If in the days of slavery the army could be used to hunt slaves, and suppress slave insurrections, why, in the days of liberty, may it not be used to enforce rights guaranteed by the Constitution?
He argues for the use of military power to protect the rights of African Americans, just as it was used during slavery.
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More from Frederick Douglass
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.