On the other hand, there were dedicated men like Representative Thad-deus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner, each of whom had long fought for racial equality. Sumner had grown up living among the free black community of Boston on the back slope of Beacon Hill, and had teamed with black attorney Robert Morris to argue the first school desegregation case, Roberts v.the City of Boston. A humorless dandy of cosmopolitan tastes and acute intellect, Sumner was relentless, fearless, and did not mind causing offense. He was sometimes called, in his reckless and determined abolitionism, the "John Brown of Congress." Of Sumner, Douglass said, "none has uttered the feelings of the black man so well; none have hurled at slavery such a succession of moral thunderbolts as he."19He hurled many such thunderbolts at Lincoln, serving as a conscience and a goad. After the disaster at Bull Run, Sumner spent until midnight at the White House trying to convince Lincoln that it was time for full emancipation, that he had been advised by John Quincy Adams that in these war circumstances, the power to do so was his. Lincoln did not agree, but Sumner would be back. While delivering a eulogy for Senator Edward Baker, a friend of Lincoln killed at the battle of Ball's Bluff, Sumner used the joint session of the Senate and House to assail slavery. He looked right at Lincoln when he named slavery as the murderer of Lincoln's late friend. Lincoln stared back stonily. Yet the two men, as different as they were, developed an odd sort of friendship and mutual respect.20
Senator Charles Sumner
After the defeat at Bull Run, during the doldrums of the summer of 1861, it was difficult for abolitionists like Douglass and Sumner to see any prospects for improvement. Douglass did not know how to write about this event without giving comfort to the rebels, but it was impossible to deny things were not going well. He urged his readers to pressure the government "through the press, by petitions, by letters, by personal representations, and in every way, in a manner to convince it that the people of this great Republic are ready" for emancipation. Douglass demonstrated his grasp of presidential legal history, noting John Quincy Adams's theory that the government could abolish slavery as a war measure during a time of conflict. He believed this to be all the justification needed for Lincoln to take the great step. Indeed, it was this same point that Charles Sumner hammered away at with Lincoln, to no avail.21
At times Douglass felt beside himself, speaking to a nation in such painfully obvious denial. He kept hearing a national refrain that this was not a war about slavery; it was a "sectional war." What qualities about these two sections would produce war, Douglass wondered? Not the two languages, climate, or soils, "not a quarrel between cotton and corn—between live oak and live stock." In fact, "There is nothing existing between them to prevent national concord and enjoyment of the profoundest peace, but the existence of slavery." If they were going to wage war against the South, why not eliminate the only thing that truly divided them? So he pushed on to "make the Government and people an abolition Government and abolition people."22
Douglass poured his frustration into a letter to Rev. Samuel J. May. It was as though the government was convinced that "no good shall come to the Negro from this war." Why was a slaveholder bearing arms against the government treated better than a slave? Not closed to optimism, he still confessed "that it seems much like hoping against hope." He would keep waiting, but "Whenever the government is ready to make the war, a war for freedom and progress and will receive the service of black men on the same terms upon which it receives that of other men I pledge myself to do one man's work in supplying the Government."23This pledge would come to pass, though in ways he could not have imagined in the first months of war.
On the day Douglass wrote this letter, August 30, one general in the field was at last taking action to change the tone and tenor of the war. General John Fremont issued an order declaring martial law in Missouri, and then declaring slaves owned by disloyal citizens free. Fremont was a household name because his western odysseys before the Civil War had captivated America's imagination. Fremont had a gift for translating the unbounded, previously unexplored beauty of the West onto maps, and these heroic exploits catapulted a man whose surveying skills exceeded his political ones into the Republican nomination for president in 1856. Four years before Lincoln's election, the country had not been ready for a party hostile to slavery's extension to win the White House. Now Fremont the Pathfinder was leaping far ahead of Lincoln's policies by conferring freedom to slaves in a crucial border state, and the president was ashen when he heard the news. This radical move was the last thing his border state policy needed. However, in Rochester, Douglass shouted for joy when he read the proclamation. He elatedly believed that the Pathfinder had found a trail to victory in this war, striking right at the rebellion's heart.24
Lincoln responded quickly, telling Fremont that his actions "will alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky." The vision of his birth state seceding and raising arms against the Union was of continual torment to Lincoln. Fremont responded that Lincoln of course could overrule him, but he would not modify his order because "it would imply that I myself thought it wrong."25
Fremont's wife, Jessie, as bright as she was outspoken, met with Lincoln in a late night meeting to plead her husband's case. According to her, Lincoln coldly responded, "It was a war for a great national idea, the Union and . . . General Fremont should not have dragged the Negro into it." Lincoln felt he had no choice but to officially withdraw the order, not only because it so frightened the border states, but because he realized a new president must maintain control of his prerogatives and policies. He could not have his generals seizing the initiative.26
Douglass's resentment of Abraham Lincoln was growing. In disgust, Douglass described "the weakness, imbecility and absurdity of this policy . . ." Fremont's proclamation had been another test that Lincoln failed, as the lawyer inside him outweighed the warrior. When Douglass heard that Lincoln was considering relieving Fremont of duty, he thought the idea suicidal for the war effort, and that Lincoln only contemplated it because a much bolder man was threatening Lincoln's ambition. The Radical Republicans in Washington were irate; Douglass predicted, "In three years more the people will call for the man and his principles to end this war! and then they will sanction the death of slavery in the man of their choice." The comment would prove to be half-right.27
Regardless of what Lincoln did to Fremont, the issue of slavery was not going away. More than any politician, general, or activist, the slaves were themselves forcing the issue. Wherever the Union forces moved into southern territory, their advancing lines made closer and more attractive the prospect of freedom. It was almost as if the Promised Land was coming to them, the fabled North Star steering their way. Though such an exodus made perfect sense to the slaves, the North seemed unprepared for them to flood military lines. If Lincoln was determined to keep slavery out of this war, the message had not reached these travelers.
