University of Virginia Library

“CUSSID BE CANAAN!”

A LECTURE

DELIVERED AT MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, DEC. 22, 1867.

We are all descended from grandfathers. Nearly a century
ago the grandfathers of some of us, in convention assembled,
uttered as doctrine, which they believed could not be gainsayed,
these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson was the particular grandfather who wrote
these high-sounding words, and, as a consequence, he has been
ever since hailed as the father of the only political party which
never believed in them. My particular mission is to show that
Jefferson was a most shallow person, which opinion of Jefferson
is very general in the South. True, the Democracy claim
him as its father; but when we remember that the same party
claim Jackson, the strangler of secession, as another father, we
can easily see how that can be. We have claimed these men
as ancestors only since they departed this life. Should they
rise from the dead, and be blessed with a view of their reputed
sons, particularly the branch of the family that has taken up
its residence in the city of New York, they would, I doubt
not, hold up their hands in horror, and exclaim, “It's a wise
father who knows his own child.”

It was well enough for Jefferson to assert the equality of
men before there was profit in inequality; but had he been
really a prophet, he would have done no such thing. In his

day Slavery was unprofitable, and, consequently, not the holy
thing it has been since. The slaves were burdens instead of
aids, for the planters were compelled to provide for them.
The hogs ate the corn, and the negroes ate the hogs, leaving
the poor owners only what they left. But happily there came
a change. An ingenious Yankee invented the cotton gin,
slave labor became valuable, and, presto! the doctrine of the
equality of men was consigned to the limbo for worn-out and
useless rubbish, and Jefferson went out of fashion. Had he
been really desirous of being held up as the prophet of the
people who afterwards claimed him as such, we should not
have had the forcible sentences I have read. He would have
diluted them into something like this: “We hold these supposed
truths to be tolerably self-evident, that, as a rule, all
white men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with divers and sundry rights, which may be considered
inalienable; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of — niggers!”

It will be observed that the two Declarations differ somewhat.
One is as Jefferson wrote it, and the other is the version
we use at Confedrit × Roads.

Jefferson was in fault in his lack of appreciation, and strange
omission of the word “white.” The same omission is painfully
observable in all the literature of the world. I have searched
faithfully the realms of poetry and history, and am compelled
to acknowledge that nowhere outside of the Constitutions of
certain States is the word “white” made a necessary prefix
to the word “man.” And against this I protest. Literature
should conform to law, and to the great Caucasian idea. The
term employed to designate responsible beings in the Constitutions
of our States being “white male.” I insist that we go
through all our books, and substitute “white male” for “man”
wherever the word occurs. Thus we shall make Sir Walter
Scott say, —

Addison shall say, in Cato, —

In Macbeth, the murderers shall say, —

And Macbeth shall answer, —

And Othello, before the senators, —

But in the Bible the improvement would shine out in a
clearer and stronger light. In our Caucasian — our white
men's Bibles — we shall have such words as these: —

1 Samuel 13: 14, —

2 Samuel 12: 7, —

Psalms 37: 37, —

And in the mouth of our Saviour we shall put these words: —

This passage would be especially grateful to us of Kentucky,
showing as it would that the distinction between the races
would be kept up through all eternity. But, unfortunately, the
Books do not so read. The American people, when slave
labor became of value, forsook Jefferson, put the word “white”
into their laws, and painted the word “nigger” on their banners,
which word has been a political Shibboleth ever since.
It is this Nigger which we shall investigate to-night. I am
the more anxious that the people shall understand the nature
of this being, and the absurdity of the attempt to elevate
him into manhood, for the reason that an effort to that end is
now being made. The insane agitators, who deny the truth of
Kentucky theology, are resisting us in our efforts to put him
in his old place. In the face of our desires, they insist upon

deluging the country with Massachusetts, and making of the
South a second New England, — factories, farms, churches,
school-houses and all.

Upon the 957th page of the Dictionary you will find the
word “negro” defined as follows: “One of the black, woolly-headed,
thick-lipped, flat-nosed race of men inhabiting Africa.”
The Negro of the Dictionary is not the individual of whom I
shall speak. The Negro I know nothing about; the Nigger
I have spent much time in investigating, and flatter myself I
understand it thoroughly. I say it of the Nigger, and him of
the Negro, for there is a wide difference between them. The
Negro is a man, born in Africa, or descended from natives of
that country; the Nigger is an idea, which exists only in the
imagination of persons of the haughty Caucasian race resident
in the United States. It is an idea which sways men,
and influences their action, without having being; a myth,
which influences the world, without possessing form or shape.
It is possessed of many attributes, is many-sided, many-shaped,
vastly endowed, and fearfully and wonderfully made. To clear
up as I go, I may as well specify some of the peculiarities of
the Nigger. For instance, it is firmly believed that he could
never provide for himself; but those so contending, also declare
that the wealth of the country is dependent upon him, and
that without him weeds would grow in the streets of our cities.
It was asserted that he would not labor; yet the same men
undertook the large job of conquering the North, that they
might continue to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He was said
to be so stupid as to be incapable of receiving even the rudiments
of an education, and yet we found it necessary, in our
States, to pass stringent laws, with fearful penalties attached, to
prevent him from doing it! It was held by eloquent speakers
that he would invade the North, and, as he was too indolent to
work, he would fill our almshouses and jails; and the same
speakers would assert a moment later, with equal eloquence,
that, accustomed as he always had been to labor, he would
work for less pay than white men, and throw them all out of
employment. This last assertion, I have noticed, was always
made by gentlemen in the vicinity of bar-rooms, whose noses
were solferino-hued, whose hats were crownless, and whose

wives, for amusement probably, took in washing to feed the
children. It is an unfortunate fact for us, that men who labor
in earnest have never been afraid of the competition of the
Nigger. Lower down in the scale of creation than the baboon,
they were fearful he would, if not restrained by law, teach
their schools, sit as judges, and be elected to Congress; so
repulsive in appearance had they painted him, with his thick
lips, black face, and kinky hair, that the very thought of one
would make a white damsel shudder; nevertheless they
demanded the enactment of laws in States where women may
choose their husbands unrestrained, to prevent these same
white damsels from marrying them. Immeasurably beneath
them in every particular, they felt called upon to perpetually
cry, “Protect us from nigger equality!” — and so on.

