Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass

Douglass, Frederick. “My Escape from Slavery.”
The Century Illustrated Magazine 23, n.s. 1 (Nov. 1881): 125-131.

My Escape from Slavery

In the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly forty years
ago, and in various writings since, I have given the public what I considered
very good reasons for withholding the manner of my escape. In substance these
reasons were, first, that such publication at any time during the existence of
slavery might be used by the master against the slave, and prevent the future
escape of any who might adopt the same means that I did. The second reason was,
if possible, still more binding to silence: the publication of details would
certainly have put in peril the persons and property of those who assisted.
Murder itself was not more sternly and certainly punished in the State of
Maryland than that of aiding and abetting the escape of a slave. Many colored
men, for no other crime than that of giving aid to a fugitive slave, have, like
Charles T. Torrey, perished in prison. The abolition of slavery in my native
State and throughout the country, and the lapse of time, render the caution
hitherto observed no longer necessary. But even since the abolition of slavery,
I have sometimes thought it well enough to baffle curiosity by saying that
while slavery existed there were good reasons for not telling the manner of my
escape, and since slavery had ceased to exist, there was no reason for telling
it. I shall now, however, cease to avail myself of this formula, and, as far as
I can, endeavor to satisfy this very natural curiosity. I should, perhaps, have
yielded to that feeling sooner, had there been anything very heroic or
thrilling in the incidents connected with my escape, for I am sorry to say I
have nothing of that sort to tell; and yet the courage that could risk betrayal
and the bravery which was ready to encounter death, if need be, in pursuit of
freedom, were essential features in the undertaking. My success was due to
address rather than courage, to good luck rather than bravery. My means of
escape were provided for me by the very men who were making laws to hold and
bind me more securely in slavery.

It was the custom in the State of Maryland to require the free colored people
to have what were called free papers. These instruments they were required to
renew very often, and by charging a fee for this writing, considerable sums
from time to time were collected by the State. In these papers the name, age,
color, height, and form of the freeman were described, together with any scars
or other marks upon his person which could assist in his identification. This
device in some measure defeated itself—since more than one man could be
found to answer the same general description. Hence many slaves could escape by
personating the owner of one set of papers; and this was often done as follows:
A slave, nearly or sufficiently answering the description set forth in the
papers, would borrow or hire them till by means of them he could escape to a
free State, and then, by mail or otherwise, would return them to the owner. The
operation was a hazardous one for the lender as well as for the borrower. A
failure on the part of the fugitive to send back the papers would imperil his
benefactor, and the discovery of the papers in possession of the wrong man
would imperil both the fugitive and his friend. It was, therefore, an act of
supreme trust on the part of a freeman of color thus to put in jeopardy his own
liberty that another might be free. It was, however, not unfrequently bravely
done, and was seldom discovered. I was not so fortunate as to resemble any of
my free acquaintances sufficiently to answer the description of their papers.
But I had a friend—a sailor—who owned a sailor’s protection,
which answered somewhat the purpose of free papers—describing his person,
and certifying to the fact that he was a free American sailor. The instrument
had at its head the American eagle, which gave it the appearance at once of an
authorized document. This protection, when in my hands, did not describe its
bearer very accurately. Indeed, it called for a man much darker than myself,
and close examination of it would have caused my arrest at the start.

In order to avoid this fatal scrutiny on the part of railroad officials, I
arranged with Isaac Rolls, a Baltimore hackman, to bring my baggage to the
Philadelphia train just on the moment of starting, and jumped upon the car
myself when the train was in motion. Had I gone into the station and offered to
purchase a ticket, I should have been instantly and carefully examined, and
undoubtedly arrested. In choosing this plan I considered the jostle of the
train, and the natural haste of the conductor, in a train crowded with
passengers, and relied upon my skill and address in playing the sailor, as
described in my protection, to do the rest. One element in my favor was the
kind feeling which prevailed in Baltimore and other sea-ports at the time,
toward “those who go down to the sea in ships.” “Free trade
and sailors’ rights” just then expressed the sentiment of the
country. In my clothing I was rigged out in sailor style. I had on a red shirt
and a tarpaulin hat, and a black cravat tied in sailor fashion carelessly and
loosely about my neck. My knowledge of ships and sailor’s talk came much
to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to stern, and from keelson to
cross-trees, and could talk sailor like an “old salt.” I was well
on the way to Havre de Grace before the conductor came into the negro car to
collect tickets and examine the papers of his black passengers. This was a
critical moment in the drama. My whole future depended upon the decision of
this conductor. Agitated though I was while this ceremony was proceeding,
still, externally, at least, I was apparently calm and self-possessed. He went
on with his duty—examining several colored passengers before reaching me.
He was somewhat harsh in tome and peremptory in manner until he reached me,
when, strange enough, and to my surprise and relief, his whole manner changed.
Seeing that I did not readily produce my free papers, as the other colored
persons in the car had done, he said to me, in friendly contrast with his
bearing toward the others:

“I suppose you have your free papers?”

