Editors From The United States

"The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own individuality, not only in form and features, but in thought and feeling. And the same is true of woman. She is herself, and can be nobody else than herself. Her selfhood is as perfect and as absolute as is the selfhood of man."

"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."

"Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever. Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us. We have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln."

"Fellow citizens, the fourteenth day of April 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell - black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator."

"Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mister Lincoln’s inauguration, that we have seen the last president of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, 'Let the Union slide'. Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of eight million cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad - handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge."

"'A spade, a rake, a hoe. A pick - axe, or a bill. A hook to reap, a scythe to mow. A flail, or what you will'. All day long he could split heavy rails in the woods, and half the night long he could study his English grammar by the uncertain flare and glare of the light made by a pine - knot. He was at home in the land with his axe, with his maul, with gluts, and his wedges, and he was equally at home on water, with his oars, with his poles, with his planks, and with his boat - hooks. And whether in his flat - boat on the Mississippi River, or at the fireside of his frontier cabin, he was a man of work. A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic. This very fact gave him tremendous power with the American people, and materially contributed not only to selecting him to the presidency, but in sustaining his administration of the government. Upon his inauguration as president of the United States, an office, even when assumed under the most favorable condition, fitted to tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln was met by a tremendous crisis. He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the republic. A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him. The Union was already practically dissolved; his country was torn and rent asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized against the republic, armed with the munitions of war which the republic had provided for its own defense. The tremendous question for him to decide was whether his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered and perish. His predecessor in office had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self - defense and self - preservation, a right which belongs to the meanest insect."

"Fellow citizens, whatever else in this world may be partial, unjust, and uncertain, time, time! is impartial, just, and certain in its action. In the realm of mind, as well as in the realm of matter, it is a great worker, and often works wonders. The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time. Few great public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. He was often wounded in the house of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast upon him from within and from without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed by Abolitionists; he was assailed by slave - holders; he was assailed by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed for not making the war an abolition war; and he was bitterly assailed for making the war an abolition war. But now behold the change. The judgment of the present hour is, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. His birth, his training, and his natural endowments, both mental and physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared among the lowly, a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple single - handed with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender youth to sturdy manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic qualities demanded by the great mission to which he was called by the votes of his countrymen. The hard condition of his early life, which would have depressed and broken down weaker men, only gave greater life, vigor, and buoyancy to the heroic spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He was ready for any kind and any quality of work. What other young men dreaded in the shape of toil, he took hold of with the utmost cheerfulness."

"I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things. First, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow - countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mister Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mister Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow - countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. The man who could say, 'Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether', gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing, while the south was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go."

"Most important, Douglass' meeting with Lincoln had personal meaning. He had received a hearing at the highest level of power, and whatever pangs of conscience he possessed about recruiting soldiers for a discriminatory army were largely put to rest. He gained reassurance that the "double battle" strategy was still tenable. Moreover, the meeting was a personal triumph for Douglass- the former slave who grew up across Chesapeake Bay on the Eastern Shore of Maryland- as he sat in the president's office, spokesman of his people. His determination to resume recruiting, which he probably made before the meeting in Washington, could only be firmer in the afterglow of the interview with Lincoln. Douglass reveled in opportunities to tell the story of his first meeting with the president. Describing the scene in a speech at Philadelphia several months later, he left no doubt of his pride in the occasion: "I tell you I felt big there!" he assured his audience. The black leader and the government recruiting agent could be the same person again, because the citizen and the activist had been treated as one man, causing a sense of recognition that Douglass- like all black leaders- sorely needed. (p. 169)"

