do not consider us to be men then why does your government count us as three-fifths of a person for their census figures? Even more importantly, if we are not men, how can you have a child with one us? You did in fact have an illegitimate child with one of your slaves, didn’t you? Are we only men when it is convenient for you? This appears to be the case. If you would open your mind a little you would see that Negroes can become much more. Look at what some of your freed slaves have become. They are, as I stated in a recent speech, “…merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers.” As can be seen, we have the mental capability to become anything that your people have become. We are, however, so oppressed that it is difficult for us to show this intelligence, because we are given no means to become educated. In your Declaration of Independence, closely following the rights that you consider to be unalienable you state, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” This statement gave me cause to close a recent speech by saying, “…for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty million crush and destroy it forever.” Through this statement and the rest of speech I was illustrating that the government you created is strong in many respects, but needs to be restructured to include Negroes as people not the property you see them as. We need not abolish our current government; we must only alter it, as you state the people must do if the government does not honor the God given rights of a people.In order for this Union to be the nation you and I envision it to be, we cannot oppress those that can be of great aid to our nation. We must re...
