From the public-domain record · 81,371 quotes
Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
Nothing was to have been expected other than what has happened, and he is a poor student of the human heart who does not see that the old master class would naturally employ every power and means in their reach to make the great measure of…
They were hated because they had been slaves, hated because they were now free, and hated because of those who had freed them.
The very manner of their emancipation invited to the heads of the freedmen the bitterest hostility of race and class.
History does not furnish an example of emancipation under conditions less friendly to the emancipated class, than this American example.
To me, the wonder is, not that the freedmen have made so little progress, but, rather, that they have made so much; not that they have been standing still, but that they have been able to stand at all.
Nor would he now be leaving the South as from a doomed city and seeking a home in the uncongenial North, but tilling his native soil in comparative independence.
The negro to-day would not be on his knees, as he is, abjectly supplicating the old master class to give him leave to toil.
He who can say to his fellow-man, “You shall serve me or starve,” is a master, and his subject is a slave.
They could not of course sell them, but they retained the power to starve them to death, and wherever this power is held, there is the power of slavery.
They did not deprive the old master class of the power of life and death which was the soul of the relation of master and slave.
They gave them the uniform of soldiers, but no arms; they called them citizens, and left them subjects; they called them free, and almost left them slaves.
They gave freedmen the machinery of liberty, but denied them the steam to put it in motion.
In the hurry and confusion of the hour, and the eager desire to have the Union restored, there was more care for sublime superstructure of the republic than for the solid foundation upon which it could alone be upheld.
Wise, grand, and comprehensive in scope and design, as were the reconstruction measures, high and honorable as were the intentions of the statesmen by whom they were framed and adopted, time and experience, which try all things, have…
They left the former slave completely in the power of the old master, the loyal citizen in the hands of the disloyal rebel against the government.
The old master class is to-day triumphant, and the newly enfranchised class in a condition but little above that in which they were found before the rebellion.
The citizenship granted in the fourteenth amendment is practically a mockery, and the right to vote, provided for in the fifteenth amendment, is literally stamped out in face of government.
The rights which they were intended to guarantee are denied and held in contempt.
But to-day, in most of the Southern States, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments are virtually nullified.
It is a great principle, up to which we may educate the people, and to this extent its value exceeds all speech.
It is the line up to which the nation is destined to march--the law to which the nation’s life must ultimately conform.
It is a great thing to have the supreme law of the land on the side of justice and liberty.
We have declared before all the world that there shall be no denial of rights on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
We have laid the heavy hand of the constitution upon the matchless meanness of caste, as well as the hell-black crime of slavery.
