Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 156

Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Address . . . on the Twenty-First Anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia. 16 pages. Octavo, 9¼ x 5¾ inches, original printed wrappers, moderate wear and minor staining; minor wear to contents. Washington, 1883
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Douglass reflects at length on the end of Reconstruction and the continued struggle for equal rights: "Peace with the old master class has been war to the Negro. . . . The reaction has been sudden, marked, and violent. It has swept the Negro from all the legislative halls of the Southern States, and from those of Congress" (page 2). "What Abraham Lincoln said in respect of the United States is as true of the colored people as of the relations of those states. They cannot remain half slave and half free. . . . You will have an aggrieved class, and this discussion will go on. Until the public schools shall cease to be caste schools in every part of our country, this discussion will go on. Until the colored man's pathway to the American ballot box, North and South, shall be as smooth and as safe as the same is for the white citizen, this discussion will go on. . . . Until the courts of the country shall grant a colored man a fair trial and a just verdict, this discussion will go on" (page 7). He concludes: "Assimilation and not isolation is our true policy and our national destiny. Unification for us is life; separation is death."

Inside the front wrapper is printed a request to publish this speech from 20 prominent men, including Reconstruction politicians Blanche Bruce and Francis Cardozo, and author J.W. Cromwell: "We still have a cause that is worth hearing and patiently considering, but you have stated the difficulties that yet environ the colored American with such precision and clearness that no man . . . can fail to see that the Negro's way is still a thorny one."

Not in Blockson or Afro-Americana. One other traced at auction, in a Swann sale, 26 February 2004, lot 136.

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