| | 1 | Author: | Douglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895 | Add | | | Title: | An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage  | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | A VERY limited statement of the argument for impartial
suffrage, and for including the negro in the body politic, would
require more space than can be reasonably asked here. It is
supported by reasons as broad as the nature of man, and as numerous
as the wants of society. Man is the only government-making animal
in the world. His right to a participation in the production and
operation of government is an inference from his nature, as direct
and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education.
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. The fundamental and unanswerable argument
in favor of the enfranchisement of the negro is found in the
undisputed fact of his manhood. He is a man, and by every fact and
argument by which any man can sustain his right to vote, the negro
can sustain his right equally. It is plain that, if the right
belongs to any, it belongs to all. The doctrine that some men have
no rights that others are bound to respect, is a doctrine which we
must banish as we have banished slavery, from which it emanated.
If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men, of course the
whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. The result is a
war of races, and the annihilation of all proper human relations. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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