NEGROPhile

Democrat & Chronicle: “It is a pivotal period in our national history — the great day which is to determine the destiny not only of the American Republic, but that of the American Continent,” he wrote in his abolitionist paper Douglass’ Monthly.

“Far off in the after coming centuries, some Gibbon with truthful pen, will fix upon that date, as the beginning of a glorious rise, or of a shameful fall of the great American Republic. Unquestionably, for weal or for woe, the first of January is to be the most memorable day in American Annals…. But will that deed be done? Oh! That is the question: There is reason for both hope and fear.”