Judge, then, of my amazement and joy, when I found—as I did find—the very laboring population of New Bedford living in better houses, more elegantly furnished—surrounded by more comfort and refinement—than a majority of the slaveholders on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
In his autobiography, Douglass describes his astonishment at the prosperity of free labor in New Bedford compared to slaveholding regions.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
A race which cannot save its earnings, which spends all it makes and goes in debt when it is sick, can never rise in the scale of civilization, no matter under what laws it may chance to be.
It is this, neither we, nor any other people, will ever be respected till we respect ourselves, and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectably.
Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the colored people have no reason to despair.