Frederick Douglass

Like is finding its like on either side of these great issues, and the great battle is at hand.

In their magnitude, these issues cast all others into the shade, depriving them of all life and vitality.

It is not probable that any open attempt to secure me as a slave could have succeeded, further than the obtainment, by my master, of the money value of my bones and sinews.

We ought to know who our enemies are, where they are, and what are their objects and measures.

The quiet prayer meeting, and the stormy halls of national debate, share its presence alike.

I could not always curb my moral indignation for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy, long enough for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost everybody must know.

You have seen it moving in all directions, and in all weathers, and in all places, appearing most where desired least, and pressing hardest where most resisted.

The nation has seen its face, and felt the controlling pressure of its hand.

The latter, it leads to the gates of all valuable knowledge—philanthropic, ethical, and religious; for it brings them to the study of man, wonderfully and fearfully made—the proper study of man through all time—the open book, in which are…

If to the enemies of liberty this subject is one of engrossing interest, vastly more so should it be such to freedom’s friends.

At this moment, I deem it safe to say, it is properly engrossing more minds in this country than any other subject now before the American people.

I take the anti-slavery movement to be such an one, and a movement as sublime and glorious in its character, as it is holy and beneficent in the ends it aims to accomplish.