Frederick Douglass: “Those against whom the measure was directed were the land-owners, and they were not angels, but men, and, being men, it…”

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

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

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.

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