Frederick Douglass: “Two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and identified negro…”

On the record

Two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and identified negro slaves as property.

Said by

Frederick Douglass

Source

Douglass highlights the legal and societal acceptance of slavery as property, critiquing the dehumanization of enslaved individuals.

More from Frederick Douglass

Jan 1, 1881

In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.

Jan 1, 1881

Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.

Jan 1, 1881

They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.

Jan 1, 1881

No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.

Frederick Douglass: “Two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and identified negro slaves as property.”