Frederick Douglass: “The bonds that had held me to “old master” were broken.”

To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.

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.

His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.