Frederick Douglass

It was not color, but crime, not God, but man, that afforded the true explanation of the existence of slavery; nor was I long in finding out another important truth, viz: what man can make, man can unmake.

I knew of blacks who were not slaves; I knew of whites who were not slaveholders; and I knew of persons who were nearly white, who were slaves.

Did they go up in the sky and learn it? or, did He come down and tell them so?

Besides, how did people know that God made black people to be slaves?

It was not good to let old master cut the flesh off Esther, and make her cry so.

This was less satisfactory than the first statement; because it came, point blank, against all my notions of goodness.

By some means I learned from these inquiries that “God, up in the sky,” made every body; and that he made white people to be masters and mistresses, and black people to be slaves.

Why are some people slaves, and others masters?

From my heart I pitied her, and—child though I was—the outrage kindled in me a feeling far from peaceful; but I was hushed, terrified, stunned, and could do nothing, and the fate of Esther might be mine next.

The whole scene, with all its attendants, was revolting and shocking, to the last degree; and when the motives of this brutal castigation are considered,—language has no power to convey a just sense of its awful criminality.

He was cruelly deliberate, and protracted the torture, as one who was delighted with the scene.

I was now living in a new world, and was wide awake to its advantages.