When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
Douglass uses vivid imagery to assert that the humanity of enslaved people is so self-evident that only when animals fail to recognize it will he debate the point.
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More from Frederick Douglass
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.
It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.