Thus, the light of this grand movement broke in upon my mind, by degrees; and I must say, that, ignorant as I then was of the philosophy of that movement, I believe in it from the first—and I believed in it, partly, because I saw that it alarmed the consciences of slaveholders.
Douglass explains his early, intuitive belief in the abolition movement, partly because he observed its unsettling effect on the consciences of slaveholders.
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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.