One of the greatest African American leaders and one of the most brilliant minds of his time Frederick Douglass spoke and wrote with unsurpassed eloquence on almost all the major issues confronting the American people during his life--from the abolition of slavery to women s rights from the Civil War to lynching from American patriotism to black nationalism. Between 1950 and 1975 Philip S. Foner collected the most important of Douglass s hundreds of speeches letters articles and editorials into an impressive five-volume set now long out of print. Abridged and condensed into one volume and supplemented with several important texts that Foner did not include this compendium presents the most significant insightful and elegant short works of Douglass s massive oeuvre.