Grade 8 Reading List: "The Blessings of Liberty and Education" by Frederick Douglass

Fifty-six years ago to-day, it was my good fortune to cease to be a slave, a chattel personal, and to become a man.

My first thought germain to this occasion, and which must have some interest for us all, very naturally relates to noted place where we now happen to be assembled.

The liberality on the part of the people of Virginia, a typical State of the South, which has encouraged and justified the founding of this Industrial School, not only within her borders, but here on the very first great battle-field between the two great sections of our Union, is as much a cause of amazement, satisfaction and joy, as is the readiness with which the good people of the North have responded to the call for pecuniary aid and thus made this enterprize successful.

The duty devolved upon me, but which I then hesitated to assume, is, in every respect, an agreeable duty.

I am glad that, at my time of life, the opportunity is afforded me to connect my name with a school so meritorious and which I can reasonably hope will be of so great and permanent service to a people so greatly needing it.

He was free by law, but denied the chief advantages of freedom; he was indeed but nominally free; he was not compelled to call any man his master, and no one could call him slave, but he was still in fact a slave, a slave to society, and could only be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.

While I have no sympathy whatever with those who affect to despise labor, even the humblest forms of it, and hold that whatever is needful to be done it is honorable to do, it is, nevertheless, plain that no people, white or black, can, in my country, continue long respected who are confined exclusively to mere menial service for which but little intelligence or skill are required, and for which but the smallest wages are paid or received...

This would not have been the case with them, if society, by any law or custom, had decided that this service should be, for such persons, their only calling and vocation in life.

So I say of menial service—it is a good condition to separate from, just as soon as one can find any other calling, which is more remunerative and more elevating in its tendency.

The school which we are about to establish here, is, if I understand its object, intended to teach the colored youth, who shall avail themselves of its privileges, the use of both mind and body.

Thought was the prerogative of the master. Obedience was the duty of the slave.

In respect of the dignity of man we may well exclaim with the great Shakspeare concerning him: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!”

In respect of the dignity of man we may well exclaim with the great Shakspeare concerning him: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!”

Yet, if man be benighted, this glowing description of his power and dignity is merely a “glittering generality,” an empty tumult of words, without any support of facts.

In view of this fact, no man whose business it is to teach should ever allow himself to feel that his mission is mean, inferior, or circumscribed.

The silent and majestic heavens, fretted with stars, so inspiring and uplifting, so sublime and glorious to the souls of other men, bear no message to him.

They forget that for these terrible wrongs there is no redress and no adequate compensation.

The despotic government of Russia was more liberal and humane to its emancipated slaves than our Republic was to ours.

The despotic government of Russia was more liberal and humane to its emancipated slaves than our Republic was to ours.

As one of the number of enslaved, I am none the less disposed to observe and note with pleasure and gratitude every effort of our white friends and brothers to remedy the evils wrought by the long years of slavery and its concomitants.

RACE, in the popular sense, is narrow; humanity is broad. The one is special; the other is universal. The one is transient; the other permanent.

God and nature speak to our manhood, and to our manhood alone. Here all ideas of duty and moral obligation are predicated. We are accountable only as men.

To those who are everlastingly prating about race men, I have to say: Gentlemen, you reflect upon your best friends.

Thus compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses, I can easily afford to be reproached and denounced for standing, in defense of this principle, against all comers.

The successful and opulent esteem them as upstarts.