Whatever of comfort is necessary to him for his body or soul that is inconsistent with his being property, is carefully wrested from him, not only by public opinion, but by the law of the country.
Douglass details how both law and society conspired to deny enslaved people any comfort or dignity that might challenge their status as property.
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Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.
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.
The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.