Frederick Douglass Part 2

Dougla.s.s supported vigorously the nomination of Lincoln for a second term, and was present at his [March 4] inauguration. And a few days later, while the inspired words of the inaugural address, long bracketed with the n.o.blest 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, slain by the hand of an a.s.sa.s.sin whom slavery had sp.a.w.ned.

X.

With the fall of slavery and the emanc.i.p.ation of the colored race the heroic epoch of Dougla.s.s's career may be said to have closed. The text upon which he so long had preached had been expunged from the national bible; and he had been a one-text preacher, a one-theme orator. He felt the natural reaction which comes with relief from high mental or physical tension, and wondered, somewhat sadly, what he should do with himself, and how he should earn a living. The same considerations, in varying measure, applied to others of the anti-slavery reformers. Some, unable to escape the reforming habit, turned their attention to different social evils, real or imaginary. Others, sufficiently supplied with this worlds goods for their moderate wants, withdrew from public life. Dougla.s.s was thinking of buying a farm and retiring to rural solitudes, when a new career opened up for him in the lyceum lecture field. The North was favorably disposed toward colored men. They had acquitted themselves well during the war, and had shown becoming grat.i.tude to their deliverers. The once despised abolitionists were now popular heroes. Dougla.s.s's checkered past seemed all the more romantic in the light of the brighter present, like a novel with a pleasant ending; and those who had hung thrillingly upon his words when he denounced slavery now listened with interest to what he had to say upon other topics. He spoke sometimes on Woman Suffrage, of which he was always a consistent advocate. His most popular lecture was one on "Self-made Men." Another on "Ethnology," in which he sought a scientific basis for his claim for the negro's equality with the white man, was not so popular-with white people. The wave of enthusiasm which had swept the enfranchised slaves into what seemed at that time the safe harbor of const.i.tutional right was not, after all, based on abstract doctrines of equality of intellect, but on an inspiring sense of justice (long dormant under the influence of slavery, but thoroughly awakened under the moral stress of the war), which conceded to every man the right of a voice in his own government and the right to an equal opportunity in life to develop such powers as he possessed, however great or small these might be.

But Dougla.s.s's work in direct behalf of his race was not yet entirely done. In fact, he realized very distinctly the vast amount of work that would be necessary to lift his people up to the level of their enlarged opportunities; and, as may be gathered from some of his published utterances, he foresaw that the process would be a long one, and that their friends might weary sometimes of waiting, and that there would be reactions toward slavery which would rob emanc.i.p.ation of much of its value. It was the very imminence of such backward steps, in the shape of various restrictive and oppressive laws promptly enacted by the old slave States under President Johnson's administration, that led Dougla.s.s to urge the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the freedmen. He maintained that in a free country there could be no safe or logical middle ground between the status of freeman and that of serf. There has been much criticism because the negro, it is said, acquired the ballot prematurely. 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 a.s.sumption that negroes-under which generalization are included all men of color, regardless of that sympathy to which kins.h.i.+p at least should ent.i.tle 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." The contention that a cla.s.s who const.i.tute 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 cla.s.s of the same general population, is as repugnant to justice and human rights as was the inst.i.tution of slavery itself. Such a condition of affairs has not the melodramatic and soul-stirring incidents of chattel slavery, but its effects can be as far-reaching and as debasing. There has been some manifestation of its possible consequences in the recent outbreaks of lynching and other race oppression in the South. The practical disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the colored people in several States, and the apparent acquiescence by the Supreme Court in the attempted annulment, by restrictive and oppressive laws, of the war amendments to the Const.i.tution, have brought a foretaste of what might be expected should the spirit of the Dred Scott decision become again the paramount law of the land.

On February 7, 1866, Dougla.s.s acted as chief spokesman of a committee of leading colored men of the country, who called upon President Johnson to urge the importance of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. Mr. Johnson, true to his Southern instincts, was coldly hostile to the proposition, recounted all the arguments against it, and refused the committee an opportunity to reply. The matter was not left with Mr. Johnson, however; and the committee turned its attention to the leading Republican statesmen, in whom they found more impressionable material. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Senators Sumner, Wilson, Wade, and others, the matter was fully argued in Congress, the Democratic party being in opposition, as always in national politics, to any measure enlarging the rights or liberties of the colored race.

