Albeit, the lash of proscription, to a man accustomed to equal social position, even for a time, as I was, has a sting for the soul hardly less severe than that which bites the flesh and draws the blood from the back of the plantation slave.
From his autobiography, Douglass reflects on the profound psychological pain of social proscription and discrimination, comparing it to the physical suffering of enslaved people.
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This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.