Frederick Douglass: “Some of my English friends greatly encouraged me to go forward, and I shall never cease to be grateful for their words…”

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

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