Frederick Douglass

I used to contrast my condition with that of the black-birds, in whose wild and sweet songs I fancied them so happy.

So the great world was opening upon me, and I was eagerly acquainting myself with its multifarious lessons.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.

But regrets with slaves were unavailing: my wishes were nothing; my happiness was the sport of my master.

This was a hard thing to do; but after much reflection I reasoned myself into the conviction that there was no other way to do, and that after all there was no wrong in it.

To be sure, this was stealing, according to the law and gospel I heard from the pulpit; but I had begun to attach less importance to what dropped from that quarter on such points.

I have met many good religious colored people at the south, who were under the delusion that God required them to submit to slavery and to wear their chains with meekness and humility.

Light had penetrated the moral dungeon where I had lain, and I saw the bloody whip for my back, and the iron chain for my feet, and my good kind master, he was the author of my situation.

On the other hand, the slave was a fixture; he had no choice, no goal, but was pegged down to one single spot, and must take root there or nowhere.

There was no improvement in condition probable--no correspondence possible--no reunion attainable.

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.

The preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson, was the means of causing me to feel that in God I had such a friend.