A Glance at the Past and Present of the Negro: An Address

by Robert H. Terrell

Those of us who have studied the passing and conflicting scenes and the bitter partisan struggles in our country for the last century, all growing out of slavery and the awful impress which the system left upon our civilization, can realize what tremendous results may hang upon the vote of a single individual. History relates that as the British ships at Trafalgar started into battle Lord Nelson, the great commander, signaled from the flag-ship this immortal message—“England expects every man to his duty.” It may have been the inspiration of these words that brought victory to the British forces that day. If this one delegate had been present when that all important vote was taken on what is now known as the ordinance of 1784, this country would have been spared the bloody drama of the Civil War and the Negro race a half century of a cruel, degrading slavery.

A wonderful lesson there is for us all in the failure of this one man to do his duty. In this hour, I may say, of our peril, when the whole Christian world has its eyes upon him, when all of his faults are magnified and all his virtues depreciated, it becomes necessary for the humblest one among us to do his duty; to live a life that will be above suspicion and that will command the respect of all men.

Though the Continental Congress did pass a law in 1787 prohibiting slavery in the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio River, the friends of the Negro were not satisfied. They turned to the Constitutional Convention. Here was an august assembly of freemen, composed of the most illustrious statesmen, warriors and patriots of the new nation, presided over by the chieftain who had led its military force to victory. Surely, it was thought the black man would get justice from men who had just won their freedom from the usurpation of the British crown. He deserved to receive it. For, from the opening to the closing of the Revolutionary War, on many fields of strife and triumph, Negroes had fought the battles of the American Nation with a valor no less distinguished than that of their white brothers with whom they passed through that desperate struggle shoulder to shoulder. This is the cold fact of history.

The ill-luck that was with the Negro in the Congress of 1784, when his future was determined by the neglect of one man, followed him to the Constitutional Convention. Unfortunately, two powerful influences for freedom, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were not present. They were abroad representing their country at European Courts. The great commoner George Mason of Virginia pleaded for the slave, but in vain. And when slavery tacitly went into the Constitution, like a man and a freeman worthy of the name, he refused to sign it, and walked out of the Convention. He prophesied then that God would finally punish a national sin like slavery by a national calamity. And so He did. The Negro had been a brave soldier in the hour of his country’s peril; the Constitutional Convention virtually declared that he was only a chattel in time of his Country’s peace.

In the shadows of the expiring days of the eighteenth century an influence for the perpetuation of slavery came from a source least expected. Among other inventions of the period was the cotton gin. It rooted the institution into the very marrow of the political and industrial life of the young Republic. The north began to develop cotton manufactories. It grew lukewarm on the subject of the freedom of the Negro. In the south the slaves increased in value, and slavery took on a new life. From this time on it became darker in its shades of inhumanity and moral degradation. It finally reached a point in its cruelty not far removed from the horrors and terrors of the “Middle Passage.” It approached, indeed, that monstrous maxim which is said to have come from the nation’s Supreme Court—“A Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.”

But the star of hope had not completely vanished. Massachusetts had declared back in 1780 that no man could stand upon her soil and look upon the towering monuments erected to the memory of her illustrious sons who fell in defense of liberty, and be a slave. Her example was followed by other states, until in 1830 the last northern state freed its slaves.

And now a new crusade against slavery began. Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Patrick Henry and John Adams had passed away, but their mantles fell on worthy shoulders. There appeared upon the scene men whom God had raised up to create for the country a conscience that would eventually demand the overthrow of slavery. They appealed to the people and invoked their sovereignty as the greatest and most affective force in a democracy.

First came Benjamin Lundy, preaching with vigor and power a gradual emancipation. Contemporaneous with him was William Lloyd Garrison, the radical, demanding nothing less than the immediate and unconditional manumission of slaves. His heroic and undaunted spirit, his earnestness and his uncompromising attitude on the subject of slavery easily made him the leading force among abolitionists. Around and about him were gathered other men imbued with the same sublime and holy sentiments. There were the eloquent Phillips, John Brown, burning with zeal, the learned Sumner, the fearless Lovejoys, our own majestic Frederick Douglass with his tongue of flame, and others equally energetic and equally in earnest. God had given to these men the fires of genius. It took the cause of human liberty to arouse them from their slumbers. Great events make great men.

From 1850 to 1860 the country was all aflame with the slavery agitation. The institution itself was complete master in the halls of national legislation. It prostituted statesmen, and by the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court of the United States “clothed it with the ample garments of judicial respectability.” Three quarters of a century after the fathers of the country had met in Convention “for the purpose of forming a more perfect union,” the great evil slavery brought that union to the very verge of dissolution. The prophesy of Jefferson that slavery would be the rock on which the country would eventually split was fulfilled and the states were in the throes of a Civil War.

There are evils so vast and radical that nothing short of a bloody revolution can be found sufficient to extirpate them. So the eradication of the monstrous system that held four millions of human beings in bondage—a vast property estimated in value at from twelve to fifteen hundred million dollars—was accomplished only by a terrible, devastating war—the court of last resort. From it there was no appeal.