This had been so when she knew we were nearly half starved; and yet, that mistress, with saintly air, would kneel with her husband, and pray each morning that a merciful God would bless them in basket and in store, and save them, at last, in his kingdom.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes the religious hypocrisy of a slave mistress who prayed for blessings while neglecting her starving slaves.
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The old slave quarter that had before sheltered them, and the fields that had yielded them corn, were now denied them.
Some will be more successful than others, and poverty, in many cases, is the result of misfortune rather than of crime; but no race can afford to have all its members the victims of this misfortune, without being considered a worthless…
The fact that we have endured wrongs and hardships, which would have destroyed any other race, and have increased in numbers and public consideration, ought to strengthen our faith in ourselves and our future.