Collaborating with White Abolitionists during the Pre–Civil War Era

Northern African Americans’ relationship with white abolitionists was inherently problematic. Their perspectives on slavery differed substantially: for white immediatists, the destruction of slavery was a matter of restoring America’s moral vision; for blacks, it was much more personal, given that, in many instances, members of their families were still held in bondage.4 Moreover, white abolitionists had never been forced to endure caste oppression based on their skin color. Equally important, because many abolitionists believed that African Americans needed their benevolent guidance in order to be elevated, white abolitionists at times appeared paternalistic and overbearing. Worse still, an unconscious sense of white superiority sometimes surfaced.5

The Colored American, a black newspaper published in New York City, expressed the growing discontent among blacks when it asserted in 1839 that “as long as we will bow to their opinion, and acknowledge that their word is counsel, so long they will outwardly treat us as men, while in their hearts they still hold us as slaves.” In fact, northern blacks were substantially underrepresented in leadership positions in antislavery societies, and many white abolitionists emphasized the defense of white civil liberties, while a growing number of Garrisonians—a heterogeneous group of radical abolitionists aligned with William Lloyd Garrison—came to focus increasingly on women’s rights, religious perfectionism, nonresistance, and disunionism more than agitation against racial discrimination. As their white allies grew more reluctant to defy prevailing racial customs—especially in the wake of antiabolitionist riots in the mid-1830s that, indeed, particularly targeted African Americans—northern blacks began to reassess their role in the antislavery movement and, above all, to question the white abolitionists’ prerogative to speak for them.6 The mounting friction between black and white abolitionists was exacerbated in the 1840s by a number of highly publicized disagreements, including the Garrisonians’ sharp criticism of Henry Highland Garnet for arguing that slaves were justified in using violence to gain their freedom and Frederick Douglass’s break with Garrison over the merits of political action and the nature of the Constitution.7

Although they were frustrated, and at times angered, by their white allies’ paternalism, prejudice, and priorities, many black leaders were reluctant to abandon their interracial collaboration. During the 1830s, the American Moral Reform Society spurned distinctions based on color; likewise, William Cooper Nell and other black activists in Boston condemned separatism and labored alongside antislavery whites in numerous organizations directed toward self-improvement. Moreover, while Frederick Douglass considered separate black institutions necessary in some instances, he nevertheless insisted that, in the final analysis, they were merely temporary expedients. By claiming such cultural values as uplift, respectability, republicanism, individual success, and civilization as their own and by insisting that they were Americans by birth and action, Douglass and other like-minded African American leaders underscored their American identity and hoped to be accepted as full-fledged citizens by persuading whites to live up to their stated ideals.8

Nevertheless, as blacks collaborated with whites and wrestled with the question of how they could best achieve their objectives of equal rights, respectful treatment, and opportunity in a white-dominated society, a strong undercurrent of race pride and consciousness developed. Many African Americans concluded that they must take the initiative in shaping the tactics, strategy, and ideology of the movement for rights and freedom. This sentiment was clearly reflected in a black conference’s proclamation of 1854: “Our relations to the Anti-Slavery movement must be and are changed. Instead of depending upon it we must lead it.”9

During the 1840s, a new generation of black leaders, such as Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, George B. Vashon, and Martin Delany, urged the black community to act in concert to define the terms of their future as Americans. These young men brought fresh leadership and organizational skills to the cause of racial justice. Their broad-ranging assault on the pervasive prejudice and discrimination in the North, however, was largely thwarted by hostile white public opinion.10 For example, black males were disfranchised in Pennsylvania in the late 1830s, referenda on black male suffrage were defeated in New York and Connecticut in the 1840s and again in New York on the eve of the Civil War, black children in most northern states continued to be segregated within public schools or excluded from them altogether, and restrictive “Black Laws” were enacted in several northern states in the 1840s and 1850s.11

These setbacks did not deter northern blacks from continuing their agitation for equal rights during the 1850s. They were motivated by their firm conviction that they deserved full citizenship rights and buoyed by the fact that in some parts of the North they indeed enjoyed specific rights, such as access to public accommodations in Cleveland, male suffrage rights in all of New England except Connecticut, and, starting in 1855, admission to racially integrated public schools throughout Massachusetts. Besides this, free blacks could count on the fundamental rights of speech, press, assembly, and petition in most northern states and could use these rights to demand legal equality.12

The 1850s, however, also witnessed a deepening sense of despair and alienation among northern blacks. The decade began with the passage of the Compromise of 1850, which sought to preserve the political balance between the sections and to bury the disputes over slavery. While Congress’s decision to admit California as a free state and to prohibit the slave trade in the District of Columbia represented concessions to the North, a draconian new Fugitive Slave Law, which placed all northern African Americans in jeopardy of being claimed as escaped slaves, seized, and sent into slavery, was intended to appease the South. At least until 1854, many northern and southern politicians, shaken by threats of civil war, desperately sought to avoid debate on the slavery question. Yet growing anti-southern sentiment in the North, fueled in part by anger against the Fugitive Slave Law, prompted southern leaders to pressure President Franklin Pierce and congressional Democrats to open the western territories to slavery. This culminated in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which, by permitting settlers to decide whether slavery would be legal, made it possible for the institution to expand into areas previously declared free by the Missouri Compromise in 1820. This law upset a tenuous political equilibrium, undermined an already weakened two-party system by destroying the Whig Party, and produced the Republican Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories.13

Growing northern fears of a slave power conspiracy were intensified by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857. Written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, this ruling declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress had no authority to legislate the limits of slavery’s expansion. For northern African Americans, the most threatening aspect of the Court’s decision was its gratuitous statement that blacks possessed no rights before the law that whites were obliged to respect. Thus, the Dred Scott decision enshrined white supremacy in American law.14

Both the Fugitive Slave Law and the Dred Scott decision seriously weakened whatever residual faith had existed among northern blacks that they could persuade whites to accept them into the mainstream of American society. African Americans responded to the Fugitive Slave Law by engaging in acts of civil disobedience and, occasionally, violent resistance; creating state organizations to combat this and other oppressive laws; and, most important, supporting emigration.15

During the early 1850s, Martin Delany, a Pittsburgh physician and writer, and other proponents of emigration to Africa went beyond the call for racial solidarity and autonomy by insisting that separate black organizations would not be effective unless they established a black nationality outside of the United States. Later in the decade, Garnet and other founders of the African Civilization Society urged a more selective emigration for the purposes of Christianizing Africa and developing its economic potential.16 Many northern black leaders rejected Delany’s arguments and considered the African Civilization Society a white plot to exile free blacks. Nevertheless, as the dismal prospects of black advancement in a white-dominated society became increasingly apparent, more and more African Americans came to view the emigrationist strategy in a more favorable—yet often ambivalent—light. By the late 1850s, most black activists in fact had moved inexorably toward emigration as their sense of alienation deepened and their desire for self-determination intensified. Even Frederick Douglass, who had long opposed exclusively black organizations, considered visiting Haiti on the eve of the Civil War to survey the prospects for black emigration.17 One month before the Civil War, Robert Hamilton, the editor of the Weekly Anglo-African, a black newspaper in New York City, expressed his feeling of despair when he labeled as “folly” the hope that racial discrimination would eventually disappear in the United States. “The equality for which we have been taught to sigh,” he wrote, “is not attainable here.”18

The Significance of the Emancipation Proclamation

Given such deep-seated pessimism, it is not surprising that, when the Civil War began, northern blacks held out little hope that the conflict would improve race relations. When the northern states refused the services of African Americans who sought to enlist in the Union Army, the African Methodist Episcopal Church spoke for many African Americans when it declared that the war was not about rights or inclusion for blacks but, rather, a contest between rival white political forces on the status of slavery in the territories. For blacks to attempt to enlist in the army, the Christian Recorder, the church’s official organ, asserted a week into the war, would be to “abandon self-respect and invite insult.”19

