speech delivered in April 1865

Passage 1 is adapted from a speech delivered in April 1865
by Frederick Douglass, “What the Black Man Wants.”
Passage 2 is adapted from a speech delivered in June 1865
by Richard H. Dana Jr., “To Consider the Subject of
Re-organization of the Rebel States.” Union general
Nathaniel Banks instituted a forced labor policy for free
African Americans in Louisiana. Dana played a prominent
role in debates about the status of Southern states
following the end of the US Civil War in 1865.
Passage 1
I hold that [Banks’s] policy is our chief danger at
the present moment; that it practically enslaves the
Negro, and makes the [Emancipation] Proclamation
of 1863 a mockery and delusion. What is freedom? It
is the right to choose one’s own employment.
Certainly it means that, if it means anything; and
when any individual or combination of individuals
undertakes to decide for any man when he shall
work, where he shall work, at what he shall work, and
for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce
him to slavery. He is a slave. That I understand Gen.
Banks to do—to determine for the so-called
freedman, when, and where, and at what, and for
how much he shall work, when he shall be punished,
and by whom punished. It is absolute slavery. It
defeats the beneficent intention of the Government,
if it has beneficent intentions, in regards to the
freedom of our people.
I have had but one idea for the last three years to
present to the American people, and the phraseology
in which I clothe it is the old abolition phraseology.
I am for the “immediate, unconditional, and
universal” enfranchisement of the black man, in
every State in the Union. Without this, his liberty is a
mockery; without this, you might as well almost
retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for
in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master,
he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a
privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the
mob, and has no means of protecting himself.
It may be objected, however, that this pressing of
the Negro’s right to suffrage is premature. Let us
have slavery abolished, it may be said, let us have
labor organized, and then, in the natural course of
events, the right of suffrage will be extended to the
Negro. I do not agree with this. The constitution of
the human mind is such, that if it once disregards the
conviction forced upon it by a revelation of truth, it 
requires the exercise of a higher power to produce
the same conviction afterwards.... This is the hour.
Our streets are in mourning, tears are falling at every
fireside, and under the chastisement of this Rebellion
we have almost come up to the point of conceding
this great, this all-important right of suffrage. I fear
that if we fail to do it now, . . . we may not see, for
centuries to come, the same disposition that exists at
this moment.
Passage 2
Is it enough that we have emancipation and
abolition upon the statute books? In some states of
society, I should say yes. In ancient times when the
slaves were of the same race with their masters, when
the slaves were poets, orators, scholars, ministers of
state, merchants, and the mothers of kings—if they
were emancipated, nature came to their aid, and they
reached an equality with their masters. Their
children became patricians. But, my friends, this is a
slavery of race; it is a slavery which those white
people have been taught, for thirty years, is a divine
institution. I ask you, has the Southern heart been
fired for thirty years for nothing? Have those
doctrines been sown, and no fruit reaped? Have they
been taught that the negro is not fit for freedom, have
they believed that, and are they converted in a day?
Besides all that, they look upon the negro as the
cause of their defeat and humiliation....
What are their laws? Why, their laws, many of
them, do not allow a free negro to live in their States.
When we emancipated the slaves, did we mean they
should be banished—is that it? Is that keeping public
faith with them? And yet their laws declare so, and
may declare it again.
That is not all! By their laws, a black man cannot
testify in court; by their laws he cannot hold land; by
their laws he cannot vote. Now, we have got to
choose between two results. With these four millions
of negroes, either you must have four millions of
disfranchised, disarmed, untaught, landless,
degraded men, or else you must have four millions of
land-holding, industrious, arms-bearing and voting
population. Choose between these two! Which will
you have? It has got to be decided pretty soon, which
you will have. The corner-stone of those institutions
will not be slavery, in name, but their institutions will
be built upon the mud-sills of a debased negro
population. Is that public safety? Is it public faith?
Are those republican ideas, or republican
institutions?

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