We have grown up with this republic, and I see nothing in her character, or even in the character of the American people, as yet which compels the belief that we must leave the United States.
Douglass asserts the historical connection of Black people to the American republic and finds no justification for their forced departure from the nation.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.