Frederick Douglass: “I am,” thought I, “not only the slave of Thomas, but I am the slave of society at large.”

The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.

That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly purpose.

True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.

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.