Frederick Douglass: “It was slavery, not its mere incidents I hated.”

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

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.

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.

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.