American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with David William Blight, part 4 of 6

Well, the Compromise of 1850, that summer was a genuine crisis in national history. It was also a crisis for the abolitionist, what they feared most in some ways was exactly this kind of compromise, that there would be a new federal commitment to slavery itself and to slavery's future in the law that would make their hopes and their strategies and their movement maybe even hopeless. Now it's a good news bad news story if you give it time, however, because on the one hand the Mexican war unshucked slavery. It just took it out of its shell.

All those efforts at gag rules and those efforts to contain this issue couldn't work anymore. And you had the evolution of the free-soil party in 1848, which holds a national convention and runs a candidate for president and candidates for other offices. There's, in Frederick Douglass, attended in Buffalo, New York, the free-soil convention actually spoke at it, which was quite a move for a young black abolitionist who's still supposed to be a garisoning, avoiding political parties, and Garrison didn't like the fact that he went to the free-soil convention. But then the nature of the compromise itself, you end the slave trade in the district of Colombia, you pass that rigid new fugitive slave law, you move the boundary of Texas and you pay Texas a bunch of money making it possible not to create more slave states out of the great Southwest. At least that's what it appeared to be. And you modify both sides just enough. You give both sides just some northern and southern's just enough to vote for that the thing narrowly passes in August of 1850.

The country was relieved because the threats here, the fears about this have been going on since January, it's lasted eight months. They couldn't even choose a speaker of the House in the Congress, they couldn't agree on anybody and then they have this huge ferocious debate from about March all over the nature of this compromise. It was actually finally driven through in parliamentary maneuvers of Stephen Douglas. But out of it comes a federal fugitive slave law that in effect says yes, slaveholders, you shall have your fugitive slaves return, it is the obligation of the northern states to do it as the obligation of individual citizens to help you retrieve your fugitive slaves as your property. Those fear into abolitionists, those fear into black fugitives, those fear into black abolitionists, some of whom are still fugitive slaves, some of whom aren't.

Douglas has his freedom by then because it was purchased for him. But only recently purchased, and he's only truly been legally free for two years. It radicalizes the anti-slavery movement arguably more than anything that had ever happened before. It makes abolitionists now realize, and by radicalize I mean it begins to make them think politically whether they like it or not, and it begins to make some abolitionists consider other means, including violence. And we get not only a Frederick Douglass, but we get a host of abolitionists, especially black abolitionists, who are beginning to say look, we'll use any means necessary. If it means we have to organize to threaten slaveholders, if it means we have to organize and maybe even use violence somewhere, they don't know how yet, they don't know how that's going to happen. But they're beginning to say you know what? We have a moral right to self-defense because look what's happening now, slave patrols. Federal magistrates, citizens, anywhere, I'm going to turn this in.

So what do you do? Self-defense. And Douglass by 1852 famously says, well, I'm paraphrasing, but he says, the proper do of a slave catcher is to have a throat cut. The reason he fears having a throat cut is because he deserves to have a throat cut. You can't get any more explicit than that. So the garrisonian pacifism that we've learned much about, non-resistance as garrison called serious pacifism, we don't want to downplay this. These people were peace advocates, has less and less traction by the 1850s. And you get fugitive slave rescues at gunpoint in the early 1850s, a famous example, the so-called Cristiano Riot. It's put into the shoes of somebody who's been in the movement since early 1850s.

It must have been incredibly discouraging. By the fall of 1850, to a devoted abolitionist that will say in New England or New York State or wherever, who now has been in the movement for, let's say, a decade at least. They've contributed money. They've gone to anti-slavery fairs. They've been purchasing the liberator for 10 years. They've been a meeting after a meeting of signed petitions. They might have even harbored a fugitive slave at some point or participated in that process.

The compromise of 1850 is enormously disappointing, discouraging. It means now the federal government, which is, through the Constitution, always been duplicitous with slavery is now much more explicitly complicitous with slavery through this new fugitive slave law. And now they have to look west. The issue now is the west, the south west, the new state building process. The American imagination now is, of course, always looking west. The future of the country is in the west. The need is not clear at all in the fall of 1850 or in 1851 and 52. It is not clear at all how this process is going to go in the west. Are those the new territories that they're just west of Illinois? Are they going to become slave states? I mean, what's going to happen? I mean, how's my son going to move west and get a farm, or his sons and so on?

They're frightened by now this exercise of federal authority. And if you're a garisonian, if you've been a diehard believer, you're a devoted garisonian for the past 15 years. Buy in that newspaper, go into meetings, you believe in moral suasion. You just had a huge blow to your belief that somehow you're going to end slavery in this country by appealing to the Christian soul of the country, or the Christian soul, because what the country just said from the government, from the heart of the government is slavery forever. The right of property in man is forever. Now that government is going to say that again before the end of the 1850s, at least twice over. But this is the first blow to that kind of moral suasionism.

