Address Delivered by Hon. Frederick Douglass (1873)

AUTHOR: Douglass, Frederick

SUMMARY (Aïcha Bouchelaghem, edited Deborah Madsen)

In this speech, Douglass argues in favor of animal welfare, specifically in farming contexts. Kindness to farmed animals is both an economic and aesthetic priority. The text is a printed version of a speech Douglass delivered the same year to an audience of Tennessee farmers and mechanics. The speech makes welfarist arguments around Douglass’s primary purpose: to propose that farming (and mechanical professions) and agricultural progress are key to racial uplift: “I hail agriculture as a refuge for the oppressed” (9).

Douglass’s ideal for the management of land and nonhuman animals rests on reciprocity. The most profitable way of practicing agriculture is sustainably, by nourishing the earth:

Every crop gathered from the field takes something valuable from the soil upon which it is grown, and the richest land in the world can be made poor if we take everything from it and give it nothing in return. While providing for ourselves, our next best thought should be given to the questions as to how we shall provide for the wants of the soil out of which comes our own living. All flesh is grass, and the amount of vegetable matter we obtain from the earth will be the measure of the life and happiness of the men and animals who subsist upon it (14).

Douglass depicts land as an organism that requires continued sustenance. The metaphor “All flesh is grass” underscores the dependence of both human and nonhuman life on a well-nourished soil. Douglass imagines the reverse of chattel slavery, which abolitionist texts describe as a means of production based on theft, a uni-lateral economic relation. What Douglass posits instead is a process of reciprocal nurture. Importantly, farming practices should respect the welfare of nonhumans and humans alike.

In the section entitled “Treatment of Animals” (12-13), Douglass views the peaceful treatment of farmed animals as strategic, echoing the argument that slavery and the violent behaviors that it fosters are economically ineffective: “Now, there is no successful farming without well-trained and well-treated horses and oxen” (12). Kindness, for Douglass, is far more productive than abusing animals into obedience: “I have seen men spend valuable hours of the best part of the day, chasing the horse and the mule in the open field, which but for the abuses heaped upon them when in harness, would have come instantly upon the call of their master. The loss arising from this source is twofold. Both man and beast have been wearied by the chase, and the temper of both has been rendered unfavorable to calm and steady exertion” (13).

Douglass’s argument in favor of animal welfare is not merely practical, however. He strengthens his exhortation by framing it as an aesthetic ideal as well: “one of the greatest pleasures connected with agricultural life may be found in the pleasant relations capable of subsisting between the farmer and his four-legged companions; for they are company as well as helpers in his toil” (12-13). Douglass places farmers and farmed animals in a reciprocal relationship, in which affection is repaid with faithfulness. This mutual exchange is inherent to Douglass’s view of the beautiful, harmonious life:

It would be well enough … to follow … the retiring statesman … to the old farm of his birth, and paint the scene of peace and sweet content in which he spends his declining years, and, at last, sinks to rest forever; to dwell at large upon the soothing charms of nature, the honest affection and trust of well-treated domestic animals, to prove that among the truly beautiful and healthful scenes of this world, there is none more beautiful than a well-managed farm (8).

Douglass assures his audience that by treating their farmed animals well they will invest in a carefree future, which includes the possibility for (virtuous) leisure.  

However, Douglass also draws a parallel between enslaved humans and nonhuman farmed animals. By evoking the discourse of individual rights, he not only critiques the enslavement of African Americans, but also deplores the violent treatment of farmed animals:

slavery had a direct and positive tendency to produce coarseness and brutality in the treatment and management of domestic animals, especially those most useful to the agricultural industry. Not only the slave, but the horse, the ox and the mule shared the general feeling of indifference to rights naturally engendered by a state of slavery. The master blamed the overseer; the overseer the slave, and the slave the horses, oxen and mules, and violence and brutality fell upon the animals as a consequence (12).

Key to Douglass’s argument is that the violence of slavery begets violence (a central point in “Haiti”). His agricultural ideal, then, requires not only the dissolution of chattel slavery but character traits associated with slavery, such as physical and verbal violence towards farmed animals: “It should be the study of every farmer to make his horse his companion and friend, and to do this, there is but one rule, and that is, uniform sympathy and kindness. All loud and boisterous commands, all brutal flogging should be banished from the field, and only words of cheer and encouragement should be tolerated” (13).

Most notable in this speech is Douglass’s use of anthropomorphism to promote the rights of farmed animals, especially horses, to welfare. He reverses the simile that he used in earlier writings in which he deplored the fact that enslaved African Americans were treated “like” horses:

A horse is in many respects like a man. He has the five senses, and has memory, affection and reason to a limited degree. When young, untrained and untamed, he has unbounded faith in his strength and fleetness. He runs, jumps and plays in the pride of his perfections. But convince him that he is a creature of law as well as of freedom by a judicious and kindly application of your superior power, and he will conform his conduct to that law, far better than your most law-abiding citizen (13).

Douglass draws on the popular trope that associates childhood with animality. An untamed horse, if “limited” in terms of rational ability, paradoxically has the potential to be a better legal subject than a human. Douglass supports his vision of an agrarian utopia by representing horses in their capacity for discipline, should they only be treated as having rights as “creatures of law.”