To which I answered:

“No sir; I never carry my free papers to sea with me.”

“But you have something to show that you are a freeman, haven’t
you?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered; “I have a paper with the American
Eagle on it, and that will carry me around the world.”

With this I drew from my deep sailor’s pocket my seaman’s
protection, as before described. The merest glance at the paper satisfied him,
and he took my fare and went on about his business. This moment of time was one
of the most anxious I ever experienced. Had the conductor looked closely at the
paper, he could not have failed to discover that it called for a very
different-looking person from myself, and in that case it would have been his
duty to arrest me on the instant, and send me back to Baltimore from the first
station. When he left me with the assurance that I was all right, though much
relieved, I realized that I was still in great danger: I was still in Maryland,
and subject to arrest at any moment. I saw on the train several persons who
would have known me in any other clothes, and I feared they might recognize me,
even in my sailor “rig,” and report me to the conductor, who would
then subject me to a closer examination, which I knew well would be fatal to
me.

Though I was not a murderer fleeing from justice, I felt perhaps quite as
miserable as such a criminal. The train was moving at a very high rate of speed
for that epoch of railroad travel, but to my anxious mind it was moving far too
slowly. Minutes were hours, and hours were days during this part of my flight.
After Maryland, I was to pass through Delaware—another slave State, where
slave-catchers generally awaited their prey, for it was not in the interior of
the State, but on its borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and
active. The border lines between slavery and freedom were the dangerous ones
for the fugitives. The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds on his trail
in full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or noisily than did mine from
the time I left Baltimore till I reached Philadelphia. The passage of the
Susquehanna River at Havre de Grace was at that time made by ferry-boat, on
board of which I met a young colored man by the name of Nichols, who came very
near betraying me. He was a “hand” on the boat, but, instead of
minding his business, he insisted upon knowing me, and asking me dangerous
questions as to where I was going, when I was coming back, etc. I got away from
my old and inconvenient acquaintance as soon as I could decently do so, and
went to another part of the boat. Once across the river, I encountered a new
danger. Only a few days before, I had been at work on a revenue cutter, in Mr.
Price’s ship-yard in Baltimore, under the care of Captain McGowan. On the
meeting at this point of the two trains, the one going south stopped on the
track just opposite to the one going north, and it so happened that this
Captain McGowan sat at a window where he could see me very distinctly, and
would certainly have recognized me had he looked at me but for a second.
Fortunately, in the hurry of the moment, he did not see me; and the trains soon
passed each other on their respective ways. But this was not my only
hair-breadth escape. A German blacksmith whom I knew well was on the train with
me, and looked at me very intently, as if he thought he had seen me somewhere
before in his travels. I really believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray
me. At any rate, he saw me escaping and held his peace.

The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most, was Wilmington.
Here we left the train and took the steam-boat for Philadelphia. In making the
change here I again apprehended arrest, but no one disturbed me, and I was soon
on the broad and beautiful Delaware, speeding away to the Quaker City. On
reaching Philadelphia in the afternoon, I inquired of a colored man how I could
get on to New York. He directed me to the William-street depot, and thither I
went, taking the train that night. I reached New York Tuesday morning, having
completed the journey in less than twenty-four hours.

My free life began on the third of September, 1838. On the morning of the
fourth of that month, after an anxious and most perilous but safe journey, I
found myself in the big city of New York, a free man—one more
added to the mighty throng which, like the confused waves of the troubled sea,
surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway. Though dazzled with the
wonders which met me on every hand, my thoughts could not be much withdrawn
from my strange situation. For the moment, the dreams of my youth and the hopes
of my manhood were completely fulfilled. The bonds that had held me to
“old master” were broken. No man now had a right to call me his
slave or assert mastery over me. I was in the rough and tumble of an outdoor
world, to take my chance with the rest of its busy number. I have often been
asked how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely
anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory
answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the
“quick round of blood,” I lived more in that one day than in a year
of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely
describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said:
“I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.”
Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and
joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil. During ten or fifteen
years I had been, as it were, dragging a heavy chain which no strength of mine
could break; I was not only a slave, but a slave for life. I might become a
husband, a father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the
cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously
made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my
fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled,
entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not
my condition after all be God’s work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and
if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my
mind for a long time, between the clear consciousness of right and the
plausible make-shifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject
slave—a prisoner for life, punished for some transgression in which I had
no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly endeavor to secure my
freedom. This contest was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory
brought me unspeakable joy.

