Skip to main content

New top story from Time: Why We Must Hear the Warning in Frederick Douglass’ ‘Sources of Danger to the Republic’ Today

https://ift.tt/3i5VDCu

On Jan. 3, 1867, nearly two years after the end of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass stood before a full house of hundreds of African Americans at Philadelphia’s National Hall. He had been invited to speak in a Black lecture series organized by William Still, famous for his work on the Underground Railroad. As recounted by the Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, the celebrated African American singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield performed several arias before Douglass’s introduction. Douglass then took the stage to speak on the “Sources of Danger to the Republic.” The Telegraph reported that he “was frequently interrupted by applause, and evidently made the best effort of his life.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“Sources of Danger to the Republic” is indeed one of Douglass’s greatest speeches, and it deserves to be better known for its ruminations on the precarious state of democracy in post-Civil War America. Douglass delivered the speech in the midst of the battle over civil rights for Black people, addressing the threat posed to the nation by a racist President who refused to give them the full rights of citizenship. Douglass’s warning about antidemocratic authoritarianism during the early years of Reconstruction resonates in our own time as well.

The “Sources of Danger” speech was prompted by the reactionary policies of Andrew Johnson, who assumed the presidency on April 15, 1865, after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Shortly after taking office, Johnson pardoned former Confederate leaders, and over the four years of his presidency he vetoed all legislation that sought to expand the rights of African Americans. (Many of those vetoes were overturned by the Radical Republicans and their allies.) In particular, Johnson opposed measures that granted African Americans the right to vote. His reactionary policies contributed to massacres of Black people in Memphis and New Orleans during the spring and summer of 1866. Appalled by the killing of over 100 Black people in those cities, Douglass linked the murders to the disempowerment promoted by Johnson. “Disenfranchisement means New Orleans; it means Memphis,” he said. In this way Douglass called attention to the always simmering possibilities for violence that accompanied the suppression of voting rights.

But Douglass was also angry at the Radical Republicans, who claimed to support African Americans, but attempted to stop Douglass from attending a public meeting of Republicans in September 1866 because they didn’t want their party to be perceived as “Black.” Douglass was also distraught that the Republicans’ proposed Fourteenth Amendment, which gave Blacks birthright citizenship, failed to include the right to vote. Without the vote, Douglass bitterly remarked, “my citizenship is but an empty name.”

Convinced that Reconstruction was at a crossroads, Douglass composed “Sources of Danger to the Republic” during late 1866 and gave its first full presentation in January 1867 to the Black lecture series in Philadelphia. In all versions of the speech, Douglass asked: What happens when a “bad man,” as he termed Andrew Johnson, occupies the White House? Douglass knew that Johnson was hardly the first “bad man” to assume the presidency and would not be the last. Before the packed house at National Hall, Douglass made a surprising claim: the principle source of danger to the Republic was the Constitution itself, which, by failing to put a significant check on executive power, “put the liberties of the American people at the mercy of a bad and wicked President and his Cabinet.”

Read more: The History of Frederick Douglass’ Searing Independence Day Oration

Douglass admired the U.S. Constitution, regularly calling it a “liberty document.” But it had “defects and errors,” he claimed, because the framers mistakenly invested the President with “kingly powers.” Key to Douglass’s speech was his elaboration of exactly how the Constitution enabled a President to thwart democracy.

Douglass objected, first of all, to the “immense patronage” that the Constitution put at the President’s disposal—hundreds of millions of dollars that he could use to appoint someone to a government job “because of his political opinions, not for any fitness for the position.” Patronage power was potentially corrupting, both of the President and his appointees, Douglass explained, for “it holds out a temptation to a man to agree with the President, not because of the wisdom and justice of his position, but because in that way he can get something in exchange for his soul.”

Second, Douglass objected to the Constitution’s conception of a presidential veto that could only be overturned by a two-thirds vote of Congress. Placing so much power in the hands of the President, he insisted, undercut the democratic spirit of Congress. In a similar vein, he argued that the presidency should be a single-term position. Under the current system, he remarked, the President “is partly President, and partly chief of the Presidential party.” For that reason, the President will always be tempted to serve himself more than the country.

Third, Douglass took special exception to the President’s pardoning power. The framers’ decision to make the President the sole arbiter on federal pardons in effect gave the President “a coin with which to traffic in treason.” Knowing that he could pardon anyone serving his interests, the President could use that power to gain “co-operation and alliance, instead of loyal obedience to the laws of the land.” Douglass summed up the problem: “A Government that cannot hate traitors, cannot love and respect loyal men.”

Douglass believed that the defects in the Constitution could be fixed through amendments that cut back on patronage, limited the pardoning power, changed the votes needed to overturn a presidential veto, made the presidency a one-term position and got rid of the vice-presidency (the office that enabled Johnson’s presidency). “Laughter and cheers,” according to the reporter for the Telegraph, greeted Douglass’s remark that “we have had back luck with Vice-Presidents.”

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

Douglass despised Johnson. But even more crucial to “Sources of Danger” was his concern that Americans risked losing that which they most valued: “democracy in its purity.” For Douglass, democracy was about voting rights. Making clear that the lack of Black suffrage had much to do with Johnson, but was not exclusively Johnson’s fault, Douglass proclaimed: “The fact is that the ballot-box, upon which we have relied as a protection from the passions of the multitude, has failed us, broken down under us.” Most Black people in America, whether in the North or South, simply didn’t have the right to vote. In his speech at National Hall, Douglass called on Black people to “hate as you love,” extolling anger as a way to create community and prompt political action. One month later, when he gave a slightly revised version of the speech to a white audience in St. Louis, Douglass concluded quite differently, telling the whites in attendance that “this matter of Reconstruction” can be left to the “constructive talent of this Anglo-Saxon race.” He continued to deliver versions of “Sources of Danger” through 1867; it was one of his most popular speeches.

With the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, giving Black men the right to vote, Douglass got what he wanted, but by the late 1870s Black people found it nearly impossible to vote in the South. Douglass anticipated these problems in “Sources of Danger” when he instructed Johnson and other white racists: “Drive no man from the ballot-box because of his color.” Douglass’s speech inspired people in 1867 and has much to say to us today, not just about the dangers posed by executive power, whether of Presidents or governors, but about what it means for the character of the nation to restrict the voting rights of African Americans and other people of color. The speech is a prophetic warning from the past about how the powerful can use the tools of power to shut down democracy. Just as important, it advocates resistance in order to preserve what Douglass termed “our beautiful republican institutions.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India records 43,082 new Covid-19 cases, 492 deaths in a day; tally breaches 93 lakh-mark https://ift.tt/3mdvWjd

India on Friday reported 43,082 new coronavirus cases and 492 deaths, taking total number of cases in the country to 93 lakh. According to the Union Health Ministry data, there are currently 4 lakh active cases across the country, while over 87 lakh patients have been discharged.

How Muni is Tackling the 10 Worst Delay Hot Spots Across SF

How Muni is Tackling the 10 Worst Delay Hot Spots Across SF By Cassie Halls The SFMTA has had its fair share of ribbon-cutting ceremonies  over the last two years. These celebrations draw attention to some of our biggest projects. Also attention-worthy are some of the more incremental efforts happening at the agency. One such effort led by the Muni Forward team is the Transit Delay Hot Spots Program , launched in February 2020 . Muni Forward is known for corridor projects such as the L Taraval Improvement Project , 16 th Street Improvement Project , and M Oceanview Transit and Safety Project . These efforts are increasing the already sizeable 80 miles of transit reliability upgrades since 2014. There are also other ways we’re working to slash travel times and improve reliability across the Muni network. The Transit Delay Hot Spots Program aims to tackle the 10 worst “delay hot spots” each year, where buses crawl between stops at four miles an hour or less. We’re looking cl...

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager By Jeremy Menzies In recognition of Black History Month, we bring you the story of Gene Henderson, the first Black man to become the head of a Muni bus division, Muni’s Kirkland Division. Henderson’s Background Gene Henderson was born in Houston, Texas, in 1916. He married his wife Naomi in 1939 and then served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the war, Gene and his family moved to San Francisco where he began his career at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Early Career On February 1, 1946, Henderson was hired as a streetcar motorman out of Sutro Division, which was located on the corner of 32nd Ave. and Clement St. He was hired just five years after Muni’s first Black transit operator, Audley Cole, had successfully fought to integrate the carmen’s union in 1941. In his early days at Muni, Gene worked one of the three lines running out of Sutro Division from the Ferry Building to the Richmond District o...

SFMTA’s Cable Car Signal Tower Gets a Refresh

SFMTA’s Cable Car Signal Tower Gets a Refresh By Jeremy Menzies At the corner of California and Powell Streets stands a diminutive but important building that has been in use for well over 100 years. This octagonal signal tower controls the crossing of the Powell and California Street cable car lines, and recently underwent a full restoration thanks to the skilled craftspeople at the Cable Car Division. A group photo of Muni craftspeople and shop management who worked to restore the signal tower in 2020-2021. The tower’s history dates to 1888 when the original was built by the Ferries and Cliff House Railroad, which operated cable cars on Powell Street at the time. That tower was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fires that ravaged Nob Hill. In March 1907, it was rebuilt by then-owner United Railroads of San Francisco (URR) and went back into operation. Photo showing signal tower in 1908 with the Fairmont Hotel and passengers waiting for a cable car in the background. Photo c...

