Of what avail would be our marble halls if once more they resounded with the crack of the slave whip, the clank of the fetter, and the rattle of chains; if slave auctions were held in front of the halls of justice, and chain-gangs were marched over Pennsylvania avenue to the Long Bridge for the New Orleans market?
Douglass vividly describes the horrors of slavery, emphasizing the moral implications of such a return to oppression.
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They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.