It coolly proposes to sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites; to rob every black stranger who ventures among them, to increase their literary fund.
Douglass critiques the Illinois law, exposing its cruel and hypocritical intent to exploit Black people for the benefit of whites.
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The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart.
His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.