Outside the question of slavery my thoughts had not been much directed, and I could hardly hope to make myself useful in any other cause than that to which I had given the best twenty-five years of my life.
Douglass reflects on his deep commitment to the anti-slavery cause, acknowledging that his singular focus made it challenging to envision a new purpose after emancipation.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
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.