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292 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

upon the land as was the case almost immediately after the tragic death of
President Lincoln; when the gigantic system of American slavery which had
defied the march of time, resisted all the appeals and arguments of the abolitionists,
and the humane testimonies of good men of every generation during
two hundred and fifty years, was finally abolished and forever prohibited
by the organic law of the land; a strange and, perhaps, perverse feeling came
over me. My great and exceeding joy over these stupendous achievements,
especially over the abolition of slavery (which had been the deepest desire
and the great labor of my life), was slightly tinged with a feeling of
sadness.

I felt I had reached the end of the noblest and best part of my life; my
school was broken up, my church disbanded, and the beloved congregation
dispersed, never to come together again. The anti-slavery platfom I had performed
its work, and my voice was no longer needed. "Othello's occupation
was gone." The great happiness of meeting with my fellow-workers was
now to be among the things of memory. Then, too, some thought of my personal
future came in. Like Daniel Webster, when asked by his friends to
leave John Tyler's Cabinet, I naturally inquired: "Where shall I go?" I was
still in the midst of my years, and had something of life before me, and as
the minister urged by my old friend George Bradburn to preach anti-slavery,
when to do so was unpopular, said, "It is necessary for ministers to live," I
felt it was necessary for me to live, and to live honestly. But where should I
go, and what should I do? I could not now take hold of life as I did when I
first landed in New Bedford, twenty-five years before: I could not go to the
wharf of either Gideon or George Howland, to Richmond's brass foundry, or
Ricketson 's oil works, load and unload vessels, or even ask Governor
Clifford for a place as a servant. Rolling oil casks and shoveling coal were
all well enough when I was younger, immediately alter getting out of slavery.
Doing this was a step up, rather than a step down; but all these avocations
had had their day for me, and I had had my day for them. My public
life and labors had unfitted me for the pursuits of my earlier years, and yet
had not prepared me for more congenial and higher employment. Outside the
question of slavery my thoughts had not been much directed, and I could
hardly hope to make myself useful in any other cause than that to which I
had given the best twenty-five years of my life. A man in the situation I
found myself, has not only to divest himself of the old, which is never easily
done, but to adjust himself to the new, which is still more diflicult. Delivering
lectures under various names, John B. Gough says, "Whatever may be the
title, my lecture is always on Temperance;" and such is apt to be the case