Langston, John Mercer

Sex: Male

Born: Louisa County, Virginia, United States
14 December 1829

Died: Washington, District of Columbia, United States
15 November 1897

Activity/Profession: Sculptor, Civil Rights Activist, Diplomat, Lawyer, Political Figure

(b. 14 December 1829; d. 15 November 1897),
an African American political leader, congressman, and intellectual.

Born in Virginia to a wealthy white planter and a slave mother, John Mercer Langston was one of the most influential African Americans of the nineteenth century. Widely regarded by contemporaries and historians alike as second in importance only to Frederick Douglass, Langston actually superseded the venerable Douglass in certain ways. Although Douglass enjoyed more widespread renown, Langston held more government positions and had a more varied career. The two men first met in 1848 and maintained a friendship for many years thereafter. They disagreed on some important racial issues, however, which sometimes led to hard feelings and, near the end of their lives, an intense rivalry that most observers would say made them bitter enemies.

Langston was about ten years younger than Douglass, and while they were both mulattoes born to slave mothers, their upbringings could hardly have been more different. Whereas Douglass endured the most abhorrent circumstances as a Maryland slave before escaping to freedom, Langston and his siblings inherited his father's estate and were adopted by a family friend in the free state of Ohio. Thus Langston grew up in a rather privileged environment and came of age among free blacks in Chillicothe and Cincinnati. As a teenager he enrolled in Oberlin College near Cleveland. In 1848 the nineteen-year-old student met the most celebrated abolitionist in America, Frederick Douglass, who invited Langston to make his first public antislavery speech. They met again in 1852, speaking in turn at a rally in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, Langston graduated from Oberlin in 1849 and continued his studies there as a graduate student, earning a master's degree in theology three years later. At that point, he sought admission to several law schools but was rejected in each case solely because of his race. He resorted to studying law independently, and in 1854 he became the first African American admitted to the Ohio bar. He practiced law in Ohio for the next fifteen years, prospering in both his business and personal life.

John Mercer Langston, photographed c. 1860–1875. He once observed: “It is in the courts, by the law, that we shall, finally, settle all questions connected with the recognition of the rights, the equality, the full citizenship of colored Americans.”

Library of Congress.

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Unlike Douglass, who made abolitionism and civil rights issues his primary vocation and assigned secondary status to his few government jobs, Langston made his career in various local, state, and national government positions but always tied racial issues to his professional activities. Langston stands among the vanguard of black elected officials in American history. He was the first African American elected to office in 1855, as the town clerk of the predominantly white community of Brownhelm, Ohio, where he owned a farm. In that office he organized a state abolition society and became heavily involved in the Underground Railroad. Although unswervingly abolitionist in sentiment, Langston waffled on the issue of whether moral suasion or direct action, or even violence, was the proper course for the movement to take. The radical abolitionist John Brown conferred with Langston, as well as with Douglass, regarding his planned assault on Harpers Ferry, although he could not persuade either man to join him in launching his doomed 1859 raid. Langston was likewise ambivalent on the question of what to do with the black population as a whole if it should be freed. He initially favored emigration and colonization but later shifted to supporting integration within the mainstream of American society. Perhaps because of the lack of clarity in his mind regarding these and other racial issues, he could never speak or write with quite the same force as Douglass.

Langston became active nationally during the Civil War and Reconstruction years. In 1861 he recruited black soldiers not only in Ohio but also in Massachusetts, where he helped organize the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. Douglass greatly appreciated the raising of this black regiment and actively recruited for it. In 1864 Langston was honored with the presidency of the National Equal Rights League, which campaigned for black suffrage and ultimately achieved that goal before the end of the decade. Meanwhile, he moved back to Oberlin in 1865, where he served on the city council and the board of education. In 1867 he accepted an appointment as chief inspector of educational facilities for the Freedmen's Bureau. In 1868 he became the founding dean of the first black law school in America, which operated within Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction, Langston and Douglass had a great deal of common ground on racial issues. As two of the nation's most prominent black public figures, they were often together on stages at civil rights rallies, abolitionist reunions, political campaigns, and conventions of various sorts. They shared the stage in New York City in 1865; in Washington, D.C., in 1872, 1873, and 1875; in Boston and North Carolina in 1872; and in Philadelphia in 1875. Although they generally shared the same message and goals during this phase of their careers, they experienced their first mild disagreement in 1872 at a national convocation of black educators held in Washington, D.C. Douglass, who always favored maximum civil rights and absolute equality for blacks, characteristically believed that African Americans should aspire to be not only educators but also administrators of schools and colleges, a point of view that Langston did not share. Ironically, Langston served as the dean of Howard Law School and later was the vice president and interim president of Howard University. He sought the presidency permanently but was rejected because of his race.

