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.
In his autobiography, Douglass recounts the moment he understood the deliberate mechanisms used by white men to maintain the institution of slavery.
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The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal.
It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.