However poor or ignorant, or unclean, or improvident he may be, I never yet found a negro who had not at least a vague desire for a better condition, an undefined longing for something called freedom, a shrewd instinct of self-preservation.
Reid notes that despite their hardships, African Americans possess a desire for freedom and self-improvement.
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No matter what we wish, the old continental isolation is gone forever.
Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.
I asked the old man what he wanted to learn to read for.
But why should a sensible man deal with such folly?