Frederick Douglass: “Dark, desperate, and forlorn as I have described the situation, the reality exceeds the description.”

Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.

Everywhere in the south the colored man is learning to read.

In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.

The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.