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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 377

marry a person of my father's complexion instead of marrying one of my
mother's complexion? How is the race problem to be solved in this country?
Will the negro go back to Africa or remain here? Under this shower of purely
American questions, more or less personal, I have endeavored to possess my
soul in patience and get as much good out of life as was possible with so
much to occupy my time; and, though often perplexed, seldom losing my
temper, or abating heart or hope for the future of my people. Though I cannot
say I have satisfied the curiosity of my countrymen on all the questions
raised by them, I have, like all honest men on the witness stand, answered to
the best of my knowledge and belief, and I hope that I have never answered
in such wise as to increase the hardships of any human being of whatever
race or color.

When the first part of this book was written, I was, as before intimated,
already looking towards the sunset of human life and thinking that my chil-
dren would probably finish the recital of my life, or that possibly some other
persons outside of family ties to whom I am known might think it worth
while to tell what he or she might know of the remainder of my story. I con-
sidered, as I have said, that my work was done. But friends and publishers
concur in the opinion that the unity and completeness of the work require
that it shall be finished by the hand by which it was begun.

Many things touched me and employed my thoughts and activities
between the years 1881 and 1891. I am willing to speak of them, Like most
men who give the world their autobiographies I wish my story to be told as
favorably towards myself as it can be with a due regard to truth. I do not
wish it to be imagined by any that I am insensible to the singularity of my
career, or to the peculiar relation I sustain to the history of my time and
country. I know and feel that it is something to have lived at all in this
Republic, during the latter part of this eventful century, but I know it is more
to have had some small share in the great events which have distinguished
it from the experience of all other centuries. No man liveth unto himself, or
ought to live unto himself. My life has conformed to this Bible saying, for,
more than most men, I have been the thin edge of the wedge to open, for my
people a way in many directions and places never before occupied by them.
It has been mine, in some degree, to stand as their defence in moral battle
against the shafts of detraction, calumny and persecution, and to labor in
removing and overcoming those obstacles which, in the shape of erroneous
ideas and customs, have blocked the way to their progress. I have found this
to be no hardship, but the natural and congenial vocation of my life. I had
hardly become a thinking being when I first learned to hate slavery, and