It has happened to me—as it has happened to most other men engaged in a good cause—often to be more indebted to my enemies than to my own skill or to the assistance of my friends, for whatever success has attended my labors.
In his autobiography, Douglass reflects on how opposition and criticism often inadvertently helped advance his abolitionist work.
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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.
Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.
It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.