England had given me shelter and protection when the slavehounds were on my track fourteen years before, and her gates were still open to me now that I was pursued in the name of Virginia justice.
Douglass reflects on his need to flee the United States after the Harper's Ferry raid, recalling previous times England offered him asylum from American injustice.
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More from Frederick Douglass
The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
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.