Complete Works of Frederick Douglass, page 117
Sir, the many changes, vicissitudes, and deaths, which have occurred within the range of our knowledge, during this decade, afford matter for serious thought. I cannot now dwell upon them. Perhaps the occasion does not require that I should dwell upon them, yet I must say, what we all more or less feel, and that is that the flight of the last ten years, with its experience of trial and death, admonish us that we are all hastening down the tide of time, and that our places in the world’s activities are soon to be occupied by other generations. They remind us that the present only is ours, and that what our hands now find to do, we should do quickly, and with all our might.
Sir, I have thought much on this subject of the present, and the future, the seen, and the unseen, and about what things should engage our thoughts, and energies while here, and I have come to the conclusion that from no work would I rather go to meet my Eternal Father, than from the work of breaking the fetters from the limbs of his suffering children.
Mr. President, [Austin Steward] I am happy to see here today many faces that were here ten years ago. I am especially glad to see you here, and to hear your voice. Sir, you have grown venerable in the service of your enslaved people, and I am glad to find that you are not weary in this department of well doing. Time has dealt gently with you this last ten years, and you seem as vigorous now as when I saw you then. You presided on that occasion, you preside now; and notwithstanding the gloomy aspect of the times, I am not without hope, that you will live to preside over a grander celebration than this; a celebration of the American jubilee, in which four million of our countrymen shall rejoice in freedom. That jubilee will come. You and I may, or we [may not live to see it; but whether we do, or do not, God reigns, and Slavery must yet fall; unless the devil is more potent than the Almighty; unless sin is stronger than righteousness, Slavery must perish, and that not very long hence.
Here, too, I am most happy to meet again my loved, and honored and much respected friend, Henry Highland Garnet. He was here with us, and spoke to us ten years ago. He has traveled much and labored much since that time. England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, have listened to his eloquent advocacy of our cause since then. While in the old world, it was his privilege to associate with refined and cultivated people; and I venture to say that no man from among us, visiting the old country, has left in his pathway a better impression for himself and people than H. H. Garnet. We need a thousand such representative men at home and abroad, to meet and repel the floods of slander of our race, which two thousand millions of dollars invested in our people, as property, constantly provoke. The American government does not need a minister at the court of St. James to look after American interests, more than we need in England a representative of our people against whom all manner of lies are told.
Happy am I too, to meet here today, as ten years ago, J. W. LoGuen, the intrepid and faithful conductor of the Underground Railroad, who has, during the interval of our former celebrations, conveyed from Republican slavery to Monarchical Liberty, not fewer than a thousand souls.
Mr, President, you miss, and we all miss, our old friend, Saml. R. Ward. He was with us ten years ago, and if he were now in the country, he would doubtless be with us here today. I will say for Mr. Ward what he can not say for himself. Though absent in body he is with us in spirit. Mr. Ward is now in Jamaica, and I am told is soon to be joined in his new home by his dear family, of whom we have often heard him lovingly speak. They are now in Canada, and he has sent for them to come out to him. I will say another word of Mr. Ward, and that is, he was, in many respects, a head and shoulders above us all. No colored man who has yet attracted public observation in this country, was ever capable of rendering his people greater service than he. And while we all deeply regret that he has seen fit to leave us for other fields of usefulness, we will here and now tender him our best wishes while he may remain abroad, and pledge him an earnest welcome should he ever return to the Empire State.
My friends, you will also miss, as I do, the eloquent Chas. L. Remond. He was on this platform ten years ago. I should have been glad to have met him here today, for though he differs from us in his mode of serving our cause, he doubtless fully sympathises with US in the sentiment which brings us together on this occasion.
Mr. President, you will pardon those homely but grateful references to individuals. The great poet has told us that one touch of nature makes all the world akin, and the cause of freedom, I think makes friends of all its friends. At any rate, I can say that I can love an enemy, if he loves the slave, for I know that if he loves the slave, he loves him intelligently, and if he hates me, he does it ignorantly. I can easily forgive such. Sir, there are other names I might well refer to, as worthy as those already mentioned, but the time would fail. I hasten, therefore, to the consideration of those topics naturally suggested by this occasion.
Friends and fellow-citizens: We have met here today to celebrate with all fitting demonstrations of joy and gladness, this the twenty-third anniversary of the inauguration of freedom as the ruling law of the British West Indies. The day and the deed are both greatly distinguished. They are as a city set upon a hill. All civilized men at least, have looked with wonder and admiration upon the great deed of justice and humanity which has made the first of August illustrious among all the days of the year. But to no people on the globe, leaving out the emancipated men and women of the West Indies themselves, does this day address itself with so much force and significance, as to the people of the United States. It has made the name of England known and loved in every Slave Cabin, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and has spread alarm, hatred, and dread in all the accursed slave markets of our boasted Republic from Baltimore to New Orleans.
Slavery in America, and slavery every where, never received a more stunning and killing condemnation.
The event we celebrate is the finding and the restoration to the broken ranks of human brotherhood eight hundred thousand lost members of the human family. It is the resurrection of a mighty multitude, from the grave of moral, mental, social, and spiritual death, where ages of slavery and oppression, and lust and pride, and cruelty had bound them. Here they were instantly clothed with all the rights, responsibilities, powers, and duties, of free men and women.
