"What a world of inconsistency, as well as of wickedness, is suggested by the smooth and gliding phrase, AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE; and how strange and perverse is that moral sentiment which loathes, execrates, and brands as piracy and as deserving of death the carrying away into captivity men, women, and children from the African coast; but which is neither shocked nor disturbed by a similar traffic, carried on with the same motives and purposes, and characterized by even more odious peculiarities on the coast of our MODEL REPUBLIC. We execrate and hang the wretch guilty of this crime on the coast of , while we respect and applaud the guilty participators in this murderous business on enlightened shores of the Chesapeake. The inconsistency is so flagrant and glaring, that it would seem to cast a doubt on the doctrine of the innate moral sense of mankind."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Civil rights activistsEditors from the United StatesAbolitionistsPublishers from the United StatesJournalists from Maryland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (c. February 1818 – 20 February 1895) was an American abolitionist, orator, author, editor, reformer, women's rights advocate, and statesman during the American Civil War. He was born a slave in Maryland, as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.
304 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Frederick Douglass →
Related Quotes
"A simple leaden bullet and a few grains of powder are sufficient in the shortest limit of time to blast and ruin all …"
"If I have done anything for the colored people, it is in a great measure due to my having had the good - fortune, whe…"
"Each colored voter of the state should say in scripture phrase, 'may my hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave …"
"It is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored to protect the negro in his right to vote. The whole mora…"
"Fellow citizens, there is little necessity on this occasion to speak at length and critically of this great and good …"
"I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the co…"
"The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and r…"
"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."
"Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed…we were at times stunned, grieved…"
"Suppose it be granted that Mr. Cleveland is a just man, and desires to protect colored citizens in the exercise of th…"