Frederick Douglass

Among honest men an honest man may well be content with one name, and to acknowledge it at all times and in all places; but toward fugitives, Americans are not honest.

I kept my secret as long as I could, and at last was forced to go in search of an honest man—a man sufficiently human not to betray me into the hands of slave-catchers.

I was not only free from slavery, but I was free from home, as well.

A man, homeless, shelterless, breadless, friendless, and moneyless, is not in a condition to assume a very proud or joyous tone; and in just this condition was I, while wandering about the streets of New York city and lodging, at least one…

The master is to him a stern and flinty reality, but the state is little more than a dream.

The slave has been all his life learning the power of his master—being trained to dread his approach—and only a few hours learning the power of the state.

A freeman cannot understand why the slave-master’s shadow is bigger, to the slave, than the might and majesty of a free state; but when he reflects that the slave knows more about the slavery of his master than he does of the might and…

Why do you tremble,” he says to the slave “you are in a free state;” but the difficulty is, in realizing that he is in a free state, the slave might reply.

He cannot see things in the same light with the slave, because he does not, and cannot, look from the same point from which the slave does.

It is difficult for a freeman to enter into the feelings of such fugitives.

Some apology can easily be made for the few slaves who have, after making good their escape, turned back to slavery, preferring the actual rule of their masters, to the life of loneliness, apprehension, hunger, and anxiety, which meets…

I was without home, without friends, without work, without money, and without any definite knowledge of which way to go, or where to look for succor.