Frederick Douglass

“ Who could blame the negro if, when he is driven from the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the schoolhouse, denied equal rights on railroads and steamboats, called out of his bed at midnight and whipped by regulators, compelled to live in rags and wretchedness, and his wages kept back by fraud, denied a fair trial when accused of crime, he shall imitate the example of other oppressed classes and invokes some terrible explosive power as a means of bringing his oppressors to their senses, and making them respect the claims of justice? ”

“ No truth taught by our national history is more evident than this, that while slavery dominated the southern half of the Republic, and free institutions prevailed in the northern half, peace and harmony between the two sections were utterly and forever impossible. No man can serve two masters, and the attempt of our Government to do this was a stupendous failure.
The union between liberty and slavery was a marriage without love, a house divided against itself; a couple unequally yoked together, held together by external force, not by moral cohesion ”

“ It is the spiritual side of humanity. Fire cannot burn it, water cannot quench it. Though occult and impalpable, it is just as real as granite or iron. The laws of its life are spiritual, not carnal, and it must conform to these laws or it starves and dies. The outward semblance of it may survive for a time, just as ancient temples and old cathedrals may stand long after the spirit that inspired them has vanished. But they, too, will moulder to ruin and vanish. The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous ”

“ Though I am a party man, to me parties are valuable only as they subserve the ends of good government. When they persistently violate the fundamental rights of the humblest and weakest in the land, I scout them, despise them, and leave them.
We boast of our riches, power, and glory as a nation, and we have reason to do so. ”

“ No nation, no party, no man can live long and flourish on falsehood, deceit, injustice, and broken pledges.
Loyalty will perish where protection and good faith are denied and withheld, and nothing other than this should be expected, either by a party, a man, or by a government. ”

“ What doth it profit a nation to gain the whole world if it shall lose its own soul?
Henry Clay, in 1839, made an elaborate defense of the right to hold property in man. Two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and identified negro slaves as property. When warned by anti-slavery men of the dreadful consequences of perpetuating slavery, he said that that warning had been given fifty years before, and that it had been answered by fifty years of unexampled prosperity. His idea was that if slavery were a curse God would not allow a nation that upheld it to prosper. ”

“ Thanks to the wisdom, loyalty, patriotism, courage, and statesmanship developed by the crisis, the nation rejected equally the idea of making the country all slaves, and permitting two separate nations, with hostile civilizations, side by side, with a chafing, bloody border between them, but chose to give us one country, one citizenship, and one liberty for all the people, and hence we are here this evening. ”

“ There is only one way to prevent the success of the Republican party if that issue is permitted to be raised. The Northern people were sound for free soil; sound for free speech; sound for the Union; sound for reconstruction in other days, and they will be sound for justice and liberty and a free ballot to the newly enfranchised citizens when that issue shall be fairly presented as a living issue between the two contending parties. ”

“ But what is prosperity, what is power, what is national glory, when national honor, national good faith, and national protection to the rights of our citizens are denied? Of what avail is citizenship and the elective franchise where a whole people are deliberately abandoned to anarchy by the Government under which they live, and told they must protect themselves from violence as best they may, for, practically, this is just what the American Government has said to the colored and white Republican voters of the South during the last eight years. ”

“ Little was said, thought, or felt about national integrity, the importance of maintaining good faith with the freedmen or the Indian, or the protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens, except where such rights were in no danger.
The great thing to be protected was American industry against competition with the pauper labor of Europe not protection of the starving labor of the South. The body of the nation was everything; the soul of the nation was nothing. ”

“ The 16th of April, the anniversary of this great act of the nation, strangely and erroneously enough has been considered simply as the colored man's day only. The business of consecrating and preserving its memory has been, by common consent, relegated to him exclusively. But, in this, our fellow citizens have been more generous to us than just to themselves. Colored men have very little more reason to hallow this day than have white men. ”

“ I deal in no threats, for myself or for any of my countrymen, and am only for peaceful methods; but I say to all oppressors, "Have a care how you goad and imbrute the colored man of the South!" He is weak, but not powerless. He is submissive to wrongs, but not insensible to his rights. He is hopeful, but not incapable of despair. He can endure, but even to him may come a time when he shall think endurance has ceased to be a virtue. ”

“ The great Republican party that carried the country safely through the late war against the rebellion, emancipated the slave, saved the Union, reconstructed the government of the Southern States, enfranchised the freedmen, raised the national credit, improved the currency, decreased the national debt, and did more for the honor, prosperity, and glory of the American people than was ever done before in the same length of time by any party in any country under similar circumstances, has been defeated, humiliated, and driven from place and power. ”

“ The one-man power in our government is very great, but the power of a party may be greater. The President is not the autocrat, but the executive of the nation.
But, happily, the executive is yet a power, and may be able to obtain the support of the coordinate branches of the government in so plain a duty as protecting the rights of the colored citizens, with those of all other citizens of the Republic. ”