Jefferson's fault was the result of a lack of knowledge. He
knew all about the Negro, but nothing about the Nigger, and
it was well for him, therefore, that he lived in the year of our
Lord 1776. Had he lived ninety years later, and enunciated
the same doctrine, we should have shot him, as we did Lovejoy.
Were he alive now, he could not have been elected to
Congress in the district represented by the Hon. John Morrisey!
No, indeed! The gentlemen who left their native soil
because of the scarcity of this equality (and of potatoes), the
men who would have been carpet-baggers but for the lack of
carpet-bags, — those who have kindly taken charge of the
politics of several of the Atlantic cities, — these men are the
sharp sticklers that the distinctions between man and man
which drove them from the land of their birth be kept up
here. Their motto is, “One man is as good as another;” but
when their eyes rest upon a black man, they very properly
add, “and better too!” This class have cultivated such a
delightful hatred of the Nigger that they won't even drink with
one, unless, indeed, the Nigger pays for the fluids. This
makes some difference. And that this distinction may be kept
up, we have interpolated into Jefferson's Declaration the word
“white,” and assert, vehemently, that both Scripture and
science, of which we know much, justify the interpolation. In
Kentucky, we don't take the Declaration of Independence as
we do our whiskey, straight, but we sweeten it to our taste.

We have all the passages of Scripture relating to it at our
tongues' end. At the Corners, you can hear at any time those
whose appearance hardly denotes erudition, whose noses
blossom as the lobster, whose hair asserts impatience of restraint
by obtruding itself through the corners of their hats,
whose toes manifest themselves through their ventilated shoes,
and to whose perpendicularity posts are necessary, exclaim,
unctuously, “And Noer planted a vineyard, and drank of the
wine, and was drunken. Cussid be Canaan.”

Having dwelt as long as is profitable upon the attributes
of this interesting being, I pass to an examination of his
origin. It is found in the 9th chapter of Genesis. The world,
sunk in wickedness, was destroyed by a flood. But it was not
the design of the Almighty to exterminate the race. I will
not stop here to argue whether it would have been better to
have made clean work of it or not. I was in New York a few
weeks ago, and thought, perhaps, it would. Be that as it
may, one family he preserved in an ark, and when the tempests
that had wrought His judgments had subsided, and the purified
earth was again fit for the occupancy of man, this family
left their floating home, and went out upon its face. The
Book gives a short, though satisfactory account of what followed.
Noah, six hundred years old at the time, having seen
nothing but water for nearly twelve months, wanted a change.
He planted a vineyard, pressed the grapes, drank the wine
therefrom, and was drunken; which was a very indiscreet performance
for one at his age. Had he been a mere infant of one
or two hundred years, it wouldn't have been so singular, but a
mature man of six hundred ought to have known better. It
has always been a mystery at the Corners how Noah could
become inebriated on so thin a drink as new wine. Deacon
Pogram remarked that Noah wuzn't a seasoned vessel. In
that condition he lay down within his tent with insufficient
clothing upon him. As it was in the beginning, so it is now,
and ever shall be. To this day the man who drinks will
sooner or later get down with too little clothing upon him.
Ham, his youngest son, saw him, and laughingly told his
brethren. Shem and Japheth reproved Ham for his levity,
and took their garments upon their shoulders, and going backward,

laid them upon him. When Noah awoke, he knew what
Ham had done, and he cursed him in these words: “Cursed be
Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”

Upon this one act of our common father hung momentous
results. That one draught of wine set in motion a succession
of events that affected the fate of the greatest nation of the
world, in all conceivable ways, from the election of constables
to the fighting of great battles. For in that cup of wine was
Democracy, — then and there it was born, and that cup of
wine gave that party its Nigger — all the capital it ever had.
The temperance people tell us that in every cup of wine there
is a devil; in this cup you will acknowledge there was a
large and particularly lively one.

The drinking of this wine, and the drunkenness that it produced
upon the inexperienced Noah, was the cause of a division
of the human race into two classes, — white men and
niggers. Under the head of white men, we class the red
man of America, with his aquiline nose, coppery complexion,
and straight hair; the Mongolian, with his olive-colored skin,
black hair, and flat nose; the Caucasian, with his fair complexion,
hair of all colors, and features of all shapes; the Celt,
with his variable features; and — Democrats. A Democrat is
counted a white man, no matter what his complexion may be;
no matter what the color of his hair — or nose. All the rest
of the human family — and Radicals — we set down as Niggers.
To the white race we ascribe all the glory of the South — to
the others nothing.

This elevation of the white race, and consequent degradation
of the black, is justified by the few of us who read the
Bible, by the sin of Ham; though, by the way, we have nothing
to say in particular of the sin of Noah, which preceded
and led to it, Noah's sin being one that we are compelled,
for obvious reasons, to look upon with much leniency.

To be frank, I have never believed that poor Ham was fairly
dealt with. I have always pitied Ham. He was, doubtless,
a great, good-natured fellow, with a keen appreciation of the
ludicrous, and was vastly amused at the condition of his sire.
Drunkenness was not so common in that day as to excite disgust;
and as he saw the old navigator on his back, his face

twisted with inebriety, his snores waking the echoes, and the
walls of his tent swaying from his hard breathing, he doubtless
thought he had, as the slang-users of this day would say, “a
good thing on the old man.”

But if it was a laughing matter with the foolish Ham, it
was not so with the shrewd Shem and Japheth. They pierced
the future. To get into the good graces of their father, they
turned their backs upon his sin and folly (as we do nowadays
upon the sin and folly of those from whom we want favors),
and, precisely as we do, cast over his sin their garments. The
only parallel to this we have in modern times occurred in
Washington a few years ago. Andrew Johnson was very
much in the condition of Noah upon one memorable 22d of
February, and a small army of patriots, who had assessorships,
post offices, and collectorships in their eyes, made haste to cast
their garments over him. But they did not succeed in covering
him. Noah awoke, and in the ill-humor which always
follows excess, cursed poor Ham, and condemned his son
Canaan to be the servants of his uncles forever. This was
the beginning of Democracy. Drunkenness brought exposure,
exposure shame, shame a curse, and thus cursed, Ham went
out a Nigger. Drunkenness made Nigger, Nigger made
Democracy, and the two have been running the machine
ever since.

We have now plainly before us the origin of the Nigger,
and have, therefore, a starting point for our investigations.
Here were three brothers, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, with a
curse upon Ham, condemning his children to serve the others.
We, the whites, claim to be the descendants of the other two,
and consequently assert the right to own and work the children
of our unfortunate uncle. The claim is a comfortable
one. Labor is something all men dread; and if it can be
positively fixed that Noah did curse Ham, and that he spoke
by authority, and that the negro is really the descendant of
Ham, and we are the descendants of Japheth, we have really a
good thing of it. We of Kentucky have always desired to
fulfil the great law of labor, as our particular friends at the
North served in the army — by substitute.

One cup of wine, and a curse after it, made a difference in
the history of the world.

