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Reconstruction
This article appeared in the December 1866 issue of The Atlantic. Douglass stated that no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. The two main themes are Douglass’ criticism of President Jackson and his urgent call to extend voting rights to African Americans.
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First published March 11, 2001
About the author
Frederick Douglass
1,141 books1,800 followersFrederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and feminist. Having escaped from slavery at age 20, he took the name Frederick Douglass for himself and became an advocate of abolition. Douglass traveled widely, and often perilously, to lecture against slavery.
His first of three autobiographies, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, was published in 1845. In 1847 he moved to Rochester, New York, and started working with fellow abolitionist Martin R. Delany to publish a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, North Star. Douglass was the only man to speak in favor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's controversial plank of woman suffrage at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. As a signer of the Declaration of Sentiments, Douglass also promoted woman suffrage in his North Star. Douglass and Stanton remained lifelong friends.
In 1870 Douglass launched The New National Era out of Washington, D.C. He was nominated for vice-president by the Equal Rights Party to run with Victoria Woodhull as presidential candidate in 1872. He became U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia in 1877, and was later appointed minister resident and consul-general to Haiti. His District of Columbia home is a national historic site. D. 1895.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1...
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhi...
http://www.loc.gov/collection/frederi...
http://www.nps.gov/frdo/index.htm
http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits...
His first of three autobiographies, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, was published in 1845. In 1847 he moved to Rochester, New York, and started working with fellow abolitionist Martin R. Delany to publish a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, North Star. Douglass was the only man to speak in favor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's controversial plank of woman suffrage at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. As a signer of the Declaration of Sentiments, Douglass also promoted woman suffrage in his North Star. Douglass and Stanton remained lifelong friends.
In 1870 Douglass launched The New National Era out of Washington, D.C. He was nominated for vice-president by the Equal Rights Party to run with Victoria Woodhull as presidential candidate in 1872. He became U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia in 1877, and was later appointed minister resident and consul-general to Haiti. His District of Columbia home is a national historic site. D. 1895.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1...
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhi...
http://www.loc.gov/collection/frederi...
http://www.nps.gov/frdo/index.htm
http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 20, 2025
Frederick Douglass was one of the great, public intellectuals of the 19th century. The fact that he was a black man and an escaped slave gave him both added prominence and a certain notoriety in some sections. In 1866 he published this essay in the Atlantic Monthly, calling on Congress, then in contentious debate over how to conduct reconstruction of the country after civil war, to pass a strong program that would give the franchise to the freedmen and vigorously protect the rights of all loyal citizens.
Early in his essay Douglass adroitly identified the crux of the issue:
”Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance, and today it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South, and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is impossible for the Federal Government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal Government be armed with despotic power to blot out state authority, and to station a Federal officer at every crossroad. This, of course, cannot be done.”
He went on immediately to identify what he saw as the solution:
The true way, and the easiest way, is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and to give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise, a right and power which will be ever present and will form a wall of fire for his protection.”
This call for voting rights for all loyal citizens, including the newly freed slaves, was one of the issues then being hotly debated in Congress, and would eventually lead to the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Douglass, having once been a slave, understood the pernicious tenacity of the institution, fully grasped what extraordinary measures had been necessary to end it, and the corollary of what extraordinary means would be needed to keep it suppressed:
”In spite of the eloquence of the earnest abolitionist, poured out against slavery during thirty years, even they must confess that, in all the probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the 19th century but for the rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.”
And he demands of Congress strong reconstruction measures to protect all loyal men:
”The people demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious states, where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property.”
In closing, he reminds his readers (and Congress) of why he, a black man, and others of his race, had the right to demand this:
”Men denounce the Negro for his prominence in this discussion, but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious states, the right of the Negro is the true solution of our national troubles.”
Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was passed guaranteeing citizenship and the franchise to all the freedmen, it wasn’t enough. Douglass’ earlier remarks on the tenacity of the slave system that would require a Federal officer at every crossroads to truly suppress, proved prescient. The South used mass murder and terror to suppress black citizens and anyone who supported them, and in the Corrupt Bargain of 1876, the Republicans agreed to officially end reconstruction and pull Federal troops out of the South in exchange for Rutherford Hayes being awarded the White House in a razor thin, contested election. This combination of Southern terrorizing lawlessness and Northern betrayal doomed Southern Blacks to nearly another century of unofficial, twilight slavery, as Jim Crow laws enforced most of the prerogatives of slavery until the second half of the twentieth century.
Early in his essay Douglass adroitly identified the crux of the issue:
”Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance, and today it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South, and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is impossible for the Federal Government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal Government be armed with despotic power to blot out state authority, and to station a Federal officer at every crossroad. This, of course, cannot be done.”
He went on immediately to identify what he saw as the solution:
The true way, and the easiest way, is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and to give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise, a right and power which will be ever present and will form a wall of fire for his protection.”
This call for voting rights for all loyal citizens, including the newly freed slaves, was one of the issues then being hotly debated in Congress, and would eventually lead to the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Douglass, having once been a slave, understood the pernicious tenacity of the institution, fully grasped what extraordinary measures had been necessary to end it, and the corollary of what extraordinary means would be needed to keep it suppressed:
”In spite of the eloquence of the earnest abolitionist, poured out against slavery during thirty years, even they must confess that, in all the probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the 19th century but for the rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.”
And he demands of Congress strong reconstruction measures to protect all loyal men:
”The people demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious states, where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property.”
In closing, he reminds his readers (and Congress) of why he, a black man, and others of his race, had the right to demand this:
”Men denounce the Negro for his prominence in this discussion, but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious states, the right of the Negro is the true solution of our national troubles.”
Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was passed guaranteeing citizenship and the franchise to all the freedmen, it wasn’t enough. Douglass’ earlier remarks on the tenacity of the slave system that would require a Federal officer at every crossroads to truly suppress, proved prescient. The South used mass murder and terror to suppress black citizens and anyone who supported them, and in the Corrupt Bargain of 1876, the Republicans agreed to officially end reconstruction and pull Federal troops out of the South in exchange for Rutherford Hayes being awarded the White House in a razor thin, contested election. This combination of Southern terrorizing lawlessness and Northern betrayal doomed Southern Blacks to nearly another century of unofficial, twilight slavery, as Jim Crow laws enforced most of the prerogatives of slavery until the second half of the twentieth century.
May 21, 2026
(read for school)
Douglass leaves little room for ambiguity in his essay, arguing that abolishing slavery was only the first step in true freedom for Black Americans, emphasizing that equality for all races is imperative for the United States to survive as a nation.
Douglass leaves little room for ambiguity in his essay, arguing that abolishing slavery was only the first step in true freedom for Black Americans, emphasizing that equality for all races is imperative for the United States to survive as a nation.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews