Frederick Douglass: “Further on let us ask: Of what avail would be our cloud-capped towers, our gorgeous palaces, and our solemn temples if…”

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

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

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.