Charles W. Chesnutt

“ And a few days later, while the inspired words of the inaugural address, long bracketed with the noblest of human utterances, were still ringing in his ears, he spoke at the meeting held in Rochester to mourn the death of the martyred President, and made one of his most eloquent and moving addresses. It was a time that wrung men's hearts, and none more than the strong-hearted man's whose race had found its liberty through him who lay dead at Washington, slain by the hand of an assassin whom slavery had spawned. ”

“ When Collins would have turned the abolition influence to the support of a communistic scheme, Douglass opposed it vehemently. Slavery was the evil they were fighting, and their cause would be rendered still more unpopular if they ran after strange gods.
When Garrison pleaded for the rights of man, when Phillips with golden eloquence preached the doctrine of humanity and progress, men approved and applauded. When Parker painted the moral baseness of the times, men acquiesced shamefacedly. When Channing preached the gospel of love, they wished the dream might become a reality. ”

“ He always endeavored in his public utterances to remove the doubts and fears of those who were tempted to leave the negroes in slavery because of the difficulty of disposing of them after they became free. Douglass, with the simple, direct, primitive sense of justice that had always marked his mind, took the only true ground for the solution of the race problems of that or any other epoch,-that the situation should be met with equal and exact justice, and that his people should be allowed to do as they pleased with themselves, "subject only to the same great laws which apply to other men." ”

“ But one cannot live long on joy; and, while his chains were broken, he was not beyond the echo of their clanking. He met on the streets, within a few hours after his arrival in New York, a man of his own color, who informed him that New York was full of Southerners at that season of the year, and that slave-hunters and spies were numerous, that old residents of the city were not safe, and that any recent fugitive was in imminent danger. After this cheerful communication Douglass's informant left him, evidently fearing that Douglass himself might be a slave-hunting spy. ”

“ From this night of slavery Douglass emerged, passed through the limbo of prejudice which he encountered as a freeman, and took his place in history. "As few of the world's great men have ever had so checkered and diversified a career," says Henry Wilson, "so it may at least be plausibly claimed that no man represents in himself more conflicting ideas and interests. His life is, in itself, an epic which finds few to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality." It was, after all, no misfortune for humanity that Frederick Douglass felt the iron hand of slavery ”

“ IV In 1841 Douglass entered upon that epoch of his life which brought the hitherto obscure refugee prominently before the public, and in which his services as anti-slavery orator and reformer constitute his chief claim to enduring recollection. Millions of negroes whose lives had been far less bright than Douglass's had lived and died in slavery. Thousands of fugitives under assumed names were winning a precarious livelihood in the free States and trembling in constant fear of the slave-catcher. Some of these were doing noble work in assisting others to escape from bondage. ”

“ But the evil was already done, and the seed thus sown brought forth fruit in the after career of the orator and leader of men. The mere fact that his master wished to prevent his learning made him all the more eager to acquire knowledge. In after years, even when most bitter in his denunciation of the palpable evils of slavery, Douglass always acknowledged the debt he owed to this good lady who innocently broke the laws and at the same time broke the chains that held a mind in bondage. ”

“ The published speeches of Douglass, of which examples may be found scattered throughout his various autobiographies, reveal something of the powers thus characterized, though, like other printed speeches, they lose by being put in type. But one can easily imagine their effect upon a sympathetic or receptive audience, when delivered with flashing eye and deep-toned resonant voice by a man whose complexion and past history gave him the highest right to describe and denounce the iniquities of slavery and contend for the rights of a race. ”

“ Frederick Douglass lived so long, and played so conspicuous a part on the world's stage, that it would be impossible, in a work of the size of this, to do more than touch upon the salient features of his career, to suggest the respects in which he influenced the course of events in his lifetime, and to epitomize for the readers of another generation the judgment of his contemporaries as to his genius and his character. ”

“ In September, 1866, Douglass was elected a delegate from Rochester to the National Loyalists' Convention at Philadelphia, called to consider the momentous questions of government growing out of the war. While he had often attended anti-slavery conventions as the representative of a small class of abolitionists, his election to represent a large city in a national convention was so novel a departure from established usage as to provoke surprise and comment all over the country. ”

“ While Douglass's color put him in a class by himself among great orators, and although his slave past threw around him an element of romance that added charm to his eloquence, these were mere incidental elements of distinction. The North was full of fugitive slaves, and more than one had passionately proclaimed his wrongs. There were several colored orators who stood high in the councils of the abolitionists and did good service for the cause of humanity. ”

“ But even all this did not entirely crush the indomitable spirit of a man destined to achieve his own freedom and thereafter to help win freedom for a race. In August, 1834, after a particularly atrocious beating, which left him wounded and weak from loss of blood, Douglass escaped the vigilance of the slave-breaker and made his way back to his own master to seek protection. The master, who would have lost his slave's wages for a year if he had broken the contract with Covey before the year's end, sent Douglass back to his taskmaster. ”

