One of the greatest African American leaders and one of the most brilliant minds of his time, Frederick Douglass spoke and wrote with unsurpassed eloquence on almost all the major issues confronting the American people during this life -- from the abolition of slavery to women's rights, from the Civil War to lynching, from American patriotism to black nationalism. But no substantial one-volume collection of his speeches and writings has ever been published before now. Between 1950 and 1975, Philip S Foner collected the most important of Douglass's hundreds of speeches, letters, articles and editorials into an impressive five-volume set, now long out of print. Abridged, adapted, and supplemented with several important texts that Foner did not include, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings presents the most significant, insightful, and elegant short works of Douglass's massive oeuvre.