tion necessary to your elevation?” Meeting with other black
leaders at the National Convention of Colored Men in 1864,
Douglass joined with them in spelling out the concerns of the
Nation's blacks.

In a republican country, where general suffrage is
the rule, personal liberty, the right to testify in courts of law,
the right to hold, buy, and sell property, and all other rights,
become mere privileges, held at the option of others, where
we are excepted from the general political liberty.... The
possession of that right is the keystone to the arch of human
liberty: and, without that, the whole may at any moment
fall to the ground; while, with it, that liberty may stand
forever,—a blessing to us, and no possible injury to you. If
you still ask us why we want to vote, we answer, Because we
don’t want to be mobbed from our work, or insulted with
impunity at every corner. We are men, and want to be as
free in our native country as other men.

As a result of the campaign for voting rights,
Douglass was convinced that the only hope for blacks lay
with the Republican Party. Slaveholders and their sympa-
thizers were too heavily represented in the Democratic Party.
Democrats, North and South, were rabidly anti-black. How-
ever haltingly the Republicans moved toward the idea of
equality, there could be hope. But blacks, Douglass asserted
in 1864, could “not expect a single voice for justice, mercy
or even decency” from Democrats.

Events bore out Douglass’ prediction.. Soon after
the war, President Andrew Johnson restored “‘home rule” in
the South and asked the Southern States to protect the rights
of Negroes. Despite his efforts, the Southern States, which
were then controlled by the Democrats, afforded few rights
to the freedmen. Most of the state conventions in 1865,
elected by whites only, adopted the 13th Amendment
(abolishing slavery) but passed laws, the Black Codes, severely
restricting the rights of the former slaves. Facing economic
ruin, convinced that the mass of the former slaves would not
work without being coerced, and fearing that the freedmen
would slay all whites on January 1, 1866, the Southern legis-
lators drew on the antebellum laws regarding free Negroes
and the vagrancy laws of the Northern states for the provi-
sions of the Black Codes. The Codes limited the right of
blacks to work, made it easy for them to be arrested as
vagrants, prohibited blacks from testifying against whites,
and fined blacks heavily for seditious speeches, insulting
gestures, absence from work or possession of firearms. Con-
tracts were authorized allowing the “master” to chastise
minor “servants,” and prohibited “servants” from receiving
visitors without the master’s approval.


31

rendous to have inferior blacks shedding the blood of white
men. It would lead to social equality, interracial sex, and
citizenship. It would be humiliating to have black men fight
to protect whites. A black man in arms would be an insult to
the white soldier. An Ohio Congressman argued that “this
is a government of white men, made’ by white men, for white
men, to be administered, protected, defended, and main-
tained by white mén.” Then, too, if black men were armed
it would cause an insurrection among the slaves and lead to
arson and murder and the extermination of Southern whites.
Another Congressman contended that the recruitment of
black troops would undermine the “supremacy of the white
race in eleven states of this Union, and [make] the colored
the dominant race in those States.”

From the outset, black men rejected the claims of
their detractors. They held several mass meetings at the
beginning of the war demanding a chance to participate.
Others formed companies and volunteeered, but the War
Department rejected their services. Douglass contended that
the arms of black men were needed to win the war. And it
made little sense to enlist foreign-born whites while denying
native-born blacks a chance to fight. The only way to end
the war, he claimed, was to “stop it on the soil upon which
it originated, and among the traitors and rebels who started
it. This can be done by ‘carrying the war into Africa.’ Let the
slaves and free colored people be called into service and
formed into a liberating army, to march into the South and
raise the banner of Emancipation among the slaves.” In re-
jecting the service of blacks, the Union Army was pandering
to a cruel prejudice that could only hinder the war effort. It
was like a man facing a strong foe with one hand tied behind
his back.

Devastating losses in the first years of the war deci-
mated the Union Army and forced the United States, for the
first time, to resort to a draft. Realizing that the war would
be long and despising the draft, whites began to change their
attitudes about having blacks in the Army; officials decided
that blacks could die as well as whites, After the Emancipa-
tion Proclamation was issued, the Union Army began accept-
ing black recruits. In March 1863 Douglass issued his famous
call, “Men of Color, to Arms!” Several of his editorials and
speeches focused on this theme. Blacks had to volunteer, he
argued, because they needed to learn the use of firearms for
their future protection and defense, to prove their manhood
and courage, gain self-respect, and to establish their claim to
all of the rights enjoyed by other citizens. “Nothing can be





Douglass taught more than 40 slaves that year. A special
camaraderie developed among most of the slaves on Free-
land's plantation. Welded together by their oppression, the
slaves interacted as brothers and sisters. In 1835, after much
discussion, Douglass and several others decided to escape to
the North. However desirable freedom was, it was still a
difficult decision. They faced a long and hazardous journey,

possible starvation and recapture even if they reached theiv
destination. But one of the slaves betrayed them before they
could escape and Douglass was locked up as one of the ring-
leaders. Later Freeland took Douglass back to Baltimore and
hired him out to a shipbuilder.

Douglass’ return to Baltimore represented his sec-
ond resurrection. He became a skilled ship caulker and
learned much about the relations between black and white
laborers. During the 1830s there were many skilled black
artisans in Baltimore. But the influx of European immigrants
led to many conflicts between white and black workers. On
one occasion a gang of white apprentices beat Douglass when
the whites refused to work with black ship carpenters. While
recovering from his wounds, Douglass became acquainted

with many free blacks.

The free black community in Baltimore consisted of
a number of men who were engaged in protest against dis-
crimination and the American Colonization Society's at-
tempts to convince free blacks to emigrate to Africa. Other
blacks had established a number of churches and benevolent
societies and debating clubs, Douglass joined one of these,
the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, and sharp-
ened his oratorical and literary skills, He also met and fell
in love with a free Negro, Anna Murray. She had been born
in Denton, Md., to former slaves. At an early age she went
to Baltimore and became the housekeeper of the city’s post-
master.

His expanding horizons and his love for Anna pro-
duced a crisis for Douglass. Slavery was so stultifying for him
that he could not bear the thought of marrying while he
was still a slave. He knew that slavery was not conducive to
normal family relationships. He had learned through bitter
experience that slavery meant “perpetual unpaid toil; no
marriage, no husband, no wife, no parent, no child, ignor-
ance, brutality, licentiousness; whips, scourges, chains, auc-
tions, jails and separations; and embodiment of all the woes
the imagination can conceive.” Ambitious, sensitive, literate,
and reflective, Douglass could tolerate captivity no longer.
He felt himself to be a powerful ship held to the rock of


68

Looking at this photograph (previous page) one cannot help wondering
if Douglass, his wife, and friends have not just gotten up from the
(

ng room table after a delightful me:
parlor. Perha

I and are about to enter the
ps Douglass will pick up his violin and play a few favorite
airs, Or they may just sit and talk about the events of the day or of
some cherished project.

Cedar Hill, the home of Frederick Douglass, sits high on the south
side of the Anacostia River, From it the Douglasses enjoyed magnificent
views of Capitol Hill

The house is furnished with many picces of furniture that
Donglass and his family owned and used while they lived here. Some
of the furniture was purchased by Douglass from the estate of Sen.
Charles Sumner, The most important asset of the home is Douglass’
ibrary, which is intact with the hooks on the shelves as he kept them.

The house had been built in the late 1850s by the Union Land
Associates, who were subdividing a 96-hectare farm into building lots.
‘The brick rectangular building may have been used as an office. About

1863 John Van Hook, one of the associates, moved into the dwelling
which by that time had become a spacious, comfortable home. On
September 1, 1877, Douglass bought the house and 3,9 hectares adjoining
this property to the south. Douglass and his family began making im-
provements—fencing, outbuildings, and a two-story frame addition
containing the kitchen and a bedroom—to the property almost imme:
diately. In 1877 he added the library and the bedroom above it. And
in the same year the two alcoves in the East Parlor on either side of the
fireplace were built,

When the Douglasses first came to Washington, they had bought
and lived in a house on Capitol Hill. That house, at 316 A Strcet, NE.,
is today the Muscum of African Art and is open to visitors.





48

Douglass, your fame is known,
Your courage is a cherished gem
In the treasury of the born
Black and white alike.

The poets view Douglass’ life and dedicate Americans anew
to the principles he enunciated. Robert Hayden spelled this
out clearly when he wrote:

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this
beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air,

usable as the earth; when it belongs at last to our children,
when it is truly instinct, brain-matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more

than the gaudy mumbo-jumbo of politicians:

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world

lonely, none hunted, alien,

where none

this man, superb in love and logic, t
shall be remembered—oh, not with statutes’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives

fleshing his dream of the needful, beautiful thing.

man

So many of the evils that Douglass fought against
still exist that his life may be seen as a warning to America.
Douglass contended that it was not enough to write a con-
stitution embodying sacred rights while denying those rights
to minorities. It was not enough to venerate the Declara-
tion of Independence and give lip service to the idea that
all men are created equal while clinging to practices which
ensure that some men would live and die as unequals. Such
inconsistency was cruel mockery of truth and conducive to
perpetual discontent, riot, and rebellion, Douglass believed
in the promise of America, but he did not believe that prom-
ise would be fulfilled:

Until the public schools shall cease to be caste schools...
until the colored man’s pathway to the ballot-box ... shall
be as smooth and as safe as the same is for the while citi-
zens, ... until the courts of the country shall grant the
colored man a fair trial and a just verdict, ... until color
shall cease to be a bar to equal participation in the offices
and honors of the country, . . . until the trades-unions,and
the workshops of the country shall cease lo proscribe the
colored man, .. . until the’ American people shall make
character, and not color, the criterion of respectability.


54

Four of Douglass’ five children grew to adulthood: (above) Rosetta, the
oldest; (above right) Lewis, the second oldest, Charles Remond, the
third child; and (below right) Frederick, Jr., next to the youngest. The
fifth child, Annie, dicd in March 1860 when she was 10 years old.


58

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the editor and publisher of
The Liberator and the most radical of the abolitionists. He introduced
Douglass to the movement, (right) Charles Sumner (1811-74) was U.S.
senator from Massachusetts from 1851 until his death, An ardent aboli-
tionist, he was a close friend of Douglass. He opposed President Andrew
Johnson's Reconstruction Plan and proposed that the former Confederate
tates not be readmitted to the Union until they guaranteed voting
ighits for blacks. Sumner’s plan was accepted, In 1870 Sumner dashed
the hopes of another President, Ulysses $. Grant, when he steadfastly
opposed Grant's cherished project of annexing Santo Domingo.

This extraordinary document, a safe-conduct for Douglass, carries the
signatures of two cabinet members, a U.S. senator, and the President.
This pass was signed by Secretary of the Interior, John Palmer Usher,
and U.S. Senator Samuel Clarke Pomeroy of Kansas. The note at the
bottom bears the signature of Postmaster General Montgomery Blair.
On the left is Abraham Lincoln's signature.



Symbol
for the Present

46

days later, following a private family scrvice at Cedar Hill,
thousands of Washingtonians paid their respects to the cham-
pion of human rights as his body lay in state at the Mctro-
politan A.M.E. Church, He was buried in Rochester, N.Y.

n death as in life Douglass symbolized the best of Amcri-

can ideals and traditions. Douglass left a legacy which

is shared by all Americans. Booker Washington could

admire him because of his early devotion to industrial educa-

tion. Martin Luther King could applaud his nonviolent re-

sistance. Du Bois found in him an early advocate of agitation
for equal rights, for Douglass believed:

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows
thal all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been
born of carnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting,
agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all
other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing.
If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess
to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, ave men who
want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain
without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without
the awful roar of its many waters. © This struggle may
be a moral one, or il may be a physical one, and it may be
both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it
never will. Find out jitst what any people will quictly submit
to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows,
or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the en-
durance of those whom they oppress.

A universal reformer, Douglass was a citizen of the
world. He traveled to Great Britain, France, Italy, and Egypt.
He became an carly symbol of Pan-Africanism, or the unity
of blacks throughout the world. Haitians revered Douglass
and appointed him as their commissioner at the World's
Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

A representative American, Douglass believed firmly
in the Declaration of Independence. He constantly showed
the inconsistency between America’s ideals and its practices.
In the face of oppression, he cited the example of the pa-
triots who had fought against tyranny. He was determined
to do the same for his oppressed brothers. He pointed the
way toward an America where men would be treated as
equals. Douglass dedicated himself to freeing white America
from the shackles of color prejudice. The white man’s happi-

ness, he argued, could not be “purchased by the black man’s
misery.” He believed in interracial cooperation, At the same
time, he stressed the need for unity among blacks.


18

Several

stipulation that they be transported to Afri
branches of the colonization society were established by
Southern whites. New York, Indiana, the U.S. Congress, and
several Southern States appropriated inoney for exportation.

