From the public-domain record · 81,371 quotes
Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
The idea that annexation meant degradation to a colored nation, was altogether fanciful; there was no more dishonor to Santo Domingo in making her a State of the American union, than in making Kansas, Nebraska, or any other territory such…
Santo Domingo wanted to come under our government upon the terms thus described; and for more reasons than I can stop here to give, I then believed, and do now believe, it would have been wise to have received her into our sisterhood of…
He was not only the most clearsighted, brave, and uncompromising friend of my race who had ever stood upon the floor of the Senate, but was to me a loved, honored, and precious personal friend; a man possessing the exalted and matured…
I am free to say that, had I been guided only by the promptings of my heart, I should in this controversy have followed the lead of Charles Sumner.
As I review the last decade up to the present writing, I am impressed with a sense of completeness; a sort of rounding up of the arch to the point where the key stone may be inserted, the scaffolding removed, and the work, with all its…
Whatever of good or ill the future may have in store for me, the past at least is secure.
The fact is, and all investigation shows it, that I was married to a corpse.
I am inclined, on the whole, to believe it a tolerably good nature, yet instances do occur which oblige me to concede that men can and do act from mere personal and selfish motives.
The more I observed and learned the more my confidence diminished.
I had heard of golden dreams, but such dreams had no comparison with this reality.
It seemed fitting to me to cast in my lot with my brother freedmen, and help to build up an institution which represented their thrift and economy to so striking advantage; for the more millions accumulated there, I thought, the more…
The journal was valuable while it lasted, and the experiment was full of instruction to me, which has to some extent been heeded, for I have kept well out of newspaper undertakings since.
I had an audience ready made in the free States; one which the labors of thirty years had prepared for me, and before this audience the freedmen of the South needed an advocate as much as they needed a member of Congress.
Upon the whole, I have never regretted that I did not enter the arena of Congressional honors to which I was invited.
The thought of going to live among a people in order to gain their votes and acquire official honors, was repugnant to my self-respect, and I had not lived long enough in the political atmosphere of Washington to have this sentiment…
That I did not yield to this temptation was not entirely due to my age; for the idea did not square well with my better judgment and sense of propriety.
The adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments and their incorporation into the Constitution of the United States opened a very tempting field to my ambition, and one to which I should probably have yielded, had I been a younger…
Grant, with his characteristic nerve and clear perception of justice, promptly recommended the great amendment to the Constitution by which colored men are to-day invested with complete citizenship--the right to vote and to be voted for in…
As in the case of the abolition of slavery, the white people of the rebellious States have themselves to thank for its adoption.
In addition to the justice of the measure, it was soon commended by events as a political necessity.
I was called forward, and responded with all the energy of my soul, for I looked upon suffrage to the negro as the only measure which could prevent him from being thrust back into slavery.
I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their fathers.
I replied that there must be two sides to the relation of master and slave, and what was deemed kind and just to the one was the opposite to the other.
My separation had been as complete as if I had been an inhabitant of another planet.
