The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the plane of common equality with all other varieties of men.
In an appeal for Black men to enlist in the Union Army, Douglass emphasizes the unprecedented opportunity to end slavery and achieve full equality.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
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…
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.