Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 181
" While moving about between besieged cities,
starving garrisons, and inquisitorial fires, bearing
on his breast a responsibility heavier than that
of any other man in his country, William still
found moments for great cheerfulness, and even
merriment.
" Men incapable of this feeling under such circumstances,
reproached him for levity. They
did not know that the farther the pendulum of
the human mind swings in one direction, the
farther it must also swing in the other direction.
" Great, loving hearts were in the breasts of both
men. Their amiable qualities naturally called
out and strengthened corresponding qualities in
all who came about them. Resembling each
other so closely in their temper, character, and
relation to their times, it is remarkable that these
two men should have resembled each other also
in the manner of their deaths. Both were assassinated,
the one by popery, the other by slavery,
and both manifested the same spirit of charity.
" When William died, as he did die, by the
hand of one of the most cold-blooded, persistent,
and treacherous assassins ever known in history,
an ungrateful wretch, who, only the day before,
had received from the good man a charity,—he
died, invoking mercy and pardon for his guilty
murderer.
"Could our own Lincoln have spoken after the