Frederick Douglass: “Why should I hang down my head, and speak with bated breath, when there was no pride to scorn me, no coldness to repel…”

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

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.

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.