This arrangement admits of the greatest license to brutal slaveholders, and their profligate sons, brothers, relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin, the additional attraction of profit.
Douglass describes how the legal system of slavery encouraged sexual exploitation by slaveholders, turning illicit pleasure into a source of profit.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.