But my gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and power
of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite so free or so
safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness and insecurity again
oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the street, a few hours after my
landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once known well in slavery. The
information received from him alarmed me. The fugitive in question was known in
Baltimore as “Allender’s Jake,” but in New York he wore the
more respectable name of “William Dixon.” Jake, in law, was the
property of Doctor Allender, and Tolly Allender, the son of the doctor, had
once made an effort to recapture Mr. Dixon, but had failed for want of
evidence to support his claim. Jake told me the circumstances of this attempt,
and how narrowly he escaped being sent back to slavery and torture. He told me
that New York was then full of Southerners returning from the Northern
watering-places; that the colored people of New York were not to be trusted;
that there were hired men of my own color who would betray me for a few
dollars; that there were hired men ever on the lookout for fugitives; that I
must trust no man with my secret; that I must not think of going either upon
the wharves or into any colored boarding-house, for all such places were
closely watched; that he was himself unable to help me; and, in fact, he seemed
while speaking to me to fear lest I myself might be a spy and a betrayer. Under
this apprehension, as I suppose, he showed signs of wishing to be rid of me,
and with whitewash brush in hand, in search of work, he soon disappeared.

This picture, given by poor “Jake,” of New York, was a damper to my
enthusiasm. My little store of money would soon be exhausted, and since it
would be unsafe for me to go on the wharves for work, and I had no
introductions elsewhere, the prospect for me was far from cheerful. I saw the
wisdom of keeping away from the ship-yards, for, if pursued, as I felt certain
I should be, Mr. Auld, my “master,” would naturally seek me there
among the calkers. Every door seemed closed against me. I was in the midst of
an ocean of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger to every one. I was
without home, without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without
work, and without any definite knowledge as to what course to take, or where to
look for succor. In such an extremity, a man had something besides his new-born
freedom to think of. While wandering about the streets of New York, and lodging
at least one night among the barrels on one of the wharves, I was indeed
free—from slavery, but free from food and shelter as well. I kept my
secret to myself as long as I could, but I was compelled at last to seek some
one who would befriend me without taking advantage of my destitution to betray
me. Such a person I found in a sailor named Stuart, a warm-hearted and generous
fellow, who, from his humble home on Centre street, saw me standing on the
opposite sidewalk, near the Tombs prison. As he approached me, I ventured a
remark to him which at once enlisted his interest in me. He took me to his home
to spend the night, and in the morning went with me to Mr. David Ruggles, the
secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee, a co-worker with Isaac T.
Hopper, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Theodore S. Wright, Samuel Cornish, Thomas
Downing, Philip A. Bell, and other true men of their time. All these (save Mr.
Bell, who still lives, and is editor and publisher of a paper called the
“Elevator,” in San Francisco) have finished their work on earth.
Once in the hands of these brave and wise men, I felt comparatively safe. With
Mr. Ruggles, on the corner of Lispenard and Church streets, I was hidden
several days, during which time my intended wife came on from Baltimore at my
call, to share the burdens of life with me. She was a free woman, and came at
once on getting the good news of my safety. We were married by Rev. J. W. C.
Pennington, then a well-known and respected Presbyterian minister. I had no
money with which to pay the marriage fee, but he seemed well pleased with our
thanks.

