Frederick Douglass: “What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?”

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

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

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.