Frederick Douglass

The heart of pity, which would melt in due time over the brutal chastisements it sees inflicted on the helpless, must be hardened.

Every new-born white babe comes armed from the Eternal presence, to make war on slavery.

What may have been mechanically and heartlessly done by the overseer, is now done with a will.

To be a slave-holder is to be a propagandist from necessity; for slavery can only live by keeping down the under-growth morality which nature supplies.

The slave-holder is not satisfied to associate with men in the church or in the state, unless he can thereby stain them with the blood of his slaves.

It is the nature of slavery to beget a state of things all around it favorable to its own continuance.

There is another element of power added to the anti-slavery movement, of great importance; it is the conviction, becoming every day more general and universal, that slavery must be abolished at the south, or it will demoralize and destroy…

He will convince the slave that his wrath is far more terrible and boundless, and vastly more to be dreaded, than that of the underling overseer.

For men are always disposed to respect and defend rights, when the victims of oppression stand up manfully for themselves.

It has revealed the arrogant and overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states; despising their principles—shocking their feelings of humanity, not only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but by attempting…

It has illustrated before all the people the horrible character of slavery toward the slave, in hunting him down in a free state, and tearing him away from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher than marriage or parental claims.

Every measure, yet devised and executed, having for its object the suppression of anti-slavery, has been as idle and fruitless as pouring oil to extinguish fire.