54804
THE SAFEGUARDS OF PERSONAL LIBERTY.
ADDRESS
BY
HON. WM. D. KELLEY,
DELIVERED AT CONCERT HALL,
Thursday Evening, June 22, 1865.
Reported for The Evening Telegraph, and revised by the Author.
PHILADELPHIA:
PUBLISHED BY THB
SOCIAL, CIVIL AND STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION OF COLORED PKOPLR
OF PKNNSYLVANIA.
1 865.
M*rrih«w A Son Printvri. 243 Arch Si.
A public meeting held in Sansom Street Hall, on Monday evening,
July 17th, 1865, under the auspices of the S. C. and Statistical
Association of the Colored People of Pennsylvania, to awaken a
deeper interest than has hitherto existed in this community on the
nubject of the right of suffrage, passed unanimously, amongst others,
the following resolution:
Resolved, That able addresses and arguments, such as the Hon. Wm. D. Kelley's
speech on the subject of the " Safeguards of Personal Liberty," and Fred. Douglass'
address on " Equality before the Law," and Hon. Robert Dale Owen's letter to
President Johnson on "Negro Suffrage and Representative Population," are among
many of the noble and unanswerable arguments that every colored man should feel
it his imperative duty to circulate.
Since this meeting, the undersigned (Publishing Committee,) have
been kindly favored with a revised copy of the Hon. Mr. Kelley's
late speech on "The Safeguards of Personal Liberty." With it they
commence the first of a series of pamphlets on the important
(subject of suffrage. All who are really favorable to the just claims
of the disfranchised, the Committee hope will give this effort en¬
couragement.
Gratuitous distribution will be made to all who desire to read on
the subject. Those, however, who wish to aid the cause, can do so
by donations to the Publishing Committee, or by purchasing a number
of pamphlets for gratuitous circulation.
As far as means will allow, the Committee will issue documents as
frequently as possible ; and they feel sanguine that the cause will be
largely benefited thereby.
Publishing Committee,—
WM. STILL,
107 N. Fifth Street.
J. C. WHITE, Sr.,
485 Old York Av., or Phila. Inst., Lombard St.
S. MORGAN SMITH,
N. W. corner Sixth and Walnut Sts.
ADDRESS.
Ladies and Gentlemen :
The presence of such an audience as this in this heated term is
unmistakable proof of the interest the people of Philadelphia take in
the subject proposed to be discussed this evening,—" The Safeguards
of Personal Liberty." Certainly no voice familiar as mine is to the
people of Philadelphia could, under ordinary circumstances, have
attracted such an audience in such a season. It is well that the
people are awake to the importance of this subject, for our generation
stands confronting the great problem of the just organization of
Government for a million of square miles of territory and for countless
- hundreds of millions of happy or miserable people.
The Emperor of the French opens his biography of Caesar with
that brief sentence from Montesquieu, which every American should
read and ponder, and accept as a governing maxim in these times:—
" In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of the republics who form
the institution, and in the sequel it is the institution which forms the
chiefs of the republic." It is for us, the existing generation ; it is for
us, perhaps, before the next bills of mortality shall be footed up, to
determine what shall be the character of the political institutions of
the broad territory I have indicated. We are to determine whether
they shall be malevolent or beneficent,—we, the people of the loyal
States of the Union, whose Governments have not been disorganized
or overthrown, and whose presence has ever been felt in the councils
of the nation. Ours is a Government of co-ordinate departments, and
the people are the direct source of the legislative department.
We have just closed a great war,—a war, the magnitude of which
has changed the phraseology of history. When, as Americans, you
read the phrase " The Revolutionary War," you at once recur to the
war of 1776. When, previously to the recent fearful contest, you
read the phrase "The Great Rebellion," you thought of the English
Rebellion, and Clarendon and his chronicles; but when men shall
hereafter read of the Great Rebellion, they will forget that there was
such an island as England, and think only^>f that Rebellion which
opened graves to nearly a million of American soldiers, and which
cemented by the blood of the slain the grandest fabric of Government
ever given to man. (Applause.)
2
We have closed this war gloriously. The graves of nearly half a
million of our brave soldiers attest the valor, patriotism and endurance
of the unassuming people of the North. The graves of nearly as
many Rebels certify in equal degree to the valor of the American
people. Our position as a military power is established. Throw
together a statement of the resources exhibited , by the North and
South, and lay it upon the table of a council of kings and <pape-
rors, and ask them whether with all the power and wealth of
Europe they can propose to put upon the shores of Ameridli like
results, and they will answer "No." We have demonstrated to the
nations that the world combined against us may not by war disturb
essentially the currents of our life. (Applause.) Henceforth internal
discord is the sole cause of dread to the American statesman and
people; arid we may go on through centuries realizing the Utopian
dreams of More, if we will but be true to the great principles that
underlie our institutions and should regulate the administration of our
Government.
Having closed this war thus satisfactorily, we are entering upon
the threshold of another—a war of ideas—which involves all the con¬
sequences for which so much blood and treasure have been expended.
It is for us to say, peacefully, quietly, in the halls of legislation, in
the Executive Chamber, from the judicial bench, and when the people
assemble in their majesty, to express by the silent ballot their opinions,
whether we shall have the full results of our sacrifices and achieve¬
ments ; whether we, in our own proper persons, shall enjoy them, or"
-whether they shall possibly never be realized, or be attained only by
distant generations after long periods of strife and agitation, and,
perhaps, of war. The contest in which we are now engaged is more
difficult than that from which we have thus come with banners stream¬
ing in glory. Our enemy in that contest was known; his uniform
was of a different color from that worn by the national soldier; the
standard under which he fought did not bear the Stars and Stripes
which our fathers knew and which we so cherish. We saw that he
was armed with deadly weapons, and using them for our destruction.
