Sir, the valor of the colored soldier was tested on many a battlefield, and to-day his bones lie bleaching beside every hill and in every valley from the Potomac to the Gulf; whose mute eloquence in behalf of equal rights for all before the law, is and ought to be far more persuasive than any poor language I can command.
Mr. Speaker, nothing short of a complete acknowledgment of my manhood will satisfy me. I have no compromises to make, and shall unwillingly accept any. If I were to say that I would be content with less than any other member upon this floor I would forfeit whatever respect any one here might entertain for me, and would thereby furnish the best possible evidence that I do not and cannot appreciate the rights of a freeman. Just what I am charged with by my political enemies. I cannot willingly accept anything less than my full measure of rights as a man, because I am unwilling to present myself as a candidate for the brand of inferiority, which will be as plain and lasting as the mark of Cain. If I am to be thus branded, the country must do it against my solemn protest.
Sir, in order that I might know something of the feelings of a freeman, a privilege denied me in the land of my birth, I left home last year and traveled six months in foreign lands, and the moment I put my foot upon the deck of a ship that unfurled a foreign flag from its mast-head, distinctions on account of my color ceased. I am not aware that my presence on board the steamer put her off her course. I believe we made the trip in the usual time. It was in other countries than my own that I was not a stranger, that I could approach a hotel without the fear that the door would be slammed in my face. Sir, I feel this humiliation very keenly; it dwarfs my manhood, and certainly it impairs my usefulness as a citizen.
The other day when the centennial bill was under discussion I would have been glad to say a word in its favor, but how could I? How would I appear at the centennial celebration of our national freedom, with my own galling chains of slavery hanging about me? I could no more rejoice on that occasion in my present condition than the Jews could sing in their wonted style as they sat as captives beside the Babylonish streams; but I look forward to the day when I shall be in the full enjoyment of the rights of a freeman, with the same hope they indulged, that they would again return to their native land. I can no more forget my manhood, than they could forget Jerusalem.
After all, this question resolves itself to this: either I am a man or I am not a man. If one, I am entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities common to any other class in this country; if not a man, I have no right to vote, no right to a seat here; if no right to vote, then 20 per cent. of the members on this floor have no right here, but, on the contrary, hold their seats in violation of law. If the negro has no right to vote, then one-eighth of your Senate consists of members who have no shadow of a claim to the places they occupy; and if no right to a vote, a half-dozen governors in the South figure as usurpers.
This is the legitimate conclusion of the argument, that the negro is not a man and is not entitled to all the public rights common to other men, and you cannot escape it. But when I press my claims I am asked, “Is it good policy?” My answer is, “Policy is out of the question; it has nothing to do with it; that you can have no policy in dealing with your citizens; that there must be one law for all; that in this case justice is the only standard to be used, and you can no more divide justice than you can divide Deity.” On the other hand, I am told that I must respect the prejudices of others. Now, sir, no one respects reasonable and intelligent prejudices more than I. I respect religious prejudices, for example; these I can comprehend. But how can I have respect for the prejudices that prompt a man to turn up his nose at the males of a certain race, while at the same time he has a fondness for the females of the same race to the extent of cohabitation? Out of four poor unfortunate colored women who from poverty were forced to go to the lying-in branch of the Freedmen’s Hospital here in the District last year three gave birth to children whose fathers were white men, and I venture to say that if they were members of this body, would vote against the civil-rights bill. Do you, can you wonder at my want of respect for this kind of prejudice? To make me feel uncomfortable appears to be the highest ambition of many white men. It is to them a positive luxury, which they seek to indulge at every opportunity.
I have never sought to compel any one, white or black to associate with me, and never shall; nor do I wish to be compelled to associate with any one. If a man do not wish to ride with me in the street-car I shall not object to his hiring a private conveyance; if he do not wish to ride with me from here to Baltimore, who shall complain if he charter a special train? For a man to carry out his prejudices in this way would be manly, and would leave no cause for complaint, but to crowd me out of the usual conveyance into an uncomfortable place with persons for whose manners I have a dislike, whose language is not fit for ears polite, is decidedly unmanly and cannot be submitted to tamely by any one who has a particle of self-respect.
