If kindness were the rule, we should not see advertisements filling the columns of almost every southern newspaper, offering large rewards for fugitive slaves, and describing them as being branded with irons, loaded with chains, and scarred by the whip.
From his autobiography, Douglass refutes the idea of benevolent slavery by pointing to the widespread, brutal advertisements for runaway slaves.
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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.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.