Frederick Douglass: “The abolitionists had passed the Red Sea of mobs, and had conquered the right to a respectful hearing.”

None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.

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.

Everywhere in the south the colored man is learning to read.

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…