Though the Lincoln administration would resist emancipation for a time, the war would change because the " 'inexorable logic of events' will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery; and that it can never be effectively put down till one or the other of these vital forces is completely destroyed."29
For years, Douglass had dismissed colonization plans. He clung to his dreams of black people living free and equal in the United States, so whether white or black people advocated these schemes of a mass exodus, he did not accept them. However, in the months before war broke out, the prospects had been discouraging enough for him to begin entertaining notions of leaving America. When James Redpath, who had organized the Tremont Temple debacle, offered him a free trip on a steamer chartered by the Haitian Bureau to investigate whether his people's future might be more promising on this revolutionary island, Douglass justified the trip to his readers: "We propose to act in view of the settled fact that many of [the black population] are already resolved to look for homes beyond the boundaries of the United States."30
Douglass was unconvinced about emigration plans but was unabashedly elated to stand "upon the soil of San Domingo, the theater of many stirring events and heroic achievements, the work of a people, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh."31Over the years he had often spoken of the thirteen years of blood-soaked slave rebellion in Haiti that had ended in the creation of a free black republic. Behind the fearless leadership of men such as Toussaint L'Ouverture, the enslaved people battled their French oppressors from plantation to fiery plantation. By 1804, Haitians had won the right to rule their own country and determine their own destiny. The world had never before seen a slave uprising create a free nation. This uprising had long been an inspiration to Douglass's struggle in America, as it repudiated myths of black cowardice and ignorance. He wanted to experience a government administered by black people more than fifty years on from their revolution. If American blacks were to emigrate, at least Haiti's proximity to their native land would mean they remained "within hearing distance of the wails of our brothers and sisters in bonds."32Although emancipation had swept throughout Europe, slavery continued in the United States, Cuba, and Brazil. Haiti was the ultimate beacon of hopefulness.
Douglass had scheduled a six-to-eight-week trip for May with his daughter Rosetta and Ottilie Assing. The trio were to set sail to Port-au-Prince from New Haven, Connecticut, on April 25. But when war broke out at Fort Sumter on April 12, Douglass faced a monumental decision. With the war at hand, could he afford to lose writing and speaking time by being abroad? Could this conflict eventually create an everlasting home for his people in a form he could only dimly envision? What kind of message would it send if Douglass left America now, instead of springing into advocacy for an abolition war?
When readers opened their May edition of Douglass Monthly, it was bewildering. On its opening pages was a detailed review of Douglass's journey to Haiti, shocking enough since he had not previously mentioned the trip and had been such an avid colonization foe. Douglass topped his personal bombshell with the news of real bombshells falling upon Fort Sumter. And in the last paragraphs of the paper, in type set at the last moment, he announced the cancellation of his trip.
Douglass reported, "The last ten days have made a tremendous revolution in all things pertaining to the possible future of colored people in the United States." He vowed that he would "stay here and watch the current events and serve the cause of freedom and humanity in any way that shall be open to use during the struggle now going on between the slave power and government." He predicted that while northerners were confident of a quick and easy war, they would soon become better acquainted with the barbarity of slaveholders. He predicted, "The revolution through which we are passing is an excellent instructor." Once that happened, "they may be willing to make war upon [slavery], and in that case we stand ready to lend a hand in any way we can be of service. At any rate, this is not time for us to leave the country."33
As tempting as the trip to free Haiti appeared, in the end it was impossible for him to tear himself away from a conflict that had the potential to make freedom real. Douglass would give America one more chance. Whether the nation would fulfill his long-deferred dreams or break his toughened heart was another question. At any rate, his decision was clear: He would hope again.
On the first day of May, Douglass wrote to a friend of his twenty-year activist career: "The clouds and darkness which surrounded its morning— and which have brooded over it most of the way—seem now disappearing in the opening prospects of my long enslaved people . . . We have drifted into the deep current of Eternal Laws—and must be carried where they lead."34
CHAPTER 6
Remorseless Struggle
Fighting had hardly begun when Douglass published heroic accounts of black soldiers in the American Revolution and the War of 1812 in the May 1861 issue of Douglass'Monthly. His message was unmistakable: LET THE SLAVES AND FREE COLORED PEOPLE BE CALLED INTO SERVICE AND FORMED INTO A LIBERATING ARMY.1
Realizing intense racism would make the prospect of free black men in blue a daunting sell, the editor began the long appeal to northern whites to think of their own welfare, to be practical about how to win this war they had stumbled into and must somehow finish. He did not share the widely held belief that the war would be quick, with a symbolic battle or two to teach the secessionists that they could achieve their goals politically. (Many Union politicians were anxious to pacify the new Confederacy once war had been tasted and found unpalatable.) Arming blacks in the South who were newly freed by Union soldiers would instantly rob the Confederacy of its chief labor source—each freed slave was one less worker for Jefferson Davis, and each gun in the hand of a black soldier further increased the Union odds. To resist this logic was senseless: "We are still hugging the delusion that we can crush out treason without hurting the traitors."2
Douglass wrote of Union generals who, in infuriating contrast to this logic, turned fugitive slaves away from their lines, thus depriving themselves of crucial intelligence sources. He predicted the physical result would be a land drenched in blood, as the enslaved would awake from a long stupor with prodigious force. The old vision of John Brown still tugged at Douglass, who was captivated by the enticing notion of free black regiments marching into the heart of the South with a stunning effect on its morale.
