“We are free to say that in respect to political rights, we hold women to be justly entitled to all we claim for man. We go further and express our conviction that all political rights, which it is expedient for man to exercise, it is equally so for women. All that distinguishes man as an intelligent and accountable being is equally true of woman; and if that government only is just which governs only by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to woman the exercise of the elective franchise, or a hand in making and administering the laws of the land. Our doctrine is that ‘Right is of no sex.’ We, therefore, bid the women engaged in this movement our humble Godspeed.”

Mr. Douglass consistently held to these views ever afterward. He was one of the first of all prominent Americans to champion the cause of female suffrage, and the women in return esteemed him and accorded to him more honor than has been shown to most men by their organizations. He was always a guest in any large gathering of woman suffragists.

In connection with the labor of running his newspaper and keeping up a strenuous interest in the many public questions that appealed to his heart and conscience, it is fitting to make some mention of his early experiences in Rochester, N. Y., his home, and the scene of his most important activities for twenty-five years. He became deeply attached to the city and its people. He said: “I know of no place in the Union where I could have located at the time with less resistance, or received a larger measure of sympathy and coöperation, and I now look back to my life and labor with unalloyed satisfaction, having spent a quarter of a century among its people. I shall always feel more at home there than anywhere else in this country.”

When Mr. Douglass began the publication of the North Star, there were people in the city who felt it a sort of disgrace that a Negro paper should be established in their midst. This was not surprising. It is doubtful if, at that time, any inhabited spot in the United States could have been found entirely free from race prejudice. So far as the Negro was concerned, wherever he wished and tried to be a good citizen, he found himself in the “enemy’s country.” The most troublesome of Douglass’s early experiences in Rochester was the attempt to educate his children. They were not allowed to attend the public school in the district in which he lived and owned property; and his young daughter, who was the “apple of his eye,” was so unkindly treated in Tracy Seminary, a school for girls, that she had to leave it. This difficulty, like every other that he encountered in his career, served only to embolden him; it encouraged him to fight. He went at the question with his characteristic force, and before long every barrier was removed and the children of black parents were freely admitted to all the schools of the city. Indeed he conducted himself so well and was personally so interesting that he soon became a popular citizen of Rochester, and his friends were as numerous and cordial in pro-slavery as in anti-slavery circles. Among those mentioned in his biography, for whom he had a special fondness, are Isaac Post, William Hallowell, Samuel D. Porter, William C. Bliss, Benjamin Fish, Asa Anthony, and Myron Holley. From time to time he addressed the citizens in Corinthian Hall. His audiences were always composed of the best people in Rochester, and in this way he did much to break down the prejudice against his race. This hall was built and owned by a prominent pro-slavery man, but so great was his respect for Mr. Douglass that he cheerfully allowed it to be used for the propaganda of emancipation. Thus the black leader became proud of Rochester and in more ways than can well be recited, the city honored him as no other colored man has ever been honored by an American municipality.

CHAPTER VIII
FREE COLORED PEOPLE AND COLONIZATION

The recognized leadership of Frederick Douglass among the colored people of the country may be dated from the publication of the North Star. Prior to that time he was regarded as an Abolition orator and a conspicuous example of the possibilities of the Negro race. He had not yet established his relationship with the free colored people of the North.

Douglass came from the South. His hardest experiences and bitterest memories were those of the Southern plantations. It was the toiling black masses, whose fortunes he had shared, that claimed his first and profoundest sympathy and interest. “Freedom first and rights afterward,” was the precept that had thus far guided his efforts in behalf of his race. His position as the publisher of a colored newspaper brought him into closer touch with the interests and aspirations of the free colored people of the North. They had obtained freedom, but they were thus far in practice, to a large degree, without rights. Douglass seemed to feel that the work he was doing and the position he occupied gave him some special claim to the support and loyalty of these people. He sometimes complained of and took deeply to heart the criticism and petty fault-finding with which a few of his fellow freedmen followed his movements. But, on the whole, they gave him generous support, and accorded him grateful recognition for his services. The leading colored men of the period who, in various ways, were helping the cause of emancipation, rallied around him and lived and labored in intimate association with him.

At this time the free Negroes formed a considerable portion of the American population. In 1850 there were about 230,000 of them in the slave-states and about 200,000 in the free-states. The liberation from bondage of this nearly half-million of colored persons had been brought about in various ways. The larger portion of them in the Northern states became free through their emancipation by Northern slave-holders. Those in the slave-states were either manumitted by their former masters or had by personal enterprise bought their own freedom. Here and there were a few West Indian colored people who had come to the United States to find a home. An ever-increasing number in the North were runaway slaves who had gained their freedom in some such way as Frederick Douglass had gained his. These were for the most part a superior class of men and women. The fact that they had the courage and enterprise to win their own liberty is good evidence that they had personal initiative and ambition. Among their number were many who, like Douglass, had secretly learned to read and write while they were still slaves. Others were first-rate mechanics who, in spite of opposition, found good employment.

The attitude of the white citizens of the North toward the free people of color was, in almost every way, hostile. The slave-holders of the South were angered by the loss of their property and the Northern people were annoyed by the presence, in their midst, in ever-increasing numbers, of this class. In fact, prejudice against the free blacks in the Northern states came to be of the most uncompromising sort. In many sections the status of the free Negro was often little better than that of an outlaw. It was literally true that he had “no rights that a white man was bound to respect.” Wherever the Negro turned his face for encouragement or for opportunity, he met with opposition and discouragement. His children were generally shut out of the public and private schools. In many instances those which would admit colored pupils, in defiance of public sentiment, were burned down or mobbed and the teachers ostracized. The case of Miss Prudence Crandall, in Canterbury, Conn., in 1833, is fairly illustrative of the public feeling in regard to Negro education. Miss Crandall was a beautiful young Quakeress of tender heart and great courage, who had opened a school for young women in the village of Canterbury. A chance admission of a colored girl raised such a storm of indignation among her neighbors that she was assailed by a mob and an attempt was made to burn the building. When she still persisted in having her way, she was arrested and sent to jail.

Other instances of this kind might be cited. In nothing were the Northern people more bitterly intolerant than in their opposition to the education of the children of free colored families. The same spirit that in the slave-holding states accounted it a crime to teach colored people to read and write, made it very dangerous for any man or woman to do, or attempt to do, the same thing in the free-states.