Frederick Douglass: “By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril.”

A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.

True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.

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

We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.