Up to the morning of the first of August, 1834, these people were slaves, numbered with the beasts of the field, marked, branded, priced valued, and ranged as articles of property. The gates of human brotherhood were bolted and barred against them. They were outside of both law and gospel. The love taught in the Bible, and the justice recorded in the Statute Book did not embrace them: they were outside. Their fellow men had written their names with horses, sheep, and swine, and with horned cattle. They were not governed by the law, but the lash, they were not paid for their work, but whipped on to toil as the American slave now is. Their degradation was complete. They were slaves; and when I have said that, I have said all. The essence of wickedness, the intensified sum of all iniquity the realization of the idea of a burning hell upon the earth, in which every passion is an unchained devil, let loose to deal out ten thousand pains, and horrors start up to view at the very mention of slavery! It comprehends all that is foul, shocking, and dreadful. Human nature shudders, and turns pale at its presence, and flies from it as from a den of lions, a nest of scorpions, or an army of rattlesnakes. The very soul sickens, and the mind revolts at the thought of slavery, and he true man welcomes instant death in preference to being reduced to its degradation and ruin.
Yet such was the condition of our brothers and sisters in the British West Indies, up to the morning of the first of August, 1834. The wicked love of dominion by man over man, had made strong their fetters and multiplied their chains. But on the memorable morning which we are met to celebrate, one bolt from the moral sky of Britain left these blood stained irons all scattered and broken throughout the West Indies, and the limbs they had bruised, out-stretched in praise and thanksgiving to God for deliverance. No man of any sensibility can read the account of that great transaction without emotions too great for utterance. There was something Godlike in this decree of the British nation. It was the spirit of the Son of God commanding the devil of slavery to go out of the British West Indies.
It said tyrant slave-driver, fling away your blood-stained whip, and bury out of sight your broken fetters and chains. Your accursed occupation is gone. It said to the slave, with wounds, bruises, and scars yet fresh upon him, you are emancipated — set free — enfranchised — no longer slaves, but British subjects, and henceforth equal before the British law!
Such my friends, was the change — the revolution — the wonderous transformation which took place in the condition of the colored people in the British West Indies, twenty-three years ago. With the history of the causes, which led to this great consummation, you are perhaps already sufficiently acquainted. I do not intend in my present remarks to enter into the tedious details of this history, although it might prove quite instructive to some in this assembly. It might prove especially interesting to point out various steps in the progress of the British Anti-Slavery movement, and to dwell upon some of the more striking analogies between that and our movement in this country The materials at this point are ample, did the limits of the hour permit me to bring them forward.
One remark in this connection I will make. The abolition movement in America, like many other institutions of this country, was largely derived from England. The defenders of American slavery often excuse their villainy on the ground that they inherited the system from England. Abolitionism may be traced to the same source, yet I don’t see that it is any more popular on that account. Mr. Garrison applied British abolitionism to American slavery. He did that and nothing more. He found its principles here plainly stated and defined; its truths glowingly enunciated, and the whole subject illustrated, and elaborated in a masterly manner. The sin — the crime — the curse of slavery, were all demonstrated in the light of reason, religion, and morality, and by a startling array of facts. We owe Mr. Garrison our grateful homage in that he was among the first of his countrymen who zealously applied the British argument for abolition) against American slavery. Even the doctrine of immediate emancipation as against gradualism, is of English, not American origin. It was expounded and enforced by Elizabeth Herrick, and adopted by all the earnest abolitionists in England. It came upon the British nation, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin upon our land after the passing of the fugitive slave law, and it is remarkable that the highest services rendered the anti-slavery cause in both countries, were rendered by women. Elizabeth Herrick, who wrote only a pamphlet, will be remembered as long as the West India Emancipation is remembered, and the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe can never die while the love of freedom lives in the world.
But my friends, it is not with these analogies and minute references that I mean in my present talk, to deal.
I wish you to look at West India Emancipation as one complete transaction of vast and sublime significance, surpassing, all power of exaggeration. We hear and read much of the achievements of this nineteenth century, and much can be said, and truthfully said of them. The world has literally shot forward with the speed of steam and lightning. It has probably made more progress during the last fifty years, than in any five hundred years to which we can refer in the history of the race. Knowledge has been greatly increased, and its blessing widely diffused. Locomotion has been marvelously improved, so that the very ends of the earth are being rapidly brought together. Time to the traveler has been annihilated.
Deep down beneath the stormy surface of the wide, wide waste of waters, a pathway has been formed for human thought. Machinery of almost every conceivable description, and for almost every conceivable purpose, has been invented and applied; ten thousand discoveries and combinations have been made during these last fifty years, till the world has ceased to ask in astonishment “what next?” for there seems scarcely any margin left for a next. We have made hands of iron and brass, and copper and wood, and though we have not been able to endow them with life and soul, yet we have found the means of endowing them with intelligent motion, and of making them do our work, and to do it more easily, quickly and more abundantly than the hands in their palmiest days were able to perform it. I am not here to disparage or underrate this physical and intellectual progress of the race. I thank my God for every advance which is made in this direction.
