Frederick Douglass

Alas, this immense wealth, this gilded splendor, this profusion of luxury, this exemption from toil, this life of ease, this sea of plenty were not the pearly gates they seemed to a world of happiness and sweet content.

The poor slave, on his hard pine plank, scantily covered with his thin blanket, slept more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclined upon his downy pillow.

In a free State, a master thus complaining without cause, might be told by his ostler: “Sir, I am sorry I cannot please you, but since I have done the best I can and fail to do so, your remedy is to dismiss me.” But here the ostler must…

These two men were both advanced in years; there were the silver locks of the master, and the bald and toil-worn brow of the slave--superior and inferior here, powerful and weak here, but equals before God.

The real feelings and opinions of the slaves were not much known or respected by their masters.

If it be broken toward the slave on Sunday, it will be toward the master on Monday.

The conviction once thoroughly established in her mind, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other, I was most narrowly watched in all my movements.

Filled with the determination to learn to read at any cost, I hit upon many expedients to accomplish that much desired end.

It is unnecessary to say that a dialogue with such an origin and such an end, read by me when every nerve of my being was in revolt at my own condition as a slave, affected me most powerfully.

If I had ever wavered under the consideration that the Almighty, in some way, had ordained slavery and willed my enslavement for his own glory, I wavered no longer.

For such friendship I was deeply grateful, and bitter as are my recollections of slavery, it is a true pleasure to recall any instances of kindness, any sunbeams of humane treatment, which found way to my soul, through the iron grating of…

He had written his character on the living parchment of most of their backs, and left them seamed and callous; my back (thanks to my early removal to Baltimore) was yet tender.