Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
288 LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
for that of Douglass, with a double * s.' The
one came from an ancestor who signed the
Declaration of Independence. The other left
children and grandchildren who are proud to
claim him as an ancestor who helped to make
possible the Proclamation of Emancipation.
These are our two great charters of liberty.
When history makes its final award it will not
give a higher place to Charles Carroll of Carrollton,
for that Magna Charta that left the black
man enslaved, than to Frederick Douglass for
the labors of a lifetime in securing that other,
which washed out the blot in the 'scutcheon of
the nation. It was an unconscious realization of
the platitude of the. Declaration of Independence,
that all men are created equal, so long a mockery
where all men were not free, that the newspapers
should almost overlook the descendant of the
•signer' in paying an obituary tribute to the
slave-born hero, who earned a renown greater
than ancestry ever conferred."
The Philadelphia Record says: " Frederick
Douglass was the most famous citizen of Washington.
No other Washingtonian, white or
black, has the world-wide reputation that he had.
Indeed, when you stop to think of it, it would be
difficult to name any other man, white or black,
in the whole country who would be as well known
as Frederick Douglass in every corner of the