I fully appreciate the beautiful sentiment which you farmers, now before me, so highly regard, “that he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before,” is a benefactor. I recognize and honor, as you do, all such benefactors. There is not the slightest danger that those who contribute directly to the world’s wealth and ease will ever be forgotten by the world. The world loves its own. A hungry man will not forget the hand that feeds him, though he may forget that Providence which caused the bread to grow. Arkwright, Watt, Fulton, Franklin, Morse, and Daguerre, are names which will not fade from the memories of men. They are grand civilizers, but civilizers after their kind — and great as are their achievements, they sink to nothingness when compared with that great achievement which has given us the first day of August as a sacred day. “What shal it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” We are to view this grand event in the light of this sublime enquiry.
“Men do not live by bread alone,” said the great Redeemer
What is true of individual men, is also true of societies, and nations of men. Nations are not held in their spheres, and perpetuated in health by cunning machinery. Railroads, steamships, electric wires, tons of gold and silver, and precious stones cannot save them. A nation may perish in the midst of them all, or in the absence of them all. The true life principle is not in them.
Egypt died in the sight of all her imposing wealth and her everlasting Pyramids. The polished stone is there, but Egypt is gone. Greece has vanished, her life disappeared as it were, in a trance of artistic beauty, and architectural splendor. Great Babylon, the mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth, fell in the midst of barbaric wealth and glory. The lesson taught by the history of nations is that the preservation or destruction of communities does not depend upon external prosperity. Men do not live by bread alone, so with nations. They are not saved by art, but by honesty. Not by the gilded splendors of wealth, but by the hidden treasure of manly virtue. Not by the multitudinous gratification of the flesh, but by the celestial guidance of the spirit.
It is in this view that West India Emancipation becomes the most interesting and sublime event of the nineteenth century. It was the triumph of a great moral principle, a decisive victory, after a severe and protracted struggle, of freedom over slavery; of justice and mercy against a grim and bloody system of devilish brutality. It was an acknowledgment by a great nation of the sacredness of humanity, as against the claims of power and cupidity.
As such, it stands out as a large and glorious contribution to the moral and spiritual growth of mankind, and just such a contribution as the world needed, and needs now to have repeated a thousand times over, in our own land especially. Look at New York city; beautiful without to be sure. She has great churches, great hotels, great wealth great commerce, but you all know that she is the victim of a dreadful disease, and that her best friends regard her as a cage of unclean birds in danger at any moment of being swallowed up by a social earthquake. Look at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Louisville, New Orleans. Look where you will, and you will see that while all without is covered and studded with the evidences of prosperity, there is yet no real sense of that stability which conscious rectitude imparts. All the great acts of the nation of late have looked away from the right path. Our very Temple of Justice has inverted and outraged all the principles of justice which it was professedly established to maintain. The government at Washington is mostly exercised in schemes by which it can cheat one section of the country for the benefit of another, and yet seem honest to all. Where this will end, Heaven only knows.
But I was calling attention to this great example of British justice not in anger, but in sorrow. Great Britain bowing down, confessing and forsaking her sins — her sins against the weak and despised — is a spectacle which nations present but seldom. No achievement in arts or arms, in letters or laws, can equal this. And the world owes Britain more for this example of humility and honest repentance than for all her other contributions to the world’s progress.
I know, and you know, it is easy enough for a nation to assume the outward and hollow seemings of humility and repentance. The world is full of such tongue-wise demonstrations. Our own country can show a long list of them. We have thanksgivings and fasts, and are unrivalled in this department of religious observances. On our fast days and fourth of Julys, we seem unto men to fast, but the sequal shows that our confessions and prayers have only come from men whose hearts are crammed with arrogancy, pride and hate.
We have bowed down our heads as a bulrush, and have spread sackcloth and ashes under us, and like the stiff-necked Jews, whose bad practices we imitate more closely than we do their religion, we have exacted all our labors.
I am not here to make invidious and insulting comparisons; but all must allow, that the example of England, in respect to the great act before us, differs widely from our manifestations of sorrow for great national sin. Here we have, indeed, a chosen fast of the Living God, an acceptable day unto the Lord, a day in which the bands of wickedness were loosed; the heavy burdens undone; the oppressed let go free; every yoke broken; the poor that were cast out of the house brought in; and men no longer hiding themselves from their own flesh.
It has been said that corporations have no souls, that with nations might is the standard of right, and that self interest governs the world.
The abolition of slavery in the West Indies is a shining evidence, of the reverse of all this profanity. Nobler ideas and principles of action are here brought to view. The vital, animating, and all-controlling power of the British Abolition movement was religion. Its philosophy was not educated and enlightened selfishness, (such as some are relying upon now to do away with slavery in this country,) but the pure, single eyed spirit of benevolence. It was not impelled or guided by the fine-spun reasonings of political expediency, but by the unmistakable and imperative demands of principle. It was not commerce, but conscience; not considerations of climate and productions of the earth, but the heavenly teachings of Christianity, which every where teaches that God is our Father, and man, however degraded, is our brother.
