Frederick Douglass: “He was in a word literally turned loose naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky.”

It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.

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

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.