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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 211

in silence; but one by one they have gradually been removed and colored
people now enter freely all places of public resort without hindrance or
observation. This change has not been wholly effected by me. From the first
I was cheered on and supported in my demands for equal rights by such
respectable citizens as Isaac Post, Wm. Hallowell, Samuel D. Porter, Wm. C.
Bloss, Benj. Fish, Asa Anthony, and many other good and true men of
Rochester.

Notwithstanding what I have said of the adverse feeling exhibited by
some of its citizens at my selection of Rochester as the place to establish my
paper, and the trouble in educational matters just referred to, that selection
was in many respects very fortunate. The city was, and still is, the center of
a virtuous, intelligent, enterprising, liberal, and growing population. The surrounding
country is remarkable for its fertility; and the city itself possesses
one of the finest water-powers in the world. It is on the line of the New York
Central railroad — a line that with its connections, spans the whole country.
Its people were industrious and in comfortable circumstances; not so rich as
to be indifferent to the claims of humanity, and not so poor as to be unable
to help any good cause which commanded the approval of their judgment.

The ground had heen measurably prepared for me by the labors of others
notably by Hon. Myron Holley, whose monument of enduring marble
now stands in the beautiful cemetery at Mount Hope, upon an eminence
befitting his noble character. I know of no place in the Union where I could
have located at the time with less resistance, or received a larger measure of
sympathy and cooperation, and I now look back to my life and labors there
with unalloyed satisfaction, and having spent a quarter of a century among
its people, I shall always feel more at home there than anywhere else in this
country.

CHAPTER VIII.

JOHN BROWN AND MRS. STOWE.

My First Meeting with Capt. John Brown —The Free Soil Movement —Colored Convention —
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" — Industrial School for Colored Poepole — Letter to Mrs. H. B.
Stowe.

About the time I began my enterprise in Rochester I chanced to spend a
night and a day under the roof of a man whose character and conversation,
and whose objects and aims in life made a very deep impression upon my
mind and heart. His name had been mentioned to me by several prominent

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