My master, who I did not venture to hope would protect me as a man, had even now refused to protect me as his property; and had cast me back, covered with reproaches and bruises, into the hands of a stranger to that mercy which was the soul of the religion he professed.
Douglass recounts his master's refusal to protect him, revealing the profound hypocrisy of a man who professed religion while denying basic mercy to his enslaved property.
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A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
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.