Frederick Douglass

When a slave cannot be flogged he is more than half free.

This spirit made me a freeman in fact, while I remained a slave in form.

I had reached the point, at which I was not afraid to die.

I was no longer a servile coward, trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust, but, my long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of manly independence.

It was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to the heaven of comparative freedom.

Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise.

A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity.

It recalled to life my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be A FREEMAN.

Covey—undignified as it was, and as I fear my narration of it is—was the turning point in my “life as a slave.” It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own…

Whence came the daring spirit necessary to grapple with a man who, eight-and-forty hours before, could, with his slightest word have made me tremble like a leaf in a storm, I do not know; at any rate, I was resolved to fight, and, what was…

I now forgot my roots, and remembered my pledge to stand up in my own defense.

My religious views on the subject of resisting my master, had suffered a serious shock, by the savage persecution to which I had been subjected, and my hands were no longer tied by my religion.