No thanks to the slaveholder, nor to slavery, that the vivacious captive may sometimes dance in his chains; his very mirth in such circumstances stands before God as an accusing angel against his enslaver.
Douglass argues that the occasional joy of enslaved people is not a credit to their masters but rather an indictment of the system before God.
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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.
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.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.