Individuals of the race have here and there enjoyed large benefits from emancipation, and the result is seen in their conduct, but the mass have had their liberty coupled with hardships which tend strongly to keep them a dwarfed and miserable class.
Douglass highlights the mixed outcomes of emancipation, noting that many still face significant hardships.
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It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal.