es of the
Union, and regained his freedom by flight from bondage, a grown man,
and, of course, under the circumstances, solitary and destitute. He
reached the North at a period when the prejudice of the Whites against
men of his race was so rampant as to constitute a positive mania.

The stern and cruelly logical doctrine, that a Negro had no rights
which white men were bound to respect, was in full blast and practical
exemplification. Yet amidst it all, and despite of it all, this gifted
fugitive conquered his way into the Temple of Knowledge, and became
eminent as an orator, a writer, and a lecturer on political and general
subjects. Hailed abroad [139] as a prodigy, and received with
acclamation into the brotherhood of intelligence, abstract justice and
moral congruity demanded that such a man should no longer be subject to
the shame and abasement of social, legal, and political proscription.
The land of his birth proved herself equal to this imperative call of
civilized Duty, regardless of customs and the laws, written as well as
unwritten, which had doomed to life-long degradation every member of
the progeny of Ham. Recognizing in the erewhile bondman a born leader
of men, America, with the unflinching directness that has marked her
course, whether in good or in evil, responded with spontaneous loyalty
to the inspiration of her highest instincts. Shamed into compunction
and remorse at the solid fame and general sympathy secured for himself
by a son of her soil, whom, in the wantonness of pride and power, she
had denied all fostering care (not, indeed, for any conscious offending
on his part, but by reason of a natural peculiarity which she had
decreed penal), America, like a repentant mother, stooped from her
august seat, and giving with enthusiasm both hands to the outcast, she
helped him to stand forward and erect, [140] in the dignity of
untrammeled manhood, making him, at the same time, welcome to a place
of honour amongst the most gifted, the worthiest and most favoured of
her children.

Chief Justice Reeves, on the other hand, did not enter the world, as
Douglass had done, heir to a lot of intellectual darkness and legalized
social and political proscription. Associated from adolescence with S.
J. Prescod, the greatest leader of popular opinion whom Barbados has
yet produced, Mr. Reeves possessed in his nature the material to
assimilate and reflect in his own principles and conduct the salient
charact