Ignorant as the colored people of the South have been, and may still be, about other matters of national importance, they have always been intelligent enough as to the character and relations of political parties.
Douglass emphasizes the political awareness of African Americans regarding party politics in the post-Civil War era.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.