08/29/2026
Excerpt from Frederick Douglass, “Lecture on Haiti . . . at the World’s Fair,” January 2, 1893
The Jews taught the world a religion, a sublime conception of the deity. The Greeks taught the world philosophy and beauty. The Romans taught the world jurisprudence. England is foremost among the modern nations in commerce and manufactures. Germany has taught the world to think, while the American Republic is giving the world an example of a Government by the people, of the people and for the people. [Applause.]
Among these large bodies, the little community of Haiti, anchored in the Carribean Sea, has had her mission in the world, and a mission which the world had much need to learn.
She has taught the world the danger of slavery and the value of liberty. In this respect she has been the greatest of all our modern teachers.
Speaking for the Negro, I can say, we owe much to Walker for his appeal; to John Brown [applause] for the blow struck at Harper’s Ferry, to Lundy and Garrison for their advocacy [applause], and to the abolitionists in all the countries of the world [Applause.] We owe much especially to Thomas Clarkson, [applause], to William Wilberforce, to Thomas Fowell Buxton, and to the anti-slavery societies at home and abroad; but we owe incomparably more to Haiti than to them all. [Prolonged applause.]
I regard her as the original pioneer emancipator of the nineteenth century. [Applause.] It was her one brave example that first of all startled the Christian world into a sense of the Negro’s manhood. It was she who first awoke the Christian world to a sense of “the danger of goading too far the energy that slumbers in a black man’s arm.” [Applause.]
Until Haiti struck for freedom, the conscience of the Christian world slept profoundly over slavery. It was scarcely troubled even by a dream of this crime against justice and liberty. The Negro was in its estimation a sheep like creature, having no rights which white men were bound to respect, a docile animal, a kind of ass, capable of bearing burdens, and receiving stripes from a white master without resentment, and without resistance. The mission of Haiti was to dispel this degradation and dangerous delusion, and to give the world a new and true revelation of the black man’s character. This mission she has performed and performed it well. . . .
