Page 12 - Integrity Seminars - Special Report

This useful display of knowledge was then made Britain free soil for slaves arriving from
followed by Douglass's broader perspective abroad and ended with a prolonged argument
about why the acquisition of knowledge is for human progress marked by British
important: emancipation, for God as the ultimate arbiter of
history, and for the eternal need for “fanatical
Nature has two voices, the one is high, the other dreamers” to push history to higher moral
low; one is in sweet accord with reason and ground [p.183].
justice, and the other apparently at war with
both. The more men really know of the essential
nature of things, and on of the true relation of
mankind, the freer they are from prejudices of
every kind. The child is afraid of the giant form of

his own shadow. This is natural, but he will part
with his fears when he is older and wiser. So
ignorance is full of prejudice, but it will disappear
with enlightenment.

Douglass's blend of reason, passion, and
knowledge was on display in an August 2, 1847 The orator Demosthenes
speech he delivered in Canandaigua, New York. /Wikimedia commons
The description below was provided by Blight, When President Obama referred to Douglass's
supra: style ("No one speaks this way anymore"), he
may also have been referring to the overall
artfulness of Douglass’s performance. Rhetoric
After local bands and choirs performed, Douglass
in this sense--as taught by The Columbian
was the first orator of the day; he delivered an
Orator--seems to be lacking in instruction
extraordinary lecture on the ancient history of
provided to contemporary college students. John
slavery, on the Atlantic slave trade, and
Searle (Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the
especially on the British antislavery movement.
University of California, Berkeley) wrote:
For an outdoor festival with thousands seeking
shade on a hot summer day, the speech was [S]peech is not just one among many natural
quite a learned effort. He named at least inclinations that I have, in the way that I have an
twenty-three British abolitionists and paid warm inclination to scratch my nose or fidget
tributes especially to William Wilberforce and nervously, for example. Speaking is more
Thomas Clarkson. He reminded auditors that all fundamental to me than these other natural
civilizations had enslaved other peoples inclinations because—and we do not really have

throughout history. Using Revelation 13:10, he a vocabulary to say this—we attain our full
cautioned, “He that leadeth into captivity, shall dignity, our full stature as speech act performing
go into captivity.” Douglass offered a compelling animals, when we exercise our capacities for
narration of the capture of African slaves by expression. As people who can talk and express
European traders, the complicity of the African ideas to each other, we are just one step below
“Prince” in the sale, and the “grim death and the angels. We can only attain our full capacity,
desolation” of the slave ships. He gave our full potentiality as human beings, if we are
instruction on the meaning of the Somerset case able to express ourselves.
of 1772, which

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