Slaves knew enough of the Orthodox theology at the time, to consign all bad slaveholders to hell, and they often fancied such persons wishing themselves back again to wield the lash.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes how enslaved people used their understanding of religion to cope with and condemn their oppressors.
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The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.