Frederick Douglass, “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress”-gctid46928

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(1857) Frederick Douglass, "If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress"

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On  August 3, 1857, Frederick Douglass delivered a "West India  Emancipation" speech at Canandaigua, New York, on the twenty-third  anniversary of the event. Most of the address was a history of British  efforts toward emancipation as well as a reminder of the crucial role of  the West Indian slaves in that own freedom struggle. However shortly  after he began Douglass sounded a foretelling of the coming Civil War  when he uttered two paragraphs that became the most quoted sentences of  all of his public orations. They began with the words, "If there is no  struggle, there is no progress." The entire speech appears below.

The general sentiment of mankind is that a man who will not fight for  himself, when he has the means of doing so, is not worth being fought  for by others, and this sentiment is just. For a man who does not value  freedom for himself will never value it for others, or put himself to  any inconvenience to gain it for others. Such a man, the world says, may  lie down until he has sense enough to stand up. It is useless and cruel  to put a man on his legs, if the next moment his head is to be brought  against a curbstone.

A man of that type will never lay the world under any obligation to him,  but will be a moral pauper, a drag on the wheels of society, and if he  too be identified with a peculiar variety of the race he will entail  disgrace upon his race as well as upon himself. The world in which we  live is very accommodating to all sorts of people. It will cooperate  with them in any measure which they propose; it will help those who  earnestly help themselves, and will hinder those who hinder themselves.  It is very polite, and never offers its services unasked. Its favors to  individuals are measured by an unerring principle in this—viz., respect  those who respect themselves, and despise those who despise themselves.  It is not within the power of unaided human nature to persevere in  pitying a people who are insensible to their own wrongs and indifferent  to the attainment of their own rights. The poet was as true to common  sense as to poetry when he said,

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.

When O'Connell, with all Ireland at his back, was supposed to be  contending for the just rights and liberties of Ireland, the sympathies  of mankind were with him, and even his enemies were compelled to respect  his patriotism. Kossuth, fighting for Hungary with his pen long after  she had fallen by the sword, commanded the sympathy and support of the  liberal world till his own hopes died out. The Turks, while they fought  bravely for themselves and scourged and drove back the invading legions  of Russia, shared the admiration of mankind. They were standing up for  their own rights against an arrogant and powerful enemy; but as soon as  they let out their fighting to the Allies, admiration gave way to  contempt. These are not the maxims and teachings of a coldhearted world.  Christianity itself teaches that man shall provide for his own house.  This covers the whole ground of nations as well as individuals. Nations  no more than individuals can innocently be improvident. They should  provide for all wants—mental, moral and religious—and against all evils  to which they are liable as nations. In the great struggle now  progressing for the freedom and elevation of our people, we should be  found at work with all our might, resolved that no man or set of men  shall be more abundant in labors, according to the measure of our  ability, than ourselves.

I know, my friends, that in some quarters the efforts of colored people  meet with very little encouragement. We may fight, but we must fight  like the Sepoys of India, under white officers. This class of  Abolitionists don't like colored celebrations, they don't like colored  conventions, they don't like colored antislavery fairs for the support  of colored newspapers. They don't like any demonstrations whatever in  which colored men take a leading part. They talk of the proud  Anglo-Saxon blood as flippantly as those who profess to believe in the  natural inferiority of races. Your humble speaker has been branded as an  ingrate, because he has ventured to stand up on his own and to plead  our common cause as a colored man, rather than as a Garrisonian. I hold  it to be no part of gratitude to allow our white friends to do all the  work, while we merely hold their coats. Opposition of the sort now  referred to is partisan position, and we need not mind it. The white  people at large will not largely be influenced by it. They will see and  appreciate all honest efforts on our part to improve our condition as a  people.

