Frederick Douglass

If in these lectures I did not make abolitionists I did succeed in making tolerant the moral atmosphere in Rochester; so much so, indeed, that I came to feel as much at home there as I had ever done in the most friendly parts of New…

But for the responsibility of conducting a public journal, and the necessity imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists outside of New England, I should in all probability have remained firm in my disunion views.

To those with whom I had been in agreement and in sympathy, I came to be in opposition.

This radical change in my opinions produced a corresponding change in my action.

A slave, brought up in the depths of ignorance, assuming to instruct the highly civilized people of the north in the principles of liberty, justice, and humanity!

Very much that was said to me in respect to my imperfect literary attainments, I felt to be most painfully true.

For the first time in the many months spent abroad, I was met with proscription on account of my color.

The grand thing to be done, therefore, was to change this estimation, by disproving his inferiority and demonstrating his capacity for a more exalted civilization than slavery and prejudice had assigned him.

How such a project would have succeeded I do not know, but many reasons led me to prefer that my friends should simply give me the means of obtaining a printing press and materials, to enable me to start a paper, advocating the interests…

I felt it my duty to labor and suffer with my oppressed people in my native land.

For myself, viewing it simply in the light of a ransom, or as money extorted by a robber, and my liberty of more value than one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, I could not see either a violation of the laws of morality or of economy.

I should like to write a book on those countries, if for nothing else, to make grateful mention of the many dear friends whose benevolent actions towards me are ineffaceably stamped upon my memory, and warmly treasured in my heart.