Frederick Douglass: “History has no better illustration of pure, disinterested benevolence.”

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

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.

It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.