American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with John Stauffer, part 5 of 5

So why did Douglas work so hard to recruit men from that particular place? Douglas believed that the easiest way to achieve citizenship for blacks was to serve as a soldier. There had been a long tradition of African American serving and the revolution serving in the war of 1812 serving as soldiers. And in that tradition they had been granted their freedom and they had been granted citizenship. In the antebellum period the question of citizenship was vague and hazy and really up for grabs. It was the 14th amendment that defines citizenship at a federal level. Before that it was really at the call of each state in many respects. And Douglas was not only advocating for freedom he wanted full citizenship which meant equality before the law. So one reason why he devoted every minute of the day to recruiting for the 54th was he understood that for black men to serve as soldiers it was the easiest way for blacks to be accorded the status of citizens. Second Douglas wanted the 54th to be seen and made visible as a regiment that was central to the United States Army.

In other words he wanted it to be known that a union victory would come about because of blacks and whites. In other words without the role of blacks the union army could not have won the war. And he had said as much victory is depends upon making use of blacks. And the easiest way to make use of blacks is to put guns in their hands to shoot southerners. And that becomes formalized in the north after the with emancipation proclamation. Another reason why it's so important for Douglas to recruit and for him to champion the 54th is after a what better symbol of democracy and of racial equality is there in the United States is if the federal government arms and gives uniforms to black soldiers and tells them to kill white men. Now this nation is no longer about white over black it's totally subverts the racism that is so marinated American society.

The role that Douglas and the other abolitionist played in the long road to the Civil War is absolutely crude. The role that Douglas and the other abolitionist played in the long road to the Civil War is absolutely crucial. Without the abolitionists the Civil War would not have occurred without the abolitionists. I think one could say that slave owners and looking at the way in which the rest of the new world was abolishing slavery, slave owners would have turned the entire United States into slave country. That was what they wanted.

That was what they wanted. Lincoln said in his house divided speech that we're worrying about what's happening in Kansas and whether or not Kansas is going to be a slave state we're going to wake up and have Illinois a slave state. Lincoln understood that the Dred Scott decision had the potential to legalize slavery everywhere in the United States because one of the aspects of the Dred Scott decision the highest tribunal in the land was the role of the, let me back up. One of the most important aspects of the Dred Scott decision is what is the status of slave of a slave when he moves to a free state. I mean after all the constitution according to most understandings characterized slaves as property.

If I'm a Mississippi master and I take my property to Boston and I'm still resident of Mississippi what's the status of my property in Boston? The Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision declares that that property remains your property overturning the state laws that would free the slave. If that's the case now taunting his majority opinion said there really needs to be a second Supreme Court decision to affirm this that's why Lincoln and other Republicans warned against the second Dred Scott. They said a second Dred Scott decision another Supreme Court decision that is all that's needed to legalize slavery everywhere in the United States because if that happens if I'm a Mississippi planner what's going to prevent me from taking 50 slaves to Boston or New York or to Chicago starting a business with slave labor. Staying there for six months of the year and returning to my home my residence in Mississippi and those slaves remain my property and what's to prevent me from selling my slaves at auction in Massachusetts or New York or Chicago in effect it turns the entire country into a slave nation.

And that's what Lincoln that's a Republicans that's what Douglas that's what everyone was so worried about and had there been no abolitionist movement that probably would have happened. In fact one of the great myths that emerges after the Civil War is that slavery would have ended of its own core slavery was dying out slavery was not profitable. Slavery was the nation's first big business. Many business historians say that the railroads are the first big business. No slavery slave trade is the first big business. The wealthiest men in the United States were not Northern Bostonians or Northern New York merchants. The wealthiest Americans were natures and Louisiana and South Carolinian planners. Without question there were more millionaires in Natchez and Mississippi this tiny little town on an absolute scale than there were in New York City.

Slavery was never more profitable than it was on the eve of the Civil War and the price the value of slaves as a commodity. If you think of slaves as a stock slaves are a wonderful investment and they were never more valuable than on the eve of the Civil War. And so had abolitionists not convinced so many millions of Americans of the evil of slavery. Slavery would have persisted well into the 20th century. We know that slavery could be very profitable within a factory system with an industrialized system. Many planners created highly profitable factory slave based factory in Atlanta in Charleston in fact slaves built the industrial base for the Confederacy. The Trediger Ironworks which was the industry building the ships and building the munitions for the Confederacy was slave based.

