His speech in England was labored, heavy, and some portions of it ambitious. But here are measured sentences, graceful transitions, truth made forcible, and the oratory refined. Thus he went on from good to better, until the managers of leading lecture-courses of the land felt that the season would not be a success without Frederick Douglass. He began to venture into deeper water; to expound problems not exactly in line with the only theme that he was complete master of. His attempts at wit usually missed fire. He could not be funny. He was in earnest from the first moment the light broke into his mind in Baltimore. He was rarely eloquent except when denouncing slavery. He was not at his best in abstract thought: too much logic dampened his enthusiasm; and an attempt at elaborate preparation weakened his discourse. He was majestic when speaking of the insults he had received or the wrongs his race were suffering. Martin Luther said during the religious struggle in Germany for freedom of thought: "Sorrow has pressed many sweet songs out of me." It was the sorrows of the child-heart of Douglass the chattel, and the sorrows of the great man-heart of Douglass the human being, that gave the world such remarkable eloquence. There were but two chords in his soul that could yield a rich sound, viz.: sorrow and indignation. Sorrow for the helpless slave, and indignation against the heartless master, made him grand, majestic, and eloquent beyond comparison.
Although he was going constantly he saved his means, and raised a family of two girls—one dying in her teens, an affliction he took deeply to heart—and three boys. When the war was on at high tide, and Colored soldiers required, he gave all he had, three stalwart boys, while he made it very uncomfortable for the Copperheads at home. At the close of the war he moved to Washington and became deeply interested in the practical work of reconstruction. He was appointed one of the Commissioners to visit San Domingo, when General Grant recommended its annexation to the United States; was a trustee of Howard University and of the Freedman's Savings Bank and Trust Company. Unfortunately he accepted the presidency of the latter institution after nearly all the thieves had got through with it, and was its official head when the crash and ruin came.
Mr. Douglass's home[126] life has been pure and elevated. He has done well by his boys; and has aided many young men to places of usefulness and profit. He strangely and violently opposed the exodus of his race from the South, and thereby incurred the opposition of the Northern press and the anathemas of the Colored people. It was not just the thing, men said—white and black,—for a man who had been a slave in the South, and had come North to find a market for his labor, to oppose his brethren in their flight from economic slavery and the shot-gun policy of the South. His efforts to state and justify his position before the Colored people of New York were received with an impatient air and tolerated even for the time with ill grace. Before the Social Science Congress at Saratoga, New York, he met Richard T. Greener, a young Colored man, in a discussion of this subject. But Mr. Greener, a son of Harvard College, with a keen and merciless logic, cut right through the sophistries of Mr. Douglass; and although the latter gentleman threw bouquets at the audience, and indulged in the most exquisite word-painting, he was compelled to leave the field a vanquished disputant.
President Hayes appointed Mr. Douglass United States Marshall for the District of Columbia, an office which he held until President Garfield made him Recorder of Deeds for the same district. He has accumulated a comfortable little fortune, has published three books, edited two newspapers, passed through a checkered and busy life; and to-day, full of honors and years, he stands confessedly as the first man of his race in North America. Not that he is the greatest in every sense; but considering "the depths from whence he came," the work he has accomplished, the character untarnished,—his memory and character, like the granite shaft, will have an enduring and undying place in the gratitude of humanity throughout the world.
Among the representative young men of color in the United States—and now, happily in the process of time, their name is legion—Richard Theodore Greener has undisputed standing. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1844, but spent most of his life in Massachusetts. His father and grandfather were men of unusual intelligence, social energy, and public spirit. Richard T. early manifested an eagerness to learn and a capacity to retain and utilize. He enjoyed better surroundings in childhood than the average Colored child a generation ago; and always accustomed to hear the English correctly spoken, he had in himself all the required conditions to acquire a thorough education. Having obtained a start in the common schools, he turned to Oberlin College, Lorain County, Ohio,—at that time an institution toward which the Colored people of the country were very partial, and whose anti-slavery professors they loved with wonderful tenderness. For some of these professors, in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Case, had preferred imprisonment in preference to obedience to the unholy fugitive-slave law. The years of 1862-3 were spent at Oberlin, and Mr. Greener showed himself an excellent student. His ambition was to excel in every thing. Not exactly satisfied with the course of studies at Oberlin, he went to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. This institution was a feeder for Harvard, and using uniform text-books he was placed in line and harmony with the course of studies to be pursued at Cambridge. He entered Harvard College in the autumn of 1865, and graduated with high honors in 1870.[127] He was the first of his race to enter this famous university, and while there did himself credit, and honored the race from which he sprang. All his performances were creditable. He won a second prize for reading aloud in his freshman year; in his sophomore year he won the first prize for the Boylston Declamation, notwithstanding members of the junior and senior classes contested. During his junior year he did not contest, preferring to tutor two of the competitors who were successful. In his senior year he won the two highest prizes, viz: the First Bowdoin for a Dissertation on "The Tenures of Land in Ireland," and the "Boylston Prize for Oratory."
The entrance, achievements, and graduation of Mr. Greener received the thoughtful and grateful attention of the press of Europe and America; while what he did was a stimulating example to the young men of his race in the United States.
At the time of his graduation there was a great demand for and a wide-spread need of educated Colored men as teachers. The Institute for Colored Youth, in Philadelphia, had been but recently deprived of its principal, Prof. E. D. Bassett, who had been sent as Resident Minister and Consul-General to the Republic of Hayti. Mr. Greener was called to take the chair vacated by Mr. Bassett. He was principal of this institution from Sept., 1870, to Dec., 1872. From Philadelphia he was called to fill a similar position in Sumner High School, at Washington, D. C. He did not remain long in Washington. His fame as an educator had grown until he was celebrated as a teacher throughout the country. He was offered and accepted the Chair of Metaphysics and Logic in the University of South Carolina, situate at Columbia. He remained here until 1877, when the Hampton Government found no virtue in a Negro as a teacher in an institution of the fame and standing of this university. In 1877 he was made Dean of the Law Department of Howard University, Washington, D. C., and held the position until 1880. He graduated from the Law School of the University of South Carolina, and has practised in Washington since his residence there. In addition to his work as teacher, lawyer, and orator, Prof. Greener was associate editor of the New National Era at Washington, D. C., and his editorial Young Men to the Front, gave him a reputation as a progressive and aggressive leader which he has sustained ever since with marked ability.
As a political speaker he began while in college, in 1868, and has continued down to the present time. He is a pleasant speaker, and acceptable and efficient in a campaign. As an orator and writer he excels. His early style was burdened, like that of the late Charles Sumner, with a too-abundant classical illustration and quotation; but during the last five years his illustrations are drawn largely from the English classics and history. His ablest effort at oratory was his oration on Charles Sumner, the Idealist, Statesman, and Scholar. It was by all odds the finest effort of its kind delivered in this country. It was eminently fitting that a representative of the race toward whose elevation Mr. Sumner contributed his splendid talents, and a graduate from the same College that honored Sumner, and from the State that gave him birth and opportunity, should give the true analysis of his noble life and spotless character.
In the "National Quarterly Review" for July, 1880, Prof. Greener replied to an article from the pen of Mr. James Parton on Antipathy to the Negro, published in the "North American Review." Prof. Greener's theme was The Intellectual Position of the Negro. The following paragraphs give a fair idea of the style of Mr. Greener:
"The writer himself appears not to feel such an antipathy to us that it must need find expression; for his liberality is well known to those who have read his writings for the past fifteen years. Nor is there any apparent ground for its appearance because of any new or startling exhibitions of antipathia against us noticeable at the present time. No argument was needed to prove that there has been an unreasonable and unreasoning prejudice against negroes as a class, a long-existing antipathy, seemingly, ineradicable, sometimes dying out it would appear, and then bursting forth afresh from no apparent cause. If Mr. Parton means to assert that such prejudice is ineradicable, or is increasing, or is even rapidly passing away, then is his venture insufficient, because it fails to support either of these views. It does not even attempt to show that the supposed antipathy is general, for the author expressly, and, we think, very properly, relegates its exercise to those whom he calls the most ignorant—the 'meanest' of mankind.
"If his intention was to attack a senseless antipathy, hold it up to ridicule, show its absurdity, analyze its constituent parts, and suggest some easy and safe way for Americans to rid themselves of unchristian and un-American prejudices, then has he again conspicuously failed to carry out such purpose. He asserts the existence of antipathies, but only by inference does he discourage their maintenance, although on other topics he is rather outspoken whenever he cares to express his own convictions.
"On this question Mr. Parton is, to say the least, vacillating, because he fails to exhibit any platform upon which we may combat those who support early prejudices and justify their continuance from the mere fact of their existence. We never expect Mr. Gayarré and Mr. Henry Watterson to look calmly and dispassionately at these questions from the negro's point of view. The one gives us the old argument of De Bow's Review, and the other deals out the ex parte views of the present leaders of the South. The one line of argument has been answered over and over again by the old anti-slavery leaders; the pungent generalizations of the latter, the present generation of negroes can answer whenever the opportunity is afforded them.
"But Mr. Parton was born in a cooler and calmer atmosphere, where men are accustomed to give a reason for the faith that is in them, and hence it is necessary, in opening any discussion such as he had provoked, that he should assign some ground of opposition or support—Christian, Pagan, utilitarian, constitutional, optimist, or pessimist.
"The very apparent friendliness of his intentions makes even a legitimate conclusion from him seem mere conjecture, likely to be successfully controverted by any subtle thinker and opponent. No definite conclusion is, indeed, reached with regard to the first query (Jefferson's fourteenth) with which Mr. Parton opens his article: Whether the white and black races can live together on this continent as equals. He lets us see at the close, incidentally only, what his opinion is, and it inclines to the negative. But throughout the article he is in the anomalous and dubious position of one who opens a discussion which he cannot end, and the logical result of whose own opinion he dares not boldly state. The illustrations of the early opinions of Madison and Jefferson only show how permanent a factor the negro is in American history and polity, and how utterly futile are all attempts at his expatriation. Following Mr. Parton's advice, the negro has always prudently abstained from putting 'himself against inexorable facts.' He is careful, however, to make sure of two things,—that the alleged facts are verities and that they are inexorable. Prejudice we acknowledge as a fact; but we know that it is neither an ineradicable nor an inexorable one. We find fault with Mr. Parton because he starts a trail on antipathy, evidently purposeless, and fails to track it down either systematically or persistently, but branches off, desipere in loco, to talk loosely of 'physical antipathy,' meaning what we usually term natural antipathy; and at last, emerging from the 'brush,' where he has been hopelessly beating about from Pliny to Mrs. Kemble, he gains a partial 'open' once more by asserting a truism—that it is the 'ignorance of a despised class' (the lack of knowledge we have of them) which nourishes these 'insensate antipathies.' Here we are at one with Mr. Parton. Those who know us most intimately, who have associated with us in the nursery, at school, in college, in trade, in the tenderer and confidential relations of life, in health, in sickness, and in death, as trusted guides, as brave soldiers, as magnanimous enemies, as educated and respected men and women, give up all senseless antipathies, and feel ashamed to Confess they ever cherished any prejudice against a race whose record is as unsullied as that of any in the land."