Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn. Frederick Douglass

had achieved greatness—the lecturer apologizing for mentioning them first, as his past experience had been chiefly among “that class of people.” [Horace] Greeley, of the Tribune, was mentioned next as evidence of what self-denying industry and unflagging perseverance can accomplish when directed into worthy channels.

      Putting aside the blot of slavery, the lecturer looked upon America as the natural home of self-made men. In no country in the world were the conditions under which such men are trained more favorable than in America. Here these men were found in high places. They were represented among our senators, savants, poets and historians.

      This was the gist of the lecture, which we must be excused from reporting at length. The various antislavery allusions with which Mr. Douglass interspersed his discourse and which he lost no opportunity of introducing, appeared to be warmly relished by the audience.

       Excerpt from “Self-Made Men”[36]

      Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson has declared that it is natural to believe in great men. Whether this is a fact, or not, we do believe in them and worship them. The Visible God of the New Testament is revealed to us as a man of like passions with ourselves. We seek out our wisest and best man, the man who, by eloquence or the sword compels us to believe him such, and make him our leader, prophet, preacher and lawgiver. We do this not because he is essentially different from us, but because of his identity with us. He is our best representative and reflects, on a colossal scale, the scale to which we would aspire, our highest aims, objects, powers and possibilities.

      This natural reverence for all that is great in man, and this tendency to deify and worship him, though natural and the source of man’s elevation, has not always shown itself wise but has often shown itself far otherwise than wise. It has often given us a wicked ruler for a righteous one, a false prophet for a true one, a corrupt preacher for a pure one, a man of war for a man of peace, and a distorted and vengeful image of God for an image of justice and mercy.

      But it is not my purpose to attempt here any comprehensive and exhaustive theory or philosophy or the nature of manhood in all the range I have indicated. I am here to speak to you of a peculiar type of manhood under the title of “Self-Made Men.”

      That there is, in more respects than one, something like a solecism in this title, I freely admit. Properly speaking, there are in the world no such men as self-made men. That term implies an individual independence of the past and present which can never exist.

      Our best and most valued acquisitions have been obtained either from our contemporaries or from those who have preceded us in the field of thought and discovery. We have all either begged, borrowed or stolen. We have reaped where others have sown, and that which others have strown, we have gathered. It must in truth be said, though it may not accord well with self-conscious individuality and self-conceit, that no possible native force of character, and no depth of wealth and originality, can lift a man into absolute independence of his fellowmen, and no generation of men can be independent of the preceding generation. The brotherhood and inter-dependence of mankind are guarded and defended at all points. I believe in individuality, but individuals are, to the mass, like waves to the ocean. The highest order of genius is as dependent as is the lowest. It, like the loftiest waves of the sea, derives its power and greatness from the grandeur and vastness of the ocean of which it forms a part. We differ as the waves, but are one as the sea.

      Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can be put in this world, and in the exercises of these uses to build up worthy character. They are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results. In fact they are the men who are not brought up but who are obliged to come up, not only without the voluntary assistance or friendly co-operation of society, but often in open and derisive defiance of all the efforts of society and the tendency of circumstances to repress, retard and keep them down. They are the men who, in a world of schools, academies, colleges and other institutions of learning, are often compelled by unfriendly circumstances to acquire their education elsewhere and, amidst unfavorable conditions, to hew out for themselves a way to success, and thus to become the architects of their own good fortunes.

      They are in a peculiar sense indebted to themselves for themselves. If they have traveled far, they have made the road on which they have traveled. If they have ascended high, they have built their own ladder. From the depths of poverty [men] such as these have often come. From the heartless pavements of large and crowded cities; barefooted, homeless, and friendless, they have come. From hunger, rags and destitution, they have come; motherless and fatherless, they have come, and may come. Flung overboard in the midnight storm on the broad and tempest-tossed ocean of life—left without ropes, planks, oars or life-preservers—they have bravely buffeted the frowning billows and have risen in safety and life where others, supplied with the best appliances for safety and success, have fainted, despaired and gone down forever.

      Such men as these, whether found in one position or another, whether in the college or in the factory; whether professors or plowmen; whether Caucasian or Indian; whether Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African, are self-made men and are entitled to a certain measure of respect for their success and for proving to the world the grandest possibilities of human nature, of whatever variety of race or color.

      Among my dark examples I can name no man with more satisfaction than I can Toussaint L’Ouverture, the hero of Santo Domingo. [B]orn a slave and held a slave till he was fifteen years of age, like [Benjamin] Banneker,[37] he was black and showed no trace of Caucasian admixture. [H]istory hands him down to us as a brave and generous soldier, a wise and powerful statesman, an ardent patriot and a successful liberator of his people and his country.

      The contemporaries of this Haitian chief paint him as without a single moral blemish; while friends and foes alike, accord him the highest ability. In his eulogies no modern hero has been more fortunate than Toussaint L’Ouverture. History, poetry and eloquence have vied with each other to do him reverence. Wordsworth and [John Greenleaf] Whittier have, in characteristic verse, encircled his brow with a halo of fadeless glory.[38] The testimony of these and a thousand others who have come up from depths of society, confirms the theory that industry is the most potent factor in the success of self-made men, and thus raises the dignity of labor; for whatever may be one’s natural gifts, success, as I have said, is due mainly to this great means, open and free to all.

      While the world values skill and power, it values beauty and polish as well. It was not alone the hard good sense and honest heart of Horace Greeley, the self-made man, that made the New York Tribune, but likewise the brilliant and thoroughly educated men silently associated with him.

      There never was a self-made man, however well-educated, who, with the same exertion, would not have been better educated by the aid of schools and colleges. The charge is made and well sustained, that self-made men are not generally over-modest or self-forgetful men. It was said of Horace Greeley that he was a self-made man and worshipped his maker. Perhaps the strong resistance which such men meet in maintaining their claim, may account for much of their self-assertion.

      Chapter 2

      The Black Man and the War

       Bridge Street AME

       February 1863

      In the winter of 1863, Douglass sought to build on the momentum generated by the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln formally issued on January 1. In addition to freeing slaves in Confederate states, the Proclamation also encouraged black participation in the war effort. Douglass became a leading voice in support of enlistment—but stressed that black soldiers should simultaneously acquire full rights of citizenship.

      On February 7, Douglass gave a well-received version of the following speech at Cooper Union—with both Robert Hamilton of the Anglo-African and Theodore Tilton of the Independent