Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
246 LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
did he lose his footing; not once did he forfeit
the companionship of our greatest; ay, not once
did he lose his hold upon God.
Here is thy greatest son, my Maryland. Rise
up to greet him as he passes through. Seventyseven
years ago thou gavest him the birth of the
bondman, but thou hast lost him. The nation
has claimed him—the wide world. Thou great
Virginia planter, sleeping by the Potomac, let
the river bear thee these tidings: " What thou
didst with thy bondmen, we have done with
ours." The tread of the soldier is around thy
slumber no more. And thou martyr-soul, beneath
God's throne, to whom was given to speak
the fiat of freedom to millions of men, women, and
children whose lot was like this man's, who were
thus " cabined, cribbed and confined" though
God's image was in them, take this martyr-spirit
to thy celestial companionship. And thou
great Empire State, who gavest to this man a
home, where he could earn his bread and rear his
children, at a time when he had not where to lay
his head, and by the broad flow of whose great
river sleeps the dust of freedom's greatest captain,
take to thy central heart and bear on thy
bosom, as the ages sweep more and more into
the sunlight of the man Christ Jesus, the battlescarred
form of Frederick Douglass. Sleep,
freedom's herald in the land of the freeborn.