Two Passages on the Rights of Emancipated Slaves by Frederick Douglass and Richard H. Dana Jr.

The first passage is an excerpt from Frederick Douglass, What the Black Man Wants (1865):

I hold that [Banks’s] policy is our chief danger at the present moment; that it practically enslaves the Negro, and makes the [Emancipation] Proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion. What is freedom? It is the right to choose one’s own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything; and when any individual or combination of individuals undertakes to decide for any man when he shall work, where he shall work, at what he shall work, and for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce him to slavery. He is a slave. That I understand Gen. Banks to do—to determine for the so-called freedman, when, and where, and at what, and for how much he shall work, when he shall be punished, and by whom punished. It is absolute slavery. It defeats the beneficent intention of the Government, if it has beneficent intentions, in regards to the freedom of our people. 

I have had but one idea for the last three years to present to the American people, and the phraseology in which I clothe it is the old abolition phraseology. I am for the “immediate, unconditional, and universal” enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself. 

It may be objected, however, that this pressing of the Negro’s right to suffrage is premature. Let us have slavery abolished, it may be said, let us have labor organized, and then, in the natural course of events, the right of suffrage will be extended to the Negro. I do not agree with this. The constitution of the human mind is such, that if it once disregards the conviction forced upon it by a revelation of truth, it requires the exercise of a higher power to produce the same conviction afterwards…This is the hour. Our streets are in mourning, tears are falling at every fireside, and under the chastisement of this Rebellion we have almost come up to the point of conceding this great, this all-important right of suffrage. I fear that if we fail to do it now, if abolitionists fail to press it now, we may not see, for centuries to come, the same disposition that exists at this moment. Hence, I say, now is the time to press this right.

The second passage is an excerpt from Richard H. Dana Jr., To Consider the Subject of Re-organization of the Rebel States the Black Man Wants (1865):

In ancient times, when the slaves were of the same race with their masters, when the slaves were poets, orators, scholars, Ministers of State, merchants, and the mothers of kings; when they were emancipated, nature came to their aid, and they reached an equality with their masters. Their children became patricians. But, my friends, this is a slavery of race; it is a slavery which those white people have been taught for thirty years is a divine institution. 

I ask you, has the Southern heart been fired for thirty years for nothing? Have these doctrines been sown, and no fruit reaped? Have they been taught that the negro is not fit for freedom, have they believed that, and are they converted in a day? Besides all that, they look upon the negro to-day as the cause of their defeat and humiliation. I am afraid there is a feeling of hatred toward the negro at the South to-day, which has never existed before, What are their laws? Why, their laws, many of them do not allow a free negro to live in one of their States? When we emancipated the slaves, did we mean they should be banished — is that it? Is that keeping public faith with them? And yet their laws declare so, and they may declare it again. That is not all. By their laws a black man cannot testify in court; by their laws he cannot hold land; by their laws he cannot vote. Now, we have got to choose between two results. With these four millions of negroes, either you must have four millions distrapchised, disarmed, untaught, landless, thriftless non-producing, non-consuming, degraded men or else you must have four millions of land-holding, industrious, arms-bearing and voting population. Choose between these two! Which will you have? It has got to be decided pretty soon which you will have. The corner-stone of those institutions will not be slavery in name, but their institutions will be built upon the mud-sills of a debased negro population. Is that public safety? Is it public faith?Are those republican ideas, or republican institutions?

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