They had to deal not with earth, wood, and stone, but with men; and by every regard they had for their safety and prosperity they had need to know the material on which they were to work.
From his autobiography, Douglass explains the slaveholders' pragmatic need to understand and control the enslaved population.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.