“Men of Color To Arms! To Arms!”: Frederick Douglass Broadside

“This is our golden moment! … For generations we have suffered under the horrors of slavery, outrage and wrong; our manhood has been denied, our citizenship blotted out, our souls seared and burned, our spirits cowed and crushed, and the hopes of the future of our race involved in doubt and darkness. But now our relations to the white race are changed. Now, therefore, is our most precious moment. Let us rush to arms! FAIL NOW, & OUR RACE IS DOOMED.

On this the soil of our birth. We must now awake, arise, or be forever fallen. If we value liberty, if we wish to be free in this land, if we love our country, if we love our families, our children, our home, we must strike now while the country calls; we must rise up in the dignity of our manhood, and show by our own right arms that we are worthy to be freemen. Our enemies have made the country believe that we are craven cowards, without soul, without manhood, without the spirit of soldiers. Shall we die with this stigma upon our graves? Shall we leave our inheritance of Shame to our Children?  No! a thousand times NO! We WILL Rise! The alternative is upon us! Let us rather die freemen than to live to be slaves. What is life without liberty! We say that we have manhood; now is the time to prove it …

SILENCE THE TONGUE OF CALUMNY Of Prejudice and Hate, let us Rise Now and Fly to Arms! We have seen what VALOR AND HEROISM OUR BROTHERS DISPLAYED AT PORT HUDSON AND MILLIKEN’S BEND, Though they are just from the galling, poisoning grasp of Slavery, they have startled the World by the most exalted heroism....

ARE FREEMEN LESS BRAVE THAN SLAVES

More than a Million White Men Have Left Comfortable Homes and joined the Armies of the Union to save their Country. Cannot we leave ours, and swell the Hosts of the Union, to save our liberties, vindicate our manhood, and deserve well of our Country. MEN OF COLOR! the Englishman, the Irishman, the Frenchman, the German, the American, have been called to assert their claim to freedom and a manly character, by an appeal to the sword. The day that has seen an enslaved race in arms has, in all history, seen their last trial....”

★ Extremely rare 44 x 87 in. broadside, listing Douglass and 54 other signers, 1863. #22552