My Bondage and My Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom

F >> Frederick Douglass >> My Bondage and My Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom

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Of the existence and power of the anti-slavery movement, as a
fact, you need no evidence. The nation has seen its face, and
felt the controlling pressure of its hand. You have seen it
moving in all directions, and in all weathers, and in all places,
appearing most where desired least, and pressing hardest where
most resisted. No place is exempt. The quiet prayer meeting,
and the stormy halls of national debate, share its presence
alike. It is a common intruder, and of course has the name of
being ungentlemanly. Brethren who had long sung, in the most
affectionate fervor, and with the greatest sense of security,

_Together let us sweetly live--together let us die,_

have been suddenly and violently separated by it, and ranged in
hostile attitude toward each other. The Methodist, one of the
most powerful religious organizations of this country, has been
rent asunder, and its strongest bolts of denominational
brotherhood started at a single surge. It has changed the tone
of the northern pulpit, and modified that of the press. A
celebrated divine, who, four years ago, was for flinging his own
mother, or brother, into the remorseless jaws of the monster
slavery, lest he should swallow up the Union, now recognizes
anti-slavery as a characteristic of future civilization. Signs
and wonders follow this movement; and the fact just stated is one
of them. Party ties are loosened by it; and men are compelled to
take sides for or against it, whether they will or not. Come
from where he may, or come for what he may, he is compelled to
show his hand. What is this mighty force? What is its history?
and what is its destiny? Is it ancient or modern, transient or
permanent? Has it turned aside, like a stranger and a sojourner,
to tarry for a night? or has it come to rest with us forever?
Excellent chances are here for speculation; and some of them are
quite profound. We might, for instance, proceed to inquire not
only into the philosophy of the anti-slavery movement, but into
the philosophy of the law, in obedience to which that movement
started into existence. We might demand to know what is that law
or power, which, at different times, disposes the minds of men to
this or that particular object--now for peace, and now for war--
now for free<365>dom, and now for slavery; but this profound
question I leave to the abolitionists of the superior class to
answer. The speculations which must precede such answer, would
afford, perhaps, about the same satisfaction as the learned
theories which have rained down upon the world, from time to
time, as to the origin of evil. I shall, therefore, avoid water
in which I cannot swim, and deal with anti-slavery as a fact,
like any other fact in the history of mankind, capable of being
described and understood, both as to its internal forces, and its
external phases and relations.

[After an eloquent, a full, and highly interesting exposition of
the nature, character, and history of the anti-slavery movement,
from the insertion of which want of space precludes us, he
concluded in the following happy manner.]

Present organizations may perish, but the cause will go on. That
cause has a life, distinct and independent of the organizations
patched up from time to time to carry it forward. Looked at,
apart from the bones and sinews and body, it is a thing immortal.
It is the very essence of justice, liberty, and love. The moral
life of human society, it cannot die while conscience, honor, and
humanity remain. If but one be filled with it, the cause lives.
Its incarnation in any one individual man, leaves the whole world
a priesthood, occupying the highest moral eminence even that of
disinterested benevolence. Whoso has ascended his height, and
has the grace to stand there, has the world at his feet, and is
the world's teacher, as of divine right. He may set in judgment
on the age, upon the civilization of the age, and upon the
religion of the age; for he has a test, a sure and certain test,
by which to try all institutions, and to measure all men. I say,
he may do this, but this is not the chief business for which he
is qualified. The great work to which he is called is not that
of judgment. Like the Prince of Peace, he may say, if I judge, I
judge righteous judgment; still mainly, like him, he may say,
this is not his work. The man who has thoroughly embraced the
principles of justice, love, and liberty, like the true preacher
of Christianity, is less anxious to reproach the world of its
sins, than to win it to repentance. His great work on earth is
to exemplify, and to illustrate, and to ingraft those principles
upon the living and practical understandings of all men within
the reach of his influence. This is his work; long or short his
years, many or few his adherents, powerful or weak his
instrumentalities, through good report, or through bad report,
this is his work. It is to snatch from the bosom of nature the
latent facts of each individual man's experience, and with steady
hand to hold them up fresh and glowing, enforeing, with all his
power, their acknowledgment and practical adoption. If there be
but _one_ <366>such man in the land, no matter what becomes of
abolition societies and parties, there will be an anti-slavery
cause, and an anti-slavery movement. Fortunately for that cause,
and fortunately for him by whom it is espoused, it requires no
extraordinary amount of talent to preach it or to receive it when
preached. The grand secret of its power is, that each of its
principles is easily rendered appreciable to the faculty of
reason in man, and that the most unenlightened conscience has no
difficulty in deciding on which side to register its testimony.
It can call its preachers from among the fishermen, and raise
them to power. In every human breast, it has an advocate which
can be silent only when the heart is dead. It comes home to
every man's understanding, and appeals directly to every man's
conscience. A man that does not recognize and approve for
himself the rights and privileges contended for, in behalf of the
American slave, has not yet been found. In whatever else men may
differ, they are alike in the apprehension of their natural and
personal rights. The difference between abolitionists and those
by whom they are opposed, is not as to principles. All are
agreed in respect to these. The manner of applying them is the
point of difference.