When the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company was chartered during Reconstruction, Langston became a trustee. With freedmen composing the majority of depositors, the bank did well for a couple of years but fell on hard times in the early 1870s, largely because the robber baron Jay Cooke milked the bank for half a million dollars just as his corporation was about to crash. The failure of Cooke's company brought on the nationwide Panic of 1873 and left the Freedman's Bank more than $200,000 in debt. In 1874, to avoid a bank failure, the trustees elected Frederick Douglass president of the bank in the hope that his name recognition would restore investor confidence. Langston did not vote for Douglass, saying his longtime friend knew nothing about banking, which was a true statement. Douglass accepted the position but was not able to restore confidence in the bank. Langston began withdrawing his own money from it at the same time that Douglass was depositing his. The subsequent failure of the bank left the two men polarized and blaming one another. Unlike Langston, Douglass carried the burden of the failure for the rest of his career.

Despite their disagreement over the bank, Douglass still considered Langston a friend, or at least publicly called him one for purposes of racial solidarity. When Langston received a commission as the U.S. consul to Haiti in 1877, Douglass lauded the appointment and praised his friend's achievements, calling him a pioneer among black statesmen. Yet when Douglass received a commission as a U.S. marshal of Washington, D.C., and the white establishment of the capital city railed against the appointment, Douglass expected, in vain, for Langston to speak up for him. After that, the two men never saw eye-to-eye on any issue of importance. During the eight years Langston held the post as consul to Haiti, he remained active as a civil rights spokesman stateside. He came out in support of the Exoduster Movement of 1879—the movement of African Americans out of the South to new settlements in Kansas—which again put him at odds with Douglass. In 1885, when Douglass commended Democratic President Grover Cleveland for his racially conciliatory inaugural address, Langston publicly criticized both the new administration and Douglass's comments, whereupon Cleveland slashed his pay. Langston resigned his post in disgust.

From 1885 to 1888, Langston served as president of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute and seemed to have no notable contact with Douglass. That changed in 1888, however, when Langston ran for Congress in Virginia's Fourth Congressional District. Despite the fact that he had been faithful to the Republican Party since its inception in the mid-1850s, the Republican machine in Virginia, run by William Mahone, refused to endorse Langston's candidacy, for racial reasons. Instead, Mahone endorsed a white man who was loyal to the local political power structure. Douglass sided with Mahone publicly, charging Langston with lack of good faith in dealing with the debt of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, which obviously was a sore subject between the two men. He also questioned Langston's motives on other issues, essentially accusing him of cashing in on his celebrity for personal gain rather than using it for the good of his race. Langston vehemently denied all such charges, and black voters were left to decide for themselves between their two most prominent leaders; black voters in this Virginia district rejected Douglass's advice and overwhelmingly voted for Langston. Langston then lost the regular election but contested the outcome, claiming fraud on the part of the Democrats. The hearing in the House of Representatives nearly a year later resulted in a strict partisan vote that ended with Langston taking a seat in Congress. On the day he was sworn into office, Democrats walked out of chamber en masse, denouncing the partisanship of the Republicans. Because of the contest and hearing, Langston served only about one year of his two-year term, during which time he frequently clashed with racist Democratic congressmen over personal attacks they levied at him. He was not reelected thereafter.

In their twilight years, Langston and Douglass continued to cross paths and come to ideological blows. They disagreed over the wisdom of states adopting educational qualifications for voting, as Mississippi had done in 1890. Langston favored qualifications and Douglass opposed them. By 1894 whatever feelings of friendship and respect that Douglass once had for Langston had clearly evaporated. He basically called Langston a traitor to his race, saying his name may be “John,” but he is no “St. John” or even “John the Baptist.” Despite the animosity, that year the two leaders shared the stage one last time in Washington, D.C., and managed to find common ground on one final issue. Both men agreed that the imperialistic expansion of the United States was a good thing, but not for the reason that most imperialists thought; Douglass and Langston thought that the annexation of islands such as Hawaii, Cuba, and Haiti would benefit the dark-skinned natives of those lands in a variety of ways—morally, socially, culturally, economically, and politically.

Despite their agreement on this issue, the two men never really mended their differences. Heading into the twentieth century their strained relationship proved the rule among black leaders rather than the exception. While it is possible to speculate that the two men could have accomplished much more had they maintained a united front, the fact that each followed his own conscience demonstrates the need to see African Americans as individuals with minds of their own, not as a homogeneous group that thinks, speaks, acts, and votes as one.

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.
Foner, Philip S. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Volume 4, Reconstruction and After. New York: International Publishers, 1955.
Huggins, Nathan I. Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.
Langston, John M. From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol (1894). New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968.
Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1948.

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