Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty.
Douglass explains how his master's religious conversion provided a new, perverse justification for his cruelty, replacing his former reliance on personal depravity.
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Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.