In September, 1866, Dougla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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. On the way to Philadelphia he was waited upon by a committee of other delegates, who came to his seat on the train and urged upon him the impropriety of his taking a seat as a delegate. Dougla.s.s listened patiently, but declined to be moved by their arguments. He replied that he had been duly elected a delegate from Rochester, and he would represent that city in the convention. A procession of the members and friends of the convention was to take place on its opening day. Dougla.s.s was solemnly warned that, if he walked in the procession, he would probably be mobbed. But he had been mobbed before, more than once, and had lived through it; and he promptly presented himself at the place of a.s.sembly. His reception by his fellow-delegates was not cordial, and he seemed condemned to march alone in the procession, when Theodore Tilton, at that time editor of the Independent, paired off with him, and marched by his side through the streets of the Quaker City. The result was gratifying alike to Dougla.s.s and the friends of liberty and progress. He was cheered enthusiastically all along the line of march, and became as popular in the convention as he had hitherto been neglected.

A romantic incident of this march was a pleasant meeting, on the street, with a daughter of Mrs. Lucretia Auld, the mistress who had treated him kindly during his childhood on the Lloyd plantation. The Aulds had always taken an interest in Dougla.s.s's career,-he had, indeed, given the family a wide though not altogether enviable reputation in his books and lectures,-and this good lady had followed the procession for miles, that she might have the opportunity to speak to her grandfather's former slave and see him walk in the procession.

In the convention "the ever-ready and imperial Dougla.s.s," as Colonel Higginson describes him, spoke in behalf of his race. The convention, however, divided upon the question of negro suffrage, and adjourned without decisive action. But under President Grant's administration the Fourteenth Amendment was pa.s.sed, and by the solemn sanction of the Const.i.tution the ballot was conferred upon the black men upon the same terms as those upon which it was enjoyed by the whites.

XI.

It is perhaps fitting, before we take leave of Dougla.s.s, to give some estimate of the remarkable oratory which gave him his hold upon the past generation. For, while his labors as editor and in other directions were of great value to the cause of freedom, it is upon his genius as an orator that his fame must ultimately rest.

While Dougla.s.s's color put him in a cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sionately 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.

Dougla.s.s possessed, in large measure, the physical equipment most impressive in an orator. He was a man of magnificent figure, tall, strong, his head crowned with a ma.s.s of hair which made a striking element of his appearance. He had deep-set and flas.h.i.+ng eyes, a firm, well-moulded chin, a countenance somewhat severe in repose, but capable of a wide range of expression. His voice was rich and melodious, and of great carrying power. One writer, who knew him in the early days of his connection with the abolitionists, says of him, in Johnson's Sketches of Lynn:

"He was not then the polished orator he has since become, but even at that early date he gave promise of the grand part he was to play in the conflict which was to end in the destruction of the system that had so long cursed his race.... He was more than six feet in height; and his majestic form, as he rose to speak, straight as an arrow, muscular yet lithe and graceful, his flas.h.i.+ng eye, and more than all his voice, that rivalled Webster's in its richness and in the depth and sonorousness of its cadences, made up such an ideal of an orator as the listeners never forgot. And they never forgot his burning words, his pathos, nor the rich play of his humor."

The poet William Howitt said of him on his departure from England in 1847, "He has appeared in this country before the most accomplished audiences, who were surprised, not only at his talent, but at his extraordinary information."

In Ireland he was introduced as "the black O'Connell,"-a high compliment; for O'Connell was at that time the idol of the Irish people. In Scotland they called him the "black Dougla.s.s [Douglas]," after his prototype in The Lady of the Lake, because of his fre and vigor. In Rochester he was called the "swarthy Ajax," from his indignant denunciation and defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which came like a flash of lightning to blast the hopes of the anti-slavery people.

Dougla.s.s 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. Dougla.s.s'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. That, to secure these rights, governments are inst.i.tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The writer may be pardoned for this quotation; for there are times when we seem to forget that now and here, no less than in ancient Rome, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Dougla.s.s brushed aside all sophistries about Const.i.tutional guarantees, and vested rights, and inferior races, and, having postulated the right of men to be free, maintained that negroes were men, and offered himself as a proof of his a.s.sertion,-an argument that few had the temerity to deny. If it were answered that he was only half a negro, he would reply that slavery made no such distinction, and as a still more irrefutable argument would point to his friend, Samuel R. Ward, who often accompanied him on the platform,-an eloquent and effective orator, of whom Wendell Phillips said that "he was so black that, if he would shut his eyes, one could not see him." It was difficult for an auditor to avoid a.s.sent to such arguments, presented with all the force and fire of genius, relieved by a ready wit, a contagious humor, and a tear-compelling power rarely excelled.

