Frederick Douglass: “As a means of recapturing their runaway property in human flesh the law was an utter failure.”

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

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.

I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.