It leaves the whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open and still to be settled, with the moral influence of exodus against us; since it is a confession of the utter impracticability of equal rights and equal protection in any State where those rights may be struck down by violence.
In his autobiography, Douglass warns that the exodus movement would undermine the struggle for equal rights in the South by implicitly admitting their impossibility there.
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For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.