Frederick Douglass: “This is the subject of my lecture this evening—what is the character of this institution?”

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.

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.

Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.

Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.