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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: the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have
come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance.
The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner
until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed,
were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while
their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which
they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?
It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion,
Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he,
was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered by fifty years
of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest
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