Frederick Douglass: “A freeman cannot understand why the slave-master’s shadow is bigger, to the slave, than the might and majesty of a free…”

Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.

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.

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.

It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.