Slaves escaping, until now, had taken to the woods; they had never dreamed of profaning and abusing the waters of the noble Chesapeake, by making them the highway from slavery to freedom.
Douglass describes a novel escape strategy involving the Chesapeake Bay, transforming a natural barrier into a path to liberty.
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None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
In any fair condition of things the men who till the soil will become proprietors of the soil.