Free blacks had much interest in their African
homeland, but most denounced the colonization society. As
early as 1839 Douglass had contended that blacks were
“American citizens, born with natural, inherent and just
rights; and that the inordinate and intolerable scheme of
the American Colonization Society shall never entice or
drive us from our native soil.” Working with and supported
by others in the anti-slavery and abolitionist societies, he
would maintain this position throughout his life. He argued
that because whites felt guilty about their treatment of blacks

they wanted to remove them from their sight. Since free
blacks were showing that they had all of the endowments of
other men, whites wanted to remove free blacks because they
represented a threat to slavery. This, Douglass argued, would
never do. Most of the blacks were born in America and
their blood and sweat had helped to make the country great.
Many of the black man’s ancestors had arrived in the United
States decades hefore those very whites who were advocating
their deportation. Absurd in its inception, colonization of
all blacks would be too costly to the national government.

Douglass was still denouncing colonization when
President Abraham Lincoln pushed a bill through Congress
in 1862 appropriating $100,000 for the purpose of encourag-
ing black colonization. During his debates with Stephen
Douglas in 1858, Lincoln had argued that blacks and whites
were so dissimilar they could not live together peacefully.
Although anti-slavery in sentiment, Lincoln felt that whites
were superior to blacks and he spoke out against racial
equality. On September 18, 1858, Lincoln said:

T am nol, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in
any way the social and political equality of the white and
black races—that I am nol nor ever have been in favor of
making volers or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them
to-hold office, nor to intermarry with white people: and T
will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference
between the while and black races which I believe will for
ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social
and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live,
while. they do remain logether there must be the position of
superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am
in favor of having the superior position assigned to the
while race.

The President held the same ideas in 1862'when he
presented his colonization scheme to a group of black leaders.


36

Douglass viewed these developments with alarm. A
reconstruction policy had to be established, he declared,
which would destroy the power of the former slaveholders.
It had to be a policy which would “establish in the South
one law, one government, one administration of justice, one
condition to the exercise of the elective franchise for men
of all races and colors alike.” Along with Republican Con-
gressmen Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, Douglass
called upon the Nation to make sure that blacks could ac-
quire land. After centuries of unrequited toil, they needed
land to make their freedom real, to become economically in-
dependent of former slaveholders whose sole object was “to
get as much work for as little pay as possible.” Unless blacks
could acquire land they would, he feared, “continue to live
a miserable life and die a wretched death.” The Black
Codes were proof of this.

A howl of protest went up in the North over this
apparent rebirth of slavery in the South. When Congress
convened in December 1865 many Northerners were con-
vinced that something had to be done to protect the freed-
man. Expecting a contrite South, the North was shocked
when the former Confederate States elected the Vice Presi-
dent, six cabinet officers and fifty-eight members of the Con-
gress of the Confederate States of America and four generals
and five colonels of the Confederate army to the U.S. Con-
gress. Angered by the “arrogance” of the South and John-
son’s failure to consult them, the Republicans rejected the
Presidential Reconstruction plan and refused to seat the
Southern Congressmen.

A steady barrage of legislation was passed by the
Republican Congress, often over Johnson’s veto. On April 9,
1866, the Civil Rights Bill, passed over the President’s veto,
guaranteed blacks equal rights with whites. On January 8,
1867, Congress, again over his veto, granted suffrage to blacks
in the District of Columbia. The boldest and most significant
part of the Congressional plan was embodied in the Recon-
struction Act of March 2, 1867, that organized the former Con-
federate States into five military districts, required the regis-
tration of black and white males as voters and the election of
delegates to new constitutional conventions in each State,
disfranchised many ex-Confedcrates, and required ratification
of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to blacks
and ensured civil rights, before any of the States could elect
Congressmen.

On March 3, 1865, Congress had established the
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands,




Contents Slavel / Abolitionist9 / Editor 13 / Racial Uplift 17
Reformer 25 / Black Warrior 27 / Politician 33
The Sage of Anacostia 39 / Symbol for the Present 46

A Douglass Portfolio 49 / Bibliographical Note 71


70




Douglass worked in the North. The Civil War era is chron-
icled in Dudley T. Cornish, The Sable Arm (New York,
1956) and Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War
(Boston, 1953).

John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction (Chicago, 1961),
W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (New York, 1935),
and Robert Cruden, The Negro in Reconstruction (Engle-
wood Clifis, N.J., 1969) are essential for unraveling the
complexities of life in the United States in the 15 years
following the Civil] War. The post-Reconstruction develop-
ments and Douglass’ role in them are considered in August
Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915 (Ann Arbor,
1963), Rayford Logan, The Negro in American Life _and
Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901 (New York, 1954) and C.
Vann Woodward, ‘Che Strange Career of Jim Crow (2d.
edition, New York, 1966).



29

to hate the system. In August 1855 he wrote to a friend and
asked him to recall a trip the two of them had taken in 1841

on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may re-
member, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of
the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled
together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to
me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio,
or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume,
that I have no interest in the thing which has, and contin-
ually exercises, the power of making me miserable.

And as a Congressman, Lincoln had supported bills that
would have abolished slavery in the District of Columbia.
Because of his anti-slavery views, Douglass ap-
plauded Lincoln’s nomination and campaigned for his elec-
tion. Though criticizing the Republicans for their “infinites-

imal amount of anti-slavery profession” and desire only to
limit the expansion of slavery, Douglass felt that the party
embodied the only viable political opposition to the South.
He viewed Lincoln's election as the first break in the South's
ability to dictate who would be President. As the months
wore on, however, Douglass became disenchanted.

In his inaugural speech Lincoln tried to quiet the
fears of the seven slave States that had seceded and those
still in the Union by promising not to interfere with “the
institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” But since
Republicans were dedicated to excluding slavery from any
new territories, the South was not placated. Douglass rejected
the feverish efforts to reach a compromise, for they were
aimed at preserving slavery. He felt that it would be better
to dissolve the Union if it could only be “maintained by new
concessions to the slaveholders; if it can only be stuck to-
gether and held together by a new drain on the negro’s
blood.”

When attempts at compromise failed, the South
Carolinians attacked the U.S. troops at Fort Sumter in April
1861 and precipitated the bloodiest war of the 19th century.
To retain the, support of pro-slavery Northern whites and
those loyalists in the slaveholding States that had not
seceded, Lincoln refused to touch the institution of slavery
for two years. Many northern whites were willing to give
their lives to preserve the Union, but few were willing, ini-
tially, to fight to free the slaves.

Blacks, however, viewed the war in a different light.
For them, it was no less than a war of liberation. And in
Douglass’ mind the Union could only win the war if aboli-

tion of slavery were one of the war aims.


15

to move to Rochester, N.Y., and publish the North Star. He
hoped the paper would help dispel the notion of the black
man’s inferiority and be the means of “making them ac-
quainted with their own latent powers, by enkindling their
hope of a future and developing their moral force.” On
December 2, 1847, the first issue of the North Star appeared
with the motto, “Right is of no sex—Truth is of no color—
God is the father of us all, and we are all Brethren.”

From 1847 to 1860 Douglass published the journal,
changing its name to Frederick Douglass’ Paper in 1851.
Between 1858 and 1868 he also published Douglass’ Monthly
Magazine. The number of subscribers, black and white, varied
between 3,000 and 4,500 and were located in 18 states and two
foreign countries. Despite financial difficulties Douglass was
able to publish his journal continuously for 18 years. It was the
most successful black newspaper before the Civil War. But
success was gained as a result of considerable personal sacri-
fice. The sacrifices would have been even greater if Douglass
had not been able to depend on his family for support. Anna
was a frugal household manager and helped Douglass in his
endeavors. His sons Lewis and Charles folded, wrapped, and
delivered papers while his daughter Rosetta served as his
secretary, taking dictation and handling subscriptions. Anna
celebrated each new issue of the paper by preparing a sump-
tuous meal for the family.

Much of the economic support for the paper came
from Douglass’ lectures. The lectures also enabled him to
sign up new subscribers. Often he offered free copies of his
books as bonuses for subscriptions. Although plagued by
slow or nonexistent payments, Douglass was aided by several
agents who sold his paper—Martin R. Delany, William Wells
Brown, George T. Downing—by black conventions and
organizations of black women, English reformers, and Amer-
ican philanthropists. Representatives Gerrit Smith, Horace
Mann, Joshua Giddings, and Senator Charles Sumner, advo-
cates of political action to bring about emancipation, all
were enthusiastic in their support of the paper. An English-
woman, Julia Griffiths, served as his office manager.

Several other black newspapers were ‘published
between 1847 and 1860. Samuel Ringgold Ward, a minister
in white churches, edited the Impartial Citizen in Syracuse,
N.Y., in 1848. Louis H. Putnam edited the Colored Man's
Journal in New York City from 1851 to 1861; W. H. Day,
a graduate of Oberlin College, published the Alienated
American in Cleveland, Ohio, from’1852 to 1856. Miflin W.
Gibbs, a Philadelphia free Negro who had emigrated to Cali-


21

of 1850 he was placed in even greater danger, for, backed
by the law Southern agents could scour the North, appre-
hend fugitives, have them arrested, and take them back
to slavery, Northern blacks were incensed by the passage of
the bill and vowed to defy it. Samuel Ringgold Ward of
New York, for example, angrily announced that “if any-
one came to take him he had better perform two acts for
the benefit of himself and his family. He should first make
his will and then make his peace with his Maker.”

Vehemently refusing to abide by what he consid-
ered an unjust law, in April 1850 Douglass joined with
others in resolving that “compromise or no compromise,
constitution or no constitution . . . no testimony short of a
Dill of sale from Alnighty God can establish the title of the
master to his slave, or induce us to lift a finger to aid in
his return to the house of bondage.” In August that same
year Douglass helped to write an address to slaves in the
South urging Uicm to flee from their masters, At a conv
tion in Pittsburgh in 1852 he insisted that “the only way to
make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter is to make half a

n-

dozen or more dead kidnappers. . . .”In the June 9, 1854,
edition of his paper he contended that the remedy for the
infamous law was a “good revolver, a steady hand, and a
determination to shoot down any man attempting to kid-
nap.” Raising: money to aid fugitives and hiding them in
his Rochester home, he sometimes helped as many as 40
slaves a month to reach Canada and freedom, Had he been
caught, he could have been imprisoned.

Free blacks, Douglass wrote, should arm themselves

and resist the enforcement of the infamous Fugitive Slave
Law. Anyone trying to kidnap a fugitive slave should be
killed like a “ravenous wolf in the act of throttling an
infant.” Douglass urged every free black to “sleep with his
revolver under his head, loaded and ready for use.” They
should provide all fugitive slaves who made their way north
with arms, he said, and teach them “at once that it is no
harm to shoot any man who would rob them of their
libeity.” Resistance had to be the order of the day if blacks,
slave and free, were not to be branded as an inferior race,
for the search for fugitives was a reproach that must be wiped
out." Every slave-hunter who meets a bloody death in this
infernal business is an argument in favor of the manhood
of our race. Resistance is, therefore, wise as well as just.”
Although he frequently advised blacks to take up
arms to resist enslavement, Douglass did not see eye to eye
with John Brown, one of the few men.who wanted to help


color. In Douglass’ eyes when blacks supported Garrison
on this point, they were acquiescing in discrimination. As
early as 1780 Paul Cuffee and other blacks in Massachusetts
had denounced taxation without representation. In 1838
sailmaker James Forten, Bishop Morris Brown, and aboli-
tionist Robert Purvis and other blacks worked to defeat a
Pennsylvania bill disfranchising blacks. They told the Legis-
lature that “when you have taken from an individual his
right to vote, you have made the government, in regard to
him, a mere despotism; and you have taken a step towards
making it a despotism to all.” During the next 12 years
blacks in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Connecticut
repeatedly demanded the right to vote. Such prominent
blacks as Philip A. Bell, Charles B. Ray, Theodore S. Wright,
Henry Highland Garnet, Charles L. Reason, George B.
Vashon, Charles H. Langston, and William H. Day urged
blacks to participate in politics. So many of these men were
his friends that Douglass could not easily ignore the rising
tide against Garrison’s rejection of politics, a rejection that

was fast becoming a principle.

An uncompromising advocate of immediate aboli-
tion, Douglass was convinced by the 1850s that anti-slavery
advocates had to obtain a political foothold to be effective.
Consequently, he joined the Liberty and Free Soil parties
to ensure that emancipation would not be ignored by the
major parties, and his editorials began to reflect this new
view. It was mandatory, he argued, for the oppressed to
participate in the political process. Before the Civil War this
participation gave the friends of freedom a chance to “pluck
executive patronage out of the hands of the pliant tools of
the whip and the chain; to turn the tide of the National
Administration against the man-stealers of this country and
in favor of even a partial application of the principles of
justice.”

