Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 297
In the third place, it was due largely to the influence
of Mr. Douglass, that the colored man
was allowed to shoulder his musket and strike a
blow for his own freedom and for the preservation
of the Union. In Chapter Eleventh of his
Life, entitled, "Secession and War," he says:
" When the government persistently refused to
employ colored troops; when the emancipation
proclamation of General John C. Fremont, in
Missouri, was withdrawn; when slaves were being
returned from our lines to their masters; when
Union soldiers were stationed about the farmhouses
of Virginia to guard and protect the master
in holding his slaves; when Union soldiers
made themselves more active in kicking colored
men out of their camps than in shooting rebels;
when even Mr. Lincoln could tell the poor
negro that' he was the cause of the war.'—I still
believed, and spoke as I believed, all over the
North, that the mission of the war was the liberation
of the slave, as well as the salvation of the
Union; and hence from the first I reproached
the North that they fought the rebels with only
one hand, when they might strike effectually
with two,—that they fought with their soft white
hand, while they kept their black iron hand
chained and helpless behind them, — that they
fought the effect, while they protected the cause,
and that the Union cause would never prosper