It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark, under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man.
Douglass describes how slavery severs the enslaved person's connection to God and divine law, subjecting them to the arbitrary will of another human.
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We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.
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.
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.