Slaves escaping, until now, had taken to the woods; they had never dreamed of profaning and abusing the waters of the noble Chesapeake, by making them the highway from slavery to freedom.
Douglass describes a novel escape strategy involving the Chesapeake Bay, transforming a natural barrier into a path to liberty.
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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.
True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.