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of  the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to  her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has  been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting  all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If  there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor  freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without  plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning.  They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it  may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power  concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find  out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out  the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon  them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words  or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the  endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas,  Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so  long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance,  either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this  world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free  from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their  removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if  needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

Hence, my friends, every mother who, like Margaret Garner, plunges a  knife into the bosom of her infant to save it from the hell of our  Christian slavery, should be held and honored as a benefactress. Every  fugitive from slavery who, like the noble William Thomas at Wilkes  Barre, prefers to perish in a river made red by his own blood to  submission to the hell hounds who were hunting and shooting him should  be esteemed as a glorious martyr, worthy to be held in grateful memory  by our people. The fugitive Horace, at Mechanicsburgh, Ohio, the other  day, who taught the slave catchers from Kentucky that it was safer to  arrest white men than to arrest him, did a most excellent service to our  cause. Parker and his noble band of fifteen at Christiana, who defended  themselves from the kidnappers with prayers and pistols, are entitled  to the honor of making the first successful resistance to the Fugitive  Slave Bill. But for that resistance, and the rescue of Jerry and  Shadrack, the man hunters would have hunted our hills and valleys here  with the same freedom with which they now hunt their own dismal swamps.

There was an important lesson in the conduct of that noble Krooman in  New York the other day, who, supposing that the American Christians were  about to enslave him, betook himself to the masthead and with knife in  hand said he would cut his throat before he would be made a slave.  Joseph Cinque, on the deck of the Amistad, did that which should make  his name dear to us. He bore nature's burning protest against slavery.  Madison Washington who struck down his oppressor on the deck of the  Creole, is more worthy to be remembered than the colored man who shot  Pitcairn at Bunker Hill.

My friends, you will observe that I have taken a wide range, and you  think it is about time that I should answer the special objection to  this celebration. I think so too. This, then, is the truth concerning  the inauguration of freedom in the British West Indies. Abolition was  the act of the British government. The motive which led the government  to act no doubt was mainly a philanthropic one, entitled to our highest  admiration and gratitude. The national religion, the justice and  humanity cried out in thunderous indignation against the foul  abomination, and the government yielded to the storm. Nevertheless a  share of the credit of the result falls justly to the slaves themselves.  "Though slaves, they were rebellious slaves." They bore themselves  well. They did not hug their chains, but according to their  opportunities, swelled the general protest against oppression. What  Wilberforce was endeavoring to win from the British senate by his magic  eloquence the slaves themselves were endeavoring to gain by outbreaks  and violence. The combined action of one and the other wrought out the  final result. While one showed that slavery was wrong, the other showed  that it was dangerous as well as wrong. Mr. Wilberforce, peace man  though he was, and a model of piety, availed himself of this element to  strengthen his case before the British Parliament, and warned the  British government of the danger of continuing slavery in the West  Indies. There is no doubt that the fear of the consequences, acting with  a sense of the moral evil of slavery, led to its abolition. The spirit  of freedom was abroad in the Islands. Insurrection for freedom kept the  planters in a constant state of alarm and trepidation. A standing army  was necessary to keep the slaves in their chains. This state of facts  could not be without weight in deciding the question of freedom in these  countries.

I am aware that the rebellious disposition of the slaves was said to  arise out of the discussion which the Abolitionists were carrying on at  home, and it is not necessary to refute this alleged explanation. All  that I contend for is this: that the slaves of the West Indies did fight  for their freedom, and that the fact of their discontent was known in  England, and that it assisted in bringing about that state of public  opinion which finally resulted in their emancipation. And if this be  true, the objection is answered.

Again, I am aware that the insurrectionary movements of the slaves were  held by many to be prejudicial to their cause. This is said now of such  movements at the South. The answer is that abolition followed close on  the heels of insurrection in the West Indies, and Virginia was never  nearer emancipation than when General Turner kindled the fires of  insurrection at Southampton.

Sir, I have now more than filled up the measure of my time. I thank you  for the patient attention given to what I have had to say. I have aimed,  as I said at the beginning, to express a few thoughts having some  relation to the great interest of freedom both in this country and in  the British West Indies, and I have said all that I mean to say, and the  time will not permit me to say more.   Sources:
  Frederick Douglass, Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass... (Rochester, 1857).