Frederick Douglass: “Slavery provides no means for the honorable continuance of the race.”

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.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.