The more the question has been settled, the more it has needed settling. The first settlement stood fifteen years, the second ten, the third five, the fourth four — and the fifth has stood the brief space of two years. This last must be called the Taney settlement.
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The post above is condensed. From the original, word for word
"The fact is, the more the question has been settled, the more it has needed settling. The space between the different settlements has been strikingly on the decrease. [...] The first stood fifteen years — the second, ten years- — the third, five years — the fourth stood four years — and the fifth has stood the brief space of two years. [...] This last settlement must be called the Taney settlement."
Between the posts · the narrator, not the paper
May 14. In New York, at the anniversary meeting of the American Abolition Society, the decision is answered by a man it says can never be a citizen.
From the pamphlet Douglass printed at his own press in Rochester later that year. He is counting the compromises — 1820, 1833, 1845, 1850, 1854, and now 1857 — and pointing out that each one holds for less time than the last. The stray hyphen after "ten years" is in the pamphlet's own printing.
Read it in the original — Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass (Rochester, 1857) ↗