The remark in the olden time was not unfrequently made, that slaves were the most contented and happy laborers in the world, and their dancing and singing were referred to in proof of this alleged fact; but it was a great mistake to suppose them happy because they sometimes made those joyful noises.
Challenging a common pro-slavery argument, Douglass asserts that the singing and dancing of enslaved people were mistakenly interpreted as signs of contentment.
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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.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.
The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.