Sickness, adversity and death may interfere with the plans and purposes of all; but the slave has the added danger of changing homes, changing hands, and of having separations unknown to other men.
Douglass contrasts the common human struggles with the distinct and profound disruptions imposed upon enslaved people, such as forced separations and sales.
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They were sent away empty-handed, without money, without friends, and without a foot of land to stand upon.
A race which cannot save its earnings, which spends all it makes and goes in debt when it is sick, can never rise in the scale of civilization, no matter under what laws it may chance to be.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.