Frederick Douglass

The thought of paying cash for labor that they could formerly extort by the lash did not in anywise improve their disposition to the emancipated slave, or improve his own condition.

Now, since poverty has, and can have no chance against wealth, the landless against the land owner, the ignorant against the intelligent, the freedman was powerless.

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

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.

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

If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness.

It would have been, to have committed the lamb to the care of the wolf--the arming of one class and disarming the other--protecting one interest, and destroying the other--making the rich strong, and the poor weak--the white man a tyrant…

It would have been rewarding its enemies, and punishing its friends--embracing its foes, and spurning its allies,--setting a premium on treason, and degrading loyalty.

It was the nature of slavery from whose depths he had arisen to make him so, and it would have kept it so.

The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.

In a circle so brilliant, it is no affectation of modesty to say I was for the most part a listener and a learner.