Frederick Douglass on the War

A large audience assembled at the Cooper Institute, New York, last Wednesday evening to hear Frederick Douglass lecture on the war.  He spoke in behalf of the colored race, and discussed the question of emancipation at length,

“My answer to the question, what shall be done with the four million slaves if emancipated? Shall be short and simple. – Do nothing with them, but leave them just as you leave other men, to do with and for themselves.  We could be entirely respectful to those who raise this inquiry, and yet it is hard not to say to them just what they would say to us, if we manifested a like concern for them, and that is: please to mind your business, and leave us to mind ours.  If we cannot stand up, then let us fall down.  We ask nothing at the hands of the American people but simple justice, and an equal chance to live; and if we cannot live and flourish on such terms, our case should be referred to the Author of our existence.  Injustice, oppression and slavery, with all their manifold concomitants, have been tried with us during a period of more than two hundred years.  Under the whole heavens you will find no parallel to the wrongs we have endured.  We have worked without wages; we have lived without hope, wept without sympathy, and bled without mercy.  Now, in the name of a common humanity, and according to the law of the Living god, we simply ask the right to bear the responsibility of our own existence.”

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, February 21, 1862, p. 2