Jan 1, 1855
My faculties and powers of body and soul are not my own, but are the property of a fellow mortal, in no sense superior to me, except that he has the physical power to compel me to be owned and controlled by him.
Frederick Douglass
The Public Record
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was "the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century".
gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1855
He that eat fastest got most, and he that was strongest got the best place; and few left the trough really satisfied.
Jan 1, 1855
Notwithstanding,” thought I, “the many resolutions and prayers I have made, in behalf of freedom, I am, this first day of the year 1836, still a slave, still wandering in the depths of spirit-devouring thralldom.
Jan 1, 1855
The slaveholder, kind or cruel, is a slaveholder still—the every hour violator of the just and inalienable rights of man; and he is, therefore, every hour silently whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat.
Jan 1, 1855
The pigs in the pen had leaves, and the horses in the stable had straw, but the children had no beds.
Jan 1, 1855
Thoughts and sentiments were exchanged between us, which might well be called very incendiary, by oppressors and tyrants; and perhaps the time has not even now come, when it is safe to unfold all the flying suggestions which arise in the…
Jan 1, 1855
They were as true as steel, and no band of brothers could have been more loving.
Jan 1, 1855
Such beams seem all the brighter from the general darkness into which they penetrate, and the impression they make is vividly distinct and beautiful.
Jan 1, 1855
It is not uncommon to charge slaves with great treachery toward each other, and to believe them incapable of confiding in each other; but I must say, that I never loved, esteemed, or confided in men, more than I did in these.
Jan 1, 1855
It is seldom the lot of mortals to have truer and better friends than were the slaves on this farm.
Jan 1, 1855
For such friendship I felt deeply grateful, and bitter as are my recollections of slavery, I love to recall any instances of kindness, any sunbeams of humane treatment, which found way to my soul through the iron grating of my house of…
Jan 1, 1855
Freeland—irreligious though he was—it must be stated, that he was the best master I ever had, until I became my own master, and assumed for myself, as I had a right to do, the responsibility of my own existence and the exercise of my own…