And it's a real turning point in the increasing politicization of the anti-slavery movement. Political anti-slavery takes its roots really out of the Mexican war, out of the compromise of 1850, and then particularly out of what occurs in the wake of Uncle Tom's cabin in the Kansas, Nebraska, act of 1850, which leads directly to the birth of the Republican Party. I'd also add to that that it's a message again. The 1850 crisis and the compromise is a message again about who runs the country, of who's actually in power. Because Millard Fillmore was the president of the United States who ushered through the compromise of 1850, and he's a New Englander. But he seems now to be, I mean, he's a weak president because he takes over for Zachary Taylor, who died in office.

Zachary Taylor was the slave holding southerner. He dies. Millard Fillmore, a New Englander, comes into the presidency, but argues vehemently for this compromise as a means of sustaining the union. So one of your own so to speak, you know, a New England wig supports this. And it's written by the great Kentucky wig, Henry Clay. So how do you ever imagine breaking this apart unless you begin to consider even greater, more radical means and forms of activism? Oh, well, Henry Beachestove, of course, gains her foothold an anti-slavery sentiment from her Cincinnati years, and actually meeting judges of slaves when she moved to New England, it's right in the wake of this compromise.

The Compromise Eighth of 1850 has a great deal to do with the impetus and the stimulation, the inspiration of what she writes. Now that book had been brewing in her for a long time, and the stories had been brewing in her, you know, the tales and the characters and no doubt for some time. But she's writing Uncle Tom's cabin in 1851. And she launches it in serials in the National Intelligence and the spring of 1852. At the very time, fugitive slave rescues are occurring around the country. At the very time, the country is trying to understand what to do in the wake. She's not alone, by the way, as a writer. Herman Melville is writing Benito Sereno in the wake of the Compromise of 1850 as well. And Frederick Douglass is writing his greatest speech, his greatest speech by far, his Fourth of July address of 1854.

Right after Uncle Tom's cabin comes out that spring, it's only, it's barely been a year and a half since the passage of the Compromise of 1850. The whole political culture seems to have shifted, and Douglass gets asked in 1852 to speak on the Fourth of July in his hometown of Rochester, and what does he deliver? It's the greatest Jeremiah ad of the entire anti-slavery movement, and I think the rhetorical masterpiece of American abolitionism. He delivers a frightening analysis of American hypocrisy to his friends as the audience in Rochester. This is a moment when everything about the future of slavery and the hopes of abolitionists seems to have suddenly been thrown up in the air, but it also means that it's a moment of great inspiration, such as we find in Uncle Tom's cabin, such as we find in Douglass's greatest speech in 1852, such as we find in other anti-slavery writings of this particular

time, and we find that the political abolition movement really takes its inspiration from this moment of crisis. The old freezoil party still is there, still hanging around in forms, you know, from old waves and some old Democrats and some temperance people are beginning to look at the idea of an anti-slavery political party in it, and lo and behold, it's going to just take one more crisis, and it's going to happen. I'm talking about their breakup through Douglass and Gays, and we haven't talked yet much about it.

Why have Frederick Douglass, or for that matter, other Black abolitionists, would remain loyal to John Brown through this story, this process of Brown's imagining of an attack on the South is a curious question, but I think it's best understood it this way. I mean Douglass first met Brown way back in 1849, 1850, then over years they didn't see each other, they reconnect when Brown is raising money. For what ultimately was the Harper's Ferry raid, he lived in Douglas's house in the winter of 1858 for a month up in the upstairs kind of attic apartment. They shared many meals together, Douglass probably knew as much about what Brown was planning to do as any other American abolitionist to the extent any of them actually knew because he was so secret.

What attracted them all, whether it's Ralph Waldo-Armerson and his parlor or Douglass in his house in Rochester, what attracted them all to John Brown, I think, and especially to Douglass, is that he was that abolitionist willing to do what the rest of them wouldn't. He was willing to take action, that might be even suicidal, that you wouldn't join yourself, but you're glad he's doing it. I mean, if you've come to the conclusion that the country is never really going to face down this issue, never really going to solve it, never really going to deal with it without some breakup, whether it's an insurrection or whether, you don't know if it's going to end up in war, but some kind of crisis, some kind of violent confrontation, not just two congressmen squaring off or one beating up another on the floor of the Senate like the Summner case, which also had a profound impact, but if you believe the country is going

to have to face some crisis and some violence is going to have to happen, you want this guy around, you may not want to be there when it happens, you may want to give him money, you may want to help him, plus John Brown, as we now know, had a very beguiling personality. He was a stunning man, his sense of moral commitment was vivid and overwhelming if you spent 10 minutes with him. He was the real thing, and to a Frederick Douglass, he was also the real thing in terms of actually believing about his deeply as anybody, Douglass, that ever met in racial equality. Now he respected Garrison on that level too, by the way, deeply respected Garrison's views on race. They had to break up over other matters, but so John Brown was the man who would do what others wished they could, wished what would happen, but would not necessarily do themselves.

