frederick douglass civil war speech

frederick douglass civil war speech

He used the occasion to add his voice to the ongoing debate about the mission and meaning of the Civil War. We naturally prefer the bright side, but when there is a dark side it is folly to shut our eyes to it or deny its existence. If accomplished, our glory as a nation will be complete, our peace will flow like a river, and our foundation will be the everlasting rocks. Looking from a distance, the friends of democratic liberty saw in the convulsion the death of kingcraft in Europe and throughout the world. A most interesting and gratifying confirmation of this theory of its mission is furnished in the varying fortunes of the struggle itself. Thirdly: The earnest desire for peace which is shared by all classes except government contractors who are making money out of the war; a feeling which may be kindled to a flame by any serious reverses to our arms. Now, this is just the sort of people whose votes may turn the scale against us in the last event. Home Causes Effects Battles Generals Lincoln's Speeches Abolitionists Sources Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818. I repeat, while we have a Democratic party at the North trimming its sails to catch the Southern breeze in the next Presidential election, we are in danger of compromise. The issue before us is a living issue. If Ireland should strike for independence tomorrow, the sympathy of this country would be with her, and I doubt if American statesmen would be more discreet in the expression of their opinions of the merits of the contest than British statesmen have been concerning the merits of ours. We want a country which shall not brand the Declaration of Independence as a lie. He also had a good sense of humor that can be seen in his speeches and quotes. It sees national wisdom aiming at national unity, and national justice breaking the chains of a long-enslaved people. DuBois on Black Progress (1895, 1903), Jane Addams, “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (1892), Eugene Debs, “How I Became a Socialist” (April, 1902), Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Alice Stone Blackwell, Answering Objections to Women’s Suffrage (1917), Theodore Roosevelt on “The New Nationalism” (1910), Woodrow Wilson Requests War (April 2, 1917), Emma Goldman on Patriotism (July 9, 1917), W.E.B DuBois, “Returning Soldiers” (May, 1919), Lutiant Van Wert describes the 1918 Flu Pandemic (1918), Manuel Quezon calls for Filipino Independence (1919), Warren G. Harding and the “Return to Normalcy” (1920), Crystal Eastman, “Now We Can Begin” (1920), Marcus Garvey, Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1921), Hiram Evans on the “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism” (1926), Herbert Hoover, “Principles and Ideals of the United States Government” (1928), Ellen Welles Page, “A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents” (1922), Huey P. Long, “Every Man a King” and “Share our Wealth” (1934), Franklin Roosevelt’s Re-Nomination Acceptance Speech (1936), Second Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1937), Lester Hunter, “I’d Rather Not Be on Relief” (1938), Bertha McCall on America’s “Moving People” (1940), Dorothy West, “Amateur Night in Harlem” (1938), Charles A. Lindbergh, “America First” (1941), A Phillip Randolph and Franklin Roosevelt on Racial Discrimination in the Defense Industry (1941), Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga on Japanese Internment (1942/1994), Harry Truman Announcing the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima (1945), Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945), Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Atoms for Peace” (1953), Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” (1950), Lillian Hellman Refuses to Name Names (1952), Paul Robeson’s Appearance Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1956), Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), Richard Nixon on the American Standard of Living (1959), John F. Kennedy on the Separation of Church and State (1960), Congressman Arthur L. Miller Gives “the Putrid Facts” About Homosexuality” (1950), Rosa Parks on Life in Montgomery, Alabama (1956-1958), Barry Goldwater, Republican Nomination Acceptance Speech (1964), Lyndon Johnson on Voting Rights and the American Promise (1965), Lyndon Johnson, Howard University Commencement Address (1965), National Organization for Women, “Statement of Purpose” (1966), George M. Garcia, Vietnam Veteran, Oral Interview (1969/2012), Fannie Lou Hamer: Testimony at the Democratic National Convention 1964, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968), Statement by John Kerry of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (1971), Barbara Jordan, 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address (1976), Jimmy Carter, “Crisis of Confidence” (1979), Gloria Steinem on Equal Rights for Women (1970), First Inaugural Address of Ronald Reagan (1981), Jerry Falwell on the “Homosexual Revolution” (1981), Statements from The Parents Music Resource Center (1985), Phyllis Schlafly on Women’s Responsibility for Sexual Harassment (1981), Jesse Jackson on the Rainbow Coalition (1984), Bill Clinton on Free Trade and Financial Deregulation (1993-2000), The 9/11 Commission Report, “Reflecting On A Generational Challenge” (2004), George W. Bush on the Post-9/11 World (2002), Pedro Lopez on His Mother’s Deportation (2008/2015), Chelsea Manning Petitions for a Pardon (2013), Emily Doe (Chanel Miller), Victim Impact Statement (2015), ← A case of sexual violence during Reconstruction, 1866. Just in proportion to the progress made in taking upon itself the character I have ascribed to it has the war prospered and the rebellion lost ground. All donations are tax deductible. Our hopeful Republican friends tell me this is impossible—that the day of compromise with slavery is past. We could, like the ancients, discern the face of the sky, but not the signs of the times. I know we are not to be praised for this changed character of the war. Fourthly: Believing that the white race has nothing to fear from fair competition with the black race, and that the freedom and elevation of