The over-work, and the brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought--“I am a slave--a slave for life--a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom”--rendered me a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes the overwhelming physical and psychological toll of slavery, which reduced him to a state of utter despair and wretchedness.
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It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
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.
It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.