Frederick Douglass: “Until then the federal arm had been more than tolerant to that relict of barbarism.”

To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.

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

I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.