In that terrible battle, under the wing of night, more cavils in respect of the quality of negro manhood were set at rest than could have been during a century of ordinary life and observation.
Douglass asserts that the 54th Massachusetts Regiment's performance at Fort Wagner definitively silenced doubts about the courage and capability of Black men.
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It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.