The shepherd protects the sheep from the depredations of the wolves, and the ballot protects poverty against property, a weak race or class against the hate and aggressions of stronger ones within the same country.
Grimké uses the metaphor of a shepherd to highlight the protective role of voting rights.
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More from Archibald Henry Grimké
He saw that they were not essentially unlike other races--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar about them, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the common property of mankind in similar circumstances.
I cannot conceive why a black man may not as reasonably object to my color, as I to his.
Lay not down your weapons until honorable terms are obtained.
At any rate they should hear what was resting upon his soul with the weight of a great woe, the force of a supreme command.