Frederick Douglass: “England can take no step forward in the pathway of a higher civilization without drawing us in the same direction.”

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.

Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance.

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