"As a speaker," says one of his contemporaries, "he has few equals. It is not declamation, but oratory, power of description. He watches the tide of discussion, and dashes into it at once with all the tact of the forum or the bar. He has art, argument, sarcasm, pathos,-all that first-rate men show in their master efforts."

His readiness was admirably ill.u.s.trated in the running debate with Captain Rynders, a ward politician and gambler of New York, who led a gang of roughs with the intention of breaking up the meeting of the American Anti-slavery Society in New York City, May 7, 1850. The newspapers had announced the proposed meeting in language calculated to excite riot. Rynders packed the meeting with rowdies, and himself occupied a seat on the platform. Some remark by Mr. Garrison, the first speaker, provoked a demonstration of hostility. When this was finally quelled by a promise to permit one of the Rynders party to reply, Mr. Garrison finished his speech. He was followed by a prosy individual, who branded the negro as brother to the monkey. Dougla.s.s, perceiving that the speaker was wearying even his own friends, intervened at an opportune moment, captured the audience by a timely display of wit, and then improved the occasion by a long and effective speech. When Dougla.s.s offered himself as a refutation of the last speaker's argument, Rynders replied that Dougla.s.s was half white. Dougla.s.s thereupon greeted Rynders as his half-brother, and made this expression the catchword of his speech. When Rynders interrupted from time to time, he was silenced with a laugh. He appears to have been a somewhat philosophic scoundrel, with an appreciation of humor that permitted the meeting to proceed to an orderly close. Dougla.s.s's speech was the feature of the evening. "That gifted man," said Garrison, in whose Life and Times a graphic description of this famous meeting is given, "effectually put to shame his a.s.sailants by his wit and eloquence."

A speech delivered by Dougla.s.s at Concord, New Hamps.h.i.+re, is thus described by another writer: "He gradually let out the outraged humanity that was laboring in him, in indignant and terrible speech.... There was great oratory in his speech, but more of dignity and earnestness than what we call eloquence. He was an insurgent slave, taking hold on the rights of speech, and charging on his tyrants the bondage of his race."

In Holland's biography of Dougla.s.s extracts are given from letters of distinguished contemporaries who knew the orator. Colonel T.W. Higginson writes thus: "I have hardly heard his equal, in grasp upon an audience, in dramatic presentation, in striking at the pith of an ethical question, and in single [signal] ill.u.s.trations and examples." Another writes, in reference to the impromptu speech delivered at the meeting at Rochester on the death of Lincoln: "I have heard Webster and Clay in their best moments, Channing and Beecher in their highest inspirations. I never heard truer eloquence. I never saw profounder impression."

The published speeches of Dougla.s.s, 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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. In later years, when brighter days had dawned for his people, and age had dimmed the recollection of his sufferings and tempered his animosities, he became more charitable to his old enemies; but in the vigor of his manhood, with the memory of his wrongs and those of his race fresh upon him, he possessed that indispensable quality of the true reformer: he went straight to the root of the evil, and made no admissions and no compromises. Slavery for him was conceived in greed, born in sin, cradled in shame, and worthy of utter and relentless condemnation. He had the quality of directness and simplicity. When Collins would have turned the abolition influence to the support of a communistic scheme, Dougla.s.s opposed it vehemently. Slavery was the evil they were fighting, and their cause would be rendered still more unpopular if they ran after strange G.o.ds.

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. But, when Dougla.s.s 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 Dougla.s.s must surely be worthy of freedom.

What Dougla.s.s's platform utterances in later years lacked of the vehemence and fire of his earlier speeches, they made up in wisdom and mature judgment. There is a note of exultation in his speeches just after the war. Jehovah had triumphed, his people were free. He had seen the Red Sea of blood open and let them pa.s.s, and engulf the enemy who pursued them.

Among the most noteworthy of Dougla.s.s's later addresses were the oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument to Abraham Lincoln in Was.h.i.+ngton in 1876, which may be found in his Life and Times; the address on Decoration Day, New York, 1878; his eulogy on Wendell Phillips, printed in Austin's Life and Times of Wendell Phillips; and the speech on the death of Garrison, June, 1879. He lectured in the Parker Fraternity Course in Boston, delivered numerous addresses to gatherings of colored men, spoke at public dinners and woman suffrage meetings, and retained his hold upon the interest of the public down to the very day of his death.

