It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a myth; it shrouded my father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning in the world.
Douglass describes how slavery fractured his family, turning his relatives into strangers and obscuring his origins, leaving him without a clear sense of identity.
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Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.