Frederick Douglass: “The absolute power of this distant “old master” had touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel iron…”

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.

Slavery had no recognition of fathers, as none of families.

If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness.

It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.