They were shut out from all lucrative employments and compelled to be merely barbers, waiters, coachmen and the like at wages so low that they could lay up little or nothing.
Describing the economic plight of colored people, Douglass highlights their exclusion from profitable jobs and their confinement to low-wage service roles that prevent wealth accumulation.
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He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.