Frederick Douglass on Republican Party (United States)

“Well, now the American people have returned the Republican Party to power; and the question is, what will it do?”

“I recognize the Republican Party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.”

“If the Republican Party shall fail to carry out this purpose, God will raise up another party that will be faithful.”

“The Republican Party is not perfect; it is cautious even to the point of timidity; but it is the best friend we have.”

“I knew that however bad the Republican Party was, the Democratic Party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican Party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored man's cause than those of the Democratic party.”

“The Supreme Court has surrendered. State sovereignty is restored. It has destroyed the civil rights Bill, and converted the Republican party into a party of money rather than a party of morals, a party of things rather than a party of humanity and justice. We may well ask what next?”

“It is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored to protect the negro in his right to vote. The whole moral power of the party has been, from first to last, on the side of justice to the negro; and it has only been baffled, in its efforts to protect the negro in his vote, by the Democratic Party.”

“Gentleman, I am a republican, a radical republican, a Black republican, a republican dyed in the wool, and for one I want the republican party to live as long as I do… It is the party of law and order, of liberty and progress, of honor and honesty, as against disloyalty, moral stagnation, dishonest voting, and repudiation.”

“For a dozen years and more the Republican Party has seemed in a measure paralyzed in the presence of high-handed fraud and brutal violence toward its newly-made citizens. The question now is, will it regain its former health, activity, and power? Will it be as true to its friends in the South as the Democratic Party has been to its friends in that section, or will it sacrifice its friends to conciliate its enemies? ... Not only the negro but all honest men, north and south, must hold the Republican Party in contempt if it fails to do its whole duty at this point. The Republican Party has made the colored man free, and the Republican Party must make him secure in his freedom, or abandon its pretensions.”

“There is no race problem before the country, but only a political one, the question whether a Republican has any right to exist south of Mason and Dixon's line... The good Lord had had a chance for a long time before the abolition. I believe that there is a moral government; and that God reigns. I am no pessimist; I give thanks to the good Lord, and also to the good men through whom He has worked. Prominent among them was Garrison, and scarcely less so was Phillips. It was they and their associates who made Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party possible. What abolished slavery was the moral sentiment which had been created, not by the pulpit, but by the Garrisonian platform. The churches did not do much to abolish slavery; but they did much to keep the agitation down.”