Yet many African Americans also realized that they must be concerned about the outcome of the war, for a Confederate victory would, at the very least, strengthen the hand of the racist Democratic party. The Weekly Anglo-African, which became known in some northern black circles as the black soldier’s paper, predicted an even more ominous consequence of a northern defeat. “The South must be subjugated,” it pointedly warned, “or we shall be enslaved.” The paper thus urged African Americans to organize military companies and to drill and to exhibit their patriotism by sending clothes and other supplies to the Union soldiers.20

When President Abraham Lincoln set forth the Emancipation Proclamation in late 1862, many northern blacks were ambivalent about its long-term significance. Because the president had been slow to act against slavery during the first eighteen months of the war, they understandably expressed suspicion regarding the motives that underlay its promulgation. For example, Frederick Douglass claimed that the Emancipation Proclamation probably reflected more a hatred of slaveholders than a concern for the welfare of slaves or free blacks, while Robert Hamilton labeled it “simply a war measure” and therefore “per se no more humanitarian than a hundred pounder rifled cannon.” Yet, having expressed their doubts, both Douglass and Hamilton—perhaps to convince themselves and buoy the spirits of other blacks—termed the proclamation “the greatest event in our nation’s history” and “a great and glorious” document.21

Perhaps the most immediate effect of the proclamation on northern blacks was that it provided a basis for their growing optimism that the war might well portend a brighter future for all African Americans. Indeed, by late 1862 the prolonged and often acrimonious debate over how to achieve equal rights—or even whether that struggle was realistic—had begun to diminish in intensity. As the war raged on and slaves escaped to the Union lines in ever larger numbers, Delany, Garnet, and their supporters came to focus more on the war’s potential for ending slavery and less on emigration. The American Civilization Society shifted its attention from Africa to the South at the same time that the African and Haitian emigration efforts collapsed. These developments paved the way for a gradual reconciliation between the emigrationists and their most vocal critics. This reconciliation was manifested most clearly in late 1862, when Garnet agreed to share the platform at Cooper Institute in New York City with such old nemeses as George Thomas Downing, a wealthy Rhode Island restaurant owner and civil rights activist, and Charles Bennett Ray, a New York journalist, educator, and minister. At this time, they were able to set aside their animosity in the name of furthering the larger cause. In his speech to a large and enthusiastic audience, Garnet stated emphatically that a Union victory and the destruction of slavery must be the foremost objectives of African Americans.22

Their growing optimism was rooted above all in the conviction that the enlistment of black males in the Union Army, which the Emancipation Proclamation provided for, would help to usher in an era of racial justice. If these soldiers performed well, the Weekly Anglo-African editorialized, it “will give us a certain force which we have hitherto lacked in our struggle for equality.” By early 1863, various northern black leaders were actively engaged in recruiting African Americans for military service. For example, the Social, Civic, and Statistical Association of the Colored People of Pennsylvania, founded by William Still, a wealthy businessman, veteran abolitionist, and prominent figure in the Underground Railroad, and other Philadelphia black leaders in the late 1850s urged young blacks to enlist in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, as did a mass meeting in New York City attended by Garnet, Douglass, Downing, and other leaders. In addition, the Black Committee, consisting of influential activists such as Garnet, Downing, and Delany, sought to coordinate recruiting on a national scale. At the same time, various African Americans warned leading Republicans that the party must unequivocally endorse these recruiting efforts. The Weekly Anglo-African reflected the sense of urgency among those involved in the recruitment campaign when it urged immediate action in mobilizing a black regiment in every large northern city.23

These recruiting efforts, however, soon experienced serious problems. Most Democrats vigorously opposed the enlistment of black troops, and the deadly draft riots in New York City and other northeastern cities in 1863 tempered the hopes of many blacks that the presence of African Americans in the army presaged a brighter future. In addition, because the pool of potential northern black recruits was relatively small, governors were forced to send Downing, Garnet, and other northern blacks into the South to recruit African Americans.24

Yet it was the systematic discrimination experienced by blacks in the military that most seriously impeded the work of the Black Committee and even led some recruiters to suspend their labor. African Americans felt a profound sense of betrayal, for discrimination by Union officials challenged their rights as citizens at a time when they assumed military service would affirm racial equality. It therefore intensified their awareness that black soldiers would be forced to fight two wars: one against the South and the other against northern discrimination. Downing and other black activists continued to pressure congressional Republicans to provide equal protection and benefits for all soldiers regardless of color. At the same time, black soldiers, who saw this issue as a symbol of the larger struggle for racial justice, vigorously protested the government’s policy. As one Ohio soldier angrily declared, “Give me my rights, the rights that this Government owes me, the rights that the white man has. I would be willing to fight three years for the Government without one cent of the mighty dollar. . . . Now I am fighting for the rights of white men.” Indeed, even if black soldiers had been provided equal benefits, some were unwilling to serve under a wholly white officer corps.25

The editor of the Weekly Anglo-African forcefully and eloquently articulated the tension that existed between northern blacks’ anger at the government’s blatant discrimination and their realization that they must not turn their backs on the war. Citing the “relentless proscription and outrage” that African Americans were subjected to in many northern cities as well as the white Union troops’ “positively horrible” treatment of southern blacks, Robert Hamilton predicted in early 1863 that African Americans might well choose not to enlist. Yet in the very same editorial, he concluded that, if African Americans were not found with rifles on their shoulders at the end of the war, a century might pass before another opportunity arose to claim their fundamental rights.26

This tension goes far to explain why northern blacks remained skeptical of the Republican Party’s commitment to racial justice. In 1863 and 1864, many even questioned how much emancipation would improve their lives. Even though Republicans now controlled the federal government and a growing number of northern state governments, blacks continued to experience widespread discrimination. Thus, they tended to look at equality before the law, economic self-sufficiency, and especially suffrage rights as more likely than emancipation to secure equality. In declaring that emancipation without enfranchisement would be “a partial emancipation unworthy of the name,” the editor of the Weekly Anglo-African underscored the conviction that only the franchise would make northern blacks truly free.27

Yet there was some cause for optimism that African Americans could trust the Republican Party to act on behalf of their interests. With emancipation unfolding across the South and the number of black troops (and casualties) mounting steadily, it became increasingly possible to imagine improved race relations at the end of the war. Likewise, declarations by federal officials such as Attorney General Edward Bates, who eviscerated the Dred Scott decision as it applied to African Americans by affirming that every free person born in the United States was “prima facie a citizen,” encouraged growing numbers of northern blacks to embrace a more hopeful vision of the future.28

This optimism led northern blacks to launch a sustained assault on racial discrimination in 1863 and 1864. One issue that blacks addressed was the right to testify against whites in court. In California, laws passed in the early 1850s barring such testimony were interpreted by some whites as license to abuse blacks without fear of penalty. Unsuccessful in challenging these laws during the 1850s, black Californians pressed their case with renewed energy during the war. With strong support from Unionist legislators, the California legislature, motivated by both humanitarian impulses and antipathy toward pro-southern forces in the state, repealed the testimony laws in 1863.29

San Francisco blacks then used their newly-won right of testimony to challenge the ban against African Americans using one of the major omnibus lines in the city. In 1864, two blacks sued the railroad and won in both the local and district courts; the decision by the Twelfth District Court, which banned the railroad from discriminating against riders on the basis of race, was particularly significant. Although ejections of African Americans from railroad cars continued for two years, this and other court decisions sharply decreased such discrimination by mid-1864.30

