Frederick Douglass

Covey was to break me, I was to break them; break and be broken—such is life.

They were property, so was I; they were to be broken, so was I.

I need not tell any one who is acquainted with either the strength of the disposition of an untamed ox, that this order was about as unreasonable as a command to shoulder a mad bull!

But to whatever motive, direct or indirect, the cause may be referred, I had not been in his possession three whole days, before he subjected me to a most brutal chastisement.

I am,” thought I, “but the sport of a power which makes no account, either of my welfare or of my happiness.

Starvation made me glad to leave Thomas Auld’s, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to Covey’s.

There was neither joy in my heart, nor elasticity in my step, as I started in search of the tyrant’s home.

The rigors of a field, less tolerable than the field of battle, awaited me.

This, to a hungry man, is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.

It was not merely the agency of Master Thomas, in breaking up and destroying my Sabbath school, that shook my confidence in the power of southern religion to make men wiser or better; but I saw in him all the cruelty and meanness, after…

The reader will not be surprised when I say, that the breaking up of my Sabbath school, by these class-leaders, and professedly holy men, did not serve to strengthen my religious convictions.

I could not go to Baltimore, but I could make a little Baltimore here.