Frederick Douglass: “A city newspaper, the Baltimore American, gave me the incendiary information denied me by the dictionary.”

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.

For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.

The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.

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