Frederick Douglass

In the national District of Columbia, over which the star-spangled emblem is constantly waving, where orators are ever holding forth on the subject of American liberty, American democracy, American republicanism, there are two slave…

Such scenes are the everyday fruits of American slavery.

There stood the husband, powerless; no right to his wife; the master’s right preeminent.

The woman was placed on the auctioneer’s block; her limbs, as is customary, were brutally exposed to the purchasers, who examined her with all the freedom with which they would examine a horse.

It goes on in all its bloody horrors, sustained by the auctioneer’s block.

Slave-rearing is there looked upon as a legitimate trade; the law sanctions it, public opinion upholds it, the church does not condemn it.

The very state from which the minister from our court to yours comes, is one of these states—Maryland, where men, women, and children are reared for the market, just as horses, sheep, and swine are raised for the market.

Some of the most awful scenes of cruelty are constantly taking place in the middle states of the Union.

The slaveholder finds it necessary to have these implements to keep the slave in bondage; finds it necessary to be able to say, “Unless you do so and so; unless you do as I bid you—I will take away your life!

The slave must be subjected to these, or he ceases to be a slave.

The whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, the blood-hound, the stocks, and all the other bloody paraphernalia of the slave system, are indispensably necessary to the relation of master and slave.

If it be right to hold slaves at all, it is right to hold them in the only way in which they can be held; and this can be done only by shutting out the light of education from their minds, and brutalizing their persons.