Three addresses on the relations subsisting between the white and colored people of the United States

by Frederick Douglass

As a part of the people of this great country, we may feel ourselves included. We represent the class which has enriched our soil with its blood, watered it with its tears, and defended it with its strong arms, but have hitherto been excluded from all part in our national glory. Now, however, all is changed. We may look forward with pleasure to the promised National Centennial Exposition, and take some credit to ourselves for helping to make the District of Columbia a suitable place for such a display. We have at least done a large proportion of the most laborious and needed work to this end.

The wisdom of the framers of the Constitution of the United States in granting to the nation, through its Congress, exclusive legislative jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, has in nothing been more abundantly and happily vindicated than in the abolition of slavery, and in making it the freest territory of this country. The benefits of this act are, however, not confined to the colored people. They are shared by all the people of this District; not more by the colored than by the white people.

Washington owes nothing to Maryland or Virginia (though born of those parents) in comparison to its debt to the nation. Through the National Government it has become the elegant and beautiful city that it is. It is the nation that has graded and paved its broad and far-reaching streets and avenues; it is the nation that has fenced and beautified its numerous parks and reservations, and made them the joy of our children, and the admiration of our visitors; it is the nation that has adorned its ample public squares and circles with choice flowers, flowing fountains, and imposing statuary; it is the nation that has erected enduring monuments of bronze and marble in honor of our statesmen, warriors, patriots, and heroes; it is the nation that has built here those vast structures, the different departments, and crowned yonder hill with a Capitol, one of the proudest architectural wonders of the world; it is the nation that has built Washington Monument, the pride of the city, the tallest structure that ever rose from the ground toward heaven at the bidding of human pride, patriotism, or piety, standing there in full view of all comers, whether approaching by land or water, with its base deep down in the earth, and its capstone against the sky, receiving and reflecting every light and shadow of the passing hour, steady alike in sunshine and storm, defying lightning, whirlwind, and earthquake—its grandeur and sublimity, like Niagara, impress us more and more the longer we hold it in range of vision.

But the nation, as I have already said, has done more for the District of Columbia than to clothe it with material greatness and splendor. It has, by the act of emancipation, imparted to it a moral beauty. It has not only made it a pleasure to the eye, but a joy to the heart. No material adornment or addition has ever done or could do for this District what the abolition of slavery has done. The nation did a great and good thing fifteen years ago by giving us a local government, and a Shepherd that lifted the city out of its deep mud and above its blinding dust and put it on the way to its present greatness, but it did a greater and better thing when it lifted it out of the mire of barbarism coincident with slavery.

Fellow-citizens, we are proud to-day, and justly proud, of the prosperity and the increasing liberality of Washington. With all our fellow-citizens we behold it with pride and pleasure rising and spreading noiselessly around us, almost like the temple of Solomon, without the sound of a hammer. New faces meet us at the corners of the streets and greet us in the market-places. Conveniences and improvements are multiplying on every hand. We walk in the shade of its beautiful trees by day and in the rays of its soft electric lights by night. We make it warm where it is cool, and cool where it is warm, and healthy where it is noxious. Our magnificence fills the stranger and sojourner with admiration and wonder. The contrast between the old time of slavery and the new dispensation of liberty looms upon us on every hand. We feel it in the very air we breathe, and in the friendly aspect of all around us. But time would fail to tell of the vast and wonderful advancement in civilization made in this city by the abolition of slavery.

Perhaps a better idea could be formed of what has been done for Washington and for us by imagining what would be the case in a return to the old condition of things. Imagine the wheels of progress reversed; imagine that by some strange and mysterious freak of fortune slavery, with all its horrid concomitants, was revived; imagine that under the dome of yonder Capitol legislation was carried on, as formerly, by men with pistols in their belts and bullets in their pockets; imagine the right of speech denied, the right of petition stamped out, the press of the District muzzled, and a word in the streets against slavery the sign for a mob; imagine a lone woman like Miss Myrtilla Miner, having to defend her right to teach colored girls to read and write with a pistol in her hand, here in this very city, now dotted all over with colored schools, which rival in magnificence the white schools of any other city of the Union; imagine this, and more, and ask yourselves the question. What progress has been made in liberty and civilization within the borders of this capital? Further on let us ask: Of what avail would be our cloud-capped towers, our gorgeous palaces, and our solemn temples if slavery again held sway here? Of what avail would be our marble halls if once more they resounded with the crack of the slave whip, the clank of the fetter, and the rattle of chains; if slave auctions were held in front of the halls of justice, and chain-gangs were marched over Pennsylvania avenue to the Long Bridge for the New Orleans market? Of what avail would be our state dinners, our splendid receptions if, like Babylon of old, our people were making merchandise of God’s image, trafficking in human blood and in the souls and bodies of men? Were this District once more covered with this moral blight and mildew you would hear of no plans, as now, for celebrating within its borders the centennial anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Bold and audacious as were the advocates of slavery in the olden time they would have been ashamed to invite here the representatives of the civilized world to inspect the workings of their slave system. To have done so would have been like inviting a clean man to touch pitch, a humane man to witness an execution, a tender-hearted woman to witness a slaughter. In its boldest days slavery drew in its claws and presented a velvet paw to strangers. They knew it was like Lord Granby’s character, which could only pass without reprobation as it passed without observation. Emancipation liberated the master as well as the slave. The fact that our citizens are now loudly proclaiming Washington to be the right place for the celebration of the discovery of the continent by Columbus, and the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, is an acknowledgement of and attestation of the higher civilization that has, in their judgment, come here with the abolition of slavery. They no longer dread the gaze of civilized men. They no longer fear lest a word of liberty should fall into the ear of a trembling captive and awaken his manhood. They are no longer required to defend with their lips what they must have condemned in their hearts. When the galling chain dropped from the limbs of the slave the mantle of shame dropped from the brows of their masters. The emancipation of the one was the deliverance of the other; so that this day, in fact, belongs to the one as truly as it belongs to the other, though it is left to us alone to keep it in memory.