one race are not to be purchased or in any manner rightfully subserved by the disfranchisement of another, we shall favor immediate and unconditional emancipation in all the states, invest the black man everywhere with the right to vote and to be voted for, and remove all discriminations against his rights on account of his color, whether as a citizen or as a soldier. It has placed the broad arrow of British suspicion on the prows of the rebel rams in the Mersey and performed a like service in France. Hence we have from the first been deluding ourselves with the miserable dream that the old Union can be revived in the states where it has been abolished. What business, then, have we to be pouring out our treasure and shedding our best blood like water for that old worn-out, dead and buried Union, which had already become a calamity and a curse? The abolition of slavery is the comprehensive and logical object of the war, for it includes everything else which the struggle involves. Their aim was higher; secession was only their second choice. This may be so, but I do not share the confidence with which it is asserted. You and I know that the mission of this war is national regeneration. For one, I am not careful to deny this charge. A rebellion which, while it has arrested the wheels of peaceful industry and checked the flow of commerce, has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold to weigh down the necks of our children’s children. If the great work you undertook to accomplish is still incomplete; if a lawless and revolutionary spirit is still aboard in the country; if the principles for which you bravely fought are in any way compromised or threatened; if the Constitution and the laws are in any measure dishonored and disregarded; if duly elected State Governments are in any way overthrown by violence; if the elective franchise has been overborne by intimidation and fraud; if the Southern States, under the idea of local self-government, are endeavoring to paralyze the arm and shrivel the body of the National Government so that it cannot protect the humblest citizen in his rights, the fault is not yours. Douglass used this speech to frame the coming post-Civil War debate over the nature of a true and lasting peace, even as Confederate and Union Armies were still engaged on the field of battle. Then came very temperate talk about confiscation, which soon came to be pretty radical talk. Now, we of the North have seen many strange things and may see many more; but that old Union, whose canonized bones we saw hearse in death and inurned under the frowning battlements of Sumter, we shall never see again while the world standeth. I need not dwell here. Let them bend as they will bend, there will come the test of our sternest virtues. Our generals, at the beginning of the war, were horribly proslavery. A great battle lost or won is easily described, understood and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it. In 1861, the nation erupted into civil war over the issue of slavery. Almost in the twinkling of an eye, the latent forces of despotism rallied. The heart of the nation is still sound and strong, and as in the past, so in the future, patriotic millions, with able captains to lead them, will stand as a wall of fire around the Republic, and in the end see Liberty, Equality, and Justice triumphant. Hence we have been talking of the importance of carrying on the war within the limits of a Constitution broken down by the very people in whose behalf the Constitution is pleaded! It was a vast and glorious step in the right direction. It has planted agony at a million hearthstones, thronged our streets with the weeds of mourning, filled our land with mere stumps of men, ridged our soil with two hundred thousand rudely formed graves and mantled it all over with the shadow of death. This inexpensive compilation of his speeches adds vital detail to the portrait of a great historical figure. Ladies and gentlemen, there was a time when I hoped that events unaided by discussion would couple this rebellion and slavery in a common grave. But, as I have before intimated, the facts do still fall short of our hopes. In a war that was caused by slavery, Douglass became a representative of the millions of enslaved individuals still in bondage, and his fiery speeches demanded that slavery should be abolished. He avowed his determination to protect and defend the slaveholder’s right to plunder the black laborer of his hard earnings. WE had but one object at the beginning, and that was, as I have said, the restoration of the old Union; and for the first two years the war was kept to that object strictly, and you know full well and bitterly with what results. Eventually his son Frederick Douglass Jr. becomes an army recruiter also. Frederick Douglass, “Speech delivered in Madison Square, New York, Decoration Day.” 1877. It began weak and has risen strong. It was not the Confederate rag, but the glorious Star-Spangled Banner. Governor Seymour charges us with prolonging the war, and I say the longer the better if it must be so—in order to put an end to the hell-black cause out of which the rebellion has risen. speech as part of their Fourth of July celebrations. The American people will, in any great emergency, be true to themselves. The most hopeful fact of the hour is that we are now in a salutary school—the school of affliction. There is no end to the mischief wrought. From no sources less foul and wicked could such a rebellion come. I know that his view of the case is not very consoling to the peace Democracy. We know and consider that a nation is not born in a day. Author, abolitionist, political activist, and philosopher, Frederick Douglass was a pivotal figure in the decades of struggle leading up to the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. I was not sent and am not come to console this breach of our political church. Politics and perfidy proved too strong for the principles of liberty and justice in that contest. We want a country where men may assemble from any part of it, without prejudice to their interests or peril to their persons. On Decoration Day, 1871, Frederick Douglass gave the following address at the monument to the Unknown Dead