Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/659

Rh disgusted, and drove away its best friends. The scepter of power could no longer be held by it, and it opened the way for the defeat of Mr. Blaine and the election of Mr. Cleveland.

Clinging in hope to the Republican party, thinking it would cease its backsliding and resume its old character as the party of progress, justice and freedom, I regretted its defeat and shared in some measure the painful apprehension and distress felt by my people at the South from the return to power of the old Democratic and slavery party. To many of them it seemed that they were left naked to their enemies; in fact, lost; that Mr. Cleveland's election meant the revival of the slave power, and that they would now be again reduced to slavery and the lash. The misery brought to the South by this widespread alarm can hardly be described or measured. The wail of despair from the late bondsmen was for a time deep, bitter and heartrending. Illiterate and unable to learn to read or to learn of any limit to the power of the party now in the ascendant, their fears were unmitigated and intolerable, and their outcry of alarm was like the cry of dismay uttered by an army when its champion has fallen and no one appears to take his place. It was well for the poor people in this condition that Mr. Cleveland himself kindly sent word South to allay their fears and to remove their agony. In this trepidation of the unlettered negro something is apparent aside from his ignorance. If he knew nothing of letters, he knew something of events and of the history of parties to them. He knew that the Republican party was the party hated by the old master class, and that the Democratic party was the party beloved of the old master class.