The first primary source on Frederick Douglass. 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. Their history is parallel to that of the country; but while the history of the latter has been cheerful and bright with blessing, theirs has been heavy and dark with agonies and curses. Massachusetts and South Carolina may draw tears from the eyes of our tender-hearted President by walking arm in arm into his Philadelphia Convention, but a citizen of Massachusetts is still an alien in the Palmetto State. the king of England. What, then, is the work before Congress? What is common to all works no special sense of degradation to any. Men are so constituted that they largely derive their ideas of their abilities and their possibilities from the settled judgements of their fellow-men, and especially from such as they read in the institutions under which they live. In fact, all the elements of treason and rebellion are there under the thinnest disguise which necessity can impose. And does not the Emperor of Russia act wisely, as well as generously, when he not only breaks up the bondage of the serf, but extends him all the advantages of Russian citizenship? 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. Can that be sound statesmanship which leaves millions of men in gloomy discontent, and possibly in a state of alienation in the day of national trouble? But why are the Southerners so willing to make these sacrifices? 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? They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes. Besides, the disabilities imposed upon all are necessarily without that bitter and stinging element of invidiousness which attaches to disfranchisement in a republic. Though the battle is for the present lost, the hope of gaining this object still exists, and pervades the whole South with a feverish excitement. <> You shudder to-day at the harvest of blood sown in the spring-time of the Republic by your patriot fathers. You have read "An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage" by Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as "Frederick Douglass (African American abolitionist and civil right 's leader), "An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage," January 1867". It is impossible at this point in time to rid African Americans from the country.2. 30 seconds. In a pair of Atlantic articles in 1866 and '67, Douglass addressed members of the 39th session of Congress, urging them to give black Americans the right to vote.
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