Frederick Douglass

I was not satisfied, yet I left in the full belief that the true course to the black man’s freedom and citizenship was over the battle-field, and that my business was to get every black man I could into the Union armies.

In all this I saw the tender heart of the man rather than the stern warrior and commander-in-chief of the American army and navy, and while I could not agree with him, I could but respect his humane spirit.

I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man--one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt.

I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the presence of a great man, than in that of Abraham Lincoln.

I entered it with a moderate estimate of my own consequence, and yet there I was to talk with, and even to advise, the head man of a great nation.

I was an ex-slave, identified with a despised race; and yet I was to meet the most exalted person in this great republic.

The distance then between the black man and the white American citizen, was immeasurable.

It really seems that nothing of justice, liberty, or humanity can come to us except through tears and blood.

What ought to have been done at the beginning, comes late, but it comes.

I am free to say, my dear sir, that the case looks as if the confiding colored soldiers had been betrayed into bloody hands by the very government in whose defence they were heroically fighting.

No word was said when free men from Massachusetts were caught and sold into slavery in Texas.

No word of retaliation when a black man is slain by a rebel in cold blood.