Hon. Fred. Douglass.

His Speech on the Color Question.

Past and Present Status of the Negro.

The Great Change in His Condition.

How shall he work out his Destiny.

Necessity for Unity of Action-- The Race to be Banded Together-- A
Moses of their own color needed-- Hard Hits at the Self-Constituted
Guardians and Beggars-- A New Declaration of Independence.

The report of the speech of Hon. Fred. Douglass, delivered on July
1875,
at Hillsdale, which appeared in The National Republican of yester-
day, contained a number of inaccuracies incident to a hastily prepared
newspaper report. As the speech has created considerable comment, and
is likely to cause more, the following verbatim report, revised by the
author is given:

Speech of Mr. Douglass.

Fellow-Citizens:-- I am not here to glorify the heroes of the
American Revolution. I simply avail myself of the occasion to say a few
plain words of matters suggested by the facts of the present hour, and
which immediately concern the colored people of our whole country.

The Revolution, of 1776, which resulted in the separation of this
country from Great Britain, and its final independence, was a time that
tried men's souls. How grandly and gloriously that trial was borne we
all know. The great men and the great events of that period are fa-
miliar to every schoolboy, white and black, in the land, and will ever

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so remain. They have been reclaimed a thousand times at every fire-side, upon every hilltop and in every valley, and will be so reclaimed again to-day.

If, however, any man should ask me what colored people have to do with the Fourth of July, my answer is ready. Colored people have had something to do with almost everything of vital importance in the life and progress of this great country. We have never forsaken the white man in any great emergency, and never expect to forsake him. We have been with him in times of peace and in times of war, and at all times. We were with him in the darkest hours of the Revolution of 1776. We were with him in the war for free trade and sailors' rights in 1812. We were with him in 1861. We were with him at Bunker Hill and at Red Bank. We were with him on the land and with him on the water, and with him everywhere. A black man was in front of the first resistance made in State street, Boston, to British power, and fell with his face toward the foe. But I will not dwell upon this topic. The late Wm. C. Neff, of Boston, the best historian the colored people have yet produced, has done ample justice to the black man in the Revolution. His book should be in the hands of every colored boy in the country.

The fathers of this Republic as I have said, had their trial ninety-nine years ago. The colored citizens of this Republic are about to have their trial now. How we shall stand that trial, how we shall pass through it, how we shall come out of it, is to me a matter of great solemnity. The men of the Revolution went through the furnace, and came out pure gold. Shall we, the colored people, present a similar example?

Let us look at the situation, and thoroughly understand all its features, relations and bearings. As a people we have gained much during the last ten years. Fortune favored us with a liberal hand. It gave us a fair wind, if not a smooth sea, and by it we were driven on at a rate of speed that we had not known before, and carried to a

money given for the benefit of the Negro. In order to obtain revenue
to carry on what they call their work (including, of course, the sala-
ries which they piously vote themselves by the thousand) they draw the
most distressing pictures of the black man's character and condition.
They keep the public mind constantly upon the poor, wretched Negro, and
thus damn the whole race to a large measure of contempt with a small
degree of pity which is akin to contempt. Hence we now and here de-
nounce and repudiate all such shams, and call upon the American people
to do the same.