The first condition of wealth and respectability there, being the ownership of human property, every nerve is strained, by the poor man, to obtain it, and very little regard is had to the manner of obtaining it.
In his autobiography, Douglass describes how the ownership of enslaved people was the primary measure of wealth and social standing in slaveholding states.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.