Mr. Ruggles was the first officer on the “Underground Railroad”
whom I met after coming North, and was, indeed, the only one with whom I had
anything to do till I became such an officer myself. Learning that my trade was
that of a calker, he promptly decided that the best place for me was in New
Bedford, Mass. He told me that many ships for whaling voyages were fitted out
there, and that I might there find work at my trade and make a good living. So,
on the day of the marriage ceremony, we took our little luggage to the steamer
John W. Richmond, which, at that time, was one of the line running
between New York and Newport, R. I. Forty-three years ago colored travelers
were not permitted in the cabin, nor allowed abaft the paddle-wheels of a steam
vessel. They were compelled, whatever the weather might be,—whether cold
or hot, wet or dry,—to spend the night on deck. Unjust as this regulation
was, it did not trouble us much; we had fared much harder before. We arrived at
Newport the next morning, and soon after an old fashioned stage-coach, with
“New Bedford” in large yellow letters on its sides, came down to
the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating what to
do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen who were about to take
passage on the stage,—Friends William C. Taber and Joseph
Ricketson,—who at once discerned our true situation, and, in a peculiarly
quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get in.” I never
obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way to our new
home. When we reached “Stone Bridge” the passengers alighted for
breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no breakfast, and, when
asked for our fares, I told the driver I would make it right with him when we
reached New Bedford. I expected some objection to this on his part, but he made
none. When, however, we reached New Bedford, he took our baggage, including
three music-books,—two of them collections by Dyer, and one by
Shaw,—and held them until I was able to redeem them by paying to him the
amount due for our rides. This was soon done, for Mr. Nathan Johnson not only
received me kindly and hospitably, but, on being informed about our baggage, at
once loaned me the two dollars with which to square accounts with the
stage-driver. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson reached a good old age, and now rest
from their labors. I am under many grateful obligations to them. They not only
“took me in when a stranger” and “fed me when hungry,”
but taught me how to make an honest living. Thus, in a fortnight after my
flight from Maryland, I was safe in New Bedford, a citizen of the grand old
commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Once initiated into my new life of freedom and assured by Mr. Johnson that I
need not fear recapture in that city, a comparatively unimportant question
arose as to the name by which I should be known thereafter in my new relation
as a free man. The name given me by my dear mother was no less pretentious and
long than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in
Maryland, dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick
Bailey. Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself from
the slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called myself Johnson; but in
New Bedford I found that the Johnson family was already so numerous as to cause
some confusion in distinguishing them, hence a change in this name seemed
desirable. Nathan Johnson, mine host, placed great emphasis upon this
necessity, and wished me to allow him to select a name for me. I consented, and
he called me by my present name—the one by which I have been known for
three and forty years—Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been
reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and so pleased was he with its
great character that he wished me to bear his name. Since reading that charming
poem myself, I have often thought that, considering the noble hospitality and
manly character of Nathan Johnson—black man though he was—he, far
more than I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I
that, if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile with a view to my
recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like him of the “stalwart
hand.”

The reader may be surprised at the impressions I had in some way conceived of
the social and material condition of the people at the North. I had no proper
idea of the wealth, refinement, enterprise, and high civilization of this
section of the country. My “Columbian Orator,” almost my only book,
had done nothing to enlighten me concerning Northern society. I had been taught
that slavery was the bottom fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea, I
came naturally to the conclusion that poverty must be the general condition of
the people of the free States. In the country from which I came, a white man
holding no slaves was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken man, and men of
this class were contemptuously called “poor white trash.” Hence I
supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were ignorant, poor,
and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the North must be in a
similar condition. I could have landed in no part of the United States where I
should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast, not only to life
generally in the South, but in the condition of the colored people there, than
in New Bedford. I was amazed when Mr. Johnson told me that there was nothing in
the laws or constitution of Massachusetts that would prevent a colored man from
being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him. There,
too, the black man’s children attended the public schools with the white
man’s children, and apparently without objection from any quarter. To
impress me with my security from recapture and return to slavery, Mr. Johnson
assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave out of New Bedford; that
there were men there who would lay down their lives to save me from such a
fate.

The fifth day after my arrival, I put on the clothes of a common laborer, and
went upon the wharves in search of work. On my way down Union street I saw a
large pile of coal in front of the house of Rev. Ephraim Peabody, the Unitarian
minister. I went to the kitchen door and asked the privilege of bringing in and
putting away this coal. “What will you charge?” said the lady.
“I will leave that to you, madam.” “You may put it
away,” she said. I was not long in accomplishing the job, when the dear
lady put into my hand two silver half-dollars. To understand the emotion
which swelled my heart as I clasped this money, realizing that I had no master
who could take it from me,—that it was mine—that my hands were
my own, and could earn more of the precious coin,—one must have been
in some sense himself a slave. My next job was stowing a sloop at Uncle Gid.
Howland’s wharf with a cargo of oil for New York. I was not only a
freeman, but a free working-man, and no “master” stood ready at the
end of the week to seize my hard earnings.

