Frederick Douglass and Cancel Culture

In his new book The President and the Freedom Fighter (Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass) author Brian Kilmeade describes an event involving Douglass in the midst of the Civil War. Douglass was invited to Syracuse New York to give a speech which was expected to be critical of President Lincoln's early reluctance to emancipate the slaves.

Lincoln was afraid that if he did that the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia would secede and join the Confederacy, but Douglass saw this as unconscionable dithering.

Kilmeade writes:

[Douglass'] harsh criticisms of Lincoln's border state policy certainly angered a great many people. When he arrived ... to lecture in Syracuse, New York, he saw advertisements supporting his speeches - but side by side were handbills that called him "Thief!", "Rescal," "Traitor!!!" - and worse. It invited all comers to "give him a warm reception at this time for the insolence he deserves."

Reading this brought to mind the many times speakers invited to speak at university venues have been threatened with disruption and violence by those who fear ideas, including, incredibly enough, university professors.

Regrettably, pusillanimous university representatives often simply cancel the event, giving the intellectual thugs a victory over the freedom to speak and the freedom of others to listen.

But that's not what happened in Douglass' case:

The owner of the theater rejected calls from his neighbors to close the doors to his hall. When he was reminded that "Frederick Douglass was a Negro," he replied that his [the theater owner] principles of freedom applied to humanity, not to color."

Would that our universities and social media giants were so principled and courageous. But that's not all. Kilmeade tells us that:

The mayor reached into the city coffers and came up with three hundred dollars to pay for regular police and a special fifty-man security force.

Additional recruits were summoned. They marched into Syracuse, where they guarded the theater entrance, bayonets fixed on their rifles. When Douglass arrived, the mayor locked arms with Douglass, endangering his own safety to shield his guest from mob violence.

How many university presidents or provosts are willing to brave violence to ensure that someone whose opinions may be unpopular among the professoriat and their students has the right to address their student body? How many universities are willing to hire extra security to defend free speech? How many instead utter weaselly bromides like, "We can't guarantee the safety of those involved so we're cancelling the event"?

Denying the other side the opportunity to speak, shouting them down and threatening violence are tactics that fascists have used for a hundred years to stifle and suppress all opposition to their tyrannical goals. It's a tactic used by the Nazi brownshirts in Germany and the Bolshevik communist/fascists in Russia and everywhere else where totalitarians seek to seize power over peoples' lives.

It'd be a tragedy if the institutions entrusted with upholding the basic principles of freedom let them win here, too.