Frederick Douglass

It was one of those bleak and flinty nights, when prairie winds pierce like needles, and a step on the snow sounds like a file on the steel teeth of a saw.

My color was no longer offensive when it was supposed that I was not a person, but a piece of property.

I was allowed to ride in peace, not because I was a man, and had paid my fare, but because I belonged to somebody?

I thanked her with genuine earnestness, and from that moment I could see that her prejudices were more than half gone, and that I was more than half welcome at the fireside of this Democratic Senator.

I felt somewhat surprised that I could be so much at ease in such company, but I found it then, as I have since, that the higher the gradation in intelligence and refinement, the farther removed are all artificial distinctions, and…

It has been a part of my mission to expose the absurdity of this spirit of caste and in some measure help to emancipate men from its control.

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

That influence met me almost everywhere outside of pronounced anti-slavery circles, and sometimes even within them.

The abolition of slavery has not merely emancipated the negro, but liberated the whites; taken the lock from their tongues, and the fetters from their press.

The people of Harper’s Ferry have made wondrous progress in their ideas of freedom, of thought, and speech.

Everything about it is impressive, and suggestive of the transient character of human life and glory.

I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.