The impression was cunningly made that slavery was the only power that could prevent the laboring white man from falling to the level of the slave’s poverty and degradation.
Douglass describes the deceptive narrative promoted by slaveholders to convince poor white laborers that slavery protected their social standing.
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A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
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.