the end of racism. He agreed with many free blacks that a good way to combat this was to have a population of "industrious, enterprising, thrifty, and intelligent" free blacks. In one speech Douglass could condemn the United States for slavery, that it’s existence in the past and present bind it to exist in the future, but in the same speech he could lift up listeners spirits. He would tell them of "the forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery."9 This referred to his belief in a moral universe ruled by God. Douglass drew a lot of hope from the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the obvious tendencies of the age like, growing civilization, progress, and internationalism. Douglass was committed to making whites aware of the injustice blacks endured through his lectures and writings. His oratorical abilities made him one of the most popular anti-slavery speakers ever. "He was described by his contemporaries as graceful, distinguished, imposing, strong, manly, confident and modest. He charmed the audiences with his style"10 In 1847 Frederick and the family moved to Rochester, where he began his independent career as an abolitionist editor. His thousands of editorials in The North Star reflect his interest in the tensions between hope and despair among his people who were struggling for their freedom and their own survival. He would try to dig deep into listeners’ and reader’s own conscience like a sermon of deliverance. He never stopped believing that the universe we live in is a moral one. He compared the struggle between slavery and freedom to similar conflicts that occur in nature. "Like the great forces of the physical world, fire, steam and lightning, they had slumbered in the bosom of nature since the world began."11 During the 1850s Douglass moved beyond Garrison’s philosophy of nonresistance and said it was a slave’s moral right to overthrow...
