Complete Works of Frederick Douglass, page 145
At Baltimore, in 1876, Mr. Douglass for the first time delivered his celebrated lecture on The National Capital. Such sentences as would cause criticism when read apart from the lecture and out of their connection were telegraphed to Washington by prejudiced persons, and immediately he became a target of abuse for the entire press of the District. When the lecture was read and understood, it became a subject of praise rather than of abuse. The humor that runs through the description which Mr. Douglass gives of the office-holding and office-seeking classes will be appreciated by the reader.
The passage is as follows: —
“But I would do injustice in the matter of the population of Washington, if I failed to say a word of another element in the social composition of the capital, in no degree more agreeable and commendable than those already referred to.
“They are the spoilsmen of every grade and description. They are the office holders, office seekers, contract buyers, pension agents, lobbyists, commissioners, and run-betweens in general. Men are here with all sorts of schemes and enterprises, some with claims valid and just and some with claims neither valid nor just. Some have to secure the extension of a patent which ought to be extended, and some are here to prevent such extension. Some are here to contest the seat of a sitting member and some are here to assist him.
“Some are here to use their influence for friends at a distance who are too modest or too timid to come themselves, some are here with heads full of brains, pockets full of money, and faces full of brass, to lobby through Congress a great patriotic measure with millions in it, and all are here to get something for nothing if possible.
“The faces and movements of these men are a study, and the impression they make is far from pleasant. There is here and there in the crowd a face of genuine manliness and joy, but the majority of them are wrinkled, darkened, and distorted by lines that tell of cunning, meanness, and servility. They are restless, eager, and anxious.
“Nowhere will you find a greater show of insincere politeness. The very air is vexed with clumsy compliments and obsequious hat lifting.
“Everybody wants favor, everybody expects favor, everybody is looking for favor, everybody is afraid of losing favor, hence everybody smiles, bows, and fawns towards everybody else, and everybody knows the full value and quality of this general self-abasement. You will seldom hear an honest, square, upright and downright no, in all this eager and hungry crowd. All look yes, and smile yes, even when they mean anything else than yes. In their large and well-worn pocket-books, many of them carry about with them carefully folded but considerably soiled papers, written in a solemn official hand earnestly recommending the bearer for any office or thing he may want, or he may be able to get, for when the former is impossible, the latter is always acceptable.
“It is easy to see upon slight inspection that some of these papers are very old and have seen much service and certify to character which may have been lost a dozen times since they were written, and thus the biggest rogues may sometimes have the best papers.
“The national capital is never without a fair representation of these hungry spoilsmen, but the incoming of a new administration is the signal for the gathering in force of this remorseless class. The avenues of the city and the corridors of the capitol and other public buildings are the literal whirlpools of social driftwood from every section of the republic.
“Its members are met with in all directions. They are crowding, elbowing, and buttonholing everywhere.
“The least offensive of this multitude are those who come here to obtain clerkships and other positions in the several governmental departments. There is nothing in this service proper, to degrade or to demoralize, and yet I cannot recommend any young man to seek this mode of livelihood. The process of getting and holding these offices is often both degrading and demoralizing. It plays havoc with manly independence and true self-respect.
“They are usually obtained through intervention of members of Congress and other influential persons for political service rendered or to be rendered, and there is often a strong temptation to resort to improper means to make an impression upon those whose influence is sought for this purpose.
“All the dishonesty and duplicity in office seeking and in the pressing of claims are not on the side of this hungry crowd. The men who serve them or profess to serve them are not always sound or what they seem.
“A member of Congress has been known to give a confiding constituent a strong letter of recommendation to a position in one of the government departments and then by another street outrun the applicant to the department addressed, to say that no attention must be paid to it and that his name was only signed to the letter for buncombe. The apology for this duplicity and treachery is political necessity. He cannot afford to make a political enemy. He would doubtless very gladly give every voter in his district an office, but the voters are too many and the offices too few. He has two cats in his room and only one mouse in his closet. Hence, while he freely signs your papers he says to the heads of the departments, ‘Pay no attention to my recommendations unless I personally accompany the applicant.’
