Frederick Douglass: “It is a proclamation of the helplessness of the Nation to protect its own citizens.”

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

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.

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

It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.