I had very strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of the comforts, and scarcely any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at the north, compared with what were enjoyed by the slaveholders of the south.
Douglass describes his mistaken belief, formed during his enslavement, that the North lacked the comforts and luxuries he associated with Southern slaveholders.
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More from Frederick Douglass
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.
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 good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.