He had been born into enslavement in Maryland before escaping North to freedom.

And now on the 5th of July 1852, at the beautiful Corinthian hall in Rochester, New York,

Frederick Douglass rose with 30 pages of text to speak to his age and to the ages.

I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work

the downfall of slavery. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great

principles it contains and the genius of American institutions. My spirit is always cheered

by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not stand in the same relation to each

other that they did ages ago. Walls, cities, and empires have become unfashionable. Intelligence

is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. Oceans no longer divide what link nations

together, thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the

other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls and grandeur at our feet. The celestial

empire, the mystery of ages is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, let there be light,

has not yet spilt its force.

I'm John Meacham and this is It Was Said. Episode 8 What To The Slave Is The Fourth

of July It was a grim hour for Black Americans. Two years before, the compromise of 1850

had brought California into the Union as a free state. But the price of admission was

a strengthened fugitive slave law which deployed the power of the federal government to capture

and to return those who, like Douglas, sought freedom.

And the prospect of slavery extending into the Western territories by popular sovereignty,

a reality that would theoretically come to pass in 1854 was a live possibility. Meanwhile,

there was a ferocious debate among abolitionists over whether the Union was worth preserving,

whether the Constitution was fundamentally pro or anti-slavery.

...