“In this pre-eminently deceitful and treacherous atmosphere, promises even on paper do not amount to much. Everybody is fed and being fed upon great expectations and golden promises, and since the diet is less than dog cheap, nobody fails of a full supply.
“If you want any office and want help to get it, everybody will cheerfully promise to help you. Your member of Congress will do what he can for you. Your senator will do what he can for you. Your whole delegation will do what they can for you. The heads of various departments will do what they can for you, and even the president of the United States, who does not permit himself generally to interfere in the matter of departmental appointment, will do what he can for you. “The amazing thing, however, is that with all this gushing and abundant promise of help your name is not on the pay roll, you are still in the cold and your chances of getting in grow beautifully less, with every dinner your friends will permit you to take at Willard’s, Wormley’s, or Welker’s.
“It is commonly thought to be a nice and pleasant thing to be a member of Congress, but I think it would be difficult for a man to find any position more abundant in vexation. A man who gets himself elected to Congress can seldom do so without drawing after him to Washington a lively swarm of political creditors who want their pay in the shape of an office somewhere in the civil service. They besiege his house at all hours night and day, break his bell wires before breakfast, crowd his doorway, if he is in he cannot get out without seeing them and if he is out he cannot get in without seeing them. They waylay him as he goes to his house and dog him to the very doors, and summon him to the cloak room or lobby after he may have been so fortunate as to have reached his seat in the House of Representatives. In all this sort of vexation and trouble he must be too polite or too prudent to express the slightest sense of annoyance. If he would be a successful politician he must face it all with the blandness, patience, and suavity of a true martyr.” Mr. Douglass has attended all the national conventions of the Republicans since the nomination of Lincoln and has always been treated by the party leaders with marks of great respect and honor. At the convention held in Minneapolis in 1892 he occupied a prominent seat on the platform in rear of the president, Hon. William McKinley, Jr., of Ohio. In 1888 at the convention held at Chicago, being loudly and repeatedly called for, he made a short address which was heartily applauded by the entire audience. Mr. Douglass at this time was in favor of the nomination of Hon. John Sherman, whom he regarded as the leading American statesman and a true friend of the colored race.
Standing before that immense audience he said: —
“Mr. President: I had the misfortune last night, while speaking to a vast audience in the Armory, to break my voice so that I feel wholly unable to address you any more than to express my thanks to you for the cordial welcome, the earnest call, you have given me to this platform. I have only one word to say and it is this, that I hope this convention will make such a record in its proceedings as to put it entirely out of the power of the leaders of the Democratic party and the leaders of the Mugwump party (laughter) to say that they see no difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party in respect to the class I represent. (Applause.) I have great respect for a certain quality I have seen distinguished in the Democratic party. It is its fidelity to its friends (laughter); its faithfulness to those whom it has acknowledged as its masters for the last forty years. (Laughter and applause.) They were faithful — I mean the Democrats were faithful — to the slaveholding class during the existence of slavery. They were faithful before the war; they were faithful during the war. They gave them all the encouragement they possibly could without drawing their own necks into the halter. (Laughter and applause.) They were faithful during the period of reconstruction. They have been faithful ever since. They are faithful to-day to the ‘solid South.’ I believe that the Republican party will prove itself equally faithful to its friends (cries of ‘Good, good’) and those friends during the war were men with black faces. (Cries of ‘That’s right!’) They were eyes to your blind, they were shelter to your shelterless sons when they escaped from the line of the rebels. They are faithful to-day, and when this great republic was at its extremest need, when its fate seemed to tremble in the balance, and the crowned heads and the enemies of republican institutions were saying in Europe: ‘Aha, aha, this great republican bubble is about to burst;’ when your armies were melting away before the fire and pestilence of rebellion, you called upon your friends, your black friends; when your star spangled banner, now glorious, was trailed in the dust, heavy with patriot blood, you called upon the negro — yes, Abraham Lincoln called upon the negro (great applause) to reach forth his iron arm and clutch with his steel fingers your faltering banner; and they came, they came 200,000 strong. (Loud cheers.) Let us remember those black men in the platform that you are about to promulgate, and let us remember that these black men are stripped of their constitutional right to vote. (Cheers.) Leave these men no longer to wade to the ballot-box through blood, but extend over them the arm of this republic and make their pathway to the ballot-box as straight and as smooth and as safe as any other citizen’s. (Cheers.) Be not deterred from duty by the cry of ‘bloody shirt.’ (Cheers.) Let that shirt be waved as long as blood shall be found upon it. (Cheers.) A government that can give liberty in its constitution ought to have power to protect liberty in its administration. (Cheers.) I will not take up your time. I have gotten my thoughts before you. I speak in behalf of the millions who are disfranchised to day. (Cheers and cries of ‘Go on,’ ‘Douglass, Douglass!’)”
