Frederick Douglass

It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them.

I could not always obey, for I was now reading and thinking.

Up to that time, a colored man was deemed a fool who confessed himself a runaway slave, not only because of the danger to which he exposed himself of being retaken, but because it was a confession of a very low origin!

I was generally introduced as a “chattel”—a“thing”—a piece of southern “property”—the chairman assuring the audience that it could speak.

I soon, however, found that my enthusiasm had been extravagant; that hardships and dangers were not yet passed; and that the life now before me, had shadows as well as sunbeams.

Now let but the truth be spoken, and a nation will start forth at the sound!” In this enthusiastic spirit, I dropped into the ranks of freedom’s friends, and went forth to the battle.

Who or what,” thought I, “can withstand a cause so good, so holy, so indescribably glorious.

My whole heart went with the holy cause, and my most fervent prayer to the Almighty Disposer of the hearts of men, were continually offered for its early triumph.

The cause was good; the men engaged in it were good; the means to attain its triumph, good; Heaven’s blessing must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions under a ruthless bondage.

The time is but as a speck, yet large enough to justify a pause for retrospection—and a pause it must only be.

My hands had been furnished by nature with something like a solid leather coating, and I had bravely marked out for myself a life of rough labor, suited to the hardness of my hands, as a means of supporting myself and rearing my children.

It was enough for me to listen—to receive and applaud the great words of others, and only whisper in private, among the white laborers on the wharves, and elsewhere, the truths which burned in my breast.