Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/415

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  • sideration. This lady gave the best years of her useful

life to the redemption of the negro from slavery.

We may well give Stephen S. Foster a place by the side of his noble wife. He, too, embraced the cause of the slave at the dawn of the agitation of the subject, and at once became one of its ablest advocates. In downright field-work, as a lecturer, he did more than any other man. Mr. Foster was the most unpopular of all the anti-slavery agents; and simply because he "hewed to the line and the plummet," not caring in whose face the chips flew. He was always at home in a discussion, and woe betide the person who fell into his hands. His announcement of his subject often startled his hearers, and even his best friends and associates would sometimes feel that he had overstated the question. But he always more than proved what he had said in the outset. In private life he is almost faultless; proverbially honest, trustworthy, and faithful in all his dealings, possessing in the estimation of his neighbors a high moral character.

Parker Pillsbury entered the field as an advocate of freedom about the same time as did Mr. Foster, and battled nobly for the oppressed.

Charles L. Remond was, we believe, the first man of color to take the platform as a regular lecturer in the anti-slavery cause, and was, no doubt; the ablest representative that the race had till the appearance of Frederick Douglass, in 1842. Mr. Remond prided himself more as the representative of the educated free man of color, and often alluded to the fact that "not a drop of slave blood" coursed through his veins. Mr. Remond has little or no originality, but his studied elocutionary powers, and fine flow of language,