Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
28O LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
level of the brute, and make him a mere beast of
burden. Hence it made it a crime for him to
learn to read and write, almost to think. He was
to have no views or opinions of his own. He
was simply to reflect those of others, to be
obedient to the mandates of the master. Its
whole code of ethics was summed up in the
injunction, " Servants, obey your masters." This
man was born under this accursed system, a
system which entirely ignored the fact that he
was a man, or that he had the right to exercise
any of the prerogatives of a man. This was not
only the prevailing sentiment in the South, it was
largely the prevailing sentiment in the North.
Church and state were alike in league with the
South against the negro. Almost the entire
North was pro-slavery. It was worth almost a
man's life to say a word against the slave power.
It was in Boston, the Cradle of Liberty, that
Garrison was dragged through the streets by a
" broadcloth mob." It was in the state of Connecticut
that Prudence Crandall's school was
destroyed because she dared to admit colored
pupils. What Theodore Parker said in his great
sermon, entitled " The True Idea of a Christian
Church," perfectly reflects the then existing sentiment
of the North: "Are there not three million
brothers of yours and mine in bondage here,
the hopeless sufferers of a savage doom; debarred