CHAPTER XII.

THE LEADER IN POLITICS.

MUCH as the colored man was talked about by members of all parties, he was not allowed to say much for himself until after the war. Then the negro vote became vitally important, not only for restoring the South to the Union, but for maintaining the supremacy of the Republicans. They have had no more loyal adherents than the followers of Douglass. Hitherto he had been nothing more than a corporal in a forlorn hope; but now he was the general in command of a great army of voters. He was right in saying that Andrew Johnson was not the Moses of the colored people, as he called himself, but only a wouldbe Pharaoh. Their real Moses had carried them safe through the Red Sea, and is still leading them to and fro in the wilderness.

His possession of this foremost place is largely due, of course, to his oratory, in regard to which Colonel T. W. Higginson, who owes to him, in great measure, his defeat as candidate for a seat in the present Congress, writes me thus: "I have hardly heard his equal, in grasp upon an audience, in dramatic presentation, in striking at the pith of an ethical question, and in single illustrations and images, as 'For the negro the Republican party is the deck; all else

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is the sea. He had shown himself a statesman also, by choosing the very path which finally led to emancipation. His firmness in this course, in spite of the opposition of those who had been his best friends, displayed such an independence of character as made it impossible for him to be contented with merely following any one. His advice on practical matters has been sound; his treatment of difficult questions has been so thorough, that a legal friend thinks he would, with special training, have made an excellent judge; and he has never let any thought of personal risk or loss come between him and his people's cause.

He proved himself fully aware of what that cause really demanded, when he took part with Phillips, Foster, Anna E. Dickinson, and Remond, in defeating, by a vote of more than two to one, the attempt made by Garrison, in New York, on May 9 and 10, 1865, to dissolve the American Anti-Slavery Society. Its object could not be said to have been attained, even in the narrowest sense, until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment seven months later; and nothing would have been better for the colored people than to have had their champions keep up an organization without political bias or party limits.

Three months later he wrote a letter, published in the "Liberator" for September 29, and giving his reasons for declining to act as an officer of the "Educational Monument Association." This was a plan for collecting money from white people, as well as colored, to build a college exclusively for colored people as a Lincoln memorial. He is decidedly in favor of having his people show their gratitude to Lincoln by erecting a monument with their own

money; but this scheme looks to him "like an attempt to wash the black man's face in the nation's tears." ... "I am for washing the black man's face, that is educating his mind," he says, but not for "sending around the hat to a mourning public." And then, again, "I am not for building up permanent separate institutions for colored people of any kind," but "am opposed to doing anything looking to the perpetuity of prejudice.” . . . When I go for anything, I like to go strong; and when I cannot go thus, I had better not go at all."

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The willingness of the whites to allow the colored people to continue in a degraded condition soon became so apparent, as to make him withdraw his opposition to associated efforts by his people under temporary emergencies. This change of view is expressly stated in his address on October 1, at the dedication of the Douglass Institute, in Baltimore. He could not but be grateful for having his own name given to a hall opened at the cost of $16,000, in the city where he had been a slave, by an association of colored men for the intellectual culture of their race and his. Such institutions were peculiarly needed; because :

"It is the misfortune of our class, that it fails to derive due advantage from the achievements of its individual members." .." Wealth, learning, and ability made an Irishman an Englishman. The same metamorphosing power converts a negro into a white man in this country. When prejudice cannot deny the black man's ability, it denies his race and claims him as a white man."... "The public has sternly denied the representative character of our distinguished men. This makes it necessary for the credit of the colored people that they should keep

up institutions, like this one, where they may feel themselves limited by 'no caste, or sect, or color,' where their souls may be thrilled with heavenly music and lifted to the skies on the wings of poetry and song. Here we can assemble and have our minds enlightened upon the whole circle of social, moral, political, and educational duties.". . . "Here may come all who have a new and unpopular truth to unfold and enforce". . . "Here, from this broad hall, shall go forth an influence which shall at last change the current of public contempt."

This wicked feeling was encountered in the White House, on February 7, 1866, when a committee, appointed by a colored convention of delegates from twenty States, attempted to persuade Johnson to withdraw his opposition against granting the suffrage to freedmen, or even giving persons of every race and color full protection from the laws, especially in the form of power to enforce contracts, to inherit property, and to testify in court. Frederick Douglass, who appeared that day in company with his son, Lewis, reminded Johnson that he had power to bless or blast a whole race, and said: "Your noble and humane predecessor placed in our hands the sword to assist in saving the nation; and we do hope that you, his able successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballot with which to save ourselves." The ex-slave-holder replied by comparing himself to Moses, and complaining of so great a hostility between the poor whites and the negroes as to make it impossible to let "both be thrown together at the ballot-box." ... "The query comes right there, whether we don't commence a war of races." He also recommended the colored people to leave the country. His unwillingness to let any one talk but

himself, was so great as to oblige the delegation to make their reply in print. They ask him: "How can you, in view of your professed desire to promote the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all means of defense?". . . "Can it be that you recommend a policy which would arm the strong and cast down the defenseless? Experience proves that those are most abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest. Peace between races is not to be secured by giving power to one race and withholding it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice." It is also shown that the blacks can never "be removed from this country without a terrible shock to its prosperity and peace," and that it would be a national infamy for them to be "driven into exile, for no other cause than having been freed from their chains." ("Life and Times," pp. 426-8.)

The House of Representatives had already proposed an Amendment to the Constitution, providing that if any State should refuse to grant the ballot to colored citizens, its number of Congressmen should be reduced proportionately. Douglass and the other delegates published a formal protest against the language, as implying the right of a State to disfranchise on account of color; and they labored individually to impress this view upon the Senators. Sumner and others declared that the Amendment did not go far enough; while all the Democrats thought it went too far. As first drafted, it was voted down in the Senate, but was subsequently revived with an introductory section which guaranteed full protection to all persons, and forbade that the privileges of