Frederick Douglass was anti-Catholic - should we care?

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There is a petition underway in Cork City to have a street named after former slave Frederick Douglass, the original 'Black Lives Matter’ advocate who spoke powerfully about his experiences as a slave and then as a free man and freedom fighter for all oppressed people.

Douglass was a friend of both President Abraham Lincoln and Daniel 'The Liberator' O’Connell, and his impact during a lengthy visit to Ireland in 1845 at the onset of the Famine was extraordinary. Over four months, Douglass traveled to Dublin, Limerick, Belfast, and Cork, where today there's a statue to him at UCC.

While he is revered in Ireland, it's worth remembering that Douglass, like most of the anti-slavery activists at the time, was fervently anti-Catholic.

It is a strange conundrum. As Joan Walsh, the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America," wrote in Salon magazine: “American abolitionists tended to be elite evangelical Protestants with grave doubts about the fitness of Irish Catholics for American democracy. The Beechers and the Tappans, Wendell Phillips, and Elijah Lovejoy; many of the renowned names of abolitionist history were also associated with ugly anti-Irish Catholic biases over the years.”

Douglass, as an associate of theirs, adopted the same high moral tone. He was also an Anglophile, thankful that the British had abolished slavery in 1807.

When it came to the causes of the Famine which he witnessed, Douglass was completely blind to any argument his beloved British were responsible for and blamed the drunken Irish instead.

In a letter to fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, penned on February 26, 1846, Douglass wrote: “The immediate, and it may be the main cause of the extreme poverty and beggary in Ireland, is intemperance. This may be seen in the fact that most beggars drink whiskey…Drunkenness is still rife in Ireland. The temperance cause has done much—is doing much—but there is much more to do, and, as yet, comparatively few to do it.”

No doubt such trenchant statements were welcomed by the British and the abolitionists. The Irish were starving themselves, Douglass seemed to be saying, because of their mad lust for drink.

Yet he was clearly ambivalent, given the massive reception he received everywhere in Ireland.

In an earlier letter to Garrison, this one penned from Belfast on January 1, 1846, Douglass said: “I can truly say, I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life since landing in this country. I seem to have undergone a transformation, I live a new life.”

In Ireland, Douglass befriended Daniel O'Connell who had implored Irish Americans to seek to end slavery, but he took no position and stated as much on O’Connell’s effort to repeal the Act of Union of 1800 which had removed Ireland’s parliament. It appeared he did not want to offend the British in any way.

His anti-Catholicism came to the fore. On a trip to Rome, he described watching a procession of Catholic novitiates, saddened “that they are being trained to defend dogmas and superstitions contrary to the progress and enlightenment of the age.”

But he was also ferociously for human rights - “I am for fair play for the Irishman, the negro, the Chinaman, and or all men of whatever country or clime, and for allowing them to work out their own destiny without outside interference,” he wrote in an 18-page article entitled "Thoughts and Recollections of a Tour in Ireland."

Like all historical figures, Douglass was a complex mixture of an escaped slave, freedom fighter, and surprisingly anti-Catholic advocate. In today’s cancel culture, his diatribes against Catholicism might be enough to write him off, but the man in full soars far beyond any effort to stereotype him. He was fearless where it most counted, telling the story of his enslaved people.

It was normal for that time for a Southerner to be anti-catholic, protestants in general didn't like Catholics in those days.

Exactly.

It was normal for ALL Americans (north south east west) to be "Anti-Papist" then. We were a solidly Protestant nation with out even a significant Catholic minority until the Irish potato famine began to drive large numbers of Irish Catholics to America. And that was happening only at about the same time as the Abolitionist movement started.


We wouldnt have a Catholic POTUS until JFK (LONG after Douglas's time). Even then it was considered almost as a big a deal that JFK was Catholic as it would be for Obama being Black decades later.

So. No. We shouldnt care. Or at least we shouldnt "cancel" him.

Yea,like I have said in other posts,if you take down one statue you have to take down them all,because everyone got some dirt on them.

No.

Its the exact opposite of what you're saying. Youve proven the opposite of what you're trying to prove.

Its your civic duty to pick and choose whom to honor with statues. And you can keep and dispose of whomever you want.

Contrary to what you said in that post in that other thread: its not about "digging up dirt" on people.

Its about whats up front about them.



We have statues to the leaders of confederacy. Their whole claim to fame is what?

Their claim to fame is that they were traitors. And not even traitors for a noble cause that you can sympathize with them opposing the state for, but for a tawdry cause at best. That being the cause of the preservation of slavery. We honor them for being villains pure and simple. So why continue doing that? Its our civic duty to pull their statues down. No "digging up dirt" needed.

George Washington happened to be slave owner. But what he was famous for was founding the nation.

MLK Jr. did not overthrow the govt. and establish a Taliban type regime to oppress women. And Frederick Douglass did not become an Oliver Cromwell type ruler of America and mass murder Catholics. So there is no reason to take down any statuary dedicated to those three.

Now I am talking about local and state governments taking down statues.

The mobs have gone way beyond, and are attacking any statues they find of White guys dressed in pre 1920 garb, and there are Alt-right vandals who vandalize Abolitionists of history (like Frederick Douglas) for revenge. That irrational mob vandalism and counter vandalism needs to stop. I will grant you that.

But there is nothing wrong with local govts rationally reassessing whom in history they choose to honor.

Well it's incrementalism,right now people are preoccupied with race and slavery.Once this preoccupation fades there will be a new taboo and you will have to take down a bunch more statues.It could take 100 years but eventually all the statues will be gone.What I'm saying makes perfect sense.

1)That doesnt follow logically.

2)It has nothing to do with what is happening anyway.

If public attitudes change, and this causes historic figures to fall out of favor, it would also cause other historic figures to rise to favor, so for every statue that would get pulled down another statue of someone else would be erected, so the total population of statues would remain about the same over time.


Second what is happening at the moment is not the result of some current obsession. It's Confederate statues coming down. It was ALWAYS taboo to commit treason, and to wage wars against the nation. And there was never a time when America wasnt obsessed with slavery and racism. The Jews conduct a ceremony at passover celebrating their escape from slavery33 centuries ago.The colonists in America declared that Britain was making us all "into slaves" and that led to the Revolutionary War.

Just because a war is “unjust” doesn’t give us the right not to be grateful to the soldiers who fought for our country or were our allies.

Frederick Douglass was anti-Catholic - should we care?

... Just because a war is “unjust” doesn’t give us the right not to be grateful to the soldiers who fought for our country or were our allies.