Abstract

Abstract I am tonight to eulogize Frederick Douglass. I cannot but admit the disadvantages under which one labors in eulogizing a living subject, but I am sure that no exercises commemorative of this event, for which so many brave and true men labored, would be complete unless some word of praise be spoken in honor of the life and work of that truly great man. And I know that when the lives of great men are viewed through the shadowy mists of death, and their deeds seen only through the dim vistas of time, their faults are often lost to sight; and their virtues loom up like mountains: while from a closer view in life we too often allow their faults to blind us to their better qualities; and so I feel that in the treatment of my subject-I shall at least be free from unmerited and exaggerated applause. Frederick Douglass first impresses me as a great man by his life as a whole, by his work, by what he labored for, by what he accomplished; and, so I in my humble judgement write his name high in the temple of American fame, high among the great names that honor the pages of American history. Were I called upon to speak of the great Washington, that father of his country, who fought for its independence, or of the imperturbable soldier Grant, the preserver of his country, who fought for its union, or of the immortal Lincoln, the martyred hero, whose life was made a supreme sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom, I could not do so with more reverence, with more heartfelt gratitude, with more devotion than I speak of Douglass who, with his tongue lit by the fires of eloquence, helped to kindle a flame, which did not cease until in one great blaze it swept this broad land from sea to sea: purifying it of one of the greatest evils that has ever infested the human race, burning the bands and melting the shackles from four million human souls, who leaped with one joyous bound out from the most abject bondage, into a most glorious liberty.

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