Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Illustrations x
4. Preface xv
5. Introduction: Frederick Douglass’s Oratory and Political Leadership xix
6. PART 1: Selected Speeches by Frederick Douglass
7. “I Have Come to Tell You Something about Slavery” 3
8. “Temperance and Anti-Slavery” 9
9. “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland” 17
10. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” 55
11. “A Nation in the Midst of a Nation” 93
12. “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered” 116
13. “The American Constitution and the Slave” 151
14. “The Mission of the War” 186
15. “Sources of Danger to the Republic” 217
16. “Let the Negro Alone” 247
17. “We Welcome the Fifteenth Amendment” 267
18. “Our Composite Nationality” 278
19. “Which Greeley Are We Voting For?” 304
20. “Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict” 318
21. “The Freedmen’s Monument to Abraham Lincoln” 337
22. “This Decision Has Hum bled the Nation” 356
23. “ ‘It Moves,’ or the Philosophy of Reform” 374
24. “I Am a Radical Woman Suffrage Man” 401
25. “Self-Made Men” 414
26. “Lessons of the Hour” 454
27. PART 2: Known Influences on Frederick Douglass’s Oratory
28. From The Columbian Orator (1817) 501
29. From “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America” (1843) 505
30. “Speech Denouncing Daniel Webster’s Endorsement of the Fugitive Slave Law” (1850) 508
31. From “Toussaint L’Ouverture” (1863) 513
32. PART 3: Frederick Douglass on Public Speaking
33. “Give Us the Facts,” from My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) 519
34. “One Hundred Conventions” (1843), from Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881; 1892) 523
35. “Letter from the Editor” (1849), from the Rochester North Star 526
36. “A New Vocation before Me” (1870), from Life and Times 528
37. “People Want to Be Amused as Well as Instructed” (1871), Letter to James Redpath 533
38. “Great Is the Miracle of Human Speech” (1891), from the Washington (D.C.) Evening Star 535
39. PART 4: Contemporary Commentary on Frederick Douglass as an Orator
40. From “Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Meeting” (1841) 539
41. “A Leaf from My Scrap Book: Samuel R. Ward and Frederick Douglass” (1849) 541
42. From “A Colored Man’s Eloquence” (1853) 547
43. From The Rising Son (1874) 549
44. “An 1895 Public Letter from Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the Occasion of Frederick Douglass’s Death,” from In Memoriam: Frederick Douglass, ed. Helen Douglass (1897) 552
45. From American Orators and Oratory (1901) 555
46. PART 5: Modern Scholarly Criticism of Frederick Douglass as an Orator
47. From Frederick Douglass: Freedom’s Voice, 1818–1845 559
48. From Specters of Democracy: Blackness and the Aesthetics of Politics in the Antebellum U.S. 566
49. From “Fighting for Freedom Again: African American Reform Rhetoric in the Late Nineteenth Century” 571
50. From The Afro-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America 579
51. From “ ‘He Made Us Laugh Some’: Frederick Douglass’s Humor” 584
52. Chronology of Other Important Speeches and Events in Frederick Douglass’s Life 593
53. Selected Bibliography 605
54. Credits 611
55. Index 613