Frederick Douglass: “Public opinion in such a quarter, the reader will see, is not likely to very efficient in protecting the slave from…”

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

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.

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.