Frederick Douglass: “It was the sober, thoughtful slave who was dangerous, and needed the vigilance of his master to keep him a slave.”

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

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

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