The hardships imposed by this atrocious and shameless law were cruel and shocking, and yet only a few of all the fugitives of the Northern States were returned to slavery under its infamously wicked provisions.
Douglass observes that despite the cruel and shocking nature of the Fugitive Slave Act, it was largely ineffective in returning many fugitives to slavery.
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True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.
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.
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.