Life and times of Frederick Douglass

by Frederick Douglass

“We see and feel to-day, as we have not seen and felt before, that the time for conciliation and trusting to the honor of the late rebels and slaveholders has passed. The President of the United States himself, while still liberal, just, and generous toward the South, has yet sounded a halt in that direction, and has bravely, firmly, and ably asserted the constitutional authority to maintain the public peace in every State in the Union, and upon every day in the year, and has maintained this ground against all the powers of House and Senate.

“We stand at the gateway of a marked and decided change in the statesmanship of our rulers. Every day brings fresh and increasing evidence that we are, and of right ought to be, a nation; that Confederate notions of the nature and powers of our government ought to have perished in the rebellion which they supported; that they are anachronisms and superstitions and no longer fit to be above ground....

“At a time like this, so full of hope and courage, it is unfortunate that a cry of despair should be raised in behalf of the colored people of the South; unfortunate that men are going over the country begging in the name of the poor colored man of the South, and telling the people that the government has no power to enforce the Constitution and laws in that section, and that there is no hope for the poor negro but to plant him in the new soil of Kansas or Nebraska.

“These men do the colored people of the South a real damage. They give their enemies an advantage in the argument for their manhood and freedom. They assume their inability to take care of themselves. The country will be told of the hundreds who go to Kansas, but not of the thousands who stay in Mississippi and Louisiana.

“It will be told of the destitute who require material aid, but not of the multitude who are bravely sustaining themselves where they are.

“In Georgia the negroes are paying taxes upon six millions of dollars; in Louisiana upon forty or fifty millions; and upon unascertained sums elsewhere in the Southern States.

“Why should a people who have made such progress in the course of a few years be humiliated and scandalized by exodus agents, begging money to remove them from their homes? especially at a time when every indication favors the position that the wrongs and hardships which they suffer are soon to be redressed?

“Besides the objection thus stated, it is manifest that the public and noisy advocacy of a general stampede of the colored people from the South to the North is necessarily an abandonment of the great and paramount principle of protection to person and property in every State in the Union. It is an evasion of a solemn obligation and duty. The business of this nation is to protect its citizens where they are, not to transport them where they will not need protection. The best that can be said of this exodus in this respect is, that it is an attempt to climb up some other way; it is an expedient, a half-way measure, and tends to weaken in the public mind a sense of absolute right, power, and duty of the government, inasmuch as it concedes by implication at least, that on the soil of the South the law of the land cannot command obedience, the ballot-box cannot be kept pure, peaceable elections cannot be held, the Constitution cannot be enforced, and the lives and liberties of loyal and peaceable citizens cannot be protected. It is a surrender, a premature disheartening surrender, since it would secure freedom and free institutions by migration rather than by protection; by flight rather than by right; by going into a strange land rather than by staying in one’s own. It leaves the whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open and still to be settled, with the moral influence of exodus against us; since it is a confession of the utter impracticability of equal rights and equal protection in any State where those rights may be struck down by violence.

“It does not appear that the friends of freedom should spend either time or talent in furtherance of this exodus, as a desirable measure, either for the North or the South. If the people of this country cannot be protected in every State of the Union, the government of the United States is shorn of its rightful dignity and power, the late rebellion has triumphed, the sovereignty of the nation is an empty name, and the power and authority in individual States is greater than the power and authority of the United States....

“The colored people of the South, just beginning to accumulate a little property, and to lay the foundation of family, should not be in haste to sell that little and be off to the banks of the Mississippi. The habit of roaming from place to place in pursuit of better conditions of existence is never a good one. A man should never leave his home for a new one till he has earnestly endeavored to make his immediate surroundings accord with his wishes. The time and energy expended in wandering from place to place, if employed in making him a comfortable home where he is, will, in nine cases out of ten, prove the best investment. No people ever did much for themselves or for the world without the sense and inspiration of native land, of a fixed home, of familiar neighborhood and common associations. The fact of being to the manner born has an elevating power upon the mind and heart of a man. It is a more cheerful thing to be able to say I was born here and know all the people, than to say I am a stranger here and know none of the people.