Similar protests against segregation in, and expulsion from, public transportation occurred in Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, and other northern cities. In response to being confined to cars that were of inferior quality or being forced to stand in open areas exposed to inclement weather, black men and especially women frequently filed lawsuits against those who physically removed them from whites-only cars (or authorized employees to do so). One of the most successful legal challenges occurred in New York in 1864, after a war widow who sat in a whites-only car was forcibly ejected by a police officer. Her victory in court effectively ended Jim Crow in the city’s transit system—at least on paper. By 1864, Cincinnati also permitted blacks to ride on all of the city’s cars, and lawsuits by black women and men would soon end separate cars in Boston. Black women played an important role in other facets of the equal rights cause. In fact, African American women in both the North and the South were more likely than men to challenge segregation and discrimination in urban transit systems, for public transportation was particularly important to them for access to their jobs, churches, and shops. In resorting to acts of civil disobedience and legal action, these women confronted public officials, transit workers and their employers, the white public, and the courts. Consequently, they were subjected to insults, humiliation, and, at times, physical assaults that resulted in serious injury. Even some black men criticized women who resorted to legal action. Nevertheless, the protests by black women achieved a measure of success in a few northern cities.31

By 1864, northern blacks had also launched assaults on various states’ Black Laws, which generally forbade black testimony in courts, prohibited African Americans from entering a state, denied voting rights, and the like. The most sustained and organized repeal campaign occurred in Illinois, where blacks, led by John Jones, a prominent Chicago businessman and civil rights activist who had been vigorously calling for repeal since the late 1840s, mobilized to pressure the legislature to act in 1863 and 1864. In an 1864 pamphlet Jones acknowledged that some of the discriminatory laws were not well enforced. But he argued emphatically that the restrictions they imposed on blacks were a “living, active reality” and that African Americans were citizens who deserved equal rights. Blacks from across the state presented petitions to the legislature and the governor in 1864, and the Repeal Association of Illinois sent Jones to Springfield to lobby for repeal. Although most Illinois Republicans did not support male suffrage rights or equal access to the public schools for blacks at this time, African Americans’ protest finally succeeded in pressuring the legislature to repeal most of the Black Laws in early 1865.32

The promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation and especially the enlistment of black troops also reinvigorated the drive for black male suffrage rights. Without exception, northern blacks’ demands for voting rights had been rebuffed during the antebellum era. But by 1863, African Americans in New Jersey, Michigan, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and a number of other northern states had begun in earnest to petition their legislatures to strike the word white from the state constitutions and, in New York, to end the property requirement imposed on blacks. Although the suffrage movement made no headway during the Civil War, a Kansas black convention held in 1863 expressed the growing conviction among northern African Americans that the war, as well as changing racial attitudes among Republicans, would eventually enable their cause to prevail. “In the progress of the war, destructive of so many prejudices and fruitful of so many new ideas,” the delegates proclaimed, “it will doubtless be discovered that it is as necessary to make the black man a voter, as it was to make him a soldier. He was made a soldier to RESTORE the Union. He must be made a voter to preserve it.”33

Robert Purvis’s odyssey from despair to hope in the course of a few years graphically illustrates the distance that many northern blacks had covered since the dark days of the 1850s. In the late 1850s Purvis, a wealthy Philadelphia businessman and Garrisonian abolitionist, had bitterly condemned the United States for practicing “the basest despotism” and even hinted that some sort of revolutionary action by blacks might be appropriate and necessary. However, at the May 1864 annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he enthusiastically declared that the future held great promise for the long-thwarted black struggle for rights and dignity. “The old things are passing away,” Purvis exulted, “all things are becoming new. . . . The damnable doctrine of the detestable Taney is no longer the doctrine of the country.” Later that year, John Rock, a Boston lawyer, abolitionist, physician, and dentist who would soon become the first African American to be admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, echoed Purvis’s sense that a new era was dawning when he said: “Every day seems almost to be an era in the history of our country. We have at last reached the dividing line.”34

The Syracuse Convention

Not far beneath the surface lay a sense of foreboding that the war might end before slavery was completely destroyed. The most frightening scenario was that, if the Democrats won the White House and gained control of Congress in the 1864 election, they would repeal the Emancipation Proclamation and resurrect the Dred Scott ruling that African Americans were not citizens and therefore deserved no legal rights. These fears were exacerbated by the Republicans’ relative silence in 1864 on the proposed constitutional amendment that would abolish slavery throughout the United States, leading some blacks to suspect that the party might abandon its commitment to emancipation at the first sign of peace with the Confederacy.35

This complex mix of optimism and anxiety was instrumental in moving some northern blacks to call for a convention in 1864 for the purpose of creating a national rights organization. It is not entirely clear who initiated this idea, but it quite likely was Henry Highland Garnet, now a minister in the District of Columbia. By the spring of 1864, other northern blacks were expressing a similar interest. These included a group in Boston, who held a mass meeting to urge such a convention. Some African Americans, including Rock and John Mercer Langston, a young Ohio lawyer and Oberlin graduate, questioned whether blacks were prepared to take this bold step. Above all, they were concerned that Garnet might use the meeting to push his old emigration agenda. Nevertheless, Rock confided to George Downing and Charles Lenox Remond, a longtime agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society who was active in recruiting black soldiers, that he hoped the convention would produce more good than not. But Rock’s desire for consultation among northern black leaders before the announcement of the gathering was rendered moot when Garnet publicly proposed in July that such a national meeting be held in New York City. Informing Garnet that the Boston group had already taken preliminary steps to hold a convention in their city, Rock suggested Boston as a better location than New York City, which Garnet preferred.36

While Rock and his colleagues hoped to “harmonize entirely” with Garnet so as to appear as united as possible, Langston and others so distrusted Garnet’s motives that they were unwilling to support his call.37 And even though the Boston group agreed with Garnet on the business to be brought before the convention and accepted his offer to prepare an address to the public, they categorically rejected New York as the site for the meeting. Their concern that a “rowdy Negro-hating spirit” in that city could recreate the horrendous acts committed by the draft rioters a year earlier was shared by the editor of the Weekly Anglo-African, who suggested Cleveland as a means of accommodating western blacks. Ultimately, Syracuse was the compromise choice because it was more centrally located than Boston or Cleveland; furthermore, because of its history of Underground Railroad activity, it was deemed safer than New York.38

The organizers chose October 4–7 as the dates for the convention and sent notices to black leaders throughout the North and those parts of the South that were under Union control. The principle of proportional representation appears to have been only loosely applied in determining representation at the convention: Pennsylvania, which had the largest black population of any northern state, had only thirty-six delegates, while New York had fifty. Likewise, Ohio, with the second-largest black population among the northern states, sent only a handful of delegates. Geographical proximity to Syracuse ultimately was the decisive factor, for most of the delegates were from the Northeast; conversely, there were no delegates from northern states west of the Mississippi River, and relatively few delegates came from the eight southern states that were represented. Yet the organizers were rather specific in determining how many delegates were allotted to a given city. For example, in Trenton, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, meetings were called to select delegates. At each meeting a committee was then appointed to choose delegates, and another group of men and women was given the task of raising money in the black churches to defray the expenses of the delegates. The participants at these meetings then pledged to inform the black community of the upcoming convention.39

