Frederick Douglass: “The slave finds more of the milk of human kindness in the bosom of the savage Indian, than in the heart of his Christian…”

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.

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.

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

He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.