Frederick Douglass

by Booker T. Washington

“There are special reasons why I should speak and speak freely. The right of speech is a very precious one. I understand that Mr. Douglas regards himself as the most abused man in the United States; and that the greatest outrage ever committed upon him was in the case in which your indignation raised your voices so high that he could not be heard. No personal violence, as I understand, was offered him. It seems to have been a trial of vocal powers between the individual and the multitude; and as might have been expected, the voice of one man was not equal in volume to the voices of five thousand. I do not mention this circumstance to approve it; I do not approve it. I am for free speech, as well as free men and free soil; but how ineffably insignificant is this wrong done in a single instance, compared to the stupendous iniquity perpetrated against more than three millions of the American people, who are struck dumb by the very men in whose cause Mr. Senator Douglas was here to plead! While I would not approve the silencing of Mr. Douglas, may we not hope that this slight abridgment of his rights, may lead him to respect in some degree the rights of other men, as good in the eye of Heaven as himself?

“Let us now consider the great question of the age, the only great national question which seriously agitates the public mind at this hour. It is called the vexed question, and excites alarm in every quarter of the country.

“The proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise, was a stunning one. It fell upon the nation like a bolt from a cloudless sky. The thing was too startling for belief. You believed in the South and you believed in the North; and you knew that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a breach of honor; and therefore, you said that the thing could not be done. Besides both parties had pledged themselves directly, positively, and solemnly against reopening in Congress the agitation on the subject of slavery; and the President himself had declared his intention to maintain the national quiet. Upon these assurances you rested and rested fatally. But you should have learned long ago that men do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. It is folly to put faith in men who have broken faith with God. When a man has brought himself to enslave a child of God, to put fetters on his brother, he has qualified himself to disregard the most sacred of compacts; beneath the sky there is nothing more sacred than man, and nothing can be properly respected when manhood is despised and trampled upon.

“It is said that slavery is the creature of positive law, and that it can only exist where it is sustained by positive law—that neither in Kansas nor Nebraska is there any law establishing slavery, and that therefore, the moment a slave-holder carries his slaves into these territories, he is free and restored to the rights of human nature. This is the ground taken by General Cass. He contended for it in the North Market Hall, with much eloquence and skill. I thought, while I was hearing him on this point, that slave-holders would not be likely to thank him for the argument. It is not true that slavery cannot exist without being established by positive law. The instance cannot be shown where a law was ever made establishing slavery, where the relation of master and slave did not previously exist. The law is always an after-coming consideration. Wicked men first overpower and subdue their fellow-men to slavery, and then call in the law to sanction the deed. Even in the slave-states of America, slavery has never been established by law. It was not established under the colonial charters of the original states, nor the Constitution of the United States. It is now and has always been a system of lawless violence. On this proposition I hold myself ready and willing to meet any defender of the Nebraska bill. I would not hesitate to meet even the author of that bill himself.

“He says he wants no broad, black line across this continent. Such a line is odious, and begets unkind feelings between the citizens of a common country. Now, fellow citizens, why is the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, a broad black line? What is it that entitles it to be called a black line? It is the fashion to call whatever is odious in this country, black. You call the devil black, and he may be; but what is there in the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, which makes it blacker than the line which separates Illinois from Missouri or Michigan from Indiana? I can see nothing in the line itself which should make it black or odious. It is a line, that’s all. It is black, black and odious, not because it is a line, but because of the things it separates. If it keep asunder what God has joined together, or separate what God intended should be fused, then it may be called an odious line, a black line; but if, on the other hand, it marks only a distinction natural and eternal, a distinction fixed in the nature of things by the eternal God, then I say, withered be the arm and blasted be the hand that would blot it out.

“Nothing could be further from the truth, then, to say that popular sovereignty is accorded to the people who may settle the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The three great cardinal powers of government are the executive, legislative and judicial. Are these powers sacred to the people of Kansas and Nebraska? You know they are not. That bill places the people of that territory, as completely under the powers of the Federal government as Canada is under British rule. By this Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Federal government has the substance of all governing power, while the people have the shadow. The judicial power of the territories is not from the people of the territories, who are so bathed in the sunlight of popular sovereignty by stump eloquence, but from the Federal government. The executive power of the territories derives its existence, not from the overflowing fountain of popular sovereignty, but from the Federal government. The secretaries of the territories are not appointed by the sovereign people of the territories, but are appointed independent of popular sovereignty.

“But is there nothing in this bill that justifies the supposition that it contains the principle of popular sovereignty? No, not one word. Even the territorial councils, elected, not by the people of the territory, but only by certain descriptions of people, are subject to a double veto power, vested, first in the governor, whom they did not elect, and second in the President of the United States. The only shadow of popular sovereignty is the power given to the people of the territories by this bill to have, hold, buy, and sell human beings. The sovereign right to make slaves of their fellow-men, if they choose, is the only sovereignty that the bill secures.

“But it may be said that Congress has the right to allow the people of the territories to hold slaves. The answer is, that Congress is made up of men, and possesses only the rights of men; and unless it can be shown that some men have a right to hold their fellow-men as property, Congress has no such right. There is not a man within the sound of my voice, who has not as good a right to enslave a brother man, as Congress has. This will not be denied, even by slave-holders.

“Error may be new, or it may be old, since it is founded in a misapprehension of what truth is. It has its beginnings; and its endings. But not so truth. Truth is eternal. Like the great God, from whose throne it emanates, it is from everlasting to everlasting, and can never pass away. Such a truth is man’s right to freedom. He was born with it. It was his before he comprehended it. The title deed to it was written by the Almighty on His heart; and the record of it is in the bosom of the Eternal; and never can Stephen A. Douglas efface it, unless he can tear from the great heart of God this truth; and this mighty government of ours will never be at peace with God, unless it shall practically and universally embrace this great truth as the fountain of all its institutions, and the rule of its entire administration....

“Now, gentlemen—I have done. I have no fear for the ultimate triumph of free principles in this country. The signs of the times are propitious. Victories have been won by slavery; but they have never been won against the onward march of anti-slavery principles. The progress of these principles has been constant, steady, strong and certain. Every victory won by slavery has had the effect to fling our principles more widely and favorably among the people. The annexation of Texas, the Florida war, the war with Mexico, the Compromise Measures, and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, have all signally vindicated the wisdom of the great God, who has promised to override the wickedness of men for His own glory—to confound the wisdom of the crafty and bring to naught the counsels of the ungodly.”