Besides the objection thus stated, it is manifest that the public and noisy advocacy of a general stampede of the colored people from the South to the North is necessarily an abandonment of the great and paramount principle of protection to person and property in every State in the Union.
In his autobiography, Douglass argues that advocating for a mass exodus of Black people from the South undermines the principle of federal protection for all citizens.
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More from Frederick Douglass
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.