Douglass, Frederick. A Plea for Free Speech.

Frederick Douglas delivers the speech at the Music Hall, a week after a memorial service for John Brown was disrupted by a mob. In it, he declares, “Boston is a great city . . . Nowhere more than here have the principles of human freedom been expounded. . . And yet, even here, in Boston, the moral atmosphere is dark and heavy. . . The world moves slowly, and Boston is much like the world. We thought the principle of free speech was an accomplished fact. . . [But] The mortifying and disgraceful fact stares us in the face, that though Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill Monument stand, freedom of speech is struck down.”