Frederick Douglass

Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers.

The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony.

That phase was this--the conflict of slavery with the interests of white mechanics and laborers.

He had grown and become a man: I, though grown to the stature of manhood, must all my life remain a minor--a mere boy.

In childhood he had considered me scarcely inferior to himself,--certainly quite as good as any other boy with whom he played--but the time had come when his friend must be his slave.

Here was a broad road leading to the destruction of slavery, which had hitherto been looked upon as a wall of security by the slaveholders.

The prospect from that point did look about as dark as any that ever cast its gloom over the vision of the anxious, out-looking human spirit.

The promise had but one fault--it seemed too good to be true.

Lead and steel were the only arguments that they were capable of appreciating, as the events of the subsequent years have proved.

I had hoped and expected much, for months before, but my hopes and expectations were now withered and blasted.

I was solitary and alone within the walls of a stone prison, left to a fate of life-long misery.

Why should these young men, who were led into this scheme by me, suffer as much as the instigator?