When first the rebel cannon shattered the walls of Sumpter and drove away its starving garrison, I predicted that the war then and there inaugurated would not be fought out entirely by white men.
Douglass recalls his early prediction, made at the start of the Civil War, that Black men would inevitably play a crucial role in the conflict.
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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.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.
Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.