Racial Uplift uring much of the 19th century some influential whites
argued that blacks and whites could not live together
in amity. Consequently, in 1817 they organized the

American Colonization Society to encourage free blacks to
return to Africa. Since the organizational meeting was held
in the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives, it was
a powerful society. Among its members were Speaker of the
House Henry Clay, Gen. Andrew Jackson, and the author
of the “Star-Spangled. Banner,” Francis Scott Key. Between
1817 and 1860 the society sent about 15,000 ex-slaves to
Liberia. Many masters freed their slaves with the express


30

Could we write as with lightning, and speak as with the voice
of thunder, we should write and cry to the nation, REPENT,
BREAK EVERY YOKE, LEY THE OPPRESSED GO FREE, FOR HEREIN
ALONE. 18 DELIVERANCE AND SAFETY! It is not loo late. The
moment is propitious. ... Now is the lime to put an end
to all our present national calamities... Any allempl now
to separate the freedom of the slave from the victory of the
Government, ... any attempt to secure peace to the whites
while leaving the black in chains... will be labor lost.

Slavery, Douglass argued, was the South’s strength.
Black bondsmen toiling in the field freed whites to go to the
front and furnished them with supplies. Slavery was the main
cause of the war, America’s national disaster. Since the North
could never defeat the South while slaves toiled in the field,
Lincoln should abolish slavery. The North should fight for
the time-honored principle of freedom. Douglass further con-
tended that “fire must be met with water, darkness with light,
and war for destruction of liberty must be met with war for
the destruction of slavery.”

But Lincoln was cautious; whenever an enthusiastic
military officer liberated slaves, Lincoln rescinded the order.
Yet, there were signs of progress. In April and June 1862 he
signed bills abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia
and in the territories. Then, on January 1, 1863, he issued

the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in the
rebellious states, but only in those areas not under Federal
control, as an act of “military necessity.” Although the act
left 800,000 blacks enslaved in the border states, it was cheer-
ing for Northern free blacks.

Frederick Douglass saw in the Proclamation “a little
more than it purported;” and saw in its spirit, “a life and
power beyond its letter.” He said that January 1, 1863, was

indeed “a day for poetry and song, a new song.” He told a
mecting in Boston that the Proclamation raised the war to
a new level. It inaugurated “a struggle between the beautiful
truth and the ugly wrong.” His happiness was not un-
bounded. Freedom had been proclaimed, but it had not been
won. A war to preserve the Union had become a war of lib-
eration, but the war was not over. Many battles lay ahead,
and it remained to be seen whether blacks would play a
significant role in the struggle. Would Lincoln, for instance,
accept black troops into the Union Army?

Although George Washington and Andrew Jackson
had utilized black troops during the American Revolution
and the War of 1812, most Northern whites were initially
appalled by any suggestion that blacks fight in the Civil War.

Blacks, they said, were cowards. Besides, it would be hor-



12

story was, its publication placed him in an extremely precar-
ious position. Legally he was still a slave and under Federal
law could be returned at any time to Maryland. Fearing that
his owner would try to have him recaptured, he found him-
self “tormented with the liability of losing [his] liberty.”
To prevent capture and reenslavement, Douglass began look-
ing for a haven in a foreign land. Preparing for his trip
abroad, Douglass moved his family to Lynn, Mass., and took
his daughter Rosetta to Albany, N.Y., to be cared for by
Abigail and Lydia Mott. Assured by friends and Anna that
his family would not suffer, Douglass spent the years 1845
to 1847 in England. Although he was able to send some
money back during this period, Anna supported the family
primarily by binding shoes.

Douglass left the United States on August 16, 1845.
Because he was black, he was denied a cabin on the Cunard
line steamer, the Cambria. Nevertheless, many of the pas-
sengers congregated in his part of the ship and just before
reaching England they implored him to deliver a lecture.
When he tried to comply the Southern whites on board
almost mobbed him.

Landing in Britain on August 28, 1845, Douglass
began a two-year lecture tour which took him to many
places throughout the United Kingdom. In his speeches he
stressed -human- brotherhood, denounced Englishmen acting
in concert with Southern slaveholders, and argued that
slavery was the common enemy of mankind. He came to
Britain, he told his audiences, because

slavery is a system of wrong, so blinding to all around, so
hardening to the heart, so corrupting to the morals, so
deleterious to religion, so sapping to all the principles of
justice in ils immediate, vicinty, that the community sur-
rounding it lack the moral stamina necessary to its removal.
It requires the humanity of christianity, the morality of the
world to remove it.

While denouncing slavery and advocating temper-
ance, Douglass met some of the leading English reformers,
notably Thomas Clarkson, Daniel O'Connell, and John
Bright. Mayors and Members of Parliament vied with each
other for the privilege of introducing him at the rallies he
held. He was so popular with the British that he often spoke
for two and a half hours day after day; sometimes a thou-
sand people would line up to shake his hand after a speech.
Despite all the acclaim, Douglass was most impressed with
the color blindness of the British. In all public conveyances,
inns, and restaurants he was received on equal terms with


Bibliographical
Note

Readers interested in more information on the life and
times of Frederick Douglass should consult a number of
works. Fortunately, Douglass has attracted a host of biog-
raphers, beginning with the lightly researched studies of
Frederic M. Holland, Frederick Douglass: The Colored
Orator (New York, 1891), James M. Gregory, Frederick Doug-
lass:_The Orator (Springfield, Mass., 1893), Charles W.
Chestnutt, Frederick Douglass (Boston, 1899) and Booker
T. Washington, Frederick Douglass (Philadelphia, 1906).
While a more scholarly approach was taken by Philip S.
Foner, Frederick Douglass (New York, 1964), the most ob-
jective and revealing biography was written by Benjamin
Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, 1948).

There is, of course, no substitute for the writings
of Douglass himself for an understanding of his thought.
Philip Foner has collected many of these in his The Life
and Writings of Frederick Douglass (4 vols., New York,
1950-55). The best source of information on Douglass is his
autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Doug-
lass (Boston, 1845); My Bondage and My Freedom (New
York, 1855); and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
(Hartford, 1881). Many of his speeches and editorials can
be found in the journals he edited, The North Star, 1847-51,
Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1851-60, and Douglass’ Monthly,
1858-63.

A number of books describe the events, people, and

institutions which were of special importance in Douglass’
life. Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (New York,
1956) and John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community:
Plantation Life in the Ante-Bellum South (New York, 1972)
are cogent and dispassionate discussions of slavery. Benjamin
Quarles in Black Abolitionists (New York, 1969) and Leon
Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States,
1790-1860 (Chicago, 1961), portray the milieu in which



56

Two of Douglass’ grandchildren: Annie Sprague and (below) Joseph
Douglass with his grandfather.



timore. Receiving his first pair of trousers, Douglass eagerly
embarked on his career of caring for the Auld's son, Thomas.
For the first time he found, in Sophia Auld, a kindhearted
white person.

Sophia Auld taught Douglass his ABCs and to spell
a few words until her husband discovered it and told her it
was illegal and unsafe to educate slaves. According to Hugh
Auld, if Frederick was taught to read, “there would be no
keeping him.” Upon hearing these words, Fred became con-
vinced that education was the key to freedom. “Though
conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher,” he
asserted, “I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at
whatever cost or trouble, to learn how to read.” During the
next seven years, he did favors for his white playmates in
return for reading lessons. Then, when he was 12 he obtained
a copy of The Columbia Orator. In this book he found sev-
eral denunciations of slavery which made a powerful impact
on him,

Reading about the abolition movement in the news-
papers and talking with Northern sailors, young Fred began
to think of forging a pass for himself and escaping. By
watching carpenters write letters on boards, Douglass learned
to copy a few letters, Latcr he obtained lessons from white
playmates and repeated the writing lessons in young Thomas
Auld’s notebook.

While in Baltimore Douglass saw many slaves who
were well treated compared to plantation standards. The fast
pace of city life made it impossible for masters to supervise
slaves as closely as they did on the plantation. In fact,
Douglass learned that “a city slave is almost a freeman com-
pared with a slave on a plantation.” Life in Baltimore gave
Douglass his first clear idea of freedom.

In 1832 Aaron Anthony died and Frederick became
the property of Anthony’s son-in-law Thomas Auld. Again
Douglass was taken from scenes of joy and returned to the
plantation, a world ruled by intimidation. He concluded
that Thomas Auld, his new master, was a fretful, cruel, and
contemptible man. He was, Douglass declared, “a slaveholder
without the ability to hold slaves. He found himself-incapa-
ble of managing his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud.”
Their allowance restricted to a scanty supply of corn meal,
Douglass and his fellow slaves often had to beg and steal just

to survive.

Repeated floggings failed to tame Douglass’ spirit,
so Auld decided to hire him out to Edward Covey for the
express purpose of breaking him. Douglass later reported that


when many women were timid on this issue, Douglass in-
sisted that it was “the duty of the women of this country to
secure to themselves the sacred right of the franchise.” In
fact, he argued, the American woman should “take her
rights as far as she can get them.” Few men were as com-
mitted to equality of the sexes as Douglass. For instance, he
once rejected the idea of changing the name of his paper to
the Brotherhood, because it “implied the exclusion of the
sisterhood.” Calling for the admission of women to all of the
black conventions he attended, Douglass continued to reveal
his conviction that “right is of no sex.”

Determined to free all classes of mankind from op-
pression, Douglass enlisted in a wide spectrnm of reform
movements. He railed against land. monopolies because he
felt that the distribution of free land would alleviate poverty.
Joining in the universal peace movement, he fought to out-
law war. Many of his editorials called for the abolition of
capital punishment because he contended that it was “un-
friendly to the progress of civilization, hostile to a true
religion, [and] repulsive to the best instincts of humanity.”

Attacks against demon rum were featured consist-
ently in Douglass’ editorials. While a slave, Douglass had
obseryed that masters often gave their slaves whiskey to make
them forget their bondage. Consequently, he associated alco-
hol with slavery. Alcohol caused distress for wives and chil-
dren. It led to poverty and crime. It was a potential barrier
to the education of blacks. All of the black conventions that
Douglass attended passed resolutions condemning addiction
to alcohol. Douglass went further. He attended the first meet-
ing of the New York Woman's State Temperance convention
in 1852 and fought successfully for the passage of a short-

~ lived prohibition law in 1855.

Douglass fought valiantly to uplift mankind. The

weak, the friendless, the proscribed, whether black or white

found in him a firm supporter. A co-worker in the campaign
for equal rights for women, temperance, abolition, and peace,
he sought to emancipate man from the chains of prejudice,
slavery, alcohol, and war.

Black he election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860
Warrior caused panic in the South, The Hlinois lawyer was
known as an anti-slavery man. Early in his career he

told an audience that “if slavery is not ‘wrong, nothing is

wrong.” Although he shared many of the popular ideas con-

cerning the inferiority of blacks, Lincoln was troubled by

slavery. The first time that he saw enslaved blacks he began


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24

they were inferior. If blacks themselves accepted segregation,
why should whites cease to oppress them? Perhaps the great-
est anger Douglass displayed was toward Elizabeth Green-
field, a free Negro singer who had performed before the
crowned heads of Europe and was known as the Black Swan.
After she performed before a segregated audience in 1852
Douglass wrote that “the conduct of the Black Swan...
should be reprobated by the colored people. She should be
called no longer the Black Swan, but the White Raven.”
Rather than repent, a year later Miss Greenfield held a
concert in New York City from which blacks were excluded.

Like many talented blacks, Miss Greenfield had to
decide whether to adhere to principles of equality or to
abandon them to make money. Because she chose the latter
course, Douglass accused her of abandoning her people and
voluntarily accepting personal humiliation. “We marvel,”
he said, “that she can allow herself to be treated with such

palpable disrespect; for the insult is to her, not less than to
her

ace.”

While urging blacks to fight against discrimination,
Douglass realized that protest alone would not lead to their
clevation. To rise, blacks had to become industrious labor-
ers and businessmen. During the first meeting of the Amer-
ican League of Colored Laborers in 1850, Douglass served
as a vice president and contended that blacks had to engage
in all kinds of economic activity. In words very similar to
those made popular by Booker T. Washington 40 years later,
Douglass urged blacks to become economically independent.
Consequently, he was foremost among those advocating the
establishment of an industrial college for blacks in the 1850s.
With or without the industrial college, blacks should enter
trades, buy land, and build homes. The work of every suc-
cessful black artisan would help to break down prejudice.
Douglass’ journals praised successful black businessmen and
stressed the importance of good grooming. Believing in “the
education of the hands and heart,” Douglass felt that most
blacks had to engage in trades and agriculture as they
emerged from slavery, Artisans and farmers would form a
firm foundation for a few blacks to engage in literary and
professional pursuits. The elevation of blacks depended

heavily, however, on their intellectual improvement.
Prejudice and discrimination would subside, Doug-
lass averred, when blacks could cite their accomplishments
in all fields. Toward this end, he urged his fellows to estab-
lish improvement, debating, and literary societies. Since
blacks had to become more literate, he stressed the impor-




Slave ometime in February 1817 or 1818 a son was born, to
Harriet Bailey, a black slave in Talbot County, Md.
Christened Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, this

son of an unknown white man would later write his name
indelibly in American history as Frederick Douglass. His
uncertain parentage and birthdate notwithstanding, he was
one of the chief actors in the scenes which moved the en-
slaved to break their chains, made real the Declaration of
Independence, and breathed liberty into the Constitution.
But before he could speak for the oppressed of all nations,
and sexes, Frederick Douglass had to suffer the privations of
slavery.

