Frederick Douglass: “But these are just the men who are valuable and who are wanted at home.”

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

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.

For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.

Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.