Frederick Douglass

The freedom from bodily torture and unceasing labor, had given my mind an increased sensibility, and imparted to it greater activity.

There is not, beneath the sky, an enemy to filial affection so destructive as slavery.

The slaveholders want total darkness on the subject.

Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is to the root of a tree; it must die under it.

I am,” thought I, “but the sport of a power which makes no account, either of my welfare or of my happiness.

Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.

I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it.

Starvation made me glad to leave Thomas Auld’s, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to Covey’s.

The slave-woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her master.

I feel it my duty to cry aloud and spare not.

I have on my back the marks of the lash; I have four sisters and one brother now under the galling chain.

There was neither joy in my heart, nor elasticity in my step, as I started in search of the tyrant’s home.