Brown was the featured speaker before the African American congregation of Boston’s Joy Street Church ten days before the fateful 1860 presidential election. He took the podium that evening to respond to the provocatively racist, proslavery speech former Alabama congressman William L. Yancey had given the previous week in the heart of Yankeedom at Faneuil Hall. Indicating Yancey had declined his cheeky invitation to debate him that evening at the church, Brown proceeded to give an alternative view of race history in both Africa and the United States in order to challenge the standard view Yancey was advocating of Anglo-Saxon superiority.
FELLOW-CITIZENS: This is an interesting crisis in the political history of our country, and especially as it regards the Anglo-African race. For the last forty years, there has been a great struggle between Freedom and Slavery in the United States, and the Slave Power has spared no pains and no amount of money to carry its unholy cause. While the advocates of freedom have not been permitted to go South and agitate the subject, slaveholders have been freely admitted to the free States, and permitted to speak as they pleased; and, on Friday evening last, many of us who are here to-night went to Faneuil Hall, to listen to one of the fire-eaters of the South, Hon. W. L. Yancey, of Alabama. He is no doubt one of the ablest as well as one of the most eloquent men of which the Slave Power can boast. And it is for the purpose of listening to a criticism upon that gentleman’s speech, that you have assembled here this evening. I wrote Mr. Yancey on Saturday, inviting him to be present to-night, promising that he should have an opportunity of replying to me, if he wished. If he is not here, the fault is his, and not mine. Although the honorable gentleman on Friday evening averred that he would treat the subject fairly and candidly, he nevertheless entirely ignored conscientiousness and morality. He made a long argument, and brought forward many figures to prove that slave labor was more beneficial to the country than free; all of which I will pass over by putting ‘Helper’s Impending Crisis’ against him. It has been shown that the product of the hay crop alone in the Free States is worth more than the entire products of the South. So I will turn Mr. Yancey out to grass. (Applause.) He said that the Declaration of Independence meant that white men were created equal, and did not include the negro. ‘It was never intended,’ said he, ‘that the blacks should be citizens.’
Upon this point, Mr. Yancey shows his ignorance of history, and proves that with all his smartness, he has been a very dull student. What says the history of our country on this question of negro citizenship? We were regarded as citizens by those who drew up the articles of Confederation between the States in 1778. The fourth of said articles contains the following language: ‘The free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.’ That we were not excluded under the phrase ‘paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice,’ any more than the whites, is plain from the debates that preceded the adoption of the article; for, on the 25th of June, 1778, ‘the delegates from South Carolina moved the following in behalf of their State: In article fourth, between the words free inhabitants insert the word white. Decided in the negative, ayes, two States; nays, eight States; one State divided.’ Such was the decision of the Revolutionary Congress, upon the citizenship of the negro.
At the ratification of the articles of Confederation, all the free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only recognized and considered citizens of those States, but such of them as had the necessary qualification possessed the elective franchise on equal terms with the other citizens. Judge Gaston, of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, in the case of the State vs. Manuel, clearly defines the law on this point. Says he, ‘The Constitution of the State extended the elective franchise to every freeman who had arrived at the age of 21 years, and paid a public tax; and under it, free persons, without regard to color, claimed and exercised the franchise until it was taken away from free men of color, a few years since, by our amended Constitution.’ And, as late as the year 1859, Judge Catron, of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a letter to the Nashville Union and American, in which he opposes the forcible expulsion of the free colored people from Tennessee, says, ‘Under our Constitution of 1796, the free colored men voted at the polls. That the old Constitution extended to them, and protected their rights, is free from doubt. They were considered citizens.’
Thus it will be seen that several of the States, including at least two of the slave States, regarded free colored persons as citizens. Yet Mr. Yancey has not read the history of his country enough to find it out. (Applause.)
