On the recordJanuary 1, 1855
We meant to reach the north—and the north was our Canaan.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgWe meant to reach the north—and the north was our Canaan.
Douglass explains in his autobiography that for enslaved people, the North represented a promised land of freedom, much like Canaan in the biblical narrative.
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We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
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.