Frederick Douglass: “If to the enemies of liberty this subject is one of engrossing interest, vastly more so should it be such to freedom’s…”

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

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

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.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.