When he came stealthily upon our soil, it was to burn our villages.
Some doubted, but more believed, that his hand was engaged in en¬
deavors to fire our cities, to disseminate pestilential disease, to poison
the fountain from which drinking water flowed to the babe, the aged,
the sick. We knew that we were grappling with a deadly enemy in
physical strife, and that it was a contest in which one or the other
must conquer,—in which we must vindicate our right to live and
govern ourselves, or, with the black man, submit to be governed by
an oligarchy that knew no law but its own will and lusts. (Applause.)
The enemy with whom we now contend is more subtle. His pur¬
poses and weapons are concealed; his strong fortresses are in our
own midst; his weapons are already piercing our hearts, and his
chains binding our limbi. The enemy that we are grappling with is
pride of race, unchristian and anti-republican prejudice against all
races of men save our own. (Applause.) He sits enthroned in our
Northern hearts. He controls our action every hour of the day in
3
every street of Philadelphia; and if we cannot conquer him, we can¬
not maintain our own freedom, or transmit the real safeguards of
personal liberty to our immediate posterity. (Applause.) The struggle
will be fearful, if it be true that he that ruleth his spirit is better than
he that taketh a city.
"But," you ask, "what are the safeguards of personal liberty?"
Let me tell you first what they are not, and, in so doing, shock your
settled-convictions. I know what worshippers of the compromises of
the Constitution • we have been. I know how, in order to save the
Constitution and the Union, we have gone on from 1820 to 1860, a
period of forty years, abandoning every principle we held dear, aban¬
doning our manhood, abandoning the safeguards of our own personal
liberty. I know how cherished the letter of the Constitution is, and
I do not mean to disparage its value as a frame of government when
I say, broadly and with emphasis, that the safeguards of personal
liberty are not found in laws and constitutions,—are not found in
legislative or constitutional provisions. These in themselves as safe¬
guards to personal liberty are idle as the summer breeze or the fan¬
tasy of the fevered brain. Do you ask me whether I mean to say
that statesmen and philosophers have been wrong in claiming that it
is important that constitutions should guarantee liberty, and that
laws should be wise, humane and preservative of the rights of indi¬
viduals ? No ; I mean to say that these give expression merely to
prevailing sentiment; that they are the means by which you may
occasionally enforce an invaded right, but that they do not guarantee
the enjoyment of rights. Let me, in the most familiar way, illustrate
the truth of these propositions.
In every State and every county of the United States, there is a
law against riot,—a law enforced by peculiar penalties; for it punishes
not only the convicted rioter, but also the tax-paying people of a city
or county in which a destructive riot is permitted to occur. It not
only requires every citizen to abstain from acts of riot, but if they
see a riot threatening, and fail to rally to the assistance of the au¬
thorities, and prevent or suppress it, and blocks of stores be burned
and millions of dollars worth of property destroyed, it taxes each
and every one to reimburse the sufferer. One might suppose, there¬
fore, that in no community would there be any destruction of property
by riot.
But Constitutions are more sacred than laws, and I turn to the Con¬
stitution of the United States and those of every State in the Union.
You will remember that they cherish and guard as precious above all
things, save human life, the freedom of speech and of the press, and
the right of the people peaceably to assemble, to discuss their griev¬
ances and petition for redress. This is not peculiar to any State; it
stands out prominent, pre-eminent, in the Constitution of every State.
Again, we find that the Constitution of the United States provides
specifically that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." Let me
illustrate the importance of this proviso, and show how large a per¬
sonal interest every citizen of the country has in the republican cha-
4
racter of each State Government. We are all now Pennsylvanians.
We may have been born in any other State of the Union or in a
foreign land; but if, having been born or naturalized in another, we
have lived in this State one year with the intention of making it our
residence, or if, having been born in a foreign land, we have, after five
years' residence, been naturalized here, we are Pennsylvanians. Yet,
under the clause of the Constitution of the United States referred to,
we may be, at the end of one or two years, as may be provided by the
Constitutions of the respective States, each one a citizen of some
other State; that is, by virtue of our citizenship here we have a right
to emigrate to any other State, and, by the lapse of the time (one or
two years at most) fixed by the Constitution of that State, will be
invested, not by specific act, but by the mere lapse of time, with
citizenship in that State. And in the interim we are constitutionally
entitled to the fullest protection of its laws.
Now, let me challenge your memories. I shall not attempt to startle
you with any new facts. I have not been exploring classic or ancient
history for illustrations of my views. I am going to appeal to the recol¬
lections of this generation, and to events that have happened within
general notoriety and our own observation. I begin first with the
city of Boston. I was there in that period of transition when pass¬
ing from youth to manhood. A native of Philadelphia, I had gone
counter to the general current of American emigration, and sought
employment in New England, instead of upon the broad fields of the
West.
