Frederick Douglass: “If a mother shall teach her children to read, the law in Louisiana proclaims that she may be hanged by the neck.”

My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.

I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.

We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.

The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.