My strong aversion to the great farm, was not owing to my own personal suffering, but the daily suffering of others, and to the certainty that I must, sooner or later, be placed under the barbarous rule of an overseer, such as the accomplished Gore, or the brutal and drunken Plummer.
Douglass explains that his hatred for the plantation stemmed not only from his own potential suffering but also from witnessing the daily torment of others and the inevitable cruelty of overseers.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.