A man’s greatest critic is always himself. Although Frederick Douglass’ has a reputation for being a very proud man, there are a few moments in his work where he criticizes himself. After the Civil War and the eradication of slavery, Douglass felt as if his better days were behind him. He spent decades fighting for the abolition of slavery, but shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation that issue had been resolved. In The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, he wrote, “I felt that I had reached the end of the noblest and best part of my life, my school was broken up, my church disbanded, and the beloved congregation dispersed, never to come together again”. This quote shows that for some time Douglass felt useless and did not know what to
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After the abolition of slavery Douglass was very much passionate about the enfranchisement of the African American man. For example, while advocating to gain African Americans the rights to wrote Douglass wrote, “The old master was offended to find the Negro whom he lately possessed the right to enslave and flog to toil, casting a ballot equal to his own, resorted to all sorts of meanness, violence, and crime, to dispossess him of the enjoyment of this point of equality… It would have been to have committed the lamb to the care of the wolf -- the arming of one class and disarming the other -- protecting one interest, and destroying the other ”. This small section shows that Douglass’s words were very much compelling and passionate. He continues to use strong metaphors, such as the wolf and lamb in this example and he effectively conveys the feelings of the “old masters” toward the enfranchisement of black men. In the same powerful passage, Douglass also wrote, “Until it shall be safe to leave the lamb in the hold of the lion, the laborer in the power of the capitalist, the poor in the hands of the rich, it will not be safe to leave a newly emancipated people completely in the power of their former masters, especially when such masters have not ceased to be such from the enlightened moral convictions but by irresistible force.”
After the abolition of slavery Douglass was very much passionate about the enfranchisement of the African American man. For example, while advocating to gain African Americans the rights to wrote Douglass wrote, “The old master was offended to find the Negro whom he lately possessed the right to enslave and flog to toil, casting a ballot equal to his own, resorted to all sorts of meanness, violence, and crime, to dispossess him of the enjoyment of this point of equality… It would have been to have committed the lamb to the care of the wolf -- the arming of one class and disarming the other -- protecting one interest, and destroying the other ”. This small section shows that Douglass’s words were very much compelling and passionate. He continues to use strong metaphors, such as the wolf and lamb in this example and he effectively conveys the feelings of the “old masters” toward the enfranchisement of black men. In the same powerful passage, Douglass also wrote, “Until it shall be safe to leave the lamb in the hold of the lion, the laborer in the power of the capitalist, the poor in the hands of the rich, it will not be safe to leave a newly emancipated people completely in the power of their former masters, especially when such masters have not ceased to be such from the enlightened moral convictions but by irresistible force.”