The poem "Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden has been circulating on the internet as a powerful response to the election of Barack Obama as the first African American President. I was doing some research today, on an entirely different topic, which led me to the unpublished papers of Frederick Douglass that are online at the Library of Congress. I decided to look to see what Douglass himself might have to say on the matter and found the following two items:

An unpublished and undated typewritten page with the following reply to a hypothetical question: What would you do if you became President?  It may have been written in 1888 when, at the Republican National Convention, Douglass became the first African-American to receive a vote for President of the United States in a major party's roll call vote. Douglass wrote:

"It seems a little absurd for one in my position to be asked, or to answer, the question as to what I would do or would not do if I were President of the United States, since no such contingency has even one chance in sixty-million to be realized. But, if that chance should happen, it would probably be my experience and my misfortune to make as many blunders and give just cause for as much criticism as any one who has ever occupied the Presidential chair. One thing however I would do or try to do. I would employ every means supplied to the President by the Constitution of the United States, to secure to every citizen of the United States, without regard to race, color, sex, or religion, equal protection of the laws. No citizen, however poor or despised, should be able to say at the close of my administration that he had suffered an injustice or had been in any way oppressed or injured by any act of mine while acting as President of the United States. "

Frederick Douglass

I also found the following verse. Yes, Frederick Douglass wrote poetry,  though he is much more famous for his prose [select here to find the unpublished poems in the online collection]. His poems are in the flowery language that was fashionable in his day. But this poem, scribbled on the back of a card, is succinct and perhaps the lines are notes for a longer poem. I wonder if he intended for it to be a song? This is also undated. The card had a French stamp on it and so this may have been written at the beginning of the Civil War when Douglass made a hasty trip to Europe because he had exchanged letters with John Brown and was afraid that he might be charged with the conspirators (he was not). The theme of the poem also suggests that it was written during the war. It is a bit hard to read so I am not positive that I have transcribed it accurately. But it does seem appropriate for this too, too astonishing moment in history:

Weapons of war we have cast from the battle.
Truth is our armour, our watch word is Love.
Hushed be the sword and the musketry rattle.
All our equipments are drawn from above.
Praise then the God of Truth,
Hoary age and [?] youth.
Praise him who flocks, for our armies increase.
Long may our rally be love, light, and liberty.
Ever our banner the banner of peace.

Frederick Douglass