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Explore the later life of Frederick Douglass

From the end of the Civil War until his passing in 1895 Douglass continued his public speaking with more than 800 speeches. He also wrote all the time, published his newspaper, and served in various government positions for more than 30 years.

  • 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments
    Frederick Douglass Virtual Exhibit
  • Broad Vision
    Frederick Douglass Virtual Exhibit
  • Despair & Hope For the Future
    Frederick Douglass Virtual Exhibit

13th, 14th & 15th Amendments

Douglass was a strong supporter of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which outlawed slavery, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” and gave African-American men the right to vote.

At the same time, Douglass had grave concerns about entrenched racism in the South. He feared that slavery had ended in name only.

“In what skin will that old snake come forth?”

Speech delivered at the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City (May 10, 1865)

By January 31 of 1865, the Senate and House had passed the 13th Amendment. As the World waited to see if enough states would ratify the law, Douglass emphasized that emancipation could not be the only goal. He felt that the right to vote is essential to citizenship and called for future amendments.

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Members of the House of Representatives celebrate after passing the 13th Amendment. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated less than four months later. "At the end of that year, the 13th amendment went into effect." Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot. While the legislatures of the south retain the right to pass laws making any discrimination between black and white, slavery still lives there.

Frederick Douglass
Speech delivered at the American Arts Society in New York City (May 10, 1855)
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When Abraham Lincoln died, his vice-president, Andrew Johnson, suddenly became the president. In 1866, Douglass (shown here around that time) met with Johnson to discuss voting rights, but the president dismissed the subject because he was worried about a race war. Photo credit: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Reconstruction

Essay published in “The Atlantic Monthly” (December 1866)

In this essay, Douglass argues for giving African-Americans the right to vote, calling “the elective franchise” a protective “wall of fire.”

Without a federal law, Douglass worried that southern states would pass their own laws redefining and restricting citizenship. African-Americans would be as powerless as they were before the war.

Get the full speech from the Atlantic

Educational Materials

Resources in conjunction with this exhibit are available to increase your educational experience.

View All Materials

 

As a slave, what did Frederick Douglass exchange for lessons and knowledge?

Find Out Now!

Because Douglass was a slave, he wasn’t allowed to learn to read or write. A wife of a Baltimore slave owner did teach him the alphabet when he was around 12, but she stopped after her husband interfered. Young Douglass took matters into his own hands, cleverly fitting in a reading lesson whenever he was on the street running errands for his owner. As he detailed in his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he’d carry a book with him while out and about and trade small pieces of bread to the white kids in his neighborhood, asking them to help him learn to read the book in exchange.

(source: Mental Floss)

“An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage”

Essay published in “The Atlantic Monthly” (January 1867)

The summer before this essay was published, Congress had passed the 14th Amendment, which granted African-Americans the rights of citizenship. Yet, as Douglass explains, citizenship has no meaning without the right to vote.

He details practical and moral reasons for giving African Americans the right to vote, chief among them being a unified North and South.

“[Congress] must enfranchise the negro, and by means of the loyal negroes and the loyal white men of the South build till a national party there, and in time bridge the chasm between North and South, so that our country may have a common liberty and a common civilization. The new wine must be put into bottles. The lamb may not be trusted with the wolf. Loyalty is hardly safe with traitors.”

Hear the full speech from The Atlantic

A black and white drawing showing a line of voters, with an older black man submitting his ballot as a white judge looks on

Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

“Seeming and Real”

Essay published in “The New National Era” (6 October 1870)

The 15th Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870, established that the voting rights of U.S. citizens “shall not be denied or abridged…on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Douglass had been fighting for voting rights, but he saw challenges ahead. As he predicted, racism would stop implementation of the law.

“‘There are no colored people in this country’ said a highly poetic friend of ours, not long since. To his mind the fifteenth amendment was not merely a law but a miracle, for nothing less than a miracle could thus so suddenly change black into white, and obliterate all traces of two hundred and fifty years of slavery, both on the part of the race enslaved and the race enslaving. This delirium of enthusiasm is very pleasant to those possessed by it, and it would seem unamiable to disturb it if it did not sometimes stand directly in the way of needed effort.”