The fat, pugnacious General Benjamin Butler had dealt with this question of what to do with them by classifying them, innovatively, as war's "contraband." It was a racist, but clever, way to deal with a contentious issue, as those who opposed emancipation liked a term that continued to keep blacks labeled as property, even as those who favored freedom knew it was, in fact, a significant softening toward an emerging reality of emancipation. After all, who would not be in favor of taking away valuable property of an enemy? Moreover, the offensive phrase held practical value for abolitionists, helping to shift the prior policies of many Union generals who had cheerfully sent slaves by the hundreds back to their masters in the first months of the war. With decidedly mixed feelings, Douglass parodied the ridiculousness of it all by telling the story of an escaped black man in Clarksville, Tennessee, whose owner found him within Union lines and accused him of stealing a horse to aid his getaway. A federal officer responded, "I don't see how that can be. One piece of property steal another?"28
As the fall began, Douglass imagined a
scenario: "If persons so humble as we could be allowed to speak to the President of the United States, we should ask him if this dark and terrible hour of the nation's extremity is a time for consulting a mere vulgar and unnatural prejudice." The article shows no sign that Douglass actually believed a meeting like this could ever occur. In his fantasy, Douglass said he would tell Lincoln of black soldiers who fought alongside General Jackson at New Orleans and how Jackson, cruel as he could be, did not deny their bravery. He wanted to enlighten the president on the black man's service in the Revolutionary War, or of the bravery of men like Nat Turner who struck at slavery without regard for their own life. In unmistakable terms, he wanted to tell the president what Douglass was proclaiming in all his public addresses, that "this is no time to fight only with your white hand, and allow your black hand to remain tied." No one had greater motivation to fight slaveholders than those they enslaved. Douglass asked, "Is he not a man? Can he not wield a sword, bear a gun, march and countermarch, and obey orders like any other?"29
If Douglass needed a reminder about his status for some in America, he received it in Syracuse, New York. He was slated to give a lecture entitled "The Rebellion, its Cause and Remedy" at Wieting Hall on Thursday and Friday, November 14 and 15, 1861. During the week, residents saw a handbill posted around the town. The title was "Nigger Fred Coming." It warned citizens of the upcoming lecture and asked, "Shall his vile sentiments again be tolerated in this community by a constitutional-liberty loving people? or shall we give him a warm reception at this time, for his insolence, as he deserves?" The writer made clear what they wanted done to this "coward and traitor," galvanizing antiabolitionists to "Rally, then, one and all, and drive him from our city!"30
The city was on edge in the hours leading up to Douglass's lecture. Violent mob action was on Syracuse's mind. Mayor Charles Andrews, a Republican, busied himself with preparations to see that a repeat of the Tremont Temple disaster would not happen in his city. He was serious enough to allocate $300 for the task. He organized the regular police and appointed a fifty-man special force for the occasion. The county sheriff and his resources joined in the efforts and those training troops at nearby Camp Munro assembled their men to take action sooner than the new soldiers would have thought. The owner of the hall refused to be frightened into canceling the lecture.31
When Douglass arrived at the hall to speak, he was stunned at the sight of a double guard of soldiers at each entrance. In fact, they had been there since late afternoon, standing with bayonets fixed. When it was time for Douglass to rise, Mayor Andrews locked arms with him and walked him to the podium, while soldiers presented themselves in the hall led by a particularly overweight major. The conservative Syracuse Daily Courier and Union railed against the Republican show of force that "beggaredail description—all to protect a negro from 'mob-violence,' fill the house with people, Fred's pockets with ten cent pieces, (at the expense of the city Government!)." They added that every disloyal Douglass speech was worth a thousand men toward the Confederate cause.32
For Douglass, the lead-up to his speech felt all too reminiscent of the previous December's speech in Boston. Yet he walked away from this event heartened, because this time those around him defended his right to speak. The effort that this mayor had taken to shield him was a promising sign in troubling times.
