I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them.
Douglass reflects on the emotional distance he felt from his siblings due to the circumstances of slavery.
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More from Frederick Douglass
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.
A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.