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THIRD PART.
CHAPTER I.
LATER LIFE.

Again summoned to the defence of his people — The difficulties of the task — The race pro-
blem — His life work.

Ten years ago when the preceding chapters of this book were written, having
then reached in the journey of life the middle of the decade beginning at sixty
and ending at seventy, and naturally reminded that I was no longer young, I
laid aside my pen with some such sense of relief as might be felt by a weary
and overburdened traveller when arrived at the desired end of a long journey,
or as an honest debtor wishing to be square with all the world might feel when
the last dollar of an old debt was paid off. Not that I wished to be discharged
from labor and service, in the cause to which I have devoted my life, but from
this peculiar kind of labor and service. I hardly need say to those who know
me, that writing for the public eye never came quite as easily to me as speak-
ing to the public ear. It is a marvel to me that, under the circumstances, I
learned to write at all. It has been a still greater marvel that in the brief work-
ing period in which they lived and wrought, such men as Dickens, Dumas,
Carlyle and Sir Walter Scott could have produced the works ascribed to them.
But many have been the impediments with which I have had to struggle. I
have too, been embarrassed by the thought of writing so much about myself
when there was so much else of which to write. It is far easier to write about
others than about one's self. I write freely of myself, not from choice, but
because I have, by my cause, been morally forced into thus writing. Time and
events have summoned me to stand forth both as a witness and an advocate
for a people long dumb, not allowed to speak for themselves, yet much mis-
understood, and deeply wronged. In the earlier days of my freedom, I was
called upon to expose the direful nature of the slave system, by telling my
own experience while a slave, and to do what I could thereby to make slavery
odious and thus to hasten the day of emancipation. It was no time to mince
matters or to stand upon a delicate sense of propriety, in the presence of a
crime so gigantic as our slavery was, and the duty to oppose it, so imperative.
I was called upon to expose even my stripes, and with many misgivings
obeyed the summons and tried thus to do my whole duty in this my first pub-
lic work and what, I may say, proved to be the best work of my life.

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