Frederick Douglass: “We could see no spot, this side of the ocean, where we could be free.”

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

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

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.