In the wake of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) addressed the issue of Black suffrage to members of the 39th session of Congress. The two articles appear here with Douglass remaining anonymous on both the wrappers and the text. Neither article appears to have been published separately.
Douglass’s first article, “Reconstruction,” provides a statement of what Douglass believed were post-war needs. “[He] saw Reconstruction as its unprecendented challenges as a continuation of the purpose of the war, a sacred responsibility to the Union dead and to 4 million freed slaves” (Blight, 471). Importantly, the article “concludes by broaching the question of the disfranchisement of the black masses in the South and by insisting that so long as this prevails, the sacrifices will have been in vain” (Aptheker, 10).
In the second article, “An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage”, Douglass addresses the subject directly. He’s at the height of his powers when he writes: “The fundamental and unanswerable argument in favor of the enfranchisement of the negro is found in the undisputed fact of his manhood. He is a man, and by every fact and argument by which any man can sustain his right to vote, the negro can sustain his right equally. It is plain that, if the right belongs to any, it belongs to all. The doctrine that some men have no rights that others are bound to respect is a doctrine which we must banish, as we have banished slavery, from which it emanated. If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men, of course the white can have none in the eyes of the blacks.”
Douglass was a key figure in the promotion and passing of the fifteenth amendment in 1870. This article is one of his strongest statements on the subject of Black suffrage.
It’s worth noting Douglass’s argument in this piece is wider-ranging and more prescient than it first appears. He clarifies that in addition to racism slavery contributed to widening inequality, namely, the “South fought for perfect and permanent control over the Southern laborer. It was a war of the rich against the poor.” Douglass adds: “The South does not now ask for slavery. It only asks for a large degraded caste, which shall have no political rights.” He is straightforwardly describing the experience of Black Americans through to passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts.
Aptheker, H., “Frederick Douglass Calls for Black Suffrage in 1866” in The Black Scholar, Vol. 5, No. 4, (December 1973- January 1974), pp.10-16; Blight, D.W., Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York, 2018), p.471.
