Frederick Douglass

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave trade—the American slave trade sustained by American politics and American religion!

It is, however, a notable fact, that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans, upon those engaged in the foreign slave trade, the men engaged in the slave trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business…

Everywhere in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave trade as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man.

There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?

The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and…

For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.

Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would to-day pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.

Must I argue that a system, thus marked with blood and stained with pollution, is wrong?

There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race.