Frederick Douglass

Pregnant words were now spoken on the side of freedom, words which went straight to the heart of the nation.

This more than all else told the thoughtful people of the North the kind of civilization to which they were linked, and how plainly it foreshadowed a conflict on a larger scale.

Shocking and scandalous as was this attack, the spirit in which the deed was received and commended by the community, was still more disgraceful.

The more open, flagrant, and impudent the slave power, the more firmly it was confronted by the rising anti-slavery spirit of the North.

Those who cared nothing for the slave, and were willing to tolerate slavery inside the slave States, were nevertheless not quite prepared to find themselves and their children excluded from the common inheritance of the nation.

The presence of slavery in a territory would certainly exclude the sons and daughters of the free States more effectually than statutes or yellow fever.

The people of the North had been accustomed to ask, in a tone of cruel indifference, “What have we to do with slavery?” and now no labored speech was required in answer.

Every body, however dull, could see that this was a phase of the slavery question which was not to be slighted or ignored.

There are many respectable colored men, fathers of large families, having boys nearly grown up, whose minds are tossed by day and by night with the anxious inquiry, what shall I do with my boys?

Indeed, even those who cherish the bitterest feelings towards us have admitted that the apprehension that negroes might be employed in their stead, dictated the policy of excluding them from trades altogether.

There is no question in the mind of any unprejudiced person that the Negro is capable of making a good mechanic.

The most telling, the most killing refutation of slavery, is the presentation of an industrious, enterprising, thrifty, and intelligent free black population.