Cassius Clay on fear among white North workmen

White and Negro Labor. Among the many attempts to excite opposition to the President’s Proclamation, there is none more false, detestable and atrocious than the assertion that emancipation will bring Southern negroes to the North to compete with our workmen, and bring down the price of wages. In his speech at Brooklyn, N.Y.. pm Tuesday evening, Cassius M. Clay thus alluded to this prejudice:

       “Germans Irishmen, Frenchmen, why are you here at all? It is because you here find a government based upon the broad principle of         liberty to all humanity. ( Loud applause.)

       Show me the man who would today oppress a man on account of his color, and I will show you a man who will, should it meet his                 ends, oppress you tomorrow. But it is not true that this interference with your labor will take place in consequence of Emancipation.         Emancipation will, in fact, but concentrate black labor in the South.” 

                                                 (Liberator, October 24 , 1862, pg 3)