On the record
It is true that we do not often hear of the enforcement of the law, punishing as a crime the teaching of slaves to read, but this is not because of a want of disposition to enforce it.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgIt is true that we do not often hear of the enforcement of the law, punishing as a crime the teaching of slaves to read, but this is not because of a want of disposition to enforce it.
Douglass explains that the lack of enforcement of laws against teaching slaves to read is not due to a lack of desire to enforce them.
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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.
It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.
Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.
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.