He who could eat fastest got most, and he that was strongest got the best place, but few left the trough really satisfied.
Frederick Douglass: “He who could eat fastest got most, and he that was strongest got the best place, but few left the trough really…”
Editor's note · Context
Douglass describes the competitive and unsatisfying nature of mealtime for enslaved children, highlighting their constant hunger and the struggle for survival.
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This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.
Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.
The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.