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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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…
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.