Frederick Douglass: “We dreaded that more than any thing this side of death.”

Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.

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.

I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.

The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.