The woman was placed on the auctioneer’s block; her limbs, as is customary, were brutally exposed to the purchasers, who examined her with all the freedom with which they would examine a horse.
Douglass recounts the brutal and dehumanizing process of a slave auction, where a woman's body was inspected like an animal.
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True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.
For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.