Frederick Douglass: “The practical construction of American life is a convention against us.”

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

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.

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

He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.