Frederick Douglass

They want the hatchway shut down, that the monster may crawl in his den of darkness, crushing human hopes and happiness, destroying the bondman at will, and having no one to reprove or rebuke him.

The slaveholders want total darkness on the subject.

Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is to the root of a tree; it must die under it.

Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.

I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it.

I feel it my duty to cry aloud and spare not.

I have on my back the marks of the lash; I have four sisters and one brother now under the galling chain.

The slaveholders would much rather have me, if I will denounce slavery, denounce it in the northern states, where their friends and supporters are, who will stand by and mob me for denouncing it.

I am here, also, because the slaveholders do not want me to be here; they would rather that I were not here.

I am here, because you have an influence on America that no other nation can have.

It is a system of such gigantic evil, so strong, so overwhelming in its power, that no one nation is equal to its removal.

He has been the prey—the common prey—of Christendom for the last three hundred years, and it is but right, it is but just, it is but proper, that his wrongs should be known throughout the world.