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.
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. The average American of to-day who sees, when his attention
is called to it, and deplores, if he be a thoughtful and just man,
the deep undertow of race prejudice that retards the progress of the
colored people of our own generation, cannot, except by reading the
painful records of the past, conceive of the mental and spiritual
darkness to which slavery, as the inexorable condition of its
existence, condemned its victims and, in a less measure, their
oppressors, or of the blank wall of proscription and scorn by which
free people of color were shut up in a moral and social Ghetto, the
gates of which have yet not been entirely torn down.
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; for his genius changed the drawbacks of color and
condition into levers by which he raised himself and his people.
The materials for this work have been near at hand, though there is
a vast amount of which lack of space must prevent the use.
Acknowledgment is here made to members of the Douglass family for aid
in securing the photograph from which the frontispiece is reproduced.
The more the writer has studied the records of Douglass's life, the
more it has appealed to his imagination and his heart. He can claim no
special qualification for this task, unless perhaps it be a profound
and in some degree a personal sympathy with every step of Douglass's
upward career. Belonging to a later generation, he was only
privileged to see the man and hear the orator after his life-work was
substantially completed, but often enough then to appreciate
something of the strength and eloquence by which he impressed his
contemporaries. If by this brief sketch the writer can revive among
the readers of another generation a tithe of the interest that
Douglass created for himself when he led the forlorn hope of his race
for freedom and opportunity, his labor will be amply repaid.