The delegates, as well as approximately two thousand black and white spectators, came to Syracuse in early October from as far away as Louisiana and Illinois. They streamed into the city by train and canal boat. Many of the black delegates appear to have stayed with families in the city’s African American community. Newspaper reports indicate that a sense of excitement and expectation permeated the air. But there was also concern that racist whites would attempt to disrupt the convention; shortly after the delegates arrived in the city, local toughs indeed sought to intimidate them by chanting “Here comes the niggers, here comes the moaks, they can’t have any convention here” and by assaulting Garnet and two other African Americans. Rock and Downing elicited promises from city officials to protect the convention’s delegates and spectators, and most delegates were determined to stay the course, no matter the obstacles that confronted them. The Weekly Anglo-African reflected this determination to persevere in the face of adversity when it asserted that it was necessary to “manfully take up the trumpet” and vocally demand their rights rather than merely to present appeals, complaints, grievances, and wrongs.40

The 145 delegates to the National Convention of Colored Men who assembled on October 4 represented a broader spectrum of the northern black leadership than any previous meeting, with the possible exception of the 1853 Rochester Convention. They included Douglass, Downing, Garnet, and many other leaders of the antebellum protest movement. These men were joined by a number of younger, well-educated men—such as John Mercer Langston, an Ohio lawyer, and George B. Vashon, a Pittsburgh teacher and journalist—who were emerging on the national scene. In addition, a few emigrationists who had returned from abroad, northern-trained teachers working among the freed people in the South, and a number of southern blacks served as delegates. A few black soldiers from both the North and the South, as well as the editors of three black newspapers—the Weekly Anglo-African, the Cincinnati Colored Citizen, and the Christian Recorder—were also present. Finally, despite the convention’s official title, Edmonia Highgate, who taught among the freed people, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a prominent writer and lecturer, served as delegates.41

The delegates began their four days of meetings by electing Douglass as president of the convention and Langston as chair of the Business Committee, which set the agenda for the proceedings. They also selected Douglass, Rock, and Garnet to present the major speeches. In addition, the Rules Committee determined that all major issues would be decided by majority vote.42

In a number of major speeches, a series of resolutions, a Declaration of Wrongs and Rights, a petition to Congress, and an address to the public, delegates to the Syracuse Convention articulated several themes that would constitute the central rationale for and the objectives of the equal rights movement during the Reconstruction era. Douglass, who served as president of the convention, eloquently summed up the purpose of the gathering. “We are here,” he declared, “to promote the freedom, progress, elevation, and perfect enfranchisement of the entire colored people of the United States . . . and to advance in the scale of knowledge, worth, and civilization, and claim our rights as men among men.”43

The proceedings of the Syracuse convention provide valuable insights into the mindset of many African Americans at this critical juncture. They were, perhaps above all, keenly aware of the symbolic importance of the tens of thousands of black soldiers then fighting to save the nation and destroy slavery, and they were determined to exploit it to the fullest. The tone was set by Rock, who underscored the stark contradiction of blacks’ strong patriotism and the systematic discrimination they faced. In a major speech, he pointedly reminded the assembled crowd—and white America generally—that, even though they were initially spurned and later received no guarantee of rewards for their service, black soldiers had enlisted at a time when many whites hesitated to defend the nation. “We are all loyal,” he stated. “Why are we not treated as friends?” Rock and others consciously and emphatically used the theme of bravery and discipline to buttress their demand for specific rights, such as male suffrage. In its address to the public, written by Peter H. Clark, a Cincinnati educator and activist, the convention posed two trenchant rhetorical questions intended to prick the conscience of whites: “Are we good enough to use bullets, and not good enough to use ballots? . . . May we give our lives, but not our votes, for the good of the republic?”44

Yet, what is perhaps most striking about the individual and collective pronouncements at the Syracuse Convention is the delicate balancing act the delegates engaged in. At the same time that the delegates vigorously demanded suffrage and other rights as citizens, they also reminded whites that this effort would in no way infringe on whites’ liberties or limit their power. Appealing to white Americans in the name of fairness, the address to the public acknowledged, “You are strong, we are weak; you are many, we are few; you are protected, we are exposed.” The disclaimers the delegates embedded in the constitution of the National Equal Rights League, which the convention established, sought especially to reassure white America that blacks did not wish to create disorder or to engage in radical action. In addition, they promised that their appeals for rights would be made solely to the minds and conscience of white America or by legal means wherever necessary.45

The convention’s Declaration of Wrongs and Rights even more graphically illustrates the delegates’ desire to find some balance between chastising white America for its long history of racial injustice and hypocrisy and recognizing that the rights they sought could only be attained with the assistance of sympathetic whites. On the one hand, the document recited a litany of grievances against white America. “We have for long ages,” it charged, “been deeply and cruelly wronged . . . we have been subdued, not by the power of ideas, but by brute force, and have been unjustly deprived not only of many of our natural rights, but debarred the privileges and advantages freely accorded to other men.” Pointing to the continuation of slavery in the South and prejudice in the North, the convention associated the Democrats with slavery and reactionary ideas and the Republicans with “negatively and passively” helping to perpetuate both discrimination and slavery. The delegates even chided some white abolitionists for questioning whether blacks needed suffrage rights.46

On the other hand, these activists appealed—in what Vincent Harding has termed the “Great Tradition” of black protest—to the better instincts of white America. Expressing confidence in the principles that underlay the American system of government and guided its people, the delegates predicted that the “generosity and sense of honor in the great heart of this nation” would ultimately accord them full citizenship rights under the Constitution.47

Two additional themes that would frequently be enunciated by equal rights activists over the next decade were part of the convention’s effort to strike a balance between demanding their rights as citizens and seeking the approval and acceptance of white Americans, especially Republicans. In a petition that the convention sent to Congress, the delegates underscored the manhood of the black soldiers, whose valor, sacrifice, and patriotism “validates our manhood, commands our respect, and claims the attention of the civilized world.” At the same time, they passed resolutions exhorting northern blacks, and especially the southern freed people, to adopt the middle-class values that northern black leaders had long espoused. To be frugal, accumulate property, and acquire knowledge, the delegates asserted, would enable African Americans to move into the mainstream of American society and advance their rights and interests.48

While the Syracuse Convention’s official pronouncements formed the ideological underpinning of the equal rights movement, the National Equal Rights League—its most important product—was considered the mechanism for organizing and mobilizing African Americans on behalf of the cause and pressuring white Americans to act in accordance with their stated ideals. The league’s structure was, in some respects, modeled on the short-lived National Council created by the Rochester Convention in 1853. But its founders went far beyond their predecessors by establishing a three-tiered structure: a national organization that would coordinate the movement’s operations and formulate broad policy positions; state auxiliaries that would be responsible for many of the day-to-day activities; and local societies that would directly connect the movement to black communities across the nation. The organization’s constitution provided for a vice president from each state represented at the Syracuse Convention; recording and corresponding secretaries; a treasurer; and an executive committee, which would be responsible for hiring agents, publishing reports and appeals, and distributing funds to the state auxiliaries. In a move that signaled the emergence on the national scene of a younger generation of northern black activists, the convention elected Langston as president of the league. Douglass and Garnet were offered other posts in the new organization, but neither chose to serve in an official capacity.49

Conflicts at the Convention

Although a broad consensus existed among the convention’s delegates that the time had come to launch a movement for equal rights, with the National Equal Rights League as its engine, during the course of the convention a series of debates—at times acrimonious—revealed deep fissures on personal, ideological, procedural, regional, and other issues. Some of the most heated disputes pitted George Downing and his followers against Henry Highland Garnet and his supporters in a replay of their battles in the 1850s.

