Frederick Douglass. Charles Waddell Chesnutt

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СКАЧАТЬ 12. Sailed from Quebec for England.

      Lectured and spoke in England and Scotland for six months.

      1860

      Returned to the United States. Supported Lincoln for the Presidency.

      1862

      Lectured and spoke in favor of the war and against slavery.

      1863

      Assisted in recruiting Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts colored regiments. Invited to visit President Lincoln.

      1864

      Supported Lincoln for re-election.

      1866

      Was active in procuring the franchise for the freedmen.

      September. Elected delegate from Rochester to National Loyalists' Convention at Philadelphia.

      1869 [1870]

      Moved to Washington, District of Columbia. Established [Edited and then bought] the New National Era.

      1870

      Appointed secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission by President Grant.

      1872

      Appointed councillor of the District of Columbia. [Moved family there after a fire (probably arson) destroyed their Rochester home and Douglass's newspaper files.] Elected presidential elector of the State of New York, and chosen by the electoral college to take the vote to Washington.

      1876

      Delivered address at unveiling of Lincoln statue at Washington.

      1877

      Appointed Marshal of the District of Columbia by President Hayes.

      1878

      Visited his old home in Maryland and met his old master.

      1879

      Bust of Douglass placed in Sibley Hall, of Rochester University. Spoke against the proposed negro exodus from the South.

      1881

      Appointed recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia.

      1882

      January. Published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, the third and last of his autobiographies. August 4. Mrs. Frederick Douglass died.

      1884

      February 6. Attended funeral of Wendell Phillips. February 9. Attended memorial meeting and delivered eulogy on Phillips. Married Miss Helen Pitts.

      1886

      May 20. Lectured on John Brown at Music Hall, Boston.

      September 11. Attended a dinner given in his honor by the Wendell Phillips Club, Boston.

      September. Sailed for Europe.

      Visited Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt, 1886-87.

      1888

      Made a tour of the Southern States.

      1889

      Appointed United States minister resident and consul-general to the Republic of Hayti and chargé d'affaires to Santo Domingo.

      1890

      September 22. Addressed abolition reunion at Boston.

      1891

      Resigned the office of minister to Hayti.

      1893

      Acted as commissioner for Hayti at World's Columbian Exposition.

      1895

      February 20. Frederick Douglass died at his home on Anacostia Heights, near Washington, District of Columbia.

      In a few places in the text of Frederick Douglass, bracketed words have been inserted to indicate possible typographical errors, other unclear or misleading passages in the 1899 original edition, and identifications that were not needed in 1899 but may be needed in the twenty-first century.

      I

      If it be no small task for a man of the most favored antecedents and the most fortunate surroundings to rise above mediocrity in a great nation, it is surely a more remarkable achievement for a man of the very humblest origin possible to humanity in any country in any age of the world, in the face of obstacles seemingly insurmountable, to win high honors and rewards, to retain for more than a generation the respect of good men in many lands, and to be deemed worthy of enrolment among his country's great men. Such a man was Frederick Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer force of character and talents that neither slavery nor caste proscription could crush must ever remain as a shining illustration of the essential superiority of manhood to environment. Circumstances made Frederick Douglass a slave, but they could not prevent him from becoming a freeman and a leader among mankind.

      The early life of Douglass, as detailed by himself from the platform in vigorous and eloquent speech, and as recorded in the three volumes written by himself at different periods of his career, is perhaps the completest indictment of the slave system ever presented at the bar of public opinion. Fanny Kemble's Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, kept by her in the very year of Douglass's escape from bondage, but not published until 1863, too late to contribute anything to the downfall of slavery, is a singularly clear revelation of plantation life from the standpoint of an outsider entirely unbiased by American prejudice. Frederick Douglass's Narrative is the same story told from the inside. They coincide in the main facts; and in the matter of detail, like the two slightly differing views of a stereoscopic picture, they bring out into bold relief the real character of the peculiar institution. Uncle Tom's Cabin lent to the structure of fact the decorations of humor, a dramatic plot, and characters to whose fate the touch of creative genius gave a living interest. But, after all, it was not Uncle Tom, nor Topsy, nor Miss Ophelia, nor Eliza, nor little Eva that made the book the power it proved to stir the hearts of men, but the great underlying tragedy then already rapidly approaching a bloody climax.

      Frederick Douglass was born in February, l8l7,—as nearly as the date could be determined in after years, when it became a matter of public interest,—at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Talbot County, on the eastern shore of Maryland, a barren and poverty-stricken district, which possesses in the birth of Douglass its sole title to distinction. His mother was a negro slave, tall, erect, and well-proportioned, of a deep black and glossy complexion, with regular features, and manners of a natural dignity and sedateness. Though a field hand and compelled to toil many hours a day, she had in some mysterious way learned to read, being the only person of color in Tuckahoe, slave or free, who possessed that accomplishment. His father was a white man. It was in the nature of things that in after years attempts should be made to analyze the sources of Douglass's talent, and that the question should be raised whether he owed it to the black or the white half of his mixed ancestry. But Douglass himself, who knew his own mother and grandmother, ascribed such powers as he possessed to the negro half of his blood; and, as to it certainly he owed the experience which gave his anti-slavery work its peculiar distinction and value, СКАЧАТЬ