I have met many religious colored people, at the south, who are under the delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains with meekness and humility.
Douglass observes that some enslaved people, influenced by religious teachings, mistakenly believed that God commanded their submission to slavery.
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We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.