Even the debate on the Business Committee’s proposal regarding the dues that would be assessed each delegate attending the league’s annual meetings had ideological and class overtones. As a minister who earned a meager salary, Garnet strongly opposed the committee’s recommendation that each auxiliary pay $100 for the first delegate and $60 for each additional person, contending that it was “a great mistake” that would penalize the common people. When his attempt to substitute a fee of $10 was narrowly defeated, an amendment that established a $50 charge for the first delegate and $30 for each additional representative passed. But Garnet criticized even this compromise; in a speech he delivered a few weeks following the convention, he claimed that a supporter of the amendment had told him, “We do not want the riff-raff.” In an obvious jab at those he considered elites who cared little about the plight of the black masses, his response to this alleged statement was “Ah! That is it, is it? Then it’s for the milk and water codfish aristocracy.” From a practical standpoint, Garnet also feared that such high dues would discourage participation in the league’s activities, warning that “They cannot raise a corporal’s guard for the Equal Rights League on that basis.”50

Garnet’s anger was also rooted in his personal animosity toward Downing and his allies, who were instrumental in enacting the higher fees. But the intertwining of personal and ideological factors went even deeper than this, for Downing also led the effort to block Garnet’s appointment as chair of the Business Committee. In an ironic twist, Douglass, in his capacity as president of the convention, appointed Garnet—with whom he had repeatedly clashed on the emigration issue in the 1850s—as chair of this important committee. He probably did so in order to mollify Garnet, who was deeply disappointed that Douglass, not he, was chosen to preside over the convention. That election was, reported George Ruffin, a Boston activist who would become the first black municipal judge in the United States, marked by “considerable feeling,” with several candidates vying for the position and mounting friction developing between the Massachusetts delegation and the large Pennsylvania contingent, which Ruffin characterized as being “in full force domineering and overbearing.”51 When the Business Committee convened, Downing and his allies bypassed Garnet and selected Langston as chair, which further offended Garnet. Following the convention, Downing made it abundantly clear that he had been determined that Garnet should not be allowed to play a prominent role at the convention. He even exulted in print that Garnet had been “defeated, mortified in his pride and ambition. . . . I plead guilty to the charge of having favored it.”52

The intense feelings that surfaced during this confrontation can be traced directly to the bitter debates over emigration in the 1850s, when Downing had been the most outspoken critic of Delany, Garnet, and other proponents of the nationalist-emigrationist position. Although Garnet had come to emphasize emancipation and black recruitment more than emigration during the war, the old hostilities left a residue of distrust and resentment between the two men. Their contrasting temperaments and Downing’s status as a wealthy businessman while Garnet was a poor minister certainly added fuel to the fire.53

Their most serious confrontation at the Syracuse Convention, however, came in response to a seemingly innocuous proposal that the African Civilization Society be added to a list of organizations to be commended for working to educate the freed people. This motion triggered an emotional debate in which Downing charged that the society was “the child of prejudice” that must atone for its “disgraceful” conduct, especially its interaction with the American Colonization Society. Given the African Civilization Society’s recent work among the freed people, Downing’s claim that Garnet’s organization believed blacks could not be elevated in the United States was not entirely accurate or fair. Nevertheless, his accusation resonated with many delegates whose call for equal rights was based on the premise that blacks could in fact move into the mainstream of American society.54

Garnet acknowledged that he and Downing had engaged in many contentious confrontations prior to the war but vowed that both men would continue to labor for the advancement of African Americans. Yet, late in his career, he found his critics’ demand that he explain his position on black improvement to be “exceedingly humiliating.” Deeply sensitive about his independence within the movement, he especially resented Downing’s charge that he was the tool of white colonizationists. Garnet ultimately chose to question Downing’s character. Downing, he stated derisively in a speech following the convention, “seems to be afflicted with a mania and whenever the word African Civilization is mentioned, he becomes excited, and is covered all over with porcupine quills.”55

Some delegates deprecated this angry exchange, because they believed that the convention was not the proper forum for settling old differences and that such strife threatened the much-needed unity within the fledgling equal rights movement. Thus, George Vashon, who would play a leading role in the cause, moved that, while the delegates had no sympathy for any colonization activities on the part of the African Civilization Society, they commended the organization for its labors on behalf of the freed people. However, Garnet rejected Vashon’s proposal, which was defeated; the original motion praising the African Civilization Society and other relief organizations that sought to assist the freed people then carried.56

The matter of where the headquarters of the National Equal Rights League would be located also produced acrimonious debate. No consensus existed among the delegates on this matter; regional and local pride played as important a role as logistics. Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Cleveland were the major contenders. Langston and others argued that Cleveland was centrally located and was relatively progressive on race relations, while those who supported Philadelphia noted that it had the largest black population of any northern city and was located near the Upper South. The initial vote went to Cleveland, but Rev. Elisha Weaver, editor of the Christian Recorder, moved to reconsider the vote, and Philadelphia was eventually chosen. Two black Ohioans who favored Cleveland were so convinced that Langston had helped to engineer a “corrupt bargain,” in which he would become president of the league in exchange for the headquarters being located in Philadelphia, that they voted against him for the presidency.57

Some of the ideological and personal differences that fueled these disputes would occasionally resurface long after the convention had adjourned. For example, the simmering resentment between the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League officials and members of the executive board of the National Equal Rights League—whose headquarters were located in Philadelphia—erupted into open conflict later in the decade. Moreover, Downing and Garnet remained unrepentant following the convention. Downing was proud that he had been instrumental in marginalizing his adversary, while Garnet was irate, at one point even threatening to call a new “people’s convention” that would act as a counterpoint to the NERL. But it is instructive that Garnet, perhaps realizing that the movement enjoyed broad support in the black community, soon lent vocal support to the PSERL. In fact, northern blacks overwhelmingly applauded the actions of the Syracuse Convention, including the creation of a national rights organization. For example, the Christian Recorder viewed the convention as a harbinger of progress for African Americans, exulting, “The ball has been set in motion.” In a similar vein, a meeting in Bridgeport, Connecticut, pledged to fully support all of the measures adopted by the convention. While the Weekly Anglo-African reminded its readers that “we have a half repentant nation to deal with, implacable and deep-seated prejudices to overcome, all the vices and sins engendered by two centuries of slavery to contend with,” it nevertheless urged its readers to join the equal rights movement.58

The Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League

The National Equal Rights League, acting in concert with various black state organizations, began operations soon after the Syracuse Convention adjourned. Langston, who oversaw the headquarters in Philadelphia and chaired the executive board, was instrumental in making the society the first viable national black rights organization in American history. Two secretaries conducted much of the league’s routine business, while Langston frequently took the message directly to the people and assisted in establishing several state auxiliaries. By mid-1865, nine state leagues had been founded—most of them in the North. Two years later there were state organizations and local auxiliaries in nearly every state in the Union. Through this expanding network of state and local auxiliaries, the national league—at least during the first few years of its existence—provided a forum for devising strategy, mobilizing the black community, and pressuring white political leaders and other officials to eradicate discriminatory laws and practices.59

The Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League—one of the first state auxiliaries established after the Syracuse Convention—serves as an excellent case study of the equal rights movement. Not only was it one of the most active and influential state organizations and did it represent the largest number of African Americans in any northern state, its extant records are also far more complete than those of the NERL or any of its other state auxiliaries. An examination of these records and those of other state equal rights groups provides valuable insights into the strategy, agenda, progress, and problems of the movement, especially during the second half of the 1860s.60

One week after the Syracuse Convention adjourned, the Philadelphia delegates to the convention established the PSERL. They elected a president and an executive board, adopted a constitution, issued a public appeal to African Americans throughout the state, and called for a statewide meeting in February 1865. Much like the founding conventions in other states, the delegates echoed many of the sentiments articulated at Syracuse. While appealing to the conscience of white Americans, they emphatically proclaimed that all men were created free and equal and that no government could legitimately limit or abrogate their fundamental rights. They also consciously sought to connect the concepts of self-improvement and manhood to the attainment of equal rights and the end of slavery.61

