Political Quotes

Frederick Douglass: “Hence the freedman, less from humanity than cupidity, less from choice than necessity, was speedily called back to labor…”

On the recordJanuary 1, 1881
Hence the freedman, less from humanity than cupidity, less from choice than necessity, was speedily called back to labor and life.
Said by
Frederick Douglass

Editor's note · Context

Douglass explains that the return of freedmen to labor was driven more by the economic self-interest of former masters than by humanitarian concerns.

Share

More from Frederick Douglass

Jan 1, 1881

The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1881

No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1881

The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1881

None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.

gutenberg.org