He was by no means the only black man wanting to fight in this war. Black men met and passed resolutions offering to fight for their country in cities such as Boston, Providence, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, New York, and Washington. In Philadelphia, men began drilling outside of their Masonic Hall.3Wherever the volunteer offers came from, the Lincoln administration was fierce and unrelenting in response: Their services were not needed or desired.
Meanwhile, the Confederacy was not so blind and took full advantage of their vast pool of enslaved labor, with every worker freeing up a white southern man to fight. The Memphis Avalanche reported, "Upwards of 1,000 negroes, armed with spades and pickaxes, have passed through the city within the past few days."4The rebels need not send them to battle, but the Confederacy was making use of their black population to do manual labor in a way that the North refused to do. Douglass knew this would be the case when he wrote in June, "The very stomach of this rebellion is the negro in the condition of a slave. The negro is the key of the situation—the pivot upon which the whole rebellion turns."5
The North was very far from understanding this pivot, but unfortunately it was not the only problem going unaddressed. Douglass used his unquestionable knowledge of the psychology of the enslaved (as well as those who had wrenched themselves free of it) to assert that if the North did not offer slaves their freedom, give them something to entice them, they would numbly continue to serve their masters and that government. In the first months of the war, he made a case that he would repeat to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in two years: "Who can blame them? They are
men, and like men governed by their interests . . . capable of love and hate. They can be friends, and they can be foes."6The current policy was making them foes, when they could be inestimably valuable friends.
Douglass believed that to alter this policy, the Lincoln administration needed to be swayed in any way possible. It required more antislavery meetings, abolition agents, editorials, and personal letters, and a mountain of labor for himself. Most of all, in this time before any battles had been fought, Douglass hoped that Lincoln would learn to assert himself and develop the kind of inflexible firmness associated with such presidents as Andrew Jackson.7Lincoln, wholly inexperienced in government organization, military knowledge, and diplomatic expertise, somehow had to exercise the authority to forcefully remind the South that he was still the lawfully elected president, that their claims of creating a new nation were false, and that the United States was in a state of fractious rebellion, not dissolution.
To that end, Lincoln was pushing General Irving McDowell and the un-proven Union army to engage the equally unproven Confederate forces. Everyone was anxious for action. As Douglass wrote at the beginning of July, "The war has made little progress, physical or moral."8At last, the Union army departed Washington on July 16, intent on engaging and quickly snuffing out the rebellion. Their path intersected with the Confederate army at Manassas Junction, next to Bull Run creek, twenty-five miles south of Washington, close enough so that politicians and other prominent Washingtonians traveled down and set up picnic parties for what they believed to be the first and last battle of this war. In the heat of July 21, the killing commenced.
Union forces were close to breaking through the Confederate flank on the lush green Henry House Hill, but an eccentric Virginia Military Academy professor named Thomas Jackson arrested their progress, earning the nickname "Stonewall" for his stand. J. E. B. Stuart, a dashing cavalry dragoon in a purple-plumed hat, and his men charged out of the woods at the perfect time, running into the jammed-in Union army and slicing their way through northern companies outfitted in their distinctive blue and white Zouave uniforms. The rout was on. The North's lack of military discipline was dangerously apparent as its ranks gave way to bloody chaos. The federal army did not formally regroup until back in the District of Columbia, with many men retreating at a run, never stopping until they saw the sight of the Capitol. The fantasy of an undemanding war was over. Douglass hoped that this shock of losing would not lure back "the dark shadow of compromise."9
In a panicked Washington overrun by shaken soldiers, the next day the House of Representatives passed a resolution stating that ending existing southern institutions was not the goal of this war. The conflict, they said, was only to preserve the Union and the Constitution. The Senate passed a parallel measure three days later. They were making it clear to both sides that the war was not over the eradication of slavery.
If the country could achieve peace, it would because they had "bound up the fate of the Republic and that of the slave in the same bundle, and the one and the other must survive or perish together," Douglass had written in May 1861. Slavery was a national affliction shackling both races: "The Republic has put one end of the chain upon the ankle of the bondman, and the other end about its own neck." In effect, both races needed emancipation to truly be free.10
Months later, with the war going badly, and with frustration growing in the North, Douglass would still claim, "No President, no Cabinet, no army can withstand the mighty current of events."11His message was consistent. Slavery caused this war, so it must end with the destruction of the cruel custom, otherwise the war would end in true defeat. There was no alternative, and it was fanciful to think otherwise.
