"The Almighty has fixed the distinction of the races; the Almighty has made the black man inferior, and sir, by no legislation, by no partisan success, by no revolution, by no military power, can you wipe out this distinction"
About this Quote
Wood is doing something brutally efficient here: laundering a political project through theology. By invoking "The Almighty" twice in quick succession, he tries to move the argument out of the messy arena of policy and into the supposedly untouchable realm of cosmic fact. If God "fixed" racial hierarchy, then anyone who challenges it isnt just wrong; theyre impious, arrogant, committing a kind of civic blasphemy. The repetition is a rhetorical vise: it narrows the space for debate until dissent looks like rebellion against the universe itself.
The phrasing "by no legislation, by no partisan success, by no revolution, by no military power" is equally telling. Wood lists the very instruments of democratic change and national transformation as if theyre futile, even dangerous. Hes warning that Reconstruction-era politics (or any antislavery advance) is an unnatural imposition, destined to fail because it violates a permanent order. Subtext: the real threat isnt to "distinction" but to white political dominance, labor control, and social standing. By calling equality a fantasy that force cannot sustain, he pre-emptively delegitimizes federal authority and arms his audience with a moral alibi for resistance.
Context matters: Wood was a major New York Democrat and former mayor, part of a Northern political current that opposed abolition and later fought Black civil rights while branding itself as realistic and constitutional. The quote is propaganda in clerical costume, designed to turn a contingent power arrangement into fate - and to make the defense of that arrangement feel like humility rather than domination.
The phrasing "by no legislation, by no partisan success, by no revolution, by no military power" is equally telling. Wood lists the very instruments of democratic change and national transformation as if theyre futile, even dangerous. Hes warning that Reconstruction-era politics (or any antislavery advance) is an unnatural imposition, destined to fail because it violates a permanent order. Subtext: the real threat isnt to "distinction" but to white political dominance, labor control, and social standing. By calling equality a fantasy that force cannot sustain, he pre-emptively delegitimizes federal authority and arms his audience with a moral alibi for resistance.
Context matters: Wood was a major New York Democrat and former mayor, part of a Northern political current that opposed abolition and later fought Black civil rights while branding itself as realistic and constitutional. The quote is propaganda in clerical costume, designed to turn a contingent power arrangement into fate - and to make the defense of that arrangement feel like humility rather than domination.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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