Talbot, on Maryland’s eastern shore, was one of the
largest cereal producing areas in the State: wheat, corn, oats,
and wool were the chief products. Containing many small
farmers and a few large slaveholders, the county's total pop-
ulation declined from 15,610 people in 1790 to 12,090 in
1840, Slavery was relatively precarious; the number of slaves
declined from 7,070 in 1790 to 3,687 in 1840. Since many of
the planters were freeing their bondsmen, the number of
free blacks increased from 268 in 1790 to 2,340 in 1840.

However widespread elsewhere, the emancipation
spirit did not reach the plantation of Douglass’ master, Capt.
Aaron Anthony. On the contrary, Douglass suffered from
many of the worst features of slavery, including an unstable
family. He never saw his father. His sisters and brothers were
scattered among several plantations; .he saw them so infre-
quently that they always appeared as strangers to him. The
relationship with his mother was almost unbelievably pain-
ful. She worked on a plantation about 19 kilometers away
and Douglass was separated from her when he was an infant.
“I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four
or five times in my life. . . . I do not recollect of ever seeing
my mother by the light of day,” he lamented. “She was with




whites. In contrast to the United States where he was “cari-
catured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with im-
punity by any one... [with] a white skin,” in England he
met “nothing to remind me of my complexion.” He dis-
covered that the British “measure and esteem men accord-
ing to their moral and intellectual worth, and not according
to the color of their skin.”

Like many American blacks who have breathed the
freer air of a foreign land, Douglass looked back upon his
native land with bitterness and ambivalence. As much as
he loved the promise of America, its practices made him feel
like an alien. In 1846 he wrote Garrison about his impres-
sions gained from living abroad.

In thinking of America... when I remember that
all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slaveholding, robbery
and wrong; when I remember that with the waters of her
noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are ‘borne to the
ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile
fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters;
T am filled with unutterable loathing, and led to reproach
myself that anything could fall from my lips in praise of such
a land. America will not allow her children to love her.

Unlike American whites, Douglass could not find
freedom in the United States. That, he found in Great
Britain. While there, a group of Englishmen raised $710
and purchased his freedom. Although soine white abolition-
ists in America castigated him for acknowledging property
rights in men by buying his freedom, Douglass was practical.
After all, the whites were not subject to be returned to
slavery. He was. They were not subject to be separated from
their families. He was. Douglass would not stand on philo-
sophical and legal niceties if he could avoid the slaveholder’s
lash. And, more importantly, the plans he had for the future
could only be carried out by a free man.

Editor he gréat projéct Dotiglass had in mind was the publica-
tion of a newspaper. Douglass felt that by publishing

a newspaper he could help to elevate blacks, both

slave and free. His British friends agreed with him and raised
more than $2,000 for that purpose. White abolitionists in the
United States were dismayed. They did not want to lose a
talented lecturer nor to have another abolition tract compet-
ing with the Liberator, the Anti-Slavery Standard, and other
papers. At first Douglass reluctantly acquiesced and returned

* to the lecture platform. So many people urged him to estab-
lish the paper, however, that in the fall of 1847 he decided



than any king upon his throne.” But his triumph was brief,
for he was soon to learn about his master.

Aaron Anthony, the owner of Frederick and 29
other slaves, worked as a steward for Edward Lloyd. Owner
of several plantations and hundreds of slaves, scion of a
prominent and wealthy family, Edward Lloyd V (1779-1834)
served in the Maryland General Assembly, the U.S. Con-
gress, and as Governor of Maryland (1809-1811). His main
plantation, the Wye House, was one of the most beautiful
in the State. As praiseworthy as Lloyd appeared to his white
neighbors, Douglass and his fellow slaves found much op-
pression on Lloyd's plantations. Adult slaves were fed corn
meal, fish, and pork, and they received one pair of trousers
or a skirt, a pair of shoes, and one blanket each year. Chil-
dren received nothing but a long shirt. The hours of work
were so long the slaves had little time to sleep. Generally the
overseers who worked for Lloyd and Anthony were hard-
driving, brutal, and heartless men. One of them killed a
slave who disobeyed and was not even tried for murdering
the black man.

Lloyd and Anthony were little better than their
overseers. So fickle was Lloyd in his punishments, that he
would give a slave 30 lashes or sell him for simply displeasing
him, All the fears that Frederick had had of Anthony were
confirmed soon after he arrived on the plantation. A sadistic
man, Anthony terrified his slaves and appeared as a dreadful
white apparition to young Douglass. While all of the flog-
gings Anthony gave his slaves affected Douglass, none were
as crushing as those administered to the boy's relatives.
Douglass recalled that he was often

awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending
shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he [Anthony] used to
lie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was
literally covered with blood. ... 1 was so terrified and horror-
stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared
nol venture out till long after the bloody transaction was
over. I expected it would be my turn next.

The frightened young boy had few responsibilities
during his first few months on the plantation. Generally
he spent his time pulling the weeds out of the gardens,
driving the cattle, chasing birds, and running errands.
Though he received few whippings, Douglass suffered greatly
from cold and hunger.

Because he had witnessed so much suffering, Doug-
lass was delighted when he learned in 1825 that his master
was sending him to live with a relative, Hugh Auld, in Bal-


Douglass was incensed, and he charged that Lincoln was
showing “his pride of race and blood, his contempt for
Negrocs and his canting hypocrisy.”

While he battled against the colonization society
and the President, Douglass also had to struggle with black
separatists who encouraged their fellows to leave the United
States voluntarily. It was inevitable that many blacks
would become separatists. At one time or another most 19th-
century free blacks felt as W.E.B. Du Bois did in the 1930s:

T was not a man; I was by long education and continued
compulsion and daily reminder a colored man in a white
world; and that white world often existed primarily, so far
as I was concerned, to see with sleepless vigilance that I was
kept within bounds... that I was and must be a thing apart.

As a result of such feelings many 19th-century blacks stressed
racial solidarity, pride, and loyalty. They retained a strong
sentiment and nostalgia for their homeland. They prefixed
“African” before the names of many of their churches.
schools, and social organizations.

Distressed by the barriers they faced in the United
States, a number of blacks yearned for a place beyond its
borders where they might find refuge. Canada, Central
America, Haiti, and Africa all had their appeal. Each offered
a haven for the oppressed, and opportunity for the black
man to demonstrate his talents. At the root of the emigra-
tion schemes was a heavy emphasis on black nationalism
tant black unity. The poet James M. Whitfield,

and a mi
the minister Henry Highland Garnet, and the Harvard-
tained physician Martin R, Delany all called for emigra-
tion. In 1852 Delany argued that blacks, if they were ever

to, progress, had to “stand independently of anything per-
taining to white men or nations.” Respect and equality
would come for blacks, Whitfield declared, only when they

had “men of their own race occupying a n
instead of a sccondary and inferior one.”
happen in the United States where blacks would always be

“crawling in the dust to the feet of our oppressors.” Out-

mary posi

his would never

side America, however, blacks could look forward to a glori-
ous future. Delany believed that it was “the destiny of the
negro, to develop a higher order of civilization and Chyis-
tianity than the world has yet seen.”

Such men as Delany, Whitfield, and Garnet enter-
tained no fears about black inferiority or powerlessness.
While whites had achieved much, Delany barely acknowl-
edged them as his equals. Besides, considered globally,
colored peoples outnumbered whites. Eventually the former


Frederick Douglass
D-\b

File:
Erederick
Douglass
Home

The Clarion Voice

By

John W. Blassingame

Division of Publications

National Park Service, U.S, Department of the Interior
1976

Color Seans aT

of! 4/2005" TECHNICAL INFORMATION CENTER
ON MICROFILM Oe ee scar


42

first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Douglass. Ten years later, he wrote his second, My Bondage
and My Freedom (1855). He spent much of his time trying
to sort out his life and writing his third autobiography, Life
and Times of Frederick Douglass (1882) .

In 1884 he took a crucial step which brought criti-
cism from both blacks and whites. In January that year he
married Helen Pitts, a white woman who had served as a
clerk in the Recorder's office. A talented woman whose
ancestors had fought in the Revolutionary War, Helen
brought new joy into Douglass’ life. But locally and_na-
tionally whites were enraged. Some Congressinen called for
a law banning interracial marriage in the District of Colum-
bia. A number of blacks accused Douglass of abandoning his
race. Douglass insisted that no one had a right to determine
a man’s associates or his marriage partner. He had not
abandoned his race. In marrying the woman he loved, he had
struck another blow against prejudice and discrimination.

For the most part, Douglass found Washington to
be a congenial place. Interested in the betterment of the
local residents, he joined many campaigns to improve their
lot. For a while he was president of the Industrial Building
and Savings Company which sought to promote the purchase
of homes by blacks. Douglass also invested heavily in other
enterprises controlled by blacks and especially the Alpha
Life Insurance Company, the Capital Savings Bank, and the
Freedom Manufacturing Company. He did not, however,
neglect social matters. Douglass often attended the theater
and read Shakespeare's plays before the Uniontown. Shake-
speare Club. Young students from Howard University, of
which he was a trustee, frequently went to Cedar Hill for
tea and games of croquet. Although Douglass did not have a
formal affiliation with any church, he was a deeply religious
man. He often addressed ministerial associations and was
fond of saying that in the 1840s “the A.M.E. Zion Church at
New Bedford gave me license to preach and I have been
preaching ever since.” The church he attended regularly in
Washington was the Metropolitan A.M.E.

As he viewed the election of each new President,
Douglass found much in the style of life in Washington
which was wryly humorous. In 1876 he gave onc of the most
comical descriptions ever written of office seekers and lobby-
ists in the capital. The hungry spoilsmen were always obse-
quious and dishonest he said, for “in the pre-eminently
deceitful and treacherous atmosphere, promises even on paper
do not amount to much. Everybody is fed and being fed




on

within a week, Covey had given him “a very severe whipping,
cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges
on my flesh as large as my little finger.” During the next six
months, Covey whipped Douglass often and forced him to
work 10 and 12 hours daily, sometimes from dawn to mid-
night. Since Covey watched them constantly, the slaves had
no respite from labor. Douglass recalled that the slaves toiled
in “all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could
never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in
the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of
the day than of the night. The longest days were too short
for him, and the shortest nights too long for him.” Six

months of back- breaking toil and constant floggings suc-
ceeded in breaking him. “I was broken in body, soul, and
spirit,” he later wrote, “My natural elasticity was crushed;
my intellect languished; the disposition to read departed;
the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark
night of slavery closed in upon me... .”

While harvesting wheat oric day Douglass was over-
come by heat exhaustion and crawled under a tree to rest.
Covey immediately ordered him to return to work but Doug-
lass could not comply. Covey then kicked him several times
and beat him over the head with a stick, After recovering
from his wounds Douglass went to his master, but he was
ordered to return to Covey. The next morning, “wearied in
body and broken in spirit,” he did so. As soon as he arrived,
Covey went after him with a whip. Douglass ran away to
the home of a friend, When he returned, Covey decided to
tie him up and whip him. But Douglass had had enough;
he decided to resist. The 16-year-old boy fought with the
white man for two hours until Covey let him alone. For the
remaining six months that Douglass spent with Covey, “he
never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger.” This
fight was a major turning point in Douglass’ life. The fight
represented

a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the
heaven of freedom. My long- crushed spirit rose, cowardice
deparied, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved
that, however long T might remain a slave in form, the day
had. passed forever when T could be a slave in fact. I did not
hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who
expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing
me.

While living with Covey and on other plantations,
Douglass had many opportunities to determine the impact
of slavery on both blacks and whites. Slavery crushed the
white man’s finer instincts, made him indifferent to suffering.


55



38

For an ordinary man, such unswerving loyalty
would have been the mark of a party hack. But Douglass
never abandoned his right to condemn his party's short-
comings. During the scandals which rocked the Grant ad-
ministration, for example, he declared that “the moral
atmosphere is tainted, rotten. .. . Avarice, duplicity, corrup-
tion, servility, fawning and trickery of all kinds confront us
at every turn.” Nowhere was this more apparent than in the
Freedmen’s Bank which had been chartered by Congress to
encourage former slaves to save. Throughout the South
blacks deposited more than $57 million in the bank a few
years after they were freed. Uuscrupulous officials, bad man-
agement, and speculation had crippled the bank by 1874.
Hoping to restore confidence, the trustees appointed’ Doug-
lass president in the spring of 1874. As soon as he dis-
covered its true condition, Douglass recommended that the
bank be closed even though most of the large, unrepaid loans
had gone to unscrupulous white speculators. Douglass com-
plained bitterly that the bank had been “the black man’s
cow but the white man’s milk.” In the same vein he criti-
cized the Supreme Court in 1883 when it declared the Civil
Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. The court was, he said,
extremely reactionary for it struck down a law which “was
a banner on the outward wall of American Liberty, a noble
moral standard uplifted for the education of the American
people.”