And why should the black man not be considered in the light of citizenship? Did not the Negro contribute his proportion towards securing the liberty and the independence of the country? If we go back to the foundation of the Republic, we shall find colored men in all the scenes of the great American drama. In times of peril has our aid been called for, and our services as promptly given. When the country, its interests, its best and most cherished rights and institutions have been assailed, not unavailingly have we been looked to. When the people of the Colonies, aroused by the injustice of British policy, arose as one man, for the maintenance of natural and imprescriptable rights, the colored man stood by the side of his white fellow-citizen. During that memorable conflict, in severe and trying service, did they contend for those principles of liberty set forth in the Declaration of Independence, which are not for white men alone, but which pertain alike to every being possessed of those high and exalted endowments that distinguish humanity. The Negro’s blood mingled with the soil of every battle-field, made glorious by revolutionary reminiscence; and their bones have enriched the most productive lands of the country. But, what cares Mr. Yancey about history or facts? He goes for slavery, without any regard to complexion. He would as soon have his plantation stocked with men taken from the audience which he addressed on Friday night, as to have them from the coast of Africa. As I listened to the loud applause which was given to the speaker by the hard-fisted laboring men of Boston, and knowing how the working man is looked upon in the South, I felt a degree of mingled shame, pity and contempt for them. Who has forgotten that impudent speech of Mr. Senator Hammond of South Carolina, a year or two since, in which he said—
‘In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life; a class requiring but a low order of intellect and little skill. It constitutes the mud-sill of society and of political government. . . . Your whole class of manual hireling laborers at the North, and your “operatives,” as you call them, are essentially slaves.’
And who will ever forget the contemptuous remarks of the editor of the Muscogee Herald, published in Mr. Yancey’s own State, and by one of his nearest neighbors? Hear what he thinks of such men as the honorable (?) gentleman spoke to in Faneuil Hall:—
‘Free society! We sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern States, and especially the New England States, are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meets with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery; and yet who are hardly fit for association with a gentleman’s body servant. That is your free society!’
And in a political Convention held in Alabama, in 1856, at which Mr. Yancey made a speech, a resolution was unanimously adopted, in which the following was embodied:—
‘The great evil of Northern society is, that it is burdened with a servile class of mechanics and laborers, unfit for self-government, and yet clothed with the attributes and powers of citizens. Master and slave is a relation in society as necessary as that of parent and child, and the Northern States will yet have to introduce it. The theory of free government is a delusion. Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring man, white or black.’
But I leave the Alabama Senator in the hands of the sun-burnt and hard-working men who applauded him so enthusiastically on Friday evening, and the Democratic Committee that imported him to Boston, to settle with them for this contempt of honest labor.
In his remarks, Mr. Yancey contended that the North should go for the increase of slave States and slaves, because slaveholders purchased shoes and clothing for their negroes from Northern manufacturers. ‘No,’ said he, ‘the nigger won’t work if free.’ Now, if Mr. Yancey had wished, he could have told his audience that there were 16,000 free colored people in Alabama, and the census of 1850 shows that among the citizens of Montgomery there are five free men of color set down as worth $20,000 each, and one of these was a slave till thirty years old. It is well known that there are nearly seventy thousand free colored inhabitants in Maryland, some of whom are worth more than $100,000. It was only during the last session of the Virginia Legislature, that a bill was introduced to enact a law driving the free blacks from the State. The only reason given for this expulsion was, that ‘the free negroes were getting too wealthy and too influential in the State.’ Judge Catron, of whom I have already spoken, says of the free blacks in Tennessee, ‘They are industrious, useful, and among them are some of the best mechanics and artizans in the State, and to drive them out would be great injury to ourselves.’ A St. Louis paper of a recent date has the following paragraph:—
‘In the foundry of Gaty, M’Cune & Co., in this city, among its two hundred and seventy operatives are two negroes, who began life at the establishment, in 1849, as slaves. By dint of unflagging industry, in due course of time one of them bought himself, wife and five children, paying for himself $1400, and on an average for his wife and children $800 each. This negro is now supposed to be worth, in his own right, more than $5000 in real estate in that city. Another negro entered the factory about the same time, amassed sufficient money by his attention to duty to purchase himself at the price of $1500, his wife at $500, and four children at $400, and is now worth $6000 in real estate. These negroes were bought from their masters by Mr. Gray, with the understanding that they should work themselves free, and out of his own pocket he gave two per cent. interest on the deferred payments.’
Yet Mr. Yancey is of opinion that ‘the nigger won’t work, if free’!
The Alabama Beacon of March 6, 1858, tells its readers that ‘there are free negroes of too much wealth in the State, and that they ought to be driven out.’
