“Frederick Douglass appealing to President Lincoln and his cabinet to enlist Negroes,” mural by William Edouard Scott
Back on April 9th Seven Score and Ten published an interesting article by Frederick Douglass that encouraged black men to enlist in the Union army. Here’s part of it.
From the Douglass’ Monthly April 1863:
WHY SHOULD A COLORED MAN ENLIST?
This question has been repeatedly put to us while raising men for the 54th Massachusetts regiment during the past five weeks, and perhaps we cannot at present do a better service to the cause of our people or to the cause of the country than by giving a few of the many reasons why a colored man should enlist.
First. You are a man, although a colored man …
Fourth. You should enlist to learn the use of arms, to become familiar with the means of securing, protecting and defending your own liberty. A day may come when men shall learn war no more, when justice shall be so clearly apprehended, so universally practiced, and humanity shall be so profoundly loved and respected, that war and bloodshed shall be confined only to beasts of prey. Manifestly however, that time has not yet come, and while all men should labor to hasten its coming, by the cultivation of all the elements conducive to peace, it is plain that for the present no race of men can depend wholly upon moral means for the maintenance of their rights. Men must either be governed by love or by fear. They must love to do right or fear to do wrong. The only way open to any race to make their rights respected is to learn how to defend them. When it is seen that black men no more than white men can be enslaved with impunity, men will be less inclined to enslave and oppress them. Enlist therefore, that you may learn the art and assert the ability to defend yourself and your race.
This paragraph made me think of 238 years ago today when the first shots were fired between British soldiers and colonial militia. The British sought to capture the American rebel military supplies:
On April 19, 1775, British and American soldiers exchanged fire in the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord. On the night of April 18, the royal governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, commanded by King George III to suppress the rebellious Americans, had ordered 700 British soldiers, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith and Marine Major John Pitcairn, to seize the colonists’ military stores in Concord, some 20 miles west of Boston.
“You should enlist to learn the use of arms, to become familiar with the means of securing, protecting and defending your own liberty”
I also thought of the letter from a South Carolina woman after Lincoln’s election. Plantation owners were afraid of a “a negro insurrection”. To protect themselves from slave vengeance, masters were “sleeping upon our arms at night”
The photo of the minuteman at Lexington is licensed by Creative Commons.
