The South staked all upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing to do that, drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not Brown's, the lost cause of the century.
Douglass critiques the South's strategy in the Civil War, highlighting their failure and the consequences of rebellion.
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A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.