Frederick Douglass

The more I observed and learned the more my confidence diminished.

I had heard of golden dreams, but such dreams had no comparison with this reality.

It seemed fitting to me to cast in my lot with my brother freedmen, and help to build up an institution which represented their thrift and economy to so striking advantage; for the more millions accumulated there, I thought, the more…

The journal was valuable while it lasted, and the experiment was full of instruction to me, which has to some extent been heeded, for I have kept well out of newspaper undertakings since.

I had an audience ready made in the free States; one which the labors of thirty years had prepared for me, and before this audience the freedmen of the South needed an advocate as much as they needed a member of Congress.

Upon the whole, I have never regretted that I did not enter the arena of Congressional honors to which I was invited.

The thought of going to live among a people in order to gain their votes and acquire official honors, was repugnant to my self-respect, and I had not lived long enough in the political atmosphere of Washington to have this sentiment…

That I did not yield to this temptation was not entirely due to my age; for the idea did not square well with my better judgment and sense of propriety.

The adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments and their incorporation into the Constitution of the United States opened a very tempting field to my ambition, and one to which I should probably have yielded, had I been a younger…

Grant, with his characteristic nerve and clear perception of justice, promptly recommended the great amendment to the Constitution by which colored men are to-day invested with complete citizenship--the right to vote and to be voted for in…

As in the case of the abolition of slavery, the white people of the rebellious States have themselves to thank for its adoption.

In addition to the justice of the measure, it was soon commended by events as a political necessity.