Gundo Sillah, Responding to Douglass

Quote#1:

“The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable—and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight.”

What he basically saying is that the road from the plantation he worked on as a slave and to the stage he is speaking on is very far from each other and the distance is a large size such as the time and effort it took for him to professionally improve his standing and to be able to stand before them. This is to show a little bit of his background and to show that for someone like him to reach where he is now was no small feat and that as he stands before them he feels the emotions and impact that comes with that.

Quote #2 :

“I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of you[r] national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon.“

When Douglass says that he is glad that the nation is young he means that he sees hope in the fact that the nation dont have a lot of age to it compared to other nations and with that there’s still a lot of things that needs to worked through and are still making a name for themselves. So one of his hopes is that in the future some of the problems his discourse is facing will soon be addressed and the norm of today wont be the norm of tomorrow as the country grow, learn, and matures.