I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.
Douglass describes the profound despair he experienced as a slave, revealing that only the hope of freedom prevented him from taking his own life.
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Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.