In that terrible battle, under the wing of night, more cavils in respect of the quality of negro manhood were set at rest than could have been during a century of ordinary life and observation.
Douglass asserts that the 54th Massachusetts Regiment's performance at Fort Wagner definitively silenced doubts about the courage and capability of Black men.
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It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.