Frederick Douglass: “But the kindness of the slave-master only gilded the chain, it detracted nothing from its weight or strength.”

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.

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

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

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.