The cruelty of Aunt Katy, the hunger and cold I suffered, and the terrible reports of wrong and outrage which came to my ear, together with what I almost daily witnessed, led me, when yet but eight or nine years old, to wish I had never been born.
Douglass recounts the cumulative effect of the brutal realities of slavery that led him to profound despair as a young child.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.
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.
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.