The government, I fear, was still clinging to the idea that positions of honor in the service should be occupied by white men, and that it would not do to inaugurate just then the policy of perfect equality.
Douglass expresses his concern that the government was hesitant to implement full racial equality in military leadership roles during the Civil War.
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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.