It was seldom that a slave, however venerable, was honored with a surname in Maryland, and so completely has the south shaped the manners of the north in this respect that their right to such honor is tardily admitted even now.
From his autobiography, Douglass critiques the dehumanizing practice of denying surnames to enslaved people and notes how this prejudice influenced even northern society.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.
His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal.