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A friendly word to Maryland: A lecture, delivered by Frederick Douglass in Bethel Church ( Baltimore), on the 17th of November, 1864
My friends: This occasion is suggestive of many reminiscences, comparisons, and contrasts — some pleasant, some sad—but all instructive I left the State of Maryland more than a quarter of a century ago, I was then in the full fresh bloom of early manhood, when each sense and faculty of the mind is wide awake, keenly alive and intensely active - not one lick of my hair was tinged by time or sorrow- I was full of the aspirations of youth, and perhaps ambition also. But now though not old, I am not young, and the early frost of winter are already beginning to thicken visibly on my head, And the many fancies of youth have yielded to the disenchanting power of time, and the stern realities of a practical life. Time has, I am glad to see, touched many of you gently. I see a few faces that I saw here thirty years ago, some of them but slightly changed. They are lit up by the same fires that warmed and cheered me in youth, but Alas! I miss from this congregation many who would have been here were they still among the living. But I will not trust myself with the train of thought and feeling which rises in this direction. I rejoice that any of us have been spared to meet again on earth, and especially that we are permitted to meet here on the soil of our birth to meet not as men but as Marylanders, children of Maryland, the land at whose sparkling fountains we first quenched our thirst, - the lands whose fields, when we were hungry, first gave us bread - to meet here, upon our own dear native soil, overspread with the holiest recollections both of joy and sorrow is an high privilege and one never to be forgotten. No speaker, I think, ever appeared before a public assembly, in circumstances more unusual and striking than I do this evening. Had any man told me, four years ago, that I should be here to-night, speaking to a Baltimore audience, I should have thought him about as insane as if he had predicted that I should some day go on a mission to the inhabitants of the moon! You have called upon me to speak, and I have obeyed your call; But what can I say, which will be half so eloquent, commanding or touching, as the thought that now fills every mind and thrills every heart. Even these dumb walls, and this silent air in all their stillness, are full of most eloquent and convincing speech. They whisper to our very inmost souls, that the spirit of liberty has been here, and like the breath of the Almighty, has touched our chains and left them broken. That Maryland is now a glorious Free State, that the revolution is genuine, full and complete, that there need be no doubt of it whatever, on the subject, the fact that I speak here to-night, and you listen, with none to molest, or make us afraid, is a satisfactory attestation, and will be so regarded wherever the fact is known. Among the contrasts suggested by this occasion, is the fact that I left here a slave, a fugitive slave, I return to you a freeman, doubly a freeman; first in that I was by nature born free, and was bought out of slavery by generous friends in England; and now, secondly, by the free constitution which Maryland has just adopted and proclaimed as the law of the State.
Description
Signer Rosavetta Jackson performs an excerpt of Frederick Douglass' speech, "A Friendly Word to Maryland".
Duration
5 minutes, 32 seconds
Credit
Ploeger ASL Interpreting, LLC/NPS
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