Frederick Douglass: “D—n you, if you move, I’ll knock your brains out!”

Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.

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.