You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. - Frederick Douglass

This war, let it be long or let it be short, let it cost much or let it cost little... shall not cease until every freedman at the South has the right to vote.

Poets, prophets and reformers are all picture-makers — and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements. They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the contradiction,

I am just as white myself as I am black; and I am not afraid of the negro getting the upper hand in me... If you build the negro a church on every hill, and a schoolhouse in every valley, and endow them all for a hundred years, you will not make up for the wrongs you have done him. Who is it that asks for protection at the polls and for equal education? The men who came forth to clutch with iron fingers your faltering flag, and shed their blood for you, who protected the women and children of the South during the war, who have tilled your soil with their horny hands, and watered it with their tears!