Frederick Douglass

All sorts of reasons against my appointment, but the true one, were given, and that was withheld more from a sense of shame, than from a sense of justice.

But the most dreadful thing threatened, was a colored man at the Executive Mansion in white kid gloves, sparrow-tailed coat, patent leather boots, and alabaster cravat, performing the ceremony--a very empty one--of introducing the…

I am not such a fool as to decry a city in which I have invested my money and made my permanent residence.

It belongs to us; and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered with shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny.

The same boundless welcome is given to all American citizens by Washington.

Elsewhere we may belong to individual States, but here we belong to the whole United States.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.

He is an owner of the marble grandeur which he beholds about him,--as much so as any of the forty millions of this great nation.

Its fall would be a blow to freedom and progress throughout the world.

From this condition, shocking for a southern man to contemplate, it is now seen that nothing less powerful than the naked iron arm of the negro, can save her.

It may or may not be true that my complexion was the cause of this departure, but no man has any right to assume that position in advance of a plain declaration to that effect by President Hayes himself.

Hence it is seen that the dependence of the planters, land-owners, and old master-class of the South upon the negro, however galling and humiliating to Southern pride and power, is nearly complete and perfect.