I could have landed in no part of the United States where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast, not only to life generally in the South, but in the condition of the colored people there than in New Bedford.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes his arrival in New Bedford and the stark difference he observed compared to the South.
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It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.
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.