The first annual meeting of the PSERL, held in Harrisburg in February 1865, witnessed what proved to be the last vestige of a longstanding rivalry between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh blacks. The Pittsburgh delegates criticized the Philadelphians’ control of the state league and complained that local auxiliaries had to deal with the NERL headquarters through the state organization’s executive board. Some of the Pittsburgh delegates even doubted whether state leagues were necessary. But, unwilling to see the movement derailed at its inception, the delegates struck a balance between the two regional factions by electing two men from each group as officers: John Peck, a Pittsburgh educator, as president; George B. Vashon of Pittsburgh and Octavius V. Catto, a Philadelphia activist and teacher, as corresponding secretaries; and Jacob C. White Jr., a Philadelphia businessman and educator, as recording secretary.62

With this compromise in place, the PSERL’s officers quickly reached out to African Americans across the state and created a statewide organizational structure. They hired Sergeant Major A. M. Green, a Union army veteran, as the league’s agent. During his tenure as agent, Green visited numerous communities and raised money for the cause. Peck and his successor, William Nesbit, an Altoona lawyer who served as president of the PSERL from 1866 until the end of the 1870s, also traveled around the state, speaking before local auxiliaries and assisting in the formation of new ones. Their efforts were quite successful. By early 1866, forty-three auxiliaries had been formed in cities and towns in every part of the state. Auxiliaries in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and other major cities had hundreds of members. Even in a small city such as Williamsport one hundred residents joined the local league. These local auxiliaries in Pennsylvania and other states, acting in conjunction with the state leagues, were in many respects the linchpins of the movement, for they circulated petitions, called public meetings, wrote letters to public officials, composed public memorials, solicited money in the churches and various social organizations, sponsored parades, and more. The NERL provided an overall framework for a national movement, especially by organizing periodic national conventions, lobbying in Washington, D.C., and holding annual meetings. But even in the years immediately following the Syracuse Convention—when the NERL was most active—it was activists at the grassroots level who were in closest touch with ordinary blacks.63

The black non-elites in Pennsylvania and other northern states appear to have played a more limited role in the state and local auxiliaries than did middle-class African Americans, for their work lives, general poverty, limited education, and other factors made it unlikely that they would deliver speeches, write reports and memorials, attend state conventions, or lobby state legislatures and Congress. But to claim that the northern equal rights movement’s leadership seldom reached out to the black masses, thereby effectively isolating them from the cause, would be inaccurate.64 The evidence indicates that farmers, mechanics, factory workers, porters, waiters, maids, and other non-elites supported, and were involved in, the cause in a number of capacities. These included participation in public meetings that addressed a broad range of issues, as well as in mass parades, with thousands of black onlookers, to celebrate events such as the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and anniversaries of the Emancipation Proclamation. In addition, black males voted in large numbers, and both men and women signed equal rights petitions that circulated in black communities. Men, women, and children also donated to the cause in their churches and engaged in acts of civil disobedience on the school and transportation issues. Finally, nearly three-quarters of all northern black males between the ages of 18 and 45 saw military service during the Civil War. These men were convinced that their service to the nation obliged them to act as citizen-soldiers on behalf of full citizenship rights.65

This broad base of support within the black community emboldened those who held leadership positions in the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League and other state leagues. For example, an officer in the Conneautville, Pennsylvania, auxiliary of the PSERL confidently reported that, following his visits to nearby communities in late 1865 to consult with other local auxiliaries, “the theme of most Every man says go on that our cause es right there es only one en fifty that will not sighn” the PSERL’s petition demanding suffrage rights. In a similar vein, William Nesbit, the league’s president, informed the Christian Recorder in late 1865 that the league’s prospects were “onward and upward.” His optimism was further buoyed by Garnet’s strong endorsement of the organization. Although Garnet had left the Syracuse Convention in a foul mood and harbored some reservations about the National Equal Rights League’s leadership—especially Langston—in early 1866 he praised the PSERL’s lobbying efforts as “admirable and able” and stated effusively to Nesbit, “I am with you heart and hand, and wish you Godspeed.” He even informed Nesbit that he was willing to “bury every thing of the past that is unpleasant to remember, and look forward in hope for the future.” Garnet’s enthusiastic endorsement of the Pennsylvania league contributed to the creation of auxiliaries in Philadelphia and Harrisburg—known as “Garnet Leagues”—which had hundreds of members.66

The PSERL, as well as other state organizations and the National Equal Rights League, were active on a number of fronts. From their inception, they directed much of their energy toward gaining male suffrage rights and ending racial segregation in, and exclusion from, the public schools. Another target of equal rights activists in Pennsylvania was the systematic discrimination against black riders on certain urban railroads. By 1864, Philadelphia was the only major northern city, other than San Francisco, that had not desegregated some or all of its railroad lines. Since 1860, the Social, Civic, and Statistical Association of the Colored People of Pennsylvania had been unsuccessful in its battle with Jim Crow. Much like the collaborative efforts by equal rights organizations in other states, in late 1864 the PSERL joined the Social, Civic, and Statistical Association, the Colored People’s Union League, and sympathetic white groups on the railroad issue. The league quickly sprang into action, hiring lawyers to challenge the railroads’ right to harass African Americans, sending three hundred copies of a petition to the legislature, and dispatching a committee to Harrisburg to lobby the state legislature. Younger blacks such as Octavius Catto also sought to involve the black masses in the protest movement by scheduling a number of mass meetings. Moreover, James Lynch, editor of the Christian Recorder, lent a powerful voice to the cause. Citing the continuing segregation of Philadelphia’s streetcars at a time when most other northern cities—under sustained pressure from African Americans—had largely ended discrimination in their public transit systems, the paper angrily charged that the city was “more unmerciful in her proscription of colored men than any other city in the Union.” Other northern blacks concurred with Lynch’s condemnation of the city. While Philadelphia had been one of the centers of antislavery activity prior to the Civil War, its large black population, a rapidly growing white working class, and economic ties to the South fueled racial hostility and led to the most rigid patterns of racial segregation in the urban North.67

Radical Republicans in the city and other parts of the state denounced racial discrimination and worked with African Americans to boycott the railroads. Radical newspapers such as the Philadelphia Press and politicians such as Congressmen Thaddeus Stevens and William D. Kelley and State Senator Morrow D. Lowry labored tirelessly for the cause. Their collaboration showed that a viable coalition of white Radicals and African Americans was possible. Despite this agitation, Philadelphia blacks and their white allies experienced immense frustration. All of the lawsuits by individuals—especially women—against the railroads were successful in court, but these verdicts produced no change in the streetcar companies’ policies. With petitions and lawsuits proving ineffective, the PSERL and other black rights organizations, with assistance from Radical Republicans, increasingly focused on lobbying the state legislature. Lowry’s desegregation bill passed by a slim margin in the Senate, but it died in the House, where a number of Republican legislators feared a backlash by voters if they supported the bill. Nevertheless, Congress’s passage of the 1866 Civil Rights Act as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Pennsylvania Legislature ultimately ratified, intensified the pressure on the legislature to end racial discrimination in the Philadelphia transit system. Finally, another Lowry-sponsored bill passed in both houses of the Assembly in 1867.68

The most formidable obstacle that the crusade against Jim Crow in transit systems and the public schools confronted during these years, apart from exclusion from the political process in Pennsylvania and many other northern states, was the pervasive racism among employers, public officials, and the white public generally. Their support for racial segregation and exclusion was clearly manifested in the political arena, where Democrats consistently opposed any attempt to modify or repeal racist policies, while many Republicans were ambivalent, cautious, and opportunistic in their stance on equal rights for African Americans.

