I had now lived with him nearly nine months, and he had given me a number of severe whippings, without any visible improvement in my character, or my conduct; and now he was resolved to put me out—as he said—“to be broken.
Douglass recounts the severe punishments he endured, illustrating the brutal methods used to control enslaved individuals.
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No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
None now denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.