When first the rebel cannon shattered the walls of Sumpter and drove away its starving garrison, I predicted that the war then and there inaugurated would not be fought out entirely by white men.
Douglass recalls his early prediction, made at the start of the Civil War, that Black men would inevitably play a crucial role in the conflict.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.