Frederick Douglass: “They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls overflowing with the…”

On the recordJanuary 1, 1881

They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls overflowing with the bitterest anguish.

Said by

Frederick Douglass

Source

Describing the profound emotional content of slave songs, Douglass explains they were expressions of deep suffering and spiritual lament.

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Guilty or not guilty, to be accused was to be sure of a flogging.

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The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.

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No word of retaliation when a black man is slain by a rebel in cold blood.

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Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.

Frederick Douglass: “They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls overflowing with the bitterest anguish.”