The overseer had written his character on the living parchment of most of their backs, and left them callous; my back (thanks to my early removal from the plantation to Baltimore) was yet tender.
From his autobiography, Douglass reflects on the physical scars of slavery and his relative fortune in avoiding them early on.
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More from Frederick Douglass
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
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.