Frederick Douglass
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in 1846
"The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider it purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither."
on 4/4/1852
"Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery."
on 19/1855
In addition to founding a newspaper and penning three autobiographies former slave is widely considered the most photographed American of the 19th century
in 1856
Portrait of Frederick Douglass from frontispiece and title page of his book My Bondage and My Freedom, published in 1856.
on 1/1862
"The great majority of human duties are of this negative character. If men were born in need of crutches, instead of having legs, the fact would be otherwise. We should then be in need of help, and would require outside aid; but according to the wiser and better arrangement of nature, our duty is done better by not hindering than by helping our fellow-men; or, in other words, the best way to help them is just to let them help themselves"
on 1/1862
"The great majority of human duties are of this negative character. If men were born in need of crutches, instead of having legs, the fact would be otherwise. We should then be in need of help, and would require outside aid; but according to the wiser and better arrangement of nature, our duty is done better by not hindering than by helping our fellow-men; or, in other words, the best way to help them is just to let them help themselves"
on 7/6/1863
"Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed."
on 7/6/1863
"[T]he Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government."
in 1872
"America is said, and not without reason, to be preeminently the home and patron of self-made men... Search where you will, there is no country on the globe where labor is so respected and the laborer so honored, as in this country."
in 1872
"We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting, and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put, and which, in both temporal and spiritual affairs, is the true miracle worker."
