Frederick Douglass: “Such a pretence is absurd and shameless upon the face of it.”

Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.

Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.

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

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.