Frederick Douglass: “They have never been mistaken as to the historical difference between the party which gave them liberty and the party…”

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.

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.

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