In contrast to Griffiths Crofts, H. Ford Douglas, a black male abolitionist, well understood Douglass's inclinations. He agreed with Douglass that black soldiers—not the Emancipation Proclamation—would be the only thing that could put an end to Lincoln's colonization impulses. Ford Douglas knew that white America doubted black men would fight. He told his friend that he was in the most prominent position to prove this assertion wrong. As the most famous black American, there was real pressure on Douglass to wear the uniform.5
Many white people found the idea of black men fighting both offensive and unrealistic. The National Intelligencer argued that black people were too clumsy to handle guns. If there were to be black soldiers, they recommended arming them with pikes. The widely read Harper's Weekly thought the idea unworthy of a civilized or Christian nation. The Dubuque Times thought it to be an insane and cowardly concession of the North's weakness. Border state politicians predicted that it would lead to the rape and killing of hundreds of white women throughout the country. Even in Douglass's hometown, the opposition was vocal. The Union and Advertiser told citizens to disregard "whatever Fred. Douglass may say about this matter." They thought it impossible for black men to win in a fight with white southerners and, in any case, doubted that Douglass could possibly raise such a regiment.6
Abraham Lincoln had been one of the severest critics of using blacks as soldiers just six months ago. In August he had told a delegation that "if we were to arm [the Negros], I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels." Now some profound change was happening. Lincoln's pragmatism began to outweigh his previous sentiments, as he found applying this previously unused element toward victory indispensable. In March 1863, he wrote Tennessee governor Andrew Johnson, "The bare sight of fifty thousand armed and drilled black soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once."7Regardless of policy changes, Lincoln's earlier dismissive words would have stung Douglass, and probably led Douglass to plead at Cooper Union in New York City on February 6, "Give them a chance! Give them a chance. I don't say they are great fighters. I don't say they will fight better than other men. All I say is, give them a chance."8
Douglass's radical abolitionist allies had also been pushing for black troops on the ground, and none more so than Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, who, like Douglass, had cried out in 1861 that the Union must "carry Africa into the war." Though he had unusual sway with Lincoln, and indeed had developed a real, though push-pull friendship with the president, nothing had happened—yet. But the mounting death toll of Union soldiers and the stunning succession of losses on the battlefield were beginning to create an internal logic to opening up black recruitment. The old refusals were starting to waver, especially with the Emancipation Proclamation as a new factor. On January 25, a group of longtime Boston abolitionists and supporters of John Brown arranged a meeting with Lincoln and his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. Wendell Phillips, Moncure Conway, and other members of the Emancipation League trooped into the president's office and went through much of the same dance that abolitionists had gone through with the administration many times before. The Boston group entered exasperated and persistent, with the president polite, cautious, and nonforthcoming. When pressed to give their hero Fremont a greater role, Lincoln replied, "Suppose I should put in the South these antislavery generals and governors, what would they do with the slaves that would come to them?" Then an odd-looking, wealthy businessman, George Luther Steams, whose flowing patriarchal beard made him look as if he had stepped in from the streets of Jerusalem instead of the meadows of Medford, Massachusetts, spoke up. "We would make Union soldiers of all who were capable of bearing arms." Not ready for that, Lincoln simply replied that his Emancipation Proclamation "knocked the bottom out of slavery." The impetuous young Conway said that without some military success, the bottom could be put back in.9
The discouraged group quickly learned upon their return to Boston that their state was in fact going to achieve their desired goal. During that same period, Massachusetts governor John Andrew (yet another thorn in Lincoln's side) had finally convinced Stanton to formally agree to a War Department-approved regiment of "volunteers of African descent."10The Massachusetts governor hurriedly headed home, hardly believing in the great shift in policy, and immediately hit a wall. His state had fewer than two thousand free black men. How were they to recruit such a historic regiment quickly, before the administration changed its mind?
Andrew wasted no time going back to George Steams, aware that his deep pockets and fame as financial supporter of John Brown would make him a perfect leader in this effort (for the rich merchant's lead pipe business was doing better than ever in the war, though the radical admitted, "Emancipation has been very hard on my purse.").11Steams quickly responded by forming the Black Committee to move beyond Massachusetts to the whole free North and even into Canada, and his energy and skill promptly confirmed Andrew's faith in him. The shy, slightly stuttering man came to life, believing that he at last was fulfilling the dream of John Brown that he had risked so much for years ago. Steams wrote to Gerrit Smith that his work now was "to make this a true John Brown Corps."12At first, the announcement of the formation of the "Colored Regiment" produced only a tiny number of recruits, and Andrew despaired. Steams said he would leave for the west the next day. He knew just where to go.
