It leaves the whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open and still to be settled, with the moral influence of exodus against us; since it is a confession of the utter impracticability of equal rights and equal protection in any State where those rights may be struck down by violence.
In his autobiography, Douglass warns that the exodus movement would undermine the struggle for equal rights in the South by implicitly admitting their impossibility there.
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My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.
I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.