Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE EARLY ABOLITIONISTS. FREDERICK DOUGLASS. An Address Delivered Before The I'nion Library Association Of Obkr1.in College. I KNEW Frederick Douglass exceedingly well. It began on thiswise. In the summer of 1841, fifty-six years ago next summer, I went from my home in Connecticut to Millbury, Massachusetts, to attend an anti-slavery convention. There, for the first time, I met Mr. Douglass. I was just twenty years of age. He was about four years older, and had been three years out of slavery. This was the first occasion, beyond the limits of my own county, when I spoke at a public meeting, and Mr. Douglass vas just beginning to address large audiences. I had some conversation with him, and liked him from the first. The tall, straight, well-built youth, with a strong head, eyes and face full of humor, and a certain frank manliness ofbearing, won from me, at once, a kindly esteem which grew in strength for more than half a century, and until I read in the morning journal that he had been suddenly called to his reward. When I saw him at Millbury., I did not know that he was a great man ; but even then there was something in his manner of thought and expression, that might have led me to suspect it. He was genial and affable and prone to laugh at his own deficiencies. He could read and write, and had acquired some general knowledge. On a table near him was a leaf of paper on which were scrawled perhaps two-dozen words. "What is this?" I said. "That," he replied with a laugh, " is my speech." At Millbury, I also met for the first time, that great leader in reform, William Lloyd Garrison. A friend who introduced me said to him that I was thinking of going to college. Fixing an earnest look upon me, he replied, "The anti- slavery field is the best college for a young m...