On the recordJanuary 1, 1881
These reasons against the measure which were supposed to be unanswerable, were in some sense the most powerful arguments in its favor.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgThese reasons against the measure which were supposed to be unanswerable, were in some sense the most powerful arguments in its favor.
From his autobiography, Douglass argues that the supposed reasons against Black suffrage were actually the strongest arguments for it.
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It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.