the portable frederick douglass

Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in 1838 and became the most powerful orator and writer of the abolitionist movement. The speeches read here, from 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' to 'Lessons of the Hour', hold the country to its own founding principles, argue for the Constitution as an antislavery document, and confront the failure of Reconstruction.

The Portable Frederick Douglass, edited by John Stauffer and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Penguin Books, 2016). Read in Junior Fall at Torrey Honors: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?; The Dred Scott Decision; The Day of Jubilee Comes; The Mission of the War; Our Martyred President; The Freedman's Monument to Abraham Lincoln; Lessons of the Hour; To My Old Master; The Inaugural Address; Letter from the Editor, on the burning down of his Rochester house; and The Color Line. Read again in the Roots of American Order summer seminar, June 2026: 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' and the Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876).