“My name’s James Hunnicut and I’m from South Carolina,” he said. A mother hushed her child with a sharp hiss. The dark faces were suddenly cautious. The young man went on.
“This is a happy birthday for you—a day to be remembered with great joy.” He waited until the fervent “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” had died away. He took a step forward and his voice grew taut.
“But now each time you come together I urge you to look into the future.”
Then in simple words that all could understand he talked to them of what it meant to be a citizen. He explained the machinery of government. He told them they must register and vote in the fall elections. Some of the men grew tense. They had discussed plans. To others it was new, and all leaned forward eagerly.
“When you are organized,” he said, “help to elect a loyal governor and loyal congressmen. Do not vote for men who opposed your liberty—no matter what they say now. Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouths shut. Educate yourselves—and go to the ballot boxes with your votes tight in your hands!”
The young folks cheered him with a kind of madness. But some of the older ones shook their heads.
A week after this happened, Frederick Douglass, on his way to Chicago, found that he could stop off at Galesburg, Illinois, in time for a local emancipation mass meeting. Galesburg was known as an Abolitionists’ town. In the town’s old Dunn Hall they had hauled up the biggest guns of the 1860 campaign. The county had gone almost solid for Abraham Lincoln, though the Hall had given its greatest ovation to one of the stoutest advocates of Stephen A. Douglas. The speaker had been Robert Ingersoll, a young man from Peoria. Now seven years later, when they planned to celebrate emancipation, the Negroes asked Robert Ingersoll to deliver the main address. Douglass had been wanting to hear Ingersoll for a year.
“On one of the frostiest and coldest nights I ever experienced,” Douglass wrote, “I delivered a lecture in the town of Elmwood, Illinois, twenty miles from Peoria. It was one of those bleak and flinty nights, when prairie winds pierce like needles, and a step on the snow sounds like a file on the steel teeth of a saw. My next appointment after Elmwood was on Monday night, and in order to reach it in time, it was necessary to go to Peoria the night previous, so as to take an early morning train. I could only accomplish this by leaving Elmwood after my lecture at midnight, for there was no Sunday train. So a little before the hour at which my train was expected at Elmwood, I started for the station with my friend Mr. Brown. On the way I said to him, ‘I’m going to Peoria with something like a real dread of the place. I expect to be compelled to walk the streets of that city all night to keep from freezing.’ I told him that the last time I was there I could obtain no shelter at any hotel and I knew no one in the city. Mr. Brown was visibly affected by the statement and for some time was silent. At last, as if suddenly discovering a way out of a painful situation, he said, ‘I know a man in Peoria, should the hotels be closed against you there, who would gladly open his doors to you—a man who will receive you at any hour of the night, and in any weather, and that man is Robert G. Ingersoll.’ ‘Why,’ said I, ‘it would not do to disturb a family at such a time as I shall arrive there, on a night so cold as this.’ ‘No matter about the hour,’ he said; ‘neither he nor his family would be happy if they thought you were shelterless on such a night. I know Mr. Ingersoll, and that he will be glad to welcome you at midnight or at cockcrow.’ I became much interested by this description of Mr. Ingersoll. Fortunately I had no occasion for disturbing him or his family that night. I did find quarters for the night at the best hotel in the city.”[27]
He had left Peoria the next morning. But his desire to meet the Peoria lawyer had increased with the passing months—not the least because he usually heard him referred to as “the infidel.”
The train was late pulling into Galesburg. Douglass took a cab at the station and was driven directly to Dunn’s Hall. The place was jammed with people, and the meeting well under way. Douglass saw that the crowd was largely colored. That meant a lot of them had come a long distance. Among so many strangers he hoped to get in without attracting attention.