Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. I09
" Gentlemen, in selecting the Claims of the Negro
as the subject of my remarks to-day, I am
animated by a desire to bring before you a matter
of living importance—matter upon which
action, as well as thought, is required. The relation
subsisting between the white and black people
of this country is the vital question of the
age. In the solution of this question, the scholars
of America will have to take an important and
controlling part. This is the moral battlefield to
which their country and their God now call them.
In the eye of both, the neutral scholar is an ignoble
man. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted
cold, or, perchance, something worse
than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly
will be rejected by earnest men on either
side of the controversy. The cunning man who
avoids it, to gain the favor of both parties, will be
rewarded with scorn; and the timid man who
shrinks from it for fear of offending either party,
will be despised. To the lawyer, the preacher,
the politician, and to the man of letters, there is
no neutral ground. He that is not for us, is
against us. Gentlemen, I assume at the start,
that wherever else I may be required to speak
with bated breath, here, at least, I may speak with
freedom the thought nearest my heart. This
liberty is implied, by the call I have received to
jbe Jiere; and yet I hope to present the subject so