“ In conclusion let me say one word more of the soul of the nation and of the importance of keeping it sensitive and responsive to the claims of truth, justice, liberty, and progress. In speaking of the soul of the nation I deal in no cant phraseology. I speak of that mysterious, invisible, impalpable something which underlies the life alike of individuals and of nations, and determines their character and destiny.
It is the soul that makes a nation great or small, noble or ignoble, weak or strong. It is the soul that exalts it to happiness, or sinks it to misery. ”

“ Americans have too little memory for good or bad political conduct. The people have said in the late election, "We care nothing for your past; but what is your present character and work?" And in rendering judgment they have said, "We see little ground for preferring one to the other." ”

“ He may adopt a policy of total indifference. He may shut his eyes to the fact that in all of the Gulf States political rights of colored citizens are literally stamped out; that the Constitution which he has solemnly sworn to support and enforce is under the feet of the mob; that in those States there is no such thing as a fair election and an honest count. ”

“ Without meaning any disrespect to the Supreme Court, or reflecting upon the purity of its motives, I must say here, as I have said elsewhere, and shall say many times over if my life is spared, that that decision is the most striking illustration I have ever seen of how it is possible to keep alive the letter of the law and at the same time stab its spirit to death. ”

“ In observing the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, we attract the attention of the American people to one of the most important and significant events in their national history, and at the same time evince a grateful and proper sense of the wonderful changes for the better that have taken place in our condition, and in that of the country generally. ”

“ But, fellow citizens, it is consoling to think that this change in the political front justly implies no real change for the worse in the moral convictions of the American people. On the great questions that divided the parties during the periods of war and reconstruction there has been no change whatever. Upon all the great measures of justice, liberty, and civilization, originated and carried through Congress by the Republican party, I believe the heart of the nation to be still safe and sound. ”

“ To the eye of the colored man the change, or apparent change, in the political situation is very marked, and wears a very sinister aspect. He has so long been accustomed to think the Republican party the sheet-anchor of his liberty, the star of all his hopes, that he can see nought but ill in the ascendancy of the Democratic party. ”

“ There are 7,000,000 of colored citizens now in this Republic. They stand between the two great parties the Republican party and the Democratic party and whichever of these two parties shall be most just and true to these 7,000,000 may safely count upon a long lease of power in this Republic. It is not their votes alone that will tell. There is deep down among the people of this country a love of justice and fair play, and that fact will tell. It is now as it was in the time of war, and it will be so in all time. The party which takes the negro on its side will triumph. ”

“ There may be many wrong ways for individuals or nations to pursue, but there is but one right way, and it remains to be seen if this is the one the present administration will adopt and pursue. Left to the promptings of his own heart and his own view of his constitutional duties, and to his own sense of the requirements of consistency, and even expediency, I firmly believe that President Cleveland would do his utmost to protect and defend the constitutional rights of all classes of citizens. But he is not left to himself, and may adopt a different policy. ”

“ It did not appear from the campaign speeches that it was important to protect and preserve both, or that the body was not more dependent upon bread for life than was the soul dependent upon truth, justice, benevolence, and good faith for health and life. In the absence of these, the soul of the nation starves, sickens, and dies. ”

“ If the measures then in controversy between the parties were now submitted to the American people, I fully believe they would sustain them one and all by an overwhelming vote.
The trouble was that the Republican party in the late campaign forgot for the moment its high mission as the party of great moral ideas, and sought victory on grounds far below its ordinary level. It made national pelf more important and prominent than national purity. It made the body more important than the soul; national prosperity more important than national justice. ”

“ In calling attention to the event which makes this day precious we honor ourselves, and honor the noble and brave men who brought it about. We render our humble tribute of gratitude today, not only to those whose valor and whose blood on the battlefield brought freedom to the American slave ”

“ All the world is a school, and in it one lesson is just now being taught in letters of fire and blood, and that is, the utter insecurity of life and property in the presence of an aggrieved class. This lesson can be learned by the ignorant as well as by the wise. ”

“ She has given us two of the largest hearts and broadest minds of which our country can boast; men who had the courage of their convictions, and who dared, at the peril of what men hold most dear, to be true to their convictions. ”

“ It raised the whole nation to a higher and happier plane of civilization, and placed the American people where they never were before, in a position where they could consistently and effectively preach liberty to all the nations of the world. ”

“ Hard as it may be to manage his party on the civil service question, where he has only to deal with hungry and thirsty office seekers, nineteen out of every twenty of whom he must necessarily offend by failing to find desirable places for them, he will find it incomparably harder to meet that party's wishes in dealing with the Southern question. ”

“ Time and cultivation have largely added to the number of those from whom a suitable selection might have been made, and one of these silent, yet powerful, agents whose mission it is to create and destroy all things mortal has left me much less desire for such distinguished service now than two years ago. ”

“ Can you be quite sure that the oppressed laborers in this country, white and colored, will not some day make common cause and learn some of the dangerous modes of protest against injustice adopted in other countries? ”

“ Oppressed peoples all over the world are protesting with earthquake emphasis against all forms of injustice, some by one means and some by another. Examples, like certain diseases, are contagious. Railroads, steam navigation, electric wires, newspapers, and traveling emissaries are abroad. ”