The slaveholder, were he kind or cruel, was a slaveholder still, the every-hour-violator of the just and inalienable rights of man, and he was therefore every hour silently but surely whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat.
Douglass asserts that the nature of slaveholding itself, not the individual master's temperament, constitutes a constant violation of human rights.
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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal.