Frederick Douglass: “In its boldest days slavery drew in its claws and presented a velvet paw to strangers.”

Covey succeeded in breaking me--in body, soul, and spirit.

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.

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.

The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.