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Frederick Douglass, Daniel O'connell, and the Transatlantic

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Frederick Douglass, Daniel O'connell, and the Transatlantic Frederick Douglass, Daniel O’Connell, and the Transatlantic Failure of Irish American Abolitionism Christopher Allan Black Christopher Allan Black is a When Frederick Douglass traveled to Teaching Associate and doctoral candidate Ireland in 1845, the fugitive slave and his bene - in the Department of English at factors hoped to develop a coalition between the Oklahoma State University. oppressed peasants and African-American slaves in their native homeland. While in bondage, Douglass had read the speeches of Sheridan in support of Catholic Emancipation in the Columbian Orator and was impressed by the Irish Catholic leader’s strong utilitarian denunci - ation of slavery and bold vindication of human rights. Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison believed that the Irish Repeal movement and the American Abolitionist movement of the 1840s shared much in common in terms of their polit - ical, social, and economic goals. In antebellum “Passage to the United States seems to America and Ireland, freed African-American produce the same effect upon the exile of slaves and oppressed working class Irish Erin as the eating of the forbidden fruit did Laborers advocated for their right to live free upon Adam and Eve. In the morning, they from intolerance, discrimination, and prejudice. were pure, loving, and innocent; in the During the mid-nineteenth century, Frederick evening guilty.” Douglass and Daniel O’Connell both crossed the Atlantic Ocean seeking sympathetic supporters The Liberator for their individual reform movements in their August 11, 1854 native countries . However, while Douglass’s Irish tour enlisted the native Irish peasantry and the Hibernian Anti Slavery Society (HASS) to fully support the Abolitionist movement in America, newly arrived Irish immigrants became reluctant to support black emancipation because they believed that O’Connell and Garrison’s equation of the Irish Repeal move - ment with Garrisonian Disunionism was being 17 used as a political ploy to discourage the Irish During their first joint appearance together at Americans ’ ascension into white middle class Conciliation Hall in Ireland, O’Connell intro - society and their desire to achieve economic duced Douglass as a friend of Irish Repeal and success at the expense of working class black supporter of Garrisonian Disunionism and took labor. i advantage of the occasion to rhetorically com - Through their attempt to ideologically pare the oppression of maintaining the Union connect the rhetoric of Irish Repeal and with Britain to the current controversy in the Garrisonian Disunionism, Douglass and United States over preserving union with the Garrison deliberately used O’Connell as a pawn slaveholding Southern states. O.A. Brownson, a to influence the political attitudes of the Irish in Catholic and the publisher of Brownson’s America .ii Douglass and Garrison believed that Review , charged O’Connell with directly inter - the key to garnering support for the black fering in American political affairs. However, emancipation movement among the newly O’Connell claimed that he was not directly arrived Irish immigrants involved enlisting the attacking the institution of American slavery; he sympathy of foreign benefactors from outside was protesting the universal abuses of oppres - the United States. O’Connell, the hero of Irish sion that he saw occurring throughout the Repeal , became crucial to these efforts because world. O’Connell asserted, “My sympathy is not he was a respected leader and political confined to the narrow limits of my own green reformer among the peasantry in his own coun - Ireland; my spirit walks abroad upon sea and try. In the eyes of the native Irish peasantry and land, and wherever there is oppression I hate Irish Americans, O’Connell was revered as a the oppressor” (Douglass 683). A large part of respected champion of liberty for his triumph in O’Connell’s appeal to the Abolitionist community the Catholic Emancipation movement of the in America was his impassioned utilitarian belief 1820s and his unwavering support of the Repeal in the universality of human suffering. While movement in the 1840s . During Douglass’s Irish Douglass and Garrison were initially cautious tour, O’Connell rhetorically referred to the for - about making the connection between the suf - mer slave as “the black O’Connell of the United fering of the Irish immigrant working class and States,” a carbon copy of himself to rhetorically African-American slaves , they believed that if appeal to the ethos of the supporters of Irish they could persuade Irish immigrants that the Repeal who were skeptical of backing anti slav - oppression of blacks was part of a larger system ery efforts in the United States . In Life and of universal human suffering then they would Times , Douglass writes of O’Connell that : become sympathetic to the Abolition of slavery in the United States. He held Ireland within the grasp of his Douglass and Garrison looked upon strong hand, and could lead it whither - O’Connell as a moral authority who had the soever he would for, for Ireland credibility to convince the Irish American popu - believed in him and loved him as she lation of the injustice of slavery. Noel Ignatiev had loved and believed in no leader observes, “Given O’Connell’s record on the slav - since. He was called “The Liberator” ery question and his influence among Irish and not without cause, for, though he everywhere, it was natural that Abolitionists in failed to effect the repeal of the Union America would wish to make maximum use of between England and Ireland, he his name” (8). The supporters of Garrisonian fought out the battle of Catholic eman - Disunionism believed that the Irish immigrant cipation, and was clearly the friend of population held the key to whether or not union liberty the world over. (682) with slaveholders would be abolished. O’Connell’s first address to an American audi - 18 ence occurred on January 28, 1842 at Faneuil off the shackles of the economic caste system; Hall in Boston. While the purpose of the meet - rather they wanted the peasantry to view ing was to advocate for the Abolition of slavery America as a society highly divided along ethnic in the District of Columbia, the Abolitionists and class lines. This emphasis on the innate made a concerted effort to advertise the event to inequality of antebellum American society is a predominantly Irish audience by posting precisely why the plight of the Irish peasant and handbills in immigrant neighborhoods and pro - the black chattel Slave are explicitly linked in moting the speech in The Boston Pilot the Douglass’s 1845 narrative. Critic Paul Giles Catholic paper. While O’Connell’s speech attract - writes: ed several thousand Irish from Boston and the surrounding area , it did not have the desired . Douglass mentions Sheridan’s effect that Garrison hoped it would have. On mighty speeches on and in behalf of February 5 , 1842, The Pilot warned against Catholic Emancipation, thus implicitly drawing close connections between the Irish linking the circumstances of Irish Repeal movement and Garrisonian Disunionism. Catholics under British rule with the The Catholic press warned that Abolition would plight of slaves in the American South. lead to the dissolution of the Union and that the This is a parallel reinforced by disunionist movement itself “was a British plot Garrison’s preface which sings the to weaken the United States” (Ignatiev 13). The praises of Daniel O’Connell, distin - Catholic media argued that if the Irish American guished advocate of universal emanci - community supported the Abolitionist movement pation, and the mightiest champion of that it would result in greater economic compe - prostrate but not conquered Ireland. tition and ethnic discrimination among emanci - (36) pated blacks and working class Irish laborers. The editors of The Pilot claimed that if Irish Throughout his narrative, Douglass consistently Americans endorsed Disunionism they ran the views the socioeconomic status and living con - risk of putting themselves back into the sub - ditions of the Irish refracted through the foreign servient minority position they experienced in cultural lens of American black chattel slavery. their native country. As a result, Douglass and Writing to Garrison in 1846 concerning the Garrison strategically employed O’Connell as a impoverished living conditions of the Irish respected authority to counteract this type of working class in their homeland, the fugitive divisive rhetoric that existed within the Irish slave observed that the peasantry lived “in much American community . the same degradation as the American slaves” To a certain extent, bringing O’Connell to (Giles 36). In the rural Irish countryside, the the United States was a way to expose the newly fugitive slave saw much that reminded him of arrived Irish immigrants to the inherent social his former condition. The working class Irish inequalities present within antebellum American peasantry labored under the same type of society . Douglass and Garrison metaphorically oppressive working conditions as African- linked the rhetoric of Irish Repeal and American slaves in the American South. In his Garrisonian Disunionism to convince recent personal narrative, Douglass elicits much philo - Irish immigrants that the institution of American sophical sympathy for the suffering of the native slavery was as unjust as the colonial oppression Irish peasantry. However, Douglass and endured by the Irish in their native homeland. Garrison’s compassion for the peasantry did not Douglass, Garrison, and O’Connell did not want extend to the Irish immigrants whom they saw the newly arrived immigrants to view the United as an economic threat to the ability of the liber - States as a utopian society where they could cast ated African-American slaves to improve their 19 class status and working conditions . Along with O’Connell, the abolitionist communi - Douglass and Garrison’s desire to enlist ty decried universal oppression and abuse of the support of the newly arrived Irish immi - perceived minority groups on both sides of the grants as advocates in support of the abolition Atlantic.
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