I had an audience ready made in the free States; one which the labors of thirty years had prepared for me, and before this audience the freedmen of the South needed an advocate as much as they needed a member of Congress.
Douglass explains his rationale for not pursuing a congressional seat, emphasizing his established role as an advocate for the freedmen.
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The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
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.
To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana.