Frederick Douglass

For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.

Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.

Action! not criticism, is the plain duty of this hour.

Words are now useful only as they stimulate to blows.

They tell you this is the ‘white man’s war’; that you will be no ‘better off after than before the war’; that the getting of you into the army is to ‘sacrifice you on the first opportunity.’ Believe them not; cowards themselves, they do…

The counsel I give comes of close observation of the great struggle now in progress, and of the deep conviction that this is your hour and mine.

I am authorized to assure you that you will receive the same wages, the same rations, the same equipments, the same protection, the same treatment, and the same bounty, secured to white soldiers.

More than twenty years of unswerving devotion to our common cause may give me some humble claim to be trusted at this momentous crisis.

The iron gate of our prison stands half open.

One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty.

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

No thief was ever more artful in his devices than this man Covey.