Frederick Douglass: “Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking…”

No word of retaliation when a black man is slain by a rebel in cold blood.

If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness.

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

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