a hundred years, you will not make up for the wrongs you have done him. Who is it that asks for protection at the polls and for equal education? The men who came forth to clutch with iron fingers your faltering flag, and shed their blood for you, who protected the women and children of the South during the war, who have tilled your soil with their horny hands, and watered it with their tears!"

Four weeks later he made an address to the Bethel Literary and Historical Association, in Washington, and, after asserting the right of colored men to vote and marry as they choose, closed with noble words which we may accept as his farewell before departing once more to Hayti, on December 7:

"I have no doubt whatever of the future. I know there are times in the history of all reforms, when the future looks dark." ... “I, for one, have gone through all this. I have had fifty years of it, and yet I have not lost either heart or hope."

"I have seen dark hours in my life, and I have seen the darkness gradually disappearing, and the light gradually increasing. One by one, I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected, prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and my people advancing in all the elements that make up the sum of general welfare. And I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that, whatever delays, disappointments, and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty, and humanity will ultimately prevail.”

CHAPTER XV.

CONCLUSION.

LOOKING at Douglass as an orator, his life may be divided into four periods.

First come the twenty-four years of preparation, before he mounted the platform in 1841. During this time, he became familiar with slavery in its best aspects, as well as in some of its worst. Only a woman could have realized all its horrors; but he felt them keenly enough to be able to make their iniquity plain to his hearers; and he had the great advantage of knowing how bad the system was in its best possible form. He also discovered that the only solid foundations of liberty are knowledge and courage. His last four years as a slave were made unusually pleasant, because he had dared, at the risk of the gallows, to fight hand to hand with his master; and promotion, from a field-hand to a city mechanic, rewarded his first attempt to run away. He taught himself to read and write, and also to speak effectively. His residence for almost three years at New Bedford showed him how deeply the North was stained with prejudices which would not let him enter a church on equal terms with white worshipers, and which prevented him from taking up the trade which he had followed successfully in Baltimore. In spite of

many hardships, he realized so fully the superior advantages of working in free competition over labor under compulsion, that he was prepared to resist all the blandishments of socialism, even when presented by those white people who had been among the first to recognize his rights. His joining the Garrisonians enabled him to become prominent as a speaker much earlier than would, in all probability, have been the case if he had preferred the voting Abolitionists; but he could not in any case have remained very long unknown and silent in Massachuestts. His education did not advance as rapidly as it would have done if he had not been obliged to be his own teacher, for the most part, even in New Bedford; but this isolation had some compensation in his developing unusual capacity for thinking for himself.

This was plain during the second period of his life, which began with his ranking himself among the Garrisonians, in August, 1841, and closed with his renouncing disunionism in May, 1851. All these years he was busy as a lecturer against slavery, and especially so during the first six. His first exploit was in helping his people gain the suffrage in Rhode Island; and he next took part in that agitation against the return of a fugitive named Latimer, which has embodied itself permanently in our literature, in Whittier's magnificent poem, "Massachusetts to Virginia." For four years the black knight roamed to and fro, from Maine to Indiana, always ready to break a lance with any champion of slavery. Sometimes he had to collect his audience by going through the town, ringing a big bell, and crying the meeting. Or else he would take his stand under a tree, or at the corner of

a side-street, and persuade people who had set out for church to stop to hear him. Once, at least, he fought for his life against an armed mob; sometimes he had the full sympathy of thousands of eager listeners; and sometimes he found only a handful of timid adherents in the almost empty hall. Opposition and indifference could not lessen his zeal, but only made him exert more eagerly his matchless power of pathos mingled with ridicule. His parodies of the slave-holders' cant had an effect which is not to be revived by merely reprinting the words; and it is impossible to do any justice to his success in calling forth tears of sympathy. His fiercest denunciations were provoked by a clerical conservatism, largely due to the disunionism represented on the banner which he and his friends formally accepted, at Boston, in 1844, and carried at the head of a great procession through Hingham. While joining eagerly in this agitation for a dissolution of the Union, he resisted the attempt of some leading Garrisonians to merge abolitionism in socialism; and his boldness in defying the authority of his superiors kept the great reform true to its orignal aim.

His devotion to it made him, when challenged to prove that he had really been a slave, tell the place and his master's name. The little book was such a great success that he could not be safe in the United States. He crossed the ocean; and found that the color-prejudice was only an Americanism. Ireland gave him one long ovation. He was at war for a year with the Scotch clergy, on the question, whether slaveholders ought to be fellowshiped; and this gave him. a reputation which was increased by a single combat

in London, with a Doctor of Divinity from New York. His English friends would have kept him among them, but he preferred to fight in the forlorn hope; and so they bought his freedom. He was also enabled by them to start a newspaper; but this was opposed by Garrison, and postponed for six months, part of which were spent in a western tour, involving some sharp debates with men who appealed to the ballotbox against slavery. Before the close of 1847, Douglass made up his mind that it was his duty to publish the "North Star;" and he took up his residence at Rochester, for there was much hostility in Boston, in spite of his remaining for three years more, loyal to Garrisonianism. He continued to lecture, though not often in New England; but his main strength was given to the paper, which showed high ability and was carried on for twelve years, in spite of occasional pecuniary difficulties. The movement in behalf of women found one of its earliest advocates in the "North Star;" much stress was laid on the need among the blacks of industrial training; and the editor's house soon became one of the most useful stations on the Under-ground Railroad.

He took less interest than many other colored men in the organization of the Free Soil party; and that same year, 1848, he denounced all supporters of the Constitution of the United States as enemies of God and man. He found out gradually his error, ás he carried on controversies, first with a negro clergyman named Ward, and then with the great philanthropist, Gerrit Smith. Before finally casting in his lot with the men who actually abolished slavery, he was able to quell a pro-slavery riot in New York, with Ward's