I will not stop to deny this claim, yet I fearlessly affirm that there is nothing in the history of savages to surpass the blood-chilling horrors and fiendish excesses perpetrated against the coloured people of this country, by the so-called enlightened and Christian people of the South.
Douglass contrasts the claimed civility of the nation with the brutal acts committed against African Americans, questioning moral superiority.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.
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.