Self-assertion, especially in political lines, was the main programme, and behind Douglass came Elliot, Bruce, and Langston, and the Reconstruction politicians, and, less conspicuous but of greater social significance, Alexander Crummell and Bishop Daniel Payne.
This quote outlines the political self-assertion of African Americans during the Reconstruction era.
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Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.