Frederick Douglass: “Give him a bad master, and he aspires to a good master; give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master.”

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

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

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.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.