Frederick Douglass

It is the line up to which the nation is destined to march--the law to which the nation’s life must ultimately conform.

It is a great thing to have the supreme law of the land on the side of justice and liberty.

We have declared before all the world that there shall be no denial of rights on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

We have laid the heavy hand of the constitution upon the matchless meanness of caste, as well as the hell-black crime of slavery.

In that instrument we have laid down the law, now and forever, that there shall be no slavery or involuntary servitude in this republic, except for crime.

It was the ruling wish, intention, and purpose of the loyal people after rebellion was suppressed, to have an end to the entire cause of that calamity by forever putting away the system of slavery and all its incidents.

He has a country, a flag, and a government, and may legally claim full and complete protection under the laws.

By the law and the constitution, the negro is a man and a citizen, and has all the rights and liberties guaranteed to any other variety of the human family, residing in the United States.

By law, by the constitution of the United States, slavery has no existence in our country.

Under a different name, we had the same, or a similar party, here; a party which despised the negro and consigned him to perpetual slavery; a party which was willing to allow the American Union to be shivered into fragments, rather than…

It was the tory party in England that fought the abolition party at home, and the same party it was, that favored our slaveholding rebellion.

But I remembered that during that war, there were two Englands, as there were two Americas, and that one was true to liberty while the other was true to slavery.