All my outward relations were against me; I must stay here and starve, or go home to Covey’s and have my flesh torn to pieces and my spirit humbled under the cruel lash of Covey.
Hiding in the woods after escaping Covey, Douglass articulates the impossible choice between starvation and returning to brutal abuse under his enslaver.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
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.
It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.