I remember to have seen, while in that city, a large assemblage of
the wealthy, intelligent and enterprising business men of Boston, in
front of a small printing office. I saw them take down by violence
the sign from the front of it, and directly afterwards bring from the
office a pale, calm-looking man ; and when they were about to perpe¬
trate violence upon him, two rough men, in their shirt sleeves pressed
through the throng of merchants and other well-dressed gentlemen,
and carried him safely away. To what place ? To one of the public
buildings near by,—the old State House. Some time afterwards I
saw a carriage drive up, the police gather around, and Theodore
Lyman, the Mayor of the city, with his baton of office, put that pale,
thoughtful man, William Lloyd Garrison—for it was he—into the
carriage, and hurried to Leverett Street jail, that its thick walls and
iron bars might protect him from a riotous mob of the intelligent, en¬
terprising, wealthy people of Boston.
And what crime did they allege against him ? " Why, this man,"
said they, " will think, and still worse, will, in accordance with the
Constitution of the State of Massachusetts and that of the United
States, say and print what he thinks,—the vile rascal!" I witnessed
the sight. His only crime was that he stood by the cardinal text and
the underlying principle of the Constitution of Massachusetts and
that of the United States, and exercised a freeman's right to think
and speak; and for that he went to prison, while the flagrant and?
well-known violators of the law went peaceably home to dine.
But again. In that year, the sovereign State of Georgia, by ttie
deliberate and unanimous action of both branches of its Legislature,
passed a bill, which met the approval of the Governor of the State,
and is printed in its statutes, offering a reward ot $5000 to the man
who would bring the body of that same William Lloyd Garrison, dead
or alive, into the State of Georgia. For what? Because he had
ever violated a law of Georgia? Not at all. He had never been
there; he had never been south of Baltimore. It was because in the
distant—and, according to Southern doctrine, sovereign—State of
Massachusetts, he would stand by the seminal principle of the Con¬
stitution of the States of Georgia and Massachusetts and the United
States of America; in other words, he would vindicate the right of
the citizen to think and speak freely, and the right of the people to
assemble peaceably and petition for redress of grievances. I do not
think that William Lloyd Garrison, or the rights he vindicated, found
adequate safeguards in legal or constitutional provisions.
Let us come now to a period a little later. In 1838, having met
with an accident which disabled me from the pursuit of my business,
I returned to Philadelphia, to the land of William Penn, the City of
Brotherly Love. Let me remark, my friends, in passing, that as
Americans owing supreme allegiance to the Constitution of the United
States, our highest pride should be that we are Americans; but we
are for the time being Pennsylvanians, and as " one star differeth
from another star in glory," so many States differ from one another in
glory, and a citizen may feel his cheek glow with pride or blanch
with shame as he reviews the history of his native State or that of his
adoption. I, as a Pennsylvanian, exult with all the pride of proud¬
est manhood over some chapters of Pennsylvania's history, while
there are others which I would, if it were possible, wash out with
tears of blood.
I came back to Pennsylvania, which was the first State, kingdom
or empire since time began that voluntarily, without remuneration
and by deliberate legislative act, abolished human slavery, which
was then prosperous in its midst. (Applause.) Yes, to dear old
Pennsylvania belongs the glory of having set the world at large the
example of voluntary emancipation. Our revolutionary ancestors, in
1780, while there were yet, as it proved, three years of war before
them, and while, so far as they knew, there might be ten, provided
for the abolition of slavery ; and it was as President of the Pennsyl¬
vania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and on behalf
of the people of our State, that Franklin, in 1T90,—but a few months
before his death,—appeared at the bar of the first Congress and pre¬
sented a petition which embodied these earnest words :—
" Your memorialists, particularly engaged in attending to the distresses arising
from slavery, believe it to be their indispensable duty to present this subject to your
notice. They have observed with real satisfaction that many important and salu¬
tary powers are vested in you for promoting the welfare and securing the blessings
of libertv to the people of the United States; and as they conceive that these bless¬
ings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of co»lor, to all de¬
scriptions of people, so they indulge themselves in the pleasing expectation, that
nothing which can be done for the relief of the unhappy objects of their care will
be either omitted or delayed. From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the
6
portion, and is still the birthright, of all men, awe? influenced by the strong tie" of humanity
and the principles of their institutions, your memorialists conceive themselves bound to
use all justifiable endeavors to loosen the bonds of slavery and promote a general
enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. Under these impressions, they earnestly
entreat your serious attention to the subject of slavery ; that you will be pleased to
countenance the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men, who alone, in this
land of freedom, are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst the general
Joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection ; that you will
promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race, and that you will step to the verge of
the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our
fellow men."
From these primitive dates till 1820, when, over her unanimous
vote in both Houses of Congress, the Missouri Compromise was
adopted, Pennsylvania stood the foremost, or among the foremost,
States of the country in defence of all the safeguards of personal
liberty. Though there be a sad intervening chapter in her history,
and though Pennsylvanians will always blush to remember that James
Buchanan was born on the soil of our State, she has not failed at
intervals since 1820 to assert, from time to time, her right to her
leading position. It was David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, who, in
1846, by reviving the Jefferson proviso^ reasserted her right; and I
may be permitted to say that it was an humble son of Pennsylvania
who, in the last Congress, claimed for her her just precedence in
recognizing the equality of all men before the law. (Applause.)
But to return from this digression. In 1838, remembering the
early and proud record of Pennsylvania, I said, as I left my friends
in Boston, " I am going to a State where constitutions are regarded
and laws obeyed, and where the people may freely think and speak.
