ld enemies; but in the
vigor of his manhood, with the memory of his wrongs and those of his
race fresh upon him, he possessed that indispensable quality of the
true reformer: he went straight to the root of the evil, and made no
admissions and no compromises. Slavery for him was conceived in greed,
born in sin, cradled in shame, and worthy of utter and relentless
condemnation. He had the quality of directness and simplicity. When
Collins would have turned the abolition influence to the support of a
communistic scheme, Douglass opposed it vehemently. Slavery was the
evil they were fighting, and their cause would be rendered still more
unpopular if they ran after strange gods.

When Garrison pleaded for the rights of man, when Phillips with golden
eloquence preached the doctrine of humanity and progress, men approved
and applauded. When Parker painted the moral baseness of the times,
men acquiesced shamefacedly. When Channing preached the gospel of
love, they wished the dream might become a reality. But, when Douglass
told the story of his wrongs and those of his brethren in bondage,
they felt that here indeed was slavery embodied, here was an argument
for freedom that could not be gainsaid, that the race that could
produce in slavery such a man as Frederick Douglass must surely be
worthy of freedom.

What Douglass's platform utterances in later years lacked of the
vehemence and fire of his earlier speeches, they made up in wisdom and
mature judgment. There is a note of exultation in his speeches just
after the war. Jehovah had triumphed, his people were free. He had
seen the Red Sea of blood open and let them pass, and engulf the enemy
who pursued them.

Among the most noteworthy of Douglass's later addresses were the
oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument to Abraham Lincoln
in Washington in 1876, which may be found in his _Life and Times_;
the address on Decoration Day, New York, 1878; his eulogy on Wendell
Phillips, printed in Austin's _Life and Times of Wendell Phillips_;
and the speech on the death of Garrison, June, 1879. He lectured in
the Parker Fraternity Course in Boston, delivered numerous addresses
to gatherings of colored men, spoke at public dinners and woman
suffrage meetings, and retained his hold upon the interest of the
public down to the very day of his death.

XII.

With the full enfranchisement of his people, Douglass entered upon
what may be called the third epoch of his c