In 1893 the World’s Columbian Exposition, or World’s Fair, was held in
Chicago in commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of the
discovery of America. A negro man, the Hon. Frederick Douglass,
attended that exposition and delivered an address on negro day. Speaking
of this great man’s visit the Advance, one of Chicago’s great religious
papers, said:
“It was fine to see at the Congress on Africa the tall form and
magnificent head of the grand old man, Frederick Douglass, now
seventy-five years of age, perfectly erect, kindly, majestic, the
‘ancient fires of inspiration welling up through all his being yet’;
affable to all; finding it still to be as natural to be eloquent as to
speak at all; sympathetic to the core with the people of his own race,
yet none the less loyal to the common interests of all the people of his
country; neither blind to the obstacles in their path and the cruel
social injustice and meanness to which they are often exposed, nor, on
the other hand, unmindful of the friends they have in the South as also
in the North, or above all to the over-shining care and purpose of God
Himself, with the ‘far-off divine intent’ that so clearly takes in the
future of both the American and African continents. Few Americans have
had a more conspicuously providential mission than Frederick Douglass.
And hardly anything in this remarkable congress was more eloquent or
more convincing than his personal presence.”
Frederick Douglass was born a slave, and his life as a slave was one of
peculiar hardship. Of it he himself says in his autobiography:
“I suffered little from any punishment I received, except from hunger
and cold. I could get enough neither of food or clothing, but suffered
more from cold than hunger. In the heat of summer or the cold of winter
alike, I was kept almost in a state of nudity--no shoes, jackets,
trousers, or stockings--nothing but a coarse tow linen shirt reaching to
the knee. That I wore night and day. In the day time I could protect
myself by keeping on the sunny side of the house, and in bad weather in
the corner of the kitchen chimney. The great difficulty was to keep warm
at night. I had no bed. The pigs in the pen had leaves, and the horses
in the stable had straw, but the children had nothing. In very cold
weather I sometimes got down the bag in which corn was carried to the
mill and got into that. My feet have been so cracked by frost that the
pen with which I am writing might have been laid in the gashes.” With
regard to his food he said that he often disputed with the dogs over the
crumbs that fell from his master’s table.
Now this man, born so lowly and surrounded by such circumstances, turned
out to be in the course of time by hard work and self-application one of
the most influential American citizens and one of the greatest orators
that this country has ever known. Among other high offices of trust and
responsibility, he was once marshal of the District of Columbia,
recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States
minister to Hayti.
He died February 20th, 1895, at his home in Anacostia, D. C., at the age
of seventy-seven years. A monument to his memory has been erected in
Rochester, N. Y., where he once lived.
What Frederick Douglass made of himself is possible for any American boy
with grit. Every boy and girl in America should read the life of this
pre-eminent negro and strive to emulate his virtues. His memory is
worthy to be honored to the last day of time.