Sir, this whole thing grows out of a desire to establish a system of “caste,” an anti-republican principle, in our free country. In Europe they have princes, dukes, lords, &c., in contradistinction to the middle classes and peasants. Further East they have the brahmans or priests, who rank above the sudras or laborers. In those countries distinctions are based upon blood and position. Every one there understands the custom and no one complains. They, poor innocent creatures, pity our condition, look down upon us with a kind of royal compassion, because they think we have no tangible lines of distinction, and therefore speak of our society as being vulgar. But let not our friends beyond the seas lay the flattering unction to their souls that we are without distinctive lines; that we have no nobility; for we are blessed with both. Our distinction is color, (which would necessarily exclude the brahmans,) and our lines are much broader than anything they know of. Here a drunken white man is not only equal to a drunken negro, (as would be the case anywhere else,) but superior to the most sober and orderly one; here an ignorant white man is not only the equal of an unlettered negro, but is superior to the most cultivated; here our nobility cohabit with our female peasants, and then throw up their hands in holy horror when a male of the same class enters a restaurant to get a meal, and if he insist upon being accommodated our scion of royalty will leave and go to the arms of his colored mistress and there pour out his soul’s complaint, tell her of the impudence of the “damned nigger” in coming to a table where a white man was sitting.
What poor, simple-minded creatures these foreigners are. They labor under the delusion that they monopolize the knowledge of the courtesies due from one gentleman to another. How I rejoice to know that it is a delusion. Sir, I wish some of them could have been present to hear the representative of the F. F. V.’s upon this floor (and I am told that that is the highest degree that society has yet reached in this country) address one of his peers, who dared ask him a question, in this style: “I am talking to white men.” Suppose Mr. Gladstone—who knows no man but by merit—who in violation of our custom entertained the colored jubilee singers at his home last summer, or the Duke de Broglie, had been present and heard this eloquent remark drop from the lips of this classical and knightly member, would they not have hung their heads in shame at their ignorance of politeness, and would they not have returned home, repaired to their libraries, and betaken themselves to the study of Chesterfield on manners? With all these absurdities staring them in the face, who can wonder that foreigners laugh at our ideas of distinction?
Mr. Speaker, though there is not a line in this bill the democracy approve of, yet they made the most noise about the school clause. Dispatches are freely sent over the wires as to what will be done with the common-school system in the several Southern States in the event this bill becomes a law. I am not surprised at this, but, on the other hand, I looked for it. Now what is the force of that school clause? It simply provides that all the children in every State where there is a school system supported in whole or in part by general taxation shall have equal advantages of school pri
vileges. So that if perfect and ample accommodations are not made convenient for all the children, then any child has the right to go to any school where they do exist. And that is all there is in this school clause. I want some one to tell me of any measure that was intended to benefit the negro that they have approved of. Of which one did they fail to predict evil? They declared if the negroes were emancipated that the country would be laid waste, and that in the end he would starve, because he could not take care of himself. But this was a mistake. When the reconstruction acts were passed and the colored men in my State were called upon to express through the ballot whether Alabama should return to the Union or not, white men threw up their hands in holy horror and declared if the negro voted that never again would they deposit another ballot. But how does the matter stand now? Some of those very men are in the republican ranks, and I have known them to grow hoarse in shouting for our platforms and candidates. They hurrah for our principles with all the enthusiasm of a new-born soul, and, sir, so zealous have they become that in looking at them I am amazed, and am often led to doubt my own faith and feel ashamed for my lukewarmness. And those who have not joined our party are doing their utmost to have the negro vote with them. I have met them in the cabins night and day where they were imploring him for the sake of old times to come up and vote with them.