"At the White House, Douglass met Lincoln for the first time. The president received the ex-slave cordially, and Douglass quickly felt at ease with what he called Lincoln's "honest... countenance." Lincoln listened attentively as the black spokesman raised the issues of pay, promotion, and treatment of prisoners, responding that he understood the complaint on unequal pay but considered it a "necessary concession" in order to achieve the larger aim of getting blacks into the army. Defending his policies and his pace, Lincoln declared that "popular prejudice" had prevented an earlier retaliatory proclamation, since he had feared that too many northern whites simply would not accept the killing of southern whites to avenge the deaths of blacks. Black heroism, as Douglass recalled the interview, was Lincoln's idea of the "necessary preparation of the public mind for his proclamation" about retaliation." Douglass was most impressed, though, when Lincoln assured him that once he took a position [emancipation or black enlistment], he would not retreat from it. Douglass got a political education from his meeting with Lincoln, and he came away better informed about the complexity of the president's responsibilities. Lincoln responded frankly and respectfully to the black leader's questions. "Though I was not entirely satisfied with his views," Douglass wrote of the meeting, "I was so well satisfied with the man and with the educating tendency of the conflict that I determined to go on with the recruiting." Trust in the man fostered patience with his policies. "My whole interview with the President was gratifying," Lincoln wrote to Stearns, "and did much to assure me that slavery would not survive the war and that the country would survive both slavery and the war." (p. 168-169)"

"From the very beginning of the conflict, Frederick Douglass argued for black military participation. An "abolition war" awaited only the will on the part of the northern people to destroy slavery and put blacks in uniform. As agitator, recruiter, and spokesman, Douglass gave the black soldier immense significance. The service of blacks in the Union forces came to represent both public and private meanings in Douglass' wartime thought. (p. 148)"

"Douglass' quest to create the hated enemy of the Union cause reflects a long-standing psychological need of his own. We must remember that he spent twenty-seven years of his life either as a slave or a fugitive slave; his sense of self-determination took its departure from his slave origins as the child of a black mother and her white master. He was both a reflection of the system into which he was born and its greatest contradiction. Slavery never received a more eloquent indictment than in Douglass' autobiographies, editorials, and speeches. He knew slavery as a system rooted in dehumanization and violence, and he knew from experience that slaves were both desired and despised. Slavery, in his view, required hatred and force in order to survive. It had taught him a great deal about the uses of violence, and it had taught him how to hate. (p. 88)"

"Abolitionists' hopes ascended to new heights in the wake of Fort Sumter; they joined the chorus of war fever and stood ready to usher slavery to an early death. After years of argument and prophecy, and after watching slavery dissolve America's political institutions, Douglass could hardly see the war in anything other than abolitionists' terms. He was fully aware that the radical implications [emancipation] of a war to save the Union were not anticipated by most northerners, but as a minority agitator, a moralist preaching an unpopular politics, and a political activist arguing for a new morality, he strove to exploit the grand opportunity now open to all abolitionists. (p. 81)"

"Fredrick Douglass was appalled at the blatant racism that lay behind refusals to accept black troops."

"in the death of Frederick Douglass we lost the greatest man that the Negro race has ever produced on the American continent."

"Frederick Douglass's life fell in the period of war, of controversy, and of fierce party strife. The task which was assigned to him was, on the whole, one of destruction and liberation, rather than construction and reconciliation. Circumstances and his own temperament made him the aggressive champion of his people, and of all the others to whom custom or law denied the privileges which he had learned to regard as the inalienable possessions of men. He was for liberty, at all times, and in all shapes. Seeking the ballot for the Negro, he was ardently in favor of granting the same privilege to woman. Holding, as he did, that there were certain rights and dignities that belong to man as man, he was opposed to discrimination in our immigration laws in favor of the white races of Europe and against the yellow races of Asia. In religion, also, he was disposed to unite himself with the extreme liberal movement. In all this he was at once an American, and a man of his time."

"Mr. Douglass eagerly assisted in the formation of the first regularly organized regiments of United States colored troops, the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers... Mr. Douglass rendered valuable aid in getting together enough fit men for two New England regiments. His two sons, Lewis H. and Charles R. Douglass, who are still living in Washington and are honored citizens, were among the first to enlist. Their father's influence with the colored people of the country was so great that his services were almost indispensable. He was distressed by the restrictions placed on these soldiers, but said: "While I, of course, was deeply pained and saddened at the slowness of heart which marked the conduct of the loyal government, I was not discouraged, and urged every man who could enlist to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his shoulder, and the star and spangle over his head.""

"It required time and the cumulation of events to bring about a state of feeling that would tolerate the suggestion of using colored men in the Union army. Mr. Douglass more than any other one man, helped to bring about this change. It finally became evident that if the Negroes were good enough to be employed in the Confederate ranks, as laborers, they ought to be good enough for like service in the Union lines."

