There are those north as well as south who entertain a much higher respect for rights which are merely conventional, than they do for rights which are personal and essential.
From his autobiography, Douglass critiques how society often prioritizes superficial rights over fundamental human rights.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
Let us then, wherever we are, whether at the North or at the South, resolutely struggle on in the belief that there is a better day coming, and that we by patience, industry, uprightness, and economy may hasten that better day.
No people to whom liberty is given, can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant.
The old slave quarter that had before sheltered them, and the fields that had yielded them corn, were now denied them.
Put us in Kansas or in Africa, and until we learn to save more than we spend, we are sure to sink and perish.