Frederick Douglass

When I plead for recruits I want to do it with all my heart, without qualification.

In that terrible battle, under the wing of night, more cavils in respect of the quality of negro manhood were set at rest than could have been during a century of ordinary life and observation.

A death blow was then given to the slaveholding rebellion.

Until then the federal arm had been more than tolerant to that relict of barbarism.

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.

We kissed the hand that smote us, and spurned the hand that helped us.

I am free to say, my dear sir, that the case looks as if the confiding colored soldiers had been betrayed into bloody hands by the very government in whose defence they were heroically fighting.

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

The distance then between the black man and the white American citizen, was immeasurable.

I was an ex-slave, identified with a despised race; and yet I was to meet the most exalted person in this great republic.

I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man--one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt.

All the kindness I had received at Baltimore, all my former hopes and aspirations for usefulness in the world, and even the happy moments spent in the exercises of religion, contrasted with my then present lot, served but to increase my…