Wise, grand, and comprehensive in scope and design, as were the reconstruction measures, high and honorable as were the intentions of the statesmen by whom they were framed and adopted, time and experience, which try all things, have demonstrated that they did not successfully meet the case.
From his autobiography, Douglass acknowledges the noble intentions and broad scope of Reconstruction measures but concludes that they ultimately failed to address the core issues effectively.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
Pardon me, therefore, for urging upon you, my people, the importance of saving your earnings; of denying yourselves in the present, that you may have something in the future, of consuming less for yourselves that your children may have a…
Inhuman as was this treatment, it was the natural result of the bitter resentment felt by the old master class, and in view of it, the wonder is, not that the colored people of the South have done so little in the way of acquiring a…
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.