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