In view of this confessed impotency of the Government and this apparent insensibility of the nation to the claims of humanity, do you ask me why I expend my time and breath in denouncing these wholesale murders when there is no seeming prospect of a favorable response?
Douglass defends his activism against racial violence, questioning the morality of inaction in the face of injustice.
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The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
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.