must she be that to her was given the power in such unstinted measure to touch and move the popular heart! More than to reason or religion are we indebted to the influence which this wonderful delineation of American chattel slavery produced on the public mind.
Nor must I omit to name the daughter of the excellent Myron Holly, who in her youth and beauty espoused the cause of the slave, nor of Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown, for when the slave had few friends and advocates they were noble enough to speak their best word in his behalf.
Others there were who, though they were not known on the platform, were none the less earnest and effective for anti-slavery in their more retired lives. There were many such to greet me and welcome me to my newly-found heritage of freedom. They met me as a brother, and by their kind consideration did much to make endurable the rebuffs I encountered elsewhere. At the anti-slavery office in Providence, Rhode Island, I remember with a peculiar interest Lucinda Wilmarth, whose acceptance of life's duties and labors, and whose heroic struggle with sickness and death, taught me more than one ​ lesson; and Amorancy Paine, who was never weary in performing any service, however arduous, which fidelity to the slave demanded of her. Then there were Phebe Jackson, Elizabeth Chace, the Sisson sisters, the Chases, the Greenes, the Browns, the Goolds, the Shoves, the Anthonys, the Roses, the Fayerweathers, the Motts, the Earles, the Spooners, the Southwicks, the Buffums, the Fords, the Wilburs, the Henshaws, the Burgesses, and others whose names are lost, but whose deeds are living yet in the regenerated life of our new republic cleansed from the curse and sin of slavery.
Observing woman's agency, devotion, and efficiency in pleading the cause of the slave, gratitude for this high service early moved me to give favorable attention to the subject of what is called "woman's rights" and caused me to be denominated a woman's-rights man. I am glad to say that I have never been ashamed to be thus designated. Recognizing not sex nor physical strength, but moral intelligence and the ability to discern right from wrong, good from evil, and the power to choose between them, as the true basis of republican government, to which all are alike subject and all bound alike to obey, I was not long in reaching the conclusion that there was no foundation in reason or justice for woman's exclusion from the right of choice in the selection of the persons who should frame the laws, and thus shape the destiny of all the people, irrespective of sex.
In a conversation with Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton when she was yet a young lady and an earnest abolitionist, she was at the pains of setting before me in a very strong light the wrong and injustice of this exclusion. I could not meet her arguments except with the shallow plea of "custom," "natural division of duties," "indelicacy of woman's taking part in politics," the common talk of "woman's sphere," and the like, all of which that able ​woman, who was then no less logical than now, brushed away by those arguments which she has so often and effectively used since, and which no man has yet successfully refuted. If intelligence is the only true and rational basis of government, it follows that that is the best government which draws its life and power from the largest sources of wisdom, energy, and goodness at its command. The force of this reasoning would be easily comprehended and readily assented to in any case involving the employment of physical strength. We should all see the folly and madness of attempting to accomplish with a part what could only be done with the united strength of the whole. Though his folly may be less apparent, it is just as real when one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the world is excluded from any voice or vote in civil government. In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world. Thus far all human governments have been failures, for none have secured, except in a partial degree, the ends for which governments are instituted.