As Douglass thought, many states found ways to stop African-Americans from voting long after the 15th Amendment was passed. Tactics included literacy tests, “poll taxes,” and plain bullying. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 tried to get rid of such barriers, and the number of registered African-American voters nationwide jumped from 1 in 4 to almost 3 in 4 today.

 

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The Library of Congress houses much of Douglass’ work–an archive that contains contents of Douglass’ home office. This image is of one of Douglass’ many handwritten manuscripts. Photo credit: Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress

Broad Vision

Douglass’ definition of equality went beyond the right of African-American men to vote. He believed that women should be able to vote and participate in all levels of government. He advocated for integrated schools. He also supported free speech, a right he often exercised in critiquing the nation’s lawmakers.

“Equal Rights For All”

Speech delivered at the American Equal Rights Association in New York City (14 May 1868)

Douglass was a feminist long before that term even existed. He was the only African-American (and one of only 40 men) at the trailblazing Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. Throughout his career, he delivered many speeches and wrote many essays arguing that women should receive the same rights as men.

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This portrait of women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton hung in Douglass’ home. Photo credit: Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

“No man should be excluded from the Government on the basis of his color, no woman on account of her sex; there should be no shoulder that does not bear its burden of the Government, and no individual conscience debarred of [a] chance to exercise its influence for good on the National councils.”

Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Speech delivered at the American Equal Rights Association in New York City (14 May 1868)

“Liberty of Speech [in the] South”

Essay published in the “New National Era”

In 1860, Douglass offered a “plea” for free speech. In his view, suppressing it is a “double wrong” since it “violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” He returned to the subject in this 1871 essay, calling for freedom of speech in the South.

“Until a man can express his opinion upon all possible subjects as freely and as safely at the South as he does at the North, freedom is the merest farce, and reconstruction a failure. All the rights possessed by citizens of one State must be freely enjoyed in every State.”

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Reverend Charles Campbell stands at the pulpit of his Richmond, Virginia church, around 1879. Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
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The Whitaker Family of South Carolina, as photographed by J.A. Palmer in 1874. Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

“Mixed Schools”

Essay published in the “New National Era”

Douglass was an early supporter of desegregating public schools. His logic here is that African-American and poor white communities needed to recognize their “common cause against the rich land-holders of the South.”

He explains that both are “tools” of the rich, in which the rich stir up racist fears to incite poor whites to “in every conceivable manner mistreat” African-Americans.

Educational Materials

Explore the later life of Frederick Douglass with curriculum designed for children in grades 1-12

Get Resources

“Looking the Republican Party Squarely in the Face”

Speech Given at the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio (14 June 1876)

Douglass was asked to speak on the opening day of the convention. He begins his speech with grand flourishes of compliments (“I must say … that you are pretty good-looking men”) and thanks them for emancipation and the right to vote.

Then he switches gears stealthily, lethally; he bluntly reminds Republicans that if they don’t protect African-American rights, African-Americans can vote them out of power.

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The Convention exhibition hall as Rutherford B. Hayes is named the Republican Party’s nominee for President. Photo credit: Cornell University Collection of Political Americans, Cornell University Library (accessed from Wikimedia Commons)

Despair & Hope For the Future

In the 1880s and 90s, violence against African-Americans in the South surged as their civil rights weakened due to restrictive “Jim Crow” laws. At times, it seemed to Douglass that slavery was lifted in name only.

Yet he held out hope that America would eventually live up to its lofty ideals – the “Star-Spangled Banner” was still a favorite tune to play on his violin.

“Our Destiny is Largely in Our Own Hands”

Speech delivered in Washington, D.C. on the occasion of the 21st anniversary of emancipation (16 April 1883)

Douglass felt renewed hope in 1883, despite the Supreme Court’s partial overturn of the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Perhaps the fact that African-Americans had been free for 20 years–a whole generation–reminded him that progress had been made. As he wrote in a different essay, “I see colored people steadily rising.”

