It would have been, to have committed the lamb to the care of the wolf--the arming of one class and disarming the other--protecting one interest, and destroying the other--making the rich strong, and the poor weak--the white man a tyrant, and the black man a slave.
Douglass uses a series of stark contrasts to illustrate the injustice and danger of denying Black men the right to vote after emancipation.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.
His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.