It is worthy of remark that secession was an afterthought with the rebels. Endeavoring to impose old and worn-out condition upon new relations—putting new wines into old bottles, new cloth into old garments and thus making the rent worse then before. Almost in the twinkling of an eye, the latent forces of despotism rallied. But if, on the other hand, this potent teacher, whose lessons are written in characters of blood and thundered to us from a hundred battlefields shall fail, we shall go down as we shall deserve to go down, as a warning to all other nations which shall come after us. The rebellion has been a rapid educator. We are not fighting for the dead past, but for the living present and the glorious future. I answer, because the nation has long bitterly hated Abolition and the enemies of the war confidently rely upon this hatred to serve the ends of treason. It was not the Confederate rag, but the glorious Star-Spangled Banner. We are writing the statutes of eternal justice and liberty in the blood of the worst of tyrants as a warning to all aftercomers. Her noblest defenders were sent into exile, and the hopes of democratic liberty were blasted in the moment of their bloom. NEW YORK >> More than a century after his death, Frederick Douglass and July 4 remain profoundly intertwined. There are vacant space at my hearthstone which I shall rejoice to see filled again by the boys who once occupied them, but which cannot be thus filled while the war lasts, for they have enlisted “during the war.”. It is cowardly to shuffle our responsibilities upon the shoulders of Providence. On Decoration Day, 1871, Frederick Douglass gave the following address at the monument to the Unknown Dead of the Civil War at Arlington National Cemetery. Secondly: That we, the loyal people of the North and of the whole country, while determined to make this a short and final war, will offer no peace, accept no peace, consent to no peace, which shall not be to all intents and purposes an Abolition peace. I know we have recently gained a great political victory; but it remains to be seen whether we shall wisely avail ourselves of its manifest advantages. We are not fighting for the old Union, nor for anything like it, but for that which is ten thousand times more important; and that thing, crisply rendered, is national unity. We want a country, and are fighting for a country, which shall be free from sectional political parties—free from sectional religious dominations—free from sectional benevolent associations—free from every kind and description of sect, party, and combination of a sectional character. I repeat, while we have a Democratic party at the North trimming its sails to catch the Southern breeze in the next Presidential election, we are in danger of compromise. In this speech, Douglass calls on Americans to remember the war for what it was—a struggle between an army fighting to protect slavery and a nation reluctantly transformed into a … But policy, policy, everlasting policy, has robbed our statesmanship of all soul-moving utterances. Our generals, at the beginning of the war, were horribly proslavery. All donations are tax deductible. Now did a warm heart and a high moral feeling control the utterance of the President, he would welcome, with joy unspeakable and full of glory, the opportunity afforded by the rebellion to free the country form the matchless crime and infamy. It began weak and has risen strong. speech as part of their Fourth of July celebrations. His withering 1852 … The position of the Democratic party in relation to the war ought to surprise nobody. A word as to the ground of hope. Ask why it was for the Mexican War, and it answers, slavery. They regard this grand moral revolution I the mind and heart of the nation as the most distressing attribute of the war, and howl over it like certain characters of whom we read—who thought themselves tormented before their time. Slavery, and only slavery, has been its recognized master during all that time. While our Republican government at Washington makes color and not character the criterion of promotion in the Army and degrades colored commissioned officers at New Orleans below the rank to which even the rebel government had elevated them, I think we are in danger of a compromise with slavery. In this address, he reminded his audience that slavery was the cause of the war and that its abolition could not be complete until the former slaves had full citizenship rights. We had been drugged nearly to death by proslavery compromises. The Civil War was less than a decade away when Douglass gave this speech, in which he referred to Independence Day celebrations that took place the previous day: Fellow Citizens, I … Frederick Douglass and other black leaders engaged with Confederate sympathizers in a battle of historical memory. Let us have the Constitution, with it thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, fairly interpreted, faithfully executed, and cheerfully obeyed in the fullness of their spirit and the completeness of their letter…. The