In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this fugitive slave law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation.
From his autobiography, this passage declares the Fugitive Slave Act to be unparalleled in its violation of justice, legal forms, and its tyrannical intent.
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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
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.