The compromise of 1877 which saw the Republican
Party largely abandon Southern blacks made Douglass “an
uneasy Republican.” Eventually he concluded that “parties
are made for men and not men for parties . . . follow no
party blindly. If the Republican Party cannot stand a de-
mand for justice and fair play it ought to go down... .”

The return of whites to complete control in the
South led to a virtual reign of tervor against blacks. The
Klan rode; homes were burned; black men were murdered and
driven by force from the ballot box; blacks were lynched.
And the Republican-controlled government did little to pro-
tect them. By 1880 Douglass saw that the black man had
reached a point where the “workshop denies him work and
the inn denies him shelter; the ballot box a fair vote, and the
jury-box a fair trial. He has ceased to be the slave of an indi-
vidual, but has in some sense become the slave of society.”
Since no institutions protected the oppressed blacks, they
were being driven inexorably to the last resort of men who
have no redress for their grievances—to armed resistance,
daggers ,.and dynamite.


26

The attitudes toward blacks and women were so
similar that Douglass’ interest in the rights of the latter was
natural, Beginning in the 1840s such women as Lucretia
Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and others
began to insist that women receive the same educational,
economic, and political rights as men. Douglass not only sup-
ported these sentiments, but also attended the first women’s
rights convention at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848. Although
$1 other men attended, Douglass was the only one to play
a prominent role in the debate. During the convention the
delegates were deeply divided over the resolution calling for
the right to vote for women. At the urging of Elizabeth Stan-
ton, Douglass spoke in favor of the resolution and it passed
by a small majority. Douglass was the only man who voted
for the suffrage resolution. For the rest of his life Douglass
was a frequent delegate at women’s rights conventions.

All of the delegates attending these meetings were
ridiculed in the press. Accused of being crackpots, fanatics,
man-haters, utopians, infidels, and free lovers, they were
bombarded from every side. The New York Herald's char-
acterization was typical:

Who are these women? What do they want? .. .
Some of them are old maids, whose personal charms were
never very attractive, and who have been sadly slighted by
the masculine gender in general; some of them women who
have been badly mated, whose own temper, or their hus-
bands’, has made life anything -but agreeable to them, and
they are therefore down upon the whole of the opposite sex;
some, having so much of the virago in their disposition, that
nature appears to have made a mistake in their gender—
mannish women, like hens that crow; some of the boundless
vanity and egotism, who believe that they are superior in
intellectual ability to ‘all the world and the rest of mankind,’
and delight to see their speeches and addresses in print; and
man shall be consigned to his proper sphere—nursing babies,
washing the dishes, mending stockings, and sweeping the
house. This is ‘the good time coming’ Besides the classes we
have enumerated, there is a class of wild enthusiasts and
visionaries—very sincere, but very mad—having the same
vein as the fanatical Abolitionists, and the majority, if not
all of them, being in point. of fact, deeply imbued with the
anti-slavery sentiment.\Of the male sex who attend these
Conventions for the purpose of taking a part in them, the
majority ave hen-pecked husbands, and all of them ought to
wear pellicoats.

With such notoriety, the women found it difficult to get
newspapers to announce their meetings. Douglass showed no
reluctance in doing so.

Douglass was foremost among the reformers in urg-
ing women to agitate and petition for the right to vote. Even



43

upon great expectations and golden promises, and s
the diet is less than dog cheap, nobody fails of a full supply.”

In a more serious vein, Douglass viewed Washing-
ton as a symbol of the Nation's principles. It represented
the unity of the people, welcomed all of them as citizens. Its
monuments and public buildings were ennobling, they indi-
cated to Americans “the value of free institutions and how
to perpetuate and maintain them.” For Douglass, Washing-
ton was “a glorious symbol of civil and religious liberty.” It
was truly home for all Americans:

nce

Elsewhere we may belong to individual States, but here we
belong to the whole Uniled States. Elsewhere we may belong
toa section, but here we belong to a whole country, and the
whole country belongs to us. It is national territory, and the
one place where no American is.an intruder or a carpel-
bagger. The new comer is not less at home than the old resi-
dent. Under its lofty domes and stately pillars, as under the
broad blue sky, all’ races and colors of men stand upon a
footing of common equality.

The ideal that Washington represented was not
followed in actual practice. While most public institutions

treated blacks with respect, many of the hotels, restaurants,
and places of public amusement discriminated against them.

Situated between two former slave States, Washington shared
many of the prejudices of Maryland and Virginia. Soon after
the war discrimination had become so prevalent that Doug-

lass began speaking out against it. In this regard Douglass
felt that Washington was ‘‘a most disgraceful and scandalous
contradiction to the march of civilization.”

Even more disgraceful was the disfranchisement of
American citizens in Washington. In 1866 when blacks con-
stituted about one-third of the District's population, Con-
gress passed a law giving all males the right to vote. Whites
became alarmed, however, when 8,200 blacks and 9,800
whites registcred in 1870. Fearing that the rapidly increasing
black population would lead to black control of the city
government, local whites petitioned Congress to prevent
the subordination of “the rights and interest and feelings
of the white man to those of the negro.” Accordingly, in
February 1871 local autonomy was taken away from District
citizens and vested in a governor, boards of health and public
works, and an I]-man upper house of the legislative council
all appointed by the President. Local residents elected a non-
voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives and
the 22 members of the lower chamber of the city’s legislative
council. But the influx of blacks continued to worry local
whites. Consequently, in 1874 Congress removed what focal


tance of adult education. Lyceums and evening and Sabbath
schools should be formed for this purpose. According to
Douglass, blacks were “an oppressed people because we are
not a reading people; any effort, therefore, directed and cal-
culated to induce colored people to read is desirable as it
constitutes the first step in our exodus from degradation.”

In an effort to encourage the subscribers to his news-
paper to read, Douglass reprinted interesting essays and re-
viewed new books, plays, magazines, and lectures. Excerpts
from the works of Thomas Carlisle, Edmund Burke, Charles
Dickens, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, William
Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Harriet
Beecher Stowe appeared regularly. Douglass also provided a
forum for blacks of a literary bent. Joseph C. Holly, Frances
E. W. Harper, James M. Whitfield, and other black poets
published some of their first poems in his paper. Some of
them, especially Harper and Whitfield, were renowned poets
by the end of the 19th century. While encouraging black
writers, Douglass wrote a short story himself, “The [Heroic
Slave,” which detailed the adventures of a fugitive slave who
led a revolt. He also reviewed and published a number of
anti-slavery poems and novels. Douglass published excerpts
from many slave narratives and urged his subscribers to read
works written by blacks. For example, Douglass felt a copy of
William C. Ncll’s. Services of Colored Americans in the Wars
of 1776 and 1812 “ought to be in the hands of every colored
man,” for it showed that “the hated black man has deserved
well of his country.”

Reformer ouglass did not restrict his activities to the elevation of
blacks. Many of the 19th-century reform movements at-
tracted his attention, Like many black leaders, for

example, Douglass believed in the equality of the sexes.
Since so many women were involved in the abolition move-
ment, it was inevitable that Douglass would join with them
in fighting to abolish discrimination based on sex. The pre-
vailing opinion of the role of women appeared in a New
York newspaper which asserted that “woman's offices are
those of wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend.” A woman was
expected to be subject to man. In an editorial in 1852, the
New York Herald asked, “How did woman first become sub-
ject to man as she now is all over the world? By her nature,
her sex, just as the negro is and always will be, to the end
of time, inferior to the white race, and therefore, doomed to
subjection; but happier than she would be in any other con-
dition, just because it is the law of her nature.”


_ FREDERICK DouGLass

ORATION

DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE

UNVEILING OF THE FREEDMEN'S MONUMENT

IN MEMORY OF

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

In LinéolnPark, Washington, D. C.

April 14th, 1876,

WITH AN APPENDIX,



me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to
sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little com-
munication ever took place between us.”

Although she spent little time with her son,
Harriet Bailey made a deep impression upon him. Douglass
remembered her as “tall and finely proportioned, of dark,
glossy complexion, with regular features, and amongst the
slaves was remarkably sedate and dignified.” His grand-
parents, Betsey and Isaac Bailey, made an even greater im-
pact on him. A master gardener, nurse and seinemaker,
Betsey was held in high esteem in the area and lived in a
cabin 19 kilometers from her master. She was a strong,
spirited woman who lavished love on her grandchildren.
Betsey became a substitute for his mother and the central
person in Douglass’ life; her cabin he viewed as a protective
haven. Until he was five Douglass faced few of the rigors of
slavery. He lived with his grandparents and “it was a long
time before I knew myself to be a slave. I knew many other
things before I knew that. Grandmother and grandfather
were the greatest people in the world to me... .”

While Douglass was initially a happy child, a white,
threatening shroud hung over his future. As each year
passed he came closer to the time when he would be taken
from his grandparents to work for his master. Filled with
dread. and foreboding, Douglass was separated from his
grandparents and taken to his master in 1824. At that time
he first met his brother Perry and his sisters Eliza and Sarah.
They were unable to comfort him as he wept constantly in
the next few days after his grandmother left.

In the next few months he learned what it meant
to be a slave. First, he came under the care of the ill-tempered
and cruel old plantation cook, Aunt Katy. Feeding the young
slaves a corn meal mush in hog troughs, Katy often punished
Douglass by refusing to let him eat. Sometimes Douglass was
“so pinched with hunger as to dispute with old ‘Nept,’ the
dog, for the crumbs which fell from the kitchen table.” Often
he had “followed with eager step, the waiting-girl when she
shook the table-cloth to get the crumbs and small bones flung
out for the dogs and cats.” Just before his mother died, she
went to the kitchen tenderly holding the young boy in her
arms and upbraided Katy for her cruelty. It was an unfor-
gettable experience for Douglass. ‘There was deep and
tender pity in her glance at me, and, at the same moment,
a fiery indignation at Aunt Katy... . That night I learned
as I had never learned before, that I was not only a child,
but somebody's. child. I was grander upon my mother’s knee


fornia, edited the Mirror of the Times in San Francisco from
1855 to 1862 and in 1856 the Rev. Jabez Campbell began
publishing the long-running journal of the African Metho-
dist Episcopal Church, the Christian Recorder, These able
editors battled valiantly in the cause of abolition and equal-
ity for free blacks. Among them, Frederick Douglass was
without peer.

Douglass believed that although blacks should ac-
cept aid from whites in their struggles, they had to be their
“own representatives and advocates.” Blacks, he said, had
to work “not exclusively, but peculiarly—not distinct from,
but in connection with our white friends.” In their struggles
all blacks, slave and free, rich and poor, were united. They
were one under the burden of prejudice, proscription, dis-
franchisement, and the charge of inferiority. Suffering with
the slave, Douglass attacked everything and everyone who
supported that accursed system.

Douglass explored practically every aspect of the
slavery question in his newspaper editorials. From 1847 to
1851 he had followed William Lloyd Garrison in denounc-
ing the Constitution as a pro-slavery document. But his
association with Charles Sumner, Gerrit Smith, and others
caused him to change his mind, and in 1851 he argued
that the Constitution could be used “in behalf of emanci-
pation.” Frustrated by the slowness of Garrison's moral sua-
sion, Douglass sought more powerful instruments to use in
destroying slavery. He called for international action to
encourage emancipation and urged Englishmen to speak out
against American iniquities. When Northern whites, claim-
ing to be “free soil” men, fought against the extension of
slavery into new territories, Douglass upbraided them and
their efforts which he saw as an evasion of the real issue.

The efforts to shut the slave power out of the Territories,
one by one, will keep the country in a constant commotion
with Border Ruffian outrages, assassinalions, incendiarisms,
conspiracies, civil wars, and all manner of sickening horrors.
The only true remedy for the extension of slavery, is the
immediate abolition of slavery. For while the monster lives
he will hunger and thirst, breathe, and expand. The true way
is Lo pul the knife into its quivering heart.

Garrison and his followers contended that abolition-
ists should not vote because America’s government was pro-
slavery. For a white man, whose skin automatically guaran-
teed his admission to the ballot box, such action was a protest
against the system. A black man, on the other hand, was
automatically barred from the ballot box because of his skin


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60

John Brown (1800-1859) was the champion of the blacks in Kansas
and at Harpers Ferry. Douglass’ involvement in Brown’s schemes forced
his flight to Canada and ultimately to England late in 1839, (Below)
Philip Bell was among the black leaders who urged participation in
the political processes of the Nation to achieve abolition and equality.

George Luther Stearns, a Massachusetts abolitionist, was recruiting com-
missioner for black troops once the decision was made to allow them
to fight. This letter (right), signed by Stearns, names Douglass his
agent. All three of his sons served with the Union armies.

