Frederick Douglass: “No word was said when free men from Massachusetts were caught and sold into slavery in Texas.”

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

The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.

Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.

To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.