Moreover, he argued it was imperative to obtain some measure of political, legal, and social rights for blacks to confront the rising level of horrific anti-black violence that was sweeping the United States. Douglass firmly made this claim in his speech at the American Equal Rights Association in I must say that I do not see how any one can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to women as to the negro. With us, the matter is a question of life and death.
It is a matter of existence, at least in fifteen states of the Union. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own.
Douglass , FDP1 v. When asked if this did not apply to black women, Douglass replied that it did but because they were black and not women Douglass , FDP1 v. He did not, however, have ready answers to concerns about how well black men, including elite black men, represented and protected the rights and interests of black women. Nor did he fully appreciate the need for women to represent themselves and to be fully autonomous and independent moral agents and citizens.
His shortsightedness was repeated by generations of black male leaders. It was Anna Julia Cooper c. During and after the Reconstruction, Douglass remained deeply concerned about the prospect that the U. He became increasingly concerned about the denial of black civil rights and the rising waves of anti-black violence.
He, thus, criticized the growing practice of black peonage in agriculture, and over time he expressed sympathy with blacks who were fleeing the American South, although he did not support the black Exodus see Section 6. He did not support the Exodus as a policy because he judged it bad for black labor, and that it did not address the institutional problems that caused the Exodus: peonage and exploitation, unequal justice, unrestrained violence, lack of resources and opportunities, and in particular, education.
He received a great deal of criticism for his position for failing to support the individual choices of black Americans who sought to flee the inhospitable, degrading, and deadly conditions in the American South.
He also criticized inequitable and unfair treatment of blacks in state criminal justice systems, in particular criticizing the Convict-Lease system Davis And he joined with Ida B. Slavery 2. Natural Law 3.
The U. Constitution 4. Violence and Self-Respect 5. Assimilation and Amalgamation 6. Integration versus Emigration 7. Leadership 8. Slavery In his three narratives, and his numerous articles, speeches, and letters, Douglass vigorously argued against slavery.
Natural Law As was mentioned in the above section, Douglass drew on the idea of natural rights and the natural law tradition in his argument against slavery. Violence and Self-Respect As already noted above, Douglass was active in the years leading up to the U. In the Narrative , Douglass wrote: The battle with Mr. He used rhetoric that appealed to the piety of the nation that the Christian Bible had to be correct on this score, and that—just as the soul of the nation depended on emancipation—the authority of the biblical text depended on the affirmation of the unity of the human family: What, after all, if they are able to show very good reasons for believing the Negro to have been created precisely as we find him on the Gold Coast—along the Senegal and the Niger—I say, what of all this?
He stated: The unity of the human race—the brotherhood of man—the reciprocal duties of all to each, and of each to all, are too plainly taught in the Bible to admit of cavil. He remarked to a journalist, the day after his second marriage to Helen Pitts, who was white, …there is no division of races.
Integration versus Emigration Douglas, as an advocate of assimilation and amalgamation, was by extension a supporter of what would be come known as integration.
He wrote, The native land of the American Negro is America. Douglass b, in Brotz —30 Fourth and finally, the real solution, according to Douglass, was not emigration, and separation, for that was contrary to historical progress, providence, and the emergence of the new American race. Leadership The relation between Douglass and the topic of black political leadership is wrapped up with his life, activities, and writing.
Here is his reduction of the amalgamationist position: It may, however, be objected here that the situation of the our race in America renders this attitude impossible; that our sole hope of salvation lies in our being able to lose our race identity in the commingled blood of the nation; and that nay other course would merely increase the friction of races which we call race prejudice, and against which we have so long and so earnestly fought.
In defense of the actions of John Brown, for example, Douglass wrote, putting him into heroic terms with overtones of Carlyle and Emerson : He believes the Declaration of Independence to be true, and the Bible to be a guide to human conduct, and acting upon the doctrines of both, he threw himself against the serried ranks of American oppression, and translated into heroic deeds the love of liberty and hatred of tyrants, with which he was inspired from both these forces acting upon his philanthropic and heroic soul.
Douglass firmly made this claim in his speech at the American Equal Rights Association in I must say that I do not see how any one can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to women as to the negro. Blight ed. Davis ed. Andrews ed.
Reprinted in FDP1 v. Blassingame ed. McKivigan ed. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. Pages numbers from the revised edition. Pittman ed. Gordon ed. Davis, Angela Y. Du Bois, W. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Reprinted as part of the The Oxford W. Frederickson, George M.
Gordon, Lewis R. Guy-Sheftall, Beverly ed. Harris, Leonard ed. Lawson, Bill E. Lee, Maurice S. Lemert, Charles C. Lott, Tommy Lee ed. Martin, Waldo E. McFeely, William S. McGary, Howard, and Bill E. Mills, Charles W. Myers, Peter C. Nott, Josiah Clark, and George R. Agassiz, Ll. Usher, M. Patterson, M. Preston, Dickson J. Cambridge, U.
Schrader, David E. Sundstrom, Ronald R. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship.
They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory.
As with rivers so with nations. On the 2nd of July, , the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea [i. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution.
They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen.
Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day—cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too—great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men.
The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.
They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country.
In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression.
They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements!
How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense.
Mark them! Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?
Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits?
Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In , Douglass was appointed U. Marshal for the District of Columbia. From — he served as U.
All of his positions, regardless of their successes and failures demonstrated African Americans could serve in the higher levels of government. Kennedy in This site was updated on DateFormat Now. Frederick Douglass in his library. Frederick Douglass has been called the father of the civil rights movement. Douglass served as advisor to presidents. Abraham Lincoln referred to him as the most meritorious man of the nineteenth century. In his later years Douglass was appointed to several offices.
He served as U. Marshal of the District of Columbia during Rutherford B. He was later appointed by President Grant to serve as secretary of the commission of Santo Domingo. Douglass had hoped that his appointments would open doors for other African-Americans, but it was many years before they would follow in his footsteps.
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