Frederick Douglass: “I hated slavery always, and my desire for freedom needed only a favorable breeze to fan it to a blaze at any moment.”

I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.

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.

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.