the highest, mankind pay him the tribute of their admiration;
when he accomplishes this elevation by native energy, guided by
prudence and wisdom, their admiration is increased; but when his
course, onward and upward, excellent in itself, furthermore
proves a possible, what had hitherto been regarded as an
impossible, reform, then he becomes a burning and a shining
light, on which the aged may look with gladness, the young with
hope, and the down-trodden, as a representative of what they may
themselves become.  To such a man, dear reader, it is my
privilege to introduce you.

The life of Frederick Douglass, recorded in the pages which
follow, is not merely an example of self-elevation under the most
adverse circumstances; it is, moreover, a noble vindication of
the highest aims of the American anti-slavery movement.  The real
object of that movement is not only to disenthrall, it is, also,
to bestow upon the Negro the exercise of all those rights, from
the possession of which he has been so long debarred.

But this full recognition of the colored man to the right, and
the entire admission of the same to the full privileges,
political, religious and social, of manhood, requires powerful
effort on the part of the enthralled, as well as on the part of
those who would disenthrall them.  The people at large must feel
the conviction, as well as admit the abstract logic, of human
equality; the Negro, for the first time in the world's
history, brought in full contact with high civilization, must
prove his title first to all that is demanded for him; in the
teeth of unequal chances, he must prove himself equal to the mass
of those who oppress him--therefore, absolutely superior to his
apparent fate, and to their relative ability.  And it is most
cheering to the friends of freedom, today, that evidence of this
equality is rapidly accumulating, not from the ranks of the half-
freed colored people of the free states, but from the very depths
of slavery itself; the indestructible equality of man to man is
demonstrated by the ease with which black men, scarce one remove
from barbarism--if slavery can be honored with such a
distinction--vault into the high places of the most advanced and
painfully acquired civilization.  Ward and Garnett, Wells Brown
and Pennington, Loguen and Douglass, are banners on the outer
wall, under which abolition is fighting its most successful
battles, because they are living exemplars of the practicability
of the most radical abolitionism; for, they were all of them born
to the doom of slavery, some of them remained slaves until adult
age, yet they all have not only won equality to their white
fellow citizens, in civil, religious, political and social rank,
but they have also illustrated and adorned our common country by
their genius, learning and eloquence.

The characteristics whereby Mr. Douglass has won first rank among
these remarkable men, and is still rising toward highest rank
among living Americans, are abundantly laid bare in the book
before us.  Like the autobiography of Hugh Miller, it carries us
so far back into early childhood, as to throw light upon the
question, "when positive and persistent memory begins in the
human being."  And, like Hugh Miller, he must have been a shy
old-fashioned child, occasionally oppressed by what he could not
well account for, peering and poking about among the layers of
right and wrong, of tyrant and thrall, and the wonderfulness of
that hopeless tide of things which brought power to one race, and
unrequited toil to another, until, finally, he stumbled upon
his "first-found Ammonite," hidden away down in the depths of
his own nature, and which revealed to him the fact that liberty
and right, for all men, were anterior to slavery and wrong.  When
his knowledge of the world was bounded by the visible horizon on
Col. Lloyd's plantation, and while every thing around him bore a
fixed, iron stamp, as if it had always been so, this was, for one
so young, a notable discovery.

To his uncommon memory, then, we must add a keen and accurate
insight into men and things; an original breadth of common sense
which enabled him to see, and weigh, and compare whatever passed
before him, and which kindled a desire to search out and define
their relations to other things not so patent, but which never
succumbed to the marvelous nor the supernatural; a sacred thirst
for liberty and for learning, first as a means of attaining
liberty, then as an end in itself most desirable; a will; an
unfaltering energy and determination to obtain what his soul
pronounced desirable; a majestic self-hood; determined courage; a
deep and agonizing sympathy with his embruted, crushed and
bleeding fellow slaves, and an extraordinary depth of passion,
together with that rare alliance between passion and intellect,
which enables the former, when deeply roused, to excite, develop
and sustain the latter.

With these original gifts in view, let us look at his schooling;
the fearful discipline through which it pleased God to prepare
him for the high calling on which he has since entered--the
advocacy of emancipation by the people who are not slaves.  And
for this special mission, his plantation education was better
than any he could have acquired in any lettered school.  What he
needed, was facts and experiences, welded to acutely wrought up
sympathies, and these he could not elsewhere have obtained, in a
manner so peculiarly adapted to his nature.  His physical being
was well trained, also, running wild until advanced into boyhood;
hard work and light diet, thereafter, and a skill in handicraft
in youth.


For his special mission, then, this was, considered in connection