I am inclined, on the whole, to believe it a tolerably good nature, yet instances do occur which oblige me to concede that men can and do act from mere personal and selfish motives.
Douglass shares his considered view on human nature, acknowledging both its general goodness and the reality of selfish actions.
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Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.