Frederick Douglass: “We stand to-day only in the twilight of American liberty.”

A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.

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

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.

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.