They have to deal not with earth, wood, or stone, but with men; and, by every regard they have for their safety and prosperity, they must study to know the material on which they are at work.
In his autobiography, Douglass explains why slaveholders meticulously study the human nature of enslaved people to ensure their own security and economic interests.
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More from Frederick Douglass
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.