d on fire over the wrongs
of the slave,--or rather the wrongs of slavery, for that wonderful
book did not portray the negro as the only sufferer from this hoary
iniquity,--Mrs. Stowe, in her new capacity as a champion of liberty,
conceived the plan of raising a fund for the benefit of the colored
race, and in 1853 invited Douglass to visit her at Andover,
Massachusetts, where she consulted with him in reference to the
establishment of an industrial institute or trades school for colored
youth, with a view to improving their condition in the free States.
Douglass approved heartily of this plan, and through his paper made
himself its sponsor. When, later on, Mrs. Stowe abandoned the project,
Douglass was made the subject of some criticism, though he was not at
all to blame for Mrs. Stowes altered plans. In our own time the value
of such institutions has been widely recognized, and the success of
those at Hampton and Tuskegee has stimulated anew the interest in
industrial education as one important factor in the elevation of the
colored race.

In the years from 1853 to 1860 the slave power, inspired with divine
madness, rushed headlong toward its doom. The arbitrary enforcement of
the Fugitive Slave Act; the struggle between freedom and slavery in
Kansas; the Dred Scott decision, by which a learned and subtle judge,
who had it within his power to enlarge the boundaries of human liberty
and cover his own name with glory, deliberately and laboriously
summarized and dignified with the sanction of a court of last resort
all the most odious prejudices that had restricted the opportunities
of the colored people; the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; the John
Brown raid; the [1855] assault on [Massachusetts antislavery U.S.
Senator] Charles Sumner,--each of these incidents has been, in itself,
the subject of more than one volume. Of these events the Dred Scott
decision was the most disheartening. Douglass was not proof against
the universal gloom, and began to feel that there was little hope of
the peaceful solution of the question of slavery. It was in one of his
darker moments that old Sojourner Truth, whose face appeared in so
many anti-slavery gatherings, put her famous question, which breathed
a sublime and childlike faith in God, even when his hand seemed
heaviest on her people: "Frederick," she asked, "is God dead?" The
orator paused impressively, and then thundered in a voice that
thrilled his audience with prophetic in