Frederick Douglass: “It is just here, that lions spring up in the path of duty, and the battle once fought in heaven is refought on the…”

It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

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.

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.