On pages 62 through 65 are a few important documents from Doug-
lass’ life. In order, they are: the title page of one of Douglass’ printed
speeches, which was given during the Centennial celebrations. The letter
names Douglass U.S. minister resident and consul general to Haiti. It is
signed (overleaf) by Secretary of State James G. Blaine. And, Douglass’
special passport as minister to Haiti.


than equal pay, Douglass continually called for equality of
treatment. By July 1863 he was so discouraged by discrimi-
nation in the Army and by its failure to retaliate in kind
whenever the Confederates murdered black soldiers that he
stopped his recruiting. “Colored men have a right,” Douglass
argued, “not only to ask for equal pay for equal work, but
that merit, not color, should be the criterion observed by
Government in the distribution of places.” In a meeting with
Lincoln in late July 1863, Douglass convinced him to work
to end the brutal treatment of black troops by the Confed-
erates and to give them the same opportunities as whites in
the Union Army. Still Lincoln did little to remove most of
the inequities until a few months before the war ended.

Warriors who were scorned by the very people they
fought to defend, the black soldiers fought under many dis-
abilities. But the freedom they sought was sweeter than the
wrongs they endured seeking it. Whether at Port Hudson,
Fort Wagner, Fort Pillow, Petersburg, or Appomattox, they
offered their lives to break the galligg chains which had
bound them for more than 200 years. As Douglass had pre-
dicted, the war to save the Union had become a war to free
the slaves.

Politician uring the Civil War Douglass clearly saw that freedom
would not be enough for blacks. If the post-war blacks
enjoyed no more rights than the antebellum free

Negroes, freedom would mean little. The slave would only
cast off his chains and be at liberty to starve and suffer at
the hands of his oppressors without any chance of redress. If
freedom was not to lose its lustre, it had to be crowned with
the right to vote. Throughout the antebellum period, most
Northern states excluded blacks from the ballot box. In New
York they were allowed to vote only if they possessed $250 or
more in property. Douglass had campaigned against the re-
striction because black men had a right to “vote on their
manhood . . . not on their dollars and cents.” Douglass be-
lieved that blacks needed the vote because without it they
were left defenseless.

Many whites opposed the extension of the franchise
to blacks. The ex-slaves, they argued, would be vindictive
toward their former masters and should not be given the
power to rule them. The blacks were inferior and too
ignorant to know how to use the ballot. They would in-
evitably be brought into conflict with their former masters.
Since blacks were considered degenerate and wild men, they
were not fit “to enter the political community with the white




people of the country.” Pennsylvania Democrats contended
that “the white race alone is entitled to the control of the
government.” A ballot in a black man’s hand would under-
mine the “inherent superiority” of whites and lead in-
evitably to social equality, mixed schools, and interracial
marriages. The Northern opponents of suffrage for blacks
were convinced that the American government was exclu-
sively for the benefit of white people.

Between 1859 and 1867 Douglass and other blacks
fought a long campaign against such views. They wrote let-
ters, gathered petitions, held state and national conventions,
and spoke on numerous occasions. The vote was necessary,
Douglass said, to guarantee some protection for blacks. To
allow whites the right to vote while denying it to blacks
would be to commit “the lamb to the care of the wolf—the
arming of one class and disarming the other.” To exclude
blacks from the ballot box because they were ignorant was
hypocritical. How could they be otherwise when it had been
a crime to teach slaves to read in the South,and Northern
schoolhouses were closed in the black child's face? But at
least the ex-slave could speak and understand the English
language. Surely he was more qualified to vote than many
immigrants who could neither write, read, speak, nor under-
stand English. .

President. Lincoln was deeply affected by the ap-
peals made by Douglass and other blacks. He knew, as
clearly as anyone, that blacks had earned the rights of citizen-
ship on the battlefield. In an April 11, 1865, specch, three
days before his assassination, Lincoln spoke about suffrage
and asserted, “I would myself prefer that it were now con-
ferred upon the very intelligent, and on those who serve our
cause as soldiers.”

Douglass firmly believed that the black man could

not long sur
bondage. Having offered his life to save his country, he had
earned all the rights that other male citizens enjoyed. The
old proscriptions against his holding office, obtaining an edu-

ive in some halfway house between freedom and

cation, traveling freely without discrimination, and working
at jobs commensurate with his talents had been blasted with
his musket fire. If America was to be united on a firm founda-
tion, it needed its loyal black citizens to counter the still
smouldering disloyalty in the South. But this loyalty could
not be ensured with partial measures. Some whites felt that
improving the condition of blacks threatened their safety.
“Why should you be afraid to permit us,” Douglass asked,

“to enter the race of competition with you? Is our degrada-


Douglass Portfolio



22

slaves to rebel. For ten years Brown was a close friend of
Douglass and frequent visitor at his homme. A deeply reli-
gious man who had fought pro-slavery men to make Kansas
a free State, Brown in the mid-1850s tried to convince
Douglass to join him in military operations against the
South. A small band of armed men would help slaves escape
and establish a free state in the mountains. Douglass was
sympathetic, but he came to feel that the plan was visionary
and would bring down all the force of the Federal Govern-
ment. But Brown would not be deterred. On October 17,
1859, he and his small band of black and white men at-
tacked the federal arscnal at Harpers Ferry, Va., (now West
Virginia). Within 24 hours Col. Robert E. Lee and a com-
pany of United States marines captured John Brown.

Douglass admired Brown’s heroism and “sympathized with
the great objects of his life.” He prophesied that Brown’s
attack had sounded the death kneH of slavery. Two wecks
after Brown’s attack, Douglas wrote:

He has attacked slavery with the weapons precisely
adapted to bring it to the death. Moral considerations have
long since been exhausted upon. slaveholders. It is in. vain
to reason with them Slavery is a system of brute force.
Tt shields itself behind might, rather than right: It must be
met with ils own weapons. Capt. Brown has initiated a new
mode of carrying on the crusade of freedom, and his blow
has sent dread and terror throughout the entire ranks of the
piratical army of slavery. His daring deeds may cost him his
life, but priceless as is the value of thal life, the blow he has
struck, will, in the end, prove to be worth ils mighty cost.

Since Brown had papers implicating Douglass in the con-
spiracy, his‘capture imperiled Douglass’ life. Warrants’ went
out for Douglass’ arrest. To avoid sharing Brown’s fate on

the gallows, Douglass fled to Canada and later to England.
He returned upon the death of his daughter Annic in 1860.

Unwilling to throw his life away in futile utopian
schemes, Douglass dedicated himsell instead to a two-pronged

attack against prejudice and oppression. Fecling that every
advance of free blacks loosened the chains of the slave,
Douglass fought constantly for the moral, intellectual and
social uplift of free blacks. He urged blacks to battle against
segregation at every turn, Refusing to send his children to
segregated schools in Rochester, Douglass argued that dual
school systems wasted moncy and intellectual power. For a
nation, he wrote, “to cramp, and circumscribe the mental
faculties of a class of its inhabitants, is as unwise as it is
cruel, since it, in the same proportion, sacrifices its power
and happiness.” Douglass was especially active in his fight


52

Frederick Douglass works at his desk in the library at Cedar Hill (pre-
vious page).

On September 15, 1838, Anna Murray became the wife of Frederick
Douglass. She had been born free, the daughter of former slaves, Bam-
barra and Mary Murray. The savings that Anna had carefully set aside
during her years of work cnabled Douglass to escape to New York
whither she followed him and they were married.

In August 1845 Frederick Douglass left the United States and sailed
for England. In part, he fled from America to escape capture as a fugi-
Live slave. The publication of his The Narrative of the Life of Fred-
erick Douglass, An American Slave had revealed his true identity and
many of his friends urged him to leave. While he was in England,
English abolitionists raised the funds to buy his freedom. This docu-
ment, dated November 30, 1846, is the bill of sale between Thomas
Auld and his brother, Hugh Auld, for Douglass, Five days later Hugh
Auld gave Douglass his freedom and in April 1847, he returned to the

United States a free man,



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vi

richly informative throughout, as illustrated by, the opening
and closing sections on the career of the black reformer. To
his opening section on Douglass as a slave, Blassingame
brings an insight sharpened by his special understanding of
the mind and the personality of blacks in bondage. To his
closing section, which deals with Douglass as “the Sage of
Anacostia,” Blassingame draws upon his unusual grasp of
black leadership techniques at the turn of the century. In
his final paragraphs, the author holds that Douglass is an
enduring symbol, a conclusion to which the reader is likely
to assent readily, having been furnished the requisite proof.

In composition, as in organization and content, this
profile will not be found wanting. It is easily read, its style
not unlike that of Douglass in clarity and verve. If this work
succeeds in capturing Frederick Douglass, embracing some-
thing of the scope of his activities and the essence of his
spirit, much is owed to Blassingame’s own skill in communi-
cation. On whatever count, he has done his part.

Benjamin Quarles


41

with manly sentiments, ennobling aspirations, reflecting the
highest intellectual and moral resources of the colored
people.” Moving to Washington in August 1871, Douglass
became editor and changed the name to the New National
Era declaring that “the field of our labors is as wide as the
limits of the nation; it is our aim to speak to and for the
people of the whole land, rather than any particular locality.”
When he went to Santo Domingo in January 1871, Douglass
left his son Lewis in charge of the paper. After his return
from the island in March, Douglass wrote a series of articles
on Santo Domingo. But the calls on Douglass’ time were
too heavy for him to devote full time to the paper. And after
his Rochester home burned in June 1872, and he became
heavily involved in the Presidential campaign, he had to
sever all ties. On February 6, 1873, Douglass turned the paper
over to his son, Lewis Douglass.

In the summer of 1872 Douglass decided to move
his family to Washington. He was especially anxious to do
so because he felt that his wife Anna would be more com-
fortable living among Washington’s large black population.
He also felt that he could help alleviate the problems con-
fronting blacks in the District of Columbia, problems he had
become aware of when serving on Washington's legislative
council for a few months in 1871. The family moved into
a home on A Street, in Northeast Washington.

Five years later Douglass purchased a home in what
was then; suburban Washington. Just across the Anacostia
River, the eastern branch of the Potomac, his new 20-room
house was situated on a hill surrounded by 3.7 hectares of
land. He purchased an adjoining 2.3 hectares in 1878. In
purchasing the house, Douglass became one of the first men
to break a restrictive covenant in Washington. According to
the original deed, blacks were to be barred from purchasing
the estate. --

Since his new home was surrounded by a large num-
ber of cedar trees, Douglass named it Cedar Hill. At the time
it offered a commanding view of the river and much of the
city. Commodious verandas, porticos, halls and rooms pro-
vided plenty of space for the Douglass family. Douglass used
the well-stocked library in preparing his numerous lectures
and essays. Paintings of Douglass and portraits of Sumner,
Blanche K. Bruce, Toussaint L’Ouverture, John Brown,
Lincoln, and others adorned the parlors. An orchard, garden,
and croquet field were situated on the grounds.

“After Anna’s death in 1881, Douglass turned in-
creasingly to literary activities. In 1845 he had published his


Although he saw that the Republican Party was
abandoning the South, Douglass found the prospect of trust-
ing the Democrats worse. Even after the end of Reconstruc-
tion he continued to try to salvage something for blacks.

Douglass’ support for the Republican Party did

not go unrewarded. Throughout the period, he was inter-
ested in blacks obtaining positions in the national govern-
ment as evidence of the black’s clevation. Through his
influence with Grant, Ebencezer Bassett, a Yale graduate,
Became consul general to Haiti, the first black man to hold
a diplomatic post. As an indication of his prominence as a
symbol of Black Republicanism, Douglass was appointed
marshal and recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia
in 1877 and 1881—the first black to hold these offices. In
1889, President. Benjamin Ha
to Haiti. Douglass’ friends and supporters urged him not to

ison appointed him minister

accept the post and criticized the administration for not
offering him a Cabinet position. Certainly he deserved such
an offer because of his long service to the Nation and the
party, but racial prejudice was a strong barrier. Almost a
century would pass after the Emancipation Proclamation
was issued before prejudice had receded far enough to allow
the appoinunent of black men to, positions on the Supreme
Court and in the Cabinet. Even so, in the context of the
times, Frederick Douglass rose higher than most of his con-
temporaries, black or white. After all, the distance between
the slave pens of Maryland and the office of marshal of the
District of Columbia or minister to Haiti was longer, more
difficult, more painful than the road traveled by any other
prominent American of the 19th century

The Sage uring and immediately after the Civil War Douglass
of Anacostia spent much time in the Nation’s Capital. What he
saw there convinced him that if he hoped to influence

events he had to have a base in the capit
after the war he began discussing the po
ing a newspaper in Washington. By 1869 the Rev. J. Sella
Martin, pastor of the Fifteenth Street Colored Presbyterian
Church, had acquired the necessary backing for the paper
and urged Douglass to join the enterprise. On January 13,
1870, the Washington New appeared with M
editor. Although he was still living in Rochester, Douglass
became corresponding editor. He wanted the New Era “

» and a few years

ibility of establish-

as

to
take its place among the many lights existing to guide, and
the many shields uplifted to defend the colored race in their
transition from bondage to freedom, . . . inspiring its readers


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slavery by heavy chains as the winds of freedom whirled
around him.

