Frederick Douglass: “In conclusion let me say one word more of the soul of the nation and of the importance of keeping it sensitive and…”

To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.

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

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.

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