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300 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Both the speech and the reply were commented upon very extensively.

"MR. PRESIDENT: In consideration of a delicate sense of propriety as well
as your own repeated intimations of indisposition to discuss or listen to a
reply to the views and opinions you were pleased to express to us in your
elaborate speech to-day, the undersigned would respectfully take this method
of replying thereto. Believing as we do that the views and opinions you
expressed in that address are entirely unsound and prejudicial to the highest
interests of our race as well as our country at large, we cannot do other than
expose the same, and, as far as may be in our power, arrest their dangerous
influence. It is not necessary at this time to call attention to more than two
or three features of your remarkable address:

"1. The first point to which we feel especially bound to take exception,
is your attempt to found a policy opposed to our enfranchisement, upon the
alleged ground of an existing hostility on the part of the former slaves,
toward the poor white people of the South. We admit the existence of this
hostility, and hold that it is entirely reciprocal. But you obviously commit an
error by drawing an argument from an incident of slavery, and making it a
basis for a policy adapted to a state of freedom. The hostility between the
whites and blacks of the South is easily explained. It has its root and sap in
the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the cunning of the
slave masters. Those masters secured their ascendancy over both the poor
whites and blacks by putting enmity between them.

"They divided both to conquer each. There was no earthly reason why
the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery,
for it was from this class that their masters received their slave catchers,
slave drivers, and overseers. They were the men called in upon all occasions
by the masters, whenever any fiendish outrage was to be committed upon the
slave. Now, sir, you cannot but perceive, that the cause of this hatred
removed, the effect must be removed also. Slavery is abolished. The cause
of this antagonism is removed, and you must see, that it is altogether illogical
(and 'putting new wine into old bottles') to legislate from slaveholding and
slave driving premises for a people whom you have repeatedly declared your
purpose to maintain in freedom.

"2. Besides, even if it were true as you allege, that the hostility of the
blacks toward the poor whites must necessarily project itself into a state of
freedom, and that this enmity between the two races is even more intense in a
state of freedom than in a state of slavery, in the name of Heaven, we reverently
ask how can you, in view of your professed desire to promote the welfare