Since Douglass's early assessments of how the war would play out proved so accurate, it is difficult today to understand how radical and unpopular these ideas were, though the incident at Tremont Temple indicates the reality Douglass faced. Prejudice toward blacks twisted views of the conflict in powerful ways. Astonishingly, the New York Times wrote that the war would be occurring even if there were not a slave in America because "The issue is between anarchy and order,—between Government and lawlessness,—between the authority of the Constitution and reckless will of those who seek its destruction." National Intelligencer echoed this sentiment with these stark words: "The existing war has no direct relation to slavery."12
In 1861, the notion of black men fighting in the war was laughable. The New York Times mockingly proposed "to Jeff. Davis that if he will rendezvous the whole of his black warriors somewhere on the coast of South Carolina, they will be delighted to meet them and him there, on any day he may name—he to general the black revolutionary cohorts, and Fred. Hannibal Douglass to lead the enemy." Such sallies would seem not just shortsighted in two years, but foolhardy from any sound strategic view. The North would find "black warriors" to be a necessity in victory, and Douglass would be a leader in recruiting them.13
Northerners were surprised and uneasy that European governments expressed little support for their cause, indicating the possibility of foreign recognition or even military support for the Confederacy. This would be a disaster for the Union. Douglass believed that the key to holding off foreign recognition of the Confederacy lay with the slavery issue. If the North could find the will to declare that they were fighting to expand freedom, other nations would then support them. As things stood, foreign governments saw the war as having no overarching moral dimension, as just the battling of states in conflict, a matter they cared little about (although the South did hold the trump card of King Cotton on their side). These nations needed some sort of well-defined differentiation of the North's goals from those of the slave-holding South.
Douglass, having been in Britain for five months in the previous year, knew that European countries were unclear as to what was driving the North in this war. He explained, "A lukewarm cause deserves only a lukewarm sympathy. When we deserve more, we shall receive more." Douglass believed a government indifferent to the malevolence of slavery would not attract allies, for "that attitude deprives us of the moral support of the world." His words were rather like Lincoln's from seven years earlier, speaking about slavery to a Peoria crowd, "I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world." The North was now blindly squandering its own "just influence" and paying the price.14
As a new president overwhelmed at the complexity of his task, Lincoln, of course, saw his way forward very differently. In his assessment, the possibility of foreign powers recognizing the Confederacy was a problem that could be dealt with as the war moved on, but there was one absolute pressing imperative that made Congress's recent vote on war goals compatible with his views. Every day, Lincoln was engaged with a delicate political balancing act to keep border states such as Kentucky, Tennessee, and most of all, Maryland in the Union. He felt the war was winnable (he hoped) with the states aligned as they were, but the loss of any of the border states tipped the equation and the war became an exercise in futility. Douglass never accepted this logic or this imperative, and he steadfastly advised, "Make this an abolition war, and you at once unite the world against the rebels."15Political leaders in Europe, who were inclined to favor the South since it served to weaken America in the play of world events, would have a difficult time justifying their opposition to that.
Lincoln, on the way to the White House, had declared at Independence Hall in Philadelphia that he "never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence . . . It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance."16 Douglass too turned to the Declaration for inspiration. The guarantee to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" was something that he believed outweighed any legal backing America had subsequently bequeathed slavery. Douglass asked the government to "unsheathe the sword to make this truth the law of the land to all its inhabitants and it will then deserve,
and will receive the cordial and earnest sympathy of the lovers of liberty throughout the world."17
On August 6, a law passed both houses of Congress calling for the confiscation of property used "in aid of the rebellion." This little remembered statute was important because it started the long train of steps to the adoption in 1865 of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution freeing all slaves. Perhaps the reason it is so overlooked is that the so-called Confiscation Act concerned not property at all, but human beings. Even abolitionist-leaning members of Congress were hamstrung by fierce resistance to the conflict being tied in any way to slavery, so the law dealt with the increasing tide of blacks freeing themselves and fleeing into Union lines in terms that their former owners would have recognized—as property. Still, for radical senators and representatives, this was an important first step in coping with the hundreds (and as the war continued, thousands) of black people that the Confederacy was depending on to assist the rebellion. The Confiscation Act was enacted in a vacuum of leadership from the Lincoln administration, which was choosing to let individual Union generals on the ground deal with the problem as they wished. These same politicians would play an important role in goading Lincoln forward, as they possessed legislative powers that agitators such as Douglass did not.
The Radical Republicans (labeled Jacobins by Lincoln's secretary John Hay) were actually a fairly diverse group, many of whom came to their convictions not through devotion to abolitionism but to a free-soil ideology aimed at the economic advancement of white men. Thus, many of the radicals, though they pushed hard at Lincoln's perceived slowness, in fact did not share Douglass's views on black equality. One of slavery's strongest foes, Senator Benjamin F. Wade, a mercurial Ohioan whose temper made him always willing to duel for his honor, swore that if the war "continues thirty years and bankrupts the whole nation, I hope to God there will be no peace until we can say there is not a slave in this land." Yet, like President Lincoln, Wade was also a firm proponent of colonizing black Americans out of the country. Even as he worked for emancipation, he hoped "to hear no more about Negro equality or anything of that kind. Sir, we shall be as glad to rid ourselves of these people, if we can do it consistently with justice, as anybody else."18
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