His predecessor in office had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self-defence and self-preservation--a right which belongs to the meanest insect.
Reflecting on the start of the Civil War, Douglass criticizes President Buchanan's inaction by asserting the fundamental right of a nation to defend itself.
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Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
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…