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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 339

less from choice than necessity, was speedily called back to labor and
life.

"But now, after fourteen years of service, and fourteen years of separation
from the visible presence of slavery, during which he has shown both
disposition and ability to supply the labor market of the South, and that he
could do so far better as a freedman than he ever did as a slave; that more
cotton and sugar can be raised by the same hands, under the inspiration of
libertu and hope, than can be raised under the influence of bondage and the
whip, he is again, alas! in the deepest trouble; again without a home, out
under the open sky, with his wife and little ones. He lines the Sunny banks
of the Mississippi, fluttering in rags and wretchedness, mournfully imploring
hard-hearted Steamboat Captains to take him on board; while the friends of
the emigration movement are diligently soliciting funds all over the North to
help him away from his old home to the new Canaan of Kansas."

I am sorry to be obliged to omit the statement which here follows, of the
reasons given for the Exodus movement, and my explanation of them, but
from want of space I can present only such portions of the paper as express
most, vividly and in fewest words, my position in regard to the question. I go
on to say:

"Bad as is the condition of the negro to-day at the South, there was a
time when it was flagrantly and incomparably worse. A few years ago he had
nothing he had not even himself. He belonged to somebody else, who
could dispose of his person and his labor as he pleased. Now he has himself,
his labor, and his right to dispose of one and the other as shall best suit his
own happiness. He has more. He has a standing in the supreme law of the
land - in the Constitution of the United States- not to be changed or affected
by any conjunction of circumstances likely to occur in the immediate or
remote future. The Fourteenth Amendment makes him a citizen and the
Fifteenth makes him a voter. With power behind him, at work for him, and
which cannot be taken from him, the negro of the South may wisely bide his
time. The situation at the moment is exceptional and transient. The permanent
powers of the government are all on his side. What though for the
moment the hand of violence strikes down the negro's rights in the South,
those rights will revive, survive, and flourish again. They are not the only
people who have been, in a moment of popular passion, maltreated and
driven from the polls. The Irish and Dutch have frequently been so treated.
Boston, Baltimore, and New York have been the scenes of lawless violence;