The chance or destiny which brought to this land of ours, and placed in the midst of the most progressive and the most enlightened race that Christian civilization has produced, some three or four millions of primitive black people from Africa and their descendants, has created one of the most interesting and difficult social problems which any modern people has had to face. The effort to solve this problem has put to a crucial test the fundamental principles of our political life and the most w

The life of Frederick Douglass is the history of American slavery epitomized in a single human experience. He saw it all, lived it all, and overcame it all. What he saw and lived and suffered was not too much to pay, however, for a great career. “It is something,” as he himself said, “to couple one’s name with great occasions, and it was a great thing to me to be permitted to bear some humble part in this, the greatest that had come thus far to the American people.” Tradition says he was of nobl

When young Douglass left Baltimore to go back to the plantation, he was about sixteen years of age;—strong, healthy, and fully capable of the hard work of a field hand. But this was not the most difficult task he now had to face. Conditions that he met there were to test his character as it had never been tested before, and the trials he endured during this period profoundly influenced all his future life. For the first time in many years, he was to feel the “pitiless pinchings of hunger.” He sa

For the second time in his life, Frederick Douglass now began earnestly to study the possible means of permanently breaking his fetters. At the end of every week, when he turned his entire earnings over to his master, his sense of injustice and indignation increased. He was scarcely able to conceal his discontent. His intense longing to be free must have betrayed itself in his countenance, for very soon he noticed that he was being closely watched. The fact that he had at one time made an attemp

Years had passed and great changes had taken place since Uncle Lawson, the old colored preacher, who had been Frederick Douglass’s first spiritual teacher and comforter, had solemnly told him that “the Lord had a great work for him to do,” and that he must prepare to do it. These words were spoken at a time when the boy was just beginning to awaken to the vast possibilities of human life, and, dimly conscious of his own powers, was groping to find his place in the world. Douglass had never forgo

The powers and privileges the conservative party sought to maintain and defend were: The unlimited authority of the master or owner of slaves. Abrogation of marriage and the family relation among slaves. The power to enforce labor without wages. Incapacity of the slaves to acquire and hold property. Incapacity to enjoy civil, domestic, and political rights. Incapacity to make contracts or bargains. The liability of the slave to be sold like other chattels, and separated from relatives. The autho

The principles for which the Abolitionists contended were the following: All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Slavery, or more properly, the practice of slave-holding, is a crime against human nature and a sin against God. Like all other sins, slavery should be abolished unconditionally, repented of, and abandoned. It is always safe to leave off doing wrong and never safe to continu

When Frederick Douglass had concluded his remarkable tour from Vermont to Indiana in the interest of the anti-slavery conventions, he was one of the most popular and widely talked of men on the American platform. The public everywhere was eager to learn everything possible about the “runaway slave” who was winning his place among the foremost of American orators. Interest in him was farther enhanced by the publication of his “Narrative,” in 1845. Its issue was made necessary by the demand for so

Frederick Douglass returned to American shores on the 20th day of April, 1847. The date and fact of his coming marked the beginning of a new chapter in his career. To be free and feel free was a great source of strength both to himself and to his friends, in renewing the struggle for emancipation. He had not only a bracing sense of security against the dangers of capture and return to slavery, but he had gained wonderfully in mental and spiritual equipment. The two years in England were years of

The recognized leadership of Frederick Douglass among the colored people of the country may be dated from the publication of the North Star . Prior to that time he was regarded as an Abolition orator and a conspicuous example of the possibilities of the Negro race. He had not yet established his relationship with the free colored people of the North. Douglass came from the South. His hardest experiences and bitterest memories were those of the Southern plantations. It was the toiling black masse

Pro-slavery and anti-slavery were at this time the names of two sets of ideas and two states of mind that no longer admitted of compromise. The words meant immeasurably more in 1850 than they had in 1830. If they had ever been mere academic terms, they were fast becoming fighting terms,—the standards of two hostile camps. In the minds of the people, they stood, respectively, for irreconcilable principles. With every fresh event affecting either one side or the other, new and more intense animosi

The anti-slavery agitation made and revealed some of the most notable characters in American history. As it grew in extent and intensity, it attracted to itself men and women gifted with the powers needed to force great issues to a conclusion. Those who were already in the struggle, like Mr. Douglass, became more strongly committed to it, and those who were not yet enlisted, but belonged to it by right of individual temperament and spiritual inheritance, hurriedly took their places in the foremo

The ten years from 1850 to 1860 were years of cumulative danger to the republic and to the principles of liberty and democracy upon which it was founded. For the Negro these years contained more of perils than of hopes. The great historical events growing out of the conflict between the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery parties appeared to have set the goal of emancipation ever farther out of the range of practical possibilities. The Fugitive Slave Law seemed for a time to put an end to all hopes

The Civil War came on as the direct result of the irreconcilable sentiments of the North and the South on the question of slavery and the political conflicts already mentioned. On the part of the South, it was begun and waged with marvelous courage and intelligence to preserve slavery and to establish the right of secession; and on the part of the North, to preserve the Union, and the right of Congress to deal with slavery as a national issue. During the first two years of the war, the Federal G

The close of the Civil War left many of the agencies of emancipation without a cause. The anti-slavery publications, the state and national anti-slavery societies, “vigilance committees,” and the vast Underground Railroad system, saw their purposes accomplished in the terms of peace. The American Anti-Slavery Society, which had been the longest in existence, and which, under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison, had done more for freedom than any other single agency, was now ready to wind up

The course of events in the succeeding thirty years proved that Frederick Douglass was wholly right in his determination not to take up his residence in one of the Southern states for political purposes. Had he followed the advice of some of his friends, his career would have been considerably marred by the exigencies of party and sectional politics, and his character as a natural leader of his people would, in all probability, have shrunken to that of a state politician. He did the wise thing,

The foregoing chapters contain the important incidents and events in the life of Frederick Douglass. He lived in a great transitional period, and, in his struggle to gain his own freedom, he personified the historic events which took place during that time. His life was so wholly under the public eye, and what he did and stood for during more than fifty years, were so much an integral portion of these years, that it is impossible to obtain an estimate of the man apart from the history of slavery

The last public office held by Frederick Douglass was that of Commissioner for the Haytian Republic at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in the summer of 1893. The government of Hayti erected an artistic pavilion on the Fair grounds, and here from May 1st to November 1st, he was stationed, dispensing the hospitalities demanded by his position and the occasion. Interesting as was the Haytian display, it did not attract as much public attention as did the Commissioner. No person or exhi

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of Frederick Douglass, 1845. —— My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855. —— My Escape from Slavery. Century Magazine , November, 1881. —— Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 1882. Holland, Frederick May. Frederick Douglass, the Colored Orator, 1891. Garrison, William Lloyd. Frederick Douglass as Orator and Reformer, Our Day , August, 1894. May, Samuel J. Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, 1869. Johnson, Oliver. William Lloyd Garrison and His Times, 1881. Austin,