“ Such a man was Frederick Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer force of character and talents that neither slavery nor caste proscription could crush must ever remain as a shining illustration of the essential superiority of manhood to environment. Circumstances made Frederick Douglass a slave, but they could not prevent him from becoming a freeman and a leader among mankind. ”

“ Douglass's fame as an orator has long been secure. His position as the champion of an oppressed race, and at the same time an example of its possibilities, was, in his own generation, as picturesque as it was unique; and his life may serve for all time as an incentive to aspiring souls who would fight the battles and win the love of mankind. ”

“ They wanted a free country, where the fleeing victim of slavery could find a refuge. Douglass perceived the immense advantage these swarming millions would gain through being free in the States where they already were. He had always been minded to do the best thing possible. When a slave, he had postponed his escape until it seemed entirely feasible. When denied cabin passage on steamboats, he had gone in the steerage or on deck. ”

“ V. It can easily be understood that such a man as Douglass, thrown thus into stimulating daily intercourse with some of the brightest minds of his generation, all animated by a high and noble enthusiasm for liberty and humanity,—such men as Garrison and Phillips and Gay and Monroe and many others,—should have developed with remarkable rapidity those reserves of character and intellect which slavery had kept in repression. ”

“ The contention that a class who constitute half the population of a State shall be entirely unrepresented in its councils, because, forsooth, their will there expressed may affect the government of another class of the same general population, is as repugnant to justice and human rights as was the institution of slavery itself. ”

“ Douglass possessed in unusual degree the faculty of swaying his audience, sometimes against their maturer judgment. There is something in the argument from first principles which, if presented with force and eloquence, never fails to appeal to those who are not blinded by self-interest or deep-seated prejudice. Douglass's argument was that of the Declaration of Independence,—"that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ The Liberty party maintained that slavery could be fought best with political weapons, that by the power of the ballot slavery could be confined strictly within its constitutional limits and prevented from invading new territory, and that it could be extinguished by the respective States whenever the growth of public opinion demanded it. One wing of the party took the more extreme ground that slavery was contrary to the true intent and meaning of the Constitution, and demanded that the country should return to the principles of liberty upon which it was founded. ”

“ But, when Douglass told the story of his wrongs and those of his brethren in bondage, they felt that here indeed was slavery embodied, here was an argument for freedom that could not be gainsaid, that the race that could produce in slavery such a man as Frederick Douglass must surely be worthy of freedom. ”

“ In 1882 occurred the death of Douglass's first wife, whom he had married in New York immediately after his escape from slavery, and who had been his faithful companion through so many years of stress and struggle. In the same year his Life and Times was published. In 1884 he married Miss Helen Pitts, a white woman of culture and refinement. There was some criticism of this step by white people who did not approve of the admixture of the races, and by colored persons who thought their leader had slighted his own people when he overlooked the many worthy and accomplished women among them. ”

“ Thousands of escaped slaves were living in Northern communities. Some of them had acquired homes, had educated their children, and in some States had become citizens and voters. Already social pariahs, restricted generally to menial labor, bearing the burdens of poverty and prejudice, they now had thrust before them the spectre of the kidnapper, the slave-catcher with his affidavit, and the United States [Supreme] Court, which was made by this law the subservient tool of tyranny. This law gave Douglass and the other abolitionists a new text. ”

“ In 1879 the hard conditions under which the negroes in the South were compelled to live led to a movement to promote an exodus of the colored people to the North and West, in the search for better opportunities. The white people of the South, alarmed at the prospect of losing their labor, were glad to welcome Douglass when he went among them to oppose this movement, which he at that time considered detrimental to the true interests of the colored population. ”

“ The worldly wisdom of denying to slaves the key to knowledge is apparent when it is said that Douglass first learned from a newspaper that there were such people as abolitionists, who were opposed to human bondage and sought to make all men free. ”

“ Their homes, their hearts, and their often none too well-filled purses were open to him. In this new atmosphere his mind expanded, his spirit took on high courage, and he read and studied diligently, that he might make himself worthy of his opportunity to do something for his people. ”

“ From Scotland Douglass went to England, where he found still another great reform movement nearing a triumphant conclusion. The Anti-corn Law League, after many years of labor, under the leadership of Richard Cobden and John Bright, for the abolition of the protective tariff on wheat and other kinds of grain for food, had brought its agitation to a successful issue; and on June 26, 1846, the Corn Laws were repealed. The generous enthusiasm for reform of one kind or another that pervaded the British Islands gave ready sympathy and support to the abolitionists in their mission. ”

“ There seemed imperative reasons, besides that of political expediency, for putting the ballot in his hands. Recent events have demonstrated that this necessity is as great now as then. The assumption that negroes—under which generalization are included all men of color, regardless of that sympathy to which kinship at least should entitle many of them—are unfit to have a voice in government is met by the words of Lincoln, which have all the weight of a political axiom: "No man can be safely trusted to govern other men without their consent." ”