Two weeks after war had been declared, the orator, writer, and former slave Frederick Douglass wrote to clergyman William Sprague (1795–1876), “I find life no burden but rather a precious privilege. . . Once the cause of the country has become the cause of the slave, the difficulty of separating the one from the other, is a ground of hope that in the almost certain triumph of the country the cause of justice and freedom to the bondman will triumph.” Miscellaneous Slavery Collection, Manuscripts Division.
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