—Charles Sumner, March 29 and 30, 18559
Sumner carefully wrote and memorized his speeches, and once perfected, he would give the same presentation many times. Later in his career, he would skimp on such preparations, moving more of his attention to the printing of his lectures. But he would deliver this speech to packed houses across Massachusetts and New York during the entire month of April. According to an early reviewer, “His lecture was eminently a lecture. It was neither a senatorial speech or a stump speech, but it was justly adapted to the calmer and more promiscuous audience of the lyceum and the lecture room.”10 It was about an hour and forty-five minutes long and was said to improve with repetition.
On the morning of March 30, the day when he would deliver it for the second time, Sumner wrote to Samuel J. May, an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Syracuse, New York, to discuss his lecture schedule. “I am to speak in New Haven on April 11th, and every evening now till then,” Sumner wrote, referring to stops in Roxbury, Worcester, Providence, New Haven, Albany, and Rochester. He was expected in Albany on April 12 and in Rochester on the thirteenth, but other than those “fixed” days, “you can change the appointments according to your desire.” His only request was that he not have a night off while on the road: “I desire to work every night and should be glad to have an engagement.” He had two openings on his calendar, on April 21 and 23, that might be booked “say at Troy and Poughkeepsie?” For his appearances in Boston, he received one hundred dollars per appearance; at other towns in Massachusetts, he was paid fifty. “I do not desire to speculate for fees,” he added, noting that he would accept whatever a local lecture committee could pay.11
The National Anti-Slavery Standard reported at the beginning of April, “he has yielded to these importunities and consented to devote his whole energies to this form of labor from the present time until the 10th of May.”12 His tour would close in New York City, coinciding with the American Anti-Slavery Society’s anniversary week celebrations on May 9, at the Metropolitan Theater, on Broadway above Bleecker. Samuel May’s New York Anti-Slavery Society published his April schedule as:
Albany . . . Thursday, April 12th
Rochester . . . Friday, 13th
Canandaigua . . . Saturday, 14th
Auburn . . . Monday, 16th
Skaneateles . . . Tuesday, 17th
Syracuse . . . Wednesday, 18th
Utica . . . Thursday, 19th
Fulton . . . Friday, 20th
Everywhere Sumner spoke, locals asked him to deliver the lecture on more nights and in additional towns. That spring he reached nearly a hundred thousand spectators and countless others in print. As his fame spread, his rhetoric intensified. The speech solidified his position as a leader in the antislavery movement.
“Well, Mr. Sumner has given us a true, old-fashioned anti-slavery discourse,” said Garrison, after the first night.13
Although Mary was present on the stage on the opening night, March 29, Sumner did not refer to her directly. Later in the speech, he argued that chattel slavery depended upon an untenable distinction between the races. Had Mary’s family known this was his intent in inviting her to the stage? In their forty days together, Sumner had meditated on Mary’s story, come to know her background, and made a lecture from her history. He asked his audience to imagine slavery as a white experience.
And, first, of the great question alleged distinction of race. This assumes two different forms, one founded on a prophetic malediction in the Old Testament, & the other on the professed observation of science. Its importance is apparent in the obvious fact that, unless such difference be clearly established, every argument by which our own freedom is vindicated—every applause awarded to the successful rebellion of our fathers—every condemnation directed against the enslavement of our white fellow citizens, by Algerine corsairs, will plead trumpet-tongued against the deep condemnation of Slavery, whether white or black.
—Charles Sumner, March 29 and 30, 185514
The presence of “Little Ida May,” there for all to see, proved that “clear” and “unmistakable” distinctions between the races did not exist, and racial difference was an unmanageable and inadequate criterion for slavery. Therefore, if the American public was to be comfortable with the institution of slavery, it must also be prepared to countenance white slavery, whether Algerian or homegrown. Given the inherent instability of categories of race, Sumner rejected the ideology of racial inferiority, a mainstay of proslavery rhetoric.
Midway through the speech, Sumner pivoted. Speaking for the abolitionist community, he said he did not intend “to change human nature.”
But descending from these summits of principle let me shew [sic] precisely what we aim to accomplish. In stating our object its practicability will be apparent. It does not assume in any way to change human nature, or to place any individual in a sphere to which he is not adapted. It does not suppose assert that a race degraded for generations under the iron heel of Slavery can be lifted at once into all the privileges of an American citizen. But it does confidently assume that every individual man, without distinction of color, is entitled to life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness; & it does with equal confidence assert that all every individual, who bear the human form, can should at once be recognized as man.
When the speech was readied for print, Sumner revised the line to read: “While discountenancing all prejudice of color and every establishment of caste, the Anti-Slavery Enterprise at least so far as I may speak for it—does not undertake to change human nature, or to force any individual into relations of life for which he is not morally, intellectually and socially adapted.”15
The phrase “relations of life” disassociated the antislavery enterprise from advocating for a wide range of other social rights for African Americans, such as rights to interracial marriage, to vote, and to own property. Sumner denounced prejudice and caste, but overall he left room for fellow whites to maintain social hierarchies based on race. He did not address the question of the social and intellectual equality of black people, particularly of those who had been “degraded” by slavery for generations. A pernicious thought poisoned the well. Sumner attacked slavery, but he tolerated segregation.