blow we strike is not merely to free a country or continent, but the whole world, from slavery; for when slavery fails here, it will fall everywhere. Few men, however great their wisdom, are permitted to see the end from the beginning. Fourthly: Believing that the white race has nothing to fear from fair competition with the black race, and that the freedom and elevation of one race are not to be purchased or in any manner rightfully subserved by the disfranchisement of another, we shall favor immediate and unconditional emancipation in all the states, invest the black man everywhere with the right to vote and to be voted for, and remove all discriminations against his rights on account of his color, whether as a citizen or as a soldier. Frederick Douglass and other black leaders engaged with Confederate sympathizers in a battle of historical memory. First: There is the absence of any deep moral felling among the loyal people against slavery itself, their feeling against it being on account of its rebellion against the government, and not because it is a stupendous crime against human nature. The American people will, in any great emergency, be true to themselves. The Democratic party, though defeated in the elections last fall, is still a power. On the other hand, exclude Abolition, and you exclude all else for which you are fighting. This sentiment is noble and generous, worthy of all honor as such; but it is only a sentiment after all, and must submit to its own rational limitations. If accomplished, our glory as a nation will be complete, our peace will flow like a river, and our foundation will be the everlasting rocks. Both warn us of danger. Let, then, the war proceed in its strong, high and broad course till the rebellion is put down and our country is saved beyond the necessity of being saved again! The same was said by Breckinridge and Vallandigham. For one, I am not careful to deny this charge. This inexpensive compilation of his speeches adds vital detail to the portrait of a great historical figure. An Abolition war! We know and consider that a nation is not born in a day. Indeed, as long as slavery has any life in it anywhere in the country, we are in danger of such a compromise. It began with few and now, behold, the country is full of armed men, ready, with courage and fortitude, to make the wisest and best idea of American statesmanship the law of the land. Strike out the high ends and aims thus indicated, and the war would appear to the impartial eye of an onlooking world like little better than a gigantic enterprise for shedding human blood. While the North is full of such papers as the New York World, Express and Herald, firing the nation’s heart with hatred to Negroes and Abolitionists, we are in danger of a slaveholding peace. The fact is, the party in question—I say nothing of individual men who were once members of it—has had but one vital and animating principle for thirty years, and that has been the same old horrible and hell-born principle of Negro slavery. I knew well enough and often said it: once let the North and South confront each other on the battlefield, and slavery and freedom be the inspiring motives of the respective sections, the contest will be fierce, long and sanguinary. Europe was assured by Mr. Seward that no slave should gain his freedom by this war. If sharp and signal retribution, long protracted, wide-sweeping and overwhelming, can teach a great nation respect for the long-despised claims of justice, surely we shall be taught now and for all time to come. I have applauded that paper and do now applaud it, as a wide measure—while I detest the motive and principle upon which it is based. There was a right side and a wrong side in the late war, which no sentiment ought to cause us to forget, and while today we should have malice toward none, and charity toward all, it is no part of our duty to confound right with wrong, or loyalty with treason. “Let us have peace.” Yes, let us have peace, but let us have liberty, law, and justice first. The livery of peace is a beautiful livery, but in this case it is a stolen livery and sits badly on the wearer. We are in fact, and from absolute necessity, transplanting the whole South with the higher civilization of the North. Douglass was one of the greatest public speakers of the Civil War era, a … But unhappily, excellent as that paper is—and much as it has accomplished temporarily—it settles nothing. Ask why it now asserts the sovereignty of the states separately as against the states united, and again slavery is the answer. I’ve posted it before, but it think it’s something worth re-reading and contemplating every Memorial Day. Let but the little finger of slavery get back into this Union, and in one year you shall see its whole body again upon our backs. Slaves became free in 1863, and everything changed for black Americans. NEW YORK (AP) — More than a century after his death, Frederick Douglass and July 4 remain profoundly intertwined. We naturally prefer the bright side, but when there is a dark side