Frederick Douglass: “Slavery shrinks from the light; it hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved.”

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.

Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.

Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.

The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.