On April 13 Frederick Douglass heard the speech at home in Rochester. He reread the transcripts to be sure of what he had heard before writing to Sumner.
Rochester, April 24, 1855 To Hon. Chas. Sumner
My dear Sir:
There were two points in your address, which grated a little on my ear at the moment, and which I would have called to your attention immediately after its delivery in Rochester had opportunity permitted. The first claimed that Mr. Garrison originated the present Anti-Slavery movement—a claim which I do not regard as well grounded, and I think I have succeeded in showing this in a lecture recently delivered in Rochester and in several other places during the past winter. Mr. Garrison found the Anti-Slavery movement already in existence when he stepped to the side of Benjamin Lundy in Baltimore. The second point was your very guarded disclaimer touching the social elevation of the colored race. It seemed to me that considering the obstinate and persecuting character of American prejudice against color, and the readiness with which those who entertain it avail themselves of every implication in its favor, your remark on that point was unfortunate.
I may be a little sensitive on the subject of our social position. I think I have become more so of late, because I have detected, in some of my old comrades, something like a falling away from their first love, touching the recognition of the entire manhood and social equality of the colored people. I do not mean by this, that every colored man, without regard to his character or attainments, shall be recognized as socially equal to white people who are in these respects superior to him; but I do mean to say that the simple fact of color should not be the criterion by which to ascertain or to fix the social station of any. Let every man, without regard to color, go wherever his character and abilities naturally carry hi
m. And further, let there be no public opinion ready to repel any who are in these respects fit for high social position.
For my own individual part as a colored man, I have little of which to complain. I have found myself socially higher than I am placed politically. The most debased white man in New York is my superior at the ballot box, but not so in a social point of view. In the one case color is the standard of fitness or unfitness; in the other, character.
I thank you heartily, my dear Sir, for honoring me with the opportunity of dropping these suggestions for your perusal.
With the spirit and manner of your noble address, I was not only pleased but profoundly gratified, and I thank God that talents and acquirements so high as yours, are devoted to the service of my crushed and bleeding race.
Believe me, my dear Sir, Your faithful and grateful friend, Frederick Douglass16
Douglass was correct in dating Garrison’s initiation in antislavery work to the 1820s, in Benjamin Lundy’s Baltimore printing office. Douglass and Garrison’s relationship was strained over a difference in ideology and method, and the competition between them for subscribers of their respective antislavery newspapers did not hasten reconciliation.17
Douglass wrote to Sumner with sensitivity and tact. He had achieved his social position in a climate of near constant battle against prejudice.18 He had to fight for his seat on the train. He would have to fight for his sons’ right to fight for the Union. He had to fight to speak in his own voice, to philosophize, to weigh new views on the subject in his mind, without being called to censure as an imposter to his race. “It was said to me,” Douglass wrote in My Bondage and My Freedom, that (for credibility’s sake) it would be “better have a little plantation manner of speech than not; ’tis not best that you seem too learned.” He noted that his white compeers in the movement were uncertain allies in the fight for human equality.
Mary’s popularity as an antislavery icon was a symptom of the lapse that Douglass named as “a falling away from . . . the recognition of the entire manhood and social equality of the colored people.” He never completely dispelled the rumor that he was not born a slave or raised in illiteracy; Mary too was subject to that suspicion due to her appearance. It seemed that American audiences categorized the enslaved millions as not deserving of the sustained attention paid these exceptional ex-slaves. In a speech, “Life Pictures,” that he gave years later, Douglass reconsidered the process that had made him an icon, a representative of his race. “All subjective ideas become more distinct, palpable, and strong, by the habit of rendering them objective.” He added this warning: our faculty for making examples out of individuals was a “power that can be potent in the hands of the bigot and fanatic, or in the hands of the liberal and enlightened.”19
Historian Benjamin Quarles, in his groundbreaking 1969 study of black abolitionism, wrote that by 1860, Charles Sumner was second to none in the esteem of black Americans.20 But Sumner’s bias found its way into public statements. Despite Douglass’s private suggestion that he desist, Sumner continued to give the lecture as written, race disclaimers and all.
Receiving no direct response from Sumner, Douglass published his thoughts in an editorial in his newspaper. What did Sumner mean when he said he would not change human nature, or place any individual in a sphere to which he was not adapted? Was that sphere the bedroom?
But it is possible that Mr. Sumner only means here to say that intermarriage of individuals of the two races is not contemplated by the Anti-Slavery Enterprise, for which he is authorized to speak; and if he does, it may still be doubted if such a disclaimer was necessary. By whom is the charge of amalgamation brought? Who but the people of the South are raising the cry of amalgamation as unnatural and monstrous? And yet who but they are blotting out the distinction between white and black? . . .
Mr. S seldom walks the broad avenues of Washington, that he does not meet the mulatto daughters of Southern members of Congress, and the best blood of old Virginia courses in the veins.
