Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 179
leader of thought as well as of men. In this
respect he was ever in the front rank, and never
in the rear of his people. He was to them, literally,
a pillar of fire by night, and a pillar of cloud
by day; shielding them alike from darkness and
from heat. Abraham Lincoln, great and good
as he was, did not lead the thought and feeling
of his country. He did not create opportunities
or events, but he was wise enough to accept the
advantages of both. He did not make public
sentiment nor did he repress it, but he adjusted
and timed his measures to its demands. And
yet, these two men, so strikingly unlike in some
important particulars, the products of different
ages and civilizations, the outgrowths of different
social conditions, the one a prince, the other a
plebeian, the one a child of wealth, and the other
a child of poverty; the one trained in all the
learning of the schools, and the other self-taught
and self-made, were stamped by nature with the
same lineaments of a common nobility, and appointed
to a common mission in the world.
" Both men were, as we have seen, at the head
of fearfully divided peoples, and both possessed,
in large measure, the high qualities needed to
soften asperities and heal divisions among them.
" Both men had foes of their own households,
and both had disguised traitors in their camps.
•* Both William and Lincoln were devoting them-