To allow a slave to escape punishment, who has impudently attempted to exculpate himself from unjust charges, preferred against him by some white person, is to be guilty of great dereliction of duty.
Douglass describes the perverse logic of slaveholders who believed it was a dereliction of duty to let a slave escape punishment for perceived impudence.
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True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal.
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.
I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.