“The Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men”
Speech | Halifax, England | January 4, 1860
Drawing on the promise of the American Dream, Douglass advocated for freedpeople to commit themselves to the cause of self-improvement. He encouraged his listeners to pursue knowledge, virtue, and education. Douglass delivered the ‘Self-Made Men’ speech many times after emancipation, calling for Black Americans to overcome their past of bondage by dedicating themselves to improving their condition.
But to the young, with all the bright world before them where to choose, the case is widely and cheeringly different. By wisdom, by firmness, and by a manly and heroic self-denial, these may wholly escape tempest, and the whirlwinds of passion and sin which have sent other voyagers to the bottom wrecked and ruined. Life is the world’s greatest and most insignificant fact. It is the grand reality that realizes all other realities. All that man can know of the dim and shadowy past, and of the solemn and mysterious future have their explanation mainly in this one great fact. It is the now that makes the then, and the here that makes the hereafter to us all. Death itself is only predicated of life, and itself can only comprehend death.
Without trenching upon the forbidden domains of theology, i may venture to say, that if this life shall only be regarded as an individual fact, standing alone, having no relations or bearings, full and complete in itself, wholly independent of, and disconnected with, any other state or place, we still find it a most glorious fact, and crowded with arguments the most convincing, and with motives the most powerful, in favour of the construction and cultivation of a true and manly character. Such are the transcendent reward of virtue, knowledge, wisdom, and power, even in this life, that man is ever under the pressure of the highest motives in favour of self-culture and self-improvement. . . .
. . . industry and application, together with a regard to favourable circumstances and opportunities [are] the means of success […] Such is my theory of self-made men, and indeed, of all made men. The credit belongs and must be ascribed to brave, honest, earnest, ceaseless heart and soul industry. By this simple means––open and free to all men––whatever may be said of chances, circumstances, and natural endowments––the simple man may become wise, and the wise man become wiser. Striking examples of the truth of this position are abundant. . . .
I now come to the relation which ideas and institutions bear to this class of men, and shall have special reference to America. I seldom find anything either in the ideas or institutions of that country, whereof to glory. The one deep dark veil of human bondage, covering as it does every department of the government, and every class of its people, poisoning the very life blood, the morals, religion, manners, and civilization of that great nation, hides from my dim vision much that might otherwise be seen, noble and beautiful and worthy of admiration and imitation. But pushing aside this black and clotted covering which mantles all our land, as with the shadow of death, I recognize one feature at least of special and peculiar excellence, and that is the relation of America to self-made men.
America is, most unquestionably and pre-eminently, the home and special patron of self-made men. In no country in the world are the conditions more favourable to the production and sustentation of such men than in America.
Frederick Douglass, “THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF SELF-MADE MEN,” Speech, January 4, 1860, in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 3: 1855-1863, by Frederick Douglass and John W. Blassingame, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 290-297.