How differently history would have been written had Noah
started a temperance society at the beginning, or had the
Maine liquor law been in operation in that country. Or had he
taken up any other branch of agriculture! Had he planted
corn instead of grapes, or gone into sheep or poultry; had a
frost blighted his grapes, or a mildew struck them, or had the
screw of his press broken; had any one of these things happened,
he would not have become inebriated; Ham would not
have seen him; there would have been no curse, no Nigger, no
Democracy. For who can imagine a Democracy without a
Nigger to be kept in subjection! Or, suppose that all of Ham's
children had died of diphtheria! Had any one of these things
happened, the whole course of political events would have been
changed. We never should have seen at political meetings in
the West, wagon-loads of ancient females, with banners over
their venerable heads, and inscribed thereon this agonizingly
touching appeal: “Fathers, protect us from negro equality!”
as though they were not old enough, as a rule, to protect themselves.
Or, this heroic declaration: “White husbands or
none!” which, taken in connection with their age and single
condition, would indicate that if they had ever had offers they
must have come from black men. In the East, the gentlemen
who sent the Hon. John Morrisey to Congress from New York,
would have been spared the crimes of arson and murder, for
there would have been no nigger orphan asylums to awaken
their righteous indignation; no adult male niggers to hang to
lamp posts. But as any one of these things would have
changed the complexion of affairs, and prevented the unfortunate
change in Ham's complexion, and as they did not happen,
we are bound to admit that Providence intended the negro to
be kept down, and in the eternal fitness of things, arranged for
an organization to keep him down.

This curse is the great pivotal fact upon which American
politics has turned for years. But we found many difficulties
in it. The first difficulty which occurred to me, is the fact
that all of Ham's children did not suffer in consequence of
their father's little indiscretion. It ought to have fallen upon
all alike, but it did not. Nimrod was a descendant of Ham,
but he was not the servant of anybody, very much. On the

contrary, quite the reverse. He was a mighty hunter before
the Lord; and mighty hunters have never been servants. The
man strong enough to struggle with the lion and to overcome
the tiger, and brave enough to dare the dangers of the chase for
the fierce delight it affords, is not the man to humbly hump his
shoulders, and to a mere man say that most hateful of all words,
“Master.” Besides, Nimrod built cities and established kingdoms,
which is not the work of servants. We were forced to the
conclusion, therefore, that the curse held to Canaan only; that
Nimrod's children mingled with the sons of Shem and Japheth,
and that their descendants are to-day white men. This troubles
us; for, counting it a truth, we were associating with those
having the blood of the cursed Ham in their veins; and besides,
if one of the descendants of Ham escaped the curse, may
not others get out from under it at the same place? Again;
if the negroes of Africa, from which country we procured the
stock we are blessed with, are really the descendants of
Canaan, the son of Ham, the curse which Noah imposed upon
them lost its adhesive power for many centuries. The brethren
separated, and each went about his business. I have
spent sleepless nights upon this question, but I must confess
that I can find no proof that Canaan, or any of his descendants,
were, until a comparatively recent date, the servants of anybody!
Can it be that the curse was as temporary in its effects
as the wine that produced it? Did it evaporate with the
fumes thereof? Did it pass away with Noah's headache the
next morning? Did Noah make over to Shem and Japheth
property for which he had no title?

Unfortunately Shem's descendants are said to have stayed in
Asia, Ham's went to Africa, and Japheth's peopled Europe.
Here is the difficulty that besets me. How could Ham's descendants
serve their brethren, they staying in Africa, while
the brethren were comfortably established in Europe and Asia?
It may be answered that they went after them; but, alas!
they had no need of that. The strong Shemites found enough
weak Shemites to enslave without going after their cousins,
and the same is true of the Japhethites. The Tartars made
servants of the Chinese, the Normans of the Saxons, and the
Romans had a cheerful habit of gobbling up all the weaker people

within their reach. Among these, I regret to say, were the
ancestors of those before me — your fathers and mine. The
curse was in existence, and had power, but somehow it was
demoralized. When Noah fired it off, it missed its aim. It
scattered like a poor shot-gun, and hit where he did not intend
it. For in all ages of the world slavery has existed. There
never has been a time when strong men were not too lazy to
work; never a time when there were not brutes and imbeciles
— the two classes necessary to the system. The strong
enslaved the weak without regard to Noah. They did it in
a manly way, too. The enslavers did not ask the person they
wished to enslave for their family record; they did not attempt
to ascertain whether or not he was descended from Canaan.
Not they. If they wanted a servant, they sought out a man
weaker than they; they knocked him down, in the old-fashioned
way, with a club; they beat him till the original man
was pretty much pummelled out of him, and then, reduced to
the condition of a beast, he was the individual they desired.
History is full of these instances, and Jefferson had this kind
of history in his mind when he wrote the Declaration; which
would have been well enough had he put the word “white”
in its proper place, that there might be no doubt as to his
meaning.

As he left it, it applies to black as well as white, and strictly
construed robs us of our Nigger.

We could never find any testimony in the Scriptures that
the dusky sons of Africa were the descendants of Canaan;
and this is another difficulty. To be a servant, as our people
understand it, one ought to be an inferior; and we held that
the negro was our inferior, and ought to be our servant, because
of the curse. Behold the snag upon which our boat
runs. Our conservative brethren oppose the conferring of any
rights upon these people, because we dread the supremacy
of the negro! That sweet boon to an oppressed people,
Andrew Johnson, in his annual messages, always devoted a
chapter to the danger of this race taking possession of the
government, and conducting it themselves; and I am not
certain but that I have seen the same fear expressed in the
reports of Secretary Welles, as he said regularly whatever the

President has said. Seward once dwelt upon it at length, but
I do not like to quote him. The distance from Abraham
Lincoln to Andrew Johnson was so great, that the leap from
the one to the other broke his moral back. He has never
stood upright since. The friends of the race jeeringly say that
if the negroes should take the government in their own hands,
they hope they will conduct it to better advantage than the
late President has, for if they do not, it would prove to the
satisfaction of everybody that the curse was a reality, and that
they are not fit, as yet, to be intrusted with political rights.

Now we have in the United States four millions of these
people, all told, and thirty millions of whites. It is as certain
as the multiplication table that if laws are necessary to prevent
them from governing us, they must be the superior and we
the inferior race. If, in a clear field, the four millions can control
the thirty millions, it must certainly be because of the
superiority of the four millions. It troubles us to reconcile
this pet fear of ours with our claims of superiority.

I have never been able, from the Book, to determine just
how far that curse extended. Noah's words were, “Cursed be
Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”
I ask especial attention to the wording of this text, as it
affords a complete justification of the practice of amalgamation,
so common in the South under the old system. The Canaanites
were condemned to be servants unto their brethren. Not unto
the stranger, but their brethren. How, except through this,
let me ask, could the slaves of the South be brethren unto
their masters? But we have full faith that the curse was
intended to include not only Canaan, but his descendants. If
it was only to cover Canaan, and was to die with him, of what
use would it have been to us? Had it died with Canaan, we
of Kentucky would have been doing our own work to-day, and
we might have put on its tombstone the epitaph written for the
kitten which died too young:

It may be well here to consider briefly the question of color,
which has worried and perplexed all of us. We are white, or

copper-colored, and the negroes, such of them as stayed at the
North, are black. The question is, “Why black?” One
theory is, that color is the result of climate, diet, habits of life,
and other conditions, which, persevered in for many generations,
will change the appearance of families of men. The people
of my State know better. They ascribe it to the curse of
Noah; that Ham, being the brother of Shem and Japheth, was
originally white, even as they were, but that he went out from
the presence of his father with this mark of his displeasure,
not only upon his face, but spread all over his body. The very
name to us is significant of color. The curse changed at once
his physical nature, and the change took place suddenly. When
Ham got to his room that morning, and gazed at himself in his
mirror, he called, in astonishment, for Shem and Japheth, that he
might be introduced to himself.

