No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers, when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.
In his 1871 Decoration Day speech at Arlington, Douglass asserts that the tribute given to the unrecognized loyal soldiers is as high as any paid to humanity's greatest benefactors.
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More from Frederick Douglass
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.