I am going to my native city, where the people have erected, and are
about to dedicate, to freedom a glorious temple, in which the boldest
thinkers of the land may meet, and in which the humblest people will
be instructed." I arrived during the week in which Pennsylvania
Hall was dedicated. I visited it. Anxious, perhaps, to boast when
I went back, that I had spoken in such a hall, I raised my young
voice in what was doubtless a very feeble attempt at eloquence. I
also visited, in the building next to that hall, an humble-looking
building in the shadow of its high walls, one whom I had loved from
my infancy, one whom I had never known to be in physical health,
but who had lain for years a sainted woman, passing slowly away,
and showing how lovely age could be as it glided calmly towards
the grave,—the sole surviving sister of my mother. But one
evening looking in that direction I saw the heavens lurid, and heard,
long squares away from the place, the howling of infuriated men. I
sought to reach the spot, but in vain. As I approached it, I thought
that the infernal region had yielded its demons to earth, and that
they were showing how hideously they could act. The blaze seemed
to reach the very heavens ; the stout walls seemed to totter; and
around the raging conflagration the Constitution-loving and law-
abiding people of Philadelphia shouted discordant songs of triumph,
the key of the hall having been handed over to the Mayor of the city,
that the act might appear to receive the stamp of municipal authority.
7
How painfully was I thus taught that Constitutional provisions were
not more efficient in Philadelphia than in Boston in guarding the
personal rights of the citizen.
But let us consider the other elause of the Constitution of the
United States referred to. A million of square miles of fertile terri¬
tory seems to me to be a .very goodly inheritance for a people ; and
the territory lying south of the Potomac and the Ohio, and west of
the Mississippi, claimed by the late insurrectionary chiefs, embraces
more than a million square miles, and is the most fertile region of
our country. The Constitution guarantees to each and all of you,
and to all other American men and women, the right to citizenship on
every foot of it.
It also guarantees to all the right to communicate freely, by letter
or otherwise, with any friend or acquaintance residing anywhere on
that million of square miles of territory. Yet, my friends, have I
been able to travel in the Southern States lately ? Let me ask you
whether the climate of Florida or of Texas or of South Carolina would
not have been fatally insalubrious to me any day since 1856, had I
ventured there. (Laughter.) Now, I will not talk about William
Lloyd Garrison, because he was a "pestilent fellow," who was always
insisting on Constitutional rights, while I only did it occasionally,
when an election was coming off! (Laughter.)
Was it not, for years before this Rebellion broke out, dangerous
for any Northern man to express, anywhere in the South, the opinion
that it was a Christian duty to do unto others as you would have
them do unto you? Did any clergyman, politician, statesman, or
private citizen, dare to say on Southern steamboat, in railroad car, or
stage, that he disapproved of human slavery, because under it you
could not do unto others as you would have them do unto you ? Would
not the political atmosphere in which he uttered such a sentiment have
been dangerous to him ? In other words, no one of you could safely
go there carrying your manhood with you. You had to leave that
behind when you travelled South. You might have your trunk and
clothing, and your bones, and the coating of flesh that covers them,
but you must leave your manhood at home with your wife and chil¬
dren, if you wished to return. (Laughter and applause.) You might
have a copy of the Constitution of the United States in every pocket
of your garments, and hold out that instrument as your safeguard ;
but you all know that you would not have found it a very efficient
protection.
Remember how it was in the case of poor Powers, the Irish-Phila¬
delphia stone-mason. Having voted for Buchanan and Florence in
the First Congressional District, he was seeking employment, and
was recommended for work on the State House at Columbia, South
Carolina. He went there, and had worked about three weeks when
he happened to drop the remark that " Slavery cut down the wages
of the white man and degraded him, and that the white working man
in the South was regarded as little better than a nigger !" For this
offence he was stripped to the belt, as a boxer would say, and tied by
the wrists ; a slave was put on each side of him with a cowhide, and
8
he was flaggelated till the blood streamed to his slippers. He was
then dressed with tar and sand, and brought, by slow stages, on an
open truck, for nearly a hundred miles, being detained in each town
for the gaze of the multitude as a " Northern Abolitionist." Barely
escaping with his life, he came back to Philadelphia. When thus
treated, he pleaded in his defence the Constitution,—at least he told
me that he had done so; but he found it no protection. His crime
was that he had asserted that a system of unpaid labor, applied to
four millions of men, degraded every other laboring man in the sec¬
tion of the country in which it prevailed ! You have read of gentle
girls decoyed from their New England homes into Southern families
to act as teachers, and of their mails being scrutinized, until finally
some injudicious friend sent them a copy of the New York Tribune,
or the Independent, with a sermon by Beecher, or, bolder still, and
more indiscreet, the Anti-Slavery Standard, or the Liberator; and
you have read how the girl in such a case was turned away with¬
out wages and without guidance, but not always without stripes;
for in one instance a fair and gentle maiden was treated just as poor
Powers had been. I have seen a daguerreotype of the beautiful face
of that daughter of old New England.
No, fellow citizens; Constitutions and laws are, in themselves, no
possible guarantee or safeguard for personal liberty. Nor are they
an efficient restraint on the cupidity or higher impulses of the indi¬
vidual. For instance, it has been felony in each of the Southern
States to teach a colored person to read the Lord's Prayer or the Ten
Commandments. I do not mean to say that the statutes declared it in
express language a felony to teach colored persons to read these par¬
ticular passages; but the law did pronounce it felony to teach colored
persons to read, and this prohibition embraced the Lord's Prayer, the
Ten Commandments, and the Old and New Testaments. Yet we find
among the slaves, and more largely among the freed people of color in
the South, a very large number who can read, and a considerable
number who can write. This circumstance testifies to different classes
of facts. It shows, in the first instance, that there were living under
the influence of that infernal system some humane people who occa¬
sionally, regardless of barbarous laws, taught a colored child. Secondly,
it shows that these " brutal " colored people, who have " no intellect,"
"will not work," and "cannot take care of themselves," did, in spite
of law, and while taking care of their masters and their masters'
families, find time and facilities to learn to read.
During my recent visit to Charleston, I was startled by what
sounded like an echo of my own voice, and turning to the speaker, I
found a thick-set black man, with hair knotted close to his head,—
"an image of the Almighty in ebony," if every one was cut outof that
material. Before him, Samuel Dickerson, stood two little girls in
plaid silk dresses, with broad-rimmed bonnets, and plaid ribbons cor¬
responding with the dresses which they wore. Each held a boquet,
and the man a wreath. As I heard his voice, I looked over the whole
place, to assure myself, and saw by his gestures and moving lips that
it was this negro of the purest African blood who was saying to Wil-
9
liam Sloyd Garrison, who had just ascended the stand beside me,
^ The emotions with which I behold you, honored, sir, are inexpres¬
sible ; and, having begun thus, he went on with a speech in flowing
sentences that would stamp him as an orator in any assemblage. In
the course of his address he said:—"For now more than ten years,
sir, it has been my privilege, at distant intervals, to be encouraged
by reading your good words in behalf of my oppressed race. To you
and the good people of the North, under the Constitution of the
United States, and the guidance of Abraham Lincoln, I owe these
dear children. First, their mother was taken; then the elder one was
snatched away; and on my knees I pleaded that this little one might
be left to me as a souvenir of the past. What was the reply that I
received ? ' Urge me no farther, or I will scatter your children to
different States.' "
Somehow that man had learned to read ; he had stolen that know¬
ledge ; and among many others I heard the same story. One would
say, " Why, my young mistress taught me." Another would tell me,
" I was on a plantation on the island, and master had taught me so
that I might keep the little accounts." Thus, here and there, benevo¬
lence or selfishness had prompte'd some of the people of the South to
violate the law which made it felony to teach a negro to read. There¬
fore, while I argue that constitutions and laws are not the sole safe¬
guards, or, in themselves, any safeguards of liberty and rights, I also
urge that they cannot be made the means of repressing the genius,
the intellect, the inspirations of a mass of human beings. (Loud
applause.)
What, then, my friends, are the safeguards of which I have pro¬
mised to speak ? Are they possible ? Oh, yes ! they are the sim¬
plest things in the world. They are popular sentiment and daily
usage. Where popular sentiment is right, the laws will be just and
equal, and will be maintained and enforced ; and where popular usages
are consistent with humanity and justice, there will be small business
for the lawyer, for usage will enforce the law.
I think f hear some one say, " Oh, you have nigger on the brain,
and now you are beginning to plead for the nigger !" God forbid
that I should forget the existence of nearly five millions of human
beings that know every sorrow that I know and every joy that I may
feel, and who look through the same narrow way to enduring happi¬
ness. Thank God! I do not forget their existence, and I do not fail
to plead for them. But my white brethren, allow me to assure you
that it is you for whom I am pleading now, because you are more
numerous than they. The colored people of America number about
five millions ; the white people over twenty-five millions ; and as_ five
is worth more than one, I plead for the five, and embrace the sixth,
and plead for him too. It is not the negro alone I have " on the
brain it is him and the white man ; it is mankind, and not any
single race or class of men. (Applause.)
Our fathers, when they gave the world a new political system, dis¬
puted all the old foundations of government, and proclaimed new
principles. They declared, first, the equal rights of all men. They
10
said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident,—that all men afe cre¬
ated equal." Did they mean equal in stature, in complexion, in intel¬
lect, in morals ? I answer the question by saying they were not fools,
nor were they blind; they knew that men differ in all these respects.
They were speaking on political subjects; they were announcing the
foundation-principles of political institutions, and they proclaimed
that, in respect to right, all men are equal, and are alike entitled to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Again, they denied the legitimacy of every Government then
existing on the face of the globe, and laid the axe at the foundation
of every throne, by affirming that the object of governments is the
protection of human rights, and that they "derive their just powers
from the consent of the governed;" and, further, that if any form of
government violates the rights of the people, it is not only their right
but their duty to reform, or, if necessary, overturn it. Upon these
propositions they rested not only their defence of the Revolution they
inaugurated, but the theory upon which they determined to establish
their Government.
Pennsylvania, to bring her Government into harmony with these
principles, in March, 1780, less than four years after that Declara¬
tion, proclaimed the emancipation of her slaves, having previously
secured by constitutional provision the right of suffrage to every free¬
man without regard to color.
Had all the States of the Union been organized on these principles,
there never would have been a day when you could not have written
a letter announcing the general doctrines of the Gospel into any
State without bringing its recipient into bodily danger, because those
doctrines would have prevailed in the South as well as in the North.
If the equality of man had been recognized all over the country, there
would have been no war during the last four years, because no man,
not even the pardoned Rebel, denies that the war was made to per¬
petuate Slavery and secure the degradation of the laboring masses.
