Frederick Douglass

Cruel and merciless as was the motive that dealt that blow, dear reader, the wound was fortunate for me.

The man had obtained complete control over me; and if he had commanded me to do any possible thing, I should, in my then state of mind, have endeavored to comply.

The overwork, and the brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought—“I am a slave—a slave for life—a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom”—rendered me a living…

I was completely wrecked, changed and bewildered; goaded almost to madness at one time, and at another reconciling myself to my wretched condition.

At times, I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, flickered for a moment, and then vanished.

If at any one time of my life, more than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr.

The first condition of wealth and respectability there, being the ownership of human property, every nerve is strained, by the poor man, to obtain it, and very little regard is had to the manner of obtaining it.

His religion was a thing altogether apart from his worldly concerns.

Knowing this fact, as the slaveholder does, and judging the slave by himself, he naturally concludes the slave will be idle whenever the cause for this fear is absent.

The fear of punishment is the sole motive for any sort of industry, with him.

There is no earthly inducement, in the slave’s condition, to incite him to labor faithfully.

Mean and contemptible as is all this, it is in keeping with the character which the life of a slaveholder is calculated to produce.