On the record
Tell us whether, after all, the half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than the pampered slave of the rice swamps!
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgFrederick Douglass: “Tell us whether, after all, the half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than the pampered slave of the rice…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass challenges the notion of relative suffering between free and enslaved individuals, provoking thought on their conditions.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Jan 1, 1881
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
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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.
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It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.
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A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.