No man will tell you that our newspapers were excluded from
Southern mails for any other reason than that it was feared they
would endanger the system of inequality that prevailed and was
cherished in the South. It was this that made it dangerous for us to
travel there; it was this that fired Pennsylvania Hall; it was this
that mobbed William Lloyd Garrison, and disgraced Boston by dis¬
closing the fact that Leverett Street jail was the only place in that
city strong enough for his protection. It was this doctrine ofkjhumai*
inequality, this violation of the principles that underlie our Govern¬
ment, this want of harmony between our usage and prejudices on the
one hand, and the theories which animate our Government, and which
we all profess to believe, on the other, that disgraced us before the
world, and converted what should have been our" peaceful life into a
restless sea of agitation, in which Constitutional safeguards were
abandoned or disregarded.
Let me show you how thoroughly we, in Philadelphia, are governed
to-day by a concession we made to the South years ago. in the vain
hope of securing peace and prosperity by promoting injustice and
11
inequality; let me show you how completely we allow our prejudices,
not natural, but thus engendered, to override the law of Pennsyl¬
vania ; how some of us who are in this hall join in demanding that the
State shall accept our prejudices as its supreme law. There is not,
within the wide limits of Pennsylvania, a jurist of standing who
will risk his professional character by denying that, according to the
law of Pennsylvania, every man and woman who is well behaved, and
can pay the fare, has a right to ride in our street cars. That is the
law of the Commonwealth, as expounded by our courts; no profes-
fessional man of reputation will dispute it.
We are a liberal people; as I have shown, our most cherished tra¬
ditions indicate our love of human freedom and equality. We are a
patriotic people; we have sent our sons and brothers, and have gone
ourselves, to the war. We are a benevolent people; we have fed
the soldiers of every State as they passed through our city, going to
or returning from the field, and our hospitals have been attended faith¬
fully by women (Grod bless them!) and by men, doing all they could
for the relief of the soldier. We are a grateful people, as is evinced
by the fact that we have tendered homes to two generals, and have
made provision for the families of some who have died. And we are
a religious people, being most of us what the world calls orthodox,
believing that the unconverted soul is punished after death; but not¬
withstanding these high qualities, the majority of the people of Phila¬
delphia would rather, during the whole war, have seen the colored
population so justly indignant, that, instead of the eleven regiments
they gave us at Camp William Penn, (applause,) they would not have
given us a man ; would rather see the sick and wounded suffer ; would
rather be branded by the world as harshly ungrateful to the maimed
soldiers of the Republic; and would rather see the yawning pit of hell
swarm with new-born demons, than that the sanctity of our street
cars should be profaned by the presence of a colored clergyman has¬
tening to baptize a dying infant, or a pious wife or mother hurrying
to a hospital to sanctify the last moments of her dying husband or
son! (Applause.)
This is the melancholy truth. There is no denying it; there is no
concealing it. There is not a man among us—unless it be one like
myself, who has been accustomed to riding in the cars of other cities,
where all races ride together—who does not feel something of a preju¬
dice on this subject. If you come to Washington, the capital of
your country, you will get used to riding in the cars with God's chil¬
dren of every complexion. I make no arraignment of my native city.
I love her. I cherish her for all her virtues. I boast of Philadelphia
at all times ; but I cannot help seeing her weaknesses. I cannot help
seeing that she is immensely hypocritical, when she talks about the
importance of getting religious instruction to ignorant and dying
people, and will allow every white strumpet and thief whose crime fur¬
nishes them with the means of paying a fare to ride in a car, and
will, as she has so recently done, turn out the colored clergyman and
other pious people hastening on the holiest errands of philanthropy
and Christianity. (Applause.)
12
Are we not, in all this, traitors to our own cause and principles ?
Are we not giving aid and comfort to our enemies,—those who are
not yet willing to accept the truths of the Declaration of Independence,
or be citizens of truly democratic States ? I pray you reform it alto¬
gether, and secure your own rights by protecting those of the hum¬
blest citizen of the Commonwealth. Make him secure, and your own
rights can never be infringed.
This is not a mere abstract suggestion. It is the practical question
of the day. The governments of the insurgent districts are to be re¬
organized. When States are organized, they must be districted upon
the census of 1860, and they can only be restored to " their practical
relations to the Union " (to borrow an expression from our late
lamented President) by the admission of their representatives into
the Congress of the United States ; and the only manner in which
you can maintain your right to citizenship and to free travel over the
million of square miles of territory, is to see that their governments
are organized in harmony with the truth that all men are equal before
the law, and those provisions of the Constitution which guarantee
the right of citizenship to the citizens of each and every State, and
the right of freedom of speech and of the press. Can we do this? Yes !
But you say that President Johnson has called upon the white
people only of the insurrectionary districts to reorganize State Go¬
vernments. I grant it; and while I do not on that account doubt his
patriotism, or assert that he has made a mistake, I know that I would
not have done just so. (Applause.) If the people to whom he has
committed the charge have the wisdom and sense to frame truly re¬
publican Constitutions, they will not only vindicate his wisdom, but
gratify his personal wishes, for his democracy is broad enough to
embrace mankind. But you ask what would you have done ? I would
have maintained military government long enough to have come to
understand the people, and let them understand their new relations
to the Government somewhat. I would, at the proper time, have had
an enrolment of the people made. I would have had the oath ad¬
ministered to the whole people, and in doubtful cases would have
taken testimony as to the loyalty of those who took the oath. When
I had ascertained who were loyal, I would either, in accordance with
Congressional provision to be made in the meanwhile, or in the method
which has been adopted by President Johnson, have called upon the
loyal people to elect delegates to a convention to frame a Constitution.
