Frederick Douglass: “These were the excuses then depended upon, but never a word was then said or whispered about Negro outrages upon white…”

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

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

Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.

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.