Frederick Douglass

The thought of being only a creature of the present and the past troubled me, and I longed to have a future--a future with hope in it.

I hated slavery always, and my desire for freedom needed only a favorable breeze to fan it to a blaze at any moment.

The thought that men are made for other and better uses than slavery throve best under the gentle treatment of a kind master.

But the kindness of the slave-master only gilded the chain, it detracted nothing from its weight or strength.

He never lisped a syllable in commendation of the fathers of this republic without inviting the sword, and asserting the right of rebellion for his own slaves.

The slaveholder, were he kind or cruel, was a slaveholder still, the every-hour-violator of the just and inalienable rights of man, and he was therefore every hour silently but surely whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat.

We never undertook anything of any importance which was likely to affect each other, without mutual consultation.

It was not uncommon to charge slaves with great treachery toward each other, but I must say I never loved, esteemed, or confided in men more than I did in these.

Freeland, irreligious though he was, it must be stated that he was the best master I ever had until I became my own master and assumed for myself, as I had a right to do, the responsibility of my own existence and the exercise of my own…

In this Christian country men and women were obliged to hide in barns and woods and trees from professing Christians, in order to learn to read the Holy Bible.

Those dear souls who came to my Sabbath-school came not because it was popular or reputable to do so, for they came with a liability of having forty stripes laid on their naked backs.

What crimes may not be committed under such ruling!