A succession of earthquakes would be less destructive, than the insurrectionary fires which would be sure to burst forth in different parts of the south, from such interference.
Frederick Douglass: “A succession of earthquakes would be less destructive, than the insurrectionary fires which would be sure to burst forth…”
Editor's note · Context
In his autobiography, Douglass vividly describes the catastrophic insurrections that would erupt if slaveholders ceased granting periodic liberties.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
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…
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.