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298 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

making the rich strong, and the poor weak — the white man a tyrant, and the
black man a slave. The very fact therefore that the old master-classes of the
South felt that their interests were opposed to those of the freedmen, instead
of being a reason against their enfranchisement, was the most powerful one
in its favor. Until it shall be safe to leave the lamb in the hold of the lion, the
laborer in the power of the capitalist, the poor in the hands of the rich, it will
not be safe to leave a newly emancipated people completely in the power of
their former masters, especially when such masters have not ceased to be
such from enlightened moral convictions but by irresistible force. Then on
the part of the Government itself, had it denied this great right to the freedmen,
it would have been another proof that "Republics are ungrateful". It
would have been rewarding its enemies, and punishing its friends — embracing
its foes , and spurning its allies, — setting a premium on treason, and
degrading loyalty. As to the second point, viz.: the negro's ignorance and
degradation, there was no disputing either. It was the nature of slavery from
whose depths he had arisen to make him so, and it would have kept it so. It
was the policy of the system to keep him both ignorant and degraded, the
better and more safely to defraud him of his hard earnings: and this argument
never staggered me. The ballot in the hands of the negro was necessary to
open the door of the school house, and to unlock the treasures of knowledge
to him. Granting all that was said of his ignorance, I used to say, "if the negro
knows enough to fight for his country he knows enough to vote: if he knows
enough to pay taxes for the support of the government, he knows enough to
vote; if he knows as much when sober, as an Irishman knows when drunk,
he knows enough to vote."

And now while I am not blind to the evils which have thus far attended
the enfranchisement of the colored people, I hold that the evils from which
we escaped, and the good we have derived from that act, amply vindicate its
wisdom. The evils it brought are in their nature temporary, and the good is
permanent. The one is comparatively small, the other absolutely great. The
young child has staggered on his little legs, and he has sometimes fallen and
hurt his head in the fall, but then he has learned to walk. The boy in the water
came near drowning, but then he has learned to swim. Great changes in the
relations of mankind can never come, without evils analogous to those which
have attended the emancipation and enfranchisement of the colored people
of the United States. I am less amazed at these evils, than by the rapidity with
which they are subsiding and not more astonished at the facility with which
the former slave has become a free man, than at the rapid adjustment of the
master-class to the new situation.