On February 7, 1866 Frederick Douglass led a delegation of 13 representatives of the National Convention of Colored Men to the White House to meet with President Andrew Johnson. A report of that meeting appears in The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Douglass and his colleagues hoped that Johnson would endorse extending the vote to blacks. Douglass said:
Mr. President, we are not here to enlighten you, sir, as to your duties as the Chief Magistrate of this Republic, but to show our respect, and to present in brief the claims of our race to your favorable consideration. In the order of Divine Providence you are placed in a position where you have the power to save or destroy us, to bless or blast us. I mean our whole race. Your noble and humane predecessor placed in our hands the sword to assist in saving the nation, and we do hope that you, his able successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballot with which to save ourselves. We shall submit no argument on that point. The fact that we are the subjects of Government, and subject to taxation, subject to volunteer in the service of the country, subject to being drafted, subject to bear the burdens of the State, makes it not improper that we should ask to share in the privileges of this condition.
Johnson responded that giving the black man the vote would ignite a race war:
If I know myself, and the feelings of my own heart, they have been for the colored man. I have owned slaves and bought slaves, but I never sold one. I might say, however, that practically, so far as my connection with slaves has gone, I have been their slave instead of their being mine. Some have even followed me here, while others are occupying and enjoying my property with my consent. For the colored race my means, my time, my all has been perilled; and now at this late day, after giving evidence that is tangible, that is practical, I am free to say to you that I do not like to be arraigned by some who can get up handsomely rounded periods and deal in rhetoric, and talk about abstract ideas of liberty, who never perilled life, liberty, or property. This kind of theoretical, hollow, unpractical friendship amounts to but very little. While I say that I am a friend of the colored man, I do not want to adopt a policy that I believe will end in a contest between the races, which if persisted in will result in the extermination of one or the other. God forbid that I should be engaged in such a work!
Johnson argued that non-slaveholding whites in the South had come to hate blacks because, as slaves. they had given planters a monopoly on power in the South. He said that blacks had contempt for poor whites, a charge Douglass denied. Then Johnson said that blacks status had improved greatly through Emancipation while Southern whites had seen their situation decline:
Now, we are talking about where we are going to begin. We have got at the hate that existed between the two races. The query comes up whether these two races, situated as they were before, without preparation, without time for passion and excitement to be appeased, and without time for the slightest improvement, whether the one should be turned loose upon the other, and be thrown together at the ballot-box with this enmity and hate existing betweenthem. The query comes up right there, whether we don’t commence a war of races. I think I understand this thing, and especially is this the case when you force it upon a people without their consent. You have spoken about government. Where is power derived from? We say it is derived from the people. Let us take it so and refer to the District of Columbia by way of illustration. Suppose, for instance, here, in this political community, which, to a certain extent must have government, must have laws, and putting it now upon the broadest basis you can put it—take into consideration the relation which the white has heretofore borne to the colored race—is it proper to force upon this community, without their consent, the elective franchise, without regard to color, making it universal?
Johnson said that only the white legislatures of the Southern states could properly grant blacks the vote.
I might go down here to the ballot-box to-morrow and vote directly for universal suffrage; but if a great majority of the people said no, I should consider it would be tyrannical in me to attempt to force such upon them without their will. It is a fundamental tenet in my creed that the will of the people must be obeyed. Is there anything wrong or unfair in that?
Mr. Douglass (smiling.) A great deal that is wrong, Mr. President, with all respect.
The President. It is the people of the States that must for themselves determine this thing. I do not want to be engaged in a work that will commence a war of races.
At the conclusion of the discussion Douglass made this famous reply:
Mr. Douglass. If the President will allow me, I would like to say one or two words in reply. You enfranchise your enemies and disfranchise your friends.
See: Reconstruction: Voices from America’s First Great Struggle for Racial Equality (LOA #303) (The Library of America) . Library of America. Kindle Edition.
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This article is not only fascinating but shows precedent. Johnson used a vastly slippery slope argument to avoid taking a logical step while Douglass seemed to state the logical argument for enfranchisement gracefully . Johnson presumed to know the feelings of free Black’s vs. Whites without citation. They were hardly able to afford a war with anyone. Johnson convinced many he was a friend to the Negro which is why Douglass replied ” you enfranchise your enemies and disenfranchise your friends.” One could argue the kind of President Johnson was is what hinders American progress today.
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Wow! We either live or die by history. In reading this I can surmise that it was Andrew Johnson that laid the groundwork for the problems into the 1900’s and beyond that we have had. I was born in Nebraska in 1961 and remember the problems this nation had in 1968 and my mom telling me, “don’t worry, that’s why we live in Lincoln Nebraska to stay away from all that” she meant the marches and the murders of King and Kennedy. Abe Lincoln died too Soon! His thought and learning process was exactly what we needed as a nation. Then the unfortunate stumble was Andrew Johnson. It was his blatant misunderstanding of what Lincoln was trying to do that led us into the problems we have had over the last 100 years.