Frederick Douglass: “This protection is given to the vilest white criminal in the land.”

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.