Date: 1845

"No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"Mr. Gore lived in St. Michael's, Talbot county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he is still alive, he very probably lives there now; and if so, he is now, as he was then, as highly esteemed and as much respected as though his guilty soul had not been stained with his brother's blood."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"I then presented an appearance enough to affect any but a heart of iron."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1845

"My soul was set all on fire."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: December 1847

"These were days when my heart was volcanic / As the scoriac rivers that roll-- / As the lavas that restlessly roll / Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek / In the ultimate climes of the pole."

— Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849)

Date: 1847

"I've dreamed in my life dreams that have staid with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind."

— Brontë, Emily (1818-1848)