Abolitionist n the summer of 1838 Douglass borrowed a sailor’s suit
and papers, boarded a train, and rode to freedom, On
September 4, he arrived in New York City. As he walked

the streets he “felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry
lions.” But his enthusiasm quickly waned when he remem-
bered that he was subject to capture and return to slavery.
Friendless, homeless, fearful, and lonely, he dared not speak
to anyone. Every white man he viewed as an enemy, a poten-
tial kidnapper who might return him to bondage. Soon,
however, he confided in a black sailor who directed him to
the home of David Ruggles, secretary of the New York
Vigilance Commiittee, an organization dedicated to helping
blacks escape from slavery. Douglass remained with Ruggles
until Anna arrived. Anna, who had sold some of her belong-
ings to help Douglass escape, brought along a trunk filled
with household goods. She and Douglass were married by the
Rev. James W. C. Pennington, a slave who had escaped
earlier from Maryland.

Two weeks after his escape from Baltimore, Fred-
erick and Anna arrived in New Bedford, Mass. There, they
made the decision to drop the surname Bailey and take a
new one, Douglass. In New Bedford Douglass learned that
black men voted, that their children went to school with
whites, and that no fugitive slave could be recaptured. But
even in New Bedford, whites were too prejudiced to work
with a black ship caulker. Consequently, Douglass was forced

to work at odd jobs: sawing wood, sweeping chimneys, load-
ing ships, digging cellars. Sometimes he made nine dollars
a month, barely enough to pay the rent. Anna worked as a
laundress to supplement Frederick's meager earnings. Three
of their children, Rosetta, Lewis, and Frederick, Jr., were
born in New Bedford.
Soon after his arrival in New Bedford Douglass
started attending the Elm Street Methodist Church and was
9 immediately assigned to a Jim Crow gallery. He was willing
to bear this humiliation until he learned that all of the white
members would be allowed to go to the communion table
before any of the black ones. He left the church for he be-
lieved that such prejudice was contrary to Christian teach-
ings. Consequently he joined a small body of black Christians,
the African Methodist Episcopal Zionists, and eventually
became a Sunday school teacher and “local preacher.” Doug-

lass was a deeply religious man; his speeches contain many


Lie vali
iL Lf rr Oi



o

(Above) Douglass and his second wife, Helen Pitts (seated), and her
niece, Eva Pitts (standing). (Below) The Douglasses at Niagara Falls.
Helen Pitts Douglass recognized the stature and national prominence of

her husband and spared no effort to make his home a memorial to him

after his death, She organized the Frederick Douglass Memorial and

Historical Association, which was chartered by Congress in 1900. Sixty-
two years later her dreams were realized when an Act of Congress made

the Frederick Douglass Home a unit of the
thereby ensuring its preservation.

‘ational Park System,



ll

free Negro lawyer; John Jones, a Chicago merchant, and
many others who were in the forefront of the abolition
crusade. These blacks labored with several famous white
abolitionists including Theodore Tilton, Sidney Howard
Gay, Henry Ward Beecher, John Greenleaf Whittier, Lewis
Tappan, Edmund Quincy, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abby K.
Foster, Lucretia Mott, Sarah Grimké, Maria Chapman,
Lydia Maria Child, Anna Dickinson, Julia Ward Howe, and
Lucy Stone. From 1841 to 1860 Douglass was one of the
most prominent of the abolitionists.

He was an incomparable orator. His booming voice,
his sarcasm, his naturalness, and his extempore delivery
made Douglass a commanding figure. He was poised, fluent,
and witty, and had a phenomenal memory. His voice was
of unequalled depth, volume, power, and had a great range
of intonation. His speeches were always logical, often
lyrical, and incomparably lucid. Laced with poetic allu-
sions and built on a firm philosophical foundation, they
embodied constant appeals to justice, equality, and freedom.

A democrat and a philosophical revolutionary, Doug-
lass believed that freedom was a natural right, a gift from
God. No one could take away this inalienable right. But
in the United States with all of its pretensions about liberty,
blacks were denied their freedom. For them the American
Bill of Rights was a “bill of wrongs,” the constitution, “a
compromise with manstealers and a cunningly devised com-
plication of falsehoods.” Douglass came to the conclusion
that freedom for the oppressed could not be won. without
struggle. He contended that it would not be an easy struggle,
for the bounds of the “tyrants are prescribed by the endur-
ance of those they oppress.” He reiterated that “he who
would be free must strike the first blow.” In an 1849 speech
Douglass insisted that he and other Americans should rejoice
if the slaves revolted, if “the sable arms which had been
engaged in beautifying and adorning the South were en-
gaged in spreading death and destruction.”

Douglass’ arguments were so eloquent that many
people began to doubt that he had been a slave. In part to
prove his authenticity, he wrote his first autobiography in
1845. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An
American Slave, with its tale of barbarism, silenced his de-
tractors. The New York Tribune's reviewer praised the book,
saying that he had never read a narrative “more simple,
true, coherent and warm with genuine feeling.” Many people
felt the same way; between 1845 and 1850 more than 30,000
copies of the Narrative were sold. As convincing as Douglass’



Introduction

An authentic hero of the spirit, Frederick Douglass re-
mains a roadmark figure, pointing the past to the present.
One who awakens our country’s conscience to the extent
that he did is not likely to be forgotten. To recapture the
man, however, is not an easy exercise. He played many
parts—among them orator, newspaper editor, author, Civil
War recruiter, federal office-holder and foreign service min-
ister. After 20 years-as a slave, he came to manhood in the
turbulent decades immediately preceding the Civil War.
Soon entering the battle for human rights, he became an
advocate whose interests were broad—he took arms against
a sea of troubles, to use the language of onc of his favorite
authors. His protest techniques were likewise varied, headed
by the gift of expression whether in the written or the spoken
word.

Nothing if not articulate, Douglass will remain his
own best interpreter. But to see him against the backdrop
of his own day.and age, to indicate something of the scope
of his activities and to assess his relevance to our times, we
need a trustworthy guide. John W. Blassingame is eminently
fitted for this vital service. Editor of the Frederick Douglass
Papers project, with headquarters at Yale, Blassingame is
steeped in the Douglass literature, conversant with the epic
quality of his career.

Blassingame lays before us a carefully done portrait
in brief compass but with all the essential features present
and in their proper degree of light and shade. Readers meet-
ing Douglass for the first time could scarcely ask for a more
pleasant introduction or experience a greater sense of dis-
covery upon first acquaintance.

Blassingame’s approach to Douglass is a skillful
combination of the topical and the chronological. He ad-
dresses himself to the major components of the Douglass
career, taking them in their historical order. Blassingame is


$2

more plain,” he said, “nothing more certain than that the
speediest and best possible way open to us to manhood, equal
rights, and elevation is that we enter this service.” Military
service would break the shackles binding the slave and re-
move prejudice and discrimination in the North. “Once let
the black man,” he said, “get upon his person the brass letters
U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his
shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power
on the earth or under the earth which can deny that he has
earned the right of citizenship in the United States.”

When the Governor of Massachusetts, John A.
Andrew, authorized the organization of a black regiment, the
54th Massachusetts, Douglass became one of its earliest re-
cruiters. His sons, Lewis and Charles, were among the first
to volunteer. Between February and mid-April Douglass per-
sonally recruited more than 100 men. Reprints of his edi-
torials were circulated throughout black communities in the
North, and he traveled extensively on recruiting tours. Doug-
lass was so successful as a recruiter that during the summer
of 1863 Lincoln met with him and promised him an appoint-
ment as brigadier general in charge of raising black troops in
the South. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, however, refused
to sign a commission for Douglass. Even so, Douglass played
a major role in recruiting the nearly 200,000 black men who
served in the Union Army. Sixteen of these men were
awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their bravery.

Throughout the war these brave black men labored
under severe handicaps. Except in Louisiana, they were not
permitted to hold commissions as officers until 1865. Rarely
were black doctors appointed as surgeons or black ministers
as chaplains. Often, the black troops were forced to work in
labor details and excluded from the battlefield. And, as if
this were not enough, they were paid less than white soldiers.
Then, too, while they fought in the South, white mobs at-
tacked their loved ones in many Northern cities. If they were
captured in the South, the Confederates either hanged them
as rebellious slaves or sold them as laborers to the highest
bidder.

Both at home and at the front, blacks were incensed
by their unequal treatment. Douglass was too, but he in-
sisted at first that if necessary, blacks should fight without any
pay and “smite with death the power that would bury the
government and your liberty in the same hopeless grave.”
Accepting his advice, the men of the 54th refused to accept
any pay for their services until they were paid the same as
white troops. While he felt that’ freedom was a larger issue




20

would rise. “The white races,” according to Delany, are but

one-third of the population of the globe—or one of them

to two of.us—and it cannot much longer continue that two-
thirds will passively submit to the universal domination of
this one-third.” He also believed that the establishment of a
powerful black nation would halt the slave trade and lead
to the abolition of slavery in the South.

While sharing many of the ideas of the African
emigrationists, Douglass was opposed to a mass exodus of
free blacks. First, it would be an admission of despair, for
departure would “virtually tell the enemy, we have no hope.”
Second, and most important, it would help to fasten the
chains even tighter around the slave. Emigration would
drain off talent which was needed in the struggle. Prejudice
and discrimination, he contended, were not invincible. Since
blacks were rising in the land of their bondage, they should
yemain and reap the fruits of their toil. Emigration would

create divisions among the blacks and decrease their
strength, American blacks could ill afford emigration at a
time when they were “becoming a nation in a nation which

disowns them.”

Rather than emigration or colonization, Douglass
urged the free blacks to stay and fight against prejudice and
discrimination. United efforts were central to this fight. Be-
ginning in 1843 Douglass took a leading role in the national
conventions held by blacks to plan concerted actions to re-
sist oppression. These conventions established permanent
bureaus to protect the black man’s civil rights, foster his
employment, collect statistics, and encourage historical stud-
ies. Major stress was placed upon unified struggle. In 1855
Douglass wrote, “Brethren let us rally! The times call upon
us, one and all, to sink minor differences, and with one
voice, one will, and one soul struggle to be free!” Seeking
to foster unity, in 1849 Douglass called for the establish-
ment of a permanent National League of Colored People.

Douglass insisted that the free blacks were duty
bound to fight for the emancipation of their enslaved broth-
ers. Every free black, he claimed, “should be ashamed to
consider himself free while his brother is a slave.” Remem-
bering vividly his own sufferings in Maryland, Douglass
felt deeply for those still in chains. At an early stage in his

carecr he began helping slaves to escape to Canada through
what was known as the underground railroad. Since the
escaped slave was a fugitive who could legally be returned
to his owner, Douglass violated the law every time he aided
one of them. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law


iv

The National Park Service Division of Publications gratefully
acknowledges the financial support given this book project
by the Parks and History Association of Washington, D.C.

The author wishes to express his thanks to the staff of the
Frederick Douglass Papers Project at Yale University, the
National Publications and Records Commission, and the
National Endowment for the Humanities.

Selection from The Break of Dawn by Arthur Lee Smith
(Molefi K. Asante)

Copyright © 1969

Reprinted by permission of the author

“Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden from Selected Poems
Copyright © 1966 by Robert Hayden
Reprinted by permission of October House Inc.

73619291


44

whites called the “curse of Negro suffrage” by abolishing all
elective offices. In their place appeared three Presidentially
appointed commissioners. While undergoing some changes
in subsequent years, control of District affairs remained
largely in the hands of Congress and the President until the
passage of a Home Rule Bill in 1974.

Frederick Douglass viewed the loss of home rule
with alarm. Without it, he recognized that blacks could not
obtain fair treatment in schools, jobs, or any other area of
life. Without the vote, they would stand helpless before
community prejudices. More than this, however, was in-
volved. Citizens of Washington, the symbol of American
principles, were denied an inherent right enjoyed by all
other Americans. Whether black or white, local residents
had no voice in choosing those who ruled them. No citizen
could protect his interests. The citizens of the District of
Columbia were in an anomalous position. Reminiscing about
this state of affairs in the 1880s, Douglass recalled:

These people are outside of the United States. They occupy
neutral ground and have no political existence. They have
neither voice nor vote in all the practical politics of the
United States. . . . Practically they are aliens; not citizens,
but subjects. {| The District of Columbia is the one
spot where there is no government for the people, of the
people, and by the people. Its citizens submit to rulers whom
they have had no choice in selecting. They obey laws which
they had no voice in making. They have a plenty of taxation,
but no representation. In the great question of politics in
the country they can march with neither army, but are rele-
gated to the position of neuters. {I have nothing to
say in favor of this anomalous condition of the people of the
District of Columbia, and hardly think that it ought to be or
will be much longer endured. .

