Frederick Douglass: “I am,” thought I, “but the sport of a power which makes no account, either of my welfare or of my happiness.”

It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.