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This illustration depicts Douglass in his role as U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia. He was first African-American confirmed for a presidential appointment by the U.S. Senate. Photo credit: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library

“Assimilation and not isolation is our true policy and our natural destiny. Unification for us is life: separation is death…All the political, social and literary forces around us tend to unification. I am more inclined to accept this solution because I have seen the steps already taken in that direction. The American people have their prejudices, but they have other qualities as well. They easily adapt themselves to inevitable conditions, and all their tendency is to progress, enlightenment and to the universal.”

Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Speech delivered in Washington, D.C. on the occasion of the 21st anniversary of emancipation (16 April 1883)

“The Future of the Negro”

Essay published in The North American Review (July 1884)

Given ongoing violence and discrimination, some Americans–black and white–wondered if it made sense for African Americans to stay in the United States. Douglass disagreed.

In this essay, he lists all the reasons why African-Americans would stay, from the practical (it’s expensive to move) to the intangible (things are getting better).

View the full essay on the Library of Congress site

“The expense of removal to a foreign land, the difficult of finding a country where the conditions of existence are more favorable than here, attachment to native land, gradual improvement in moral surroundings, increasing hope for a better future, improvement in character and value by education, impossibility of finding any part of the globe free from the presence of white men,–all conspire to keep the Negro here, and compel him to adjust himself to American civilization.”

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This image of a stylish young woman (taken around 1880) is a “carte de visite,” a photo card given to friends and family. Photo credit: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library

Frederick Douglass uses advanced vocabulary in all of his writing.

Can you define these words found throughout the exhibit?

Chasm, Farce, Conspire

Get Definitions!

A dictionary with a magnifying glass balanced on top of the open pages

  • Chasm : a deep divide
    • Douglass uses this word in “An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage” to describe the relationship between the North and South of the United States
  • Farce : a foolish display
    • In “Liberty of Speech [in the] South,” Douglass uses this word to show that freedom is only for show in the South and not a reality.
  • Conspire : to work together toward a shared goal, often secretly
    • Douglass uses this word in “The Future of the Negro” to convey that African Americans had little choice in whether they stayed in the United States or not.

Did you know the definitions? Don’t worry if you didn’t, some of Douglass’ speeches are so complicated you’d need many years of university education just to understand them!

“Strong to Suffer, And Yet Strong to Strive”

Speech in Washington, D.C. celebrating emancipation (16 April 1886)

The speech finds Douglass weary, contemplating the future of African-Americans in general and wondering aloud about the next generation of civil rights activists. He notes that it is difficult to offer new thoughts on the “same subject, before the same audience.”

He even goes as far as to say that, “I wish that your choice of speaker had fallen upon one of our young men …. I want to see them coming to the front as I am retiring to the rear.” In the speech that follows, he offers advice to those who will follow him.

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In this 1883 illustration, Douglass, the “colored champion of freedom,” is wreathed by other African-American men of accomplishment. Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
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This view of the fairgrounds illustrates why the exposition was called “the white city,” a nickname that must have been bitterly ironic to the African-Americans excluded from the year-long event. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

“The Reason Why the Colored American is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition”

Pamphlet distributed at the Columbian Exposition (1893)

Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 in honor of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to America. The fair took place across 700 acres (that’s about 530 football fields!), and more than 20 million tickets were sold.

Yet, African-Americans could not get jobs at the fair, and were not allowed to create an exhibit showing their culture.

Douglass was one of the few African-Americans at the World’s Columbian Exposition, he served as a representative for the country of Haiti. Angered by the discrimination, he partnered with fellow activist-writers Ida B. Wells, Ferdinand Lee Barnett, and Irvine Garland Penn.

They wrote and distributed this pamphlet together. Douglass would later write a short preface to Wells’ masterpiece about lynching, The Red Record.

Read the full pamphlet from the University of Pennsylvania

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