Frederick Douglass

I saw that there was fear as well as rage in the manner of speaking of the abolitionists, and from this I inferred that they must have some power in the country, and I felt that they might perhaps succeed in their designs.

Thus the light of this grand movement broke in upon my mind by degrees; and I must say that ignorant as I was of the philosophy of that movement, I believed in it from the first, and I believed in it, partly, because I saw that it alarmed…

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.

I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted though I abhorred slavery more than ever.

I could teach him “the letter,” but he could teach me “the spirit,” and refreshing times we had together, in singing and praying.

His words made a very deep impression upon me, and I verily felt that some such work was before me, though I could not see how I could ever engage in its performance.

Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.

Slavery had no recognition of fathers, as none of families.

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.

One word of the appraisers, against all preferences and prayers, could sunder all the ties of friendship and affection, even to separating husbands and wives, parents and children.