In Chicago January 1, 1893, on the dedication of the pavilion devoted to the exhibits from the Republic of Hayti, Hon. Frederick Douglass, one of the commissioners for the Haytian government, made an address which the reader will find interesting and instructive. He takes the opportunity here afforded to praise the courage and bravery of the Haytians in their struggle for independence and to pay in glowing language a graceful tribute to the great Toussaint in contrasting him with Napoleon Bonaparte.
“In taking possession of and dedicating this pavilion to the important purposes for which it has been erected, Charles A. Preston and myself, commissioners appointed by the government of Hayti to represent that government in all that pertains to such a mission, wish to express our satisfaction with the work thus far completed. His Excellency, General Hyppolite, has been the supreme motive power and the mainspring by which this pavilion has found a place in these magnificent grounds. The moment when his attention was called to the importance of having his country well represented in this Exposition, he comprehended the significance of the measure, and has faithfully and with all diligence endeavored to forward such resources as were necessary to attain this grand result. For ourselves as commissioners, under whose supervision and direction this pavilion has been built, I may say that we feel sure that Hayti will heartily approve our work, and that no citizen of that country who shall visit the World’s Columbian Exposition will feel ashamed of its appearance or will fail to contemplate it with satisfied complacency.
Its internal appointments are consistent with its external appearance. They bear the evidence of proper and thoughtful regard for the taste, comfort, and convenience of its visitors, as well as for the appropriate display of the productions of the rich, tropical country which shall be here exhibited. Happy in these respects, it is equally happy in another important particular. Its location and situation are desirable. It is not a candle put under a bushel, but a city set upon a hill. For this we cannot too much commend or be too grateful for the liberality of the honorable commissioners and managers of these grounds. They have awarded us ample space and a happy location.
“Hayti will be happy to meet and welcome its friends here. While the gates of the World’s Columbian Exposition shall be open and shall welcome the world to this enclosure, the doors of this pavilion shall also be open and will give a warm welcome to all who shall see fit to honor us with their presence. Our emblems of welcome will be neither brandy nor wine. No intoxicants will be served here, but we shall give all comers a generous taste of our Haytian coffee, made in the best manner by Haytian hands. They shall find this coffee pleasant in flavor and delightful in aroma. Here, as in the sunny clime of Hayti, we shall try to do honor to that country’s hospitality.
