Frederick Douglass: “The nation has seen its face, and felt the controlling pressure of its hand.”

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

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

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

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.