Frederick Douglass

It had not been a war of conquest, but rather a war of conciliation.

The key to the situation was the four million of slaves; yet the slave who loved us, was hated, and the slaveholder who hated us, was loved.

Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance.

No word was said when free men from Massachusetts were caught and sold into slavery in Texas.

What ought to have been done at the beginning, comes late, but it comes.

It really seems that nothing of justice, liberty, or humanity can come to us except through tears and blood.

I entered it with a moderate estimate of my own consequence, and yet there I was to talk with, and even to advise, the head man of a great nation.

I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the presence of a great man, than in that of Abraham Lincoln.

In all this I saw the tender heart of the man rather than the stern warrior and commander-in-chief of the American army and navy, and while I could not agree with him, I could but respect his humane spirit.

I was not satisfied, yet I left in the full belief that the true course to the black man’s freedom and citizenship was over the battle-field, and that my business was to get every black man I could into the Union armies.

To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.

It is a more cheerful thing to be able to say I was born here and know all the people, than to say I am a stranger here and know none of the people.