Frederick Douglass: “He was in a word literally turned loose naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky.”

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.

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.