Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States
“Lest you should, at any other time, commit a similar blunder, I
beg to state, once for all, that I do not believe that the slavery
question is settled, and settled forever. I do not believe that
slave-catching is either a Christian duty, or an innocent amusement.
I do not believe that he who breaks the arm of the kidnapper, or
wrests the trembling captive from his grasp is ‘a traitor.’ I do not
believe that Daniel Webster is the saviour of the Union, nor that the
Union stands in need of such a saviour. I do not believe that human
enactments are to be obeyed when they are point-blank against the law
of the living God. And believing most fully, as I do, the reverse of
all this, you will easily believe me to be a person wholly unfit to
receive the suffrages of gentlemen holding the opinion and favoring
the policy of that wing of the Whig party denominated ‘the _Silver
Grays_.’
“With all the respect which your derision permits me to entertain for
you,
I am, gentlemen,
Your faithful fellow-citizen,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.”
The perpetrators of the wanton and gratuitous insult which elicited
this beautiful rebuke, would be sadly outraged, were we to insist
on withholding the title of “Gentlemen” from those who could, on
any pretence, trample on the feelings of such as they esteem their
inferiors. If they half begin to comprehend the meaning of the term,
much more to feel its power, their cheeks must have crimsoned with
shame, when they saw their own unprovoked assault, contrasted with the
calm and self-respectful serenity of this reply.
Another instance of this dignity under circumstances of peculiar trial,
may be found in his own account--in the columns of “Frederick Douglass’
paper”--of a rencontre with a hotel clerk in Cleveland. It is as
follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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