Frederick Douglass: “Honest men no longer believe that there is any ground to apprehend Negro supremacy.”

We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.

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

We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.

The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.