The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being fitted out
for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The sawing this wood was
considered a good job. With the help of old Friend Johnson (blessings on his
memory) I got a saw and “buck,” and went at it. When I went into a
store to buy a cord with which to brace up my saw in the frame, I asked for a
“fip’s” worth of cord. The man behind the counter looked
rather sharply at me, and said with equal sharpness, “You don’t
belong about here.” I was alarmed, and thought I had betrayed myself. A
fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents, called fourpence in Massachusetts.
But no harm came from the “fi’penny-bit” blunder, and I
confidently and cheerfully went to work with my saw and buck. It was new
business to me, but I never did better work, or more of it, in the same space
of time on the plantation for Covey, the negro-breaker, than I did for myself
in these earliest years of my freedom.

Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford three and forty
years ago, the place was not entirely free from race and color prejudice. The
good influence of the Roaches, Rodmans, Arnolds, Grinnells, and Robesons did
not pervade all classes of its people. The test of the real civilization of the
community came when I applied for work at my trade, and then my repulse was
emphatic and decisive. It so happened that Mr. Rodney French, a wealthy and
enterprising citizen, distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a
vessel for a whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and
coppering to be done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr.
French for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ me, and
I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon reaching the
float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work, I was told that every
white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished condition, if I struck a blow
at my trade upon her. This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so
shocking and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it now appears to me. Slavery
had inured me to hardships that made ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me.
Could I have worked at my trade I could have earned two dollars a day, but as a
common laborer I received but one dollar. The difference was of great
importance to me, but if I could not get two dollars, I was glad to get one;
and so I went to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The consciousness
that I was free—no longer a slave—kept me cheerful under this, and
many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in New Bedford and
elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts. For instance, though colored
children attended the schools, and were treated kindly by their teachers, the
New Bedford Lyceum refused, till several years after my residence in that city,
to allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its hall. Not
until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and
Horace Mann refused to lecture in their course while there was such a
restriction, was it abandoned.

Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New Bedford to give me
a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of work that came to hand. I sawed
wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, moved rubbish from back yards, worked on the
wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and scoured their cabins.

I afterward got steady work at the brass-foundry owned by Mr. Richmond. My duty
here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and empty the flasks in which
castings were made; and at times this was hot and heavy work. The articles
produced here were mostly for ship work, and in the busy season the foundry was
in operation night and day. I have often worked two nights and every working
day of the week. My foreman, Mr. Cobb, was a good man, and more than once
protected me from abuse that one or more of the hands was disposed to throw
upon me. While in this situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard
work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like
water, was more favorable to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a
newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while I was performing the up
and down motion of the heavy beam by which the bellows was inflated and
discharged. It was the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and I look back
to it now, after so many years, with some complacency and a little wonder that
I could have been so earnest and persevering in any pursuit other than for my
daily bread. I certainly saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire
me with such interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands
found to do. I am glad to be able to say that, during my engagement in this
foundry, no complaint was ever made against me that I did not do my work, and
do it well. The bellows which I worked by main strength was, after I left,
moved by a steam-engine.

Douglass, Frederick. “Reconstruction.”
Atlantic Monthly 18 (1866): 761-765.

Reconstruction

The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may very
properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn
topic of reconstruction.

Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more intense,
or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best of reasons for
this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left undecided by the last
session of Congress, must be manfully grappled with by this. No political
skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands statesmanship.

Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall
pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results,—a
scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,—a strife for empire,
as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to liberty or
civilization,—an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be
the merest mockery of a Union,—an effort to bring under Federal authority
States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter, and to bring
men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers and vote with
revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate of the country that
conquered them; or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward
of victory over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all
contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and
equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of
Congress. The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as
to these questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill
and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted
and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot,
unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by
States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control
even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own
despotic will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to
control its own local affairs,—an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in
the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other
political idea,—no general assertion of human rights can be of any
practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is
neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the
government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States
compatible with the sacred rights of human nature.

The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect
the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the
power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws
the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book.

Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human
selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It
has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own
continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without
law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its
side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of
the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you
have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which
it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the
Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State authority,
and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of course, cannot
be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to
make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal
citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever
present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection.

One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the highly
instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to republican
government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic governments,
no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its
citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory before
the war has been made fact by the war.

There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive teacher,
though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come to us, and it
was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never a day before its time,
for it comes only when all other means of progress and enlightenment have
failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress
his deep yearnings for manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience,
takes the initiative, and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease
of oppression, the result is the same,—society is instructed, or may be.

Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are
the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the
glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching
disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already
within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their
defects from the mariner until the storm calls all hands to the pumps.
Prophets, indeed, were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets
while their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they
tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?

