Frederick Douglass: “Rather bear those ills we had Than fly to others which we knew not of.”

Human liberty excludes all idea of home and abroad.

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.

Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.

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.