So the idea that slavery can only survive in an agricultural area. The slavery was dying out on the eve of the Civil War. One of the myths propagated initially at least by southerners as a way to demonize abolitionists in which for most of the 20th century they said gee had it not been for these lunatic abolitionists. Slavery would have died out in 10 years or so anyway. We would have avoided this apocalyptic blood bath of a war. And the United States would have been a lot better off. What we now know is that had it not been for the abolitionists the United States would have been thoroughly a slave nation. And in fact had it not been for the abolitionists in the United States it could have reversed this enormous growth of an anti-slavery movement in the western culture. In other words the success of emancipation in the United States was a crucial impetus and inspiration for the ultimate emancipation of slavery in Brazil and throughout the new world.

Had things gone different in the United States, slavery could have crept back into all of South America, to Central America. Because one of the truly revolutionary aspects about anti-slavery is that the idea that slavery is an evil, the idea that people can imagine a world without slavery was a radically revolutionary new idea at the beginning of the 18th century. In fact at the beginning of the 18th century no one could imagine a world without slavery. From the beginning of civilization really until the 18th century even slaves themselves, so the 18th century is the emergence of anti-slavery thought. Even slaves themselves through most of western culture, you could say that no slave has ever wanted to be a slave.

But in every known slave rebellion, from the Spartacus rebellion in Rome in 71 CE through the huge Zanz rebellion in northern Africa in 860, 9 CE and every known slave rebellion until the 18th century slave rebels felt no compunction in slaving others in their cause. So in essence no one wanted to be a slave, they just wanted to invert the hierarchy. The rise of anti-slavery thought meant that that fundamental hierarchy that had long existed in western culture between master and slave got totally collapsed and for the first time people could imagine a world without slavery. So when you do the very beginning of the answer again, so I have two versions too. So what role do people play in the build up the civil war? The role that abolitionists played in the build up to the civil war was absolutely crucial and the best way of answering it really is to say what would have happened had there been no abolitionists?

Had there been no abolitionists? There would have been no civil war. And in fact had there been no abolitionists, southern slave owners in looking around them and seeing slavery and slavery being abolished everywhere, so many other places in the new world, they would have essentially taken over the United States as a slave nation. And they probably would have been successful at annexing Cuba at taking over parts of Central America and reversing that trend of emancipation. Do you want me to say anything about Douglas's religious views of the civil war? Douglas's understanding of the civil war was representative. Douglas defined the civil war in apocalyptic terms and in fact he specifically said that the civil war is a battle between Michael and his angels against Satan.

And this wasn't symbolically for Douglas the civil war would bring about this new age of peace and harmony. It was truly an apocalypse that would yield this new dispensation. And that was represented the vast majority of northerners understood the civil war in apocalyptic terms. It's why so many people were willing to die. It's why so many people were willing to allow this war to continue. Yes, we're living through an apocalypse. Once we get through it we'll have this thousand year reign of peace and harmony. And the best indication of this millennialist apocalyptic sensibility is the most popular song of the civil war era, the battle hymn of the republic. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosened the fateful lightning with his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.

The language the Julie Ward how uses comes right out of the book of revelations. I could say that I mean that's that's a whole different set of arguments. Yeah, I mean it totally transforms reform movements after the civil war. Because in the sense Douglass and Garrison other abolitionists believe that this is though with the war the apocalypse had come. The new age is nowhere inside. It creates a real crisis in belief, a crisis in identity. And Douglass, Garrison the vast majority of abolitionists who after I believe that God was real, God was present, God could transform the affairs of the world immediately. They became much more secular, much more secular. And in fact Douglass by the late 1870s castigated other blacks for assuming, for pretending that God could actually affect the affairs of the world.

And that's not only stupid, it's unhelpful, it's against your interests. He becomes much more secular and is thought he never abandons his religious worldviews but no longer does he believe that God is eminent, that God can enter and transform the affairs of the world. Looking back, you know, Garrison dies in 1879. Looking back then in 1879, how Douglass was able to discover. In 1879, Douglass viewed the struggle as this extraordinary success. He was already more secular and because he's more secular, he's now accepting more gradual means to fulfill what he and others had set out to achieve in the war itself, meaning equality under the law.

There's also a huge difference in Douglass's attitude because after the war, Douglass has the Constitution totally on his side with the reconstruction amendments. The Constitution now abolishes slavery everywhere. The Constitution now guarantees citizenship for all persons and the Constitution also guarantees equality under the law and gives the suffrage to black men. And so Douglass becomes a Republican insider, whereas before the war, he's a prudent revolutionary. Now he is a Republican insider, an elder statesman, so to speak. Douglass is the first politician, I'm sorry, Douglass is the first black man to receive a federal appointment that requires Senate approval when he becomes the marshal of the District of Columbia and then the recorder of deeds.

