Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
IOO LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
contrive, and the hand to execute!' A commanding
person—over six feet, we should say, in height,
and of most manly proportions. His head would
strike a phrenologist amid a sea of them in Exeter
Hall, and his voice would ring like a trumpet in
the field. Let the South congratulate herself
that he is a fugitive. It would not have been
safe for her if he had remained about the plantations
a year or two longer. Douglass is his fugitive
name. He did not wear it in slavery. We
do not know why he assumed it, or who bestowed
it on him, but there is some fitness in it, to his
commanding figure and heroic part. As a speaker
he has few equals. It is not declamation, but
oratory, power of debate. He watches the tide
of discussion with the eye of the veteran, and
dashes into it at once with all the tact of the
forum or the bar. He has wit, argument, sarcasm,
pathos—all that first-rate men show in their
master efforts. His voice is highly melodious
and rich, and his enunciation quite elegant, and
yet he has been but two or three years out of the
house of bondage. We noticed that he had
strikingly improved, since we heard him at Dover
in September. We say this much of him, for he
is esteemed by our multitude as of an inferior
race. We should like to see him before any
New England legislature or bar, and let him feel
the freedom of the anti-slavery meeting, and see