Frederick Douglass

We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic.

We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers.

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…

It is the easiest thing in the world, as all editors know, to pervert the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech by simply giving isolated passages from the speech itself, without any qualifying connections.

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

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.

It is national territory, and the one place where no American is an intruder or a carpet-bagger.

Under its lofty domes and stately pillars, as under the broad blue sky, all races and colors of men stand upon a footing of common equality.

The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.

I may mention here an incident somewhat amusing and instructive, as it serves to illustrate how easily Americans could set aside their notoriously inveterate prejudice against color, when it stood in the way of their wishes, or when in an…