On the recordJanuary 1, 1881
The old master class is to-day triumphant, and the newly enfranchised class in a condition but little above that in which they were found before the rebellion.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgFrederick Douglass: “The old master class is to-day triumphant, and the newly enfranchised class in a condition but little above that in…”
Editor's note · Context
From his autobiography, Douglass describes the grim reality where the former slaveholding class has regained power, leaving newly freed people in a state barely better than slavery.
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No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
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Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the colored people have no reason to despair.
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A race which cannot save its earnings, which spends all it makes and goes in debt when it is sick, can never rise in the scale of civilization, no matter under what laws it may chance to be.
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No people to whom liberty is given, can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant.