West India Emancipation

This is a speech given on August 3, 1857, in Canandaigua, New York. The majority of the speech was a history of British emancipation efforts. Douglass also urged American leaders to follow the British example in this speech. He also credited the West Indian blacks with bringing about their emancipation through violent resistance. He encourages other blacks in the United States to continue to exert similar pressure. However, shortly after he began, Douglass uttered two paragraphs that became the most quoted sentences of all of his public orations, foreshadowing the coming Civil War. He started by saying, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress."