I am less amazed at these evils, than by the rapidity with which they are subsiding and not more astonished at the facility with which the former slave has become a free man, than at the rapid adjustment of the master-class to the new situation.
From his autobiography, expressing his surprise at the speed with which both former slaves and masters adapted to the post-emancipation era.
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More from Frederick Douglass
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
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.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.