Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
18 LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
emergency. An ancient author relates that when
an inhabitant of the barren island Seriphus in
the iEgean sea, to which the Romans banished
their criminals, claimed that Themistocles had
acquired distinction not through his own glory
but through that of his native Greece, Themistocles
replied : " Neither, by Hercules, if I had
been a man of Seriphus, should I ever have been
eminent, nor, if you had been an Athenian, would
you ever have been renowned."
It sometimes happens that one circumstance or
chain of circumstances singles out a man from
among his fellowmen and places him in the number
of those whose fame shall endure and grow
brighter with time. Father of his Country is the
title which-appropriately belongs to Washington,
because, under his leadership, success crowned
our arms in the war for independence. The fame
of John Brown is made /secure by his raid upon
Harper's Ferry and his subsequent martyrdom.
If the other acts of President Lincoln be forgotten,
the one act of signing the Emancipation
Proclamation will insure him the remembrance
of posterity. Hero of Appomattox is the designation
by which Grant will be known through the
ages. The name of Frederick Douglass will
survive as the fugitive slave who became one of
the most eloquent orators as well as profound
thinkers of his time.