Let me turn to another phase of the subject. ‘You say,’ said the speaker, ‘that our institution demoralizes the whites and the blacks. I say you are mistaken.’ And here the gentleman undertook to prove that raising cotton was the highest idea of morality. Cotton—cotton—cotton—was the burden of his song. It reminded me, fellow-citizens, of the servant girl, not long from the Emerald Isle, who wanted her employer, an old gentleman, to read a letter from her lover; and not wishing him to know its contents, she came with the letter in one hand and some cotton in the other, and said, ‘Please, Mr. Maine, will you be kind enough to read this letter for me? and as you won’t want to know what is in it, I brought this cotton, that you might put it in your ears, so that you might not hear what was in the letter.’ (Loud applause.)
But let us try the moral character of slavery in Alabama by the testimony of her own citizens. Mr. John Balch, a resident of Tuscaloosa, in that State, advertises his runaway woman in the following manner:—
‘Ranaway from me, a negro woman, named Fanny. She is as white as most white women; with straight light hair, and blue eyes, and can pass herself off for a white woman. She is very intelligent; can read and write, and so forge passes for herself. She is very pious, prays a great deal, and was, as supposed, contented and happy. I will give $500 for her delivery to me.’
Mr. John Peck, of Mobile, Ala., has lost his man Sam, and says: ‘He has light sandy hair, blue eyes, ruddy complexion, and will no doubt try to pass himself for a free white man.’ Whether Fanny and Sam got their ‘blue eyes, straight hair, and white complexion,’ as such slaves generally do, from their masters, or not, I will leave Mr. Yancey to say. The Hon. C. C. Clay, who once occupied the seat in the United States Senate, now held by the orator of Friday night last, said, in a speech in his own State, ‘Slavery corrupts the morals of the whites as well as the blacks. The evils of the system cannot be enumerated. They glare upon us at every step.’ Yet Mr. Yancey thinks that there is nothing immoral in the institution! (Applause.)
The speaker was asked if men from the North could go South. He replied, ‘Yes, if you don’t go there to steal our niggers.’ If the person who made this inquiry had kept pace with the insolence of the Slave Power, he could have found an answer to his own question in the expulsion of the bookseller from Mobile, three years ago, for obtaining a copy of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative for a customer. During the present year, a book agent was arrested in Alabama for soliciting subscribers to ‘Fleetwood’s Life of Christ,’ published by a Northern publisher. The Methodist Conference was in session at that time, and the case was noticed on the floor of that body. The members advocated the unfortunate agent’s immediate expulsion from the place, on the ground that his continued presence would be dangerous to the existence of Southern institutions! A paper was drawn up, adopted, and published in the newspapers, setting forth the ground of their action, substantially as follows:
‘We have examined this man’s case. We find no evidence to convict him of tampering with slaves, but as he is from the North, and engaged in selling a book published at the North, we have a right to suspect him of being an Abolitionist, and we therefore recommend, in order to guard ourselves against possible danger, that he be immediately conducted by the military out of this county into the next adjoining.’
Here is a poor simple book agent escorted out of the town by the military, to save him from a mob of Mr. Yancey’s friends and constituents! The Hon. gentleman knew very well that no Northern man is safe at the South, if it is suspected that his opinions are against oppression.
‘The superior ought to govern the inferior; the blacks were intended for slaves, owing to their inferiority,’ said the Alabama Senator. What opportunity has he ever given his slaves to show their intellectual endowments? The whole South is aware that the blacks would rise from their present degraded condition, if they had the chance (loud applause); therefore the slave is forbidden to have a book or to learn to read. Genius may always rise, as it often has done, from the cottage to the mansion, from manual labor to mental occupation, from the hard lot of the many to the privileges of the few, to occupy positions of power in the State, or of eminence in the republic of letters. But intellect must have the opportunity of free development; it must not be placed in the hands of such men as Mr. Yancey, whose highest boast was, that he gave his slaves two pairs of coarse shoes every year.
