In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the south; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder.
Douglass vividly describes the internal slave trade, portraying the suffering and dehumanization of enslaved people being marched to market.
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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.
For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.
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.