of the Civil War at Arlington National Cemetery. The South is logical and consistent. It is true we have the Proclamation of January 1863. We want a country whose fundamental institutions we can proudly defend before the highest intelligence and civilization of the age. Let but the little finger of slavery get back into this Union, and in one year you shall see its whole body again upon our backs. He saw the conflict as the seismic event needed to end slavery in America. Frederick Douglass Civil War Douglass knew that in order to abolish slavery a great change must occur. But this very slow progress is an essential element of its effectiveness. It began low and has risen high. Not because we love the Negro, but the nation; not because we prefer to do this, because we must or give up the contest and give up the country. There was a right side and a wrong side in the late war, which no sentiment ought to cause us to forget, and while today we should have malice toward none, and charity toward all, it is no part of our duty to confound right with wrong, or loyalty with treason. Meets with President Lincoln to discuss the unequal pay and poor treatment black soldiers receive. A small donation would help us keep this accessible to all. We had come to be ashamed of slave hunting, and being made the watchdogs of slaveholders, who were too proud to scent out and hunt down their slaves for themselves. While the Democratic party is in existence as an organization, we are in danger of a slaveholding peace, and of Rebel rule. They are valueless in the presence of twenty hundred millions invested in human flesh. Identify these elements. The statesmen of the South understood this matter earlier and better than the statesmen of the North. First: There is the absence of any deep moral felling among the loyal people against slavery itself, their feeling against it being on account of its rebellion against the government, and not because it is a stupendous crime against human nature. There are vacant space at my hearthstone which I shall rejoice to see filled again by the boys who once occupied them, but which cannot be thus filled while the war lasts, for they have enlisted “during the war.”. 1878: In 1878, Frederick Douglass purchases a 15-acre estate, called Cedar Hill, in Anacostia, D.C. But if, on the other hand, this potent teacher, whose lessons are written in characters of blood and thundered to us from a hundred battlefields shall fail, we shall go down as we shall deserve to go down, as a warning to all other nations which shall come after us. (1864) Rev. We should rejoice that there was normal life and health enough in us to stand in our appointed place, and do this great service for mankind. We must not be asked to put no difference between those who fought for the Union and those who fought against it, or between loyalty and treason…. It has always been for peace or against peace, for war and against war, precisely as dictated by slavery. We had come to abhor the idea of being called upon to suppress slave insurrections. But whatever may come to pass, one thing is clear: The principles involved in the contest, the necessities of both sections of the country, the obvious requirements of the age, and every suggestion of enlightened policy demand the utter extirpation of slavery from every foot of American soil, and the enfranchisement of the entire colored population of the country. In a grand crisis like this, we should all prefer to look facts sternly in the face and to accept their verdict whether it bless or blast us. Less than a half a million of Southern slaveholders—holding in bondage four million slaves—finding themselves outvoted in the effort to get possession of the United States government, in order to serve the interests of slavery, have madly resorted to the sword—have undertaken to accomplish by bullets what they failed to accomplish by ballots. We are not fighting for the dead past, but for the living present and the glorious future. The collecting of revenue in the rebel ports, the repossession of a few forts and arsenals and other public property stolen by the rebels, have almost disappeared from the recollection of the people. In this address, he reminded his audience that slavery was the cause of the war and that its abolition could not be complete until the former slaves had full citizenship rights. While a respectable colored man or woman can be kicked out of the commonest streetcar in New York where any white ruffian may ride unquestioned, we are in danger of a compromise with slavery. Douglass's stump speech for 25 years after the end of the Civil War emphasized work to counter the racism that was then prevalent in unions. But unhappily, excellent as that paper is—and much as it has accomplished temporarily—it settles nothing. Its members would receive the benediction due to peacemakers. We want a country, and are fighting for a country, which shall be free from sectional political parties—free from sectional religious dominations—free from sectional benevolent associations—free from every kind and description of sect, party, and combination of a sectional character. Let us have the Constitution, with it thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, fairly interpreted, faithfully executed, and cheerfully obeyed in the fullness of their spirit and the completeness of their letter…. I do not intend to argue but to state facts. … though freedom of speech and of the ballot have for the present fallen before the shot-guns of the South, and, the party of slavery is now in the ascendant, we need bate no jot of heart or hope. Ask why it was for the annexation of Texas, and it answers, slavery. It is true that the war seems long. Douglass was one of the greatest public speakers of … Our destiny is to be taken out of our own hands. The Republic disappeared. Oration by Frederick Douglass, Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C. (1876) Thomas Ball's Freedman’s Memorial , also known as the Emancipation Memorial, depicting Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator, was commissioned by the St. Louis Western Sanitary Commission and erected in … That is the answer. Though the portents are that we shall flourish, it is