This would have been in accordance with ancient precedent, so far as
precedent exists, for the Fathers recognized every man who fought
and paid taxes as a citizen.
You can nowhere find in the Constitution any thing like a discrimi¬
nation between white and black. When it was adopted, the colored
freeman was a voter in every State in the Union except South Caro¬
lina. It is denied that he was such in Virginia and Delaware, where
the exercise of suffrage was regulated by legislative provision; but
their Bills of Rights covered the case, and I have proof, abundant
and perfect, that negro suffrage was practised in Delaware. It never
was meant by our fathers of the Revolutionary and Constitutional
13
era that freemen should be excluded from the exercise of suffrage by
reason of color. I would, therefore, have gone back to Revolutionary
times for my precedent; I would have taken the Declaration of Inde¬
pendence and the Constitution of the United States as my guide; and
would have allowed all loyal men over twenty-one years of age to
vote. (Applause.)
You may say that the President has submitted the question to the
pardoned Rebels. I grant you that he has; and I fear, as I have already
said, that in this he has made a mistake; but, if so, it is not neces¬
sarily a fatal one. If those gentlemen should be so far enlightened
as to fashion constitutions giving the suffrage to every man, white or
colored, who can read, or read and write, I shall take no exception,
because every man among them, who has any ability, can, in one year,
learn to read and write. The colored people sit with humility at the
feet of any child, or man or woman, who will teach them. If the
whites who have been reared in ignorance, and taught that all labor
is disgraceful and education unnecessary, will not learn, let them be
excluded with black men who may choose to remain in ignorance.
If the colored citizens do not learn when the opportunity shall be
afforded, let them be excluded, but let the law be just, and its restric¬
tions apply equally to all. Men who are ignorant can learn; men
who are poor, if we secure their right to acquire land by purchase,
and under the homestead law in the South, can and will acquire
wealth. Whatever, therefore, be the rule, let it, I repeat, apply
equally to all. (Applause.) I would, were the matter submitted to
me, give the poor and ignorant the right to vote; the strong, the
wise, the wealthy man can take care of himself. It is the poor and
the ignorant who need the suffrage to protect themselves.
Again, throw the mass of the poor and ignorant people into the
voting population, and the wise, the wealthy, the powerful, will see
that they must establish a system of public education; for if they
allow ignorance and vice to prevail around them, ignorance and vice
may legislate away their rights and property. Thus it is that the
North takes its poor children from the gutters and the purlieus of the
city and educates them; and those who enter our schools in poverty and
weakness often leave with minds enlightened and enlarged, and finally
go to the grave men of wealth, their names and honorable achieve¬
ments recorded in history. I would say, give the suffrage all over the
country to the poor and the ignorant, and so constrain the wealthy
and powerful to look to the welfare of the poor and the ignorant.
And still again, I would, as a purely selfish measure, take the poor
blacks into our political family. Let me illustrate my meaning. You
are sick, bleeding, torn; thieves and robbers have been upon you, as
they have been upon our country for four years. You have two per¬
sons to choose between. On the one hand, you have a friend—black,
poor, ignorant, but who knows there is a God, and who fears his punish¬
ments—who instinctively clung to you through all the time when the
robbers were stripping and assailing you—who, in spite of his poverty
and ignorance, has been willing to lay down his life to save yours.
On the other hand, you may seek the aid of a man stronger than you
14
are, of great intelligence and learning,—acute, powerful, unscrupu¬
lous,—fearing neither God, man, nor the devil. You must put your
life in the hands of one or the other. Which will you choose ? I
would take the poor and ignorant friend, and would try, with his aid,
to keep the powerful enemy off; and that is what you must do in the
South. (Applause.) You must either take the poor, ignorant masses,
who, during the war have been your friends, have fed you in hos¬
pitals, have released you from prisons, have piloted you by night
through marshes and woods, and have been ready to lay down their
lives for you (enthusiastic cheers), or you must take the brothers and
friends and associates of John C. Breckinridge and Jefferson Davis as
your rulers ; for such, by the aid of Northern sympathizers, they will
be. For myself, as God is my judge, I will never consciously cast a
vote in the American Congress that shall favor the admission of a
representative from a reconstructed State under an oligarchic or aris¬
tocratic Constitution. (Great and long-continued applause.)
I have said, my friends, that I am pleading our own cause. I will
not insult these kind people of African descent who are here to-night,
by pretending that I am pleading for them alone. I do not wish
them to think, as one did when I spoke here last, that I mean to throw
contempt upon them, when I say that I am not pleading for them. I
do embrace them in the plea which I make; but, as I have said, I
regard five as more than one, and I wish them to understand that I
plead for ourselves; for the Almighty has so inextricably interwoven
the duty of justice to them with our own welfare, that in pleading
with you to extend justice to them, I plead with you to promote your
own peace, prosperity, and happiness,—nay, to guarantee your own
freedom here in Philadelphia.
"Why," you may say, "the slavery question is settled, and our
fathers banished it from this State." I know that slavery, in name,
is ended; but you may change the name without changing the thing.
If you leave four millions of laboring people at the South without the
right to testify in open court, without the right to make a contract as
any other person may, without the right to free education, such as is
enjoyed by the children of Northern laboring people, you, in fact,
leave slavery there. You surrender those four millions of laboring
people and their posterity to be preyed upon by aristocratic capitalists,
and used as instruments for degrading whatever other millions of
laboring men and women may go to dwell among them.
