Neither would our gratitude forget those who supplemented the great act of emancipation by carrying the blessings of education to the benighted South, thus preparing the liberated freedman for the duties of citizenship.
Douglass acknowledges the vital role of education in preparing freedmen for citizenship after emancipation.
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It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.
It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.