XII.

With the full enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of his people, Dougla.s.s entered upon what may be called the third epoch of his career, that of fruition. Not every worthy life receives its reward in this world; but Dougla.s.s, having fought the good fight, was now singled out, by virtue of his prominence, for various honors and emoluments at the hands of the public. He was urged by many friends to take up his residence in some Southern district and run for Congress; but from modesty or some doubt of his fitness-which one would think he need not have felt-and the consideration that his people needed an advocate at the North to keep alive there the friends.h.i.+p and zeal for liberty that had accomplished so much for his race, he did not adopt the suggestion.

In 1860 [1870] Dougla.s.s moved to Was.h.i.+ngton, and began [took over] the publication of the New National Era, a weekly paper devoted to the interests of the colored race. The venture did not receive the support hoped for; and the paper was turned over to Dougla.s.s's two [oldest] sons, Lewis and Frederick, and was finally abandoned [in 1874], Dougla.s.s having sunk about ten thousand dollars in the enterprise. Later newspapers for circulation among the colored people have proved more successful; and it ought to be a matter of interest that the race which thirty years ago could not support one publication, edited by its most prominent man, now maintains several hundred newspapers which make their appearance regularly.

In 1871 Dougla.s.s was elected president of the Freedmans Bank. This ill-starred venture was then apparently in the full tide of prosperity, and promised to be a great lever in the uplifting of the submerged race. Dougla.s.s, soon after his election as president, discovered the insolvency of the inst.i.tution, and insisted that it be closed up. The negro was in the hands of his friends, and was destined to suffer for their mistakes as well as his own.

Other honors that fell to Dougla.s.s were less empty than the presidency of a bankrupt bank. In 1870 he was appointed by President Grant a member of the Santo Domingo Commission, the object of which was to arrange terms for the annexation of the mulatto republic to the Union. Some of the best friends of the colored race, among them Senator Sumner, opposed this step; but Dougla.s.s maintained that to receive Santo Domingo as a State would add to its strength and importance. The scheme ultimately fell through, whether for the good or ill of Santo Domingo can best be judged when the results of more recent annexation schemes [1898: Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and de facto Cuba] become apparent. Dougla.s.s went to Santo Domingo on an American man-of-war, in the company of three other commissioners. In his Life and Times he draws a pleasing contrast between some of his earlier experiences in travelling, and the terms of cordial intimacy upon which, as the representative of a nation which a few years before had denied him a pa.s.sport, he was now received in the company of able and distinguished gentlemen.

On his return to the United States Dougla.s.s received from President Grant an appointment as member of the legislative council, or upper house of the legislature, of the District of Columbia, where he served for a short time, until other engagements demanded his resignation, [one of] his son[s] being appointed to fill out his term. To this appointment Dougla.s.s owed the t.i.tle of "Honorable," subsequently applied to him.

In 1872 Dougla.s.s presided over and addressed a convention of colored men at New Orleans, and urged them to support President Grant for renomination. He was elected a presidential elector for New York, and on the meeting of the electoral college in Albany, after Grant's triumphant re-election, received a further mark of confidence and esteem in the appointment at the hands of his fellow-electors to carry the sealed vote to Was.h.i.+ngton. Dougla.s.s sought no personal reward for his services in this campaign, but to his influence was due the appointment of several of his friends to higher positions than had ever theretofore been held in this country by colored men.

When R. B. Hayes was nominated for President, Dougla.s.s again took the stump, and received as a reward the honorable and lucrative office of Marshal of the United States for the District of Columbia. This appointment was not agreeable to the white people of the District, whose sympathies were largely pro-slavery; and an effort was made to have its confirmation defeated in the Senate. The appointment was confirmed, however; and Dougla.s.s served his term of four years, in spite of numerous efforts to bring about his removal.

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 Dougla.s.s when he went among them to oppose this movement, which he at that time considered detrimental to the true interests of the colored population.