The slaveholder himself, the daily robber of his equal brother,
discourses eloquently as to the excellency of justice, and the
man who employs a brutal driver to flay the flesh of his negroes,
is not offended when kindness and humanity are commended. Every
time the abolitionist speaks of justice, the anti-abolitionist
assents says, yes, I wish the world were filled with a
disposition to render to every man what is rightfully due him; I
should then get what is due me. That's right; let us have
justice. By all means, let us have justice. Every time the
abolitionist speaks in honor of human liberty, he touches a chord
in the heart of the anti-abolitionist, which responds in
harmonious vibrations. Liberty--yes, that is evidently my right,
and let him beware who attempts to invade or abridge that right.
Every time he speaks of love, of human brotherhood, and the
reciprocal duties of man and man, the anti-abolitionist assents--
says, yes, all right--all true--we cannot have such ideas too
often, or too fully expressed. So he says, and so he feels, and
only shows thereby that he is a man as well as an anti-
abolitionist. You have only to keep out of sight the manner of
applying your principles, to get them endorsed every time.
Contemplating himself, he sees truth with absolute clearness and
distinctness. He only blunders when asked to lose sight of
himself. In his own cause he can beat a Boston lawyer, but he is
dumb when asked to plead the cause of others. He knows very well
whatsoever he would have done unto himself, but is quite in doubt
as to having the <367>same thing done unto others. It is just
here, that lions spring up in the path of duty, and the battle
once fought in heaven is refought on the earth. So it is, so
hath it ever been, and so must it ever be, when the claims of
justice and mercy make their demand at the door of human
selfishness. Nevertheless, there is that within which ever
pleads for the right and the just.

In conclusion, I have taken a sober view of the present anti-
slavery movement. I am sober, but not hopeless. There is no
denying, for it is everywhere admitted, that the anti-slavery
question is the great moral and social question now before the
American people. A state of things has gradually been developed,
by which that question has become the first thing in order. It
must be met. Herein is my hope. The great idea of impartial
liberty is now fairly before the American people. Anti-slavery
is no longer a thing to be prevented. The time for prevention is
past. This is great gain. When the movement was younger and
weaker--when it wrought in a Boston garret to human apprehension,
it might have been silently put out of the way. Things are
different now. It has grown too large--its friends are too
numerous--its facilities too abundant--its ramifications too
extended--its power too omnipotent, to be snuffed out by the
contingencies of infancy. A thousand strong men might be struck
down, and its ranks still be invincible. One flash from the
heart-supplied intellect of Harriet Beecher Stowe could light a
million camp fires in front of the embattled host of slavery,
which not all the waters of the Mississippi, mingled as they are
with blood, could extinguish. The present will be looked to by
after coming generations, as the age of anti-slavery literature--
when supply on the gallop could not keep pace with the ever
growing demand--when a picture of a Negro on the cover was a help
to the sale of a book--when conservative lyceums and other
American literary associations began first to select their
orators for distinguished occasions from the ranks of the
previously despised abolitionists. If the anti-slavery movement
shall fail now, it will not be from outward opposition, but from
inward decay. Its auxiliaries are everywhere. Scholars,
authors, orators, poets, and statesmen give it their aid. The
most brilliant of American poets volunteer in its service.
Whittier speaks in burning verse to more than thirty thousand, in
the National Era. Your own Longfellow whispers, in every hour of
trial and disappointment, "labor and wait." James Russell Lowell
is reminding us that "men are more than institutions." Pierpont
cheers the heart of the pilgrim in search of liberty, by singing
the praises of "the north star." Bryant, too, is with us; and
though chained to the car of party, and dragged on amidst a whirl
of <368>political excitement, he snatches a moment for letting
drop a smiling verse of sympathy for the man in chains. The
poets are with us. It would seem almost absurd to say it,
considering the use that has been made of them, that we have
allies in the Ethiopian songs; those songs that constitute our
national music, and without which we have no national music.
They are heart songs, and the finest feelings of human nature are
expressed in them. "Lucy Neal," "Old Kentucky Home," and "Uncle
Ned," can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth
a tear as well as a smile. They awaken the sympathies for the
slave, in which antislavery principles take root, grow, and
flourish. In addition to authors, poets, and scholars at home,
the moral sense of the civilized world is with us. England,
France, and Germany, the three great lights of modern
civilization, are with us, and every American traveler learns to
regret the existence of slavery in his country. The growth of
intelligence, the influence of commerce, steam, wind, and
lightning are our allies. It would be easy to amplify this
summary, and to swell the vast conglomeration of our material
forces; but there is a deeper and truer method of measuring the
power of our cause, and of comprehending its vitality. This is
to be found in its accordance with the best elements of human
nature. It is beyond the power of slavery to annihilate
affinities recognized and established by the Almighty. The slave
is bound to mankind by the powerful and inextricable net-work of
human brotherhood. His voice is the voice of a man, and his cry
is the cry of a man in distress, and man must cease to be man
before he can become insensible to that cry. It is the righteous
of the cause--the humanity of the cause--which constitutes its
potency. As one genuine bankbill is worth more than a thousand
counterfeits, so is one man, with right on his side, worth more
than a thousand in the wrong. "One may chase a thousand, and put
ten thousand to flight." It is, therefore, upon the goodness of
our cause, more than upon all other auxiliaries, that we depend
for its final triumph.