Yet part of the problem for northern black activists lay within their own ranks as well as with the larger black community. From their inception, the PSERL and other equal rights organizations experienced numerous problems—including a persistent shortage of funds, apathy on the part of some blacks, personal feuds, class and regional differences, and ideological divisions—all of which at times adversely affected the movement. Once again, the PSERL’s experience provides valuable insights into a number of problems that afflicted northern equal rights organizations during this period. One of the most serious difficulties the PSERL had to contend with was the widespread poverty among northern blacks. Systematic discrimination in the job market pushed African Americans disproportionately into low-wage jobs. Consequently, many rights organizations were unable to fund their operations adequately; in some cases they scarcely functioned at all. It was often difficult for local auxiliaries to hire lecturers because they could not afford to pay them. Likewise, especially during periods of high unemployment, local leagues could send little or no money for dues to the state organization. One local leader acknowledged that in several PSERL auxiliaries, “You have the form for what it is worth[;] the substance is a myth.” In some places the lack of resources also forced local rights groups to meet in churches because they could not afford to rent meeting rooms. This at times caused problems, especially when conservative trustees and ministers balked at providing space for equal rights activists whose meetings they feared might be disruptive.69

State and local league officials in Pennsylvania also complained that some African Americans were simply apathetic about their rights. Their anger toward those who chose not to become involved in the movement was at times palpable. Following an unsuccessful attempt to establish an auxiliary in Wilkes-Barre, one activist bitterly remarked that too many people in the community “take no pride in this great noble act”; another local leader bemoaned that “the worst set of men” would “give there [sic] life for a ball picnic or a parade but you come to muster them together to get them to advocate their rights or furnish means for others to do it for them it is like trying to force water to run uphill.” A similar complaint was expressed by a Philadelphia rights activist, who chastised those who wished to be viewed as leaders in the black community yet, when called upon to labor for the cause, were either apathetic or indifferent. He was ashamed, he concluded, that “the deprivation of our rights and privileges can be laid at our door.”70

Yet some activists associated with the PSERL blamed generational and class bias for this indifference toward the cause. For example, during the struggle to desegregate Philadelphia’s railroads, younger, more militant activists such as Octavius Catto and William D. Forten, son of James Forten, a pioneer black activist, angrily accused William Still, a wealthy black businessman, and other older middle- and upper-class black leaders of denigrating the black masses in order to elevate the rights and stature of the black elite. They particularly disliked what they saw as the elite’s tendency to cultivate the good will of the white elites more than to mobilize the black community in the struggle for equal rights. Still, whose coal business was boycotted by the militants in 1867, could indeed be rather patronizing toward both the black and white working class. Yet in a vigorous defense of his record, Still noted that Catto was an upstanding member of the city’s black professional class and that Forten was a member of one of the wealthiest black families in Philadelphia. He also pointed to his long history of working to advance the interests of the black community. The cultural and material gaps among African Americans certainly created different expectations regarding the achievement of respectability and success in mainstream America, and the black masses had far less opportunity or reason to depend on white allies for their advancement. However, the social classes lived and interacted with each other on many levels within the black community, and they experienced in common a pervasive racial hostility. Moreover, it is apparent that Catto and Forten were also disturbed by the attitude of older black activists such as Still and James Lynch, editor of the Christian Recorder, who believed that the younger generation should defer to them. In the midst of this dispute, Lynch appeared to confirm the existence of a generation gap within the movement when he scolded younger African Americans for not accepting the advice of their elders.71

The equal rights movement was also divided at times by a complex mix of personal animosity and ideological differences. Some of these clashes were intense and resulted in deep fissures that persisted for years. In California, a bitter feud between the two most influential African Americans in the state—Peter Anderson, editor of the Pacific Appeal, and Philip A. Bell, editor of the Elevator—lasted through much of the 1860s and 1870s. Bell, who had collaborated with Anderson in editing the Pacific Appeal for a brief time in the early sixties before he established a rival newspaper, was more militant and outspoken than the rather cautious and diplomatic Anderson. Their differences on political strategy were quickly transformed into a struggle for control of the equal rights cause in California, with each editor frequently questioning the commitment, integrity, and wisdom of the other. At one point Bell declared that arguing with the Anderson faction, whom he provocatively referred to as “copperheads,” was useless, for “we do not cast pearls before swine.” For his part, Anderson accused Bell and other “restless parties” of acting in an “unwise and impolitic” manner by attempting to divide the movement.72

These warring factions in California never split into separate organizations. In Michigan, however, the state equal rights league was wracked by deep divisions that led to the creation, for a time, of two competing leagues. Eight months after the Michigan Equal Rights League was founded in early 1865, a convention called by a group of dissidents declared that, since a number of officers had met without the knowledge or consent of a majority of the organization’s members, the league no longer enjoyed the confidence of African Americans in the state. The “gross outrage” committed by these officers, delegates to the Detroit Convention announced, effectively terminated the Michigan League; the dissenters then proceeded to establish the Equal Rights League of Michigan. When some delegates sought to reconcile the two groups by moving to invite the offending officers to the convention, the resolution was defeated. Thus, the seats for Michigan’s representatives to the first annual convention of the National Equal Rights League, held in Cleveland in September 1865, were claimed by both groups. At the NERL convention delegates implored the Michigan combatants to settle their dispute. When the delegates from the Equal Rights League of Michigan insisted that only they had the right to represent Michigan’s blacks at the meeting, the convention ultimately supported their claim.73

The NERL itself experienced problems from its inception; some were structural and procedural in nature, while others resulted from ideological and personal differences within the movement. The national organization’s difficulties were due in part to the challenge of coordinating and communicating with dozens of state leagues scattered over thousands of miles. This problem was compounded by the limited funds at its disposal, which meant that only a skeleton staff worked at the national headquarters in Philadelphia. And because the first few meetings of the executive board were cancelled due to the lack of a quorum, the NERL’s first annual meeting in 1865 decided that all members of the board must live in the vicinity of Philadelphia. Langston sought to offset the organization’s inability to hire a fulltime agent because of inadequate funds by traveling extensively around the country, but this created something of a leadership vacuum at headquarters. There was at least some basis for the Weekly Anglo-African’s lament in 1865 that the NERL was “almost an unknown institution because of its great distance from the people.”74

The editor did not blame the national officers for this deficiency. Rather, he argued that more direct representation was needed at the NERL meetings. Two years later, the executive board voted to restructure the league by establishing six districts in the nation, each with its own superintendant. But there is no evidence that this plan to create an intermediary level in the movement’s bureaucracy was ever implemented. The NERL was also hampered by differences among the state and local leaders on a variety of issues. Conflict erupted at the first national meeting in 1865 over who should pay the dues to defray the national officers’ expenses. Some delegates complained that no uniform dues were charged, and a number of state leaders grumbled that they too often had to assess their auxiliaries in order to raise money. This debate was resolved in favor of assessing uniform dues, though this does not seem to have solved the NERL’s financial problems. Another issue related to the accreditation of delegates to the national meetings. Langston notified the state organizations in 1866 that they must limit the number of accredited members they could send. Yet, a few months later the executive board appeared to overrule Langston when it stated that all friends of equal rights, not just representatives of the state and local auxiliaries, would be invited to attend the meetings.75

