What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?—what must be the condition of that people?
Douglass challenges the moral integrity of the United States by contrasting its stated ideals with the legal denial of marriage rights to enslaved people.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
Put us in Kansas or in Africa, and until we learn to save more than we spend, we are sure to sink and perish.
I will not listen, myself, and I would not have you listen to the nonsense, that no people can succeed in life among a people by whom they have been despised and oppressed.
The old slave quarter that had before sheltered them, and the fields that had yielded them corn, were now denied them.