Peace between races is not to be secured by degrading one race and exalting another, by giving power to one race and withholding it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes.
From a delegation's reply to President Andrew Johnson, this asserts that true racial peace requires equal justice for all, not the degradation or exaltation of any single group.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.