Thus, the light of this grand movement broke in upon my mind, by degrees; and I must say, that, ignorant as I then was of the philosophy of that movement, I believe in it from the first—and I believed in it, partly, because I saw that it alarmed the consciences of slaveholders.
Douglass explains his early, intuitive belief in the abolition movement, partly because he observed its unsettling effect on the consciences of slaveholders.
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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.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.