" The northern people have been long connected with slavery; they have been linked to a decaying corpse; which has destroyed the moral health. The union of the government; the union of the north and the south, in the political parties; the union in the religious organizations of the land, have all served to deaden the moral sense of the northern people, and to impregnate them with sentiments and ideas forever in conflict with what as a nation we call genius of American institutions. "

― Frederick Douglass , My Bondage and My Freedom