Frederick Douglass

Each colored voter of the state should say in scripture phrase, 'may my hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth' if ever I raise my voice or give my vote to the nominee of the Democratic Party.

Suppose it be granted that Mr. Cleveland is a just man, and desires to protect colored citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights. What is he, and what is any man in the Presidential chair, without the support of his party? As …

It is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored to protect the negro in his right to vote. The whole moral power of the party has been, from first to last, on the side of justice to the negro; and it has only been baffled, in …

He told me much about himself in a very brief space, for he seemed to have more tongues than ears. I could not get a word in anywhere and you know I am too much in love with my own voice to like being suppressed and overtalked in that way, …

Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed…we were at times stunned, grieved, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled.

The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own individuality, not only in form and features, but in thought and feeling. And the same is true of woman. …

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever

the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has …

it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery

Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never …

Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.

we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds

The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with …

In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery

Detraction paves the way for the very perfections which it doubts and denies.

England laughed at American authorship and we sent her Emerson and Uncle Tom's Cabin

Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can …

I believe in individuality, but individuals are, to the mass, like waves to the ocean. The highest order of genius is as dependent as is the lowest.

Personal independence is a virtue and it is the soul out of which comes the sturdiest manhood. But there can be no independence without a large share of self-dependence, and this virtue cannot be bestowed. It must be developed from within.

In the United States, the slightest infusion of Teutonic blood is thought to be sufficient to account for any considerable degree of intelligence found under any possible color of the skin.

Jefferson was not ashamed to call the black man his brother and to address him as a gentleman.

No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.

Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached, in their glorious career that …