—Frederick Douglass’s Paper, June 1, 185521
Douglass’s editorial reminds us, once again, that Mary’s presence on the platform was pedestrian. If anything, her appearance pointed to a lack of consistency in white support. William Cooper Nell had made more or less the same criticism in his report to Douglass’s paper, a few months prior. White audiences should not feel such “intense excitement” about “the Little White Slave Ida May” and Anthony Burns. “White fugitives” were not new; the only new aspect was the interest white audiences paid them. In the newspapers of black abolitionists, there is evidence of pushback against the whitening of the antislavery argument, as represented by Mary as “Ida May.”
A month after her appearance at Sumner’s lecture, Mary appeared, as “Ida May II,” at Dr. John Sweat Rock’s speech on race. Community leader Dr. Rock was an abolitionist and surgeon, who in 1861, would also become the first black lawyer to be admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court.
LECTURE TONIGHT BY A COLORED PHYSICIAN. Dr. J. S. Rock, a truly talented colored man, and “uncommon good speaker,” will repeat his lecture on “the races and slavery,” at Cochituate Hall this (Friday) evening, at 7 o’clock. Go and hear him. Anthony Burns and Ida May II., a white slave child, will be present.
—Boston Evening Transcript, May 4, 185522
In this 1855 speech, Dr. Rock used Mary’s presence at the event to make the same point as Sumner: to prove that classification by race was an untenable, irrational construct.23 He challenged the connection between race and slavery with humor and force. Though making the same argument as Sumner, Rock did not equivocate on the issue of equality. “It is utterly impossible to classify mankind into races,” he said, and when we attempt a racial standard, “we shut out all white men from the Caucasian race whose features are not regular according to the standard, and we shut out all black men from the African race, whose features are not irregular according to the standard.—White men who have irregular features we make Africans, and black men who have regular features we make Caucasians.” The only conclusion to be drawn from racial classification is this: “In undertaking to prove too much they prove nothing.”24
Before the month was out, “Little Ida May” receded from public view. There are no further mentions in the press of Mary’s appearances as “Ida May II.”
On the opening day of the Anti-Slavery Anniversary Week celebrations in New York City, there was a torrential downpour. “Had the weather been favorable, it is a safe thing to affirm that the house could not have held the audience that resorted to it.”25 And as the National Anti-Slavery Standard went on to report, the doors were “held open for all and the world to come in” all day. During the week before this annual gathering of the antislavery faithful, there had been “vile and malignant” anti-abolitionist demonstrations and press, but this did not muster a counter protest on the day of the anniversary celebrations. “The sternest denunciations of Union and of the Church failed to arouse a single sibilant remonstrance.”
The abolitionist movement felt renewed. Mainstream crowds listened to radicals advocate zealous positions without protest or censure. Swelled numbers gathered to hear William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, and others. “It certainly meant something more than met the eye, when two Senators of a Sovereign State”—Henry Wilson and Charles Sumner—“in the same week, stood before immense audiences in the chief city in the land, and exposed the dangers of Freedom and debunked the abominations of Slavery.” This was Sumner’s first lecture in New York, and it was sold out. He was invited to reappear a second night, downtown at Niblo’s Theater, and then a third night, in Brooklyn. All three events sold out.
Sumner commanded the antislavery arena, but he worried that this springtime growth would be checked. “We seem to approach success,” Sumner wrote antislavery jurist William Jay, “but I shall not be disappointed if we are again baffled.” From his vantage point, a triumph so quick in coming could not effect deep change, for “
our cause is so great that it can triumph only slowly.”26
PART FIVE
PRIVATE PASSAGES
17
Private Life
Boston, October 1855
Henry Williams returned to Concord, bringing with him a small statuette of Little Eva and Uncle Tom, the stars of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was October 1855, and these objects, known as “Tomitudes,” were in every shop in North Boston. That month also marked the five-year anniversary of Henry’s flight from Virginia.
He was making an errand of gratitude and reflection. He could take the train now, surely, but Concord historians insist that he walked. This time Henry Williams approached the Thoreau home in the broad light of day and entered by the front door. Sophia and Henry David Thoreau were surprised to see him. Four years after they had sent him by train to Canada, he was standing upon their doorstep. He had much to tell them about his manumission and his reunion with his family, and they gathered to listen.
Williams gave Thoreau the statue of Tom and Eva, not to remember the novel by, but to remember him by. It had been made in Staffordshire, England, he showed Thoreau, while he himself was from Stafford County, Virginia. Williams had met Thoreau on his previous flight to Concord, before his wife and children were reunited with him, and before the world had met Uncle Tom and Little Eva. And just as the figurine depicts Eva standing on the knee of a grinning Tom, now Henry beams when he is with his daughter Mary.
George Tolman, a later resident of Thoreau’s home and custodian of his effects there, would say of the figurine that “the negro spent his last penny for the gift for his friend,” but that seems a demeaning, false assumption, made for effect.1 Williams could handle money. But “Thoreau was deeply appreciative of the gratitude and always treasured the gift and its association,” Tolman recalled, and he would keep the statuette for the rest of his life. It remains treasured beyond its worth today. “Tom and Eva” is a highlight of the Thoreau collection at the Concord Museum.
Girl in Black and White Page 20
