Frederick Douglass: “I was victorious, and well off for the moment; prouder, on my mother’s knee, than a king upon his throne.”

He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.

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

Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.

I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.