Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. II5
very honorable exhibition of breadth and progressiveness
on the part of the students. The Western
Reserve was always in advance, keeping
step with Worcester county, Massachusetts. Mr.
Douglass took as his subject, * The Claims of
the Negro Ethnologically Considered.' The honored
president of the University of Rochester
kindly and cordially promised to give Mr. Douglass
the benefit of his extended knowledge of ethnology,
and it was the privilege of the Rambler to
accompany Mr. Douglass to the house of the
president and to introduce (as an isthmus connecting
two continents) the radical lecturer to
the somewhat conservative president. Later it
was his honor to introduce Mr. Douglass to the
president of Brown University.
" In the course of his address, Mr. Douglass
cited one author who decried the claim of the
negro to equal manhood, on the ground that
1 the voice of the negro is thin and piping, an
evidence of inferiority.' This passage Mr. Douglass
delivered in a voice of thunder, convulsing
the audience, and rendering other reply needless."
Mr. George Thompson, whom Lord Brougham
called " the most eloquent man in all England,"
had argued before the people of Glasgow, Scotland,
that the constitution of the United States
was a pro-slavery instrument, and took the ground
that the dissolution of the Union as held by the