Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
3O2 LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
Hayti. I did not want him to go; I wrote him
and told him so, and told him why. It was
because I felt that we could not spare him
out of the country. It seemed to me that our
interests would not be quite so safe if he were
away. The very fact that he was here filled me
with the assurance that all would be well. And
this is the way, I think, we all felt,—a sense of
security in the consciousness of the fact that he
was in our midst.
In politics he was a Republican. He loved
the grand old party of Liberty, — but when it
proved recreant to its trust, when it was ready
to sacrifice the negro, to trample him in the
dust, to push him aside out of deference to popular
prejudice, then it was that he turned upon
it, and cauterized it with actual lightning. I
shall never forget the article which he wrote on
the reasons for the defeat of the Republican
party, which was published, I think, in Harpers
Weekly. It was a masterly arraignment of that
party for its cowardice and its perfidy, and showed
how deeply concerned he was for the welfare of
this race, and how he was ever looking out for its
interests. In the twenty-fifth chapter of the
Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is represented, in the
great day of solemn account, as saying to those
on his right hand, " Come, ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you