Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/680

672 could be secured if the black vote was abandoned. Then came along the old issues of tariff and free trade, and kindred questions of material interests, to the exclusion of the more vital principles for which the Republican party stood in the days of its purity and power. But the expected accessions to its ranks from the white voters of the South did not take place. If anything, the South became, with every concession made by the Republicans to win its white vote, more solidly Democratic. There never was yet, and there never will be, an instance of permanent success where a party abandons its righteous principles to win favor of the opposing party. Mankind abhors the idea of abandoning friends in order to win the support of enemies. Considering that the Republican party had fallen away from the grand ideas of liberty, progress, and national unity in which it had originated, and no longer felt that it should protect the rights it had recognized in the Constitution, some of its foremost men lost their interest in its success, and others deserted outright, claiming that as there was now, on the Southern question, no difference between the two parties, there was therefore no choice. Even colored voters in the North, where in doubtful Republican States their votes are most important and can turn the scale for or against one or the other of the parties, began to advocate the withdrawal of their support from the old party by which they were made citizens and to join the Democratic party. Of this class I was not one. I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored man's cause than those of the Democratic party. The Democratic party was the party of reaction and the chosen party of the old master class. It was true to