Frederick Douglass

The physical cruelties are indeed sufficiently harassing and revolting; but they are as a few grains of sand on the sea shore, or a few drops of water in the great ocean, compared with the stupendous wrongs which it inflicts upon the…

After lying there about three quarters of an hour, brooding over the singular and mournful lot to which I was doomed, my mind passing over the whole scale or circle of belief and unbelief, from faith in the overruling providence of God, to…

Slavery is always slavery; always the same foul, haggard, and damning scourge, whether found in the eastern or in the western hemisphere.

It makes no difference whether the slaveholder worships the God of the Christians, or is a follower of Mahomet, he is the minister of the same cruelty, and the author of the same misery.

There I was, in the deep woods, sick and emaciated, pursued by a wretch whose character for revolting cruelty beggars all opprobrious speech—bleeding, and almost bloodless.

There are no conflicting rights of property, for all the people are owned by one man; and they can themselves own no property.

Whether on the coast of Africa, among the savage tribes, or in South Carolina, among the refined and civilized, slavery is the same, and its accompaniments one and the same.

The very accompaniments of the slave system stamp it as the offspring of hell itself.

This was a daring step; if it failed, it would only exasperate Covey, and increase the rigors of my bondage, during the remainder of my term of service under him; but the step was taken, and I must go forward.

To eat the fruit of his own toil, to clothe his person with the work of his own hands, is considered stealing.

He can own nothing, possess nothing, acquire nothing, but what must belong to another.

Cruel and merciless as was the motive that dealt that blow, dear reader, the wound was fortunate for me.