“We meet to-day on the anniversary of the independence of Hayti, and it would be an unpardonable omission not to remember that fact with all honor at this time and in this place. Considering what the environments of Hayti were ninety years ago; considering the peculiar antecedents of its people, both at home and in Africa; considering their long enforced ignorance, their poverty and weakness, and their want of military training; considering their destitution of the munitions of war, and measuring the tremendous moral and material forces that confronted and opposed them, the achievement of their independence is one of the most remarkable and one of the most wonderful events in the history of this eventful country, and I may almost say in the history of mankind. I shall make no elaborate comparison of Hayti with ourselves. American independence was a task of tremendous proportions. In the contemplation of it the boldest held their breath and many brave men shrank from it appalled. But Herculean as was this task and dreadful as were the hardships and sufferings it imposed, it was nothing in its terribleness when compared with the appalling nature of the war Hayti dared to wage for its freedom and independence. Its success was a surprise and a startling astonishment to the world. Our war of the revolution had a thousand years of civilization behind it. The men who led it were descended from scholars, statesmen, and heroes. Their ancestry were the men who had defied the powers of royalty and wrested from an armed and reluctant king the grandest declaration of human rights ever given to the world. They had the knowledge and character naturally inherited from long years of personal and political freedom. They belonged to the ruling race of the world and the sympathy of the world was with them. But far different was it with the men of Hayti. The world was all against them. They were slaves accustomed to stand and tremble in the presence of haughty masters. Their education was obedience to the will of others, and their religion was patience and resignation to the rule of pride and cruelty. As a race they stood before the world as the most abject, helpless, and degraded of mankind. Yet from these men of the negro race came brave men; men who loved liberty more than life, wise men, statesmen, warriors, patriots, and heroes; men whose deeds stamp them as worthy to rank with the greatest and noblest of mankind; men who have gained their freedom and independence against odds as formidable as ever confronted a righteous cause or its advocates. Aye, and they not only gained their liberty and independence, but they have maintained it. They have never surrendered what they thus gained to any power on earth. This precious inheritance they hold to-day, and I venture to say here in the ear of all the world, not in a spirit of defiance, but in the confidence of the integrity of Hayti’s people, that they never will surrender their inheritance.
“Much has been said of the savage ferocity and sanguinary character of the warfare waged by the Haytians against their masters and against the invaders sent from France by Bonaparte with the purpose to re-enslave them, but impartial history records the fact that every act of blood and torture committed by the Haytians during that war was more than duplicated by the French. The revolutionists did only what was essential to success in gaining their freedom and independence, and what any other people assailed by such an enemy for such a purpose would have done.
“They met deception with deception, ambuscade with ambuscade, arms with arms, harassing warfare with harassing warfare, fire with fire, blood with blood, and they never would have gained their freedom and independence if they had not thus matched the French at all extremes, ends and opposites.
“History will be searched in vain for a warrior more humane, more free from the spirit of revenge, more disposed to protect his enemies, and less disposed to practice retaliation for acts of cruelty than was Toussaint L’Ouverture. His motto from the beginning of the war to the end of his participation in it was protection to the white colonists and no retaliation of injuries. No man in the island had been more loyal to France, to the French republic and to Bonaparte; but when he was compelled to believe by overwhelming evidence that Bonaparte was fitting out a large fleet and was about to send a large and powerful army to Hayti to conquer and reduce his people to slavery, he, like a true patriot, and a true man, determined to defeat this infernal intention by preparing for effective defense.
“The world will never cease to wonder at the failure of the French and the success of the blacks. Never did there appear a more unequal contest. The greatest military captain of the age, backed by the most warlike nation in the world, had set his heart upon the subjugation of the despised sons of Hayti, and spared no pains, and hesitated to employ no means, however revolting, to compass his purpose. Though he availed himself of bloodhounds from Cuba to hunt down and devour women and children; though he practiced fraud, duplicity, and murder; though he scorned to observe the rules of civilized warfare; though he sent against poor Hayti his well-equipped and skillfully commanded army of 50,000 men; though the people against whom this army came were unskilled in the arts of war; though by a treachery the most dishonorable and revolting the invaders had succeeded in capturing and sending Toussaint in chains to France to perish in an icy prison; though his swords were met with barrel hoops; though a wasting war had defaced and desolated the country for a dozen years, Hayti was still free, its spirit was unbroken, and its brave sons were still at large in the mountains ready to continue the war if need be for a century.
