Review by Bill Doughty––
“Douglass: Speeches & Writings” delivered remarks in and about Great Britain. He described the horrors of “the monster slavery.” And he spoke about the need for greater diversity, voting rights, integration, and equality.
Douglass examined American ideals, leaders, and the reality of caste over the concept of “race.” One of the best essays in this compilation is "Our Composite Nationality," which deserves this extended excerpt, as Douglass speaks to national division and the healing he hopes for even as he predicts more division along lines of race and religion.
On Unity –– What is Real American Exceptionalism?
“Without undue vanity or unjust depreciation of others, we may claim to be, in many respects, the most fortunate of nations. We stand in relation to all others, as youth to age. Other nations have had their day of greatness and glory; we are yet to have our day, and that day is coming. The dawn is already upon us. It is bright and full of promise. Other nations have reached their culminating point. We are at the beginning of our ascent. They have apparently exhausted the conditions essential to their further growth and extension, while we are abundant in all the material essential to further national growth and greatness.
The resources of European statesmanship are now sorely taxed to maintain their nationalities at their ancient height of greatness and power.
American statesmanship, worthy of the name, is now taxing its energies to frame measures to meet the demands of constantly increasing expansion of power, responsibility and duty.
Without fault or merit on either side, theirs or ours, the balance is largely in our favor. Like the grand old forests, renewed and enriched from decaying trunks once full of life and beauty, but now moss-covered, oozy and crumbling, we are destined to grow and flourish while they decline and fade.
This is one view of American position and destiny. It is proper to notice that it is not the only view. Different opinions and conflicting judgments meet us here, as elsewhere.
It is thought by many, and said by some, that this Republic has already seen its best days; that the historian may now write the story of its decline and fall.
Two classes of men are just now especially afflicted with such forebodings. The first are those who are croakers by nature—the men who have a taste for funerals, and especially National funerals. They never see the bright side of anything and probably never will. Like the raven in the lines of Edgar A. Poe they have learned two words, and these are ‘never more.’ They usually begin by telling us what we never shall see. Their little speeches are about as follows: You will never see such Statesmen in the councils of the nation as Clay, Calhoun and Webster. You will never see the South morally reconstructed and our once happy people again united. You will never see the Government harmonious and successful while in the hands of different races. You will never make the negro work without a master, or make him an intelligent voter, or a good and useful citizen. The last never is generally the parent of all the other little nevers that follow.
During the late contest for the Union, the air was full of nevers, every one of which was contradicted and put to shame by the result, and I doubt not that most of those we now hear in our troubled air, will meet the same fate.
It is probably well for us that some of our gloomy prophets are limited in their powers, to prediction. Could they command the destructive bolt, as readily as they command the destructive world, it is hard to say what might happen to the country. They might fulfill their own gloomy prophesies. Perfection is an object to be aimed at by all, but it is not an attribute of any form of Government. Neutrality is the law for all. Something different, something better, or something worse may come, but so far as respects our present system and form of Government, and the altitude we occupy, we need not shrink from comparison with any nation of our times. We are today the best fed, the best clothed, the best sheltered and the best instructed people in the world …
“There was a time when even brave men might look fearfully at the destiny of the Republic. When our country was involved in a tangled network of contradictions; when vast and irreconcilable social forces fiercely disputed for ascendancy and control; when a heavy curse rested upon our very soil, defying alike the wisdom and the virtue of the people to remove it; when our professions were loudly mocked by our practice and our name was a reproach and a by word to a mocking earth; when our good ship of state, freighted with the best hopes of the oppressed of all nations, was furiously hurled against the hard and flinty rocks of derision, and every cord, bolt, beam and bend in her body quivered beneath the shock, there was some apology for doubt and despair. But that day has happily passed away. The storm has been weathered, and portents are nearly all in our favor.
There are clouds, wind, smoke and dust and noise, over head and around, and there always will be; but no genuine thunder, with destructive bolt, menaces from any quarter of the sky.
The real trouble with us was never our system or form of Government, or the principles underlying it; but the peculiar composition of our people, the relations existing between them and the compromising spirit which controlled the ruling power of the country.
We have for along time hesitated to adopt and may yet refuse to adopt, and carry out, the only principle which can solve that difficulty and give peace, strength and security to the Republic, and that is the principle of absolute equality.
We are a country of all extremes—, ends and opposites; the most conspicuous example of composite nationality in the world. Our people defy all the ethnological and logical classifications. In races we range all the way from black to white, with intermediate shades which, as in the apocalyptic vision, no man can name a number.
In regard to creeds and faiths, the condition is no better, and no worse. Differences both as to race and to religion are evidently more likely to increase than to diminish.” (12/07/1869)
Douglass’s speech, excerpted above, was delivered just four years after the end of the Civil War and 73 years to the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor and Oahu. During the Pearl Harbor attack, as every Sailor knows, African American Mess Attendant Doris “Dorie” Miller of USS West Virginia (BB-48) took charge of a machine gun and fired back at attacking planes. That was nearly 83 years ago.
Two hundred years prior to CVN 81’s expected launch, Frederick Douglass was still enslaved in Maryland but would soon escape in 1838 to the North in a sailor’s uniform.
Today, men and women of many ethnicities and backgrounds serve in the U.S. military, ready to defend the United States. Today, former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are among the most respected people in America. Former Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of African and Asian descent, is the Vice President of the United States, Retired General Lloyd Austin leads the Department of Defense, Hakeem Jeffries is Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, and there are two African American Justices on the Supreme Court. The advances of African Americans, especially since President Truman integrated the military and LBJ championed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, would be nearly unimaginable to Frederick Douglass and his contemporaries.
In 2023 some people attempt to ban books and sanitize history, including Black History. The history of the United States is filled with promise, struggle, and progress. Book-banning autocrats who try to white-wash history have an opposite effect: They highlight the ongoing struggle for civil rights, right to a full education, and need for civility. And, ironically, they dilute the fact that the United States has made great positive strides to live up to its ideals.
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