The Exodus. While I would not underrate or deny that the colored people of the South have suffered and are still suffering great abuses and hardships - inhereted [sic] from a barbarous past condition, I may yet safely venture the opinion, that if they were generally and systematically, whipt [sic], starved and shot to death, and if the[struck: ir][inserted: re] were no rational ground of hope for speedy relief, it would be the duty as well as the instinct of these people to rise up not in squads of tens, or companies of hundreds, and move off to the North, but that thousands and tens of thousands should turn their backs upon the Sunny South, as Lot did upon Sodom and as the Hebrews did upon Egypt - even if they had to crawl away upon their hands and knees; and the fact that only the few leave and the millions remain behind - proves that their case is not quite so desperate as the advocates of Exodus would have us believe. Very truly yours Fredk.. Douglass - Washington May 19th 1879