Frederick Douglass

I could be robbed by indirection, but this was too open and barefaced to be endured.

The practice from week to week of openly robbing me of all my earnings, kept the nature and character of slavery constantly before me.

The man who takes his earnings must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so.

The right to take my earnings was the right of the robber.

He did not earn it; he had no hand in earning it; why, then, should he have it?

I was living among freemen, and was in all respects equal to them by nature and attainments.

The slightest show of sympathy or justice toward a person of color was denounced as abolitionism; and the name of abolitionist subjected its bearer to frightful liabilities.

To strike a white man was death by lynch law, in Gardiner’s ship-yard; nor was there much of any other law toward the colored people at that time in any other part of Maryland.

As I look back to this period, I am almost amazed that I was not murdered outright, so murderous was the spirit which prevailed there.

The impression was cunningly made that slavery was the only power that could prevent the laboring white man from falling to the level of the slave’s poverty and degradation.

The slaveholders blinded them to this competition by keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves as men--not against them as slaves.

The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he was flung into…