Nor did I, when pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering what was utterly false; for I always measured the kindness of my master by the standard of kindness set up by slaveholders around us.
Douglass explains that his positive replies about his master were not entirely false, but rather a reflection of how enslaved people were forced to measure "kindness" against the low standards of the surrounding slaveholding society.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.
The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…