I submit, Mr. Speaker, that political prejudices prompt the democracy to oppose this bill as much as anything else. In the campaign of 1868 Joe Williams, an uncouth and rather notorious colored man, was employed as a general democratic canvasser in the South. He was invited to Montgomery to enlighten us, and while there he stopped at one of the best hotels in the city, one that would not dare entertain me. He was introduced at the meeting by the chairman of the democratic executive committee as a learned and elegant, as well as eloquent gentleman. In North Alabama he was invited to speak at the Seymour and Blair barbecue, and did address one of the largest audiences, composed largely of ladies, that ever assembled in that part of the State. This I can prove by my simon-pure democratic colleague, Mr. SLOSS, for he was chairman of the committee of arrangements on that occasion, and I never saw him so radiant with good humor in all my life as when he had the honor of introducing “his friend,” Mr. Williams. In that case they were extending their courtesies to a coarse, vulgar stranger, because he was a democrat, while at the same time they were hunting me down as the partridge on the mount, night and day, with their Ku-Klux Klan, simply because I was a republican and refused to bow at the foot of their Baal. I might enumerate many instances of this kind, but I forbear. But to come down to a later period, the Greeley campaign. The colored men who were employed to canvass North Carolina in the interest of the democratic party were received at all the hotels as other men and treated I am informed with marked distinction. And in the State of Louisiana a very prominent colored gentleman saw proper to espouse the Greeley cause, and when the fight was over and the McEnery government saw fit to send on a committee to Washington to present their case to the President, this colored gentleman was selected as one of that committee. On arriving in the city of New Orleans prior to his departure he was taken to the Saint Charles, the most aristocratic hotel in the South. When they started he occupied a berth in the sleeping-car; at every eating-house he was treated like the rest of them, no distinction whatever. And when they arrived at Montgomery I was at the depot, just starting for New York. Not only did the conductor refuse to allow me a berth in the sleeping-car, but I was also denied a seat in the first-class carriage. Now, what was the difference between us? Nothing but our political faith. To prove this I have only to say that just a few months before this happened, he, along with Frederick Douglass and others, was denied the same privileges he enjoyed in coming here. And now that he has returned to the right party again I can tell him that never more will he ride in another sleeping-car in the South unless this bill become law. There never was a truer saying than that circumstances alter cases.
Mr. Speaker, to call this land the asylum of the oppressed is a misnomer, for upon all sides I am treated as a pariah. I hold that the solution of this whole matter is to enact such laws and prescribe such penalties for their violation as will prevent any person from discriminating against another in public places on account of color. No one asks, no one seeks the passage of a law that will interfere with any one’s private affairs. But I do ask the enactment of a law to secure me in the enjoyment of public privileges. But when I ask this I am told that I must wait for public opinion; that it is a matter that cannot be forced by law. While I admit that public opinion is a power, and in many cases is a law of itself, yet I cannot lose sight of the fact that both statute law, and the law of necessity manufacture public opinion. I remember, it was unpopular to enlist negro soldiers in our late war, and after they enlisted it was equally unpopular to have them fight in the same battles; but when it became a necessity in both cases public opinion soon came around to that point. No white father objected to the negro’s becoming food for powder if thereby his son could be saved. No white woman objected to the negro marching in the same ranks and fighting in the same battles if by that her husband could escape burial in our savannas and return to her and her little ones.
Suppose there had been no reconstruction acts nor amendments to the Constitution, when would public opinion in the South have suggested the propriety of giving me the ballot? Unaided by law when would public opinion have prompted the Administration to appoint members of my race to represent this Government at foreign courts? It is said by some well-meaning men that the colored man has now every right under the common law; in reply I wish to say that that kind of law commands very little respect when applied to the rights of colored men in my portion of the country; the only law that we have any regard for is uncommon law of the most positive character. And I repeat, if you will place upon your statute-books laws that will protect me in my rights, that public opinion will speedily follow.