When push came to shove, when the great moment of truth finally came, Douglass actually showed up, as we know, and the Stone Query were told outside Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, when Brown is still trying to gather his band and takes with him a fugitive slave. As John Brown to him, gives that fugitive slave his own choice. Do you want to go with John Brown or not? He chose to go with him. In that case, we know it was in part because his own wife was still a slave in Virginia, and Brown begged, according to Douglass's testimony on this, Brown begged Douglass to join him, dearly wanted to join him. He'd actually, at one point, beg her at Tubman to join him too, and her at Tubman had more sense than to follow this guy. But Douglass famously wrote that he said, you know, John, they will swarm and you will

be trapped. What is it? A ring of steel or something like that? In steel trap, and Douglass says, good luck, Godspeed, I'm out of here. It's a good thing because, again, he'd have been dead or hanged. That he does not join, join, join, join, Brown is in one sense reflective of Frederick Douglass's own personality. Douglass said, oh, he's fought with his fist if he had to. He was no leader of slave insurrections, however. He knew how they ended. He knew this could not have a happy ending for the slaves. Although he was still oddly, you might say glad John Brown was doing it. And of course, in the wake of Brown's capture, trial and execution, the most celebrated such trial and execution in American history.

Frederick Douglass, like many others, made the absolute most out of that martyrdom. Douglass understood the meaning of martyrdom. And he said explicitly over and over in his John Brown eulogy speech, the rest of his life. And he gave a John Brown speech for decades after that, if he was asked. He said over and over and over what I think is absolutely true, that John Brown was far more valuable dead than he'd ever been alive. Far more valuable to the cause of anti-slavery and ultimately to emancipation as the dead martyr than he had ever been as a living strategist. Now that might be, you might say, that's easy to say after the fact. Exposed facto, it's always nice to admire the martyr, right? The martyr's dead. But Douglass did risk a lot. We need to remember here, as we know, Douglass was almost captured by federal marshals in Rochester, escaped perhaps by only 48 hours up to St. Lawrence and left to Britain.

Right, gets to the news. Well, when Douglass gets to the news of John Brown's writer Harper's fairy, he's of course not surprised. On the other hand, as he said, he would hold his breath because the sensation Douglass felt that that moment of, oh, God, what comes now, oh, God, they'll be after all of us. Or, oh, God, is it going to develop into some sort of enveloping insurrection in Virginia? What sort of blood bath may flow from this? It's not that Douglass didn't want blood, so to speak. And he also knew that his own life was at risk now, and he hurriedly took the train from Philadelphia, North, and then back to Rochester, and as fast as possible, packed his bags.

And we need to think for a moment what this meant in Douglass's own family life. All of these episodes in Douglass's own family life is poor Anna, holding this family was, well, five kids together, the little daughter Annie is going to die when Douglass is in England in the summer of 1860. And he comes home and repacks the bag, and within less than 48 hours, he's on the card up to the lake and off to St. Lawrence for how long? Who knows? There's a whole lot of letters between Brown and Frederick Douglass or some letters, at least, that were discovered in Brown's trunk. And I think arguably, Frederick Douglass was as much an accomplice to Harper's Ferry as any other American abolitionists, including those who gave money and guns and all the rest. Douglass possibly knew as much about it as anyone.

And it's still a bit remarkable that legally he escaped all this when he came back in the summer of 1860. I mean, that has to do with the political climate and election year in Congress deciding, now we're not going to prosecute him, we're not going to hang any more martyrs here. We already made one martyr for the abolition cause, and if they don't, Frederick Douglass no, or even tried him, but if he wasn't a co-conspirator, then there have never been co-conspirators. But he had the good sense not to join this band. I mean, I think Douglass knew at that point that Brown's band of men was really very small. And Douglass did know about the Harper's Ferry arsenal, I'm not sure he knew how big it was, but the idea that this small band of men was going to attack a federal arsenal and try to create a slave insurrection, the rational, pragmatic, if still radical Frederick Douglass looked at that and it was a pretty easy call for him.