Noah, when he changed Ham's style and shape, had doubtless
a glimpse of the future, and he made of him precisely the
kind of man that the future required. As he was to be the
menial of his brethren for all time, he considerately gave him
a complexion suited to his condition; one that would not show
dirt. To further fit him for the discharge of the duties that
were to be his, his nose was flattened, that it could never be
turned up in scorn at anything; his arms were elongated, his
shoulders were broadened, his forehead was driven backward,
and his hair, long and straight like ours, was converted into
wool, that he should waste no time in dressing it, and also that
we, his masters, might have a better hold for our fingers.
These are the physical characteristics of the race in America,
and we affirm that the negro must and ought to be a slave,
because the Almighty, working through Noah, made him
exactly of the shape and style necessary to that condition.

There may be a mistake here. It is possible, as I once
heard a philosophical son of Ham say, that those who hold
these views have been all along mistaking their own work for
the Almighty's. He had the impudence to say that it was
possible that when the first negro was landed upon our shores
he was neither flat-nosed, long-heeled, or large-handed. He
was, however, forthwith set at work grubbing land in Virginia;
his nose was being continually flattened by the fist of his

chivalrous master; his shoulders were broadened by the burdens
piled upon them; his hands were widened by constant
holding of the hoe, and his heel was providentially lengthened
to enable him to maintain his equilibrium under the loads he
was compelled to carry. Had they been shorter, he would,
when overloaded, have fallen backward. His receding forehead
he accounted for in this way: “Of what use,” said he,
“would a head shaped to hold brains be to one who had no
brains to hold? and why should he have brains who has no
occasion to use them?” But I noticed that this particular
nigger, who had learned to read and write, had a head shaped
very much like those of ordinary people of intelligence, and
that his children, who could not only read and write, but
cipher, were still more so. He had put out his one talent to
usury, and it had become ten in his descendants. We of the
South feared this. We would not fly in the face of the Lord
on any account. Zealous to fulfil his word, and determined
that for his glory Canaan should forever be a servant unto his
brethren; and fearful that if they should gain knowledge they
might give the Lord the slip, and be their own men, we withheld
knowledge from them. Piously, therefore, we enacted
laws making the teaching of these foreordained slaves to read
the sacred word of God a penitentiary offence. And in our
determination that they should not be unfitted for their
destiny, we did hang very many meddlesome Yankees who
doubted it all, and proposed to do something towards elevating
them above the condition of beasts. In those happy days,
south of the Ohio River, it only required twenty minutes of
time to arrest, try, hang, and divide the clothes of a Northern
school teacher. And when one of these Noah cursed men
demonstrated, by opposing the will of his master, that he had
brains, the matter was pleasantly and peremptorily settled by
knocking them out. A great deal of brain has been thus
disposed of in the Southern States.

Another trouble that besets us, is the fact that the curse
remained inoperative and in abeyance for centuries after it was
pronounced. The children of Ham, it is supposed, occupied
Africa all by themselves. They fell, as did their cousins in
Europe and Asia, into vice; their vices being just as much

more detestable than those cultivated by their cousins as the
climate of their country is hotter. Vice, like vegetation,
attains its greatest perfection in hot climates. The farther
south you go, the less orthodox you find mankind. Vermont,
where man wrestles with Nature, and wrests a subsistence from
an unwilling soil by main strength, has never faltered in her
devotion to humanity. Louisiana, on the other hand, where
Nature yields her treasures at the asking, is as true to the
Democracy as the needle to the pole, or the Kentuckian to his
whiskey: two examples of fidelity equalled by nothing else in
this world. Where men find a living ready made, they have
too much time upon their hands to be good. The Ten Commandments
have but little chance where labor is unnecessary.
Had South Carolina been blessed with a month of sleighing
each year, she never would have passed an ordinance of secession.
No climate less hot than that of Mississippi could
develop such a man as Jeff Davis; and Salisbury, Andersonville,
Belle Isle, and General Forrest were only possible
where the thermometer stands at one hundred for months
together. It may be, indeed it has been said by a few soldiers
who survived Andersonville, that the heat in which the men I
have mentioned, exist, was not meant to affect the moral
natures, but was intended by a kind Providence, who foreknew
their destination, to prepare them, in some slight measure, for
the still greater heat to which they are certain to be subjected
in the future.

The Japhethites harried, murdered, and plundered each other
in Europe, and the Shemites fell to a still deeper depth of
barbarism, as did our African brother.

In Europe the Japhethites built large castles, and rode about
upon horses, clad absurdly in cast iron, with inverted pots upon
their heads, killing each other with iron spears, and the
Africans were doing the same things, on a smaller scale, with
spears pointed with fish-bones.

But the sons of Canaan had not been as yet introduced to
the curse, unfortunately. There were slaves in Africa, but
they were slaves not unto Japheth's children, but unto themselves,
precisely as the children of Shem and Japheth enslaved
men of their own race. When Cæsar conquered a

nation at war with Rome, he made slaves of his captives; and
when Gumbo Quashee, prince of Borriaboola Gha, led his hosts
of warriors against a neighboring king, he dragged back
captives in his train, who were at once enslaved. If Gumbo
met defeat, the only difference was, he took his turn at the
mill. The enslaved have always been the victims of a curse,
not of the drunken Noah, but of that more terrible curse,
weakness.

There is another ugly point in this matter of the curse that
is hardly worth referring to, but it may be as well. The fact
is (and this hurts us), the Africans, the woolly-headed, thick-lipped,
dark-skinned, Africans, of whom we have made slaves
under the curse, are not the descendants of Canaan, upon
whom the curse fell, at all.

Unfortunately for us, who have risked our all upon this,
the Scriptures are explicit upon this point.

Canaan begat Sidon and Heth, and their descendants were the
Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, and — sights of other
tribes. The Book tells us precisely where they are located.

Too lazy and shiftless to move any distance, they pre-empted
the ground upon which Jerusalem stands, their territory including
those New Yorks of the old world, Sodom and Gomorrah.
They were not a nice people to have for next door neighbors.
They had many disagreeable habits. They were a compound
of Brigham Young and Kidd the Pirate, and it is supposed
that Salt Lake City and New York were modelled after
their principal towns as near as may be. It will be remembered
that these two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, came to a
sudden end.

