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1p., ruled paper. Approx. 7-1/2x5 inches. Written from his home in western New York, Douglass in the later summer of 1866 agrees to deliver a proposed lecture in Marietta, Ohio sometime in the upcoming months, writing: "I think I may safely promise to deliver one of the course of lectures you propose to have delivered in Marietta Ohio- during the approaching winter; but at what time I cannot now determine; You may, however, if you please, consider me engaged for one of your Course." The brief letter is unpublished in the Papers. Douglass had been invited to deliver the ninth lecture in a series of eleven sponsored by Marietta College in 1866-67, and would deliver his lecture "Sources of Danger to the Republic" for the Marietta College series on April 6, 1867. The lecture series was organized by Addison Howard Siegfried, a sophomore at Marietta College, described by Hawley as a "music teacher, organist, and chorister at the First Baptist Church . a significant figure in the music circles of Marietta" (Hawley, p. 426). Held in the Marietta Baptist Church to accommodate a larger audience, a portion of the proceeds raised from ticket sales to Douglass's lecture were donated to the Washington County Soldiers' Monument Association. Given in the aftermath of the Civil War during the clash between Radical Republicans and President Andrew Johnson over Reconstruction, the editors of the Frederick Douglass Papers Project note the following on Douglass' "Sources of Danger to the Republic" oration: "During the winter of 1866-67 Douglass, who had just published an article on 'Reconstruction' in the Atlantic Monthly, combined his criticisms of President Andrew Johnson and his views on the constitutional powers granted presidents in a speech entitled 'Sources of Danger to the Republic,' which apparently was ?rst delivered in Brooklyn, New York, on 17 December 1866. Carrying his message from there to Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, Douglass traveled as far west as Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota before returning to Rochester in March. His audiences generally approved his remarks." The oration opened establishing the correctness of questioning government without being deemed a traitor, before continuing: "In other days-darker days than these-I appeared before the American people simply as a member of a despised, outraged and down-trodden race; simply to plead that the chains of the bondmen be broken; simply to plead that the auction block shall no more be in use for the sale of human ?esh. I appear here no longer as a whipped, scarred slave-no longer as the advocate merely of an enslaved race, but in the high and commanding character of an American citizen having the interest that every true citizen should have in the welfare, the stability, the permanence and the prosperity of our free institutions, and in this spirit I shall criticise our government to-night." He continued by praising the Founding Fathers, though noting that he did not always do so (perhaps a reference to his famous July Fifth oration), "that against the assumptions, against the inducements to do otherwise, they have given us a Constitution commensurate in its beneficent arrangements with the wants of common humanity; that it embraces man as man . The fathers of this republic did not learn to insert the word white, or to determine men's rights by their color. They did not base their legislation upon the differences among men in the length of their noses or the twist of their hair, but upon the broad fact of a common human nature . They made a constitution for men, not for color, not for features. In the eye of that great instrument the moment the chains are struck from the limbs of the humblest and most whip scarred slave he may rise to any position for which his talents and character fit him. For this I say the fathers are entitled to the profound gratitude of mankind-that against all temptations to do otherwise, they have given us a liberal constitution . I am here to.
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