But for the responsibility of conducting a public journal, and the necessity imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists outside of New England, I should in all probability have remained firm in my disunion views.
Douglass attributes his shift away from disunionist views to the intellectual demands of editing a public journal and engaging with diverse abolitionist perspectives.
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More from Frederick Douglass
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.