Frederick Douglass: “That day’s work I considered the real starting point of something like a new existence.”

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

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

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

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.