it is folly to shut our eyes to it or deny its existence. Not because we love the Negro, but the nation; not because we prefer to do this, because we must or give up the contest and give up the country. Slavery is humbled in Maryland, threatened in Tennessee, stunned nearly to death in western Kentucky, and gradually melting away before our arms in the rebellious states. It consists in their known treachery to the loyal government. It is not pleasant to contemplate the hour as one of doubt and danger. Ladies and gentlemen, there was a time when I hoped that events unaided by discussion would couple this rebellion and slavery in a common grave. While there is a vestige of Slavery remaining, it will unite the South with itself, and carry with it the Democracy of the North. It has driven Mason, the shameless man hunter, from London, where he never should have been allowed to stay for an hour, except as a bloodhound is tolerated in Regent Park for exhibition. They charge that it is no longer conducted upon constitutional principles. Who was going to fight for slavery in the Union? I now hold that a sacred regard for truth, as well as sound policy, makes it our duty to own and avow before heaven and earth that this war is, and of right ought to be, and Abolition War. Now, this is just the sort of people whose votes may turn the scale against us in the last event. But now the world begins to see something more than legitimacy, something more than national pride. The Northern people have always been remarkably confident of their own virtue. It overturned the French throne, sent Louis Philippe into exile, shook every throne in Europe, and inaugurated a glorious Republic. He saw the conflict as the seismic event needed to end slavery in America. They have based their confederacy squarely on their cornerstone. But the sectional character of this war was merely accidental and its least significant feature. I neither dispute their title nor the pretensions founded upon it. In a speech delivered on November 15, 1867, Douglass said: "A man's rights rest in three boxes. It began low and has risen high. Our destiny is to be taken out of our own hands. Why is this war fiercely denounced as an Abolition war? The colored people told me a few days ago in Washington that they were the victims of the most brutal treatment by these Northern soldiers when they first came there. While the major part of antislavery profession is based upon devotion to the Union rather than hostility to slavery, there is danger of a slaveholding peace. Some of them, like Hunter and Butler, because they hate slavery on its own account, and others, because slavery is in arms against the government. We did our very best to prevent it. Politics and perfidy proved too strong for the principles of liberty and justice in that contest. Douglass used this speech to frame the coming post-Civil War debate over the nature of a true and lasting peace, even as Confederate and Union Armies were still engaged on the field of battle. Haiti and Liberia are recognized. Then there is the danger arising from the impatience of the people on account of the prolongation of the war. When we were merely fighting for the old Union the world looked coldly upon our government. They have but to cross the rebel lines to be hailed by the traitors as countrymen, clansmen, kinsmen, and brothers beloved in a common conspiracy. Let but our rulers place the government fully within these trade winds of omnipotence, and the hand of death is upon the Confederate rebels. He avowed his determination to protect and defend the slaveholder’s right to plunder the black laborer of his hard earnings. Celebrations honored the bravery of both armies, and the meaning of the war faded. Great was their disappointment. We are now wading into the third year of conflict with a fierce and sanguinary rebellion, one which, at the beginning of it, we were hopefully assured by one of our most sagacious and trusted political prophets would be ended in less than ninety days; a rebellion which, in its worst features, stands alone among rebellions a solitary and ghastly horror, without a parallel in the history of any nation, ancient or modern; a rebellion inspired by no love of liberty and by no hatred of oppression, as most other rebellions have been, and therefore utterly indefensible upon any moral or social grounds; a rebellion which openly and shamelessly sets at defiance the world’s judgment of right and wrong, appeals from light to darkness, from intelligence to ignorance, from the ever-increasing prospects and blessings of a high and glorious civilization to the cold and withering blasts of a naked barbarism; a rebellion which even at this unfinished stage of it counts the number of its slain not by thousands nor by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands; a rebellion which in the destruction of human life and property has rivaled the earthquake, the whirlwind and the pestilence that waketh in darkness and wasteth at noonday. 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