Frederick Douglass

Under its lofty domes and stately pillars, as under the broad blue sky, all races and colors of men stand upon a footing of common equality.

It is national territory, and the one place where no American is an intruder or a carpet-bagger.

Elsewhere we may belong to a section, but here we belong to a whole country, and the whole country belongs to us.

Elsewhere we may belong to individual States, but here we belong to the whole United States.

The same boundless welcome is given to all American citizens by Washington.

In the remotest section of the republic, in the most distant parts of the globe, amid the splendors of Europe or the wilds of Africa, we are still held and firmly bound to this common center.

It belongs to us; and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered with shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny.

I am not such a fool as to decry a city in which I have invested my money and made my permanent residence.

It is the easiest thing in the world, as all editors know, to pervert the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech by simply giving isolated passages from the speech itself, without any qualifying connections.

You have a right to say what you please on that point; yet I think it would be only fair and generous to wait for some dereliction of duty on my part before I shall be adjudged as incompetent to fill the place.

But the most dreadful thing threatened, was a colored man at the Executive Mansion in white kid gloves, sparrow-tailed coat, patent leather boots, and alabaster cravat, performing the ceremony--a very empty one--of introducing the…

All sorts of reasons against my appointment, but the true one, were given, and that was withheld more from a sense of shame, than from a sense of justice.