Born a slave, Frederick Douglass through his words did as much as any man to eliminate slavery as America’s peculiar institution.
Douglass, who lived 1818-1895, was by 1867 already a longtime national figure. His famous address, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” had been given 15 years earlier. (That same address has been shared annually in a community oration by the Lebanon County branch of the NAACP since it was formed in 2020.)
Douglass, at first a skeptic of President Abraham Lincoln (and always a critic), became also a friend over three meetings in 1863, 1864, and 1865. Then Lincoln was dead – “A simple leaden bullet and a few grains of powder are sufficient in the shortest limit of time to blast and ruin all that is precious in human existence,” Douglass lamented – and in his place was President Andrew Johnson.
Douglass first gave his “Sources of Danger to the Republic” speech in Brooklyn on Dec. 17, 1866. He had that same month published an article, “Reconstruction,” in The Atlantic Monthly, arguing for a comprehensive reconstruction of the Southern states that ensures equal rights and protections for all citizens, particularly freed Black Americans, in the aftermath of the Civil War. His “Sources of Danger to the Republic” speech took the critique a step further by describing the vice presidency, from which President Johnson emanated, as a grave threat to the republic.
It was not until agony was manifested from a million of hearthstones in our land, and the Southern sky was darkened, that we managed to part with our reverence for slavery, and to place a musket on the shoulders of the black man. We may now do from choice and from sacred choice what we did by military necessity.
Frederick Douglass, last lines in his “Sources of Danger to the Republic” speech
He dramatically compares the vice presidency to a tempting bauble, stating it’s as unnecessary as “electing a second wife when we have got one already.” He argues that the proximity of the VP to the presidency creates a thin “wall of assassination” that is dangerous to the republic. Douglass’s conclusion is clear: “Let us have no more Vice Presidents.”
Douglass took the speech on the road, with stops in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
On Jan. 3, 1867, he spoke to hundreds of African Americans in Philadelphia’s National Hall, since destroyed, at 12th and Market streets. The Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph reported that he “was frequently interrupted by applause, and evidently made the best effort of his life.”
The next day, Jan. 4, 1867, Douglass was in Lebanon.
Citing local late 19th-century Lebanon historian Rev. P.C. Croll, the Lebanon Daily News in 1983 said that his lecture was given in the county courthouse, then located at Eighth and Cumberland streets. Chris Sholly, in a 2008 column for the Daily News, said the speech was given in a packed room in the courthouse. Sholly also dug up an archival clip from the defunct Lebanon Courier in which the reporter remarked, “We have rarely seen an audience so enchanted for two hours by a speaker.”
Douglass would give many more speeches in the years that followed and continue to reside in national notoriety. He died Feb. 20, 1895, at Cedar Hill in Washington, D.C., today the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.
An 1895 blurb in the Daily News following Douglass’ death may fill in some more blanks of the visit, but a discrepancy in the reported year he visited Lebanon merits some skepticism about how accurate the details are. The Daily News reported that D.M. Karmany, a “pronounced Abolitionist,” was “instrumental in getting the great colored orator here.”
The year confusion aside – the Daily News column says the speech was in 1858, when it was actually in 1867 – the overall story is utterly plausible. If anyone brought Douglass to Lebanon, it would have been Karmany.
Karmany is also documented as having brought another Black orator to Lebanon, Henry Highland Garnet, for a speech. Founder of the Lebanon Mutual Insurance Co. in 1856, he led the company until 1901. He was also a Republican, a longtime member of the Perseverance fire company, and called by the Daily News “one of the oldest and best known residents of Lebanon with the progress of which as borough and municipality he was prominently identified for a period of more than a half century.”
The paper reported that Douglass arrived later than planned, and so a planned pre-speech dinner was skipped and Douglass was taken immediately to the courthouse when he arrived at 7:30 p.m.
“His audience, which filled to overflowing the court house, received with attention every word he said,” reported the Daily News. “After the lecture then came the dinner, but Douglass left with the midnight train.”
Special thanks to Lebanon County history buff Pat Rhen for providing information for this article.
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