Eric Foner Quote
He accused Democrats of attempting to dehumanize the negro—to take away from him the right of ever striving to be a man…to make property, and nothing but property of the Negro in all the states of this Union. In the rhetorical high point of the seven debates, he identified the long crusade against slavery with the global progress of democratic egalitarianism: That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world…. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings…. It is the same spirit that says, You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it. No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.30 While
He accused Democrats of attempting to dehumanize the negro—to take away from him the right of ever striving to be a man…to make property, and nothing but property of the Negro in all the states of this Union. In the rhetorical high point of the seven debates, he identified the long crusade against slavery with the global progress of democratic egalitarianism: That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world…. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings…. It is the same spirit that says, You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it. No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.30 While
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About Eric Foner
Foner has published several books on the Reconstruction period, starting with
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 in 1988. His online courses on "The Civil War and Reconstruction", published in 2014, are available from Columbia University on ColumbiaX.
In 2011, Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010) won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Lincoln Prize, and the Bancroft Prize. Foner previously won the Bancroft Prize in 1989 for his book Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution - 1863–1877. In 2000, he was elected president of the American Historical Association. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.