It is perhaps fitting, before we take leave of Douglass, 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 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.
Douglass 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 mass of hair which made a striking
element of his appearance. He had deep-set and flashing 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 flashing 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 Douglass [Douglas],"
after his prototype in _The Lady of the Lake_, because of his fìre
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.
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. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted
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." Douglass
brushed aside all sophistries about Constitutional 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 assertion,--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 assent 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 illustrated 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. Douglass,
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 Douglass offered himself as a refutation of the last
speaker's argument, Rynders replied that Douglass was half white.
Douglass 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. Douglass'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 assailants by
his wit and eloquence."
A speech delivered by Douglass at Concord, New Hampshire, 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 Douglass 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] illustrations 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 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. 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, 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. 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.
What Douglass'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 pass, and engulf the enemy
who pursued them.
Among the most noteworthy of Douglass's later addresses were the
oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument to Abraham Lincoln
in Washington 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.