Some still hated and feared Douglass, but others were increasingly offering support and protection. Douglass's schedule of lecturing picked up, and he pressed his message wherever he could. He battled through frequent colds as he continued to suffer from chronic bronchitis. As his British friend Rosine Draz reminded him, "Do take care of your health. Do not use your voice when your chest is weak." Draz, his most active English correspondent, knew Douglass pushed hard into his work reframing this war because he believed in the cause, but she also believed that if he paused, his grief from Annie's death would threaten to overwhelm him again.33
As much as possible, Douglass focused on his work. In the Monthly, he printed a letter supporting full and immediate emancipation that he implored supporters to sign and mail to Congress, and petitions that he directed abolitionists to take from house to house to accumulate signatures. He hoped these letters and petitions would arrive in congressional offices "in such numbers, and in such arguments, as to leave no room for the Government to escape from the great work of liberation."34
A year to the day, Douglass was back on the same Tremont Temple stage where he had last done battle with words and fists. It was bitter December in Boston. Making a speech on the anniversary of such an ignominious occasion was in itself a statement of defiance for Douglass. But surprisingly, the speech he prepared did not remotely resemble the themes he had spoken of last year. His lecture was on the emerging art form of photography.
The lecture series, known as the "Fraternity Course," had featured some of the greatest minds in America—Emerson, Beecher, Phillips, and Sumner. Douglass's insecurity speaking on such a topic was evident immediately, as he professed that this type of address was hardly his area of expertise. With uncertainty in his voice, he began tracing the history of the captured image, this new art and its innovators. It had been only twenty-five years ago that Da-guerre had first manipulated light to record pictures, and now this advance was being practiced all over the globe. Douglass was having a hard time focusing the speech, drifting into philosophical ramblings on the femininity of photographical subjects to the medium's impact on politics, religion, and art. He theorized, "The whole soul of man is a sort of picture gallery." He wondered if photographs make their subject less or more glorious. Douglass seemed to lack a unifying theme for his thoughts.
Douglass had been speaking for the better part of an hour and was failing miserably. One correspondent in attendance thought that at this point the speech was "near being a total failure." Expounding on how a young Shakespearean character might look in a picture, he seemed to have a moment of realization about why he was really here. Then, his sense of mission took over.
With a sharp oratorical turn, he gave up photography and took the speech in an utterly different direction. For an overflowing crowd of such distinction and power, the images of Daguerre seemed trifling in comparison to the usual themes Douglass knew and cared about, victory and freedom. Douglass recovered the power and passion audiences knew him for, painting his own picture of a country where "every pillar in our great national temple is shaken . . . War and blood have burst forth with savage ferocity among brothers." He was setting up the message he infused into every issue of his paper. It was not sectionalism destroying the United States but something infinitely worse: "We have attempted to maintain a union in defiance of the moral chemistry of the universe."
His audience awakened, ready to engage the mercurial speaker. "We are striking with our white hand, while our black one is chained behind us." Proclaiming that the government must recruit black men to win this war, the country was now "catching slaves instead of arming them." With a growing rhetorical cadence, Douglass alleged, "We are endeavoring to heal over the rotten cancer, instead of cutting out its death dealing roots and fibers." He told the assembly he wanted to fight, now, but could only go to war as an officer's servant.
Then he recalled the events of the year before, the cries of hatred, the streets that were blocked, the doors shut to black men fleeing their assailants. Those firebrands had called for his blood, but he asked, where was that mob tonight? Bostonians and many across the North were starting to understand, "Nothing stands today where it stood yesterday. The choice which life presents, is ever more, between growth and decay, perfection and deterioration. There is no standing still, nor can be. Advance or recede, occupy or give place." The nation was heading toward final freedom for his people. He finished by linking this back to technological innovation. He endeavored to tie two virtually disparate speeches together, explaining that photography and ending slavery were both part of humanity's progress, their never-ending journey toward something better.
; As Douglass stepped down from the dais, the crowd gave a powerful and enthusiastic ovation. For a second year, Douglass had saved himself in Tremont Temple.35
The year 1861 had been painful for Douglass. Three days before Christmas, he wrote to Gerrit Smith about "our rotten government." He found himself "bewildered by the spectacle of moral blindness infatuation and helpless imbecility which the Government of Lincoln presents. Is there no hope?"36The president's first Annual Message to the Congress (a tradition that later evolved into the State of the Union address) was another dagger to his hopes, as Lincoln wrote at length about sending blacks "at some place, or places, in a climate congenial to them."37Almost worse than realizing that this idea that echoed Henry Clay's old notion to colonize the black population was still alive in the war atmosphere was the new president's stated determination that, however he prosecuted this conflict, he was determined to keep it from degenerating "into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle."38Then what was this? If not a "revolutionary struggle," then was this a deadly crisis without a moral center? Douglass had not gone to Haiti because his belief that America could redeem itself was alive again. Now what?
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