Notwithstanding the love I bear the metropolis, because of
its politics, the reading of the account of the destruction of
these cities, and knowing that what has been may, for the same
cause, occur again, has deterred me from investing very
largely in real estate in New York. But these Canaanites did
not go to Africa; they stayed in Asia; and as we have been
enslaving only Africans, it is clear that there has been a mistake
somewhere, and that we have been innocently enslaving
the wrong race all this time. You all remember the venerable
story of the tub. An old woman brought suit once upon a time

for the value of a tub which she had loaned, and which had
been returned to her piece by piece, the hoops having all
dropped off. The defence set up by the borrower was comprehensive.
First, and to begin with, the defendant never
borrowed the tub. Secondly, she returned it with the hoops
all on, and, thirdly, the plaintiff never had a tub.

It is about so with this pet curse of ours. It wasn't good
for much at best, it didn't stick to the people at whom it was
levelled, and the Africans, upon whose shoulders we have
piled it, are not Canaanites. Our ancestors did not believe
this, however. They believed in this curse, with the childlike
simplicity of a pawnbroker. It is very easy for us to
believe in anything that holds out promise of personal benefit.
Men whose love for gain cannot be satisfied with six days of
labor, very generally question the sanctity of the Sabbath;
and we all insist that laws shall be made to fit our desires,
rather than to bring our desires to fit laws. These ancestors
of ours were a greedy set. They hungered after a life of no
labor, and they believed, therefore, that the Lord directed
Columbus across the untried waste of waters that rolled
between Spain and America solely that this long retired and
almost forgotten curse might be revived and put in force. It
had been a failure thus far; but as they looked out upon the
new world, and saw how magnificently they could live, if they
could only get their labor for nothing, their faith in it revived.
They found here field and forest, gold and water, everything
but labor.

The emigrant might, it is true, have done the labor himself,
but then this cherished curse of ours would have been still
floating around the world, like the dove of the eminent navigator
who uttered it, with no place to rest the sole of its foot.
Besides, they did not want to do the labor. The first settlers
of Virginia, from whom the chivalry of that State claim
descent, never labored at home, and why should they here?
The settlers of Carolina were men to whom labor was as
distasteful as it has ever been to their descendants. The
negro was precisely what they wanted. The original decree
was, “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” They
were determined that the decree should be fulfilled, but they
wanted the dividing of it.

They were perfectly willing to do the eating, but they
wanted the negro to do the sweating; and had he been
content with this division of the decree, all would have been
smooth to-day.

They prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread;” but
they added to the petition, “and furnish us a nigger to feed
it to us.”

Of course they believe in the curse. The planter on the
banks of the James felt the convenience of an arrangement
which would obviate the first curse of labor, by a second
curse; of having the sin brought into the world through the
agency of the apple, done away with by another sin which
had its origin in the grape.

They found it a blessed thing to have a being rich in muscle
to perform their share of the penalty of the first curse, giving
them wasteful summers at Saratoga, and ample time and means
for the cultivation of the Southern Christian graces — gambling,
horse-racing, pistol-shooting, and the like. It was a glorious
life they led! Did the proud Caucasian master have an
ill run of luck at cards? a nigger on the block made it all
right the next morning. Did madam, his wife, mourn, and
refuse to be comforted, because a thousand dollar shawl was
not? the matter was easily arranged. The tearing apart of
a husband and wife, and the sale of one; the condemning of a
quadroon of her own sex to a life of shame, was all that was
necessary. Did they desire to entertain their friends sumptuously?
Why should they not? There was no sordid counting
of cost, as it was farther North; for were there not niggers
to sweat? Virginia hospitality was celebrated. Vermont
hospitality might have been, had Vermont fostered this curse,
and partaken of its benefits. It's easy enough to be hospitable
with a hundred negroes, more or less, sweating for you gratis.
We did not invent reapers or sewing machines, for we didn't
need them. Flesh and blood was to be bought in any market,
and it was cheaper than iron and steel. We down South were
happily circumstanced. We had black slaves at home to do
our labor, and white serfs up North, just as humble, to do our
voting. Nature kindly furnished us a race white enough to
vote, and low enough to be owned.

Interpreting the curse to include all Africa, our pious fathers
set about bringing as many of its inhabitants as possible under
its operations. They sent out missionaries, whom a censorious
world was wicked enough to stigmatize as pirates and slavers,
clad in red shirts, with pistol at belt and cutlass by side,
bearded like pards, and full of strong oaths. These evangelizers,
full of zeal and rum, sailed up the rivers of Africa, and
surprised villages of these accursed people, killing the accursed
men and women too old to work, and the accursed children too
young to work, but selecting out carefully the able-bodied
ones of both sexes. Packing these in the holds of their
vessels like herrings, they turned their prows homeward,
throwing overboard, from day to day, the bodies of those who
had so little regard for the curse of Noah as to die on the way
to the fulfilment thereof. And so at last the curse was fulfilled.
On the cotton plantations, in the rice swamps, in the cane and
tobacco fields, the supposed sons of Ham toiled on, expiating
the stupidity of their supposed father, who, a great many
centuries before, hadn't any more sense than to look in upon
his father when he was drunk.

But just as this convenient and comfortable curse got into
good working order it was killed.

Abraham Lincoln smote it under the fifth rib, and it died the
death.

The nation, in deadly peril, called upon our black cousins to
aid in its deliverance, and it gave up the ghost. The sons of
Ham, inferior as they were in all other respects, were discovered
to be able to pull a trigger or push a bayonet with anybody,
and to the astonishment of those who stood before them, they
had the will to do it. They dared to stand in battle array
before the chivalry of the South. We very soon accounted
for the daring.

When Lincoln put the musket in the hands of the Southern
negroes, it was Greek against Greek, brother against brother.
The blood of the old cavaliers, which gave courage and daring
to the Beauregards, Lees, Masons, and Hamptons, made cavaliers
also of Scipio, Pompey, and Cæsar, their half-brothers; and
why not. The Federals turned against the Confederates
twenty thousand men having the best blood of the South

coursing through their veins, and inspiring them to high
chivalrous deeds.

Then the struggle became literally fratricidal. Another
thing made these fellows fight. They had treasured up that old
saying of Jefferson, and they rejoiced when the firing upon
Sumter gave them promise of the glad day when it should be
a reality. When they were satisfied that the nation was really
divorced from slavery, they flew to arms to prove themselves
worthy of the future they hoped for. We must confess that
they fought bravely and died grandly.

The swart hero in the death-trap at Petersburg, on the plain
at Port Hudson, and in the enclosure at Fort Pillow, showed
an example of heroism that any people might be proud of.

The slave who remained on the plantation, who risked life to
feed, nurse, and guide the flying fugitive from Andersonville,
showed a devotion the like of which the world never witnessed
before. We of the South were whipped, and by their aid.

