Then President Lincoln gave Governor Andrew of Massachusetts permission to raise two colored regiments. The day the news broke, Douglass came home waving his paper in the air. Anna’s face blanched. Up from the table rose her two sons, Lewis and Charles.
“We’ll be the first!” They dashed off to sign up. Young Frederic was in Buffalo that morning. When he got back, he heard where they had gone, and turned to follow them.
“Wait! Wait!” The mother’s cry was heartbroken.
His father too said, “Wait.” Then Douglass explained.
“This is only the first, my son. We’ll have other regiments. There will be many regiments before the war is won. We must recruit black men from every state in our country—South as well as North.” He looked at his tall son and sighed. “Unfortunately, I am known. I would be stopped before I could reach them in the South. Here is a job for some brave man.”
They faced each other calmly, father and son, and neither was afraid.
“I understand, sir. I will go!”
A few evenings later, before an overflow audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, Frederick Douglass delivered an address which may be placed beside Patrick Henry’s in Virginia. It appeared later in leading journals throughout the North and West under the caption “Men of Color, to Arms!”
“Action! Action, not criticism, is the plain duty of this hour. Words are now useful only as they stimulate to blows. The office of speech now is only to point out when, where, and how to strike to the best advantage.” This was Douglass the spellbinder, Douglass, who had lifted thousands cheering to their feet in England, Ireland, and Scotland. “From East to West, from North to South, the sky is written all over ‘Now or Never.’ Liberty won by white men alone would lose half its luster.... Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”
The applause swept across the country. White men read these words and were shamed in their prejudices; poor men read them and thanked God for Frederick Douglass; black men read them and hurried to recruiting offices.