Frederick Douglass: “Our countrymen in chains, The whip on woman’s shrinking flesh, Our soil yet reddening with the stains Caught from her…”

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.

Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance.

Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.