It is the easiest thing in the world, as all editors know, to pervert the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech by simply giving isolated passages from the speech itself, without any qualifying connections.
In his autobiography, Douglass critiques the media's power to distort meaning by selectively quoting from speeches, highlighting the importance of context.
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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.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.