It may be "traced like a wounded man through a crowd, by the blood." Exclude the negroes as a class from political rightsteach them that the high and manly privilege of suffrage is to be enjoyed by white citizens only, that they may bear the burdens of the state, but that they are to have no part in its direction or its honors, and you at once deprive them of one of the main incentives to manly character and patriotic devotion to the interests of the government; in a word, you stamp them as a degraded caste, you teach them to despise themselves, and all others to despise them. The South fought for perfect and permanent control over the Southern laborer. Is the existence of a rebellious element in our borderswhich New Orleans, Memphis, and Texas show to be only disarmed, but at heart as malignant as ever, only waiting for an opportunity to reassert itself with fire and sworda reason for leaving four millions of the nations truest friends with just cause of complaint against the Federal government? Hardships, services, sufferings, and sacrifices are all waived. His right to a participation in the production and operation of government is in inference from his nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education. The answers to these questions are too obvious to require statement. Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage - Frederick Douglass 1867 Masses of men can take care of themselves. They now stand before Congress and the country, not complaining of the past, but simply asking for a better future. As a nation, we cannot afford to have amongst us either this indifference and stupidity, or that burning sense of wrong. If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men, of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. From "Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage" How does Douglass support his claim that African Americans have rendered a "score of past services" to the United States? win the trust of an increasingly mistrustful electorate. The young men of the South burn with the desire to regain what they call the lost cause; the women are noisily malignant towards the Federal government. The hope of gaining by politics what they lost by the sword, is the secret of all this Southern unrest; and that hope must be extinguished before national ideas and objects can take full possession of the Southern mind. Can that statesmanship be wise which would leave the negro good ground to hesitate, when the exigencies of the country required his prompt assistance? There is that, all over the South, which frightens Yankee industry, capital, and skill from its borders. Though the battle is for the present lost, the hope of gaining this object still exists, and pervades the whole South with a feverish excitement. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you give him at once a powerful motive for all noble exertion, and make him a man among men. This evil principle again seeks admission into our body politic. His right to a participation in the production and operation of government is an inference from his nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education. The lamb may not be trusted with the wolf. Review Us. Freedom of speech and of the press it slowly but successfully banished from the South, dictated its own code of honor and manners to the nation, brandished the bludgeon and the bowie-knife over Congressional debate, sapped the foundations of loyalty, dried up the springs of patriotism, blotted out the testimonies of the fathers against oppression, padlocked the pulpit, expelled liberty from its literature, invented nonsensical theories about master-races and slave-races of men, and in due season produced a Rebellion fierce, foul, and bloody. What is common to all works no special sense of degradation to any. 1 0 obj Give the negro the elective franchise, and you give him at once a powerful motive for all noble exertion, and make him a man among men. African Americans--Washington (D.C.), - Read the next essay; Civil rights, - The American people can, perhaps, afford to brave the censure of surrounding nations for the manifest injustice and meanness of excluding its faithful black soldiers from the ballot-box, but it cannot afford to allow the moral and mental energies of rapidly increasing millions to be consigned to hopeless degradation. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you at once destroy the purely sectional policy, and wheel the Southern States into line with national interests and national objects. We asked the negroes to espouse our cause, to be our friends, to fight for us, and against their masters; and now, after they have done all that we asked them to do,--helped us to conquer their masters, and thereby directed toward themselves the furious hate of the vanquished,--it is proposed in some quarters to turn them over to the political control of the common enemy of the government and of the negro. Under the potent shield of State Rights, the game would be in their own hands. These sable millions are too powerful to be allowed to remain either indifferent or discontented. Three years later, the . Besides, the disabilities imposed upon all are necessarily without that bitter and stinging element of invidiousness which attaches to disfranchisement in a republic. Douglass, Lewis, 1840-1908--Correspondence, - But upon none of these things is reliance placed. For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,) the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the American population. We want no longer any heavy- footed, melancholy service from the negro. But in a country like ours, where men of all nations, kindred, and tongues are freely enfranchised, and allowed to vote, to say to the negro, You shall not vote, is to deal his manhood a staggering blow, and to burn into his soul a bitter and goading sense of wrong, or else work in him a stupid indifference to all the elements of a manly character. Griffiths, Julia, -1895--Correspondence, - a comparison between two different things. Once firmly seated in Congress, their alliance with Northern Democrats re-established, their States restored to their former position inside the Union, they can easily find means of keeping the Federal government entirely too busy with other important matters to pay much attention to the local affairs of the Southern States. What, then, is the work before Congress? It is a measure of relief,--a shield to break the force of a blow already descending with violence, and render it harmless. Page 1 of "An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage" Nor can we afford to endure the moral blight which the existence of a degraded and hated class must necessarily inflict upon any people among whom such a class may exist. Bruce, Blanche Kelso, 1841-1898--Correspondence, - Arming the negro was an urgent military necessity three years ago,are we sure that another quite as pressing may not await us? But this mark of inferiorityall the more palpable because of a difference of colornot only dooms the negro to be a vagabond, but makes him the prey of insult and outrage everywhere. From "Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage" Which best describes Douglass's main purpose? From "Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage" - Brainly The Amistad Case (1841) The Weeping Time, March 3, 1859 Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage by Frederick Douglass (January 1867) These three primary source documents each deal with the decline of slavery in the United States. You shudder to-day at the harvest of blood sown in the spring-time of the Republic by your patriot fathers. Under the potent shield of State Rights, the game would be in their own hands. My Escape from Slavery. Look across the sea. Masses of men can take care of themselves. Frederick Douglass: An Appeal To Congress For Impartial Suffrage An analogy can explain something unfamiliar by associating it with something more familiar. The spectacle of these dusky millions thus imploring, not demanding, is touching; and if American statesmen could be moved by a simple appeal to the nobler elements of human nature, if they had not fallen, seemingly, into the incurable habit of weighing and measuring every proposition of reform by some standard of profit and loss, doing wrong from choice, and right only from necessity or some urgent demand of human selfishness, it would be enough to plead for the negroes on the score of past services and sufferings.
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