It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion, Will slavery never come
to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years ago, and it has been
answered by fifty years of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of
the earnest Abolitionists,—poured out against slavery during thirty
years,—even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the
case, that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the
limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion, and perhaps only have
disappeared at last in a fiery conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that
which has now been suppressed.

It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason
prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the
thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been taught to our
cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that
cause entirely removed from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work of
national regeneration and entire purification Congress must now address Itself,
with full purpose that the work shall this time be thoroughly done. The deadly
upas, root and branch, leaf and fibre, body and sap, must be utterly destroyed.
The country is evidently not in a condition to listen patiently to pleas for
postponement, however plausible, nor will it permit the responsibility to be
shifted to other shoulders. Authority and power are here commensurate with the
duty imposed. There are no cloud-flung shadows to obscure the way. Truth shines
with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and
rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony.

If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the requisite
materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now before it. Whether
its members look at the origin, the progress, the termination of the war, or at
the mockery of a peace now existing, they will find only one unbroken chain of
argument in favor of a radical policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of
the last session, some excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President stood in
the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an
apostasy which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. It was natural
that they should seek to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to the
side of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows now that it must go on
without his aid, and even against his machinations. The advantage of the
present session over the last is immense. Where that investigated, this has the
facts. Where that walked by faith, this may walk by sight. Where that halted,
this must go forward, and where that failed, this must succeed, giving the
country whole measures where that gave us half-measures, merely as a means of
saving the elections in a few doubtful districts. That Congress saw what was
right, but distrusted the enlightenment of the loyal masses; but what was
forborne in distrust of the people must now be done with a full knowledge that
the people expect and require it. The members go to Washington fresh from the
inspiring presence of the people. In every considerable public meeting, and in
almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house, school-house, or
cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been discussed, and the people
have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the
doctrines of expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they
have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a
brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage.
Radicalism, so far from being odious, is not the popular passport to power. The
men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest majorities,
while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or else left at home.
The strange controversy between the President and the Congress, at one time so
threatening, is disposed of by the people. The high reconstructive powers which
he so confidently, ostentatiously, and haughtily claimed, have been disallowed,
denounced, and utterly repudiated; while those claimed by Congress have been
confirmed.

Of the spirit and magnitude of the canvass nothing need be said. The appeal was
to the people, and the verdict was worthy of the tribunal. Upon an occasion of
his own selection, with the advice and approval of his astute Secretary, soon
after the members of the Congress had returned to their constituents, the
President quitted the executive mansion, sandwiched himself between two
recognized heroes,—men whom the whole country delighted to
honor,—and, with all the advantage which such company could give him,
stumped the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, advocating everywhere
his policy as against that of Congress. It was a strange sight, and perhaps the
most disgraceful exhibition ever made by any President; but, as no evil is
entirely unmixed, good has come of this, as from many others. Ambitious,
unscrupulous, energetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,—a
political gladiator, ready for a “set-to” in any crowd,—he is
beaten in his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a
convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and persistent
attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers solemnly secured to
Congress by the Constitution. No vindication could be more complete, no
condemnation could be more absolute and humiliating. Unless reopened by the
sword, as recklessly threatened in some circles, this question is now closed
for all time.

Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat theological
question (about which so much has already been said and written), whether once
in the Union means always in the Union,—agreeably to the formula, Once in
grace always in grace,—it is obvious to common sense that the rebellious
States stand to-day, in point of law, precisely where they stood when,
exhausted, beaten, conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal
authority. Their State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property
of the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the
institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should begin
with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there be no hesitation. It
would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any
account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into
existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended
governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation
in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order,
should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and
impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the
formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.

It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the precise
steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people are less concerned
about these than the grand end to be attained. They demand such a
reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in
the late rebellious States,—where frightful murders and wholesale
massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This
horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as
will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property; such a
one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern
civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at
home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be
tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this
session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work.

The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the beginning,
is simply to 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. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal
white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political
prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be
done.

Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is no
fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel armies as in
reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the negro is the true
solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events, which goes
directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color or features of men,
has determined the interests of the country as identical with and inseparable
from those of the negro.

The policy that emancipated and armed the negro—now seen to have been
wise and proper by the dullest—was not certainly more sternly demanded
than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was success in
war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the nation must
fall or flourish with the negro.

Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between
citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a
citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently
includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the
Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican
Congress now to institute one. The mistake of the last session was the attempt
to do this very thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political
rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the
rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored
citizens. This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated
citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the
Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of each
State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several
States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal voter in all
the States.