Hence with every reverse to the national arms, with every exulting shout of victory raised by the slaveholding rebels, I have implored the imperiled nation to unchain against her foes, her powerful black hand.
Douglass recounts his consistent appeals to the Union to enlist Black soldiers, especially in response to Confederate victories.
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The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.
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.
The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal.