These dear children are ours—not to work up into rice, sugar, and tobacco, but to watch over, regard, and protect, and to rear them up in the nurture and admonition of the gospel—to train them up in the paths of wisdom and virtue, and, as far as we can, to make them useful to the world and to themselves.
Douglass articulates the profound difference in raising children in freedom, emphasizing their development and well-being over their economic exploitation.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to be small in anything.
I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.
Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave. ” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.