Page:The National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race (1919).djvu/15

 FREDERICK DOUGLASS

REDERICK DOUGLASS, Orator and Statesman, born a slave, rose to be one of the great men of his day. whose name will live in American history. He was born in Maryland, February 14. 1817. Mis name at first was Frederick Augustus Wash ington Baily ; he changed it, being hunted as a fu gitive slave, to Douglass. He chose Douglass be cause of his facination for this character as por trayed by Sir Walter Scott, a character which the ex-slave in his grand manner much resembled.

In his childhood he saw little of his mother, noth ing of his father. The mother worked on a planta tion twelve miles from her son and could only see him by making the journey on foot and after work time. Whatever training the boy received up to the age of eight, he received it from his grand mother.

At the age of eight years he was put under Aunt Katy, who was cruel, often depriving the little fel low of food. On one occasion he went to bed so hungry that when all the household were asleep he rose and began to parch and eat corn. In the midst of the corn-parching, his mother came in, bringing a ginger cake, which made him feel that he was "somebody's child." This was the last time he saw his mother.

Douglass was sent to Baltimore, where after a time he learned to read, being taught by his new mistress, Mrs. Auld. When the master discovered what the mistress had done, he set a watch over Douglass lest he should escape. This he finally did, though he was long sought after and had one time to go to England to avoid capture. He was finally bought and set free.

He gave his life as a freedman to liberating his brethren and to improving the ex-slave condition after freedom came. He served during his life time as United States Marshall in the District of Columbia, as Recorder of Deeds in the District of Columbia, and as Consul General to the Republic of Hayti. He was the first Negro to hold these offices. He was much traveled and was admired as an orator and as a man wherever he went.

A few of the sayings of Douglass follow:

"Emancipation has liberated the land as well as the people."

"Neither the slave nor his master can abandon all at once the deeply entrenched errors and habits of centuries."

"There is no work that men are required to do, which they cannot better and more economically do with education than without it."

"Muscle is mighty but mind is mightier, and there is no field for the exercise of mind other than is found in the cultivation of the soul."

"As a race we have suffered from two very op posite causes, disparagement on the one hand and undue praise on the other."

"An important question to be answered by evi dence of our progress is: Whether the black man will prove a better master to himself than the white man was to him."

"Accumulate property. This may sound to you like a new gospel. No people can ever make any social and mental improvement whose exertions are limited. Poverty is our greatest calamity On the other hand, property, money, if you please, will produce for us the only condition upon which any people can rise to the dignity of genuine manhood."

"Without property there can be no leisure. With out leisure there can be no invention, without invention there can be no progress."

"We can work and by this means we can retrieve all our losses."

"Knowledge, wisdom, culture, refinement, manners, are all founded on work and the wealth which work brings."

"In nine cases out of ten a man's condition is worse by changing his location. You would better endeavor to remove the evil from your door than to move and leave it there."