Mr. Speaker, I trust this bill will become law, because it is a necessity, and because it will put an end to all legislation on this subject. It does not and cannot contemplate any such idea as social equality; nor is there any man upon this floor so silly as to believe that there can be any law enacted or enforced that would compel one man to recognize another as his equal socially; if there be, he ought not to be here, and I have only to say that they have sent him to the wrong public building. I would oppose such a bill as earnestly as the gentleman from North Carolina, whose associations and cultivations have been of such a nature as to lead him to select the crow as his standard of grandeur and excellence in the place of the eagle, the hero of all birds and our national emblem of pride and power. I will tell him that I have seen many of his race to whose level I should object to being dragged.
Sir, it matters not how much men may differ upon the question of State and national rights; there is one class of rights, however, that we all agree upon, namely, individual rights, which includes the right of every man to select associates for himself and family, and to say who shall and who shall not visit at his house. This right is God-given and custom-sanctioned, and there is, and there can be no power overruling your decision in this matter. Let this bill become law and not only will it do much toward giving rest to this weary country on this subject, completing the manhood of my race and perfecting his citizenship, but it will take him from the political arena as a topic of discussion where he has done duty for the last fifty years, and thus freed from anxiety respecting his political standing, hundreds of us will abandon the political fields who are there from necessity, and not from choice and enter other and more pleasant ones; and thus relieved, it will be the aim of the colored man as well as his duty and interest, to become a good citizen, and to do all in his power to advance the interests of a common country.
June 9, 1874
“A REIGN OF TERROR”:
MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 1874
William Lloyd Garrison to the Boston Journal
To the Editors of The Boston
Journal:
Authentic intelligence from various portions of the South reveals the pregnant fact that the old rebel element is again in the ascendant, slaughtering like dogs obnoxious loyal white and colored citizens, and inaugurating a new reign of terror as bloody and unrelenting as marked the scenes of 1860–61. If the tragedies that are daily occurring were simply murder or assassination to gratify personal revenge or to obtain a coveted booty, they might be left to the disposal of the local authorities, and no Governmental interference would be deemed desirable or necessary; but they are notably for disloyal ends, against the enjoyment of equal civil and political rights, and in the interest of that rebellious spirit which involved us in one of the bloodiest conflicts recorded in the annals of history, and which incomparably prefers to rule in hell rather than reign in heaven. They mean the suppression of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right peaceably to assemble together for redress of grievances, the independent exercise of the elective franchise in the hands of free men, and the overthrow of all the safeguards of personal security. They mean rebellion and war—an imperium in imperio, whereby American citizenship may be trampled upon with impunity. Of these, take as specimens the summary massacre, by a mob of masked assassins, of sixteen colored citizens in Gibson county, Tennessee, and the cold-blooded murder of six white Republican office-holders and seven colored men at one time in Red River Parish, Louisiana, by an armed band of “White Leaguers.” In Garrard county, Kentucky, “a perfect reign of terror” is reported, United States troops having been fired upon, a number of negroes killed, and the residence of Hon. William Sellers (Republican) burned to the ground. Of course, the rebel justification for these horrible deeds is that the victims were conspiring for the destruction of the whites, or purposing some other evil device; but the accusation is manifestly that of the wolf in the fable against the lamb. In the end, it is always shown in such cases that the aggressors are the disloyal and degraded whites, whose tiger ferocity is untamable. The colored people of the South are the least inclined to bloodshed of any considerable portion of mankind; they forbear and forgive, and meekly endeavor to keep the peace in a manner that would be regarded as lack of manhood in white men; they know full well, moreover, that in any collision with their satanic enemies they would be the chief sufferers, and a circumspection, born of prolonged martyrdom, leads to all possible endurance on their part under the most cruel provocations. If in any case, goaded to desperation, any of their number arm in self-defence, or are nerved to pull a trigger, the act is magnified into a diabolical uprising of the blacks to exterminate the whites, whose passions are most easily “set on fire of hell.”
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