Originally aired on February 06, 1998 - In part 180 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson examines the role Frederick Douglass played during the Civil War.
#180 – Frederick Douglass
No citizens gained more for the Civil War than black Americans. Many pioneers helped them towards those first halting steps of freedom. Standing head and shoulders above them all was a fugitive slave who had risen from bondage and established himself as one of the foremost orator editors of the entire abolition movement. His name, as any student of American history should know, was Frederick Douglass.
Born in Maryland in 1817, Douglass spent his first twenty-one years as a slave. He was fortunate to have a master kind enough to give him the basics of reading and writing. In 1837, Douglass fled his owner and headed north. With what he called, “luck, pluck and remarkable gifts”, he settled in Rochester, New York and published a newspaper entitled The North Star.
All the while, Douglass was working himself through the ranks of William Lloyd Garrison’s militant anti-slavery organization. By the 1850’s, Douglass was hailed as the most influential black leader of his day and a “living monument” who commanded respect as he sought to change society.
Douglass lectured throughout the North on behalf of emancipation and equal rights at a time when slavery was still firmly entrenched in America. He was also in appearance a huge man with hair slung back to his shoulders, full beard and blazing eyes. His deep voice had the sound of thunder.
One authority may have been correct when he said that, “Douglass reached the minds and hearts of white people more effectively than any other man of his race”. A sampling of his quotations attests to the depth of his thinking and the power of words.
When the specter of civil war appeared on the horizon Douglass thundered, “standing outside the pale of American humanity, denied citizenship, unable to call the land birth, my country, and longing for the end of the bondage of my people, I am ready for any political upheaval which should bring about a change in the existing condition of things.”
He violently opposed any last minute compromise with the South. “If the Union,” Douglass said, “can only be maintained by new concessions to the slave holders and a new drain on the Negro’s blood then let the Union perish.”
In 1862, Douglass urged President Lincoln to issue an Emancipation Proclamation. The ex-slave declared, “to fight against slave holders without fighting against slavery is but a half-hearted business and paralyzes the hands engaged in it. Fire must be met with water. War for the destruction of liberty must be met with war for the destruction of slavery.”
Lincoln issued such a proclamation, but Douglass was not satisfied. He had worked and hoped so long to see his people given freedom. Now they much be given the chance to demonstrate that they were worthy of the blessing. Douglass pled for free blacks to be enlisted as Union soldiers. There they would demonstrate that they had never been inferior beings. Douglass shouted, “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U. S., let him get an eagle on his button and a musket on his shoulder and there is no power on Earth which can deny that he has earned his right to citizenship.”
All of this came to pass. Some 180,000 blacks ultimately became soldiers for the Union cause. Their numbers and in many cases their sacrifices were instrumental in the ultimate victory for the North. Frederick Douglass witnessed that accomplishment. Until his death in 1895, he spoke and he wrote with thoughtfulness and eloquence. His tireless energies became his legacy. Douglass presented the greatest challenge to the American paradox of slavery and freedom. He as much as any one was responsible for eliminating one of those words from the American language.
