As the title may reveal, “Letter to Henry Clay” is a letter printed in The North Star on December 3, 1847. It addresses, and criticizes, many of the points made in a speech given by Henry Clay at the Mass Meeting in Lexington, Kentucky, November thirteenth of the same year. All of the data about its printing is clearly labelled at the top of the letter.
The purpose of this letter is quite clear: to debunk Mr. Clay’s arguments about slavery. Douglass takes nearly every argument made by Clay and states clearly, and not without some heat, why each point is immoral, unethical, and contradictory.
With the arguments made by Douglass, it is obvious how he feels about slavery from a personal and worldly view. Slavery affects him still, even as a free man of the north, so the assumptions made my Clay are argued with a sharp tongue. It is a matter close to his heart and he will go the limit of blatantly insulting the other’s validity to prove his points.
I am filled with questions about how Fredrick Douglass can tolerate having so much bitterness and anguish towards the man he writes to. Were there other men that he successfully debunked with such detail and skill? Was this what he did from day to day, or was the speech made by Henry Clay so revolting that he no choice but write to him? The amount of material he has written on the matter shows that not only Henry Clay evoked this reaction, but how one man can tolerate being spiteful towards so many people leads one to wonder how Fredrick Douglass coped.