(The Associated Press) This undated file image shows African-American social reformer, abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass. Douglass was the country's most famous black man of the Civil War era, a conscience of the abolitionist movement and beyond and a popular choice for summing up American ideals, failings and challenges. His withering 1852 oration in Rochester, New York ranks high in the canon of American oratory and is still widely cited as a corrective to the day’s celebratory spirit.