The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he was flung into competition with a class of laborers who worked without wages.
Douglass details the economic mechanisms by which both enslaved black people and poor white laborers were exploited under the slave system.
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They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…
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