[1] Letter, Introduction to _Life of Frederick Douglass_, Boston,
1841.


<10>to the employment of Mr. Douglass as an agent by the American
Anti-Slavery Society. So far as his self-relying and independent
character would permit, he became, after the strictest sect, a
Garrisonian. It is not too much to say, that he formed a
complement which they needed, and they were a complement equally
necessary to his "make-up." With his deep and keen sensitiveness
to wrong, and his wonderful memory, he came from the land of
bondage full of its woes and its evils, and painting them in
characters of living light; and, on his part, he found, told out
in sound Saxon phrase, all those principles of justice and right
and liberty, which had dimly brooded over the dreams of his
youth, seeking definite forms and verbal expression. It must
have been an electric flashing of thought, and a knitting of
soul, granted to but few in this life, and will be a life-long
memory to those who participated in it. In the society,
moreover, of Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, William Lloyd
Garrison, and other men of earnest faith and refined culture, Mr.
Douglass enjoyed the high advantage of their assistance and
counsel in the labor of self-culture, to which he now addressed
himself with wonted energy. Yet, these gentlemen, although proud
of Frederick Douglass, failed to fathom, and bring out to the
light of day, the highest qualities of his mind; the force of
their own education stood in their own way: they did not delve
into the mind of a colored man for capacities which the pride of