Frederick Douglass: “We shall think more of a common cause and its requirements and less of obligation to support the claims of rival…”

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

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

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

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.