Abolition’s Afterlives

Abstract

On 10 May 1865, just a month after Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Frederick Douglass addressed the members of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The Society had assembled to consider the question of whether to permanently disband now that emancipation had been achieved. Adopting the familiar role of historian of antislavery, Douglass considers the past, present, and future of abolition.1 He recalls his early work as an agent of the Society, agitating against attempts to inscribe white supremacy into law in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. “That was good anti-slavery work twenty years ago,” he says. “I do not see why it is not good antislavery work now” (577). Opposing the view of those who, like William Lloyd Garrison, thought it “ludicrous” and an “absurdity” to maintain the Society after slavery had been abolished, Douglass insists “that the work of Abolitionists is not done” and warns that slavery “has been called by a great many names, and it will call itself by yet another name” (qtd. in Yerrinton 1; Douglass 578, 579). Hence, he advises, “you and I and all of us had better wait and see what new form this old monster will assume, in what new skin this old snake will come forth next” (579).