There was no earthly reason why the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery, for it was from this class that their masters received their slave catchers, slave drivers, and overseers.
From a delegation's reply to President Andrew Johnson, this explains the historical reasons for animosity between enslaved blacks and poor whites.
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More from Frederick Douglass
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.