War, slavery, injustice, and oppression, and the idea that might makes right, have been uppermost in all such governments; and the weak, for whose protection governments are ostensibly created, have had practically no rights which the strong have felt bound to respect.
Continuing his critique of past governments, Douglass identifies war, slavery, and the principle of "might makes right" as dominant forces that have historically denied rights to the weak.
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More from Frederick Douglass
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.