Summary
During and after the Civil War, the people of the United States considered how exactly the nation would be reconstructed. In 1867, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment, establishing birthright citizenship and defining Black Americans’ place in the country. But in 1862 the Republican-dominated Congress had outlawed the importation of “coolie” workers, thereby racially labeling Chinese as akin to enslaved persons. In this context, Frederick Douglass celebrated a “composite nationality.” Many peoples together had made the United States, he said, and the best path to its future progress was to embrace diversity on “the principle of absolute equality.” Douglass rejected the idea of a racial hierarchy, but endorsed the belief that different races bore distinct characteristics. He argued that industrious Chinese immigrants would make the United States stronger and wealthier. He made the far more radical claim that migration was a human right, that no nation could justly close its borders against those who traveled in search of a new home. Further, Douglass denied that open immigration policy would harm white Americans. “Right wrongs no man,” he said, repurposing an argument African Americans used in their pursuit of equality. Advocating for Chinese immigrants reasserted Black activists’ claims to their own belonging as they positioned themselves as part of the community who would welcome foreigners into the United States.
Source
Speech Excerpt:
…I am especially to speak to you of the character and mission of the United States, with special reference to the question whether we are the better or the worse for being composed of different races of men.
Without undue vanity or unjust depreciation of others, we may claim to be, in many respects, the most fortunate of nations. We stand in relations to all others, as youth to age. Other nations have had their day of greatness and glory; we are yet to have our day, and that day is coming…
It is thought by many, and said by some, that this Republic has already seen its best days; that the historian may now write the story of its decline and fall…
Their little speeches are about as follows: You will never see such statesmen in the councils of the Nation as Clay, Calhoun and Webster. You will never see the South morally reconstructed and our once happy people again united. You will never see this Government harmonious and successful while in the hands of different races…
The real trouble with us was never our system or form of government, or the principles underlying it, but the peculiar composition of our people; the relations existing between them and the compromising spirit which controlled the ruling power of the country.
We have for a long time hesitated to adopt and carry out the only principle which can solve that difficulty and give peace, strength and security to the Republic, and that is the principle of absolute equality.
We are a country of all extremes, ends and opposites; the most conspicuous example of composite nationality in the world. Our people defy all the ethnological and logical classifications. In races we range all the way from black to white, with intermediate shades which, as in the apocalyptic vision, no man can name or number…
Europe and Africa are already here, and the Indian was here before either. He stands to day between the two extremes of black and white, too proud to claim fraternity with either, and yet too weak to withstand the power of either. Heretofore, the policy of our government has been governed by race pride, rather than by wisdom.
Until recently, neither the Indian nor the negro has been treated as a part of the body politic. No attempt has been made to inspire either with a sentiment of patriotism, but the hearts of both races have been diligently sown with the dangerous seeds of discontent and hatred…
Before the relations of those two races are satisfactorily settled, and in despite of all opposition, a new race is making its appearance within our borders, and claiming attention.
It is estimated that not less than one hundred thousand Chinamen are now within the limits of the United States. Several years ago every vessel, large or small, of steam or of sail, bound to our Pacific coast and hailing from the Flowery kingdom, added to the number and strength of this new element of our population…
I have said that the Chinese will come, and have given some reasons why we may expect them in very large numbers in no very distant future. Do you ask if I would favor such immigrations? I answer, I would. “Would you admit them as witnesses in our courts of law?” I would. Would you have them naturalized, and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship? I would. Would you allow them to vote? I would. Would you allow them to hold office? I would…
I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible.
Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever…
I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours…
All great qualities are never found in any one man or in any one race. The whole of humanity, like the whole of everything else, is ever greater than a part. Men only know themselves by knowing others, and contact is essential to this knowledge…
If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all the nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.
