Frederick Douglass

I always felt uncomfortable, after having received anything in this way, for I feared that the giving me a few cents, might, possibly, ease his conscience, and make him feel himself a pretty honorable robber, after all!

The fact, that he gave me any part of my wages, was proof that he suspected that I had a right to the whole of them.

The practice, from week to week, of openly robbing me of all my earnings, kept the nature and character of slavery constantly before me.

He should be left to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible tormentors, ever ready to snatch, from his infernal grasp, his trembling prey.

Such is my detestation of slavery, that I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave.

We owe something to the slaves, south of Mason and Dixon’s line, as well as to those north of it; and, in discharging the duty of aiding the latter, on their way to freedom, we should be careful to do nothing which would be likely to…

In publishing such accounts, the anti-slavery man addresses the slaveholder, not the slave; he stimulates the former to greater watchfulness, and adds to his facilities for capturing his slave.

Nothing is more evident, than that such disclosures are a positive evil to the slaves remaining, and seeking to escape.

The practice of publishing every new invention by which a slave is known to have escaped from slavery, has neither wisdom nor necessity to sustain it.

A slaveholding community has a peculiar taste for ferreting out offenses against the slave system, justice there being more sensitive in its regard for the peculiar rights of this system, than for any other interest or institution.

The colored man, there, must not only shun evil, but shun the very appearance of evil, or be condemned as a criminal.

If there be one crevice through which a single drop can fall, it will certainly rust off the slave’s chain.