Frederick Douglass: “The reader will easily see that I had something more than the simple fact of being free to think of, in this extremity.”

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.

The day we celebrate is preëminently the colored man’s day.

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

True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.