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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 343

about as likely to make votes for Democrats as for Republicans, and to raise
up bitter prejudice against them as to raise up friends for them....

"Plainly enough, the exodus is less harmful as a measure than are the
arguments by which it is supported. The one is the result of a feeling of outrage
and despair; but the other comes of cool, selfish calculation. One is the
result of honest despair, and appeals powerfully to the sympathies of men;
the other is an appeal to our selfishness, which shrinks from doing right
because the way is difficult.

"Not only is the South the best locality for the negro, on the ground of
his political powers and possibilities, but it is best for him as a field of labor,
He is there, as he is nowhere else, an absolute necessity. He has a monopoly
of the labor market. His labor is the only labor which can successfully offer
itself for sale in that market. This fact, with a little wisdom and firmness, will
enable him to sell his labor there on terms more favorable to himself than he
can elsewhere. As there are no competitors or substitutes he can demand living
prices with the certainty that the demand will be complied with. Exodus
would deprive him of this advantage....

"The negro, as already intimated, is preeminently a Southern man. He is
so both in constitution and habits, in body as well as mind. He will not only
take with him to the North, southern modes of labor, but southern modes of
life. The careless and improvident habits of the South cannot be set aside in
a generation. If they are adhered to in the North, in the fierce winds and
snows of Kansas and Nebraska, the emigration must be large to keep up their
numbers....

"As an assertion of power by a people hitherto held in bitter contempt,
as an emphatic and stinging protest against high-handed, greedy, and shameless
injustice to the weak and defenceless, as a means of opening the blind
eyes of oppressors to their folly and peril, the exodus has done valuable
service. Whether it has accomplished all of which it is capable in this direction,
for the present is a question which may well be considered. With a
moderate degree of intelligent leadership among the laboring class of the
South, properly handling the justice of their cause, and wisely using the
exodus example, they can easily exact better terms for their labor than ever
before. Exodus is medicine, not food; it is for disease, not health; it is not to
be taken from choice, but necessity. In anything like a normal condition of
things, the South is the best place for the negro. Nowhere else is there for
him a promise of a happier future. Let him stay there if he can, and save both
the South and himself to civilization. While, however, it may be the highest
wisdom in the circumstances for the freedmen to stay where they are, no