He succeeded, but it was because the attention of the throng was riveted on the speaker who faced them on the platform far up front. Only those persons whom he pushed against even saw the big man with the upturned coat collar.
Douglass later described Robert G. Ingersoll as a man “with real living human sunshine in his face.” It was this quality of dynamic light about the man up front which made him stare on that January night. He had come prepared to be impressed, but he was amazed at the almost childlike freshness of the fair, smooth face with its wide-set eyes. Ingersoll was of fine height and breadth, his mouth as gentle as a woman’s, but, as Douglass began taking in what the man was saying, his wonder grew.
“Slavery has destroyed every nation that has gone down to death. It caused the last vestige of Grecian civilization to disappear forever, and it caused Rome to fall with a crash that shook the world. After the disappearance of slavery in its grossest forms in Europe, Gonzales pointed out to his countrymen, the Portuguese, the immense profits that they could make by stealing Africans, and thus commenced the modern slave trade—that aggregation of all horror—infinite of all cruelty, prosecuted only by demons, and defended only by fiends.
“And yet the slave trade has been defended and sustained by every civilized nation, and by each and all has been baptized ‘legitimate commerce’ in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
Douglass felt a chill descend his spine.
He told them that every great movement must be led by heroic, self-sacrificing pioneers. Then his voice took on another quality.
“In Santo Domingo the pioneers were Oge and Chevannes; they headed a revolt, they were unsuccessful, but they roused the slaves to resistance. They were captured, tried, condemned and executed. They were made to ask forgiveness of God and of the King, for having attempted to give freedom to their own flesh and blood. They were broken alive on the wheel and left to die of hunger and pain. The blood of those martyrs became the seed of liberty; and afterward in the midnight assault, in the massacre and pillage, the infuriated slaves shouted their names as their battle cry, until Toussaint, the greatest of the blacks, gave freedom to them all.”
He quoted Thomas Paine: No man can be happy surrounded by those whose happiness he has destroyed. And Thomas Jefferson: When the measure of their tears shall be full—when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness—doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress and, by diffusing light and liberality among the oppressors or at length by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to the things of this world and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality.
He named Garrison, who was “for liberty as a principle and not from mere necessity.”
A cheer went up from the crowd. Douglass’ heart was glad as he heard it. Ingersoll then talked of Wendell Phillips, and of Charles Sumner, who at that moment was battling for the freedmen in Congress. His voice deepened, his great eyes became soft pools of light.