Frederick Douglass

The old slave quarter that had before sheltered them, and the fields that had yielded them corn, were now denied them.

Old and young, sick and well, were turned loose to the open sky, naked to their enemies.

They were sent away empty-handed, without money, without friends, and without a foot of land to stand upon.

It was born in the tempest and whirlwind of war, and has lived in a storm of violence and blood.

Nothing was to have been expected other than what has happened, and he is a poor student of the human heart who does not see that the old master class would naturally employ every power and means in their reach to make the great measure of…

They were hated because they had been slaves, hated because they were now free, and hated because of those who had freed them.

The very manner of their emancipation invited to the heads of the freedmen the bitterest hostility of race and class.

History does not furnish an example of emancipation under conditions less friendly to the emancipated class, than this American example.

To me, the wonder is, not that the freedmen have made so little progress, but, rather, that they have made so much; not that they have been standing still, but that they have been able to stand at all.

Nor would he now be leaving the South as from a doomed city and seeking a home in the uncongenial North, but tilling his native soil in comparative independence.

The negro to-day would not be on his knees, as he is, abjectly supplicating the old master class to give him leave to toil.

He who can say to his fellow-man, “You shall serve me or starve,” is a master, and his subject is a slave.