On the recordJanuary 1, 1855
The first step, in the wrong direction, was the violence done to nature and to conscience, in arresting the benevolence that would have enlightened my young mind.
Said by
Frederick Douglass
Source
gutenberg.orgThe first step, in the wrong direction, was the violence done to nature and to conscience, in arresting the benevolence that would have enlightened my young mind.
Douglass identifies the initial moral compromise in his mistress's treatment of him as the suppression of natural benevolence and conscience.
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His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.
It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.
The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.