Frederick Douglass

If the slaves learnt to read, they would learn something else, and something worse.

His bare word would go further in a court of law, than the united testimony of ten thousand black witnesses.

The plea for this outrage was then, as it is now and at all times—the danger to good order.

Michael’s, like slaveholders elsewhere, would always prefer to see the slaves engaged in degrading sports, rather than to see them acting like moral and accountable beings.

His fame as an overseer went abroad, and his horrid crime was not even submitted to judicial investigation.

I early began to address my companions on the subject of education, and the advantages of intelligence over ignorance, and, as far as I dared, I tried to show the agency of ignorance in keeping men in slavery.

You may hurl a man so low, beneath the level of his kind, that he loses all just ideas of his natural position; but elevate him a little, and the clear conception of rights arises to life and power, and leads him onward.

That very convenient covert for all manner of cruelty and outrage that cowardly alarm-cry, that the slaves would “take the place,” was pleaded, in extenuation of this revolting crime, just as it had been cited in defense of a thousand…

Give him a bad master, and he aspires to a good master; give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master.

Beat and cuff your slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog; but, feed and clothe him well—work him moderately—surround him with physical comfort—and dreams of freedom intrude.

This devilish outrage, this fiendish murder, produced, as it was well calculated to do, a tremendous sensation.

The right to take my earnings, was the right of the robber.