Not only the intelligence of the slave, but the instincts of humanity, must be barred by positive law, hence Breckenridge and his friends erected the flinty walls of the Constitution and the Supreme Court for the protection of slavery at the outset.
Douglass argues that slavery requires the suppression of human intelligence and natural instincts, leading its proponents to seek constitutional and judicial protections.
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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.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.