The practical operation of this doctrine would be to make all the future new States slaveholding States, for slavery once planted and nursed for years in a territory would easily strengthen itself against the evil day and defy eradication.
Frederick Douglass: “The practical operation of this doctrine would be to make all the future new States slaveholding States, for slavery…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass explains the dangerous implications of the new Southern doctrine, which would ensure the expansion of slavery into new territories.
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I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.
Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.