Under the Garfield administration Dougla.s.s was appointed in May, 1881, recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. He held this very lucrative office through the terms of Presidents Garfeld and Arthur and until removed by President Cleveland in 1886, having served nearly a year after Cleveland's inauguration. In 1889 he was appointed by President Harrison as minister resident and consul-general to the Republic of Hayti, in which capacity he acted until 1891, when he resigned and returned permanently to Was.h.i.+ngton. The writer has heard him speak with enthusiasm of the substantial progress made by the Haytians in the arts of government and civilization, and with indignation of what he considered slanders against the island, due to ignorance or prejudice. When it was suggested to Dougla.s.s that the Haytians were given to revolution as a mode of expressing disapproval of their rulers, he replied that a four years' rebellion had been fought and two Presidents a.s.sa.s.sinated in the United States during a comparatively peaceful political period in Hayti. His last official connection with the Black Republic was at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, where he acted as agent in charge of the Haytian Building and the very creditable exhibit therein contained. His stately figure, which age had not bowed, his strong dark face, and his head of thick white hair made him one of the conspicuous features of the Exposition; and many a visitor took advantage of the occasion to recall old acquaintance made in the stirring anti-slavery days.

In 1878 he revisited the Lloyd plantation in Maryland, where he had spent part of his youth, and an affecting meeting took place between him and Thomas Auld, whom he had once called master. Once in former years he had been sought out by the good lady who in his childhood had taught him to read. Nowhere more than in his own accounts of these meetings does the essentially affectionate and forgiving character of Dougla.s.s and his race become apparent, and one cannot refrain from thinking that a different state of affairs might prevail in the Southern States if other methods than those at present in vogue were used to regulate the relations between the two races and their various admixtures that make up the Southern population.

In June, 1879, a bronze bust of Dougla.s.s was erected in Sibley Hall of Rochester University as a tribute to one who had shed l.u.s.tre on the city. In 1882 occurred the death of Dougla.s.s'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. But Dougla.s.s, to the extent that he noticed these strictures at all, declared that he had devoted his life to breaking down the color line, and that he did not know any more effectual way to accomplish it; that he was white by half his blood, and, as he had given most of his life to his mothers race, he claimed the right to dispose of the remnant as he saw fit.

The latter years of his life were spent at his beautiful home known as Cedar Hill, on Anacostia Heights, near Was.h.i.+ngton, amid all "that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends."

He possessed strong and attractive social qualities, and his home formed a Mecca for the advanced and aspiring of his race. He was a skilful violinist, and derived great pleasure from the valuable instrument he possessed. A wholesome atmosphere always surrounded him. He had never used tobacco or strong liquors, and was clean of speech and pure in life.

He died at his home in Was.h.i.+ngton, February 20, 1895. He had been perfectly well during the day, and was supposed to be in excellent health. He had attended both the forenoon and afternoon sessions of the Women's National Council, then in session at Was.h.i.+ngton, and had been a conspicuous figure in the audience. On his return home, while speaking to his wife in the hallway of his house, he suddenly fell, and before a.s.sistance could be given he had pa.s.sed away.

His death brought forth many expressions from the press of the land, reflecting the high esteem in which he had been held by the public for a generation. In various cities meetings were held, at which resolutions of sorrow and appreciation were pa.s.sed, and delegations appointed to attend his funeral. In the United States Senate a resolution was offered reciting that in the person of the late Frederick Dougla.s.s death had borne away a most ill.u.s.trious citizen, and permitting the body to lie in state in the rotunda of the Capitol on Sunday. The immediate consideration of the resolution was asked for. Mr. Gorman, of Maryland, the State which Dougla.s.s honored by his birth, objected; and the resolution went over.

Dougla.s.s's funeral took place on February 25, 1895, at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Was.h.i.+ngton, and was the occasion of a greater outpouring of colored people than had taken place in Was.h.i.+ngton since the unveiling of the Lincoln emanc.i.p.ation statue in 1878. The body was taken from Cedar Hill to the church at half-past nine in the morning; and from that hour until noon thousands of persons, including many white people, pa.s.sed in double file through the building and viewed the body, which was in charge of a guard of honor composed of members of a colored camp of the Sons of Veterans. The church was crowded when the services began, and several thousands could not obtain admittance. Delegations, one of them a hundred strong, were present from a dozen cities. Among the numerous floral tributes was a magnificent s.h.i.+eld of roses, orchids, and palms, sent by the Haytian government through its minister. Another tribute was from the son of his old master. Among the friends of the deceased present were Senators Sherman and h.o.a.r, Justice Harlan of the Supreme Court, Miss Susan B. Anthony, and Miss May Wright Sewall, president of the Women's National Council. The temporary pall-bearers were ex-Senator B. K. Bruce and other prominent colored men of Was.h.i.+ngton. The sermon was preached by Rev. J. G. Jenifer. John E. Hutchinson, the last of the famous Hutchinson family of abolition singers, who with his sister accompanied Dougla.s.s on his first voyage to England, sang two requiem solos, and told some touching stories of their old-time friends.h.i.+p. The remains were removed to Dougla.s.s's former home in Rochester, where he was buried with unusual public honors.

