The slave is robbed, by his master, of all his earnings, above what is required for his bare physical necessities; and the white man is robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he is flung into competition with a class of laborers who work without wages.
In his autobiography, Douglass details the economic mechanisms by which both enslaved Black people and free white laborers are exploited.
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More from Frederick Douglass
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.