Frederick Douglass: “It takes stout nerves to stand up, in such circumstances.”

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

Human liberty excludes all idea of home and abroad.

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.

No word of retaliation when a black man is slain by a rebel in cold blood.