Their reason for this, as alleged, was, that if free colored carpenters were encouraged, they would soon take the trade into their own hands, and poor white men would be thrown out of employment.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes the economic rationale white laborers used to justify discrimination against free black carpenters.
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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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The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.