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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory
before the war has been made fact by the war.
There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive teacher,
though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come to us,
and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never
a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means
of progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed
and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings
for manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative,
and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression,
the result is the same,--society is instructed, or may be.
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