They were trained in the school of servility to believe that white men alone were entitled to be waited upon by colored men; and the lesson taught by my presence on the “Tennessee” was not to be learned upon the instant, without thought and experience.
Douglass explains that the colored waiters' discomfort stemmed from their training in servility, which taught them only white men deserved service from colored men.
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Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.