Summoned away to her account, with the impassable gulf of slavery between us during her entire illness, my mother died without leaving me a single intimation of who my father was.
From his autobiography, Douglass reflects on the tragic circumstances of his mother's death and the mystery of his parentage due to slavery.
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His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.