Frederick Douglass: “By this fact we have said to the world that we are not sufficiently united as a people to celebrate our freedom…”

It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.

I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.

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.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.