BAM was indeed filled to capacity that Friday night. Postmaster George Lincoln—a white abolitionist, and then the highest-ranking federal official in Brooklyn—served as master of ceremonies. The Eagle reported that Senator Samuel Pomeroy, a Kansas Republican, joined Theodore Tilton on the stage, as did a number of “colored people.” Writing in the New York Tribune, editor Sydney Howard Gay—a leading figure in the Underground Railroad, and a longtime ally of Douglass—observed that “the beauty and fashion of the City of Churches were largely represented in the audience, with here and there a colored lady or a colored gentleman sitting in the audience, as if to demonstrate the fact set forth by the orator of the evening, ‘that friend could sit near friend, as easily as master or mistress could sit near servant.’”[51]
Thomas Kinsella of the Eagle assumed a far less respectful tone in his editorial about the event, which appeared alongside the paper’s recap. What appears first here is the text of the speech, as reprinted in Frederick Douglass’ Monthly, interspersed with portions of the Eagle’s versions of it. (Note that I have added italics to indicate the Eagle portions.) That is followed by Kinsella’s splenetic reply. Whether it was Douglass’s statements about the Irish or his concluding comments about publicly socializing with white women (or both) that set Kinsella off is not clear.
*
What Shall Be Done with the Negro?
Ladies and Gentlemen
I think that most of you will agree with me in respect to the surpassing importance of the subject we are here to consider this evening though you may differ from me in other respects. It seems to me that the relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country, is of all other questions, the great, paramount, imperative and all commanding question for this age and nation to solve. [Cheers.]
All the circumstances of the hour plead with an eloquence, equaled by no human tongue, for the immediate solution of this vital problem. 200,000 graves—a distracted and bleeding country pleads for this solution. It cannot be denied, nobody now even attempts to deny, that the question, what shall be done with the Negro, is the one grand cause of the tremendous war now upon us, and likely to continue upon us, until the country is united upon some wise policy concerning it. When the country was at peace and all appeared prosperous, there was something like a plausible argument in favor of leaving things to their own course. No such policy avails now. [Cheers.]
We are encompassed by it on every side and burned with [the question] as by fire, and turn which way we will, it meets us at every point. What will be done with the four or five millions of colored people in the United States? The Copperheads may sneer at the question as a nigger question, and seek to degrade it by miscalling and mispronouncing [the word Negro], but in doing so they only degrade themselves. [Cheers.] They talk about the Union as it was and about the Constitution as it is, and pretend to ignore the great question of the day. Nevertheless the Negro will come out; despite all the dust and smoke thrown in his face, the Negro looms up as the pivot upon which the life or death, the salvation and prosperity, or the rain of the republic depend. [Cheers.]
The term, Negro, is at this hour the most pregnant word in the English language. The destiny of the nation has the Negro for its pivot, and turns upon the question as to what shall be done with him. Peace and war, union and disunion, salvation and ruin, glory and shame all crowd upon our thoughts the moment this vital word is pronounced.
You and I have witnessed many attempts to put this Negro question out of the pale of popular thought and discussion, and have seen the utter vanity of all such attempts. It has baffled all the subtle contrivances of an ease-loving and selfish priesthood, and has constantly refused to be smothered under the soft cushions of a canting and heartless religion. It has mocked and defied the compromising cunning of so-called statesmen, who would have gladly postponed our present troubles beyond our allotted space of life and bequeath them as a legacy of sorrow to our children. But this wisdom of the crafty is confounded and their counsels brought to naught. A divine energy, omniscient and omnipotent, acting through the silent, solemn and all-pervading laws of the universe, irresistible, unalterable and eternal, has ever more forced this mighty question of the Negro upon the attention of the country and the world.
What shall be done with the Negro? meets us not only in the street, in the church, in the senate, and in our state legislatures; but in our diplomatic correspondence with foreign nations, and even on the field of battle, where our brave sons and brothers are striking for liberty and country, or for honored graves.
This question met us before the war; it meets us during the war, and will certainly meet us after the war, unless we shall have the wisdom, the courage, and the nobleness of soul to settle the status of the Negro, on the solid and immovable bases of eternal justice.
I stand here tonight therefore, to advocate what I conceive to be such a solid basis, one that shall fix our peace upon a rock. Putting aside all the hay, wood and stubble of expediency, I shall advocate for the Negro, his most full and complete adoption into the great national family of America. I shall demand for him the most perfect civil and political equality, and that he shall enjoy all the rights, privileges and immunities enjoyed by any other members of the body politic. [Cheers.] I weigh my words and I mean all I say, when I contend as I do contend, that this is the only solid, and final solution of the problem before us. It is demanded not less by the terrible exigencies of the nation, than by the Negro himself for the Negro and the nation, are to rise or fall, be killed or cured, saved or lost together. Save the Negro and you save the nation, destroy the Negro and you destroy the nation, and to save both you must have but one great law of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity for all Americans without respect to color. [Cheers.]
Already I am charged with treating this question, in the light of abstract ideas. I admit the charge, and would to heaven that this whole nation could now be brought to view it in the same calm, clear light. The failure so to view it is the one great national mistake. Our wise men and statesmen have insisted upon viewing the whole subject of the Negro upon what they are pleased to call practical and common sense principles, and behold the results of their so-called practical wisdom and common sense! Behold, how all to the mocker has gone.
Under this so-called practical wisdom and statesmanship, we have had sixty years of compromising servility on the part of the North to the slave power of the South. We have dishonored our manhood and lied in our throats to defend the monstrous abomination. Yet this greedy slave power, with every day of his shameless truckling on our part became more and more exacting, unreasonable, arrogant and domineering, until it has plunged the country into a war such as the world never saw before, and I hope never will see again.
Having now tried, with fearful results, the wisdom of reputed wise men, it is now quite time that the American people began to view this question in the light of other ideas than the cold and selfish ones which have hitherto enjoyed the reputation of being wise and practicable, but which are now proved to be entirely and absolutely impracticable.
The progress of the nation downward has been rapid as all steps downward are apt to be.
First. We found the Golden Rule impracticable.
Second. We found the Declaration of Independence very broadly impracticable.
Third. We found the Constitution of the United States, requiring that the majority shall rule, is impracticable.
Fourth. We found that the union was impracticable.
The golden rule did not hold the slave tight enough. The Constitution did not hold the slave tight enough. The Declaration of Independence did not hold the slave at all, and the union was a loose affair and altogether impracticable.
