Frederick Douglass: “For my part, I had become altogether too big for my chains.”

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.

Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.

We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.