Douglass followed local affairs affecting blacks with
much interest and became one of the social leaders in the
capital. In 1873, for example, he complained bitterly because
a black man was not appointed president of Howard Uni-
versity. Douglass represented local blacks at a number of
ceremonial functions. After Charles Sumner’s death, Douglass
marched at the head of the black honor guard in the funeral
procession. Similarly, he was one of Vice President Henry
Wilson’s pallbearers and one of the black mourners who
accompanied the body to Massachusetts. As marshal of the
District of Columbia, he participated in the inaugural cere-
monies, escorting the President to the Capitol. He also
attended Congressional and diplomatic receptions. Such fa-
mous black leaders as John Mercer Langston, P.B.S. Pinch-
back, and Senator Blanche K: Bruce often dined at his home.




37

known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. This combination welfare
department, medicare organization, education bureau, and
court distributed five million rations to destitute whites and
15 million rations to destitute freedmen from 1865 to 1869
thereby saving many from starvation. By 1870 the Bureau
had resettled 30,000 persons or refugees displaced by the war.
The Bureau established 47 hospitals for the freedmen by
1867 and treated 450,000 cases of illness. The Bureau was
also instrumental in educating the freedmen. By 1870, 247,333
pupils were being taught in 4,392 Bureau schools by more
than 9,000 teachers. In the economic realm, the Bureau drew
up labor contracts to be signed by the freedmen and the
planters, adjudicated disputes between the parties, and leased
abandoned plantations to the freedmen. While the Bureau
was unable to grant land to the freedmen, blacks had ac-
quired 65,124 hectares of land in Florida and 141,610 hectares
in Georgia by 1874. The protection the freedmen received
depended on the Bureau officials; often, the officials were
beguiled by the planters and united with them to keep the
blacks “in their place.” Generally, however, the Bureau agent
was simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of his task.

In the succeeding years other acts were passed that
concerned blacks. On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment
and on March 30, 1870, the 15th Amendment, which guaran-
teed the right of citizens to vote, were ratified. Reacting to
stories about atrocities committed against the freedmen, Con-
gress passed Ku Klux Klan Acts in 1870 and 1871. The ter-
ritorial government of the District of Columbia enacted
public accommodation legislation in 1872. Then, on March
1, 1875, after prolonged and acrimonious debate, Congress
passed a 1 Rights Bill which prohibited discrimination
nationwide against blacks in public accommodations.

During this period Douglass worked incessantly for
the Republican Party. He campaigned for Republican Con-
gressmen in 1866 and attacked Andrew Johnson’s policies.
When Johnson offered to appoint Douglass commissioner of
the Freedmen’s Bureau, he refused partly because Johnson
was at odds with Republican Party leaders. Douglass cam-
paigned, until his death, for Republican Presidential candi-
dates including Ulysses $ Grant in 1868. However much they
wavered, the Republicans were far ahead of Democrats in
maintaining the freedom and punishing the enemies of
blacks. For Douglass, the Republican Party was the deck,
“all else is the sea.” Throughout the post-war period he felt
that the Democrats wanted to reverse the progress made by
blacks during Reconstruction.



23

for color blind schools because he believed that education
was one of the primary forces for the elevation of blacks.

At no time did Douglass feel that blacks should
submit to discrimination without protest. He refused to
accept any injustice in silence. He denounced discrimination
against blacks in inns, on steamboats, railroads and street-
cars, and in. places of public amusement. One of the first
to adopt the practice of entering and refusing to leave places
which barred blacks, Douglass was a forerunner of the black
protest in the 1950s. Despite threats, he demanded equal
treatment on’ Massachusetts trains in the 1840s:

My treatment in the use of public conveyances about these
times was extremely rough, especially on the Eastern Rail-
road, from Boston to Portland. On that road, as on many
others, there was a mean, difty, and uncomfortable car set
apart for colored travelers called the Jim Crow car. Regard-
ing this as the fruit of slaveholding prejudice and being
determined to fight the spirit of slavery wherever I might find
il, I resolved to avoid this car, though it someiimes required
some courage to do so.... 1... sometimes’ was soundly
beaten by conductor and brakemen. On one occasion six of

. these ‘fellows of the baser sort, under the direction of the

conductor, set out to eject me from my seal, As usual, I had
purchased a first-class-ticket-and paid-the required .sum. for
it, and on the requirement of the conductor to leave, refused
to do so... They... found me much attached to my seat,
and in removing me I lore away two or three of the sur-
rounding ones, on which T held a firm grasb, and did the
car no service in some other respects... . The result was
that Stephen A. Chase, superintendent of the road, ordered
all passenger trains to pass through Lynn, where I then lived,
without stopping.

Douglass refused, he said, “to be proscribed when I
can possibly help it.” Because he considered himself a man,
he argued that he was “entitled to the rights and privileges
of a man.” He was especially adamant on this point when
it came to white churches which relegated blacks to a
separate gallery. Such churches, he declared, must have had
an idea of heaven which was “‘a place of unfading joy, and
resplendent magnificence, where white people shall play for-
ever upon their golden harps; and colored people, if we,
like Uncle Tom, submit to their indignities with becoming
meekness, shall be permitted from the negro pew, to peep
into the glory of THEIR third heaven to all eternity!”
Having contempt for whites who tried to discrim-
inate against him, Douglass was incensed when blacks volun-
tarily submitted to segregation. He upbraided his friend,
Samuel Ward, when he spoke before a segregated audience.
Such an act represented an admission that blacks believed



It brutalized the slave, enforced his ignorance, placed a pre-
mium upon his deceitfulness, blighted his hopes, and did
not reward his industry. Above all else, slavery undermined
religion and guaranteed immorality. Since the church upheld
slavery in the South, Douglass became suspicious of organized
religion. His most brutal masters were avid churchgoers.
Covey, for example, had often asked Douglass to sing at
family devotional services. The white ministers tried to make
the slaves satisfied with their lot in life. In their sermons the
ministers sometimes told Douglass and his fellow slaves that
it was God’s will that they obey their masters.

Neither Douglass nor many of his fellow slaves
believed such sermons. Their God was the God of freedom,
a Deliverer. The spirituals they sang were prayers for deliv-
erance from oppression. Beautiful and melancholy, the spir-
ituals expressed the yearnings of the slaves for liberty. “The
songs of the slave,” Douglass declared, “represent the sorrows
of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching
heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience.
I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express
my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike
uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery.” Converted
when he was 13, Douglass hungered to read the Bible. Two
black men in Baltimore, Charles Johnson and a Mr. Lawson,

became his spiritual leaders. Douglass spent much time with
Lawson, reading the Bible, attending church, “singing, pray-
ing, and glorifying God.” Lawson had a profound influ-
ence on the formation of Douglass’ character.

Ever after his meetings with Lawson, Douglass
prayed fervently for his freedom. Like other slaves, he be-
lieved that God watched over him and took a special interest
in his welfare. Although he suffered all the cruelties of slavery
the “living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not
from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me
through the gloom. This good spirit was from.God, and to
him I offer thanksgiving and praise.” While he found suste-

nance in the God of freedom, Douglass found little to praise
in churches which welcomed slaveholders to their bosoms.
After his confrontation with Covey, it would only be a few
years, he found, before his God would answer his prayers
for freedom.

In 1834 and 1835 Douglass was hired out to a
kinder man, William Freeland. While working for Freeland,
Douglass taught the local slaves every Sunday at the home of
one of the 2,000 free Negroes in Talbot County. Delighted
to be doing something to better the condition of his race,



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‘As the Nation’s principal conservation ayency, the Depart:
ment of the Interior has responsibility for most of our
nationally,owned public Jandy and natural resources. This
includes fostering the wisest use of our Jand and water
resources, protecting our fish and wildlife, preserving the
cnvironmente! and culrural value of dur national parks and
historical, places, and providing for the enjoyment of life
through outdoor recreation: The Department amesses our
energy and niineral resources and works ro assure thar their
development is in the best interests of all our people: ‘The
Department also has 2 major responibility for American
Indian reservation communities and for people who live in
{Mand Territories under U.5. administration.

National Park Service
U.S, Department of the interior



45

Respected as the “Sage of Anacostia,” Douglass re-
ceived many indications of the esteem of local blacks. On
the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1883 he was honored with a banquet at-
tended by several Congressmen and other notables. A similar
reception was held in 1886 when Douglass returned from a
tour of Europe and Egypt. On that-occasion the Rev. Walter
H. Brooks, pastor of the 19th Street Baptist Church, read a
poem he composed for the occasion symbolizing the meaning
of Frederick Douglass for the black residents of Anacostia
and the District of Columbia:

Honor the statesman now returning

From the shores of France and Spain,
From the British Isles and mainland,
To his native home again.

Honor the man whose potent speeches
In the world both old and new,

Now for him a fame undying

Made the bondman friends most true.

Honor the old man in his glory,
Read the story of his life,

Tell it to your sons and daughters
Till they feel the bitter strife.

Strife for freedom, land, and manhood,
Strife for all the rights of men,

Hold him up the friend of letters,

In his threescore years and ten.

Hold him up a people's leader,

In the struggle which we wage
’Gainst oppression dark and cruel,
Honor him the prince and sage.

Honor him, and hail him welcome
Welcome Frederick Douglass here,
Where he made long fight for freedom,
Wielding tongue of fire e’er.

Honor him with shouts of gladness,
Bid the nation honor, too,

For in him the cause of justice
Finds a champion strong and true.

On February 20, 1895 Frederick Douglass died after
attending a meeting for women’s rights that afternoon. Four


47

The father of 20th century protest movements,
Douglass taught blacks that they must fight-against discrim-
ination, prejudice, and oppression. Self-respect, constant
struggle, education, and hard work were the roads that led
to freedom. While blacks had to rely primarily upon their

own cfforts, he felt that they should cooperate “with all men
without distinction of color.” He demanded “freedom now”
long before it becaine a theme in the 1960s. According to the
writer Albion Tourgee, Douglass’ “memory should be an
inspiration to every colored man and a warning to every
white American that caste discrimination, . . . cannot long
be justified by its results.”

Americans honored Douglass during his lifetime
and after his death. Upon receiving news of his death, the
North Carolina legislature adjourned, and the Legislatures of
Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York passed res-
olutions of regret. Buildings, schools, prizes, and societies
have been named after him. The United States Post Office
has issued a commemorative stamp in his honor and in 1954
a Broadway play,'In Splendid Error, portrayed his life. Doz-
ens of black and white poets have sung his praises. In The
Break of Dawn Arthur Lee Smith (Molefi K. Asante) wrote
in 1964:

Douglass! We miss thee now,
In this decadent age,

We need thy virtuous soul

‘To soothe our wounded bodies.

We need thy moral freshness
To blow over our sick nation
Filling us with higher sp’
Of intangible goodness!

Where is thy clarion voice
That rang so loudly

So short a period ago
Against a wall of like vices?

Where hides thy mighty force

That moralized, yes, two continents,
By shaking conscience foundations
With striking messages of right?

We are tired of hate and bias,
Long encinies of black and poor,
Who are counted lower than dirt,
Though they plow the row.


10

passages from the Bible. His home life reflected his belicfs
and before each meal every member of the family read a
verse from the Bible.

The small black community, with its churches, so-
cial organizations, and talented men, gave Douglass some
scope for increasing his oratorical skills. But it was William
Lloyd Garrison, the fiery and uncompromising white aboli-
tionist who published the anti-slavery newspaper, the
Liberator, who became his greatest teacher. The Liberator
became his textbook. In later years Douglass described the
Liberator as “a paper after my own heart. It ‘detested
slavery—exposed hypocrisy and wickedness in high places—
made no truce with the traffickers in the bodies and souls of
men; it preached human brotherhood, denounced oppression,
and, with all the solemnity of God’s word demanded . . .
complete emancipation. . ..”

Taking its place beside his Bible, the Liberator

taught Douglass that sectarianism was false, color prejudice
was sinful, and churches that defended slavery were “syna-
gogues of Satan.” For thrée years Douglass read the Liberator
and attended anti-slavery meetings in New Bedford. When
the abolitionists met in Nantucket in 1841 le attended and
was asked to speak. Afterwards the abolitionists convinced
him to become a lecturer-for the Massachusetts ‘Anti-Slavery
Society. Treated as a prize specimen or showpiece, Douglass
spoke of his experiences as a slave and secured subscribers
to the Liberator and the National Anti-Slavery Standard.
Eventually, Douglass outgrew his role as a showpiece and
began to denounce all forms of oppression.

Anna encouraged Douglass and occasionally trav-
eled with him to lectures. She cooperated with the other
women active in the anti-slavery societies, prepared articles
to sell at the fairs of the societies, and donated some of her
earnings to the abolitionists. She was a reserved woman,
proud of her husband’s contributions to the cause of freedom.

In his crusade against slavery, Douglass joined with
many other black men and women who were among the
most effective agents of the anti-slavery societies. One of
the first of these agents was Charles Lenox Remond,. for
whom Douglass named his third son. Others were William
Wells Brown, the first black playwright; Frances E. W.
Harper; Maryland-born poet; Henry Bibb, a former Ken-
tucky slave who later edited a newspaper in Canada; Henry
Highland Garnet, a fiery minister who was the first black
man to speak in the U.S. House of Representatives; the
Rev. Jermain W. Loguen; John Mercer Langston, an Ohio