Volume II Part 59 (1/2)
”Know ye that the Congress of the United States, on or about the 27th day of February, in the year 1869, pa.s.sed a resolution in the words and figures following, to wit:
”A RESOLUTION proposing an amendment to the Const.i.tution of the United States.
”_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress a.s.sembled, (two-thirds of both houses concurring.)_ That the following article be proposed to the legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Const.i.tution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said legislatures, shall be valid as part of the Const.i.tution, namely:
”ARTICLE XV.
”SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
”SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
”And, further, that it appears, from official doc.u.ments on file in this department, that the amendment to the Const.i.tution of the United States, proposed as aforesaid, has been ratified by the legislatures of the States of North Carolina, West Virginia, Ma.s.sachusetts, Wisconsin, Maine, Louisiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Nevada, Vermont, Virginia, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Texas; in all, twenty-nine States.
”And, further, that the States whose legislatures have so ratified the said proposed amendment const.i.tute three-fourths of the whole number of States in the United States.
”And, further, that it appears, from an official doc.u.ment on file in this department, that the legislature of the State of New York has since pa.s.sed resolutions claiming to withdraw the said ratification of the said amendment which had been made by the legislature of that State, and of which official notice had been filed in this department.
”And, further, that it appears, from an official doc.u.ment on file in this department, that the legislature of Georgia has by resolution ratified the said proposed amendment.
”Now, therefore, be it known that I, Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State of the United States, by virtue and in pursuance of the 2d section of the act of Congress, approved the 20th day of April, 1818, ent.i.tled ”An act to provide for the publication of the laws of the United States, and for other purposes,” do hereby certify, that the amendment aforesaid has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the Const.i.tution of the United States.
”In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the Department of State to be affixed.
”Done at the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, this 30th day of March, in the year of our Lord, 1870, and of the independence of the United States, the ninety-fourth.
[SEAL.]
”HAMILTON FISH.”
The Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation itself did not call forth such genuine and wide-spread rejoicing as the message of President Grant. The event was celebrated by the Colored people in all the larger cities North and South. Processions, orations, music and dancing proclaimed the unbounded joy of the new citizen. In Philadelphia Frederick Dougla.s.s, Bishop Jabez P. Campbell, I. C. Wears, and others delivered eloquent addresses to enthusiastic audiences. Mr. Dougla.s.s deeply wounded the religious feelings of his race by declaring; ”I shall not dwell in any hackneyed cant by thanking G.o.d for this deliverance which has been wrought out through our common humanity.” A hundred pulpits, a hundred trenchant pens sprang at the declaration with fiery indignation; and it was some years before the bold orator was able to make himself tolerable to his people. There was little of the spirit of tolerance among the Colored people at the time, and upon such an occasion the remark was regarded as imprudent, to say the least.
A new era was opened up before the Colored people. They were now for the first time in possession of their full political rights. On the 25th of February, 1870, Hiram R. Revels took his seat as United States Senator from Mississippi. On the 9th of January, 1861, Mississippi pa.s.sed her ordinance of secession, and Jefferson Davis resigned his seat as United States Senator. Within a brief decade a civil war had raged for four and a half years; and after the seceding Mississippi had pa.s.sed through the refining fires of battle and had been purged of slavery, she sent to succeed the arch traitor a _Negro_,[123] a representative of the race that Mr. Davis intended to be the corner-stone of his new government!![124] It was G.o.d's work, and marvellous in the eyes of the world. But this was not all. Just one year from the day and hour Senator Revels took his seat in the United States Senate, on the 24th of February, 1871, Jefferson F. Long, a _Negro_, was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia, the State of Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederate States!! And then, as if to add glory to glory, the American Government despatched E. D. Ba.s.sett, a Colored man from Pennsylvania, as Minister Resident and Consul-General to Hayti! And with almost the same stroke of his pen, President Grant sent J. Milton Turner, a Colored man from Missouri, as Resident Minister and Consul-General to Liberia! Mr. Ba.s.sett came from Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was written and proclaimed, and where the n.o.ble Dr. Franklin had stood against the slavery compromises of the Const.i.tution! Philadelphia, then, the birthplace of American Independence, had the honor of furnis.h.i.+ng the first Negro who was to ill.u.s.trate the lofty sentiment of the equality of _all_ men before the law. And the republic that Mr. Ba.s.sett went to had won diplomatic relations with all the civilized powers of the earth through the matchless valor and splendid statesmans.h.i.+p of Toussaint L'Ouverture.
This was a black republic that had a history and a name among the peoples of the world.
Mr. Turner went from Missouri, the first State to violate the ordinance of 1787, and to establish slavery ”northwest of the Ohio”
River. He went to a republic on the West Coast of Africa that had been built by the industry, intelligence, and piety of Negroes who had flown from the accursed influences of American slavery. The slave-s.h.i.+ps had disappeared from the coast, and commercial fleets, from all lands came to trade with the citizens of a free republic whose ministers were welcomed in every court of Europe, and whose official acts were clothed with the authority and majesty of ”_the Republic of Liberia_!”
