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476

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ment. Wise, grand, and comprehensive in scope and design, as were the
reconstruction measures, high and honorable as were the intentions of the
statesmen by whom they were framed and adopted, time and experience,
which try all things, have demonstrated that they did not successfully meet
the case.

In the hurry and confusion of the hour, and the eager desire to have the
Union restored, there was more care for the sublime superstructure of the
republic than for the solid foundation upon which it could alone be upheld.
They gave freedmen the machinery of liberty, but denied them the steam to
put it in motion. They gave them the uniform of soldiers, but no arms; they
called them citizens, and left them subjects; they called them free, and
almost left them slaves. They did not deprive the old master class of the
power of life and death which was the soul of the relation of master and
slave. They could not of course sell their former slaves, but they retained the
power to starve them to death, and wherever this power is held, there is the
power of slavery. He who can say to his fellow-man, "You shall serve me or
starve," is a master, and his subject is a slave. This was seen and felt by
Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and leading stalwart Republicans, and
had their counsels prevailed the terrible evils from which we now suffer
would have been averted. The negro to-day would not be on his knees, as he
is, abjectly supplicating the old master class to give him leave to toil. Nor
would he now be leaving the South as from a doomed city and seeking a
home in the uncongenial North, but tilling his native soil in comparative
independence. Though no longer a slave, he is in a thraldom grievous and
intolerable, compelled to work for whatever his employer is pleased to pay
him, swindled out of his hard earnings by money orders redeemed in stores,
compelled to pay the price of an acre of ground for its use during a single
year, to pay four times more than a fair price for a pound of bacon, and be
kept upon the narrowest margin between life and starvation. Much com-
plaint has been made that the freedmen have shown so little ability to take
care of themselves since their emancipation. Men have marvelled that they
have made so little progress. I question the justice of this complaint. It is
neither reasonable, nor in any sense just. To me, the wonder is, not that the
freedmen have made so little progress, but, rather, that they have made so
much; not that they have been standing still, but that they have been able to
stand at all.

We have only to reflect for a moment upon the situation in which these
people found themselves when liberated: consider their ignorance, their pov-
erty, their destitution, and their absolute dependence upon the very class by