Frederick Douglass: “The most interesting feature of my history here, was my learning to read and write, under somewhat marked disadvantages.”

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

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.

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

A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.