A Lecture on the Anti-Slavery Movement

     "If the anti-slavery movement shall fail now, it will not be from outward opposition, but from inward decay. Its auxiliaries are everywhere. Scholars, authors, orators, poets, and statesmen, give it their aid" (Douglas 4).  

     In 1855 Frederick Douglas delivers this lecture to the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society.  It focuses on the organizations that make up the anti-slavery movement.  The four groups are the Garrisonians, the Anti-Garrisonians, the Free Soil Party, and the Liberty Party.  He critiques the way these groups approach their pursuit of the end of slavery.  He does so in order to examine how the Anti-Slavery movement can continue to grow.

     The reason Douglas takes the time to critique these organizations is because he wants to keep them from dying out.  Even if this were to happen, he believes that the Anti-Slavery movement has become so strong that it will continue to exist.  He does not fear that the movement will be stopped by opposing forces but that it can only end if it decays from within (Douglas 4).  This is why he takes the time to point out the errors in the current branches of the Anti-Slavery movement.  He believes that if these organizations take the wrong path and do not seek to abolish slavery for all men, then the movement will suffer.  He however believes that if those who support the movement hold on to the right principles, then the movement will definitely succeed (Douglas 4).

Douglas, Frederick "A Lecture on the Anti-Slavery Movement" The Americans (1855) Web.  27 March, 2015.