The chief reason that Steams was the right man for the job was his faith in and long friendship with Frederick Douglass. Steams boarded a train on February 23 to Rochester, intent on recruiting the orator as his chief spokesman. He simultaneously signed up many other black leaders to become recruiters, but only Douglass had the instant credibility and voice to spread the word. It seems incredible but true that it took only weeks to assemble such a vast national network of agents to sign up black recruits, with Steams basing himself in Buffalo to direct his men like "pieces on a chessboard."13
The King he quickly employed was Douglass. Remarkably, Douglass's great recruiting speech, "Men of Color, to Arms!" appeared in print only three days after Stearns's visit. This suggests a rush of inspiration Douglass experienced after Stearns's call, although he may have already written notes toward such a declaration, whether or not the government asked for his people's help. In any case, Douglass's excitement was palpable. He was soon telling friends that filling up the ranks of the Fifty-fourth Regiment of the Massachusetts volunteer Infantry was the best possible service he could perform for the country's welfare.14
The recruiting speech was an impassioned call to his people that in retrospect reads as an addendum to the Emancipation Proclamation itself, with all the power and moral grandeur that Lincoln's document lacked. Douglass saw the opportunity to promote the abolition war he wanted. For months, he had been traveling virtually without pause, usually riding all night after an address to the next night's site. During the month, he covered over two thousand miles, speaking from Boston to Chicago. Every speech or conversation he had during the time revolved around one conviction: "the ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN EVERY PART OF OUR COUNTRY IS THE BEST AND ONLY WAY TO RESTORE OUR DISTRACTED AND WAR-SMITTEN NATION TO PERMANENT PEACE."15
Douglass began his recruiting at home. The first two men enlisted for the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth were his sons Lewis and Charles. Douglass told a friend that his boys would "go to peril all for Liberty and country."16 Douglass at the outset knew the risks of sending black troops to fight in the South. Armed black men, free or slave, violated the fundamental custom of American society, and their danger was magnified in the South. A white abolitionist friend of Douglass's, Martha Greene, sent a son to war, but did so with the government's protection of him in the event of capture. Southern policy was already clear—blacks were not soldiers, merely insurgent slaves, and death would be their lot. She told Douglass that Charles and Lewis would have "halters about their necks," even more so in the event that rebels discovered exactly who their father was. She was amazed and almost dismayed over "the depth of earnestn
ess it must require in you to send yours."17 There was no hesitation now, however. His recruiting would be that much more effective with his beloved sons as leading examples.
Lewis was twenty-two and Charles eighteen when they signed up to begin recruitment for the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth. Douglass's middle son, Frederick Jr., was twenty at the time, and later in the year he signed on to assist in black recruitment in the Mississippi Valley. His father thought him the most practical of the brood, but this came from a cautious, hesitant nature. The fact that he chose not to fight fits with a pragmatism mixed with trepidation. Lewis and Charles were both slightly shorter than their father, with a darker skin tone and features that more resembled Anna's. Charles had a slender face, with innocent chestnut eyes like Rosetta's. Lewis had a more mature countenance, bearded and worn.18
Educated in Rochester public schools, the boys relished helping their father prepare his newspaper, as well as delivering it locally. Yet Douglass was often traveling during their childhood, and he wondered about the effect his being gone so much might have on them. He feared, and others noted, that they seemed to take after Anna more than him. Knowing the boys would likely struggle in his considerable shadow, he tried to offer his protection and care. Each had grown up reading the story of their father fighting back against the slave breaker Covey—perhaps all three sons saw the Civil War as the opportunity for their similar awakening to full manhood.
Lewis was the most confident and capable of them. Yet career prospects for a young black man continually discouraged him. Only a few months before the possibility of black enlistment, he was making plans to participate in a group emigrating to a Central American colony. The prospect of being in the vanguard of the black military represented a fresh start at proving himself on American soil, as his father had always hoped would be the case.19 Though he was professionally stifled, he was finding himself increasingly successful in his courtship of the beautiful Amelia Loguen, daughter of one of the highest-ranking men in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Compared to her, he thought himself the "vilest wretch on earth," though an "undefinable force attracts me to you, and I have no means of resisting it and would not if I had." Amelia now found herself among the thousands of young women praying no harm would befall their beloved.20
Once March came, Douglass recruited all over New York state. He visited Auburn, Ithaca, Buffalo, Geneva, Oswego, Utica, Little Falls, Canajo-harie, Glens Falls, Syracuse, Troy, Albany, and more. He did not have to strain hard to convey the fierce happiness he felt in this long-dreamed-of opportunity: "The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty."
The government had long held back their "powerful black hand." Now the chance was here and it warranted their action. He explained that circumstances for enlistment were hardly ideal, but there was no time to delay. If white men won this war without their help, blacks would never truly gain their liberty. Worse, infinitely worse, if this war was lost, the opportunity to finally destroy slavery might never come again. Douglass cried, "Who would be free themselves must strike the blow."21
Regretting that it was not the state of New York calling them, Douglass told his black audiences to take up arms for Massachusetts. Sadly, at this point in his recruitment tour he transmitted erroneous information received from Steams, who got it from Governor Andrew, who thought he had it from the War Department: Douglass assured them that they would have the same wages, rations, equipment, bounty of one hundred dollars, and the same government protection as white soldiers. Some were skeptical, but Douglass told them that his twenty years as an abolitionist should make him worthy of trust: "I have assured myself on these points, and can speak with authority."
