Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
I9B LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
skillfully commanded army of 50,000 men; though
the people against whom this army came were
unskilled in the arts of war; though by a treachery
the most dishonorable and revolting the invaders
had succeeded in capturing and sending Toussaint
in chains to France to perish in an icy prison;
though his swords were met with barrel hoops ;
though a wasting war had defaced and desolated
the country for a dozen years, Hayti was still free,
its spirit was unbroken, and its brave sons were
still at large in the mountains ready to continue
the war if need be for a century.
" When Bonaparte had done his worst, and the
bones of his unfortunate soldiers whitened upon
a soil made rich by patriotic blood, and the shattered
remnants of his army were glad to escape
alive, the heroic chiefs of Hayti, in the year 1803,
declared its independence, and it has made good
that declaration down to 1893. Hayti's presence
here to-day in the grounds of this World's Columbian
Exposition at the end of the 400th
anniversary of the discovery of the American continent
is a re-affirmation of its existence and
independence as a nation and of its place among
the sisterhood of nations."