Frederick Douglass: “I could see Harper's Ferry only as a trap of steel, and ourselves in the wrong side of it.”

I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.

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

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.