appeal to congress for impartial suffrage answer key
Do you find this information helpful? beware what you do. A very limited statement of the argument for impartial suffrage, and for including the negro in the body politic, would require more space than can be reasonably asked here. Here they are, four millions of them, and, for weal or for woe, here they must remain. As a nation, we cannot afford to have amongst us either this indifference and stupidity, or that burning sense of wrong. Will you repeat the mistake of your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? Strong as we are, we need the energy that slumbers in the black mans arm to make us stronger. The new wine must be put into new bottles. Their history is parallel to that of the country; but while the history of the latter has been cheerful and bright with blessings, theirs has been heavy and dark with agonies and curses. Anaphora. a comparison between two different things. As you members of the Thirty-ninth Congress decide, will the country be peaceful, united, and happy, or troubled, divided, and miserable. Disguise it as we may, we are still a divided nation. by John W. Blassingame (transcription project) 1 0 obj beware of what you do. Douglass, Helen, 1838-1903. It is supported by reasons as broad as the nature of man, and as numerous as the wants of society. Douglass, Frederick. Freedom of speech and of the press it slowly but successfully banished from the South, dictated its own code of honor and manners to the nation, brandished the bludgeon and the bowie-knife over Congressional debate, sapped the foundations of loyalty, dried up the springs of patriotism, blotted out the testimonies of the fathers against oppression, padlocked the pulpit, expelled liberty from its literature, invented nonsensical theories about master-races and slave-races of men, and in due season produced a Rebellion fierce, foul, and bloody. Foreign countries abound with his agents. It will tell how they forded and swam rivers, with what consummate address they evaded the sharp-eyed Rebel pickets, how they toiled in the darkness of night through the tangled marshes of briers and thorns, barefooted and weary, running the risk of losing their lives, to warn our generals of Rebel schemes to surprise and destroy our loyal army. Collapse All | Expand All An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage Frederick Douglass Atlantic Monthly January 1867 An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874--Correspondence, - (1957) Roy Wilkins, The Clock Will Not Be Turned Back, African American History: Research Guides & Websites, Global African History: Research Guides & Websites, African American Scientists and Technicians of the Manhattan Project, Envoys, Diplomatic Ministers, & Ambassadors, Foundation, Organization, and Corporate Supporters. There is that, all over the South, which frightens Yankee industry, capital, and skill from its borders. Statesmen of America! Exclude the negroes as a class from political rightsteach them that the high and manly privilege of suffrage is to be enjoyed by white citizens only, that they may bear the burdens of the state, but that they are to have no part in its direction or its honors, and you at once deprive them of one of the main incentives to manly character and patriotic devotion to the interests of the government; in a word, you stamp them as a degraded caste, you teach them to despise themselves, and all others to despise them. The result is a war of races, and the annihilation of all proper human relations. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you give him at once a powerful motive for all noble exertion, and make him a man among men. Visit American Literature's American History section for other important historical documents and figures which helped shape America. It is a measure of relief,a shield to break the force of a blow already descending with violence, and render it harmless. There is that, all over the South, which frightens Yankee industry, capital, and skill from its borders. , or . In fact, all the elements of treason and rebellion are there under the thinnest disguise which necessity can impose. But why are the Southerners so willing to make these sacrifices? It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare that he shall not share in the making and directing of the government under which he lives, than to say that he shall not acquire property and education. The work of destruction has already been set in motion all over the South. Oak Ridge High School 1450 Oak Ridge Turnpike Oak Ridge, TN 37830. answer choices Thomas Jefferson Abraham Lincoln George Washington Woodrow Wilson Question 5 Is the existence of a rebellious element in our borderswhich New Orleans, Memphis, and Texas show to be only disarmed, but at heart as malignant as ever, only waiting for an opportunity to reassert itself with fire and sworda reason for leaving four millions of the nations truest friends with just cause of complaint against the Federal government? African American Pamphlet Collection (Library of Congress). The South will comply with any conditions but suffrage for the negro. Nor can we afford to endure the moral blight which the existence of a degraded and hated class must necessarily inflict upon any people among whom such a class may exist. Foreign countries abound with his agents. The fundamental and unanswerable argument in favor of the enfranchisement of the negro is found in the undisputed fact of his manhood. The South will comply with any conditions but suffrage for the negro. Will you repeat the mistake of your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? He is a man, and by every fact and argument by which any man can sustain his right to vote, the negro can sustain his right equally. Loyalty is hardly safe with traitors. Q. Does any sane man doubt for a moment that the men who followed Jefferson Davis through the late terrible Rebellion, often marching barefooted and hungry, naked and penniless, and who now only profess an enforced loyalty, would plunge this country into a foreign war to-day, if they could thereby gain their coveted independence, and their still more coveted mastery over the negroes? 1973 Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Manuscript/Mixed Material. The first primary source on Frederick Douglass. It was a war of the rich against the poor. It is enough that the possession and exercise of the elective franchise is in itself an appeal to the nobler elements of manhood, and imposes education as essential to the safety of society. We have crushed the Rebellion, but not its hopes or its malign purposes. The South fought for perfect and permanent control over the Southern laborer. 3 !1AQa"q2B#$Rb34rC%Scs5&DTdEt6UeuF'Vfv7GWgw 5 !1AQaq"2B#R3$brCScs4%&5DTdEU6teuFVfv'7GWgw ? It must cause national ideas and objects to take the lead and control the politics of those States. Once firmly seated in Congress, their alliance with Northern Democrats re-established, their States restored to their former position inside the Union, they can easily find means of keeping the Federal government entirely too busy with other important matters to pay much attention to the local affairs of the Southern States. or will you profit by the blood-bought wisdom all round you, and forever expel every vestige of the old abomination from our national borders? The hope of gaining by politics what they lost by the sword, is the secret of all this Southern unrest; and that hope must be extinguished before national ideas and objects can take full possession of the Southern mind. We have thus far only gained a Union without unity, marriage without love, victory without peace. Sprague, Rosetta Douglass--Correspondence, - Casting aside all thought of justice and magnanimity, is it wise to impose upon the negro all the burdens involved in sustaining government against foes within and foes without, to make him equal sharer in all sacrifices for the public good, to tax him in peace and conscript him in war, and then coldly exclude him from the ballot-box? Enfranchise them, and they become self-respecting and country-loving citizens. They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes. Under the potent shield of State Rights, the game would be in their own hands. Waiving humanity, national honor, the claims of gratitude, the precious satisfaction arising from deeds of charity and justice to the weak and defenceless,--the appeal for impartial suffrage addresses itself with great pertinency to the darkest, coldest, and flintiest side of the human heart, and would wring righteousness from the unfeeling calculations of human selfishness. beware what you do. The American people can, perhaps, afford to brave the censure of surrounding nations for the manifest injustice and meanness of excluding its faithful black soldiers from the ballot-box, but it cannot afford to allow the moral and mental energies of rapidly increasing millions to be consigned to hopeless degradation. There is but one safe and constitutional way to banish that mischievous hope from the South, and that is by lifting the laborer beyond the unfriendly political designs of his former master. Yet the negroes have marvellously survived all the exterminating forces of slavery, and have emerged at the end of two hundred and fifty years of bondage, not morose, misanthropic, and revengeful, but cheerful, hopeful, and forgiving. Is the present movement in England in favor of manhood suffragefor the purpose of bringing four millions of British subjects into full sympathy and co-operation with the British governmenta wise and humane movement, or otherwise? Retrieved from the Library of Congress,
