ugh to keep the metal running like water, was
more favorable to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a
newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while I was performing
the up and down motion of the heavy beam by which the bellows was
inflated and discharged. It was the pursuit of knowledge under
difficulties, and I look back to it now, after so many years, with some
complacency and a little wonder that I could have been so earnest and
persevering in any pursuit other than for my daily bread. I certainly
saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire me with such
interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands found to
do. I am glad to be able to say that, during my engagement in this
foundry, no complaint was ever made against me that I did not do my work,
and do it well. The bellows which I worked by main strength was, after I
left, moved by a steam-engine.

Douglass, Frederick. "Reconstruction."

Atlantic Monthly 18 (1866): 761-765.

RECONSTRUCTION

The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may
very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already
much-worn topic of reconstruction.

Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more
intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best
of reasons for this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left
undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled with
by this. No political skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands
statesmanship.

Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended
shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent
results,--a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,--a
strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to
liberty or civilization,--an attempt to re-establish a Union by force,
which must be the merest mockery of a Union,--an effort to bring under
Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may
safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate
with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their
deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other
hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have a
solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social
antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, a