By some means I learned from these inquiries that “God, up in the sky,” made every body; and that he made white people to be masters and mistresses, and black people to be slaves.
Douglass recounts the common, religiously-based justification for slavery he encountered as a child, which claimed divine ordination for racial hierarchy.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.