Frederick Douglass: “Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the colored people have no reason to despair.”

We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.

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.

Slavery had no recognition of fathers, as none of families.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.