I do not say that we would not have been beaten had they
not thrown themselves into the breach, but it was done the
easier because of them. They stopped bullets at least. The
bullet that let out the life of the negro soldier at Nashville,
might, had he not stood in its way, made life-long sadness in
your home; and many a son of a Northern mother who came
home laurel crowned, owes his life to the unknown black man
who lies in an unhonored grave upon the fields from which he
plucked honor.

These poor deluded Canaanites, as we shall term them, believed
that they had earned their promotion to a higher rank,
and really expected it.

But we knew better. Down in Kentucky we held a consultation
on this very question. That blessed saint and keen
observer of men, Deacon Pogram, remarked sagely, “that men
and women was the most ungrateful members of the human
family.” Said he further on this head, “The sense of gratitood
the Fedrals feel will die out with the peals of the bells which
celebrate the victrys the nigger allies helped to win. They
endured the nigger because they needed him; but now, thank
the Lord, they don't need him no more, and, halleloogy, he'll
be the same cussed nigger he alluz wuz.” I use the Deacon's
exact words.

He was right. The wholesome prejudice against color
swallowed up gratitude, and the pride of race swallowed justice.
The negro stepped one foot upon the threshold of the Temple
of Liberty, but we rudely pushed him back. They wanted
not only freedom, but the elective franchise, the ungrateful
wretches not being satisfied with what we had given them.

They had been provided for generously. We of the South
accepted the situation, and acknowledged their freedom, but
we felt that it was necessary that they be regulated. And so
we decreed that they should not leave the plantations on
which they were employed without passes from their employers,
under penalty of being shot at sight.

They should have the right of suing any one — of their own
color — if they could give white bail for costs; and here was
a privilege — they were to have the unrestricted right of
being sued the same as white men. They should not purchase
or lease real estate outside of any incorporated city or village;
and as large bodies of them were considered dangerous, they
should not purchase or lease real estate within any incorporated
city or village. As we fixed their wages at four dollars per
month, they boarding themselves, these laws relating to the
purchase of real estate might seem unnecessary. But we
wanted to be on the safe side. And we proposed to give
them the ballot, in time. Of other men we required no
preparation, but we felt it necessary of these. We only
required them to pass a creditable examination in Greek,
Latin, embroidery, French, German, and double-entry bookkeeping,
and to facilitate their acquiring these branches we
burned all their school-houses.

These regulations were made in Mississippi. In my State
of Kentucky it was not necessary to do anything in the matter,
for Kentucky did not rebel. We preserved a strict neutrality.
That estimable pillar in the Church at the Corners, Elder
Gavitt, who has since gone to his reward, remarked that “no
one cood be more nootraller than he was.” He loyally stayed at
home all day, and bushwhacked Federal pickets all night, and
after battles he robbed the dead and wounded of both sides
impartially. For thus remaining neutral we have been permitted
to manage our niggers in our own way.

The curse was by this time abandoned, but the hankering
after cheap labor remained. We found at once a new reason
for degrading this race — a new theory for keeping them
down. We discovered, just in the nick of time, that they
were not men at all. And this suited our friends of the
North. They had always objected to the theory that the negro
was a man, and that he was enslaved because of his inferiority.
They murmured to themselves, “If the stronger shall
own the weaker, if the intellectually superior shall hold in
slavery the intellectually inferior, God help us! We might as
well select our masters at once.”

When Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, we felt
that all was gone. We felt as grateful, as men of our stamp
could feel, that our lives were not forfeit, that we had yet our
property, save and except our niggers. But this feeling wore
off. Andrew Johnson became suddenly tired of the rôle of
Moses, or rather he changed his Israelites. He led the astonished
Africans into the Red Sea, and left them there; and
putting himself at the head of their Egyptian pursuers, he
pulled them out of the troubled waters they had fallen into.
We were not slow to take advantage of this changed condition
of affairs. There is a modesty in the Southern character, but it
does not crop out very much. We began to talk of our rights;
our niggers, and our system. We felt that all was not lost so
much as it had been. True, they were free, but had we not
legislatures? Congress, in its wisdom, left them in our hands
after all. They could vote by law, and by law some of us
could not; but what of law, so long as we had the executing
of it? We were admitted to the Georgia legislature, and we
at once expelled enough of our black enemies to give us the
control of that body. Elsewhere force — the rifle, the pistol,
the knife — gave us the control we wanted, and by a liberal
use of these peculiarly Southern agencies, the doomed sons of
Canaan were practically as far from freedom as ever. They
were by law competent to vote in Louisiana, but of what avail
to them was that privilege so long as the power was in the
hands of our people, who by force controlled one election, that
they might use the power thus gained to disfranchise them
forever, and reduce them to the old status?

It was necessary to satisfy our friends of the North that we
were right in this matter. We had no trouble to do it. Our
learned men measured their arms, legs, hands, and skulls, and
finding a difference, held it was right and proper that all political
rights be denied them. Smelling committees were appointed,
who discovered that the nigger was possessed of an
odor not perceptible in the white, and forthwith that odor took
the entire conservative part of the people by the nose, and led
them at its own sweet will. It was not as agreeable as Night-blooming
Cereus, and it was decided that therefore he ought
not to vote. His color was next critically considered, and in a
new light. It was not like ours; and should a man presume
to exercise the rights of freemen whose complexion rivalled
charcoal? Their heels protruded more than ours, and therefore
they must be deprived of all privileges save that of living,
and that only by sufferance. This rule we find to be
weak in some respects.

The first objection that occurs to me to this method of determining
a man's qualifications for the exercise of the great
privilege of a freeman is the uncertainty of its application.
We will suppose a white man to have arms, legs, and skull, of
the average negro shape and measurement; does that unfit
him for the ballot? We must admit this, if these measurements
are to be the test. Or, suppose, from inattention to
personal cleanliness, he should carry with him an odor unpleasant
to persons of refined sensibilities, would that unfit him?
The adoption of this rule would require boards of election to
smell of each elector who offered a ballot; and that there might
be uniformity in the matter, which is necessary in a republic,
the government would be forced to establish a bureau of perfumery.

Ignorance we would urge as a disqualification; but alas, we
have a most excellent reason for sailing clear of that. A very
large per cent. of those who oppose giving the ballot to the
negroes, because of their ignorance, put a cross to their names
when they sign a promissory note, and accomplish that simple
feat with much difficulty and running out of tongue.

Fielding, the great English novelist, gave us a most amusing
picture of a terror occasioned in a small English village on

the coast, by a rumor that the French had landed at a time
when the pugnacious Gauls were threatening an invasion of
that country. At the grated window of a debtor's prison appears
the face of a person who had been incarcerated for many
years for a debt which he could never hope to pay, and whose
imprisonment was therefore like to be perpetual. With an expression
of the most earnest indignation upon his faded face,
he exclaims, from behind the bars, “Zounds! are the French
coming to deprive us of our liberties?”

