Excerpts from 2 Speeches by Frederick Douglass

Delivered by Frederick Douglass, at

Zion Church, Sunday, June 30.

. . . The present difficulties of our country have brought into notice, far more vividly than ever before, the fact that no nation is absolutely independent of all others. We are not only ruled by national laws, and international laws, but upon all great questions we have to appeal to the great law of the world's public opinion, or the world's judgment. Both the North and the South have been anxious to secure a favorable judgment for themselves in the present contest. We have watched eagerly to see what the London Times had to say - what Lord JOHN RUSSELL had to say - and what LOUIS NAPOLEON had to say. No civilized nation can be totally indifferent to the opinion of the rest of mankind. It is an attribute of man's nature to wish to stand approved in the eyes of his fellows; and as of individual men, so of nations. It is impossible to over estimate the self-executing power of this unwritten, but all-pervading law. The settled judgment of mankind, in respect to the right or wrong of any given case, almost shuts the door to argument and doubt. The mightiest of monarchs and the greatest generals have trembled before the verdict of the world. The printing press and the lightning are the most potent rulers of our times. Regiments, battalions, and vast accumulations of munitions of war, are often rendered powerless in the face of the silent moral influence of the world's public opinion.

No people on the globe have ever appealed more emphatically to this tribunal, than have the American people; and yet few people could do so with less success in attaining a desirable verdict. How do we stand now before the bar of the world's opinion? It certainly is a very remarkable fact, and suggestive of the very small influence exerted by particular forms of government, that while Russia, an autocratic Government, is emancipating its serfs, the United States, a democratic Government, is the scene of a bloody civil war for the extension of slavery. The haughty pride of our American civilization may well hang its head and blush at the contrast. It would be a relief to our national self-complacency if the war now going on were really a war between liberty and slavery - if it were abolition on the one hand, and preservation on the other. Such a contest, waged with spirit and determination by the Government against the slaveholding traitors and rebels, would instantly command the respect and sympathy of the civilized world; but, unfortunately, up to the present hour we are entangled with relatives. The South only is positive and absolute. The North is comparative, and, therefore, it is firm in nothing.

Our newspapers and public men express surprise and indignation that European governments have manifested so little sympathy with the Government in suppressing the slaveholding rebels. They have little cause, in my opinion, for this surprise and this indignation. We have ourselves to thank for the chilling blasts that come to us upon every breeze from the Eastern world. We are lukewarm, cursed with halfness, neither hot nor cold. Let but the Government of the U.S. plant itself upon the immutable truth proclaimed in its own Declaration of Independence, that all men are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and unsheathe the sword to make this truth the law of the land to all its inhabitants, and it will then deserve, and will receive the cordial and earnest sympathy of the lovers of liberty throughout the world. . . .

I have little admiration for slaveholders in any circumstances; and yet I must accord to them the merit of entire frankness and consistency. They have plunged the country into all the horrors, desolations and abominations of civil war. But they are consistent. They had declared their purpose; they have written piracy and robbery upon every fold of the Confederate flag, and displayed the death head and crossbones in ghastly horror from the mast heads of their pirate ships. - No one is at a loss to know what they mean. They hate liberty, and say so. They are for slavery, and for all its kindred abominations. Their cause is openly espoused and shamelessly avowed. Ten thousand times over, give me such an enemy, rather than a half-hearted, luke-warm and halting friend!
The anti-slavery cause has, from the beginning, suffered more from the compromising and temporising spirit of the politicians who have undertaken to serve it, than from the assaults of its open and undisguised enemies. - It has often been more injured by the 'ifs' and 'buts' of the politicians, than by the brickbats and unsalable eggs of the pro-slavery mob.

We have now had this war with slaveholders on our hands nearly six months. As yet, no great battle has been fought, and no great victory has been won on either side. Much damage, to be sure, and destruction has taken place. Business has been destroyed, the glory of the country tarnished, doubt and anxiety spread over the land. The forces of the two contending powers have been face to face for weeks and months. Annoying and menacing movements, marches and counter-marches, a battery occasionally attacked, a railway train fired into, a picket shot down by an assassin, a bridge blown up, a house burnt down, a few rebels quickly arrested and as quickly released, thus far make up the incidents of the war. And yet, in this unfinished and almost unbegun state of the conflict of arms, while earnest men in every land are looking for a decision which shall be one thing or the other, and set at rest forever the question whether we, the American people have a Government or not - whether a State has a right to secede - whether a part is more than the whole - whether liberty or slavery shall give law to the Republic, to the shame and confusion of all beholders - the mixed and ill-assorted head, part iron and part clay, of Compromise looms above the sea of our National troubles. Where, under the whole heavens, among what people but the American people could there be, in such a state of facts, even a possibility of compromise? How shall we account for it, even among ourselves? I will tell you. American society, American religion, American government, and every department of American life since the formation of the present Government, with freedom in one section, and slavery in the other, have naturally parted with their native vigor and purity, and degenerated into a compromise, so that an American wherever met with is simply a bundle of contradictions, incongruities and absurdities. For every truth he utters, he has a qualification, and for every principle he lays down, he has an exception. All his doctrines are accompanied with 'ifs' and 'buts.' The attempt to reconcile slavery with freedom has dethroned our logic and converted our statesmanship into stultified imbecility. It has given three tongues to all our politicians, a tongue for the North and a tongue for the South, and a double tongue for the nation.

. . . Thus far our Government has done nothing against the alleged compromises of the Constitution of the United States, the old bond of Union. It has taken up no hostile attitude against slavery itself, and thus has left the door of compromise wide open. This fact, and the additional fact that there are political schemers who still look southward for political support in high and influential positions, increases my apprehension of danger. Until slavery is openly attacked, this danger will continue imminent.