"In spite of the seeming pro-slavery policy of the national administration, Frederick Douglass was earnestly consecrating every energy of his being to the President's support. He was wise enough to understand that if Lincoln in the beginning, had stated his policy to be, not only to save the Union, but also to free the slaves, all would have been lost. While other Abolitionists were impatient and doubtful of Mr. Lincoln's course, Douglass declared himself convinced that the war, even though it be called a "white man's war," was nevertheless the beginning of the end of the nation's great evil. He still believed, and so declared in his public speeches, that "the mission of the war was the liberation of the slaves as well as the salvation of the Union." "I reproached the North," he said, "that they fought with one hand, while they might strike more effectively with two; that they fought with the soft white hand, while they kept the black iron hand chained and helpless behind them; that they fought the effect, while they protected the cause; and said that the Union cause would never prosper until the war assumed an anti-slavery attitude and the Negro was enlisted on the side of the Union.""

"At one time Mr. Douglass was travelling in the state of Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in the baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price for his passage that the other passengers had paid. When some of the white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass, and one of them said to him: "I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner," Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: "They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me…""

"In late May 1861, three escaped slaves showed up at Fortress Monroe, a Union stronghold on the tip of Virginia's Peninsula, claiming they had been forced by their master to dig a Confederate battery position. It happened that the officer commanding this post- indeed, in charge of the entire Department of Virginia- was a Massachusetts lawyer and politician turned general named Benjamin Franklin Butler. Like his colonial namesake, Butler possessed a seemingly limitless stock of shrewd ingenuity. When a Confederate officer presented himself and demanded that this human property be returned under existing laws, Butler refused. He argued that because in this case the blacks had been employed against the U.S. government, they had become legitimate contraband of war and thus fair game for confiscation. Butler would later lay claim to being the first to utilize the term "contraband" in this context; in fact, the evidence is a bit murky on that point, though it is certainly true that through his act he established a precedent that other, likeminded Union officers were quick to follow. Suddenly the small Federal enclaves began to attract a growing number of male slaves and their families. Butler's fateful action was further legitimized on August 8, when the U.S. Congress authorized the seizure of all Southern property used "in aid of the rebellion"- a definition that specifically included slaves. From his editorial pulpit, Frederick Douglass issued a strident call to "Let the slaves and free colored people be called into service, and formed into a liberating army.""

"For Frederick Douglass, the bombardment of Fort Sumter launched a campaign of violence aimed squarely at the heart of the slave-owning Confederacy. "The cry now is for war, vigorous war, war to the bitter end," he told readers of the Douglass Monthly in May 1861. Douglass, himself an escaped slave, was one of the most prominent and eloquent figures in the U.S. abolitionist movement. "From the first," he would write later in his autobiographical Life and Times, "I, for one, saw in this war the end of slavery; and truth requires me to say that my interest in the success of the North was largely due to this belief." While openly advocating for the enlistment of blacks in the military, Douglass acknowledged that any Africans Americans in uniform would be assailed on two sides- by the Confederacy and its slave owners before them and by the pervasive racism of the North behind. As U.S. citizens flocked to the colors after Fort Sumter, Douglass proclaimed a key precondition for black participation: "Nothing," he said, "short of an open recognition of the Negro's manhood, his rights as such to have a country equally with others, would induce me to join the army in any capacity." Douglass' admonitions went unheard, however, amid the pounding drums and blaring trumpets of war. Hundreds of Northern free blacks joined the rush to defend the Union, giving no thought to any possible political agenda."

"While a life like Frederick Douglass's is remarkable, we must remember that not every person who lived through slavery was like Douglass. Most did not learn to read or write. Most did not engage in hand-to-hand combat with white slave breakers. Most did not live close enough to free states in the North to have any hope of escape. No one, enslaved or otherwise, was like Douglass. There were other brilliant, exceptional people who lived under slavery, and many resisted the institution in innumerable ways, but our country's teachings about slavery, painfully limited, often focus singularly on heroic slave narratives at the expense of the millions of men and women whose stories might be less sensational but are no less worthy of being told."