In November, 1894, a movement was begun in Rochester, under the leaders.h.i.+p of J. W. Thompson, with a view to erect a monument in memory of the colored soldiers and sailors who had fallen during the Civil War. This project had the hearty support and a.s.sistance of Dougla.s.s; and upon his death the plan was changed, and a monument to Dougla.s.s himself decided upon. A contribution of one thousand dollars from the Haytian government and an appropriation of three thousand dollars from the State of New York a.s.sured the success of the plan. September 15, 1898, was the date set for the unveiling of the monument; but, owing to delay in the delivery of the statue, only a part of the contemplated exercises took place. The monument, complete with the exception of the statue which was to surmount it, was formally turned over to the city, the presentation speech being made by Charles P. Lee of Rochester. A solo and chorus composed for the occasion were sung, an original poem read by T. Thomas Fortune, and addresses delivered by John C. Dancy and John H. Smyth. Joseph H. Dougla.s.s, a talented grandson of the orator, played a violin solo, and Miss Susan B. Anthony recalled some reminiscences of Dougla.s.s in the early anti-slavery days.

In June, 1899, the bronze statue of Dougla.s.s, by Sidney W. Edwards, was installed with impressive ceremonies. The movement thus to perpetuate the memory of Dougla.s.s had taken rise among a little band of men of his own race, but the whole people of Rochester claimed the right to partic.i.p.ate in doing honor to their distinguished fellow-citizen. The city a.s.sumed a holiday aspect. A parade of military and civic societies was held, and an appropriate programme rendered at the unveiling of the monument. Governor Roosevelt of New York delivered an address; and the occasion took a memorable place in the annals of Rochester, of which city Dougla.s.s had said, "I shall always feel more at home there than anywhere else in this country."

In March, 1895, a few weeks after the death of Dougla.s.s, Theodore Tilton, his personal friend for many years, published in Paris, of which city he was then a resident, a volume of Sonnets to the Memory of Frederick Dougla.s.s, from which the following lines are quoted as the estimate of a contemporary and a fitting epilogue to this brief sketch of so long and full a life:

"I knew the n.o.blest giants of my day, And he was of them-strong amid the strong: But gentle too: for though he suffered wrong, Yet the wrong-doer never heard him say, 'Thee also do I hate.' ...

A lover's lay- No dirge-no doleful requiem song- Is what I owe him; for I loved him long; As dearly as a younger brother may.

Proud is the happy grief with which I sing; For, O my Country! in the paths of men There never walked a grander man than he!

He was a peer of princes-yea, a king!

Crowned in the shambles and the prison-pen!

The n.o.blest Slave that ever G.o.d set free!"

Bibliography

The only original sources of information concerning the early life of Frederick Dougla.s.s are the three autobiographies published by him at various times; and the present writer, like all others who have written of Mr. Dougla.s.s, has had to depend upon this personal record for the incidents of Mr. Dougla.s.s's life in slavery. As to the second period of his life, his public career as anti-slavery orator and agitator, the sources of information are more numerous and varied. The biographies of noted abolitionists whose lives ran from time to time in parallel lines with his make very full reference to Dougla.s.s's services in their common cause, the one giving the greatest detail being the very complete and admirable Life and Times of William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons, which is in effect an exhaustive history of the Garrisonian movement for abolition.

The files of the Liberator, Mr. Garrison's paper, which can be found in a number of the princ.i.p.al public libraries of the country, const.i.tute a vast storehouse of information concerning the labors of the American Anti-slavery Society, with which Dougla.s.s was identified from 1843 to 1847, the latter being the year in which he gave up his employment as agent of the society and established his paper at Rochester. Many letters from Mr. Dougla.s.s's pen appeared in the Liberator during this period.