Horses and men—cattle and women—pigs and children—all holding the same rank in the scale of social existence; and all subjected to the same narrow inspection, to ascertain their value in gold and silver—the only standard of worth applied by slaveholders to slaves!
Douglass condemns the slave system for reducing human beings to the level of animals, valued solely by their monetary worth to slaveholders.
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It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
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.