The great and grand mistake of the conduct of the war thus far, is the attitude of our army and Government towards slavery. That attitude deprives us of the moral support of the world. It degrades the war into a war of sections, and robs it of the dignity of being a mighty effort of a great people to vanquish and destroy a huge system of cruelty and barbarism. It gives to the contest the appearance of a struggle for power, rather than a struggle for the advancement and disenthrallment of a nation. It cools the ardor of our troops, and disappoints the hopes of the friends of humanity.

Now, evade and equivocate as we may, slavery is not only the cause of the beginning of this war, but slavery is the sole support of the rebel cause. It is, so to speak, the very stomach of this rebellion.

The war is called a sectional war; but there is nothing in the sections, in the difference of climate or soil to produce conflicts between the two sections. It is not a quarrel between cotton and corn - between live oak and live stock. The two sections are inhabited by the same people. They speak the same language, and are naturally united. There is nothing existing between them to prevent national concord and enjoyment of the profoundest peace, but the existence of slavery. That is the fly in our pot of ointment - the disturbing force in our social system Every body knows this, every body feels this, and yet the great mass of the people refuse to confess it, and the Government refuses to recognise it. - We talk [of] the irrepressible conflict, and practically give the lie to our talk. We wage war against slaveholding rebels, and yet protect and augment the motive which has moved the slaveholders to rebellion. We strike at the effect, and leave the cause unharmed. Fire will not burn it out of us - water cannot wash it out of us, that this war with the slaveholders can never be brought to a desirable termination until slavery, the guilty cause of all our national troubles, has been totally and forever abolished.

From: Douglass' Monthly (August 1861).

SPEECH OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS ON THE WAR

Delivered in National Hall, Philadelphia

JANUARY 14, 1862

. . . But how shall the rebellion be put down? I will tell you; but before I do so, you must allow me to say that the plan thus far pursued does not correspond with my humble notion of fitness. Thus far, it must be confessed, we have struck wide of the mark, and very feebly withal. The temper of our steel has proved much better than the temper of our minds. While I do not charge, as some have done, that the Government at Washington is conducting the war upon peace principles, it is very plain that the war is not being conducted on war principles.

We are fighting the rebels with only one hand, when we ought to be fighting them with both. We are recruiting our troops in the towns and villages of the North, when we ought to be recruiting them on the plantations of the South. We are striking the guilty rebels with our soft, white hand, when we should be striking with the iron hand of the black man, which we keep chained behind us. We have been catching slaves, instead of arming them. We have thus far repelled our natural friends to win the worthless and faithless friendship of our unnatural enemies. We have been endeavoring to heal over the rotten cancer of slavery, instead of cutting out its death-dealing roots and fibres. We pay more attention to the advice of the half-rebel State of Kentucky, than to any suggestion coming from the loyal North. We have shouldered all the burdens of slavery, and given the slaveholders and traitors all its benefits; and robbed our cause of half its dignity in the eyes of an on-looking world. . . .

I have been often asked since this war began, why I am not at the South battling for freedom. My answer is with the Government. The Washington Government wants men for its army, but thus far, it has not had the boldness to recognize the manhood of the race to which I belong. It only sees in the slave an article of commerce - a contraband. I do not wish to say aught against our Government, for good or bad; it is all we have to save us from anarchy and ruin; but I owe it to my race, in view of the cruel aspersions cast upon it, to affirm that, in denying them the privileges to fight for their country, they have been most deeply and grievously wronged. Neither in the Revolution, nor in the last war did any such narrow and contemptible policy obtain. It shows the deep degeneracy of our times - the height from which we have fallen - that, while Washington, in 1776, and Jackson, in 1814, could fight side by side with negroes, now, not even the best of our generals are willing so to fight. Is McClellan better than Washington? Is Halleck better than Jackson?

One situation only has been offered me, and that is the office of a body servant to a Colonel. I would not despise even that, if I could by accepting it be of service to my enslaved fellow-countrymen. In the temple of impartial liberty there is no seat too low for me. But one thing I have a right to ask when I am required to endure the hardships and brave the dangers of the battle field. I ask that I shall have either a country, or the hope of a country under me - a Government, or the hope of a Government around me, and a flag of impartial liberty floating over me.

We have recently had a solemn fast, and have offered up innumerable prayers for the deliverance of the nation from its manifold perils and calamities. I say nothing against these prayers. Their subjective power is indispensable; but I know also, that the work of making, and the work of answering them, must be performed by the same hands. If the loyal North shall succeed in suppressing this foul and scandalous rebellion, that achievement will be due to the amount of wisdom and force they bring against the rebels in arms.

Thus far we have shown no lack of force. A call for men is answered by half a million. A call for money brings down a hundred million. A call for prayers brings a nation to its altars. But still the rebellion rages. - Washington is menaced. The Potomac is blockaded. Jeff. Davis is still proud and defiant, and the rebels are looking forward hopefully to a recognition of their independence, the breaking of the blockade, and their final severance from the North.

Now, what is the remedy for all this? The answer is ready. Have done at once and forever with the wild and guilty phantasy that any one man can have a right of property in the body and soul of another man. Have done with the now exploded idea that the old Union, which has hobbled along through seventy years upon the crutches of compromise, is either desirable or possible, now, or in the future. Accept the incontestible truth of the "irrepressible conflict." It was spoken when temptations to compromise were less strong than now. Banish from your political dreams the last lingering adumbration that this great American nation can ever rest firmly and securely upon a mixed basis, part of iron, part of clay, part free and part slave. The experiment has been tried, and tried, too, under more favorable circumstances than any which the future is likely to offer, and has deplorably failed. Now lay the axe at the root of the tree, and give it - root, top, body and branches - to the consuming fire. - You have now the opportunity. . . .

From: Douglass' Monthly (February 1862).