American Slavery – Address by Mr F. Douglas

Extract A lecture was delivered in the Abbey Close U.P. Church, on Thursday night, by Mr Frederick Douglas, a gentleman of colour, from the United States, on slavery in that country, to a very large and respectable audience. Indeed, although the night was both cold and stormy, there was not a vacant seat in the church, the interest attaching to Mr Douglass’s alleged complicity in the outbreak in Virginia, at Harper’s Ferry, and his well remembered ability as a lecturer on American slavery, proving irrisistable attractions on the occasion … Mr DOUGLAS, who, on rising, was loudly cheered, said – I experience great pleasure in once more being privileged to stand before an audience in Paisley. There are pleasant associations about this place. I have pleasant recollections of the town in which I now am, and of the people to whom I am speaking. It is now nearly fourteen years since I stood before a Paisley audience, so the little boys and girls who were seven years of age then are twenty-one now, and I speak in some respects to another generation, although I am glad to see some here to-night who welcomed me here fourteen years ago. (Applause.) Although their locks may have become white, their hearts are still warm towards the oppressed and enslaved in another land, and they are here again to give me once more a welcome to Paisley – a welcome which not only gives joy to my heart, but which will give joy to the hearts of the downtrodden on the other side of the Atlantic, with the hope of “the good time” when the opinion of mankind will snap their fetters and allow them to go free. (Applause.)1 I have not the vanity to suppose that I can instruct a Paisley audience, or any other audience in Great Britain, on the principles of civil and religious liberty. I know where I am, and I know to whom I speak, and if there is any place more than another where freedom has found a home, it is in the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. I first came here as a fugitive. I was then in danger of being captured and sent back to bondage. I am here again – although purchased by British gold I am here again as a fugitive – flying not from one master, but from many masters – from a Government, which, although boasting of its liberty, would stretch forth its bony arm to snatch me into the jaws not of slavery, but of death. You are aware that my name has been associated with that of a man who has gone to the scaffold and suffered as a martyr for my enslaved people. In the United States I am charged with acquiescence or complicity in John Brown’s great scheme to deliver the slaves of Virginia and Maryland out of their bondage. I do not think it necessary to try to enlighten you on the abstract principles of liberty. With those abstract principles you are fully acquainted. I have no vain purpose of bringing you here to-night to disclose anything novel, and perhaps very little that is startling; I am here rather to stir up your minds to the remembrance of what you have already learned than to throw before you any new truths on the subject. Properly speaking there is no such thing as new and old truths. Error may be new or old – it had a beginning and must have an end – but truth is neither old nor new, like the great God from whose bosom it emanates, it is from everlasting to everlasting, and can never pass away. Man is born with a right to liberty. It entered into the very idea of his creation. It was his before he wanted it. The title-deed is inscribed upon all the powers and faculties of the human soul, and the record of it is with God; and until tyrants can scale the eternal throne and remove the Almighty, no agreement, no combination into which tyrants may enter can abrogate or destroy that right. It belongs to every man. The wonder is that there ever could have been two opinions about it. It is amazing men ever could have differed as to the rightfulness of liberty on the one hand, and as to the wrongfulness – the stupendous iniquity – of slavery on the other. As to complexion, one is none the more a man for being white, and another is none the less a man for being black. All possess the same elements of manhood – a head to think, and a heart to feel, and to be touched with the tale of a brother’s woe; and the blacks, like the whites, can rise through all the gradations of human condition, and of human progress, upwards from sublunary things to Heaven, from the earth to the skies, until they grasp the glorious idea of a God, in common with the rest of mankind. And thus is his right established. Is it not a wonder there ever were two opinions as to the rightfulness of liberty on the one hand, and of the wrongfulness and hell-black iniquity of slavery on the other? Slavery is directly contrary to every man’s sense of right and wrong. Now, we hold the American people are divided into two classes – antislavery men and pro-slavery men; and it has been well remarked it is fire which is wanted and not light. It is not so much an intelligent appreciation of principles as a disposition to be just and honest that we need to overthrow slavery. What is there in this question that it should be called a difficult one? The very dogs in old Scotland are capable of understanding the principles involved in it. (Laughter.) The ground of the anti-slavery movement is simply this, that every man is himself. That is all (Cheers.) That he belongs to himself. That his hands, and head, and legs are his own, and belong to nobody else, and that if he runs away on his own legs, nobody else has a right to find fault with him. Now, I think this is so simple, that any respectable Newfoundland dog might understand it. But this is taking the human view of the subject, while some of the American defenders of slavery tell us not to look at it from this human stand-point. The negro, they tell us has a black skin, woolly hair, flat nose, thick lips, and dull intellect, and that this is not applicable to him. Many Doctors of Divinity holding these ethics think slavery too bad to be human, but good enough to be divine. I have been accustomed to look up to God as the source of all excellence, and I reply to this, if there be anything good, if there be anything noble, if there be anything benevolent, and if there be anything of good report in us, it comes from the centre and source of all goodness alone, and it is, therefore, impossible that slavery can be divine. In order to ascertain whether slavery is divine, we have only to ascertain what slavery is, and what God says are his attributes. God never approves and sanctions anything unlike himself. Then if slavery be divine, it must be like God – it must correspond with his attributes. What then is slavery? You know what highway robbery is. You know what the highway robber is. He meets you at midnight, in a lonely place, and with a pistol at your head demands your purse or your life. That is highway robbery. What is slavery? Precisely the same. There is not a shadow of difference between the principle of highway robbery and the principle of slavery. Much as you value your purse, you value your life more. And what is the language of every slaveholder to his slave? “You shall give up your liberty or your life.” The chain, the