To strike a white man was death by lynch law, in Gardiner’s ship-yard; nor was there much of any other law toward the colored people at that time in any other part of Maryland.
Douglass describes the brutal reality of racial injustice and the absence of legal protection for Black individuals in Maryland during his time as an enslaved person.
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I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.