Langston himself was partially responsible for the conflict within the movement. His biographers have noted that while he used his considerable political skills to resolve some of the disputes that arose among its members and his oratorical skills to inspire those who attended his lectures, he was extremely sensitive to criticism from other black leaders. This brought him into conflict with several prominent equal rights activists, particularly the officers of the PSERL. One of the most serious quarrels surfaced at the third annual meeting of the National Equal Rights League, held in Washington, D.C., when representatives of the PSERL led an effort to block the election of Langston to a third term as president. In nominating William Nesbit, their president, for the position, they asserted the principle of rotation in office. But other issues lay not far beneath the surface. Although Langston ultimately received the support of a majority of the delegates, his critics questioned his leadership ability. A year later, conflict erupted again when the PSERL instructed Nesbit to ask Thaddeus Stevens to confirm a conversation in which Langston had allegedly questioned the constitutionality of congressional reconstruction legislation related to the South. Stevens clearly did not trust Langston, considering his views on Reconstruction “fiddle stick nonsense.” Nesbit and other PSERL leaders shared Stevens’s estimation of Langston, informing the Radical Republican leader that “we have been suspicious of the double dealing, perhaps even the secret treachery of John M. Langston, and only need your testimony to enable us to take from him a post of honor that he disgraces amongst us.”76

Langston resigned as president of the NERL in 1868, in large part because his duties as an inspector of schools for the Freedmen’s Bureau and an organizer of southern black voters occupied much of his time. He also soon would be appointed head of the law department at Howard University in Washington, D.C.77 With his departure, the National Equal Rights League became nearly inactive for almost a year, though in 1869 it helped to coordinate a national convention on behalf of black male suffrage. Equal rights activists continued to be guided by a strong sense of common purpose. But more than ever before, the state and local auxiliaries supplied the energy and funds that sustained the cause.

In addition to the disputes between state and national equal rights leaders among the delegates to the NERL’s annual meetings, some of the most intense debate on ideological issues occurred within the PSERL and other state organizations. One such debate, which can be traced far back into the antebellum era, stemmed from fundamental differences over whether all-black organizations were necessary and appropriate and how African Americans should treat each other. The first issue involved considerations of both strategy and principle: whether they would achieve more success and be truer to their principles as part of a biracial alliance or as a blacks-only movement. Throughout the existence of the Reconstruction-era equal rights organizations, racial pride and identity and a legitimate distrust of potential white allies, on the one hand, lived in tension with a deep commitment to the principle of colorblindness and the necessity of coexisting with a racist white majority. This tension surfaced again and again. Some northern blacks strenuously objected to all-black organizations. In 1867, for example, Parker Smith, a Philadelphia lawyer, severely criticized both the PSERL and the Social, Civic, and Statistical Association for being “founded upon a distinctive principle—when the necessity of the case does not demand it.” Their aim, he asserted, should be “homogeneity” and the achievement of equal rights for all citizens “by virtue of a common humanity.” Most equal rights activists, however, believed that societies organized and managed by African Americans were necessary as instruments for protection, pride, unity, and control over their own destiny in a hostile society. The Weekly Anglo-African spoke for many northern blacks when it stated that, while African Americans were not prejudiced against whites and were opposed to “clannishness,” their treatment by whites required them to look out for themselves by establishing their own institutions. In fact, the founders of the National Equal Rights League frequently used the word “colored” in the preamble to its constitution. Following a lengthy debate at its first annual meeting, the delegates voted to delete this word wherever it occurred in the document, and the state auxiliaries followed suit. Yet there is no record of whites joining either the national or state organizations.78

Racial pride and identity also lay at the heart of an often emotional debate over how blacks should relate to both whites and other African Americans. For many proponents of equal rights, this issue was grounded not only in the demand for equality under the law but also—given the almost daily insults and humiliation they suffered at the hands of whites—the deeply-felt desire to be treated with respect and dignity. The debate generally focused on black businessmen’s treatment of African American customers, and it invariably generated heated rhetoric and deep divisions. The most prolonged debate on this matter occurred at the PSERL’s 1865 annual meeting. Supporters of a resolution stating that any African American businessman who refused to treat black and white customers in the same manner “is guilty of the greatest dereliction of duty” forcefully reminded the delegates that the cherished goal of equal rights must include equal treatment. The depth of anger and resentment was such that one delegate declared that anyone who opposed the resolution “is not entitled to our consideration.”79

However, several delegates—including barbers, restaurant and bath house owners, and other entrepreneurs—vigorously objected to the proposal. Black businessmen, they declared, must be free to refuse service to disreputable blacks and whites alike; further, the league had no right to regulate people’s private lives. In an argument that presaged white opposition to Charles Sumner’s Supplementary Civil Rights Bill in the 1870s, they also pointedly reminded the resolution’s proponents that the league sought legal, not social, equality and chided them for failing to grasp the realities that confronted businessmen. Even Nesbit, who agreed with the spirit of the resolution, criticized its advocates’ “high-strung notions.” Following heated debate, the resolution passed. But the issue did not disappear. While the matter was not debated at the National Equal Rights League’s first annual meeting later that year, Langston felt compelled to denounce discrimination against blacks by African American businessmen “as tending to degrade us in the eyes of a discerning public.” In a similar vein, in 1867 the Christian Recorder castigated blacks who continued to “stand in the way of the elevation of their race by taking the unmanly and degraded position of catering to American prejudice.”80

A number of leading black activists were deeply disturbed by the sharp debate on these issues. William D. Forten was particularly dismayed by what he considered black Pennsylvanians’ penchant for constant infighting. “We are so unreliant, so weak, antagonistical, caviling and captious,” he wrote less than a year after the PSERL was founded, “that it is almost impossible to collect our scattered spiritless forces, made doubly so from the want of systematic combinations, and direct them to any point in our enemy lines, though assured of its vulnerability.” The Christian Recorder concurred with Forten’s pessimistic observation, expressing regret that blacks seemed more divided than other groups. Even the generally optimistic Nesbit, while expressing the hope that African Americans could “come together in the spirit of true brotherhood,” concluded in 1865 that the divisions among blacks were “injurious and destructive in their bearing on us.”81

Other northern blacks, however, were more philosophical about the divisions within the ranks of the equal rights movement. The Brooklyn correspondent of the Christian Recorder counseled black activists to regard debate and differences of opinion as natural and, at times, positive in their effects. “Our public men,” he wrote, “need to learn, that great men differ in opinion, and that these differences are the result of varied habits of thought, and education, and developments; yet these are the sources of human progress.” It was unfortunate, he added, that “our otherwise strong men exhibit so much weakness in their personal feuds. They forget the great, vital interests of the nation in the struggle for self-adulation.”82

Indeed, northern blacks had long been divided on a number of personal and ideological issues.83 It is not surprising that such divisions existed and, in some cases, intensified as they sought to take advantage of propitious developments that generated a sense of hope as well as urgency and uncertainty. After decades of frustration and despair, they realized that the moment they had long anticipated had finally arrived. But, at the same time, they were painfully aware that their efforts might well come to naught unless their white allies embraced the concept of equal rights for all American citizens. Unfortunately, Republicans were not dependable allies. Even worse, there was the nagging fear that the door to equality before the law could well close—and then might not open again for several generations.

This volatile mix of hope and anxiety was exacerbated by the lingering effects of old battles over strategy and ideology as well as personal resentments and suspicions, which at times poisoned the atmosphere. Likewise, the indignities and humiliation that had long been part of their experience in a white-dominated, racist society created a defensiveness and insecurity that frequently manifested itself in the need to vigorously defend one’s manhood and motives.

Nevertheless, while these divisions within the ranks of the equal rights movement undoubtedly weakened the cause, such disagreements were certainly not unique to northern black activists. After all, white reformers and political party members had long clashed on matters of ideology, strategy, personality, and tactics. Equally important, on an issue such as black manhood suffrage—the dominant focus of the equal rights movement during the mid- and late 1860s—northern blacks were in substantial agreement on why it was a necessary and vital objective and how to go about obtaining it.