Frederick Douglass: “With him, it is literally a word and a blow, and, in most cases, the blow comes first.”

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.

I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.

Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.