Frederick Douglass

I was called forward, and responded with all the energy of my soul, for I looked upon suffrage to the negro as the only measure which could prevent him from being thrust back into slavery.

I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their fathers.

I replied that there must be two sides to the relation of master and slave, and what was deemed kind and just to the one was the opposite to the other.

My separation had been as complete as if I had been an inhabitant of another planet.

But now the children of those who had committed these outrages and follies, were applauding the very principles which their fathers had condemned.

An act for which those leaders expected to be pelted with stones, only brought to them unmeasured applause.

The people were more enlightened and had made more progress than their leaders had supposed.

Would you not be branded all over the land as dastardly hypocrites, professing principles which you have no wish or intention of carrying out?

Would not the charge of cowardice, certain to be brought against you, prove more damaging than that of amalgamation?

It seems strange now, in view of all the progress which has been made, that such a question could arise.

They, dear fellows, found it much more agreeable to talk of the principles of liberty as glittering generalities, than to reduce those principles to practice.

The men who framed it, and those who adopted it, framed and adopted it for the people, and the whole people--colored men being at that time legal voters in most of the States.