"Swept up in the infinite possibilities of the moment, even the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who before the war had excoriated America for the hollowness of its ideals, dared to imagine the nation as more than a white man's republic with black men as honored guests. "I want a home here not only for the Negro, the mulatto, and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours," Douglass declared in 1869. "In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds.""

"As a schoolkid in Virginia, I never received an honest accounting of slavery. Many historians have now given us a clear look at the slave trade, plantation life (that is, life on the enslaved labor farms), and slave rebellions. Every aspect of slavery was just as evil as the abolitionists and the peerlessly honest former slave Frederick Douglass described it. If anything the conditions were worse. The only way to argue for slavery, then or now, is to believe that the enslaved weren't real human beings. That the lives of those who had darker skin had less worth; that the color of skin meant the difference between human and not quite human. And that is the hideous lesson my Virginia history textbook taught schoolchildren in the Old Dominion."

"The abolitionists, not just Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison but the countless thousands who supported their cause, fought to abolish slavery and grant the rights of citizenship to all Americans, regardless of their race."

"When police tried to prevent former slave Frederick Douglass from attending the inaugural reception in 1865, President Lincoln went to the door and said, 'Here comes my friend Douglass!'"

"Many northern African Americans saw the war not only as a means of striking down the institution of slavery but as an opportunity to press their demands for full citizenship in a reunited nation. Even in the slavery-free North, African American rights were neither consistent nor secure. Suffrage was restricted to a few New England states, African Americans could not testify in court against a white defendant, and economic rights were not ensured. The justification for such restrictions in the North was that these rights were reserved for citizens of the United States, which free African Americans, not to mention slaves, were not. The conflict with the South, therefore, became a venue where African Americans, by demonstrating their loyalty and willingness to sacrifice for the benefit of the federal government, could improve their social status or even gain citizenship. Many African American leaders believed blacks should deny their services to the government until offered the reward of citizenship. Frederick Douglass told a Boston crowd, "Nothing short of open recognition of the Negro's manhood, his rights as such to have a country equally with others, would induce me to join the army in any capacity. Many other African Americans, however, eagerly volunteered their services to the federal government after the assault on Fort Sumter."

"Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. He eagerly attended the founding meeting of the Republican Party in 1854 and campaigned for its nominees. A brilliant speaker, Douglass was asked by the American Anti-Slavery Society to engage in a tour of lectures, and so became recognized as one of America's first great black speakers. He won world fame when his autobiography The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, in which he gave specific details of his bondage, was publicized in 1845. Two years later, he began publishing an anti-slavery paper called the North Star. He was appointed Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti by President Benjamin Harrison on July 1, 1889, the first black citizen to hold high rank in the U.S. government. Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. After the Civil War, Douglass realized that the war for citizenship had just begun when Democrat President Andrew Johnson proved to be a determined opponent of land redistribution and civil and political rights for former slaves. Douglass began the postwar era relying on the same themes that he preached in the antebellum years: economic self-reliance, political agitation, and coalition building. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice."

"In contrast to the contemporary black Americans, the black Americans, in that era, were in solid support of the Republican Party. This was the party that fought the northern and southern Democrats to pass the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Although President Andrew Johnson tried to bamboozle Frederick Douglass to the Democrat side by making false or empty promises, he did not succeed. Douglass was no fool and was not going to let Johnson use him to gain the support of the Negroes in his effort to be 'elected' president. Frederick Douglass and other prominent Blacks threw their support to Ulysses S. Grant for president."

"Many Negroes responded enthusiastically to such appeals [as those by Douglass]. But others still held back. This was especially true in New York City, where Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and other speakers urged colored men to enlist at a meeting in Shiloh Church on April 27. In spite of their eloquence, only one recruit came forward. Douglass was appalled, and told the audience that he was ashamed of them. A Mr. Robert Johnson arose and defended the Negroes of New York, and, according to the report of the affair, "by a few well-spoken words, [he] convinced the meeting that it was not cowardice which made the young men hesitate to enlist, but a proper respect for their own manhood. If the Government wanted their services, let it guarantee to them all the rights of citizens and soldiers, and, instead of one man, he would insure them 5,000 men in twenty days. Mr. J's remarks were received with tremendous and long-continued applause.""

