Historical voices

But now the children of those who had committed these outrages and follies, were applauding the very principles which their fathers had condemned.

An act for which those leaders expected to be pelted with stones, only brought to them unmeasured applause.

The people were more enlightened and had made more progress than their leaders had supposed.

Would you not be branded all over the land as dastardly hypocrites, professing principles which you have no wish or intention of carrying out?

Would not the charge of cowardice, certain to be brought against you, prove more damaging than that of amalgamation?

It seems strange now, in view of all the progress which has been made, that such a question could arise.

They, dear fellows, found it much more agreeable to talk of the principles of liberty as glittering generalities, than to reduce those principles to practice.

The men who framed it, and those who adopted it, framed and adopted it for the people, and the whole people--colored men being at that time legal voters in most of the States.

Besides, the worst enemy of the nation could not cast upon its fair name a greater infamy than to admit that negroes could be tolerated among them in a state of the most degrading slavery and oppression, and must be cast away, driven into…

Peace between races is not to be secured by degrading one race and exalting another, by giving power to one race and withholding it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes.

Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest.

Experience proves that those are most abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity.

There was no earthly reason why the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery, for it was from this class that their masters received their slave catchers, slave drivers, and overseers.

Those masters secured their ascendency over both the poor whites and blacks by putting enmity between them.

It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave master.

So long as they could keep him beyond the circle of human brotherhood, they could scourge him to toil, as a beast of burden, with a good Christian conscience, and without reproach.

The way of transgression is a bottomless pit, one step in that direction invites the next, and the end is never reached; and it is the same with the path of righteous obedience.

It is another illustration of how any advance in pursuance of a right principle, prepares and makes easy the way to another.

I am less amazed at these evils, than by the rapidity with which they are subsiding and not more astonished at the facility with which the former slave has become a free man, than at the rapid adjustment of the master-class to the new…

Great changes in the relations of mankind can never come, without evils analogous to those which have attended the emancipation and enfranchisement of the colored people of the United States.

The evils it brought are in their nature temporary, and the good is permanent.

And now while I am not blind to the evils which have thus far attended the enfranchisement of the colored people, I hold that the evils from which we escaped, and the good we have derived from that act, amply vindicate its wisdom.

The ballot in the hands of the negro was necessary to open the door of the school house, and to unlock the treasures of knowledge to him.

It was the policy of the system to keep him both ignorant and degraded, the better and more safely to defraud him of his hard earnings; and this argument never staggered me.