Douglass' Monthly

Founded in 1859 by Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York—on the same street and in the same room as his other newspapers—Douglass' Monthly, published under the motto “Avenge me of mine adversary,” was Douglass's third newspaper. Similar in focus to his North Star (1847–1851) and Frederick Douglass' Paper (1851–1859), Douglass' Monthly (1859–1863) was a concise and appealingly produced version of Douglass's second newspaper. As he explained, his third paper was an antislavery broadsheet that never gave an uncertain sound to the trump of freedom and focused on imparting to its readers a basic understanding of American society.

Edited by Douglass and partially supported by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass' Monthly printed political and antislavery news along with captivating editorials mostly written by Douglass himself. In these editorials Douglass asserted his deeply felt position that some individuals involved in the American abolitionist movement were relaxing their antislavery exertions and no longer making the case for justice and humanity to the heart and conscience of the nation on moral grounds.

Originally circulated in Britain, Douglass' Monthly was a rival to the Anti-Slavery Advocate, a highly radical Garrisonian monthly edited in Dublin, Ireland, and published in London. Part of the strength of Douglass' Monthly, whether in England or the United States, was that it provided an independent and influential black American voice that helped shape the antislavery movement before and during the Civil War. Douglass used Douglass' Monthly as a sounding board for his argument that the liberation of the slave in America would mean peace, honor, and prosperity to the American nation. Thus, after secession Douglass was persistent in his demands that the United States government proclaim the war as primarily a battle to end slavery.

In support of Abraham Lincoln and black participation in the Civil War, Douglass' Monthly proclaimed that black men going into the U.S. Army and Navy were fighting a double battle: against slavery in the South and against prejudice and proscription in the North. Frederick Douglass made this call in Douglass' Monthly because he not only saw Lincoln as a man of unblemished private character but also understood that a war undertaken for the perpetual enslavement of black men, similar to what white men went through in the Revolutionary War, logically called for black men to help suppress it and to become familiar with the means of securing, protecting, and defending their own liberty.

During the first two years of the war, Douglass' Monthly repeatedly argued two points: that the war must be fought to end slavery and that black Americans must become a part of the military force that would be necessary to defeat slavery. Douglass' Monthly itself, however, would not survive the war; it ceased publication in 1863. Unfortunately, the only existing complete runs of Douglass's three newspapers, including Douglass' Monthly, were destroyed in a house fire in 1872. Frederick Douglass did not terminate Douglass' Monthly as a result of diminished support or because he thought that the need to speak out against slavery and prejudice against the black race ended with the Civil War. Rather, he ceased publication because he felt that he could better serve the abolitionist cause by accepting an expected army commission—which, however, never materialized. With genuine remorse, and not knowing that he would not get the commission, Douglass explained in August 1863 that publication of Douglass' Monthly, which had continued in one form (and name) or another during nearly sixteen years of editorial toil and covered a period remarkable for the intensity and fierceness of the moral struggle between slavery and freedom, would be discontinued.

Bibliography

Blassingame, John W., ed. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series 1, Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. 5 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979–1992.
Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Chesebrough, David B. Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998.
Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Vol. 1, Early Years, 1817–1849. Edited by Philip S. Foner. New York: International Publishers, 1950.
McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, 1991.
Ripley, C. Peter, ed. The Black Abolitionist Papers. Vol. 1, The British Isles, 1830–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
Sterling, Dorothy. Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery. New York: Norton, 1991.

processed xml | source xml

Sign up to recieve email alerts from African American Studies Center