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Quotes from Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895, went from slave to orator to American minister to Haiti resident during his lifetime. A prolific writer, he wrote three autobiographies and numerous other works. Here is a sampling:
From ``A plea for free speech in Boston,'' 1860.
``No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions had ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power.''
From ``What to the slave is the Fourth of July?,'' July 5, 1852.
``Allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independece, extended to us?''
``In that instrument [the Constitution] I hold there is no warrant, license nor sanction of the hateful thing [slavery]; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither . . . Let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can be found anywhere in it.''