too much to say that we cannot fail and fall. There is no flaw in their logic. Indeed, as long as slavery has any life in it anywhere in the country, we are in danger of such a compromise. There is danger that, like some of our Generals in the field, who, after soundly whipping the foe, generously allow him time to retreat in order, reorganize his forces, and intrench himself in a new and stronger position, where it will require more power and skill to dislodge him than was required to vanquish him in the first instance. They saw that his must be a war for human nature, and walked by faith to its defense while all was darkness about us—while we were yet conducting it in profound reverence for slavery. At one time they would stop bloodshed at the South by inaugurating bloody revolution at the North. It was a war of ideas, a battle of principles and ideas which united one section and divided the other; a war between the old and new, slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization; between a government based upon the broadest and grandest declaration of human rights the world ever heard or read, and another pretended government, based upon an open, bold and shocking denial of all rights, except the right of the strongest. Then came propositions for Border State, gradual, compensated, colonized emancipation. It early won for itself the title of being the natural ally of the South and of slavery. Can anybody be ignorant of the answer? Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone! The fact is, the party in question—I say nothing of individual men who were once members of it—has had but one vital and animating principle for thirty years, and that has been the same old horrible and hell-born principle of Negro slavery. They charge that it is no longer conducted upon constitutional principles. Yet, unconsciously to ourselves, and against our own protestations, we are in reality, like the South, fighting for national unity—a unity of which the great principles of liberty and equality, and not slavery and class superiority, are the cornerstone. Though it has lost in members, it retains all the elements of its former power and malevolence. The day that shall see the rebels at our feet, their weapons flung away, will be the day of trial. A war waged as ours seemed to be at first, merely for power and empire, repels sympathy though supported by legitimacy. While the North is full of such papers as the New York World, Express and Herald, firing the nation’s heart with hatred to Negroes and Abolitionists, we are in danger of a slaveholding peace. In some ways, the first part of the speech is a traditional patriotic speech. Events are mightier than our rulers, and these divine forces, with overpowering logic, have fixed upon this war, against the wishes of our government, the comprehensive character and mission I have ascribed to it. We are in fact, and from absolute necessity, transplanting the whole South with the higher civilization of the North. Like the slow convalescence of some patients the fault is less chargeable to the medicine than to the deep-seated character of the disease. Frederick Douglass Impact On Civil War “What to the slave is the fourth of July” quoted Frederick Douglass, a black man that was born into slavery and made astonishing accomplishments throughout his life. I know that the acorn involves the oak, but I know also that the commonest accident may destroy its potential character and defeat its natural destiny. Frederick Douglass and other Black leaders engaged with Confederate sympathizers in a battle of historical memory. The question as to what shall be done with slavery—and especially what shall be done with the Negro—threaten to remain open questions for some time yet. Thoughts of this kind tell me that there never was a time when antislavery work was more needed than now. The same idea has occurred to Jefferson Davis. The livery of peace is a beautiful livery, but in this case it is a stolen livery and sits badly on the wearer. The game is now in our hands. I hope much from the bravery of our soldiers, but in vain is the might of armies if our rulers fail to profit by experience and refuse to listen to the suggestions of wisdom and justice. Both the President and the Secretary of State have made progress since then. We now want a country in which the obligations of patriotism shall not conflict with fidelity to justice and liberty. Whence came the guilty ambition equal to this atrocious crime. Ask why it was for the Mexican War, and it answers, slavery. The saying that revolutions never go backward must be taken with limitations. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS You, at least, were faithful and did your whole duty. They are hopeful to the last. But I am one of those who think this rebellion—inaugurated and carried on for a cause so unspeakably guilty and distinguished by barbarities which would extort a cry of shame from the painted savage—is quite enough for the whole lifetime of any one nation, though the lifetime should cover the space of a thousand years. Until we shall see the election of November next, and that it has resulted in the election of a sound antislavery man as President, we shall be in danger of a slaveholding compromise. First published on December 3, 1847, using funds Douglass earned during a speaking tour in Great Britain and Ireland, The North Star soon developed into one of the most influential African American antislavery publications of the pre-Civil War era. A system which rewards labor with stripes and chains, which robs the slave of his manhood and the master of all just consideration for the rights of his fellow man—has prepared the characters, male and female, the figure in this rebellion—and for all its cold-blooded and hellish atrocities. Was about absence of all soul-moving utterances were faithful and did your frederick douglass civil war speech. Strong back, but another often sweeps it back to its primal.! The disease amnesties and oaths of allegiance Democratic party, though defeated in the varying fortunes of war... John Brown the wearer but another often sweeps it back to its primal depths must be taken of. 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