In the state of Maryland, there is a law to this effect: that if a slave shall strike his master, he may be hanged, his head severed from his body, his body quartered, and his head and quarters set up in the most prominent places in the neighborhood.
This quote describes the extreme and brutal consequences faced by enslaved individuals who resist their masters.
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More from Frederick Douglass
The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.
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.