Speaking and Lecturing For Worthy Causes like Liberation and Emancipation
Author: Arthur Edgar E. Smith
Category: Communications
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Frederick Douglas who was born a slave after several failed attempts fled from slavery and travelled by train and ferry far away from the scene of his escape. His escape to freedom eventually led him to New York, the entire journey taking less than 24 hours.
Douglass joined various organizations in New Bedford, Massachusetts, including a black church, and regularly attended abolitionist meetings. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly journal, The Liberat and in 1841, he heard Garrison speak at a meeting of the Bristol Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass was unexpectedly asked to speak at one of these meetings, where he told his story and was encouraged to become an anti-slavery lecturer. Douglass was inspired by Garrison, later stating that "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments (the hatred of slavery) as did those of William Lloyd Garrison."
Garrison was likewise impressed with Douglass, and wrote of him in The Liberator. Several days later, Douglass delivered his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket. Twenty-three years old at the time, Douglass said that his legs were shaking. He conquered his nervousness and gave an eloquent speech about his rough life as a slave.
In 1843, Douglass participated in the American Anti-Slavery Society's Hundred Conventions project, a six month tour of meeting halls throughout the Eastern and Midwestern United States. He participated in the Seneca Falls Convention, the birthplace of the American feminist movement, and was a signatory of its Declaration of Sentiments.
Douglas soon establishjed a reputation as a brilliant speaker. On the request of the American Anti-Slavery Society Douglass was being engaged in lecture tours which brought him recognition as one of America's first great black speakers. This won him world fame when his autobiography was published in 1845.
As one of the most prominent figures, and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history, Douglas's towering posture showed dignity and strength, especially when speaking, with his powerful baritone voice booming out. These features together gave him a strong presence everywhere.
Douglass spent two years in Great Britain and Ireland giving several lectures, mainly in Protestant churches or chapels, some "crowded to suffocation," At his hugely popular London Reception Speech, which Douglass delivered at Alexander Fletcher's Finsbury Chapel in London in May 1846. Douglass remarked that there he was treated not "as a color, but as a man." He also met and befriended the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell.
He soon became one of the most effective orators of his day, an influential newspaper editor and proprietor, a militant reformer and a respected diplomat.
Douglass' work spanned the years prior to and during the Civil War. He was acquainted with the radical abolitionist John Brown but disapproved of his plan to start an armed slave rebellion in the South. Brown visited Douglass' home two months before he led the raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry. After the incident, amidst suspicion or accusations of complicity in John Brown's raid on the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry in 1859, Douglass fled for a time to Canada, fearing he might be arrested as a co-conspirator. Douglass believed that the attack on federal property would enrage the American public. Douglass would later share a stage in Harpers Ferry with Andrew Hunter, the prosecutor who successfully convicted Brown.
Douglass conferred with President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 on the treatment of black soldiers, and with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of black suffrage. His early collaborators were the white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips..
By the time of the Civil War, Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the country, known for his oratories on the condition of the black race, and other issues such as women's rights.
Douglass and the abolitionists argued that the aim of the war was to end slavery and that African Americans should be allowed to engage in the fight for their freedom. Douglass wrote about this in his newspapers and gave several speeches declaring his thoughts and how the war was indeed for the liberation of the slaves.
On the night of December 31, 1862, when President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass describes the spirit of those waiting for the announcement: "We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky...we were watching...by the dim light of the stars for the dawn of a new day...we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries."
Once the slaves were freed, Douglass also wanted equality for his people as well. He and Abraham Lincoln worked together providing plans to move the liberated slaves out of the South. Lincoln had doubts about the war ever ending, but soon enough the Confederate forces gave in to the Union and the war to end slavery was won.
At Abraham Lincoln's memorial, a tribute to Lincoln being given by a prominent lawyer. was not as successful as some of the audience there would have hoped, when Douglass was goaded to stand up and speak. At first out of respect for the speaker he declined, but eventually he gave into the pressure and with no preparation gave a glowing tribute for which he received much respect. The crowd, roused by his speech, gave him a standing ovation. A witness later said, "I have heard Clay speak and many fantastic men, but never have I heard a speech as impressive as that." Lincoln's wife is said to have given Douglass Lincoln's favorite walking stick which still rests in Douglas's Cedar Lodge.
Douglas criticized Lincoln's successors over what he felt was an insufficiently prompt and just Reconstruction policy one the war had been won. Douglas was particularly insistent on the necessity for swift passage of the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing suffrage to the newly emancipated slaves. Never satisfied with the grudging legal concessions the Civil War yielded, Douglas continued to object to every sign of discrimination - whether economic, sexual, legal or social. Even after taking up government appointments, he continued to speak out on such matters as the exploitation of black sharecroppers in the South. He went on to demand ant-lynching legislation and to protest the exclusion of blacks from public accommodations. He was also active in suffrage movements for women, believing firmly in the power of the ballot as one of the necessities of freedom.
Douglas's life has become the heroic paradigm for all oppressed people. He is in fact one of the hundreds of freedom heroes I saw showcased at the Underground Freedom Centre as well as many other exhibitions on American History or Culture in Washington D.C, San Francisco or wherever. His carreer as a champion of human rights led the way for later black leaders like Booker T. Washington, W.E. B. DuBois and Martin Luther King Jr.
Further reading
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. Frederick Douglass, Autobiography (Library of America, 1994)
Foner, Philip Sheldon. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. New York: International Publishers, 1950.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin, and Oscar Handlin. Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass. Library of American Biography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.
Lampe, Gregory P. Frederick Douglass: Freedom's Voice,. Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998. X (alk. paper) (pbk. alk. paper) (on his oratory)
Levine, Robert S. Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN (alk. paper). ISBN (pbk.: alk. paper) (cultural history)
McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, 1991
Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. Washington: Associated Publishers, 1948.
Extensive summary, analysis, and important quotes from "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"
Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass at Project Gutenberg.
Audio book of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass at FreeAudio.org.
The Heroic Slave at the Documenting the American South website.
Frederick Douglass Project at the University of Rochester.
My Bondage and My Freedom at Project Gutenberg.
Collected Articles Of Frederick Douglass, A Slave (Project Gutenberg)
Frederick Douglass (American Memory, Library of Congress) Includes timeline.
Timeline of Frederick Douglass and family
Frederick Douglass Timeline
Frederick Douglass NHS - Douglass' Life
Frederick Douglass NHS - Cedar Hill National Park Service site
Frederick Douglass Western New York Suffragists
Mr. Lincoln and Freedom: Frederick Douglass
Mr. Lincoln's White House: Frederick Douglass
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Keywords: frederick doglas, campaigning, emancipation from slavery, freedom hero
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Date Submitted: 7/18/2008
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