The negro question, if left in this condition, will be, in the future,
what the slavery question has been in the past. But, under the new
state of circumstances, more of the colored people will rise up than
could under the Fugitive Slave Law, to make known their wrongs,
and to appeal to the hearts of the wise, the humane, and the just of
the North. Thus we shall live in a state of constant agitation, more
intense than it has been in the past. The negro question will be
used by unprincipled demagogues to misgovern us in Philadelphia, as
the slavery question has been to our great detriment. Do you know,
you young ladies, who graduated in the Girls' High School of this
city, why Cleveland's unequalled " Compendium of English Litera-
15
ture " was taken from you as a class-book ? That work was excluded
from the school, and the city of Philadelphia put to the expense of
buying new books for all those who had used it. Why ? Because
Professor Cleveland had dared to insert a foot-note in favor of free¬
dom ! This happened in the Philadelphia schools less than six years
ago. A text-book which England or America has not equalled was
taken from our daughters, and the city of Philadelphia put to the ex¬
pense of buying entire new sets of an inferior work, because that
Philadelphia book contained a foot-note against slavery ! If we are
to continue the negro question as a subject of agitation, the compilers
of other school books may chance to say something in favor of the
negro, and their excellent works be hustled out of our schools, because
they might offend our Southern brethren, who have come here to buy
our dry goods, books and political principles ! (Laughter and ap¬
plause.)
There is not a girl or boy in the schools of Philadelphia who has
not in this and other matters been defrauded of essential educational
rights by our subserviency to the spirit of the South. We must not
let the negro question enter our schools in that form again. I would
rather see it stalk in in the form of the darkest-hued negro in the
world, than feel that my children were slaves to the ex-slave-owners
of the South.
Have you in your libraries an American edition of Campbell's
poems, published since 1854 ? If, in purchasing it, you inquired
of the bookseller whether it was a complete edition, you were pro¬
bably told that it was, that it contained all his poems, including the
fugitive and minor pieces—everything that Campbell ever wrote. Yet
in no recent American edition of the works of that poet can you find
these lines:
" United States 1 your banner wears
Two emblems—one of fame ;
Alas ! the other that it bears
Reminds us of your shame.
"^Tour standard's constellation types
White freedom by its stars ;
But what's the meaning of the stripes ?
They mean your negroe's scars."
Now it is quite as well for the American purchasers of Campbell's
poems to know how we were sneered at by the writer of some of the
best poems in our language for our want of fidelity to our professed
principles. The insertion of these verses in our American publica¬
tions could have done the citizen or country no harm, but it might
have affected the Southern sale of the book. Therefore, although the
South would not buy one copy to our fifty, we Northern people were
cheated. The South was our master and must be respected.
But again, are you an Episcopalian ? If so, have you a copy of
the prayer-book, embellished with that pious fraud, the beautiful
frontispiece ? Have you ever seen Ary Scheffer's picture, entitled
Christus Consolator ? I have stood before it by the hour, and been
penetrated and inspired by the great lesson of the Christian artist.
16
He knew that Christ's love embraced and that his spirit could exalt
the humblest member of the race He came to redeem. The central
figure of the picture is the sublime form of the Consoler, His counte¬
nance radiant with his divinity, and before him the humble people
who were consoled by His presence and His influence—whose sorrow
and agonies, physical and mental, he lifted from their poor souls ;
and among them was the negro.
But when an American artist prepared that picture for an Ameri¬
can publisher's edition of the prayer-book, it was found that, in re¬
ducing the size, all the figures could not be included, and so they cut
out the poor " darkey !" (Laughter and applause.)
Now, I am told, and I accept the statement as true, that this was
not done intentionally in the direction that I imply ; but what I mean
to say is, that if there had been no prejudice at the North against the
negro, and if the five millions of American citizens of African descent
had been in the enjoyment of their rights, and in the habit of reading
and attending public schools, and a fair share of them the Episcopal
church, they too would have been purchasers of prayer books ; and it
is probable that the artist might have found that he could take out
one of the white figures, leaving the sole colored man there to testify
that the Church recognizes Christ's power to impart consolation and
immortal hope even to the hundreds of millions of the children of
Africa.
My friends, we have been enslaved with the blacks of the South.
We stand degraded in the eyes of nations and of history. We can
now redeem ourselves. It is given to our generation, as it has been
given to none since that which founded our Government, to be re¬
membered in the long hereafter as a generation that blessed the world
forever. It is given to us to harmonize the practical workings of our
institutions with the sublime truths that underlie them. It is given
to us to establish in popular sentiment and the usages of the Ameri¬
can people the practice of perfect justice. To do it, we have but to
be true to our own highest and best and most Christian instincts—
to be true to the great principles which our fathers strove to incul¬
cate ; and meanwhile, by persuasion, by mercy, by the use of those
wonderful agencies of this era—the Church, in popular hands ; the
Missionary Society, the Sunday School Union, with its affluence of
literature prepared for undisciplined or immature intellect; the Bible
Society, the Tract Society, the temperance lecturer, the ten thousand
moral agencies known only to the people of the North—to be firm and
persistent in our allegiance to the right, and generous in the applica¬
tion of these good influences, as we have been in pouring out our
treasure and our blood during the war; and, with our generation, the
dangers that threaten us will have passed, and our country will be
in reality a refuge for the oppressed of all lands—a bright light by
night and a towering column by day, that shall lead the nations on¬
ward till perfect freedom dwells upon the globe. (Vehement and long
continued applause, amid which the speaker retired.)