In this same period Frederick Dougla.s.s was made a Presidential Elector for the State of New York; and thus helped cast the vote of that great commonwealth for U. S. Grant as President, in 1872. In the chief city of this State the first Federal Congress met, and on the first day of its first session spent the entire time in discussing the slavery question. Through the streets of this same city Mr. Dougla.s.s had to skulk and hide from slave-catchers on his way from the h.e.l.l of slavery, to the land of freedom. In this city, a few years later, he was hounded by a pro-slavery mob,--but at last he represented the popular will of its n.o.blest citizens when they had chosen him to act for them in the Electoral College.
Born a slave, some time during the present century, on the eastern sh.o.r.e, Maryland, in the county of Talbot, and in the district of Tuckahoe, Frederick Dougla.s.s was destined by nature and G.o.d to be a giant in the great moral agitation for the extinction of slavery and the redemption of his race. He came of two extremes--representative Negro and representative Saxon. Tall, large-boned, colossal frame, compact head, broad, expressive face adorned with small brown, mischievous eyes, nose slightly Grecian, chin square set, and thin lips, Frederick Dougla.s.s would attract attention upon the streets of any city in Europe or America. His life as a slave was studded with painful experiences. Early separation from his mother, neglect, and then cruel treatment gave to the holy cause of freedom one of its ablest champions, and to slavery one of its most invincible opponents.
Transferred from Talbot County to Baltimore, Maryland, where he spent seven years, Mr. Dougla.s.s began to extend the horizon of his intellectual vision, and to come face to face with the hideous monster of slavery in the moments of reflection upon his condition in contrast with that of a fairer race about him. Inadvertently his mistress began to teach him characters of letters; but she was stopped by the advice of her husband, because it was thought inimical to the interest of the master to teach his slave. But having lighted the taper of knowledge in the mind of the slave boy, it was forever beyond human power to put it out. The incidents and surroundings of young Dougla.s.s peopled his brain with ideas, gave wings to his thoughts and order to his reasoning. The word of reproof, the angry look, and the precautions to prevent him from acquiring knowledge rankled in his young heart and covered his moral sky with thick clouds of despair. He reasoned himself right out of slavery, and ran away and went North.
David Ruggles, a Colored gentleman of intelligence, took charge of Mr.
Dougla.s.s in New York, and sent him to New Bedford, Ma.s.sachusetts.
Having married in New York a free Colored woman from Baltimore named ”Anna,” he was ready now to enter upon the duties of the new life as a freeman. He found in one Nathan Johnson, an intelligent and industrious Colored man of New Bedford, a warm friend, who advanced him a sum of money to redeem baggage held for fare, and gave him the name which he has since rendered ill.u.s.trious.
The intellectual growth of Mr. Dougla.s.s from this on was almost phenomenal. He devoured knowledge with avidity, and retained and utilized all he got. He used information as good business men use money. He made every idea bear interest; and now setting the music of his soul to the words he acquired, he soon earned a reputation as a gifted conversationalist and an impressive orator.
In the summer of 1841 an anti-slavery convention was held at Nantucket, Ma.s.sachusetts, under the direction of William Lloyd Garrison. Mr. Dougla.s.s had attended several meetings in New Bedford, where he had listened to a defence of his race and a denunciation of its oppressors. And when he heard of the forthcoming convention at Nantucket he resolved to take a little respite from the hard work he was performing in a bra.s.s foundry, and attend. Previous to this he had felt the warm heart of Mr. Garrison beating for the slave through the columns of the ”Liberator”; had received a copy each week for a long time, had mastered its matchless arguments against slavery, and was, therefore, possessed with an idea of the anti-slavery cause. At Nantucket he was sought out of the vast audience and requested by William C. Coffin, of New Bedford, where he had heard the fervid eloquence of the young man as an exhorter in the Colored Methodist Church, to make a speech. The hesitancy and diffidence of Mr. Dougla.s.s were overcome by the importunate invitation to speak. He spoke: and from that hour a new sphere opened to him; from that hour he began to exert an influence against slavery which for a generation was second only to that of Mr. Garrison. He was engaged as an agent of the Anti-Slavery Society led by Mr. Garrison. He was taken in charge by George Foster, and in his company made a lecturing tour of the eastern tier of counties in the old Bay State. The meetings were announced a few days ahead of the lecturer. He was advertised as a ”fugitive slave,” as ”a chattel,” as ”a thing” that could talk and give an interesting account of the cruelties of slavery. As a narrator he had few equals among the most polished white gentlemen of all New England.
His white friends were charmed by the lucidity and succinctness of his account of his life as a slave, and always insisted upon his narrative. But he was more than a narrator, more than a story-teller; he was an orator, and in dealing with the problem of slavery proved himself to be a thinker. The old story of his bondage became stale to him. His friends' advice to keep on telling the same story could no longer be complied with; and das.h.i.+ng out of the beaten path of narration he began a career as an orator that has had no parallel on this continent. He found no adequate satisfaction in relating the experiences of a slave; his soul burned with a holy indignation against the inst.i.tution of slavery. Having increased his vocabulary of words and his information concerning the purposes and plans of the Anti-Slavery Society, he was prepared to make an a.s.sault upon slavery.