Frederick Douglass

The Fourteenth Amendment makes him a citizen and the Fifteenth makes him a voter.

With power behind him, at work for him, and which cannot be taken from him, the negro of the South may wisely bide his time.

The black man (unlike the Indian) loves civilization.

Every day brings fresh and increasing evidence that we are, and of right ought to be, a nation; that Confederate notions of the nature and powers of our government ought to have perished in the rebellion which they supported; that they are…

Besides the objection thus stated, it is manifest that the public and noisy advocacy of a general stampede of the colored people from the South to the North is necessarily an abandonment of the great and paramount principle of protection…

That influence met me almost everywhere outside of pronounced anti-slavery circles, and sometimes even within them.

It leaves the whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open and still to be settled, with the moral influence of exodus against us; since it is a confession of the utter impracticability of equal rights and equal protection…

It does not appear that the friends of freedom should spend either time or talent in furtherance of this exodus, as a desirable measure, either for the North or the South.

A man should never leave his home for a new one till he has earnestly endeavored to make his immediate surroundings accord with his wishes.

The time and energy expended in wandering from place to place, if employed in making him a comfortable home where he is, will, in nine cases out of ten, prove the best investment.

It cannot be doubted that in so far as this exodus tends to promote restlessness in the colored people of the South, to unsettle their feeling of home, and to sacrifice positive advantages where they are, for fancied ones in Kansas or…

Yes, they were the legitimate fruit of slavery, and were second in villainy only to the slaveholders themselves who made such a class possible.