There is a growing recognition of the duty and obligation of the American people to guard, protect, and defend the personal and political rights of all the people of all the States; to uphold the principles upon which rebellion was suppressed, slavery abolished, and the country saved from dismemberment and ruin.
From his autobiography, observing a growing national commitment to protecting civil rights and upholding the outcomes of the Civil War, on national duty and Reconstruction principles.
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More from Frederick Douglass
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.