Frederick Douglass: “We are either rising or falling, advancing or retreating.”

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.

In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.

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

Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.