Frederick Douglass: “A master is one—to speak in the vocabulary of the southern states—who claims and exercises a right of property in the…”

Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance.

I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.

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.

He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.