True as a means of destroying slavery, it was like an attempt to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon, but the thought that there was one less slave, and one more freeman,--having myself been a slave, and a fugitive slave--brought to my heart unspeakable joy.
Frederick Douglass: “True as a means of destroying slavery, it was like an attempt to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon, but the thought…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass reflects on the Underground Railroad, acknowledging its limited scope in ending slavery but expressing profound personal joy in each individual's freedom, having been a fugitive slave himself.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
An exceptionally poor and dependent people will be despised by the opulent and despise themselves.
Pardon me, therefore, for urging upon you, my people, the importance of saving your earnings; of denying yourselves in the present, that you may have something in the future, of consuming less for yourselves that your children may have a…
Some will be more successful than others, and poverty, in many cases, is the result of misfortune rather than of crime; but no race can afford to have all its members the victims of this misfortune, without being considered a worthless…
The battle against popular prejudice will have been fought and won, and in common with all other races and colors, we shall have an equal chance in the race of life.