It is usual on occasions of this kind, not only to set forth, as I have in some measure done, what has been gained by the abolition of slavery, but also to speak of the causes and instrumentalities which contributed to this grand result. If this were my first appearance before you on similar anniversaries, I should feel it entirely proper to do so now; but having discharged this duty faithfully and fully in several former addresses, there is no special reason for a repetition of it in this instance. In one of those addresses I specially endeavored to trace, and did trace with more or less success, the history of the earliest utterances of anti-slavery sentiments in this country and in England. I described the rise, progress, and final triumph of the abolition movement in both countries. I have in no case omitted to do justice to the noble band of men and women who espoused the cause of the slave in the early days of its weakness, and when to do so was to make themselves of no reputation and subjects of the vilest abuse. I have held up their example of virtuous self-sacrifice to the admiration and imitation of all who would serve the human family in its march from barbarism to a higher state of civilization. In my judgment there never was a band of reformers more unselfish, more consistent with their principles, more ardent in their devotion to any cause than were these early anti-slavery men and women of this country.

The charge is sometimes made that the colored people are ungrateful to their benefactors. In my judgment no charge could be more unjust. In whatever else they have failed, they have ever shown a laudable sense of gratitude. The names of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, John P. Hale, Charles Sumner, Gerrit Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and a host of others are never pronounced by us but with sentiments of high appreciation and sincere gratitude.

Of course I cannot deny that there are those amongst us who, either thoughtlessly or selfishly, or both, dare to deny their obligations to the great Republican party and its leaders. They insist upon it that freedom came to them only as an act of military necessity. They see in it no sentiment of justice, no moral preference. They profess to see no difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party, and insist that one party has no more claim to their support than the other. Such men are about as ready to join one party as the other. Perhaps they even lean a little more to the Democratic than to the Republican party. I admit that were they fair representatives of the colored people of the United States the charge of ingratitude might be very easily sustained. But, happily, such men do not represent the sentiments of the colored people, but greatly and flagrantly misrepresent them. The colored people do see a difference between the two parties, as broad as the moral universe and as palpable as the difference between the character of Moses and that of Pharaoh. For one I never will forget that every concession of liberty made to the colored people of the United States has come to them through the action of the Republican party, and that all the opposition made to those concessions has come from the Democratic party. Any colored man who either denies this or endeavors to disparage that party and belittle their concessions by attributing them entirely to selfish and cowardly motives brands himself as unjust, uncharitable, and ungrateful. The blindness of such men is very surprising. Do they not see that in denying their obligations to the Republican party they only invite the scorn and contempt of the Democratic party? Do they not understand that they are advertising themselves as base political ingrates? Do they not know that they are giving notice to the Democratic party—the party that they are just now aiming to conciliate—that they will be as unjust and ungrateful to that party for any concessions from it as they declare themselves to be to the Republican party for what that party has done?

But, fellow-citizens, while I gratefully remember the important services of the Republican party in emancipating and enfranchising the colored people of the United States, I do not forget that the work of that party is most sadly incomplete. We are yet, as a people, only half-free. The promise of liberty remains unfulfilled. We stand to-day only in the twilight of American liberty. The sunbeams of perfect day are still behind the mountains, and the mission of the Republican party will not be ended until the persons, the property, and the ballot of the colored man shall be as well protected in every State of the American Union as are such rights in the case of the white man. The Republican party is not perfect. It is cautious even to the point of timidity; but it is, nevertheless, the best political force and friend we have.