Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 241
Mr. Douglass never lost his sense of the proportion
of things; never was unduly elated by
his successes and achievements. He was uncompromising
in his opinions and yet a patient
waiter. He had a sagacious, a long patience for
the result. When a great man is gone, for the
first time we begin to see the space he filled, as
though a mountain peak had been removed from
our moral horizon. It will take a long time to
measure the conservative and yet progressive
influence of this great man ; for he was great,
and great in the period of great men. He was
greater than his eloquent speech ; he was greater
than his life. If you write the history of the
anti-slavery movement he was great there, it
centered in him and around him; of the civil
war and the reconstruction period, he was a man
to whom presidents and senators, to whom millions
of enfranchised people looked for counsel.
He taught the senators wisdom. Shakespeare
makes Mark Antony say over the form of the
dead Caesar: " My heart is in the coffin there
with Caesar." I know what that means to-day.
Mr. Douglass had qualities that won the heart.
No young man could know him without having
for him a reverence that was filial. And wise
will it be for the young men, whom he tenderly
addressed as a father, if they heed his counsels,
read his life, study his example, live as he lived.