Frederick Douglass

Whips, chains, gags, and thumb-screws have all lain under the droppings of the sanctuary, and instead of rusting from off the limbs of the bondman, those droppings have served to preserve them in all their strength.

Ministers of religion come forward and torture the hallowed pages of inspired wisdom to sanction the bloody deed.

Yes, the pulpit there stands up as the great defender of this cursed institution, as it is called.

Why, we have slavery made part of the religion of the land.

While America is printing tracts and bibles; sending missionaries abroad to convert the heathen; expending her money in various ways for the promotion of the gospel in foreign lands—the slave not only lies forgotten, uncared for, but is…

I have to inform you that the religion of the southern states, at this time, is the great supporter, the great sanctioner of the bloody atrocities to which I have referred.

No law whatever will bring the guilty man to justice for the crime.

I think no better exposure of slavery can be made than is made by the laws of the states in which slavery exists.

Are not such deeds condemned by the law and denounced by public opinion?

Can it be possible that such things as these exist in the United States?

She chose death, rather than to go back into the hands of those christian slaveholders from whom she had escaped.

She knew if she went back, she must be a slave forever—she must be dragged down to the scenes of pollution which the slaveholders continually provide for most of the poor, sinking, wretched young women, whom they call their property.