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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

communicated to the human understanding by letters. Our colored schools in
the city of Washington compare favorably with the white schools, and what is
true of Washington is equally true of other cities and towns of the south. Still
another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their
gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions. They cannot
be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.

Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer's whip can keep them from
voting their convictions. Then another ground of hope is that as a general
rule we are an industrious people. I have traveled extensively over the south,
and almost the only people I saw at work there were the colored people. In
any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors
of the soil. Only arbitrary conditions can prevent this. To-day the negro,
starting from nothing, pays taxes upon six millions in Georgia, and forty
millions in Louisiana. Not less encouraging than this is the political situation
at the south.

The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by
intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and
this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws
controlling the action of political parties.

While the Constitution of the United States shall guarantee the colored
man's right to vote, somebody in the south will want that vote and will offer
the terms upon which that vote can be obtained.

Thus the forces against us are passion and prejudice, which are transient,
and those for us are principles, self-acting, self-sustaining, and permanent.
My hope for the future of my race is further supported by the rapid decline
of an emotional, shouting, and thoughtless religion. Scarcely in any direction
can there be found a less favorable field for mind or morals than where such
a religion prevails. It abounds in the wildest hopes and fears, and in blind,
unreasoning faith. Instead of adding to faith virtue, its tendency is to substi-
tute faith for virtue, and is a deadly enemy to our progress. There is still
another ground for hope. It arises out of a comparison of our past condition
with our present one,—the immeasurable depths from which we have come
and the point of progress already attained. We shall look over the world, and
survey the history of any other oppressed and enslaved people in vain, to
find one which has made more progress within the same length of time, than
have the colored people of the United States. These, and many other consid-
erations which I might name, give brightness and fervor to my hopes that
that better day for which the more thoughtful amongst us have long labored,
and millions of our people have sighed for centuries, is near at hand.