Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/540

532 "As an assertion of power by a people hitherto held in bitter contempt, as an emphatic and stinging protest against high-handed, greedy, and shameless injustice to the weak and defenseless, as a means of opening the blind eyes of oppressors to their folly and peril, the exodus has done valuable service. Whether it has accomplished all of which for the present it is capable in this direction is a question which may well be considered. With a moderate degree of intelligent leadership among the laboring class of the South properly handling the justice of its cause and wisely using the exodus example, it can easily exact better terms for its labor than ever before. Exodus is a medicine, not food; it is for disease, not health; it is not to be taken from choice, but from necessity. In anything like a normal condition of things the South is the best place for the Negro. Nowhere else is there for him a promise of a happier future. Let him stay there if he can, and save both the South and himself to civilization. While, however, it may be the highest wisdom in the circumstances for the freedmen to stay where they are, no encouragement should be given to any measures of coercion to keep them there. The American people are bound, if they are or can be bound to anything, to keep the north gate of the South open to black and white and to all the people. The time to assert a right, Webster says, is when it is called in question. If it is attempted by force or fraud to compel the colored people to stay there, they should by all means go—go quickly and die, if need be, in the attempt." . . . . . . . ..