Slavery seemed to be at the very top of its power; the national government with all its powers and appliances were in its hands, and it bade fair to wield them for many years to come.
Douglass describes the seemingly insurmountable power of slavery and its control over the national government in the period leading up to the Civil War.
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No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.