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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: entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms,
based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way
or the other by the present session of Congress. The last session
really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions.
The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the proposed
constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized
as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot,
unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a
government by States to something like a despotic central government,
with power to control even the municipal regulations of States,
and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains
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