31. [Frederick Douglass], “An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage,” Atlantic Monthly (January 1867): 112-17.


Appeal for the extension of suffrage to black males. The author notes early in the address that African Americans are not going to go away. “For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,) the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the American population. They are too numerous and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by natural causes.” He ends with this observation about the Southern states during the early days of Reconstruction. “This evil principle [slavery] again seeks admission into our body politic. It comes now in shape of a denial of political rights to four million loyal colored people. The South does not now ask for slavery. It only asks for a large degraded caste, which shall have no political rights” (emphasis in original).