Frederick Douglass

Driven into semi-exile by civil and barbarous laws, and by a system which cannot be thought of without a shudder, I was fully justified in turning, if possible, the tide of the moral universe against the heaven-daring outrage.

Slavery is a crime, not against Englishmen, but against God, and all the members of the human family; and it belongs to the whole human family to seek its suppression.

I took my stand on the high ground of human brotherhood, and spoke to Englishmen as men, in behalf of men.

Coming generations in this country will applaud the spirit of this much abused republican friend of freedom.

They are the people who sympathize with Louis Kossuth and Mazzini, and with the oppressed and enslaved, of every color and nation, the world over.

The main object to which my labors in Great Britain were directed, was the concentration of the moral and religious sentiment of its people against American slavery.

I felt that I had a duty to perform—and that was, to labor and suffer with the oppressed in my native land.

But for this, I might at any time become a victim of this most cruel and scandalous enactment, and be doomed to end my life, as I began it, a slave.

As I walked through the building, the statuary did not fall down, the pictures did not leap from their places, the doors did not refuse to open, and the servants did not say, “We don’t allow niggers in here!

They looked as sour as vinegar, and as bitter as gall, when they found I was to be admitted on equal terms with themselves.

This species of aristocracy belongs preeminently to “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” I have never found it abroad, in any but Americans.

Whatever may be said of the aristocracies here, there is none based on the color of a man’s skin.