The Time to Assert a Right

In December 1860, after the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Boston mob overwhelmed an abolitionist gathering on the one-year anniversary of the death of violent abolitionist John Brown. The police did not protect the meeting, and the mob successfully prevented escaped slave Frederick Douglass and others from speaking. Several people argued that unpopular speech like abolition did not deserve protection. A few days later, Douglass added a brief but powerful statement on free expression to a planned speech.

“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes … the great moral renovator of society and government.…

“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they, first of all, strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers [Colossians 1:16; Ephesians 6:12], founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble if men are allowed to reason righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery cannot tolerate free speech.…

“After all the arguments for liberty to which Boston has listened for more than a quarter of a century, has she yet to learn that the time to assert a right is the time when the right itself is called in question and that the men of all others to assert it are the men to whom the right has been denied? … There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.…

“The principle must rest upon its own proper basis. And until the right is accorded to the humblest as freely as to the most exalted citizen, the government of Boston is but an empty name, and its freedom a mockery. A man’s right to speak does not depend upon where he was born or upon his color. The simple quality of manhood is the solid basis of the right—and there let it rest forever.”

Reflection

What does Frederick Douglass accomplish by invoking spiritual powers when discussing tyranny? What does he state to be three reasoned arguments that tyrants want to censor? Do you agree with his statement of principle to protect unpopular speech? What gave Douglass the courage to stand up again after being attacked by a mob?