Douglass did not wade joining John Brown's band very heavily for very long at all. He wanted to support it. He took shields green down to meet John Brown. He would morally support it and he would rhetorically support it the rest of his life, but join it and never. And all the men who joined, I mean the blacks who joined John Brown all had a good personal reason to do it. Only in the south unemployed, I mean they had reasons to do it. I think also it's important to understand by then Douglass well knows what his own calling is. His calling is his pen and his voice. It's not taken a rifle in following John Brown. To each his own weapon.

How did Douglass feel about Lincoln after a strict marriage? Well, Frederick Douglass' relationship with Abraham Lincoln is complex and changing. The election year of 1860, he in effect publicly supported Lincoln and the Republican Party. Kind of like a half loaf. He wasn't pleased with the Republican platform. He thought the Republican platform in its ideology was only half measures, but he was extraordinarily excited that what he called an anti-slavery reputation had been elected to the presidency. The election of Lincoln was hugely important to Frederick Douglass and more than anything. You need to back up even further.

The Republican Party's threat to slavery misperceived or not, we might debate, but the Republican Party's threat as southerners to the extent that it pushed them seem to be the crucial reason that they actually went through with secession in the deep south was what Douglass celebrated in the secession winter of 1861 in the wake of Lincoln's election. Douglass wanted secession. He wanted a breakup of the union. He had no real personal way of affecting it. He's actually very frustrated in the winter. The secession winter of 1661 during the interregnum before Lincoln takes office. He's very frustrated up in Rochester. He's not getting all the news. He's not actually tied into the loop of the leadership of the Republican Party. I mean, what he made seward is not sending him telegrams, nor a salmon chase.

He's not in that part of that conversation. He doesn't know Lincoln yet. He only first became aware of Abraham Lincoln because of the Lincoln Douglas debates in 1858. He doesn't know Lincoln. He doesn't know quite what to trust. What Douglass thought most likely was going to happen in the secession winter was not what came about for some dirt or a brick of war. It's what he wanted to happen. What he thought was going to happen was another compromise, and he wrote about it over and over in his editorials. He feared whether it would be the crit and didn't compromise. There were all kinds of compromise measures floating around Washington, all kinds of things. Constitutional amendments, new Missouri compromise, lines. Some people were even arguing there should be a plural presidency. You'd have a southern or anonym or you'd have a dual presidency. All kinds of cock-a-mami ideas were floating around in the air, and all Douglass can do is read those newspapers, communicate with the people he knows, and hope.

He basically hated Lincoln's first inaugural address. Now, that may be a bit strong. He was very disappointed with Lincoln's first inaugural. We know it today, of course, with the beauty of its ending about the mystic chords of memory and so on and so forth. But what Douglass didn't like about it, of course, was the olive branch to the south. There's a big olive branch in that first inaugural. Douglass said, I don't know whether to trust this Lincoln and this Republican Party yet, but what he's glad about is that the seveners don't trust him. Of course, Douglass was so disappointed, fearful in such despair, lest we forget. We're not always in a big hurry to get the Civil War started and get on with this story. In between January and March of 1861, Frederick Douglass fell into such despair about the situation. He believed there would be compromise, and so he booked passage to go visit Haiti with

his daughter, Rosetta. All these swirling schemes of black emigration have been around in the 1850s. They really kind of rose again in the wake of the Dred Scott case in the late 1850s. Douglass had always denounced him. Douglass was Mr. Birthright in America. He thought all those immigration schemes were largely a waste of time. Even though they were basically human rights, you have a right to immigrate anywhere you want. But he stayed here, he kept arguing, but not that winter. He was going to go to Haiti and see about it. If not for himself, just to visit and see the place, because there was a movement, a Haitian immigration movement led by James T. Holley or James Redpath and others. Of course, he had booked the ship to go before Fort Sumter, and he was scheduled to leave literally only a couple of days after Fort Sumter occurred.

When the firing in Fort Sumter occurred, Lincoln's so-called April policy now became almost moot or became public and war broke out, Douglass writes that wonderful little editorial where he says, trip to Haiti, cancelled or postponed or I forget the exact title. But Douglass was thrilled by disunion, secession, and especially the outbreak of the war. He had come to believe, we don't want to call him a prophet about this just yet, because he doesn't know the future anymore anybody else. He had come to believe that the best thing that could happen for the cause of slaves, the best thing that could happen for the cause of emancipation, would be a sanctioned war against the South if they were in his view crazy enough to secede. In his editorials in the secession winter, right up into the spring and summer of 1861, he's all but begging them to secede.

He's glad for more states joined the Confederacy because it forces Lincoln's hand. When Lincoln calls for troops, Douglass wants more troops and he wants black troops. Because by that point in time, he'd come to believe that the best thing that could ever happen for the cause of abolitionism was some kind of breakup of North and South and a situation where the North is forced into, the federal government is forced into a sanctioned military move against the South. Of course that is exactly what is about to come.