"Douglass was born a slave, he won his liberty. He is of negro extraction, and consequently was despised and outraged. He has by his own energy and force of character commanded the respect of the nation. He was ignorant, he has, against law and by stealth and entirely unaided, educated himself He was poor, he has by honest toil and industry become rich and independent, so to speak. He, a chattel slave of a hated and cruelly wronged race, in the teeth of American prejudice and in face of nearly every kind of hindrance and drawback, has come to be one of the foremost orators of the age, with a reputation established on both sides of the Atlantic; a writer of power and elegance of expression. A thinker whose views are potent in controlling and shaping public opinion; a high officer in the national government. A cultivated gentleman whose virtues as a husband, father, and citizen are the highest honor a man can have."

"As Frederick Douglass observed in his autobiography, under this system of modified serfdom, the Black sharecropper was "free from the individual master," but was now "the slave of society.""

"It was the great Frederick Douglass, who had a price on his head, who said “Without struggle, there is no progress.” And echoing his words was the answer of the great abolitionist poet, James Russell Lowell: “The limits of tyranny is proscribed by the measure of our resistance to it”."

"Those damned sons of bitches thought they had me in a trap! I know that damned Douglass; he's just like any nigger, and he would sooner cut a white man's throat than not."

"I’ve been inspired by the profound and timeless writings of James Baldwin, Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, and Nina Simone."

"We helped plow the fields, build the dams, write the poems and sing the music of America. Are not all Americans proud, of Doree Miller, of Frederick Douglass, of Paul Robeson, of Joe Louis, of Marian Anderson."

"Our Douglass, too, with his massive brain,/Who plead our cause with his broken chain,/And helped to hurl from his bloody seat/The curse that writhed and died at his feet."

"As a public speaker, he excels in pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency of language. There is in him that union of head and heart, which is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of the hearts of others."

"The struggle for the right of women to vote was nationwide and growing. It had started with the first Equal Rights Convention, at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, which was addressed by Frederick Douglass, the great Negro leader. The suffragists had been ridiculed, assaulted by mobs, refused halls, arrested for attempting to vote, disowned by their families."

"Under Roman law as well as in the United States, slaves were deprived of legally recognized spouses or families and of genuine property ownership. As with most domestic animals, their lowly status was enforced by the threat of almost unlimited physical punishment. As Frederick Douglass put it, after describing the ways that the “slave breaker” Mr. Covey had “tamed” him: “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” In an earlier essay on this subject, I have theorized that, given the repeated comparisons of slaves to domestic animals throughout history (and Aristotle wrote that the ox was “a poor man’s slave”), the initial enslavement and “bestialization” of prisoners of war may well have been modeled on the successful techniques of taming and domesticating wild animals. But some animals could never be domesticated, and even those slaves who at times felt themselves transformed, like Douglass, into “brutes” did not lose their essential humanity, a fact that repeatedly underscored the preeminent contradiction of “inhuman bondage.” Indeed, one of the central and inspiring truths of African American history, a truth dramatized by fugitives like Frederick Douglass, was the way slaves succeeded in asserting their humanity and reinventing their diverse cultures, despite being torn away from their natal African families and societies, despite being continuously humiliated, bought and sold, and often subjected to torture and the threat of death. Thus the word “inhuman,” in this book’s title, refers to the unconscionable and unsuccessful goal of bestializing (in the form of pets as well as beasts of burden) a class of human beings. This is not meant to deny, as much slave testimony indicates, that some slaves suffered recurrent psychological as well as physical damage."

"There's a long tradition of music as education and of situating education at the center of our social struggles. Frederick Douglass, for example, talked about how important it was for enslaved Black people to educate themselves. Because once they began to educate themselves, they would no longer be slaves."

"During the July 18, 1863 evening assault on Fort Wagner, Confederate artillery took a frightful toll on the ranks of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, massed at the base of the parapet, while the sounds of exploding shells and hissing lead fragments mingled with the screams and shouts of men. Above the din, the powerful voice of the regiment's sergeant major, Lewis Douglass, urged the men forward. "Come on boys," Douglass bellowed, "we are on review today before Governor Andrew." His reference to the state executive who authorized the regiment drew cheers from the men as they rallied and stormed the fortification. Douglass might have summoned another name to inspire the troops- his father, Frederick Douglass. The elder Douglass played an important role in the formation of the Fifty-fourth, with the publication of "Men of Color, to Arms!" a few months before the battle at Fort Wagner."

