The relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.

Douglass frames race relations not as a peripheral social issue but as the defining national problem of his era—“paramount” and “all-commanding.” The wording suggests urgency and moral inevitability: the United States cannot claim democratic legitimacy while the relationship between white and Black Americans is structured by domination, exclusion, or violence. By calling it a “question…to solve,” he implies that policy, law, and public conscience must be brought into alignment with justice, and that the nation’s future depends on doing so. The quote also reflects Douglass’s strategic insistence that Black freedom and citizenship are central to the American project, not a special-interest concern.