PM Modi extends birthday wishes to Sonia Gandhi https://ift.tt/3lYD7eu

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday extended birthday greetings to Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi. Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Modi said, "Birthday greetings to Smt. Sonia Gandhi Ji. May God bless her with a long and healthy life."

New top story from Time: ‘We’re Nowhere Close to the Deal’. Coronavirus Aid Package Talks Break Down as Trump Rejects Help for Cities

https://ift.tt/3098lHW WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday dismissed Democratic demands for aid to cash-strapped cities in a new coronavirus relief package and lashed out at Republican allies as talks stalemated over assistance for millions of Americans. Another lawmaker tested positive for the virus. Republicans, beset by delays and infighting, signaled a willingness to swiftly approve a modest package to revamp a $600 weekly unemployment benefit that’s running out. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., roundly rejected that approach as meager, all but forcing Republicans back to the negotiating table. Without action, the aid expires Friday. “We’re nowhere close to the deal,” said White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. He said they’re “miles apart.” Stark differences remain between the $3 trillion proposal from Democrats and $1 trillion counter from Republicans, a standoff that is testing Trump and Congress ahead of the November election and putting...

New top story from Time: U.S. Agents to Pull Back in Portland But Will Remain on Standby

https://ift.tt/3gclOEH (PORTLAND, Ore.) — The Trump administration and Oregon leaders declared victory after it was announced that U.S. agents guarding a federal courthouse during violent demonstrations in Portland will pull back, but it wasn’t clear the agreement will reduce tensions that have led to more than two months of protests. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said Wednesday agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will begin leaving the city’s downtown area on Thursday, but Acting Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf wouldn’t specify where they would go. He insisted a federal presence would remain in Portland until the Trump administration was assured the agreement was working and the Oregon State Police was sufficiently protecting federal property. Many demonstrators are peaceful, but smaller numbers have thrown fireworks, flares, rocks and ball bearings at federal agents, used green lasers to blind them ...

Hop Onboard Muni and Enjoy Downtown Union Square

Hop Onboard Muni and Enjoy Downtown Union Square By Pamela Johnson The iconic Cable Cars are just one of the many options to get you to all the holiday festivities in Downtown Union Square! The SFMTA would like to wish you a Happy Holidays! With festivities, dining, shopping and all the many holiday activities to choose from, Downtown Union Square, much like the rest of the city is making optimistic strides in the city’s economic recovery. Catching Muni, paratransit or a taxi to downtown supports small businesses and is a big boost to our transit goals. Below is a comprehensive list of transit and parking options to head into the heart of the downtown shopping and festivities this holiday season.    Central Subway Special Weekend Shuttle  The Central Subway’s Special Weekend Shuttle has got you covered on Saturday and Sunday’s every 12 minutes from 8 am to 12 am. Deboard at our new Union Square/Market Street Station . From here, you can also transfer to BART’s Po...

Improving Safety on 16th Street

Improving Safety on 16th Street By John Gravener Construction on Phase 2 of the 16th Street Improvement Project began May 9, 2022. 16th Street is part of the city’s High Injury Network , where 75% of the city’s severe and fatal traffic incidents occur on just 12% of the city’s streets. This project, in addition to improving reliability of the 22 Fillmore line, has several pedestrian safety features that will make 16th Street a safer place for all modes of transportation. For people who walk on 16th Street: One of these safety elements is the installation of 2 new pedestrian bulbs at Guerrero Street and South Van Ness Avenue. These bulbs shorten the crossing distance between the corners of an intersection and make people who are about to cross the street more visible to drivers. The bulbs also require vehicles to slow down when making right-hand turns. High-visibility crosswalks will be installed. These make it easier for people driving to see people crossing the street, and als...

Smarter Traffic Signals Prioritize Transit and People

Smarter Traffic Signals Prioritize Transit and People By Robert Lim Have you ever wondered how traffic signals could better balance the needs of all road users, whether driving, bicycling, walking or taking Muni? The SFMTA is rolling out its Connected Corridor Pilot this month to use transit platform and traffic signal sensor data to inform signal timing adjustments. The pilot also aims to collect information to support transit efficiency and street safety improvements.  Traffic engineers use signal timing adjustments as a tool to prioritize the flow of travel in specific directions or for different travel modes – Muni, people walking or driving – to meet the changing demands of the road network across different timepoints in a day. The Connected Corridors Pilot seeks to push the envelope of innovation by investing in advanced technologies, funded through a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) grant. These tools will better position the city to serve the potential future ne...