“John Brown and Abraham Lincoln!” He lay awake at night linking the two names. Time seemed endless.
Yet it was only the latter part of June when President Johnson made Benjamin F. Perry, former member of the Confederate legislature, the Provisional Governor of South Carolina. Perry promptly put things back the way they had been “before Lincoln.” He conferred suffrage upon all citizens who had been legal voters prior to Secession. He called for an election by these people of delegates to a Constitutional Convention to be held in September. In his opening address as Provisional Governor, the Honorable Mr. Perry stated his platform very clearly. “This is a white man’s government, and intended for white men only.”
Horace Greeley reported the facts in the Tribune together with a grim editorial.
Douglass shook with rage. His anger was directed not at the Southern Provisional Governor but at the man who now sat in Abraham Lincoln’s place. For a moment his hate for Andrew Johnson consumed every rational thought. Then his mind began to clear—to race, to leap forward. The moment broke his lethargy.
“John Brown and Lincoln—yes!” He spoke aloud. “But I’m living. I am still here!” He struck the desk with his fist. “And by God we’ll fight!”
Then, seizing his pen, he swept aside the papers that had been gathering dust, and on a clean white page he began to write.
“The liberties of the American people are dependent upon the ballot-box, the jury box and the cartridge box.... Freedmen must have the ballot if they would retain their freedom!”
His words sounded across the country. In many instances they filled people, already worn out and war-weary, with dismay. The ballot was such a vast advance beyond the former objects proclaimed by the friends of the colored race that it struck men as preposterous and wholly inadmissible. Antislavery men were far from united as to the wisdom of Douglass’ stand. At first William Lloyd Garrison was not ready to join in the idea, but he was soon found on the right side. As Douglass said of him, “A man’s head will not long remain wrong, when his heart is right.”
But if at first Garrison thought it was too much to ask, Wendell Phillips saw not only the justice, but the wisdom and necessity, of the measure.
“I shall never leave the Negro until, so far as God gives me the power, I achieve [absolute equality before the law—absolute civil equality],” he thundered from his pulpit.