passed a resolution threatening that the South would be full of "rapine, blood, and fire," if the Senate did not pass the Civil Rights Bill, since found by the Supreme Court to violate the Constitution in giving to the national Government functions which belong to the States.

March, 1876, he spoke at a meeting got up nominally for serenading Senator Morton, of Indiana, but really for rebuking those Republicans who had refused to give a seat in either House of Congress to a mulatto, whose title and character were severely criticized by the independent press. That June the committee on credentials of the Republican National Convention reported against recognizing what was called "the Boss Shepherd and Fred Douglass delegation." His wish to have either Morton or Conkling nominated was not fulfilled; and the zeal with which he took part in sending Butler to fight for negro suffrage in Congress, was soon repaid by the General's getting himself made Democratic governor of Massachusetts. Whatever we may think about the purity and wisdom of the Stalwarts, we must honor the motives which have made the Douglass follow their banner no less loyally after it ceased to float over White House and Capitol, or even to lead the march. And we can all agree with him "that person is at least as sacred as its incident, property." The only question about either is to what extent protection is the business of Congress.

CHAPTER XIII.

MARSHAL AND RECORDER.

No politician, who aimed at keeping the colored people subservient to his ambition, would venture to show as much dissatisfaction with their religious views, as was expressed at this time by Douglass. It is impossible to realize how independently he has thought, and how disinterestedly he has spoken, unless this point is made duly prominent. Before looking at him as a holder of office, we must know how high he stands above such a readiness to conform to received opinions, as has always been the shortest and easiest way to promotion and patronage.

Sympathy with recent movements in theology has deepened the impression made by what he calls the "pregnant and striking fact that American slavery never was afraid of American religion." We have seen how he treated some well-known texts at Nashville; and in a lecture on "William the Silent," written near the close of the war, he said: "For whatever else we may be indebted to religion, we owe it nothing for the idea of religious toleration. Nothing is so imperious, exacting, unreasoning, and intolerant as faith, when it takes full possession of the human mind." His speaking of the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, as due to our common humanity,"

rather than to divine grace, called out so much censure that he wrote in a letter to the "Washington Republican," in June, 1870:

"If the instigator of this sham trial, in place of getting up these church meetings to try distant heretics like myself, would honestly go to work, and endeavor to reform the character, manners, and habits of the infestering thousands of colored people, who live in the utmost misery and destitution in the immediate vicinity of Big Bethel, he would do more to prove his church sound than by passing any number of wordy resolutions about thanking God."

Early in 1874 he took part in dedicating the hall of the Free Congregational Society in Florence, Massachusetts, and spoke very plainly about the faith in which he had lived while a slave. Soon after, he was invited to speak before the Free Religious Association in Boston, in company with its president, Rev. O. B. Frothingham, Mr. F. E. Abbot, of the "Index," Colonel Higginson, Dr. Bartol, and Rabbi Sonneschein. His letter, which was published in company with one from the founder of the Brahmo Somaj, is as follows:

"Dear Mr. Potter :

"WASHINGTON, D. C., May 15, 1874.

"I have delayed attention to your kind invitation thus long in the hope of being able at last to return you an affirmative answer, but circumstances are against me. I cannot be present at your Free Religious Convention in Boston. This is, of course, of smaller consequence to others than to myself, for I should come more to hear than be heard. Freedom is a word of charming sound, not only to the tasked and tortured slaves who toil for an earthly master, but for those who would break the galling chains of darkness and superstition. Regarding the

Free Religious movement as one for light, love, and liberty, limited only by reason and human welfare, and opposed to the works of those who convert life and death into enemies of human happiness, who people the invisible world with ghastly taskmasters, I give it hearty welcome. Only the truth can make men free, and I trust that your convention will be guided in all its utterances by its light and feel its power. I know many of the good men and women who are likely to assemble with you, and I would gladly share with them the burden of reproach which their attacks upon popular error will be sure to bring upon them. Very truly yours,

"FREDERICK Douglass.”

His letters to friends furnish these passages :

"I once had a large stock of hope on hand, but like the sand in the glass, it has about run out. My present solace is in the cultivation of religious submission to the inevitable, in teaching myself that I am but a breath of the Infinite, perhaps not so much. I was very sorry not to be able to attend the Free Religious Convention in Boston last week. I shall hereafter try to know more of these people." "I sometimes (at long intervals) try my old violin; but after all, the music of the past and of imagination is sweeter than any my unpracticed and unskilled bow can produce. So I lay my dear, old fiddle aside, and listen to the soft, silent, distant music of other days, which, in the hush of my spirit, I still find lingering somewhere in the mysterious depths of my soul."

...

The most complete utterance of his views is a lecture which was delivered before the Bethel Literary and Historical Society in Washington, and has not been published. The subject is the saying, incorrectly credited to Galileo, "It Moves." Among the opening sentences are these:

"I do not know that I am an evolutionist, but to this extent I am one. I certainly have more patience with those who trace

mankind upward from a low condition, even from the lower animals, than with those who start him at a high point of perfection and conduct him to a level with the brutes. I have no sympathy with a theory that starts man in heaven, and stops him in hell." ... “An irrepressible conflict, grander than that described by the late William H. Seward, is perpetually going on. Two hostile and irreconcilable tendencies, broad as the world of man, are in the open field; good and evil, truth and error, enlightenment and superstition."

Another passage I quote at some length, because it is decidedly the ablest I know of on this side.

"It may not be a useless speculation to inquire whence comes the disposition or suggestion of reform, whence that irresistible power that impels men to brave all the hardships and dangers involved in pioneering an unpopular cause. Has it a natural or a celestial origin? Is it human, or is it divine, or is it both? I have no hesitation in stating where I stand in respect of these questions. It seems to me that the true philosophy of reform is not found in the clouds, in the stars, nor anywhere else outside of humanity itself. So far as the laws of the universe have been discovered and understood, they seem to teach that the mission of man's improvement and perfection has been wholly committed to man himself. He is to be his own savior or his own destroyer. He has neither angels to help him, nor devils to hinder him. It does not appear from the operation of these laws, nor from any trustworthy data, that divine power is ever exerted to remove any evil from the world, how great soever it may be. Especially does it never appear to protect the weak against the strong, the simple against the cunning, the oppressed against the oppressor, the slave against his master, the subject against his king, or one hostile army against another, although it is usual to pray for such interference, and also for the conquerors to thank God for the victory, though such thanksgiving assumes that the Heavenly Father is always with the strong and against the weak, and with the victors against the vanquished. No power in nature asserts itself to save even inno