Frederick Douglass: “As a general rule, then, darkness reigns over the abodes of the enslaved, and “how great is that darkness!”

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

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.

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.