‘The nigger can’t be any thing,’ exclaimed the speaker; and in the next breath he said, ‘You have nigger lawyers here in Boston; we don’t have such in our State.’ The gentleman stopped short at this point, for he saw that if men could be lawyers in Boston, they could be in Alabama, if they were permitted. He stands with his feet upon the neck of the negro, and exclaims, ‘He’s inferior, because he don’t rise!’ And who is this man that claims a superiority over the black man? Will his antecedents bear a critical examination? Let us see. ‘When the Britons first became known to the Tyrian mariners,’ says Macaulay, ‘they were little superior to the Sandwich Islanders.’ Hume says, ‘They were a rude and barbarous people, divided into numerous tribes, dressed in the skins of wild beasts. Druidism was their religion, and they were filled with superstition.’ When the Romans invaded Britain, the people were reduced to a state of slavery or vassalage, as degrading as the slavery on Mr. Yancey’s plantation. Their king, Caractacas, was captured, and sent a slave to Rome. Still later, Henghist and Horsa, the Saxon generals, presented another yoke to the Britons, which they were compelled to wear. But the last dregs of the cup of humiliation were drunk when William of Normandy met Harold at Hastings, and with a single blow, completely annihilated the nationality of the Britons. Out of this conglomeration of Britons, Romans, Normans and Saxons sprang the proud Anglo-Saxon of to-day. During the time that the Anglo-Saxon was passing through this crucible of refinement, his condition was scarcely less humiliating than that of the slave on the banks of the Mississippi. And it is the descendant of such a race who claims a superiority over us! (Loud applause.)
But, fellow-citizens, this is not all. It is an historical fact, that when the Stuarts were on the English throne, it was the custom to transport their convicts to the West Indies and to the American Colonies. Many of these criminals were sent to the Colony of Virginia, and afterwards rose from their servile condition, spread over the Southern States, and their antecedents lost in the increase of population. Now, as it is a physiological fact, that the parent transmits his propensities to the child, it is reasonable to suppose that the convict blood of 1640 courses through the veins of the proud sons of the South of the present time. And instead of that blood becoming purer by the removal, it has become still more corrupt by its course through the veins of nine generations of woman-whippers, slave-traders and fillibusters. (Loud applause.)
Now let me look at the antecedents of the negro, three thousand years ago, when in the period of their greatness and glory, when they held the foremost rank in the march of civilization; when they constituted, in fact, the whole civilized world of their time. Euclid, Homer and Plato were Ethiopians; Terence, the most refined and accomplished scholar of his time was of the same race; Hanno, the father of Hamilcar and grandfather of Hannibal, was a negro. Herodotus, the father of history, says that the Ethiopians were black, and had curled hair. The Romans, Saxons and Normans, who swallowed up the Britons and gave them a name and a language, received their civilization from Egypt and Ethiopia. When Mr. Yancey’s ancestors were bending their necks to the yoke of William the Conqueror, the ancestors of his slaves were revelling in the halls of science and learning. If the Hon. Senator from Alabama wants antecedents, he shall have them; and upon such, I claim a superiority for the negro. (Loud applause.)
But an editorial from the Montgomery Mail, Mr. Yancey’s own paper, tells us the reason why he spoke as he did on Friday evening. It says:—
‘The Democrats of the South, in the present canvass, cannot rely on the old grounds of defence and excuse for slavery; for they seek not merely to retain it where it is, but to extend it into regions where it is unknown. Much less can they rely on the mere constitutional guarantees of slavery; for such reliance is pregnant with the admission that slavery is wrong, and, but for the Constitution, should be abolished. If we stop there, we weaken our cause; for we propose to introduce into new territory human beings whom we assert to be unfit for liberty, self-government and equal association with other men. We must go a step further. We must show that African slavery is a moral, religious, natural, and probably, in the general, a necessary institution of society. This is the only line of argument that will enable Southern Democrats to maintain the doctrines of State equality and slavery extension.’ . . . ‘Northern Democrats need not go thus far. They do not seek to extend slavery, but only to agree to its extension, as a matter of right on our part.’
Thus it will be seen that the whole drift of Mr. Yancey’s speech was settled before he left his State.
Now, fellow-citizens, I have done with the Alabama Senator; but I must confess that I felt ashamed of the intelligence of that portion of the working men of Boston, who applauded so loudly on Friday evening, when, if they should go South, Mr. Yancey would not shake hands with them with a pair of tongs ten feet long. (Laughter and loud applause.)