They had opportunity enough and provocation enough, God knows, to attack the property and the lives of the defenseless families of their hard task-masters during those four dreadful years of sectional strife.
Grimké acknowledges the potential for violence among freedmen during the war but notes their restraint.
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That the founder of the new political party, as a practical man, should discriminate between colored men with a vote and colored men without a vote seems to me to be altogether natural, to grow, in fact, out of the necessities of every…
It reaches down to the springs of fundamental social and political changes at the South in relation to its race question, and sets in motion the healing waters of its pool of Bethesda, which will in time heal it of its sickness and cleanse…
That colored men with the ballot should be rated in terms of the political game higher than other colored men who have it not, violates no rule of business ethics.
But to do this, to realize on their party promises and pledges to the people, they must have votes, not mere good will which can not translate itself into effective support on election day.