In its name, we have been called upon to deepen our infamy before the world, to rivet the fetter more firmly on the limbs of the enslaved, and to become utterly insensible to the voice of human woe that is wafted to us on every southern gale.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes how false patriotism is invoked to justify the intensification of slavery and ignore the suffering of the enslaved.
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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 had no interest in recognizing or preserving any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.