Letter from Frederick Douglass to Charles Sumner, April 8, 1862
Letter to Hon. Charles Sumner
[In early 1862,] Congress was debating a bill calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, with compensation to slaveholders. The measure encountered bitter opposition from slaveholders and their sympathizers. "Senators," cried Senator Saulsbury of Delaware, "abandon now, at once and forever, your schemes of wild philanthropy and universal emancipation; proclaim to the people of this whole country everywhere that you mean to preserve the Union as established by the fathers of the Republic, and the rights of the people as secured by the Constitution they helped to frame, and your Union can never be destroyed; but go on with your wild schemes of emancipation, throw doubt and suspicion upon every man simply because he fails to look at your questions of wild philanthropy as you do, and the God of heaven only knows, after wading through scenes before which those of the French revolution `pale their ineffectual fires,' what ultimately may be the result." [187]

But popular pressure for abolition of slavery in the nation's capital was too strong to be diverted by predictions of a reign of terror. On March 30, 1862, Senator Sumner, who with Henry Wilson, the junior Senator from Massachusetts, was most active in pushing the measure, delivered a notable address urging its speedy adoption. "It is the first instalment," he declared, "of the great debt which we will owe to an enslaved race, and will be recognized as one of the victories of humanity." The effect, he predicted, would soon be felt throughout the South. "What God and nature decree, rebellion cannot arrest," he concluded. [188]

Douglass hastened to send [this] letter of thanks to Sumner for his magnificent address....

On April 3, 1862, the bill passed the Senate. Eight days later it received final approval in the House. On the sixteenth day of April, the President signed the bill outlawing slavery in the nation's capital.

For the first time since the outbreak of the war, Douglass' joy was unbounded. The measure, he informed his readers, was "the first great step towards that righteousness which exalts a nation." He called for hosannahs: "Let high swelling anthems (such as tuned the voice and thrilled the heart of ancient Israel, when they shouted to heaven the glad tidings of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage) now roll along the earth and sky...." [189] [III:21 -- 22]

TO HON. CHARLES SUMNER

Rochester, April 8th, 1862.

My Dear Sir:

I want only a moment of your time to give you my thanks for your speech in the Senate on the Bill for the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia. I
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trust I am not dreaming but the events taking place seem like a dream. If Slavery is really dead in the District of Columbia, and merely waiting for the ceremony of "Dust to dust," by the president, to you, more than to any other American statesman, belongs the honor of this great triumph of Justice, Liberty and Sound Policy. I rejoice for my freed brothers, and Sir, I rejoice for you. You have lived to strike down in Washington, the power which lifted the bludgeon against your own free voice. I take nothing from the good and brave men who have cooperated with you. There is, or ought to be, a head to every body, and whether you will or not, the Slaveholder and the Slave look to you as the best embodiment of the Anti-Slavery idea now in the counsels of the Nation. May God sustain you. This is my prayer for you and all the good men who surround you. I am Dear Sir, Truly and gratefully yours,

Frederick Douglass

Charles Sumner Papers, Harvard University

Notes

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Note from page 493: 187 Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Boston and New York, 1877, vol. III, p. 276.

Note from page 493: 188 Ibid., p. 274.

Note from page 493: 189 Douglass' Monthly, May, 1862.