Frederick Douglass

I want the slaveholder surrounded, as by a wall of anti-slavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring down in letters of light.

To tear off the mask from this abominable system, to expose it to the light of heaven, aye, to the heat of the sun, that it may burn and wither it out of existence, is my object in coming to this country.

Covey was to break me, I was to break them; break and be broken—such is life.

Slavery shrinks from the light; it hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved.

They want the hatchway shut down, that the monster may crawl in his den of darkness, crushing human hopes and happiness, destroying the bondman at will, and having no one to reprove or rebuke him.

They were property, so was I; they were to be broken, so was I.

It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a myth; it shrouded my father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning in the world.

He may work him, flog him, hire him out, sell him, and, in certain contingencies, kill him, with perfect impunity.

The law gives the master absolute power over the slave.

I need not tell any one who is acquainted with either the strength of the disposition of an untamed ox, that this order was about as unreasonable as a command to shoulder a mad bull!

A master is one—to speak in the vocabulary of the southern states—who claims and exercises a right of property in the person of a fellow-man.

In consideration of these facts, I feel that I have a right to speak, and to speak strongly.