Frederick Douglass: “Apply these sublime and glorious truths to the situation now before you.”

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.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.