I had drawn blood from him, and should even without this satisfaction have been victorious, because my aim had not been to injure him, but to prevent his injuring me.
Frederick Douglass: “I had drawn blood from him, and should even without this satisfaction have been victorious, because my aim had not been…”
Editor's note · Context
From his autobiography, Douglass reflects on his fight with Covey, explaining his true victory was in preventing further injury rather than inflicting it.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.
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.
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.