Frederick Douglass: “That phase is this: the conflict of slavery with the interests of the white mechanics and laborers of the south.”

The day we celebrate is preëminently the colored man’s day.

If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness.

We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.

We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.