Frederick Douglass

If it is attempted, by force or fraud to compel the colored people to stay there, they should by all means go--go quickly, and die if need be in the attempt.”...

The American people are bound, if they are or can be bound to anything, to keep the north gate of the South open to black and white and to all the people.

While, however, it may be the highest wisdom in the circumstances for the freedmen to stay where they are, no encouragement should be given to any measures of coercion to keep them there.

Exodus is medicine, not food; it is for disease, not health; it is not to be taken from choice, but necessity.

With a moderate degree of intelligent leadership among the laboring class of the South, properly handling the justice of their cause, and wisely using the exodus example, they can easily exact better terms for their labor than ever before.

As an assertion of power by a people hitherto held in bitter contempt, as an emphatic and stinging protest against high-handed, greedy, and shameless injustice to the weak and defenceless, as a means of opening the blind eyes of oppressors…

Not only is the South the best locality for the negro, on the ground of his political powers and possibilities, but it is best for him as a field of labor.

Plainly enough, the exodus is less harmful as a measure than are the arguments by which it is supported.

Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.

It cannot be doubted that in so far as this exodus tends to promote restlessness in the colored people of the South, to unsettle their feeling of home, and to sacrifice positive advantages where they are, for fancied ones in Kansas or…

It is a more cheerful thing to be able to say I was born here and know all the people, than to say I am a stranger here and know none of the people.

The fact of being to the manner born has an elevating power upon the mind and heart of a man.