Ostensibly they were institutions of benevolence designed to mitigate the rigors of slave life, but practically they were a fraud instituted by human selfishness, the better to secure the ends of injustice and oppression.
Douglass exposes the deceptive nature of slave holidays, revealing them as tools of oppression rather than acts of kindness.
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True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.
Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.