The slaveholder finds it necessary to have these implements to keep the slave in bondage; finds it necessary to be able to say, “Unless you do so and so; unless you do as I bid you—I will take away your life!
Douglass explains that slaveholders rely on instruments of torture and the ultimate threat of death to enforce obedience and maintain bondage.
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In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
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.