Frederick Douglass

If he stole he but took his own; if he killed his master, he only imitated the heroes of the revolution.

Slaveholders made it almost impossible for the slave to commit any crime, known either to the laws of God or to the laws of man.

I am,” I thought, “not only the slave of Master Thomas, but I am the slave of society at large.

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.

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.

I was not without the suggestion, at the moment, that it might be the harbinger of the coming of the Son of man; and in my then state of mind I was prepared to hail Him as my friend and deliverer.

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

She was nevertheless a slave--a slave for life--a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small…

While she lived, I felt that I had a strong friend to plead for me in any emergency.

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.

I had known what it was to experience kind and even tender treatment; they had known nothing of the sort.

In contemplating the likelihoods and possibilities of our circumstances, I probably suffered more than most of my fellow-servants.