I doubt if there be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book.
Frederick Douglass: “I doubt if there be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book.”
Editor's note · Context
From his autobiography, this passage expresses doubt that any other nation would possess the audacity and depravity to enact a law as unjust as the Fugitive Slave Act.
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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.
The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are impartial and eternal.
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.
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.