Michael’s unacquainted with the fact, that, instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes the hypocrisy of slaveholders who preferred their enslaved people to engage in degrading activities rather than learn to read the Bible.
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The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the colored people have no reason to despair.
A poverty-stricken class will be an ignorant and despised class, and no amount of sentiment can make it otherwise.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.