Most of all, Douglass conveyed that regardless of race, they were men. Every man should see his duty in a contest where right and wrong were so clear. If black men did not enlist, it would only justify racist ideas that they were cowards. He told them to enlist for their own self-respect. Men who became soldiers would be able to defend themselves long after the war. Douglass wanted these young black men armed for an uncertain future. If they did not serve, Douglass foresaw a national retreat into compromise, complete with a revocation of the Emancipation Proclamation. He enticed them with the simple notion that the American government was at last giving them the chance to kill white slaveholders. These men could carry a bloody abolition dream to the heart of the South.22
Douglass concluded by raising the names of great men martyred for freedom: Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, John Brown. Black men had the golden opportunity to ease away animosity against their people and to win the gratitude of the country. Douglass offered to pay their way to the camp at Readville, outside of Boston. Some nights, when his words sent the crowd around him into a whirlwind of joy and jubilee, Douglass concluded by singing "John Brown's Body."23
In Syracuse, Douglass spoke at Zion's Church two weeks in a row, burning with energy. At the first meeting, twelve men came forward to serve. During the next week, word of Douglass's message spread throughout the community and seven more men signed up. When Douglass returned for his second speech, six more men volunteered, bringing Douglass's Syracuse total to twenty-five. They were poor men; one observer guessed that they arrived with about five dollars collectively among them. Yet they were attentive, smart individuals with strong, battle-ready bodies.
Ambrose Cook was only seventeen, green and impatient for a fight with a slaveholder. On the other hand, Thomas Leonard, with a grizzled white beard, was almost sixty. What he lacked in youthful spirit, he made up for with perspective on how valuable the chance to fight was. Leonard was disappointed when he found out from Douglass that there were not black officers. Douglass also felt this was a cowardly injustice on the part of the government, though not one outweighing the progress of being able to serve. Douglass compared that to a man refusing to touch water until he was a great swimmer. Leonard also thought better of it and remarked that they would fight so heroically that the government would be forced to change its mind about the officer question.24
Douglass paid a doctor fifteen cents per man to examine them a few days later. Once he approved them, Douglass sent his son Charles to put Leonard and the twenty-four other men on the train for Boston. Steams had worked a deal with a railroad company by which the men rode in first class without disturbances at a reduced rate. Douglass gave them plenty of ham and bread for the journey. Charles spent a few weeks making these trips back and forth from New York state to Boston until it was time for him to stay in camp.25
Syracuse was a successful trip, but in smaller towns, Douglass would labor for only a few individuals. His trip to Little Falls produced four soldiers and Canajoharie provided two. Douglass sometimes felt frustrated by having to make these humble appeals for often small results. Nevertheless, he pressed on, knowing the larger matters at stake. In Geneva, seventeen men were ready to enlist after hearing the confident power of Douglass's oration. Yet in the hours that followed, more than half of the volunteers changed their minds, two at the last second before their train started. It took determined work to fill a regiment.26
Using a donation from Douglass's radical philanthropist friend Gerrit Smith, Steams took care of Douglass's expenses plus ten dollars a week. Douglass privately felt it was not enough considering the demand of the work, but was too invested in the mission to grumble. Douglass wrote to Smith in the spring of 1863 that he saw "no hope for the American slave outside the salvation of the country." In the March issue of his Monthly, he wrote about the cruel possibility that Lincoln might rescind the Emancipation Proclamation for a compromise. He saw every recruit as being an argument against the possibility of returning black men to chains. By mid-April, he had sent more than one hundred men to the Fifty-fourth.27
Rosine Draz warned him that he was pushing himself too hard. She reminded him to pace himself because his people would need his strength
for many years to come. She lamented that it was rare these days that he had time to return her letters, but did not want to jeopardize any minute he could spend on his quest. It was enough for her to pray for Douglass. Many of the prayers had to do with Douglass's letters about his going to war. She found the thought almost too horrible to contemplate, but assured him that she would do anything she could for his children if he did not survive the war. Her opinion was that his life was too precious for his people's welfare for him to sacrifice it. Julia Griffiths Crofts expressed these feelings more bluntly. Douglass sent her another letter declaring that if the New York legislature would sanction a regiment, he was ready to serve. She implored him not to accept any commission offered to him. Pleading for him to refrain, she continued, "never go south—or killed you most assuredly will be—you are, in many respects, a marked man"28
Douglass may have been tempted to serve because of letters from old friends who were in the service. George Evans, a white abolitionist who was able to fight from the beginning of the war, said that he saw the war transforming into an abolition war because of the determination of "the immense multitude of the flying fugitives" all over the Virginia countryside.29
Douglass and Lincoln Page 17