Even so. I must admit that the men who tremble the most
for their country, when they contemplate the ignorant negro
possessing the ballot, are those who cannot read, and the patriot
who sells his vote for a drink of rum, is the identical fellow
who talks the loudest of the danger of giving the ballot
to a mass of people whose votes can be so easily influenced.

Several other reasons prevented us from making all that we
hoped for out of the ignorance of the negroes, particularly of
the South. Did we point to the ignorant field hand, and ask
triumphantly if such as he was fit to vote? Forthwith our
opponents held up, as an offset, the degraded brutes of our
Northern cities. Did we point to the vicious negroes? They
could and did point to the roughs of New York, Philadelphia,
and Baltimore. And they rather troubled us when they asserted
that the ballot in the hands of ignorant white men was
just as dangerous as in the hands of ignorant black men; that
the ballot, ignorantly or viciously cast, is what hurts us, not
the color of the man who casts it. They asserted that he who
says “Stand off” to the colored man because he cannot read
his ballot, ought to say “Stand off” to the white man equally
ignorant. There is no denying this. Were intelligence made the
test, it would scarcely be worth while to open polls in half the
districts of New York city, and one fourth of our entire strength
would fade out like frost under a May sun. Finally we adopted
as ground upon which we could stand, the theory that there
were many creations instead of one; that Adam was not the
Simon pure, original man; that the nigger is a different being
altogether from us — a beast, a sort of superior baboon; and
being a beast, that we have the right to own and work him,
as we have the horse or ox.

This position seemed to many of us impregnable; but it
didn't stand a minute. Miscegenation or amalgamation knocked
the support out from under us. Up stepped a pert abolitionist,
and asked, “What will you do with the mulatto — he who
is half man and half beast?

And here is a difficulty. If we count them as beasts, we do
the man that is in them injustice? If we count them as men,
we profane manhood, by elevating with it the lower creation.

And when such a one dies, what then? Does the man half,
for which Christ died, claiming its inheritance in his blood, go
into the next world on an equality with us, dragging with it
the half that is beast? Or should there be ever so slight a
preponderance of beast, does the hybrid topple over in a lop-sided
way into the limbo for departed animals, dragging with
it the half that is man? If so, O, my Kentucky friends, how
much of Kentucky soul and Kentucky spirit is there in that
limbo, held in solution by the animal surroundings into which
your gross sensuality has condemned it?

That unmitigated wretch, Joe Bigler, it will be remembered,
reproached that old saint, Deacon Pogram, for walloping one
of these nearly white negroes who had the Pogram nose.
“Deacon,” said he, “how kin yoo bear to thrash so much Pogram
for the sake of walloping so little nigger?” Another objection
to this theory is the fact, that while treating them as
beasts in the matter of voting, we treat them very much like
men in the matter of tax-paying. I have known men who
grew furious at the idea of being jostled at the polls by a
negro, do violence to the theory by standing side by side,
quietly and without a murmur, with a very black one in
the rush to pay taxes at the treasurer's office! And during
the late unpleasantness, what man of all our people objected
to having the name of the blackest and most offensive
negro in his township or ward written just before his own on
the draft enrolment? That was what hurt us, for during its
continuance we heard nothing of this hatred of race. The
nigger of 1861, when we didn't want him, softened down wondrously,
into the “colored man” in 1863, when we did want
him. The negro's face, black as it was, looked well to our
friends of the North under a blue cap, and he was a very

Apollo in their eyes when they wanted their quotas filled.
Ours was a white man's government; but we were all wondrous
willing that black men should die for it in our stead.

If I remember aright, I have, in the course of these remarks,
referred to the Democracy once or twice. I cannot
avoid making mention of their competitors, the Republican
party, and here acknowledging the assistance it has been to
us. In 1856 that party got hold of an idea that for many
years was too large for it. They grasped it by the tail, and
they have been trying to manage it from that end ever since
until this minute. They never dared to look it in the face.
The crusade upon slavery, squarely made years ago by Wendell
Phillips, Lovejoy, Garrison, Giddings, and the few terrible
agitators who were bent upon turning the world upside down,
which they did, was entered into by those who followed them
afar off, only when they were compelled to. And how feeble
their assent! They endeavored not to pierce its centre, its
weakest point, but to flank it. They commenced the movement
against it by declaring their willingness that it should continue
to exist in the States — that the slave-pens, under the shadow
of the Capitol at Washington, should continue to show forth
the beauties of a republican form of government, and that
they themselves, free men, should continue to be used as
bloodhounds, with United States marshals to set them on, to
hunt down the fugitives from bondage. They made haste to
announce in advance their determination not to interfere with
it where it existed, and they never did till they were compelled
to. They frittered away the first two years of the war
before they were manly enough to tie themselves to what
they believed to be a truth, and permit it to drag them to victory.
Forced by circumstances they could not control, they
mustered up courage at last to declare the only friends they
had in the South free: but what followed? They started in
affright at the spectre they had raised. The Republican party
was brave enough to face the armies of the rebellion, but it
was not brave enough to face a prejudice. From the close of
the war up to this winter, in the very flush of the victories
they had won by the aid of the strong hands of their black
allies, they coolly betrayed them. So magnanimous were they,

so generous were they to their enemies, that they forgot their
friends. They gave us, their late masters, the right to disfranchise
them at any time. They gave Southern legislatures
the power to reduce them again to serfdom, and even those in
the Northern States were denied their rights. How much
these foolish people have made by their motion, how much they
have of safety, how much of the rights they have earned, how
much they have of citizenship, let Memphis, New Orleans, and
the Georgia legislature answer. The Republican party lacked
the courage, and we knew it would, to follow to its logical
conclusion the idea upon which it was based. Too many of
its members shuddered at the Nigger as soon as the Nigger
was of no use to them. And there is a reason for this. It is
a soothing thought to too many men that there is somebody
lower down in the scale of humanity than themselves. Such
men have an uncontrollable desire to look down upon somebody,
and hence their desire to keep the negro down, as that
is the only portion of the race they can, with any show of
truth, claim to be above. And feeling the danger of his rising
above them if let alone, they seek to keep him down by
piling upon his head the dead weight of unfriendly legislation.
It is a philosophical truth this. The more despicable the
man, the more anxious he is to have it understood that
somebody is lower still. The most ardent defenders of
slavery eight years ago were those who hadn't a particle
of interest in it, — those who, if negroes had been selling
at five cents apiece, could not have raised money enough
to have purchased the paring of one's finger nail; and to-day
those most bitterly opposed to Nigger suffrage are those whose
stolid ignorance and inwrought brutality makes any attempt
at further degradation a hopeless task. They can be got
lower — by digging a hole.