Another source of congratulations is the fact that, amid all the
efforts made by the church, the government, and the people at
large, to stay the onward progress of this movment, its course
has been onward, steady, straight, unshaken, and unchecked from
the beginning. Slavery has gained victories large and numerous;
but never as against this movement--against a temporizing policy,
and against northern timidity, the slave power has been
victorious; but against the spread and prevalence in the country,
of a spirit of resistance to its aggression, and of sentiments
favorable to its entire overthrow, it has yet accomplished
nothing. Every measure, yet devised and executed, having for its
object the suppression <369>of anti-slavery, has been as idle and
fruitless as pouring oil to extinguish fire. A general rejoicing
took place on the passage of "the compromise measures" of 1850.
Those measures were called peace measures, and were afterward
termed by both the great parties of the country, as well as by
leading statesmen, a final settlement of the whole question of
slavery; but experience has laughed to scorn the wisdom of pro-
slavery statesmen; and their final settlement of agitation seems
to be the final revival, on a broader and grander scale than ever
before, of the question which they vainly attempted to suppress
forever. The fugitive slave bill has especially been of positive
service to the anti-slavery movement. It has illustrated before
all the people the horrible character of slavery toward the
slave, in hunting him down in a free state, and tearing him away
from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher than
marriage or parental claims. It has revealed the arrogant and
overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states;
despising their principles--shocking their feelings of humanity,
not only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but
by attempting to make them parties to the crime. It has called
into exercise among the colored people, the hunted ones, a spirit
of manly resistance well calculated to surround them with a
bulwark of sympathy and respect hitherto unknown. For men are
always disposed to respect and defend rights, when the victims of
oppression stand up manfully for themselves.

There is another element of power added to the anti-slavery
movement, of great importance; it is the conviction, becoming
every day more general and universal, that slavery must be
abolished at the south, or it will demoralize and destroy liberty
at the north. It is the nature of slavery to beget a state of
things all around it favorable to its own continuance. This
fact, connected with the system of bondage, is beginning to be
more fully realized. The slave-holder is not satisfied to
associate with men in the church or in the state, unless he can
thereby stain them with the blood of his slaves. To be a slave-
holder is to be a propagandist from necessity; for slavery can
only live by keeping down the under-growth morality which nature
supplies. Every new-born white babe comes armed from the Eternal
presence, to make war on slavery. The heart of pity, which would
melt in due time over the brutal chastisements it sees inflicted
on the helpless, must be hardened. And this work goes on every
day in the year, and every hour in the day.

What is done at home is being done also abroad here in the north.
And even now the question may be asked, have we at this moment a
single free state in the Union? The alarm at this point will
become more general. <370>The slave power must go on in its
career of exactions. Give, give, will be its cry, till the
timidity which concedes shall give place to courage, which shall
resist. Such is the voice of experience, such has been the past,
such is the present, and such will be that future, which, so sure
as man is man, will come. Here I leave the subject; and I leave
off where I began, consoling myself and congratulating the
friends of freedom upon the fact that the anti-slavery cause is
not a new thing under the sun; not some moral delusion which a
few years' experience may dispel. It has appeared among men in
all ages, and summoned its advocates from all ranks. Its
foundations are laid in the deepest and holiest convictions, and
from whatever soul the demon, selfishness, is expelled, there
will this cause take up its abode. Old as the everlasting hills;
immovable as the throne of God; and certain as the purposes of
eternal power, against all hinderances, and against all delays,
and despite all the mutations of human instrumentalities, it is
the faith of my soul, that this anti-slavery cause will triumph.

[The end]

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