"The political and military events that gradually turned the Union army into an army of liberation, aided by the Emancipation Proclamation as the predictable next step. How could the war have continued much longer without turning it into a war for emancipation and not merely to preserve the Union? And how could the Union cause have triumphed without the arming of black men? But in truth, Lincoln's decision was a huge break with the past. Shortly before the proclamation was to take effect, Frederick Douglass, who had pushed hard for emancipation, celebrated with these words: "This is scarcely a day for prose. It is a day for poetry and song, a new song." Douglass rightly celebrated the day as a major step towards emancipation, and that is how we recall this crucial turning point, but he also recognized that it was a milestone in the relationship between the federal government and black men, both free and soon to be freed. When the Lincoln administration finally agreed to let black men take up arms against the Confederacy, an important door opened that would be very difficult to close. By arming black men, the Union was acknowledging something about black humanity and specifically about the manhood of these new soldiers. The administration was also implicitly acknowledging that they needed these new recruits to help win the war and restore the Union. Although celebrated as an immense moral step, the Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent recruitment of soldiers into the regiments of the United States Colored Troops represented decisions born out of explicit military necessity, and they were presented to Northern voters on those terms."

"As an orator, writer and editor, Douglass holds an honored place among the gifted men of his day. As a man of business and a public officer he has been preeminently successful; honest and upright in all his dealings, he bears an enviable reputation. As a husband, father, neighbor and friend, in all social relations, he has been faithful and steadfast to the end. He was the only man I ever knew who understood the degradation of disfranchisement for women. !!!!! Through all the long years of our struggle he has been a familiar figure on our platform, with always an inspiring word to say. In the very first convention he helped me to carry the resolution I had penned, demanding woman suffrage. Frederick Douglass is not dead! His grand character will long be an object lesson in our national history; his lofty sentiments of liberty, justice and equality, echoed on every platform over our broad land, must influence and inspire many coming generations!"

"To Douglass it was a war of liberation, pure and simple. In the May issue of his paper he let himself go. Amid sprawling drawings of the American flag and eagle he exulted, "Freedom for all, or chains for all." A few lines further on he added sardonically that his assurance could be traced "less to the virtue of the North than to the villainy of the South." But since it was a war of emancipation, as he felt, he had a suggestion for the new president as to how it should be waged. "Let the slaves and free colored people be called into service and formed into a liberating army, to march into the South and raise the banner of Emancipation among the slaves." To his surprise, however, Lincoln failed to jump at the suggestion. Negro enlistments in the navy were accepted without question, in view of practice long established, but the president wanted to think about this army thing. What Douglass did not know at the time, of course, the extent to which Lincoln's efforts to hold the border states in line and his behind-the-scenes struggles with other Republicans in the government accounted for his reluctance to change the Negro's status."

"If things are allowed to go on as they are, it is certain that slavery is to be abolished. By the time the north shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand for that? It is not a supposable case. War will break out everywhere like hidden fire from the earth. We will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination. We will be completely exterminated, and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back to a wilderness and become another Africa or Saint Domingo. Join the north and what will become of you? They will hate you and your institutions as much as they do now, and treat you accordingly. Suppose they elevated Charles Sumner to the presidency? Suppose they elevated Fred Douglass, your escaped slave, to the presidency? What would be your position in such an event? I say give me pestilence and famine sooner than that."

"Frederick Douglass would rejoice, for he fought not only slavery but the oppression of women."

"(What direction do you see the movement in the U.S. taking at this time?) I think it has become less domestic and more international. Marcus Garvey tried to articulate, after all, quite a long time ago, and even Frederick Douglass, that the situation of the black American slave was tied to the situation of the slaves all over the world."

"As I see it today, all the struggles are one. The armaments we and the battle arenas for black women and white women are different. The struggle, I hope, is to make this country a better place for everybody. And one has to start at home, like charity. You know, make it better for your own self and, once you do that, automatically life is better for everyone-in a very oblique way. But once one's own struggle is enjoined-and maybe overcome-then one can get about the business of struggling other people's struggles. Frederick Douglass says, "He who is struck must himself cry out.'"