whip, the bowie knife, the revolver, the rifle – all these instruments are used to keep the slave. He must give up his liberty or die. Every man has in his soul the love of liberty, ever urging him upwards and onwards, and when anything trammels him, he cries out for elbow room. No amount of food and clothing, or any other earthly good, will compensate for the want of liberty. Man loves liberty, and he can only be a responsible being when he has liberty. (Cheers.) It is said by some people, that the American slave is well treated, well fed, well clothed, and well taken care of, better even than the working men and working women of this country. That is the boast. What have I to say to this? In the first place, I have to say that it is impossible, on any large scale, that they can be contented and happy in the slave states. Men naturally love liberty, and loving liberty, they cannot but act, and move, and give evidence of discontent at being slaves. However treated, let them take away the chain, the whip, the blood-hound, the revolver, and the rifle, and the slave will walk out of his house of bondage at once. These are all needed to keep him in bondage, because he loves liberty. Mr Douglas then went on to show that the British travellers who formed such favourable opinions of slavery, only saw what the slaveholders pleased to exhibit to them, while they were dining at their tables, and dancing with their daughters, and that it was not likely they would be fools enough to call up their slaves to be whipped for the entertainment of their guests. In such circumstances, the slaveholders were put upon their good behaviour. It was maintained that the cruelties practised on the slave, were only the abuses of the system, but the slave had a right to liberty by virtue of his manhood, and was restless and discounted in proportion, as he was kindly treated. That was human nature. He became taller with every improvement of his condition, and the only way to produce a kind of contentment was to crush the slave and put out his intellectual eye. He next discussed the question how some of the planters got work out of their slaves without the use of the lash, and showed that it was by operating upon their affections, and threatening to sell them to others who would use them worse. He likewise replied to the argument, that a man would not use his slave badly, because it would lessen his value, by showing that the reasoning faculty of the slave, and his love of liberty, made him worse to manage than the horse. The man must be crushed, broken down, extinguished before he would be contented. When they showed him a contented slave, they would show him a man with the image and superscription of his Maker effaced from his soul, and the man gone. The whole aim of the slaveholders was to make the slaves work to them for nothing, and find themselves. He then made a severe attack upon the American clergymen who came over to this country, and made themselves the defenders and apologists of slavery, and urged that such men should not meet with the countenance which they received. As a specimen of this class he mentioned a Dr Pomroy,2 who being questioned as to how it happened amidst so much liberty, and religion, and revivals in the United States, there were four millions of slaves in the land, replied in the following strain: – “Well brother that is a very deplorable circumstance. (Laughter in consequence of the canting tone in which the words were uttered.) We do deplore slavery very much, but it is a question surrounded with very embarrassing difficulties and we must be pardoned if we say to you our transatlantic friends, that you do not understand this question. We should be left to deal with it ourselves.” (Cheers and laughter.) Although Americans talked in this way, they knew that the people of this country understood the question too well. After again urging that they should do all in their power to make slavery disreputable, he gave a long list of passages of Scripture, which were completely ignored in the Southern States, as bearing against slavery, while any number of sermons might be preached on the text, “servants obey your masters.” He cleverly and eloquently touched on a number of collateral topics, and concluded this part of his address, by saying, that as they loved all the elements of Christianity, they were bound to oppose slavery as an enemy to their christian name – as an enemy to religion – as an enemy to liberty – as an enemy to humanity – and as an enemy to the whole universe – which the whole universe should take arms to put down. (Loud applause.) Mr Douglas then gave an account of the insurrection at Harper’s Ferry. On the 15th of October, he said, John Brown and a handful of followers entered the place, containing about 3,000 inhabitants, and captured the arsenal which contained 80,000 stand of arms. He opened the prisons, and liberated for the time some three hundred slaves. They kept possession of the arsenal for thirty-six hours, when it was surrounded and captured by the United States troops, when John Brown had two sons shot, and his son-in-law and himself taken prisoners. He had since been tried, found guilty, and hanged, for having committed high treason against the state of Virginia. He did not regard what John Brown did as wrong in itself. The district of country in which the occurrence happened, was in a state of chronic insurrection. Slavery itself was an insurrection. Slaveholders were an armed band of insurgents, arrayed against the rights and liberties of their brother men. (Cheers.) John Brown only stepped in to put an end to that insurrection, and to show them that blows in such a state were to be taken as well as given – that the crushed worm might turn and sting them. He then argued that it was not as some said a mad enterprise, but that if John Brown had succeeded he would have ranked with Washington as a patriot, but as he failed, he was hanged as a rebel. He made a blunder in remaining several hours too long in the arsenal. His intention was to take to the chains of mountains which runs from Virginia down through North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. These mountains which contained a hundred Thermopylae’s3 were to form the base line of John Brown’s operations, and they were well suited for that purpose. After referring to the constancy and fortitude displayed by Brown; he maintained that in reality his sacrifice might lead to success greater than would have been accomplished, had his project for raising the slaves succeeded. He then narrated the circumstances of his own purchase for £150, by a subscription raised in this country, and alluded facetiously to the rise which must have taken place in his value, since Governor Wise,4 of Virginia, had offered a reward for him of 50,000 dollars. (A laugh.) He then mentioned a few facts, as proving, that the anti-slavery cause in America, was steadily, and rapidly progressing, and concluded by intimating, that he intended delivering an address on that part of his subject, in the same place, on Friday, next week. The lecturer spoke for two hours and a quarter, in a pleasing and sometimes eloquent manner, and was frequently loudly applauded.

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