Frederick Douglass

The day dawns; the morning star is bright upon the horizon!

More than twenty years of unswerving devotion to our common cause may give me some humble claim to be trusted at this momentous crisis.

I am authorized to assure you that you will receive the same wages, the same rations, the same equipments, the same protection, the same treatment, and the same bounty, secured to white soldiers.

We can get at the throat of treason and slavery through the State of Massachusetts.

In good earnest then, and after the best deliberation, I now for the first time during this war, feel at liberty to call and counsel you to arms.

The counsel I give comes of close observation of the great struggle now in progress, and of the deep conviction that this is your hour and mine.

They tell you this is the ‘white man’s war’; that you will be no ‘better off after than before the war’; that the getting of you into the army is to ‘sacrifice you on the first opportunity.’ Believe them not; cowards themselves, they do…

The office of speech now is only to point out when, where, and how to strike to the best advantage.

Words are now useful only as they stimulate to blows.

Action! not criticism, is the plain duty of this hour.

When the war is over, the country is saved, peace is established, and the black man’s rights are secured, as they will be, history with an impartial hand will dispose of that and sundry other questions.

Hence with every reverse to the national arms, with every exulting shout of victory raised by the slaveholding rebels, I have implored the imperiled nation to unchain against her foes, her powerful black hand.