Frederick Douglass: “Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the colored people have no reason to despair.”

He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.

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

Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.