Douglass ultimately becomes the minister of the equivalent of the ambassador to Haiti, first black man to hold such an office. And Douglass never abandons his faith in the Republican Party as the last best hope for blacks, even though he understands the shortfall. What Douglass and many other abolitionists had realized is the costs of their mediatist apocalyptic millennialist vision, that it might be better off if we embrace gradual means without the bloodshed, without the chaos, that ultimately will achieve our aim and will do so without the cost, do so more successfully. And after all, if you no longer believe that God is here and now in real and can transform time and can transform society like that, then you better have faith in linear progress.

Can I get you just to redo the change in his religious views again? Frederick Douglass, after the Civil War, has a profound shift in his religious views while before the war he saw himself as a prophet believe that God could intervene in the affairs of the world was here and now and could transform society like that. After the war, in a sense Douglass asked the question with the apocalypse, Douglass asked the question with the Civil War, the apocalypse has come, where is the new age? Where is this thousand year reign of peace and harmony?

Well, it's not there. Douglass, like so many other reformers in essence, have a crisis of faith, a crisis of conscience, and Douglass becomes more secular. It's not as though he abandoned God, but no longer can God enter into and affect the affairs of the world, no longer can God transform society immediately. In fact, Douglass increasingly chastises or criticizes blacks who place all their faith in God and in God's presence in reality in this world and says, listen, that's not going to happen and you better have faith in traditional notions of progress. I could also say that's one of the reasons that led Garrison to end the liberator.

That same sort of understanding that the emancipation is the apocalypse that will bring about the new age is one of the important factors that leads Garrison to end publication of his liberator. I mean, after all, Garrison understands that there's still a lot of work to do, but with emancipation with the 13th Amendment having been passed for Garrison for most abolitionists, this new age of peace and harmony is at hand. It will be inevitable. We no longer need the liberator. We are successful. We have fulfilled God's work or worked to fulfill, acted out God's will. The rest will be inevitable. We have entered into this new age of peace and harmony. And when it's not here next year or the following year, they understand that we need to be patient. We need to wait. And we should no longer try to intervene or embrace the kind of militant or immediate actions that we have because look at what happened during the Civil War.

We are in this period of profound progress and it will come about. And it's very quick. I just want to do the first section. So why was it custom to separate children from the mother? I'm trying to get at the idea of Douglass. Not being able to trust anyone, but he, not even its effect on him, but why would be a custom other than productivity? There is a pattern of not letting slaves know their birthdays, of not letting them know their mothers. There is a psychological goal. The reason that Douglass, well let me back up. When Douglass was a little boy on the Lloyd plantation for the first five years or so of his life, he characterized as a kind of wild freedom.

He was living with his grandmother. There was a tradition on the plantations such that slave children until the age of five or so lived with their grandparents or lived with an older woman. That was in part because the mother who was younger, they wanted to be put to work. Their masters wanted to put them to work in the field. They wanted to instill in the slaves early on that they were commodities, that they were not people, that they were things not humans. So they would never know their birthday. They would never really know their mother. Their function and purpose in life was an extension of the will of the master. That's what the masters wanted. So Douglass never really knew his mother at all. He lives with his grandmother for the first five years of his life.

He doesn't have to do any work because he's a little child. His grandmother at the request of his master, one day, drops him off at Y House, the big house, and then abandons him leaves. That was standard. That was Douglass's introduction to slavery. In one sense, you could say that that was Douglass being cast out of his little garden of Eden. And it was a way to emphasize even to slave children that you have no will, that you have no rights, that you have no autonomy. You are an extension of the master's will. And it horrified Douglass. He was traumatized by the one person who he had could trust in his life, abandoning him. He had siblings around him. He had cousins around him. He didn't know them. And suddenly he enters this hell for him. It's a truly a hell that he then struggles for years and years to climb himself out from. I just wanted to more questions. Why do you think Lucretia also, and why, why does Lucretia, and her husband, Thomas, all send Douglass,

to be the playmate of Tommy Ald in Baltimore? It could be because Thomas Ald was Douglass's father, and he wanted to protect his son, his slave son, and knew that Douglass would be better off in Baltimore. And the Douglass never knew who his father was. He thought it might be his master, and one speech later in life, Douglass thought, publicly he said that he thought that Thomas Ald was his father. So that would help explain why he was sent to Baltimore, which was far better place for a slave to be. And another reason would be that even if Douglass weren't the son of Thomas Ald, he was probably the son of someone that they knew very well,

because the circles on the Lloyd plantation were very tight-knit. He was definitely the son of someone that Lucretia and Thomas knew if it weren't Thomas. And so given that he's not only a slave, he's part of our larger family, we should take care of him. You want to hold for once that's good? Oh, yeah, yeah, stop walking here. You didn't think it covered. It was very thorough job there, just to go with anything. No, that's, if you wanted to do anything over again, I could do that too. That's good. So we just need to see if it's gone for 15 seconds.

Okay, that's good. Thank you.