Frederick Douglass

He was to me no longer a slaveholder either in fact or in spirit, and I regarded him as I did myself, a victim of the circumstances of birth, education, law, and custom.

Our courses had been determined for us, not by us.

But now that the results of the war had changed all this, I had for several years determined to return to my old home upon the first opportunity.

The span of human life is too short for the repetition of events which occur at the distance of fifty years.

The people of Harper’s Ferry have made wondrous progress in their ideas of freedom, of thought, and speech.

The abolition of slavery has not merely emancipated the negro, but liberated the whites; taken the lock from their tongues, and the fetters from their press.

I thanked her with genuine earnestness, and from that moment I could see that her prejudices were more than half gone, and that I was more than half welcome at the fireside of this Democratic Senator.

I was allowed to ride in peace, not because I was a man, and had paid my fare, but because I belonged to somebody?

She spoke to the world through every line of her countenance.

My color was no longer offensive when it was supposed that I was not a person, but a piece of property.

No word of retaliation when a black man is slain by a rebel in cold blood.

My whole future depended upon the decision of this conductor.