Great changes in the relations of mankind can never come, without evils analogous to those which have attended the emancipation and enfranchisement of the colored people of the United States.
From his autobiography, discussing the inevitable difficulties accompanying major societal transformations like emancipation.
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More from Frederick Douglass
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
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.