The difficulty in doing justice to the life and character of such a man is not altogether due to the quality of the zeal, or of the ability brought to the work, nor yet to any imperfections in the qualities of the man himself; the state of the moral atmosphere about us has much to do with it.
Douglass reflects on the challenges of accurately representing the life of John Brown due to societal moral conditions.
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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.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
It had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.