enfranchised
slaves into what seemed at that time the safe harbor of constitutional
right was not, after all, based on abstract doctrines of equality of
intellect, but on an inspiring sense of justice (long dormant under
the influence of slavery, but thoroughly awakened under the moral
stress of the war), which conceded to every man the right of a voice
in his own government and the right to an equal opportunity in life
to develop such powers as he possessed, however great or small these
might be.

But Douglass's work in direct behalf of his race was not yet entirely
done. In fact, he realized very distinctly the vast amount of work
that would be necessary to lift his people up to the level of their
enlarged opportunities; and, as may be gathered from some of his
published utterances, he foresaw that the process would be a long one,
and that their friends might weary sometimes of waiting, and that
there would be reactions toward slavery which would rob emancipation
of much of its value. It was the very imminence of such backward
steps, in the shape of various restrictive and oppressive laws
promptly enacted by the old slave States under President Johnson's
administration, that led Douglass to urge the enfranchisement of the
freedmen. He maintained that in a free country there could be no safe
or logical middle ground between the status of freeman and that of
serf. There has been much criticism because the negro, it is said,
acquired the ballot prematurely. There seemed imperative reasons,
besides that of political expediency, for putting the ballot in his
hands. Recent events have demonstrated that this necessity is as great
now as then. The assumption that negroes--under which generalization
are included all men of color, regardless of that sympathy to which
kinship at least should entitle many of them--are unfit to have a
voice in government is met by the words of Lincoln, which have all the
weight of a political axiom: "No man can be safely trusted to govern
other men without their consent." The contention that a class
who constitute half the population of a State shall be entirely
unrepresented in its councils, because, forsooth, their will there
expressed may affect the government of another class of the same
general population, is as repugnant to justice and human rights as was
the institution of slavery itself. Such a condition of affairs has not
the melodramatic and soul-stirring incidents of chattel slavery,