How shall we dispose of the negro. He was ever a disturbing
element in American politics, and ever will be so long
as left in the position he has occupied. The curse theory is
worthless, and the beast theory leaks like a sieve. If there
ever was anything in the curse it has all faded out, and if he
is not a man, he is a most excellent imitation. We have abandoned
the Nasbyan theory, and have fallen back upon Jefferson.

Now that the government is in a transition state, now
that we can make of it what we will, suppose that we rebuild
upon a safe and sure foundation. Suppose we overhaul the
laws of the country, and strike out the word “white,” leaving
standing alone the all-sufficient word man. We are trying
now the experiment of being a genuine republic. Suppose
that there may be no longer a dispute upon this head, that we
insist upon incorporating into the Constitution — the supreme
law of the land — the Jeffersonian Declaration, that all men are
equal. I want, and insist upon it, that the Declaration of
Independence shall be no longer a “glittering generality,” as
that meanest of all mean things God ever created, a Massachusetts
pro-slavery man, once said, but a living, robust truth,
possessed of as much vitality as any other truth which has
blessed the world.

What stands in the way? Prejudice! Only this, and nothing
more, and that may be overcome. New England did it,
and New York, years ago, took one step in that direction. In
New York, the negro who owns a mule worth two hundred
and fifty dollars, votes, no matter what his other qualifications
may be, while he who lacks that, does not, no matter how well
he is fitted for the exercise of the right in other respects.
This is not well, but it is something. By this rule the mule
votes, not the man; and the late election in that State shows
the mules to have been largely in the majority.

Until this principle is adopted our republic is no republic,
and our boasted freedom is a hollow sham. We must have no
more of this inequality. We must make all men before the law
equal. We must not leave the rights of a single citizen in the
hands of timid legislatures, interested oligarchies, and ex-slaveholders.
The rights of the negro must be secured by law,
above the reach of ex-slaveholders; men who, to live a life
of luxurious idleness, would garrote the Goddess of Liberty
for the white robes she wears. We must make him not only
free in name, but in reality, and must give him that potent
weapon, the ballot, that he may maintain and defend his freedom.
I want all distinctions based upon color wiped out in
all the States. I want all the roots of this bitterness eradicated.
I want the great principle upon which a republic

should be founded incorporated into the Constitution. If, now
that it can be done, we do less than this, we are cowards and
faithless men.

I want them to have all privileges enjoyed by other classes.
“Do you want niggers in office?” shudderingly asks the member
of Congress, who sees in his mind's eye one sitting beside him.
I answer, “Certainly, if the people desire it, not otherwise;”
and they are a part of the people. I have no particular care in
the matter; I only insist that they shall be eligible. Whether
they are elected to official position or not, is something that is
entirely within your control. If you return a man a horse that
is his, it does not follow that you must give him also silver-plated
harness and a carriage. If you pay a debt, it does
not follow that you must likewise marry into the family of your
creditor. You have in this city an overwhelming majority of
whites — it is for you to choose. Where they have a majority,
I presume they will do as we have done — elect men of their
own race; and I should advise them to. But there is no law
to compel you to elect black men, or men of any other color,
to official position. You have a right to vote for whom you
please. I am not certain but that the good of the public would
be subserved by substituting some negroes I know of for some
white officials. For instance, were I a citizen of New York,
I would most gladly exchange John Morrisey for Frederick
Douglass, and rather than spoil the trade, I would throw in
Fernando Wood and his brother Ben, and esteem the bargain
a most excellent one at that. But our conservative friends do
not so see it. “My God!” said one of them, with horror in
his countenance, “think of my being tried afore a nigger jury
for hoss-stealin!”

The people elect, or ought to elect, men to office to serve
them. If you desire whitewashing done, do you look at the
color of the artist to whom you intrust the purifying of your
walls and ceilings? No; you select the man who has the most
skill. Why not so in official positions? If you have among
you negroes who have ability superior to the whites, if you
have those who can better fill the offices, you as tax-payers,
do yourselves gross injustice by not electing them. It does
not follow that you must therefore take them to your bosoms

as social equals. You have, under the Constitution of the
United States, the blessed privilege of choosing your own
associations. We do not care to associate with all white men,
but all white men vote nevertheless.

I would not make them superior to the white. I would do
nothing more for them than I would for other men. But I
would not prevent them from doing for themselves. I would
tear down all bars to their advancement. I would let them
make of themselves all that they may. In a republic there
should be no avenue to honor or well-doing closed to any man.
If they outstrip me in the race, it proves them to be more
worthy, and they are clearly entitled to the advantages resulting.
There is no reason for this inequality. Knowing
how deep the prejudice is against the race, knowing how low
down in our very natures its roots have struck, I demand, in
our renewed and purified republic, the abrogation of all laws
discriminating against them. I demand for them full equality
with us before the law. Come what may, let it lead to what
it will, this demand I make. I make it as a worshipper of
true Democracy; as one who believes in the divine right of
man — not white man, red man, or black man, but MAN, to self-government.
I make it as one who will be free himself; and
that he may be free himself, would have all others free. I
demand it, not as a gracious gift to the colored man of something
we might, if expedient, withhold, not as a right he
has earned by service done, but humbly, and with shame
in my face at the wrong we have done, I would give it him
as returning a right that was always his; a right to which
he has a patent from God Almighty; a right that we had
taken from him by brute force, and the taking of which by
us was almost the unpardonable sin. I demand it, for until
it is done our boasted freedom is a sham, and our pretence
of republicanism a miserable lie. I demand it, for I would
have no privileged classes in this government, for fear that
some day my children may by force be deprived of the rights
I enjoy by a class arrogating to themselves superiority. I
demand it, because I believe governments were instituted
on earth for the protection of the weak against the strong,
and that in a republic the ballot is the weak man's only

protection. I demand it, because we cannot afford to give the
lie to our professions; because we cannot afford to say to the
world one thing and do another.

What shall we do with the negro? Do by him what enlightened
Christianity commands us to do to all. Let us square
our action in this, as in all other matters, by that sublime precept,
“Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you.”

Casting behind us, as unworthy of a moment's serious consideration,
the miserable sophistries of the false teachers who
have well nigh ruined the republic, let us dare to do right.
Let us declare and crystalize our Declaration into unchangeable
laws, that under the flag all men shall be men. Let us
build an altar, the foundation of which shall be Reason, the
topstone Justice, and laying thereon our prejudices, let them
be consumed in the steady, pure flame of Humanity. The
smell of that sacrifice will be a sweeter savor to the Father
of all races than any since Abel's. Let us raise ourselves from
the low, dead, flat plane of self-interest, and demonstrate our
strength, not by trampling upon the defenceless heads of those
weaker and lower than ourselves, but by lifting them up to us.
And then, when the flag has under its shadow only free men,
when all men are recognized as men, we can look the world
in the face, and repeat without a blush that grand old Declaration,
that Magna Charta of human rights, that Evangel of
Humanity: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.”