On the record
Had not Henry Box Brown and his friends attracted slaveholding attention to the manner of his escape, we might have had a thousand Box Browns per annum.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgHad not Henry Box Brown and his friends attracted slaveholding attention to the manner of his escape, we might have had a thousand Box Browns per annum.
This statement highlights the unintended consequences of attention drawn to escape methods, which could hinder others' chances for freedom.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.