Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester · 1852 pamphlet, p. 5

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your "sovereign people" (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.

Frederick Douglass · 5 July 1852
Lee, Mann & Co., Rochester, 1852. Reading text from Literature in Context (University of Virginia), checked against the Rochester pamphlet where corrections are recorded; verse and source pagination retained.
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